| Giant Robot Armageddon |
[Mar. 20th, 2009|03:29 pm] |
Working with the Wacom tablet is totally fucking with the look of my brush lines. I've been casting about for good examples of process. This thread got my attention. I'm trying to decide if this is really a direction I want to go in. It kind of runs counter to my whole, self-imposed SHORTEN THE PRODUCTION CYCLE mandate.
 |
|
|
| To Do... nah |
[Mar. 20th, 2009|01:25 pm] |
|
Books, routers, cables, computers, cell phones -- I have lots of old stuff that still has a modicum of value that I would like to extract. I entertain the fantasy of selling it on ebay but in reality that process is just way too time intensive. I'll keep all the crap until the pain of storing it outweighs the pain of losing whatever slight value it still holds, and then I'll throw it away. |
|
|
| Ready my Special Place in Hell |
[Mar. 19th, 2009|12:21 pm] |
Today I ordered a double short latte at the Sudbury Starbucks. The woman at the bar made a double tall latte and tried to give it to me. I said 'this is supposed to be a double short.'
'Can you except a tall? It's bigger.'
'No.' I said.
So her helper poured some of it into a short cup and added a shot of espresso.
A double short latte is supposed to have two shots of espresso, not one shot plus whatever happened to be an arbitrary portion of some other drink. So I refused the drink again.
The third attempt was foamless but I let it slide.
Sudbury is on the shortlist of places we are looking to move to but I never thought I would actually end up living there. It's a town of tiny, attractive-but-somehow-sexless women and repressed-but-entitled man-like beings. After my performance in Starbucks today maybe I'd fit in well with that crowd.
|
|
|
| A&P |
[Jan. 27th, 2009|09:48 pm] |
Ten years ago I found out that John Updike had lived in Ipswich, MA —my father's hometown. My dad said "oh yeah, Updike... someone pointed him out to me in the grocery store years ago."
"What store?" I asked.
"I think it was the A&P." He replied.
At the time he didn't know Updike had written a story called 'A&P'. He didn't know 'A&P' was stitched into my brain.
Updike died today. I always thought I would meet him. I would have resisted the wankerish urge to tell him that they didn't actually burn suspected witches in Salem.
Who needs a drink?
A&P
"In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits. I'm in the third check-out slot, with my back to the door, so I don't see them until they're over by the bread. The one that caught my eye first was the one in the plaid green two-piece. She was a chunky kid, with a good tan and a sweet broad soft-looking can with those two crescents of white just under it, where the sun never seems to hit, at the top of the backs of her legs. I stood there with my hand on a box of HiHo crackers trying to remember if I rang it up or not. I ring it up again and the customer starts giving me hell. She's one of these cash-register-watchers, a witch about fifty with rouge on her cheekbones and no eyebrows, and I know it made her day to trip me up. She'd been watching cash registers forty years and probably never seen a mistake before."
|
|
|
| Girl Heroes |
[Jan. 14th, 2009|11:07 am] |
I got a message from an old friend on facebook today.
She has a daughter who is interested in comics but she (the mother) feels that the range of female superheroes is limited. She's asking me for suggestions.
Where are the dope girl heroes of this moment?
This question has been asked and answered a million times on the web, but the answer clearly hasn't yet penetrated the mainstream culture. Also, there are bound to be answers to this question that exist nowthat didn't just a moment ago.
I'm formulating my reply to her question... any suggestions? |
|
|
| So Alone |
[Jan. 5th, 2009|09:21 pm] |
I've decided that my MySpace account should die.
For some reason MySpace and I just never got along.
Twitter, however, is magnificient. I love it.
It has restored my faith in the internets.
The mom mafia rules FaceBook in my world so I've avoided it.
But the time has come...
http://www.facebook.com/people/Daniel-Warner/1003811714
Friends? |
|
|
| I Believe in that Poison |
[Dec. 15th, 2008|09:18 pm] |
By 2004 I had read a little Rimbaud but never fell for it. It felt like something that belonged to the baby boom generation. At best it was what the people whose work I liked to read liked to read. That year a friend of mine gave me a coverless copy of Rimbaud's complete works and letters. His brother had given it to him. Something about that book sparked my appreciation. Maybe it was because the translations were better than the other versions I had read. Maybe it was because the book itself reminded me of my good friend. Maybe the work of a young poet took on new meaning for me as I crossed over into my thirtieth year. I don't know.
MORNING OF DRUNKENNESS
My story of the good and the beautiful! Terrible fanfare of music where I never lose step! Magical rack! Hurrah for the miraculous work and for the marvelous body, for the first time! It all began with the laughter of children and it will end there. This poison will still be in my veins even when the fanfare dies away and I return to the earlier discord. And now that i am so worthy of this torture, let me fervently gather in the superhuman promise made to my created body and soul. This promise, this madness! Elegance, science, violence! They promised me they would bury in the darkness the tree of good and evil, and deport tyrannical codes of honesty so that I may bring forward my very pure love. It all began with feelings of disgust and it ended—since I could not seize its eternity on the spot—it ended with a riot of perfumes.
Laughter of children, discretion of slaves, coldness of virgins, horror of figures and objects from here, be consecrated by the memory o that night. It began in slyness and it came to an end with angels of fire and ice.
Brief night of intoxication, holy night! even if it was only for the mask you bequeathed to us. We assert you, method! I am not forgetting that yesterday you glorified each of our ages. I believe in that poison. I can give all of my existence each day.
Behold the age of Murderers. |
|
|
| The Shared Table |
[Nov. 26th, 2008|01:53 pm] |
My laptop was dead by the time I made it to 'Cafe on the Common' in Waltham.
I'm now sharing a tiny table and an outlet with a kind stranger.
As Shay and Robin get older Beth and broaden our scope of activities. I've assembled a functional social life over the past few weeks. I've noticed that at this stage in life there seems to be more value in maintaining numerous 'shallow' relationships rather than the select 'deep' high-overhead friendships of my 20s. Maybe the value was always there but I'm just noticing it now. Or, more likely, I have always been aware of it and simply pushed it out of my mind so that I could work on comics in every waking moment of free time.
Last week I heard Robin 'reading' books to herself at 3am.
I'm seeing more and more of myself reflected in her behavior.
"I am of those who like to stay late at the cafe,"
the older waiter said.
"With all those who do not want to go to bed.
With all those who need a light for the night." |
|
|
| Bathroom Tales II |
[Sep. 25th, 2008|10:14 am] |
|
Same bathroom, same guy, but today he shuffled into the stall carrying a huge, green, plastic watering can with a broken spout. |
|
|
| ... and I Have a MF Beard |
[Sep. 24th, 2008|06:23 am] |
The new 'I'm a PC' commercial pokes it's finger directly into what has always irritated me about the 'I'm a Mac' commercials.
I am Mac user but I am not that smarmy, doe-eyed man-boy. That guy is an untested, unscarred naif. That guy can only exist against a happy white backdrop where nobody is fighting, starving, building, winning, losing or struggling. Introduce any beauty, pain or reality into that world and the image of the man-boy dissolves. Man-boy exists in an American-born cloud of cognitive dissonance. He's a fashion statement, and computer as fashion statement is wack in the extreme.
The PC commercial is driven by big values--It's not about the machine, but what you do with it. More in the vein of the 'Think' and 'Think Different' messages, it promotes individualism, doing good work, and passion alongside it's products.
This commercial won't get me to move away from working on a Mac but this stuff resonates very deeply with me.
'...I design green buildings' Flower Tower
'...and I challenge the law' Man One
What happens when you email geek dream girl feng@windows.com? |
|
|
| Bathroom Tales |
[Sep. 23rd, 2008|05:45 am] |
Yesterday I was in a public rest room. An old guy (probably in his late seventies or early eighties) shuffles in. His hands were shaky and he was in complete slow motion. He took a paper towel from the dispenser and CAREFULLY, SLOWLY folded it into a rectangle the size of a match book. Then, stopping to ponder the significance of each pump, covered the thing with slimy pink hand soap. He shuffled into a stall taking his wet little present with him.
I don't know what he was planning to clean with that thing, but getting old doesn't seem like a ton of fun. Will I ever need to take a folded paper towel covered with hand soap into the stall with me? |
|
|
| The Story Continues |
[Sep. 22nd, 2008|12:31 pm] |
I was locked in the cellar making pages all weekend. Drawing a full bike-rack in deep birds-eye view perspective is that kind of thing that really makes you question what you are doing with your life. The assignment calls for really tight diagrammatic drawing. It's a departure from my usual, fast-and-loose designs and I'm getting into it. I'm hoping it the exercise will push me forward in terms of craft.
I did manage to escape to the Comic Shop on Saturday morning. I got the ancient Milligan/McCarthy Rogan Gosh trade, a Cooke/Brubaker Catwoman trade, the first issue of the the Seth Fisher/Zeb Wells Big In Japan mini series and the first Warren Ellis Storm Watch trade. The grand total was under $23 because the trades were used.
Beth took the girls to NY for the weekend. I needed some focus time so that I could dig into the MIT project. Without the non-stop chaos of kids the suburbs can be erie. |
|
|
| FUGU 6 |
[Sep. 13th, 2008|12:36 am] |
|
|
|
|
| Lunch |
[Sep. 10th, 2008|01:28 pm] |
John Maeda (technologist) is now the president of RISD (art school).
I think the implication there is self-explanatory.
Listen to an interview with John Maeda. It sounds like Lydon (the host) and Maeda are spooning naked in the afternoon sun but about halfway through Maeda has an interesting point about 'making the case for creativity.'
Robert McKee makes that case beautifully in the introduction to STORY. I'm about 1/3 of the way through that book and have totally bought into it.
MIT has commissioned a bunch of comics pages. I've decided that those pages will count towards my 365 day total. They have to. My schedule right now allows for 3-4 hours of drawing in the morning from 4am to 8am. So I don't have any wiggle room when it comes to taking on projects.
PSA -- Don't order a 'double espresso' at Panera Bread. Heads will explode. Lines will be held up.
ALSO -- I don't know If I'm that 'laptop in the cafe' guy anymore. I mean, I am TODAAAY, but I wonder if that's something I want to hold onto moving forward. |
|
|
