I used to be all tip-top up to date on computers. Hell, Gal and I built her last computer while we were living in Halifax, nerve wracking as that was (both the comp building and the Halifax experiences).

Back in Calgary I knew a few amazing people who would help me assemble computer stuff and find good deals on quality components so I wouldn’t have to buy pre-packaged computers with crappy cheap bits inside or parts I wouldn’t actually want.

But with everything else going on I’ve never had a chance to build that computer contact here in Toronto. I upgraded a few bits of my machine, swapped out the processor and added a new video card about a year and a half ago. Now I’m running Photoshop CS2 and a pile of programs which are finally giving my latest machine a heavy workout.

Parts from this ol’ box have been with me since I moved back to Calgary in 2000. I think it may be time to buy a whole new box and network this one to it for back-up storage and playing LAN games here at the apartment with friends.

So…

Please give me quality people or places I should go to in the Toronto area for computer purchases. People who aren’t going to screw with me or ‘used car salesman’ style sell me stuff I don’t want/need. I do need a whip ass computer but I want to be able to pick things and not feel out of my depth. I know quite a bit about computers, but am not totally up to date anymore.

Things I would be porting over:
– My new LCD monitor
– My Wacom tablet
– My printer and scanner

Things I need:
– cheap monitor (so my current box which is becoming my 2nd box would still have one)
– keyboard
– mouse
– speaker system
– The comp itself with lots of USB ports, a fast processor, an unholy amount of RAM and a sweet ass video card.

I have software out the wahoo and can install my own OS and everything else no problem.

Your recommendations would be much appreciated.

Sometimes I warm up to digitally paint by just scribbling or blending random colors to get my brain going. I pull up a blank digital little canvas and just putter around without much rhyme or reason. Yesterday I messed with a couple brushes in Photoshop to warm up and got this in about 10 minutes:

Not too shabby as a warm up. I’ll have to post the actual stuff I’m working on later on when it’s published.

Adaptations.

Anything that isn’t a story’s original medium is an adaptation. Even when Sin City is directed by Frank Miller (the guy who wrote and drew the comic) and almost every frame is composed to mirror the comic, it’s still an adaptation. How true something is to the spirit of the original source is where things get murky.

Which brings me to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Visually impressive, in places it’s a dead-on vision of Roald Dahl’s book. The first 15 minutes or so is an almost perfect adaptation, updating the frame of reference ever so slightly without making a nuisance of itself. But then, Willy Wonka shows up in person and something goes horribly wrong. The visuals are still working well but the heart and soul of the movie goes very askew.

Johnny Depp, what the Hell are you doing?!

This isn’t the diminutive and eccentric sagely figure I saw in the original illustrations from the book or imagined moving through my mind. This isn’t even Gene Wilder’s strange legalese-spouting chocolateer from the original movie adaptation. Johnny Depp is just out somewhere – going, going… gone. Where he’s at isn’t somewhere empathetic or entertaining… it’s just creepy, plastic and slightly repulsive. His jerky mannerisms mixed with the grotesque pallor of his skin and a halted voice like some sort of cowardly eunuch left me with an empty hole where there was supposed to be delight. Who thought this was a good idea? It boggles my mind that dailies would come in and no one could take a clear view of this and go “No, there’s something missing – right here – right here dead center where there should be a wonderful character.”

Most of the casting is quite inspired. Charlie’s entire family is fantastic, the kids are pretty sharp and everything else is raring to go. The Oompa Loompas could’ve been done with a little less modern trappings and techno music, but even that wasn’t a boat sinker. All the film needed was a ringmaster to direct the circus. A special Willy Wonka to fill it in and make the whole thing magical. What they got was a jaw-clenching unlikeable twitchy creep with a completely unnecessary sub-plot heaped on to make the whole thing crash under its own weight.

Adaptation can take liberties with the source but it has to be like a nature hike where you “leave no trace of your passing”. Changes should be as seamless as possible, especially when the source material is extremely well known. Taking Tom Bombadil out of Fellowship seems like a smart move when you read that portion of the book and realize that it has nothing to do with the core of Lord of the Rings. Adding in brutally overwrought flashbacks of Willy Wonka’s childhood and wrenching the ending into a creepy and emotionless father and son reunion that was never in the book? What did that add to the tale? What part of the original story was strengthened by it or made clearer?

I left the theatre disappointed and wondering why creative people have to shit on things that worked just fine the way they were. If you have to bugger with things… create original stories not adaptations. Look at what you’re doing and ask “Would I want someone to alter my work this much from the source?” If the answer is “No” then rethink your strategy instead of assuming you know better than the original creator who crafted the material you loved enough to want to adapt it in the first place.

Typos over instant messaging can be truly priceless. Gal’s awesome one today was:

“Here’s hoping it wasn’t *crosses ginfers*”

GINFERS!

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Okay, that might have seemed funnier than it was just due to lack of sleep, but it was amusing.

Apparently the alarm clock here in Toronto has been going off at 5:30am all week while I was away in San Diego. I found that out first thing this morning when it woke me up and I groggily turned it off.

Ouch. My body aches and my head feels distant. It must be post-San Diego.

Details and more photos behind the cut…

We leave for San Diego tomorrow morning. I can’t believe this is my fourth Comic-Con coming up, let alone my third with Udon. Each one has been a surreal and wonderful experience. Each one is a whirlwind of things happening all around me.

Last minute packing.
Butterflies in my stomach.
My brain going a mile a minute.

It’s times like this that I feel like my life is a journey. It’s not a 9 to 5 job and it’s probably never going to be. It’s an undulating and shifting mass of challenges and pitfalls. It’s the fear and joy that comes with being catapulted into new creative experiences.

If you’ll be attending the show, I look forward to seeing you again or meeting you for the first time.

Udon will be at Booth #5556. Most of the Udon crew will be there signing the Udon 2005 Sketchbook, Exalted #0, Street Fighter and Darkstalkers comics and doing sketches. In addition, we have two Japanese Street Fighter artists attending as our guests signing a limited edition version of the Capcom Eternal Challenge artbook. There will also be a Street Fighter arcade machine on free play all weekend by our booth.

Pure chaos.

90,000+ attendees and a convention center 6 blocks long. Here we go again.

Maybe someday it’ll be “business as usual”.

Back from Origins. We debated staying until Monday morning to get some extra rest, but decided to make the trek on Sunday evening instead and get back home for sleep.

The show went pretty well overall. The comic sold more than White Wolf had anticipated we would, which was really nice. Quite a few people hadn’t heard there was an Exalted comic coming out which means we’re informing more people about it – obviously quite a good thing.

I wasn’t sure what to expect sales wise. Origins is a gaming-heavy show and all indications looked like attendance was up. The crowd there is definitely board game/minis skewed and involves a lot more playing than buying. Even still, we moved a bunch of the books and sold quite a few to some retailers who will be carrying it back at their home stores. I have no idea what that will mean for sales when compared to Gen Con or Dragon Con later on this summer.

Other highlights:
– Drunken karaoke on Wednesday night to celebrate Brian’s birthday.
– Learning to play Gloom with Ray and Gal. Ray later taught us some kick ass Black Jack strategies to boot.
– Seeing many friends including dextra, ssines, d20hound and crothian.
– Dancing like crazy on Friday night even though my legs felt like jelly.
– Playing Capture the Flag on the show floor with the FanPro gang on Saturday afternoon. Those guys kick ass and made the day entertaining.
– Chatting about the elements that make up the new World of Darkness with Gal and Ray on the drive home.

That’s the quickie version. We’re leaving for Comic-Con in a week and then things will go totally berserk. I’ll post some Origins photos up by tomorrow. Today I rest and tomorrow I dive into the dozens of things that need to get done before we leave.

5 reasons why I am a geek. Given to me as a challenge by the_caveat.

1) Marvel Comics Trivia – especially 80’s continuity crap. My mother used to get irritated that I wasn’t reading anything but comics. To combat her irritation I started lugging around the Handbook of the Marvel Universe and reading obsessively from it (Look Mom, it’s almost all text! Not a comic at all). How obsessive? My brother Joe and I used to test each other with ridiculous trivia like “What was the first appearance of the Killer Shrike?” and stuff like that. Most of it is still stuck in my brain.

2) I have half a shelf of anime soundtracks I can’t understand and 3 shelves of tankobon I can’t read. In a related anime vein – my first webpage was a Geocities site dedicated to Masakazu Katsura. It still exists and gets traffic even though I don’t update it.

3) My multitudes of comics, DVDs and books are all organized alphabetically or by subject and then alphabetically. The moving company that took my stuff from Calgary to Halifax was disturbed that half of the weight of the load hauled was in books and movies.

4) I have binders full of production model sheets from animated movies… hundreds of them all organized by year of release or alphabetical order. They started off at Sheridan as a reference resource and are now just a collection of their own. At Sheridan some of the animation instructors used to ask me for reference material instead of the other way around.

5) I make my living in comics, card games, RPGs and other illustration. Geeks pay my bills and I love it!