It’s been a long time, but I think I should start doing things here again.
Just watched We Need to Talk About Kevin. I first read the book shortly after it was released, but I never would have imagined a film adaptation would have been possible. The film turned out to be amazing — very powerful, the type of movie that lingers in your mind afterward. I’d like to try and do a write-up of it.
Happy New Year!
Soundtracks to No More Heroes and No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle. Fun games, great music to work to. Makes you feel pumped up and excited without being too distracting. I was especially entertained when I discovered that Akira Yamaoka had done the work for No More Heroes 2′s OST, as I was only familiar with his work from the Silent Hill series — what a shift in mood and tone!
I also loved the character designs for both games, done by Kozaki Yusuke, but that is another story I suppose. For now, just the music is keeping me company.
Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
– Kurt Vonnegut
I’ve always admired Kurt Vonnegut’s writing; Slaughterhouse Five always has been and will be one of my favorite books.
Screenshots from the film Versus, released in 2000, directed by Ryuhei Kitamura and starring Tak Sakaguchi. It is, for the most part, an incredibly trashy film focused on action, gunfights, zombies and gore — but there’s a very, very brief scene where a villain mob boss (green suit, above) comforts one of his lackeys (seen from behind here). It’s an extremely saccharine moment that almost seems out of place in the film due to its cloying nature. And of course, it’s my favorite bit of the whole movie. The tender little hug balances out the awfully-executed bloodshed and hilariously over-the-top action so well that it’s almost amazing.
Starting in March of 2009, I drew a webcomic for about an year and a half. This was during a time period where I was very unsure of what I wanted to do with my life — I had just left the engineering department of my university, and was tentatively looking between the Computer Science, Art, Design and Writing departments as potential shelters I could hide in. I had always enjoyed drawing comics, and this proved to be a welcome distraction.
SKIAmachy is a story I’d been slowly working on in my head over the past couple of years. It was, in essence, a story about overthrowing a totalitarian government — something with similar roots to V for Vendetta, but about a hundred times more childish. Although I’d like to bluster on about how I had grand plans for it — the story involved a decoy protagonist, no clear black-and-white morality, and either side of the terrorists-versus-government war could be cast as the villain — the end product was mostly ‘just okay.’ The writing was fairly juvenile, and the art certainly wasn’t mind-blowing.
However, I think I learned a lot simply from the process of holding myself to a deadline. My art ended up improving quite a bit, simply because I spent so much time drawing — I would like to think that my panel layout and graphic storytelling got some boosts, too.
I had to put SKIAmachy on indefinite hold during my senior year in undergrad, due to the timesinks that my senior thesis and other classes ended up being. However, I’d like to either revisit or reboot the story someday. I feel like I had something good going there — not necessarily a glowing example of excellent writing, but at least something that was fun. It was a pet project of mine, and I’d very much love to go back to the characters and story that kept me company during a time I was very uncertain about everything.
Hello hello, this is a test. Testing, testing, one two three.
