Spelling

From Worcester Magazine:
In true blog fashion, the spelling, grammar and punctuation of these selections are to the individual poster's tastes.

If that's true, then who the hell is Derek King?

Hey, you. Go buy this.

Tonight, my friend Heather is holding a fundraiser, the Dreaded Event. A rock show with auctions mixed in. I made this for the event:

Go bid on it.

Show your work: Nytmare edition

As many people know, I work digitally and take screengrabs as I work. Click here to see the latest animation, for last weeks' Nytmare poster.

Couple things to notice. I originally had the hero fearlessly jumping at the monster, but that wasn't really working for me. So he came forward and got entangled in the muck. I saw this picture of this roman sculpt when I was little and it's always stuck with me. Something so calm and cool about all three of them: 'Stupid serpents of evil, we're trying to talk here!'


Also, there was going to be a chick in the image as well, but as I was drawing her, I just couldn't wrap my head around the narrative. Too complicated without actually being interesting. Same thing with those roots. Too much.

Also, during the build, you'll see the text turn on and off. I dropped in the text early, knowing that I wanted the composition to be 50/50 text/image, but kept it shut off (hidden) most of the time because of the gritty complex fonts. They tend to choke Illustrator. I like that program because it really moves at the speed of thought, so it's just an efficiency thing.

Have a pleasant weekend.
d

Tax Petition Man

There's an old guy outside my market with a petition. Every time I walk by, he asks me if I want to sign his petition to reduce the sales tax. I decline and think to myself, if you've got one to increase the sales tax, maybe I'l sign that petition, but I have no interest in mixing it up with him. Guys that age get all red and shaky, knock shit over with flailing arms and get heart attacks. So fuck that. I give him the same answer I give the Jehovahs:
"I appreciate what you're doing, but no thanks."

Today, I pulled up and a fashionable young woman with a comically large ass was signing his petition. Once she rolled her SUV out onto the shitty, busted-up streets of Worcester, our metaphor was complete.

Him: "Will you sign this petition to reduce the Mass sales tax?"
Her: "Will that leave more money in my pocket?"
"Sure!"
"So I'll be able to spend more of my money on the fatty, sugary treats that have made me such an unsightly double-wide?"
"Yes!"
"That's great! Now what about shopping for clothes and hair products and treatments that I use to fill my empty stupid life?"
"You'll definitely more money for that stuff, PLUS that stuff will be so much less expensive."
"How much?"
"Well, if your hairdo costs $45, I would guess about 14.037 cents."
"Oh snap, that's great. Now I'll probably have money to buy so much other garbage that I don't have room for it in my house? And so I'll have to think about renting offsite storage space for it all."
"Indubitably."
"Oh wow. This sounds great, my life is going to be so fucking incredible! OK well see ya later, I have to drive home the long way to avoid all the intersections where firemen are begging me to put spare change in their boots, I'm all like whateverrr. I just take these other roads but they're so worn out and full of potholes that it bashes my fashionable SUV apart."
"Yeah, that's because those jerks in government are greedy crooks."
"For reals yo. Toodles."

There are constant calls to cut-cut-cut taxes and concurrently a constant whining and suffering of the public good. What are we doing with all that extra money that we save? Buying plastic crap from China? That's it? That's what we choose for a prize when we trade in our community's well-being?

I drive and walk around this city this summer, on broken roads, looking at immense garage sales full of dogshit bullshit trash, and looking at the empty pools. This city didn't have enough money to open the pools this year. It's not like they didn't have the money to fix them after they were vandalized, or some situation like that. No, they just didn't have the money to bother opening them. Fuck the children in this city. I guess it makes sense: If your parents can't afford a pool, then you don't get to swim. This makes my head all hot and explodey.

Publicly: We don't have enough money to simply activate the equipment that we already own. Privately: We apparently have enough money to buy enough shit to load up our every shelf closet garage shed and cubbyhole.

So I'll say this for the sake of the children: Fuck you and fuck your petition.

Jumping the gun a bit...

...since I haven't got final go-ahead yet. But here's the new poster for Nytmare's CD release show:


I don't usually post things before they're fully cooked, but I'd like to get as much hype as early as we can for this show. If there's major changes to the poster, I'll fix this image later. Here's our first glimpse of the music:



(And no, I didn't draw the pic that's on the video.)

And just because

I can never leave well enough alone...I added some trim. Don't touch it.


14"x22 is my new standard size. Mostly because I visited Hatch Print shop in Nashville last week. 30 minutes there was worth a lifetime of floundering on the internet. Their gorgeous work is inescapable in the Nashville area.

Quickie...Unknown Hinson

I love Unknown Hinson. I just wish he would venture north when he tours.

Ridiculous...MechaDone

Yeah, this one was fun, and I put way too much into it. All in illustrator, and mostly in illustrator 10. I only use CS3 or PS to touch up and make it ready for the web.

The linework is an ugly angry mess. Hah.

So close to done...

Just some details to fill in. I want some planes, some mother-effin' tanks, and more detailing on the tail and ground. The Japanese text translates to "mecha godzilla. this is all just nonsense. i don't speak or write japanese. these words are from g o o g l e translate. my apologies to japanese speakers." So yeah. Fun.

Mecha III

More...

MechaGodzilla II

Been on the road the past few days, so not much to report on this, though I threw some colors at it and did some creative stretching. I saw something this weekend that made me think about distorting this one a bit, and as soon as I did it I liked it. Not sure yet about the colors.

MechaProgress I...

Still trying to decide exactly how I want to treat the Godzilla in the foreground. I want his lines and colors to be heavy to keep him into the foreground. I might reverse the bones out, maybe make the X-Ray effect more subtle. Not sure yet...I know I want the colors to be blazing by the time I'm done.

I've also been taking screengrabs every 15 min, so that should be fun. Cheers. d

Mr Smartass* has been going on for a whole year

Holy Cow.
Thanks to everyone who has been coming from the start. And welcome to everyone who has just started coming and OMG, filling up that room. Wednesday nights are tough sell, but you guys are cool. It's getting good and this week we've got the specialest of treats...

*The Mr. Smartass Theater Show is a live homage (aka total ripoff) to the classic television program Mystery Science Theater 3000. Three of Worcester's most notorious smart alecs give each film a new soundtrack laced with puns, dirty jokes, sound effects, factoids and pop culture references.

**Every show is unique, every show starts at 9:30, and it's ALWAYS FREE to get in. The Lucky Dog Music Hall is at 89 Green Street in beautiful Worcester MA.

***It's especially free if you are wearing a tube top.

Starting Up Mechagodzilla

Working a new image for my buddy Andy's book, Man Made Monsters. Not sure if I'll be able to use this particular image, since it's a copyrighted character. If so, I'll make something else. Here's my thumbnail and my pencils for it. Still lots of decisions to make with it and I'm not sure when I'm going to have a good block of time to work on it. Busy week coming up.
d

D-9 Update II

This might be done. Spent some more time on it tonight. Happy with how the shantytown came out. It's important to make sure that detailed bits of background look right so they don't wreck the whole piece.



As I was finishing up, Nick told me that Ted Kennedy had died, around midnight tonight. I know his last effort was to push through a proper universal health care system so that we could join the rest of the modern, shoe-wearing world. It's despicable that so many went to so much trouble to destroy a dying man's efforts, and hurt the rest of us in the process, just in the name of greed. Many of those people will be on the TV tomorrow, weeping and reciting fake sentiment.

Rest in peace, you will be missed.