Silent Bob

If by awkward you mean awesome! I've waited my whole life to hear Morgan Freeman say something like "Shoot this motherfucker!"

Sure it is, it's just not skill.

there's absolutely nothing wrong with using photo's for reference.

but tracing? that's cheating no matter what way you look at it

Rockwell traced. Van Eyck traced. There's even evidence that many of the Renaissance masters used a camera obscura to trace their proportions. For many artists, it's simply part of their process.

I sense an Art & Literature poll brewing...

I dunno, depends on their attitude about it.

Unless they're self-publishing their own work, comic artists are not fine artists, they're paid illustrators and an illustrator's job is to create an image that conveys a story. It doesn't matter whether they're using manipulated photographs or fully painted canvases, if their image fits and clearly conveys the message of the story, they've done their job. If this guy's going around bullshitting everybody by saying "look how fantastic I am at completely drawing these things from my head" then ok, he's a dick. But if he's upfront about what he does and his images work for the book, he's done his job. My personal opinion is that for a fine artist, the important part of the artwork is the process. For an illustrator, it's the final image - nothing else. Whatever a guy has to do to make that final image is fair game.

Here, look, I'm gonna use some of my own stuff to illustrate my point (I'm not trying to hijack the thread or anything). One of these images was done without any "lightboxing" or tracing whatsoever and one of them was done without ever putting pencil to paper. Does it matter which is which? Are either of the images less effective because of it?

Oh don't get me wrong, I don't think the guy's all that great and how he uses his reference certainly hurts the effectiveness of his art, but for someone to call him a talentless hack and not a real artist for doing something that most comic artists do (even if he does it badly) is pushing it.

Ross uses photographs extensively. For the kind of lighting and realism that he strives for, it's almost necessary. Most artists use photo reference and a ton of them do "lightboxing". I know I've done it tons of times. Hell, by this guy's definition, Norman Rockwell was a tracer (Rockwell would often project photographs of his models onto his canvasses and trace them to get the proportions right). While some of the examples this guy has put up aren't particularly good uses of photo reference, to say the guy is less of an artist for being strict with his reference sometimes is ridiculous. Even the great Bryan Hitch sticks to his reference sometimes:

However, those frames that he swiped from other artists, that is pretty low.

Miller succeeded in alleviating none of my fears. He's basically saying "of course it's similar to Sin City - I'm doing it" to which Spirit fans all over the world reply "that's the problem".

Eh, give them a break, they're new.

Originally I didn't have much desire to see Wanted. Not only did it seem to have very little of the book but none of the trailers came even close to portraying the "fuck you" attitude that made the comic so great. That was until they released this new red band trailer. Sure, the plot still doesn't resemble the comic in the slightest, but the attitude is there and that's what matters.

There were plenty of news articles a few weeks back that talked about how Ed Norton and Louis Leterrier were unhappy with the studio-mandated final cut of The Incredible Hulk. They say the theatrical cut (only 106 minutes long) removes too many character scenes and damages the plot - a fact that many early reviews have been confirming.

In a recent interview, director Louis Leterrier has told fans that a final director's cut will be released on dvd and blu-ray and will include a whopping 70 extra minutes, making the film about three hours long. And the real exciting part of the rumor? Word is that one of the deleted scenes is a dark sequence where Bruce Banner travels to the arctic circle and finds...someone.

also it's the face of hondo's, it'd be like united or the *insert u.s. city* *insert some type of animal* changing their crest

Which they do fairly often, here.

I like our logo and all, but to me it kinda says "hey we wanted a logo but, y'know, we didn't want to have to think about it much".

Why do you prefer parody logos?

That's...a picture, not a logo.

OI! contest maybe??

If we do a logo contest, I'm definitely in.

So, what would you guys say defines Hondos? It's a tough place to squeeze into a single image (hence the shark, lion, basketball thing, I suppose). Let's do this logo right. Honest to god, I have a logo-conceptualizing questionnaire lying around if anyone cares to answer it.

Yay for BGaE2! Boo for new voice actors (I hope Jade is the same).

Yay for awkward-looking costumes!

No, I mean that sincerely...

Yes, Temple of Doom remains the relative low point of the series, but you have to admit that it had, hands down, the best climax of the entire franchise.

Another thing I liked about the film:

Another thing I didn't like:

I'm not really the only one who saw it last night, right?

Some more things I liked about Kingdom:

A couple more things I didn't like:

Despite a good performance by Blanchett, Irina Spalko is probably the least memorable Indiana Jones villain to date. She had gimmicks instead of genuine character traits (

) and not enough (or any) memorable lines. Belloq she ain't.

Just got back from seeing it. Review possibly forth-coming if I ever get un-lazy. Until then, lemme just say I liked it. Obviously, no film will ever match Raiders (you can say that about just about any action movie, anyway) but I think Kingdom fits in comfortable with Temple of Doom and The Last Crusade. I had a few gripes (too much cgi!) but they are all drowned out by the thrill of seeing Harrison Ford in that costume again.

One thing I was surprised by was just how much I liked Mutt. I'm a big fan of Shia LaBeouf. I think he's great in everything he's in and he's got a huge career ahead of him, but I still expected him to be completely overshadowed by Harrison Ford and the legacy of Indiana Jones. I also thought his character background was a little hokey. Basically, I just didn't think it would work. But remarkably, Shia holds his own thanks to a fun but not overly-showy performance. He blended right into the flick (just like his hyper-kinetic performance in Transformers blended in with Michael Bay's filming style - but this was more enjoyable) and I can see why the almighty Spielberg has taken a liking to him. If they really do plan to pass the series on to another character someday, I'd be happy to follow him.

Yay Greg Rucka!

Hey Darth, you ever find a good image for a tat? This one was always one of my favorites of Maleev's

And of course, this one (back when Joey Q could draw DD):

I normally can't stand Finch, but this was pretty cool:

Some of Mack's stuff might make a good tattoo:

And here's someone who got a tat of my absolute favorite Daredevil image:

If the Avengers movie confirms as having just Iron Man, Cap and Thor, or will another properties sneak their way in, like Ant Man or Hulk

There's an Ant Man movie in the pipeline, to be written and directed by Edgar Wright. I'd imagine he'll appear in the Avengers flick as well. I wouldn't be surprised if a few others like Wasp and Hawkeye come into play as secondary characters as well.

Dear God I hope not, Samuel L. Jackson has proven that whatever acting talent he once had has degenerated into him looking cool and saying "fuck" a lot.

Let's be fair. Does Nick Fury really need much more range than that?

Don't hate yourself, hate Frank Miller.

Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige has confirmed to Sci-Fi Wire that the upcoming "The First Avenger: Captain America" will be a World War II period piece.

 

Feige says the film, scheduled for release in May 6th 2011, will serve to set up the eventual "Avengers" movie to be released six weeks later on July 1st.

 

He also dismissed the recent Matthew McConaughey casting talk, but did confirm the object glimpsed in Tony Stark's workshop in "Iron Man" is part of the character's shield.

 

As for other properties, "Iron Man 2" is still on schedule for April 30th 2010, with talks underway with director Jon Favreau to return.

 

"Thor" is scheduled for July 4th 2010 with Mark Protosevich ("The Cell") currently working on the script. A director will be announced later this Summer, and much of the action will be set in the mythical Norse realm of the gods - Asgard.

I'm glad it's not Matthew McConaughey for Cap. A WWII film will be great, because then the Avengers movie can start with them finding Cap's body (let's face it, it's basically going to be an Ultimates movie).

Last I heard, Matthew Vaughn was directing Thor, but I guess he isn't anymore. Shame. After Layer Cake and Stardust, I really wanted to see him take it on.

Also:

Brian K. Vaughan, a co-producer and writer on "Lost" and creator of the acclaimed comic series "Y: The Last Man", will pen an adaptation of "Runaways" for Marvel Studios says The Hollywood Reporter.

 

Launched in 2002, the critically acclaimed comic book series follows a group of teenagers who find that some family secrets are bigger than others when they discover their parents are actually super-villains.

 

Running away from their homes, the teens band together and begin a journey of discovery, both of their parents' origins and of their own inherited powers, while trying to make up for the evil done by their folks.

 

Vaughan co-created the series with artist Adrian Alphona. Marvel's Kevin Feige will produce but a release date is not yet set.

It really really was.

'S looking cool. I hope they put a lot more polish into those "destructible environments" because the physics still look pretty sloppy. Nick, I really enjoyed Stranglehold, too. I hope these guys are looking at that game to see how destructible environments are done right.

Oh yeah, the last boss does kinda cheat. But still, you'll get through it.

Nope, but it does, unfortunately, end sooner than you expect it to.