Movie Round Up.

While I sit around trying to get an idea jumpstarted, I have had time to do one thing… watch a lot of films. So here’s a quick rundown of what I’ve been watching lately, and my thoughts on them.

The Evil Dead Remake: Saw this at the end of last week. Probably in my top-five movies I wanted to see this year. Like the remakes of Night Of The Living Dead, Dawn Of The Dead, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Hills Have Eyes, it keeps enough of the original to make it a perfectly watchable movie. These movies tend to swap a little bit of substance for style, but there is a guilty pleasure in seeing the effects updated in these films. I watched the original a few months back, and one of the things that hit me watching it again is that the Cheryl character is probably the best acted and most intriguing character in the first film. I could totally see why they would make that character the star of the remake. I like the Ash character, but he doesn’t start to come in to his own until Evil Dead 2. It was also nice to see something so gruesome and bloody on a cinema screen again. In this shitty age where only Michael Bay films, and watered-down, monotonous, horror movies with too many quiet… quiet… BOO! moments make it into cinemas. It was nice to see a movie that didn’t hold back and let the blood-and-guts fly.

The Feast Trilogy: This kind of picks up where my last review left off, but… if you’re a Romero or Cronenberg, and you can use horror themes to make comments on life\society, then great. But if you’re a horror director\writer and you can’t do thought provoking… go trashy. I love Shaun Of The Dead, but I fear the knock on effect of that movie is this… if you were going to make a goofy horror movie in the old days, you may not have had plot or even good actors, but some half-decent gore effects and a little sleaze would take your low-budget horror movie a long way. There seem to be a lot of zom-coms now, where neither the zombies or the comedy are any good. Slacker-types, running around making not very funny jokes. Not very funny jokes and weak gags seems to be the new blood-and-guts and nudity. You’re lucky if these film even make an attempt at doing some live-action, non-CGI gore. I’m not saying the Feast movies are anywhere near perfect (the third one I’d barely class as a film), but at least it’s guys in half-decent monster suits running around with some gore and soft-nudity thrown in. Yeah, they have their fair share of weak-gags in these flicks, which only get worse as the films go on, but they do have some redeeming features. Arse-kicking punk chicks who struggle to keep their clothes on. Character survival gags you truly can’t second guess. Some decent monsters make-up and gore. I kind of think this is a fair enough go at doing cheap horror movies. It’s no Return Of The Living Dead, but at times it has brief moments of coming close. It’s a fair enough swing of the bat, these films.

To sum up… less ‘dude’ humour in horror, please. Less stoner\slacker lazy humour movies pretending to be horror flicks. I’m gonna move on before this becomes a rant.

Room 237: Being 31, I’m sad to say my idea of a good night in now is a really in-depth documentary on horror movies, chips and dips. Tragic, but true. Room 237 is probably the biggest documentary on a horror film in years. The Shinning would probably make most people’s top-ten horror movies list. I think this documentary got a rough ride from some people because of some of the kookier theories people put forward in it. For example, they talk about the fake Apollo 11 moon landing theory far less then some reviews would have you believe in this documentary. I think this film does a good job of giving you both some solid theories on this film, and maybe some not so solid ones. If you like kooky-film theories (which I do. There should be more films like this.), you’ll probably enjoy it. How big is Kubrick’s rep, that even when he made continuity errors, people still think he’s a genius? I’m not saying the guy wasn’t good, but no one’s bullet-proof.

Fistful Of Thumb-Nails.

I’m currently back in the land of being creatively constipated again. Since finishing up Project B.O.B. a little while back, I’ve done one pin-up that I thought was so-so, and one Dracula fan-art piece I liked. I’ve also done pages-and-pages of thumb-nails. I guess it’s just a case of working out the bad ideas, until the good ones come along. Like panning for mind gold. At least it gives me time to play around in my sketchbook, I guess. Bottom line, I have no idea what I’m gonna draw next and I’m finding it a bit frustrating.

Right here-and-now, though. Here’s a profile sketch of everyone's favourite count. I think he actually looks a bit cooler from the side. You get the hooked nose thing going on. I’d love to turn this into a pin-up if I could figure out a way. It’s what he’d look like if they were gonna put his face on a coin or stamp or something. Maybe I’ll put a crown on him and turn it into a bit of Anno Dracula fan-art.

Dracula Descending.

Been a long time coming, but I finally got around to doing some Dracula themed art. Pretty much all last year I had a massive urge to do something Dracula related, but couldn’t spare the time, as I was too busy finishing up my graphic-novel. But now I have some free time, I thought I‘d scratch that bat-shaped itch.

Here’s the count channelling his inner-Spiderman. I don’t want to even think how many hours I spent last week drawing and then inking those stones. This was maybe the most time-consuming bit of art I’ve ever done. I’m happy with the way the castle-wall looks (thank God), but I did come close to losing my mind a few times drawing this. I’ve been wanting to try and depict Dracula’s famous lizard wall-crawl for a while now. It’s a trait that has maybe fallen out of favour in recent years when people do their take on this character, but I’ve got a soft spot for it. I was kind-of-joking… but I do think Dracula would move a bit like Spiderman visually. Maybe minus the web-slingers, of course.

I’ve got plans to do some more Dracula art soon. Maybe try and do a small portfolio of them. I’d love to do a sequential Dracula story at some point, too. But for now, hopefully this pin-up will find some love. I had a lot of fun drawing it… apart from when I spilled\sprayed ink all over the place… and the whole spending hours and hours drawing rocks.

Wow, my internet has been so slow these last few days. It’s like going back to dial-up days, waiting for pictures and videos to load.

Just The Two Of Us.

As by now you probably know, what I was working on this week is still in the works. Partly because it’s an ambitious shot. Partly because of real life mishaps. Hopefully the wait will be worth it, that’s all I’ll say. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a while now. A little tribute to the greatest horror novel of all time… and the greatest villain ever.

Until then… as I said last week, there was a character from my last pin-up (now up on DeviantArt, also), that I wanted to develop a bit. I haven’t given him a name yet, but I did get a chance to do this sketch of him this week. I don’t know if I’ve got his look quite right yet, but I think it’s a cool design. He’s fun, but tricky to draw, this guy. I’ve got a few characters I want to develop further in the coming months.

Time Well Spent… Not!

Grrrrrr! Spent all week trying to free up some time and get mundane real-life tasks out the way, so I could get some serious inking done today. This was my plan, until, sadly, about 20-minutes in I knocked my ink-pot flying and spent half my allotted time getting ink-stains out of my trousers and carpet. SOOOOOO FRUSTRATING! It’s put a real dent in my weekly workload.

I have been working on something new recently (which now probably won’t be finished until next week, thanks to my inky mishap… it looked like an octopus had exploded or something.) Spent nearly three hours this week just drawing rocks alone. To get in the right frame-of-mind for this new pin-up, I’ve been reading these very twisted facts about Vlad The Impaler. Also got a new True Blood box-set for the weekend.

Apocalypse Mama.

If you said (C) Mutants, you’re a winner.

This was me just easing my way back into drawing after a short break, really. Single Mum gunning down rampaging mutants in an apocalyptic future seemed as good a place as any to start back with. Wish I had better Photoshop skills, so I could drop in a nice apocalyptic sky. Something radioactive and multi-coloured, maybe. But it was fun drawing them mutants. They’re a bit small, so tiny details like extra nipples and scary, screaming faces might be lost on casual viewers. Zooming in is highly recommended. My first thought while designing this shot was for it to be a Zombie pin-up… but then I thought the world was by now surly bloated with too much Zombies art, so I went Mutant instead. I really liked the two-headed lead mutant (again… wish I had drawn him a tiny bit bigger), I may very well try and flesh this character out a bit more in my sketchbook, and have another go at drawing him at some point. Who doesn’t like two-headed mutants?

Must be tough being a single mum in a post-apocalyptic, mutant-infested scorched earth…?

Live From The Drawing-Board.

Since I’m not currently working on something where I have to be very careful about spoilers, I thought I’d post this photo of a pin-up I’m currently drawing. Found some time over the bank-holiday to start doing some rough pencil layouts, and this is how they’re looking. Hopefully should have this piece done by the end of the week, if the sequential Gods are willing.

Here’s a fun side-game. Guess the bad guys of this pin-up. Are they gonna be:

(A) Zombies

(B) Werewolves

(C) Mutants

(D) Hipsters

Place your bets, please.