More Monkey Magic

Just a quick'n to post my picture of Monkey. He's pretty much Jamie-Hewlett style (or as far as I can muster) and his outfit is the tracksuit Hewlett put him in. I did draw Tripitaka into the picture, but he wasn't so good...

I love the relationship between the spirit/monsters and Tripitaka in the old TV series and the Hewlett/Albarn version. They don't really know how to deal with a human and he is always slightly appalled by their amorality - but he relies on them being violent and dishonourable so he can continue to be good and pure :)
I always got the impression that the Monkey/Tripitaka relationship is the closest thing to understanding between the characters, and it's even sweet at times.

Monkey Magic!

IIIIIIIIIIIII went to see Monkey: Journey to The West last night and it was fandabbidosingtastic! It was stupendous! I loved Damon Albarn's music, and Jamie Hewlett's designs and Chen Shi-Zheng's direction.

It wasn't perfect. The transitions between scenes were a little bumpy. Maybe my expectations are unrealistic after seeing a similarly ambitious show (His Dark Materials at the National Theatre) a couple of years ago which was utterly smooth. Mind you, they had the amazing Rubik's-cube that is the Olivier stage to play with.

I'd never been to the Royal Opera House before (only to a little boxy theatre right at the top to see my brother perform as part of the Knack course). It's breath-taking. We could still see nice and clearly from up in the gods, though.

The performers were amazing, all of the main characters able to sing, act and perform acrobatics and martial arts... Monkey himself, of course, made the biggest impression, snarling and cackling his crazed way through the story. The animation was charming - pretty jerky and looped, but with all of Hewlett's inimitable style - the design, from costume to set was beautiful and as I say, the music was incredibly impressive - stirring and comedic by turns.

So to keep in theme I thought I'd upload a picture of some drawers I painted last year. They were just those wooden Ikea ones, meant for CDs (in fact, that's what I keep in them now), but I have a tradition of livening those up in elaborate style, and these were Spirite- Away-inspired.

Vintage doodle-o-grams

Hello, been a few days - because I got me a job. Not an animation job. That was never really the plan after finishing the course: I want time to have a good think before I try and enter that world, and in any case the animation jobs market is a little slow in summer.

Sooooo... here's quite an old sketch-wetch of Lyra Belacqua running across the crumbling ice-bridge towards the end of Northern Lights. And that seems a perfect cue to have an exposulate about how very much the film sucked. It SUCKED. It sucked warm sick through a short straw (sorry, but I read the phrase in a Neil Gaiman comic a few years ago, and ever since have felt that if I have to put up with the image being lodged in my brain, I can at least try to share the pain as much as possible).

Well, actually, the film had good bits. A couple. I thought Weitz did a good job as scriptwriter once or twice, particularly in the interaction between Lyra and Mrs. Coulter. But there was just so much that was incomprehensibly bad about the film, and the ice bridge scene is a perfect example.

Firstly, because of the last-minute, half-arsed pissing about with the structure they'd done, the scene was in a new, geographically inept, place. Secondly, the thing looked ridiculous - in what possible situation would that long, spindly bridge exist? Lyra and Iorek's interactions were also far too soppy, and Lyra's actions odd in the circumstances. But mostly, Weitz seems to be the most fantastically random director. Having provided Lyra with an unfeasibly long and dramatic bridge to cross he then skips the crossing and simply cuts to Lyra safe on the other side.

But then that seems all of a piece with Weitz approach of failing to understand on even the most basic level what to include from the book, so the film ends up being made up of scenes which are either tedious exposition or action sequences. He seems to regard the whole thing as something of a chore, herding into montages - or simply cutting - any scenes which are not essential to plot. He gets out of the way, as quickly as possible, scenes which anyone with any affection for the story should revel in telling. The film is at once overblown in the fantastical design (not to sya that a lot of that wasn't excellent) and uncomfortable with its own fantasy identity, apparently unable to quite take seriously the inventions of the story. When Weitz said he was worried he couldn't direct a film with a such a large CG element, I see what he meant. To be fair, I think it is a rare director who can make CGI look any good, but the most basic requirement of a director in such a role is that he himself believe in what he's trying to create - otherwise how can we?

As I say, the work of the design department on the film was excellent. From costume to set, the attention to detail and flair of originality was of an excellent standard The actiong was also largely very good. I thought Dakota made a great Lyra (although trailers hint that some of her best scenes didn't actually make the final cut), though she's not MY Lyra. Craig really captured my idea of Asriel and brought a lot of charisma and humour to the role. Nicole was all right - sometimes very good indeed, sometimes, where the script let her down, not so good. Ian McKellan is obviously a great actor, but was completely miscast as Iorek. They might as well have cast Sarah Michelle Gellar as Lyra. His voice sounded a little phoned-in.

The animation was also very good (and the character modelling and rendering etc - I love what Rhythm and Hues did with the coloured shine on daemons' fur), but as I say I'm extremely wary of overuse of computer animation in films, and I hate that culture of animation houses bidding to get work on big films, and being disconnected from any creative process that might be going on. The bears were done by Framestore by the way. The feel in the film is of characters who are technically excellent in their execution, inco-operated into the film with perfect professionalism. But they cannot hide the fact that they are post-production effects created by an entirely separate production team.

That is, of course, why Northern Lights should be made as a 2D feature! OK, it's never going to happen Even in the golden age of 2D feature animation, Northern Lights would have presented an unrealistically risky proposition, and now barely any 2D features are being made at all. But that doesn't stop me from directing an adaptation in my head :)

So I uploaded the above sketch (the composition of which is based on Chihiro running away from No-Face in Spirited Away, by the by), and also this little gem (...) from a couple of years back, which are kind of representative of my thoughts on said hypothetical film.

This is Lyra and Roger, having been out on the roof, climbing back into Lyra's room to run down to the crypts and play kids and Gobblers. Their daemons are missing. I guess Pantalaimon is ahead of Lyra, out of shot, and Salcilia hasn't yet come in through the window... yeah, let's go with that.Kata.

The Retiring Room

Back to Northern Lights. First of all, acrylic paintings never seem to look very nice scanned. I'd very much appreciate some advice over this (Although I acknowledge it might have something to do with my scanner being a bit old and cheap and my skills in correcting matters of Photoshop being lacking).

But getting back to the point: this is something I've been engaged in painting for aaaages. I probably started in about this time last year and have had so little time to myself since then I've had to grab a few hours here and there. Four hours here, six hours there - that might seem like a lot, but I do paint very slowly.

The scene is from near the beginning of Northern Lights. Lyra has sneaked into the Retiring room - forbidden to servants and those of a female disposition - and has just been interrupted in her inspection of it by the sound of approaching footsteps...

I wish this reproduction of the picture was better, because I really am very proud of this picture, even in its unfinished state. I find creating environments, particularly in full colour, out of my imagination difficult and was determined to create a Retiring Room of my own. I used one of the schoolroom sets from A Little Princess (the lovely 1995 version directed by Alfonso Cuaron) for reference in the layout of the room, and that film also prompted the heavy use of green I should think. But most of it is mine. The design of the carpet is based on a batik design I found in a book, and incooperates images of birds, animals and insects. I didn't want to be the Retiring Room to be quite something that could exist in our world, past or present, see. Undoubtedly, Jordan College isn't a million miles away from the atmosphere of real-life Oxford colleges. But it's not quite the same; and I imagined that the existence of daemons, and their centrality to life, would have influenced all sorts of things in that world - design, for instance.

Another detail is more self-indulgent :) the two portraits are of Philip Pullman and John Milton (r-l), the writer of Paradise Lost and Regained which influenced the writing of His Dark Materials. In a further fit of self-indulgence I posed them in the style of two relevant paintings. Pullman's pose is based on that of Da Vinci's 'Lady With an Ermine' (or 'Girl with A Stoat' as Terry Practhett has it). Except I gave him a jackdaw rather than a stoat because he's guessed on several occasions that he might have such a daemon. Milton's posed according to Holbein's 'Lady with A Squirrel' (imaginative at names, these artists). My skill at that scale isn't such that they look particularly like their subjects, but it makes me happy to have them there :)

Still to be done... Lyra needs painting properly. The smaller bookcase, just behind her, needs to be filled. The Jordan coat of arms needs to be painted into the shield above the fireplace. Also, I think the rug needs more definition. The lamp and decanter on the table need painting and finishing respectively, and talking of lamps the candle-flames and the light they shed is another layer of detail to be done. Finally, Pantalaimon needs to be added. Formed like a tropical bird, he'll be fluttering in shock above and to the right of Lyra. He's moth-formed in the book, but I like the image of a tropical bird because it'll be so clearly out of place in the room.

Toodle pip. Kata.

Ezra Cawson

I didn't really impart very much information about Blaidd yesterday, but then she's the main character and telling her story would entail telling the entire story of the story...

Suffice to say she grows up in this tented city in the South of England, spending her days in half-wild, half-militaristic marshalling of the city with her friends. Then, when she's fourteen, several factors conspire to remove her from home and friends, and she finds herself in central Europe in a situation she isn't remotely equipped to handle.

Later she falls in with the Shamans of Barcelona, and when I draw Blaidd as an adult or older teenager, its in their semi-uniform.


But never mind Blaidd for now; it's Ezra I'm posting pictures of. Blaidd meets her on the great, Europe-looping railway called the Crystal Way.

There she is. Except that's her when she's older - maybe 19. Ezra's teenaged brattisheness matures into fully-fledged self-absorbsion and a controlling tendency, but she's a good friend to some, and has a prodigious talent for her music. Her band, formed with her art-school friends, is at the vanguard of the new music emerging in Blaidd and Ezra's youths, and Ez becomes an icon of the youth movement of that time. She is the sort of person of whom students would have posters of on their walls for generations.

Physically my references for Ez are Keira Knightly and Louise Lomabrd (as she appeared in the BBC's The House of Eliott). Young, slim and boyish (except when she is being girly); as you might be able to tell from the above sketch there's a very 30s glamour about her, as well as the more obvious 60s influence. Someone I always bare in mind (though I don't really know much about the woman) is Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane. My other references are Pete Towshend (my personal hero, though god knows why), Noel Fielding (who is the modern face of 60s-style rock stardom) and Russell Brand (who demonstrates the lighter side of self-obsession).

^ Here she is with longer hair... and a white frock... hurrah. What else... she can't face anything more solid than black coffee before lunchtime; she changes her image frequently; she falls elaborately in love with people until they let her down by being human; she's a talented photographer, particularly of the figure (her hero, if she existed in Ezra's world, would be Lee Miller) but photography is a barely accepted art-form in her college so the tutors rather despair of her; her father lets her down in dramatic fashion early on, and while she is close to her mother (protective of her, even), she enjoys being part of Blaidd's all-embracing family.

Here's a good example of the mix of influences: Ezra's pose is copied from a shot of Grace Slick at Woodstock; she's purloined Townshend's boiler suit and grumpiness, and Skyla the charming-but-equally-self-absorbed singer is doing his best Roger Daltrey impersonation (actually, the physical references are equal parts Daltrey and Noel Fielding, again. So basically I've peopled my world with versions of Noel Fielding. Sounds like a nice world).

Time to get me OCs out

I bring greetings from the extremely soggy land of Shepherd's Bush.

Right, enough of these proper characters created by valid writers, I've got me own creations :) Now, I know the drawing to the right is a little odd (and possibly doesn't make much sense, especially in non-coloured form) but I'm fond of it so up it must be loaded.

Baaaasically there's a girl and she grows up in this city, which is made of tents and souks and yurts and peopled by bohos and what I believe the French called Les Marginal (or maybe they don't.) A childhood of Woodcraft Folk camps has not been wasted on me.

Blaidd's - that's Blaidd over there - Blaidd's place in this is as part of the Packs of teenagers that police the city semi-officially, like a corupt yet hippy scouts. And as a part of the Samhain celebrations in the city the Packs form part of a great parade which beats the city bounds...

To summarise: there's a whole lot of detail, none of which is particularly relevant to any story, but is more a case of me finding places to cram every detail of life that captures my imagination. Like a magpie wedging more and more shiny bits of tinfoil into its nest. I believe in this case I'd recently been to Lewes Bonfire. Anyhoo, was trying to get tokens of the many and contradictory influences. Like I say, dunno if that's clear, but at the very least its a picture of a girl with a papier mache wolf mask and fairy wings, and that's got to be a good thing.


There's a younger Blaidd, somewhat more conventionally dressed...

And there's a picture of her having a dance while on shift...

Blue Skies (some chance...),

Katamaran.

Northern Lights delights

Current and inexplicable obsession with 'Monstrous Regiment' aside, the only thing I ever really draw fanart for is Philip Pullmans 'His Dark Materials' - in particular, 'Northern Lights', my favourite by far of the trilogy.

This is because since reading NL at age 12, twelve years ago, it has pretty much remained my favourite book. Of course I've got a long list of favourite books. But NL remains irreplacably close to my heart and furthermore, whereas I have no inclination to draw characters or scenes from many other of my favourite books, I have drawn hundreds of pictures of Lyra and co.

So I thought I'd post a few of my recent favourites here...

The above is an odd one to start with, but it's my most recent success. It's the characters Lord Asriel Belacqua and Marisa Coulter (with their daemons Stelamria and the golden monkey respectively) as I imagine them years before the events of HDM.

To try and explain matters simply: prompted by a fellow fan's comment that he imagined Marisa growing up in an exotic British colony, I suddenly had an intriguing impression of her early life (which might one day develop into a fully-fledged story). The idea was slowly fleshed out, to the point where I wanted to draw a 16-year old Marisa in 30s-style clothes; a little self-conscious, but with growing confidence in her charm and beauty; a girl leaving a tomboyish past behind and dreaming of life in London society and her own debut. (Of course, she wouldn't be called Coulter at this stage but I haven't thought of a maiden name yet).

Naturally, it was irresistable to have Lord Asriel make a cameo in her early life, though at this point their only reaction to each other would be irritation (she at his arrogance and contempt; he at her childishness) and antagonism. He's about 23 to her 16, a recent graduate of Oxford and travelling restlessly to foreign regions... his clothes were fun too: I like the idea that Lord A affects the styles of a working man or a soldier, flattering himself that he is a man of the people, at the same time as enjoying his aristocracy and subscribing to the hierarchical status-quo. That seems to fit with his later attitudes.

Finally: these two were drawn separately but I composited them on the computer. Something about their poses looked like they were posing for photographs (half-shyly, half glowing with her own prettiness in Marisa's case; impatiently in Asriel's). I liked the idea that Marisa's family and its guests had made some excursion to a local beauty spot and someone had got the two young, photgenic people to pose for the Box Brownie in front of the waterfall (or whatever)... and this would be probably the only photo that was ever taken of Lyra's parents together... involved, I know :)


Ahem. On a slightly less complicated note, here's some sketches I did of how I imagine King Iorek Byrnison of the Panserbjorn of Svalbard. Of course, armoured bears are based on polar bears and I used photographic reference for these sketches, but with some adjustments: I draw Iorek with a head smaller in proportion to his frame than a polar bears. I think that makes him look a little more like a person (since humans have small heads). Also, when cartoonists or animators want their characters to be more accessible, sympathetic, cute - they give their characters proportionally large heads and big features. See Disney. So Iorek having a smaller head and tiny eyes has the opposite effect of making him more remote, less instantly likable. Also, he has opposable thumbs and dextorous fingers as you can see in his 'I crush your skull' pose there :)

Aaaaand finally we have Lyra and Roger, slightly pre-NL, messing around at Jordan. The picture was prompted by me wandering how I'd portray Roger's daemon Salcilia (in the animated adaptation of NL that lives in my head), and deciding she'd have a palette of reds and like fox form. Hammer and Tongs put Sal in lots of dog-forms for the film, because Roger is a servant I guess, but I don't think Lyra would be best friends with the sort of obedient, unrebellious boy who would warrant a dog daemon. Dunno what Pantalaimon's meant to be, btw, just some sort of cattish thing...

Oh, and for some reason I can;t get out of my head that, sans animals, this picture is also a young Cecilia and Robbie from Ian McEwan's Atonement (looooove that book). The girl has a slightl look of Keira Knightly, and the childrens' poses remind me of the scene from the film where Robbie and Cee are messing around in the surf near Beachy Head.

S'all folks (for now). Blue Skies.

Kata.

Mal and Polly (but mostly Mal)

Howdy. As I start this blog the pathetic fallacy of the raging storm outside, the wail of police sirens, the stars exploding in the sky (no, sorry, that was just the streetlights coming on) all conspire to announce that this... is a momentous occasion.

Yes, I have started a blog to share my charming drawings with a world that's been, frankly, crying out for this sort of enlightenment. If you're very lucky I might expand the remit and post examples of the sorts of nonsense I spend my pays mulling over. For instance, why am I obsessed with the Discworld book Monstrous Regiment? To be sure, Pratchett is a fine writer, and its true that I enjoy the story archetype of the girl dressing as a boy to go to war... but it's a flawed book... the theme and consequently the plot and the main character's arc seem to meander a little uncertainly... but still...


I keep drawing bits of it. Well... I keep drawing Maladicta the cross-dressing vampire soldier (sorry if that's a spoiler for anyone) and now I've finally managed to commit Polly to paper in a form I'm pleased with.

Their uniforms in the book are described as - dunno, 19th century English? - but I've been veering more in the direction of WWI or WWII style uniforms. These aren't great scans (my computer has an uneasy relationship with pencil) but you get the gist of it. Mal is all 1930s, as well as being a lesbian vampire soldier (well, possibly lesbian), and my take on her has been developing...

Pol is a bit more 40s but seems to have kept better track of her shako than Mal. The odd thing is I always envisaged that Mal would continue to live as a boy post-Monstrous Regiment, enjoying the freedom it gave her, whereas Polly would be more of a standard bearer for female soldiery in Borogravia, but when I came to draw them it was almost the other way round.

Anyhoo, thought I'd kick off with some of my most recents doodlings. More soon.

Kata.