Another quick trip down memory lane tonight. While thinking of B movie posters I wanted to post a couple of weeks back, I remembered one of my favourite ones for the Friday the 13th part 4. One of the reasons I like this poster is I remember seeing it a lot in a grotty video store window when I was a kid. This video store was in this tiny shop (which has since been turned into a tiny house) by the railway bridge. It had been in the window for a while and the sun had started to fade it a bit over time. Being young I had never seen a Friday the 13th type of movie and wasn’t sure what I was looking at. I didn’t really know what a Hockey mask was and so when I saw it all those years ago whenever I’d walk past and see this faded poster, I thought it was a picture of a stabbed up potato.
The idea of cutting into a potato and the potato starts bleeding really grossed me. Still does thinking about it now. Put me off potato’s for years as a kid. Even years later after seeing all the Friday the 13th movies and own them on DVD nothing has even come close to freaking me out as much as the idea of a bleeding potato.
As a bonus here a 3D poster I found for Friday the 13th part 3D. I can never decide which is better, part 3 or part 4.
Even though I’m turning 26 at the weekend I’m a little freaked out at how much I’ve been trying to relive my childhood these last couple of weeks. Firstly for my Birthday I’m getting a Doctor Who box set so I can watch again one of my all time favourite Dr Who episodes The sea devils with Jon Pertwee as the Doctor. Then at some point this week when my friend ask what I want for my birthday I’m going get him to get me a couple of Where Wally books from the children book section as a birthday treat. And sadly it doesn’t end there. Late last night while looking around at prices of DVD’s on the net and watching clips of old kids shows when I remembered A great show called Terrahawks. Took me a while to look it up as I thought it was called Thunderhawks and it took about five minutes for Google to set me straight. I didn’t think Terrahawks had anything to do with Gerry Anderson but turns out I was wrong. What I liked about his stuff that I watched as a kid was the title and end credits. They always pumped you up (that and all the sweets and chocolates you’d have eaten) before the show started.
Here the intro to Terrahawks and if this song isn’t bouncing around in you head after watching this you’re a stronger man then I.
I still think it one of the best intro and it also has the best end credits as well. Gerry Anderson shows were the only shows you hand to watch from start to end. Noughts and Crosses has never been this good.
Talking of Gerry Anderson shows another program that had a must watch opening and closing credits was Captain Scarlet. You watched that faceless assassin walk down that same alley every week and yet you always had to watch that opening. No theme music and how many shows start with the hero being gunned down in a dark alley? I never really liked Thunderbirds (they looked like gay, male, flight attendance for one thing) but Captain Scarlet was cool as fuck.
It weird that the theme tune came at the end of Captain Scarlet but just to make you watch right to the end they have these shit hot Ron Embleton painting. If your going to have a theme tune you want it to sound a lot like this.
Just to end here some clips from a kids game show called Knightmare. There probably four guys sitting around in a pub like old war buddies talking about the time they won Knightmare as kids. Nothing would induce male bonding like this show. You’d get so worked up watching this show. The blades coming down the wall was always the best bit for me (1:35 seconds in). It was the only game show were if you lost you got killed... well kind of... not really.
Latest panels from Dirge. Its always fun to draw animals into your work if you’ve got the time and reference to do it right. You get so used to drawing humans with two legs that anything with four legs or more seems a bit alien.
Yikes is all I can say about this video. These are Japanese Hornets. They might not look that bad at the start of this video until you see them in scale with normal Bees. They’re about the size of your thumb and the worlds largest Hornets. The Japanese Hornets sting is so strong it can dissolve human flesh and they kill about 70 people each year in Japan. They’re sting also gives out an odour that attracts other Japanese Hornets.
This is a video of a small group of Japanese Hornets taking out a whole hive of Bees for they’re honey and young. Yep that right. They kill thousands of Bees in hours just to steal they’re honey and eat they’re larvae.
What I like about this video is the over the top narrator and Jaws 2 style camera shot of riding on the Hornets back as they approach the hive.
Of course the Honey bee have started to evolve a new trick of they’re own:
“When a hornet scout locates and approaches a Japanese honey bee hive it will emit specific pheromonal hunting signals. When the honey bees detect these pheromones, a hundred or so will gather near the entrance of the nest and keep it open, apparently to draw the hornet further into the hive or allow it to enter on its own. As the hornet enters the nest, a large mob of about five hundred honey bees surround it, completely covering it and preventing it from moving, and begin quickly vibrating their flight muscles. This has the effect of raising the temperature of the honey bee mass to 47 °C (117 °F). The honey bees can just tolerate this temperature, but the hornets cannot survive more than 45 °C (113 °F), and die. Often several bees perish along with the intruder, but the death of the hornet scout prevents it from bringing reinforcements which could wipe out the colony.” {Wikipedia}
Your taking your own life in your hands quoting from Wikipedia but they have a picture so I think it could well be true (unless some twelve year old kid has got the better of me).
No wonder Japanese Comics and Cartoons have the best Monsters\Creatures in the world. Just look at how messed up they’re wildlife is. Just a shame it cost 70 lives a year. We’d draw better monster in the UK if we had more to go on then Daddy long legs and slugs on milk bottles.
Never enjoyed my trips to the public Library to photocopy work down from A3 to A4 but this week has been the toughest. The old photocopier was crap and the screen was covered in marks but at least the only thing you had to worry about was running out of paper and having to leave your (well my) artwork unwatched as I went to ask for more paper. The new photocopier is all dancing and singing and looks like a sci-fi prop but can’t even do that as I found out yesterday wasting a whole afternoon trying. I then wasted most of the night trying the old scan in two half’s and join up in Photoshop trick. I had always hated the idea of this but liked the idea and never having to have to go back to the Library so I gave it a go. I have no idea how people do this or if I’m just cursed this week because as I’d line up one piece of my artwork another piece (usually the guttering) wouldn’t match up.
I’ll be honest I’m not as technical as I’d like to be and the biggest pain over the last three years of Dirge has always been technology. Apart from Photoshop all the technical side of making this comic has been driving me up the wall. What ever I do next I’d like it to have a lot less to do with needing technology. I think I might take comics back to they’re must basic form and go live in a cave and just paint on the walls and invite people round to see them.
Anyway I’m sure I’ll get over it, but it has set me back a few days. It all reminding me of that scene from Office Space.
So I’m going to be sending next week trying the Library again or trying to find a new place to Photocopy my work. At least with all that unneeded scanning last night I can post this panel. Had a lot of fun drawing this one. Crowd scene can take they’re toll but this one wasn’t to bad as it wasn’t to big a crowd. I could take some time drawing each member of the public and go into a bit of detail.
A big love of mine are B movies. B movie are “motion picture made on a low or modest budget and intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature” or so says the mighty Wikipedia. (Always wondered why they were called B movies and now I know. Even I’m learning something from this blog). But what I think I love even more then B movies or Grindhouse films\Trailers or exploitation movies are they’re posters. I think it comes from back when I was a kid and I’d walk in to the local newsagents that had a video room in the back. VHS rental boxes were massive back then and this room was crammed with videos from floor to ceiling. I wasn’t old enough to watch most of those films but just walking around looking at all the different covers seemed cool enough. Most B movies tend to be a let down after all as I sadly found out when I was old enough to watch them. Hence why the posters and video covers were always so cool to look at. What the director couldn’t pull off in the movie with his budget and skill, he’d pay an artist to paint up how it should look even if half the time the movie doesn’t. You could say as a small kid that those days hanging out at the weekend around video stores, was the first time I really started to notice artwork.
When I’m drawing a cover to a comic I tend to try and take a little from the design of posters for B movie\Exploitation films. Comic covers and film posters are different, but not so different in many ways. In fact I’d even go as far as to say it wouldn’t surprise me if those Movie poster artist took some lessons from comic book covers.
I’ve picked out a few B movie posters that I really like and that I think really work well even if the film it based on probably didn’t.
The Phantom Of Paradise is a great cult film by Brian De Plama. Very twisted. Very cool. They tend to use photo from the film to promote the film now sadly but I think this poster from 1974 is fantastic. Probably one of the best taglines you’re ever read on a poster as well.
I never seen or even heard of this film but I’m guessing the film probably isn’t as good as it’s poster. It like something off an EC comic cover.
What better then those Were Wally books from when you were a kid? How about if you had to shoot Wally with a sniper rifle and Wally was drunk and throwing insults at you (I should point out for some reason Wally called Waldo in America). The drunken insult are funny as hell and there a real satisfaction when you find Wally and the shoot the fucker for what he said about your mum.
I couldn’t post the game and I have no idea how to post links on Blogger, and the link to my scorecard (which was very impressive) won't work damn it. So it a cut and paste job but well worth the effort.
To be honest, all I’ve done these last couple of days is play this game. Probably the most playable game on the net. Way better then Tetris. It a bit hard when you start off but stick with it.
Wow Christmas and New Year have been kind of a blur to me this year. Would have liked a bit more time off truth be told. Plus also the insult of buying a new flat screen TV only for there to be hardly any good films on over Christmas. Oh well, I got The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, 80’s TV series off a friend and ordered some DVD’s in the online sales. Also got a couple of great Graphic Novels at Xmas that I’ve been reading while tucked up in bed over these cold nights.
Hoping 2008 will be a good year for me as 2007 turned out to be a better year then expected. I’m hoping 2008 will be even better and I have a couple of things in the pipeline for 08.
I’ve eaten so much sweet and salty food over Xmas and New Year and have a cold I just can’t shake, so I’m feeling pretty sick lately. Need to get some fruit and\or veg in my diet or I won’t make it through January.
Anyway hope you had a great Xmas and New Year.
P.S. No I don’t have a New Years resolution and the next person to ask me is going to get a jab in the eye. Why have they become such a big deal this year? Everything is being outlawed by the government these days anyway, you need what few dirty habits you have left to make it through the day.
