MECHANIKA

I got a very nice surprise when I came back from AUTOZONE…Great open, huh. Well, I had to go to Autozone in the morning to get a new battery for the car and then replace it in the parking lot myself. I am not a car man by any means, so do not laugh if my battery winds up in my front seat, because I didn’t secure it properly.When I came back home, I was met by my Fed Ex man, Keith, who pulled up to my house with not one but two packages for me.One of the packages was a storyboard program that I will get into at a later date. The other package was a signed copy of my friend Doug Chiang’s new book, MECHANIKA.

I met Doug back in 2001 I believe, during a brief stay on Skywalker Ranch during pre-production of EPISODE 2: ATTACK OF THE CLONES. Doug was and is an approachable kind of guy, and we have remained friends, even though we only see each other if he is in LA, and he is usually working or selling in one form or another. Doug and I are the same age and yet he has so fewer grey hairs. Darn calm mind and all. Anyway, MECHANIKA is Doug giving back to fans and fellow artists as he reveals his tricks of the trade in a step by step fashion. You will see him solve problems with pencil, marker and digital paint.Doug was the design director for those “indie” prequel films THE PHANTOM MENACE and the before mentioned ATTACK OF THE CLONES. His designs also heavily shaped the latest WAR OF THE WORLDS, POLAR EXPRESS and BEOWOLF. He also co-wrote and painted the book, ROBOTA.  If you want to learn from a young but humble master, check out MECHANIKA. 

THE OTHER “STAN, THE MAN”

We seem to be losing many talented people these days. Tim Russert just left us. A smart, even handed newsman. Comic book fans lost Mike Wieringo months back and recently lost the great Dave Stevens who created “THE ROCKETEER”.  All of these people were wayyyyy too young to go. Russert was 58, Wieringo was 43 I believe, and Dave was 52. Sydney Pollack was A VIBRANT 72, while Anthony Minghella was 54!!!!! This just freaking saddens me.

I met Dave Stevens a couple of years ago, not knowing he was battling a fatal illness. Cool guy. Nice. Looked younger than his years.  Healthy.  I interviewed with Minghella for “COLD MOUNTAIN” (didn’t get the gig) but man, was he the most humble and engaging man of talent and ability I had met in a long time.  He spoke TO me, not AT me.  A true gentleman.

Now, today while surfing the net I find out that Stan Winston died last night at the age of 58 from cancer.  For those of you who don’t know, Stan Winston (and his crew) built the non CGI dinosaurs from the “JURASSIC PARK” films.  That big T-Rex head that blows it’s nostrils and steams up the window of the truck. That was Stan.  The exo-skeleton for the Terminator. Yea.  And the metal suit that Robert Downey wore in “IRON MAN” … yea, Stan supervised all that.

Stan had the intelligent idea that CGI shouldn’t take over films. He thought that his live mechanical effects used with CGI would only make the films better. CGI after a while just looks…CGI. You know the objects are not really there after a while, even though the spfx (special effects) look great. Winston was an talented artist in his own right, if you ever saw some of his PREDATOR sketches.  Yea, that movie too.I had the honor of meeting Stan  years back at the old GOLDEN APPLE COMICS location on Melrose when he did a signing for a new line of comic books he was behind. I only got to chat with him for a few moments, but it was worth it.  I guess heaven will have a great spfx shop, thoughtful movies, a news division and comic books. Now certainly, though this is not about storyboards, their was not am person in the business who did not respect these talented and classy people. 

Oh, Stan Winston was the “other Stan” only because of the great and very much alive, Stan Lee, co-creator and writer of the classic Marvel Comics super heroes. That was a blog ago. 

TOOLS OF THE TRADE

A few years back, my friend, fellow illustrator/storyboard artist Todd Harris offered me the term, “paper’s for chumps!” He was referring to doing art work on paper ; drawing on it with a pencil or pen, scanning the work, getting approvals from a director, and then doing FINISHES, scanning those, and THEN saving/emailing/printing the finished work. Oh, and as nothing is “finished” in film, like when the director changes their mind, and you have to RE-DRAW everything.Todd works on a Wacom tablet. It comes in a 4 by 6 or 6 by 8 size. A USB cable connects it to your computer. Using a special pen that comes with the tablet, you look at your computer screen, while keeping the pen on the tablet, drawing whatever you need to. The image you are drawing appears on the computer screen, or an attached monitor. What this does is that you can save time by not scanning. Everything goes directly into your computer. If you need to make a change (you need to be working in a program like Photoshop, Painter, or Illustrator) you can make the change you need to and instantly save it.When I was working on FAST AND FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT, my storyboard teammates Darrin and Jim hipped me on to Wacom’s CINTIQ, which we saw at a demonstration. A Cintiq is a monitor that hooks up to your computer. Instead of drawing on a tablet and looking at a separate screen (I can’t handle the dis-connect), you draw ON the monitor, as if you were drawing on a desk with a piece of paper. It replicates the angle and feel of regular drawing, while still getting you away from scanning. Many artists, like production illustrators Doug Chiang or Ryan Church do color paintings digitally. I mainly use it for black and white work. These guys are also brilliant artists with a digital brush or live brush. It just takes time to make the get used to the medium. One can certainly send digital art to clients in all stages and make changes.This is great for the commercial field. Fine artists need not apply.The difference is that a Cintique or even a Wacom tablet lack the “teeth” that paper has, and even when you are coloring, a Wacom pen is not the same as using an actual brush. This all has to do with “feeling” as you do your work. All in all, the Cintiq or tablet do offer advantages as well as disadvantages. As a commercial artist, digital lets me deal with my clients at the speed they are getting used to having and getting information.

GETTING GRAPHIC

This past week, my wife, Betty K. Bynum (an extraordinary hyphenate singer/actress/writer) convinced me to go to the Los Angeles Book Expo, held at the L.A. Convention Center.  The reason I wound up going was that there would be several seminars and workshops on graphic novel production.As someone who has read comics for almost my entire life and who has worked in the film industry for the last fifteen years, one might think that a graphic novel would be a natural thing for me to do.Well, I had to be dragged kicking and screaming by Betty, and my very close friend, artist Lawrence Christmas. Larry would say like clockwork after I was tired from writing at odd hours while working on a screenplay, “hey man, you should do a graphic novel. Hollywood is buying them up”, and “there’s more than one way to skin a cat” and quite possibly “don’t let Hannibal Lector inside your head”, but I may be getting quotes mixed up. I am very confident in my storyboarding ability,  but a frame to frame comic book has intimidated me for quite some time.  My strength is clear and inventive storytelling, not sheer drawing ability.  If I draw something for publication, I want it to be great.Now, there have been some…a damn too many graphic novels that have sold and have been optioned by Hollywood that have looked like someone drew it with their left butt cheek after downing a bottle of Johnny Thunder moonshine. But there have been others, WATCHMEN,  THE NEW FRONTIER, WHITE OUT that were really well drawn or downright brilliant in their execution. I will in fact most likely only write the graphic novel, (that phrase again… it’s just a long form comic book, y’all) and leave the drawing to other hands.  But, I may do a number of layouts.The first event I went to was a “Graphic Novel breakfast” which featured cartoonists Art Spiegelman, MAUS) Jeff Smith, (BONE) and Mike Mignola, (HELLBOY) as well as Jeph Loeb, a  comic book writer and a producer on SMALLVILLE and HEROES,.Art Spiegelman’s MAUS is about as far from super hero drawing as you can get,(anthropomorphic mice and cats standing in for Jews and Germans during the Holocaust)   but the art is very solid and well thought out.  It was great seeing Art, as it had been twenty-five years, and I reminded him that I was the student (he had me pegged as a “Marvel Comics kid”, which I was) who introduced him to some young artist named Frank Miller.  Miller went on to reinvigorate the DAREDEVIL character, and then go on to create his characters in SIN CITY, and 300.  Frank just directed THE SPIRIT, which was created by one of my other SVA teachers, Will Eisner.Anyway, I met quite a few people who work in film and who purchase or create graphic novels or who just know how the game is played. I gave out a few cards and took a few as well.Aside from that, I ran into Stan Lee, the comics writing legend, Leonard Nimoy who was signing a book of nudes, Stephen J. Cannell, creator of THE A TEAM, which was a treat, as I am working on the movie version, and my good friend, the greatly talented design director of two Star Wars prequels, as well as BEOWOLF and POLAR EXPRESS, Doug Chiang.  Everyone had a book to sell. Even Bobby Brown. Yea, how dare Whitney get in the way of the brotha’s… brilliance.  Hey, she did proclaim loudly (when Brown was released from jail a few years back) that her then hubby was “THE KING OF RnB!!!”Like Nancy Reagan said, “JUST SAY NO”, kids.  Anyway, I already knew a lot of the information, but I did certainly walk out of the building with a much greater sense of all that was possible with graphic novels. It makes sense that I would find to use my film and comic book backgrounds and to put them to good use. Now, I have to make the script into the best piece of writing it can be.Easy, …right?