I usually try not to make a habit of showing off client work in my personal site. I’ve always believed that there should be a healthy amount of separation between what I do for a living and what I live for. This isn’t to say that I’m not proud of what I do. I LOVE my work and I try to do the best I can but I’d generally prefer people to visit my site and see what really makes me tick. You know, things you’d rather do when you have a billion dollars in your bank account, a manse at the Riviera, and a personal jet to get you there.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a billion dollars, nor a manse, and not even a bicycle to get me from point A to B.

But what I do have a lot of is a ton of unseen stuff. Things I did for other people during my employ as a mercenary. And come to think of it, there are a lot of times when I look through my digital war chest and say to myself, “Hey, that doesn’t look half as bad as I remember it! Not bad at all.”

A few years back, I almost got commissioned to do a series of scenery paintings for some high fantasy audio play. The project unfortunately didn’t pan out so I never got past the thumbnail stage. I think I made a dozen or so before the deal fell through the economic cracks. But that was a long time ago so I got over it already.

But despite all that, these thumbnails were actually quite fun to do. The descriptions were rather vague but I didn’t see it as a hindrance. More like a free pass to do whatever the heck I wanted to do. It also gave me the opportunity to play with various color schemes. It worked in some cases, it utterly failed in most. But all in all it was a pleasant and interesting practice. Click at the images to see how messy they are up close!

And being the obsessive person that I am who spend hours and hours trying to make sure that my inks are as clean as I intended them to be, I’m also the kind of person who keeps unflattened files of everything I do. I justify it “for the sake of posterity.” And in this case posterity did pay off because now I can make a nifty animation of my thumbnailing process:

Been sifting through my files and found this ancient drawing I did back in 2009 for the brilliant webcomic Marooned by my good friend Tom Dell’Aringa. This came out in the first self-published volume of his comic. I’m not sure how many volumes he sold but as far as I can remember I’ve never really publicized this drawing on my own until now. 

A very mundane scene. This is one of those pieces that I’m very happy with. I don’t think I can make this any better than it is. Please click the image for a bigger version.

And just in case people are wondering, yes, that’s Cydonia in the background. My version anyway.

it’s you I’m looking for.

Been looping the song All My Days by Alexi Murdoch while working on volume 2 of Laddertop and kept having this nagging scene in my mind. Decided to just stop working and get it out of my system. Tried coloring it but decided to just stick with just lineart later on. Quite happy with how it turned out.

I really really love mundane scenes.

This song is also the intro song in the movie Real Steel which I gushed about in an earlier post.

…when I realized I won’t be a washed-up pugulist driving cross-country to enter ROBOT BOXING with my plucky sidekick.

Truth be told, this is really what I looked like after watching the latest robot beat-em-up Real Steel. Heck, is there any other robot beat-em-up? No. Transformers do not count. Well, there’s Robot Jox, but the last time I saw that movie, I recall squirming in my chair. So that doesn’t count either. Unless they remake it with better special effects.

My love affair with robots is a deep and lasting one, spanning decades. I love robots. I also love monsters. And there’s nothing I love more than robots vs monsters. And the bigger they are, the happier I am. Unfortunately, Real Steel doesn’t have monsters. But it has a ton of robots. And by golly, weren’t they oh so prettay.

However, the funny thing is that although I love robots I’ve stubbornly avoided watching Real Steel for the longest tiem. In fact, the first time I saw the trailer I was incredibly dumbstricken.  Outraged, even. Why? Because I thought it was way too similar to this little webcomic called Automatic that I used to do for Wirepop.com back in 2003-2006 about robot fighting. Heck, they even used controllers.

Even the synopsis I did when I pitched the project is pretty similar:

****

Marco hasn’t won a single mecha battle in his life.  However, when he happened to chance upon a mysterious engine in the scrapyard, his luck is about to take an unusual turn.  Powering his old beat-up mecha with the engine, he starts to win one streetfight after another until his victories lead him to fame, the global arena, and under the eyes of a shadow organization.

****

 Who’s smiling now, you little shmuck? Definitely not you…

But I got over that anyway. Considering that I soon found out that they loosely based Real Steel from a short story written by Richard Matheson in 1956 that did shut me up for a bit. And before anybody accuses me of accusing them of stealing my idea. No, that’s not what I’m upset about. The concept of robots punching robots is as old as time itself. I’m more upset that someone did a better story. And boy was I depressed for the longest time. I really do love robots that much. Delusions of grandeur, my friends. Delusions. It’s not healthy for you.

I haven’t read the story Steel from where the movie is based from so I have no real opinion about it. Although a little bird told me that they changed a lot of things. But hey, this is Hollyweird we’re talking about. It’s a miracle if they don’t change things completely. I bet they would age up Ender in the upcoming Ender’s Game movie and make Bean his rival in a heated love triangle with Petra Arkanian…. and there will be vampires!

(OMG. I hope Orson Scott Card doesn’t see this and fire me from Laddertop. (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻ I’m working my butt off on volume 2 and it will be great so please don’t fire me!)

Anyway, Real Steel turned out to be quite a treat. A dash of father-son drama, some shiny robot bashing, and a bunch of really sweet music. Oh, and the one thing I love the most about the movie is that despite it’s a futuristic movie (futuristic in the sense that it’s set in 2020), there’s nothing futuristic about it aside from the robots.  It’s like now. Except that there are robots punching each other to smithereens. I like that. I love that.

I’m pretty sure that to everyone who’s read Laddertop and actually paid attention has realized that it’s what I’m striving for in the art. Speculative fiction is not always about spaceships and floating cars and hoverboards. A lot of times just dropping in something extraordinary in an ordinary setting is more than enough but people unfortunately miss that. And that is a tragedy.

So do I recommend Real Steel? You bet I do. If you are nostalgic about good old Americana and a pretty solid story about fighting for the ones you love with fists of steel, then yes. But if you’d rather sit through a movie with nothing but explosions for two hours, well there’s Transformers for you.

And to end this post, I’ll be leaving you, my plucky sidekicks, with a couple of pages I did as part of my pitch proposal back in 2003 for Automatic because tears are delicious and I never run out of them.

Sketch of Sola falling asleep while eating: 20 minutes.  Time it took to decide what to write here: 1 hour. Face = palm.