Friday night Halloween Party down… two weddings to go. This is one heck of a weekend.

From last night, here’s the look:

Costume is done. just waiting for a bit of the paint to dry while I shower, shave and tidy up around the apartment…

Sometimes I worry about never having a normal schedule or a normal social life… then I realize that being able to call up artist friend who I know will be awake at 1am so I can borrow some acrylic paint to finish my Halloween costume is actually quite fun. There is no normal and that’s just fine.

Improving on my Riddler costume from 3 years ago. The question marks on the jacket were held on with fabric tape before, but now they’re sewed on (thanks to the power of Grandma’s sewing machine). The hat’s the proper color this time, as is the face mask. Nifty keen.

Tonight’s the Silver Snail Halloween Party. Should be entertaining.

Woke up this morning and remembered what I was going to post about on Sunday but forgot…

I saw the Who Killed The Electric Car documentary on Friday night. I’d seen the trailer and wanted to check it out earlier in the summer, but it wasn’t playing in Toronto until now.

Um, wow.

It’s quite good and you’d be wise to check it out if it’s playing near you… or snag it when it comes out on DVD November 14th.

Fully electric-powered cars that emitted no exhaust fumes and ran fast, quiet and clean existed when I was heading to college in 1996. Ten years ago the technology was affordable and on the roads because of tough legislation in California forcing the car manufacturers to come up with alternatives to polluting vehicles – the same kind of legislation that forced the industry to comply with a whole ton of good things we now take for granted, like catalytic converters, seatbelts and airbags. The story of how that technology got buried and where the auto industry is headed now may seem pretty clear once you watch the trailer for the documentary, but there’s a bunch of other things they cover too. Check it out.

I grew up in Oshawa, a GM town. Almost everyone we knew worked at GM at some point or was friends with someone who did. Hell, the cheesy ‘Welcome to Oshawa’ sign says – ‘The city that moto-vates Canada’. My contempt for the auto industry as a whole and GM specifically is pretty pointed now. So many companies (and every political group in power) have a ‘short term profit at all costs’ mentality to please their stockholders and/or make messes for the next group in charge to worry about. Huge group mentality emitting this giant ‘not my problem’ signal. Quite sad.

I was contacted a few weeks ago by a guy who’s putting together a television series about creative people in the Toronto area. Back when I first started the Makeshift site he discovered my Photoshop tutorials; When he saw I had a book coming out he figured it would be a good time to interview me. So… they came by today. I tidied up my apartment, they set up a bunch of lights and we shot the interview and some stock footage of me drawing and painting on the computer.

Most of the chat was about inspirations, storytelling, having my story on the web and getting it ready for print. I think it
went well. I’m hoping I spoke clearly and didn’t “um” a bunch or anything.

The interviewer and cameraman get set up for the shoot.
I didn’t get any photos of me blathering, so lights and camera equipment will have to do.

The segment won’t be airing until at least January, but when I know which channel it’s on and other details I’ll tell you all here on the ol’ livejournal. All in all a good, and a little different than the norm, kind of day.

Nerdy updates:

– Watched Battlestar Galactica Season 3 Episode 4… WOW. Almost every complaint I had about the direction the story seemed to be taking got fixed in one brain-busting kick ass episode. Kudos to the creative team for pulling off that one. I’m quite excited to see where things go from here. I’m still a bit annoyed that they jerked their viewers around with this plotline, but at least it seems to be heading in a good direction now.

– Chris and Andrew’s bachelor party last night was madness. Booze, food, booze, dancers, booze, karaoke… I’m stunned that I didn’t feel absolutely awful when I woke up this morning. My suspicions about Chip‘s insanity was confirmed last night… that man was made to party and he has no dignity filter whatsoever – awesome and terrifying.

– There’s now over 200 people subscribed to this Livejournal. That’s kind of crazy. I will try and post more useful/entertaining things, lest you all run away. 😛

– There were a couple other things I was gonna post about… and I just forgot them. That’s sort of impressive.

Okay, I need some sleep. More tomorrow.

Makeshift got an unexpected boost today with an LJ post on the ultra-popular Scans Daily Livejournal Community. I wondered why several pre-orders had suddenly come through in a short span of time and checking the site server logs lead me back to the post. That kind of grassroots spreading the word about the book is really amazing and humbling at the same time.

I’ll be posting this on the site early next week but since you’re here at the personal LJ, here’s a sneak peek of the final cover:

Makeshift final cover design behind the cut.

Tonight’s digital painting class felt like I had a Eureka kind of breakthrough in understanding some new ways of approaching things. Here’s the result of about 1.5-2 hours of experimenting with some new digital painting techniques:

Click HERE to see the progression of the piece as I worked.

Rather than starting off with a tight piece of line art (which is how I normally work) I tried to build up forms almost entirely with tone. As hard as it is to do when you’re starting with blobs of paint you have to trust yourself at each stage even when there isn’t much to look at. Having the Undo button and Layers in Photoshop makes that even easier.

Pencil drawing usually focuses on adding shadows to a white page. In comparison, painting is usually about starting dark and adding light to a piece, getting more focused and detailed as you go. It’s like pulling specifics out of murkiness.

The final change is not as big a jump as it may look. Tiny details are added, the overall ‘outline’ of the figure is cleaned up and several adjustments of Saturation, Brightness and and an added Overlay layer to punch up the colors makes the piece pop a lot.

It’s a step in the right direction as far as learning new styles and ways I can work digitally.

Apparently this is the week of watching stuff. I got caught up on Heroes, the new comic book-styled NBC show about regular people gaining super powers.

My overall impression of the first four episodes: It’s a solid start.

On one level it’s amusing the amount of great reviews and hype its getting. Almost every single idea in Heroes is kit-bashed from comic book stories I read growing up. The narration, the dialogue, the themes and the characters are this weird mix-and-match of comic book clichés, with the odd one carefully turned upsidedown on purpose. None of it’s new to comic book fans, but that doesn’t make it any less appealing – similar ideas worked great in comic form and play out just as well on TV. Comics have been a wellspring of ideas for years and Hollywood’s finally paying attention not just to the licenses and characters but also the actual storytelling talent available. It’s good to see.

I did have to laugh when one of the ‘Previously on Heroes’ blurbs at the start of an episode mentioned that we saw people around the globe gaining powers… um, a Japanese guy and five Americans isn’t really ‘global’.

The characters are evolving well. There are tightly woven threads pulling the cast together, unlike in Lost where the coincidences started to feel brutally random and pointless. The personalities are extremes but they work because we get to see so many different reactions to their transformations. Normal TV viewers get a wild new experience and geeks get to revel in the mainstream ‘cool’ of superheroes done without POW, BAM or BIFF.

They’ve got the difficult task of gathering a large group together and making them a cohesive unit without it sucking away the interest of their individual stories. There’s a lot of characters to juggle and it’ll be neat seeing how it plays out in this first story arc.

If you haven’t watched it yet… check it out. It’s obvious in spots if you’re a comic geek, but it’s also head and shoulders over most other stuff out there.

Besides, any scene with Hiro in it has been an absolute winner so far. His excitement and enthusiasm is 100% infectious… and he references comic book trivia perfectly. When he started talking about X-Men #143 (Days of Future Past – SO GOOD) and the space-time continuum I think I peed, just a little bit. 😉

Chatting with a friend on the phone…

Other Person: So how are things?

Zub: Oh you know, good… but chaotic.

Other Person: So, chaotic-good rather than say, chaotic-neutral or chaotic-evil?

Zub: Yes.

Nerds rule. If I have to explain the joke to you, then there’s no point really.

More good stuff coming out… the new Schlock Mercenary book is now available for pre-order. Howard’s sci-fi strip is comedy gold filled with witty conversations and wonderful interactions. If you’ve never read it before, dig in. Once it gets momentum you’ll be ripping through the archives like mad.