Quill

I've been doing commissions and character designs and fixing up storyboards for jobs while looking for more work.  That's to tide me over while work on developing my carreers(comics, movies).  Luckily I live in the right place(near a lot of the studios) and all that practice drawing hundreds of comic pages makes drawing storyboards and character design fairly easy for me.

But of course my main goal is to get my comic published and I have sent my pitch out.  Haven't gotten a rejection letter yet so we'll see what happens.  I'm been happy with it and don't really want to change anything except maybe redraw a page or two(but that would only take me a day or two).  I really feel I solidified something about my art with all the fixing and redrawing I did to make this comic.  I know "what is there" more when I draw things.

Writing

Luckily I got one of my scripts read and we're working on making a pilot or single episode.  It would be low budget but the people working on it are great and liked my pitch.  Since they had no idea who I wrote for the parts it was nice when I was having a sit down and they liked my explanation enough to figure out I was clearly one of the characters.  Because I guess that means the parts still mine.  I guess that wasn't changing but I had no idea.  So I'm doing rewrites and refining that.  It's a weird Adrianish(my friends will know what that means) sitcom with a goofy but dark way to it.  It has jokes I wrote that worked and people laughed at, but I knew they were inside jokes totally at my own expense(there is a little subplot about a girl my character made paintings of, for example, and that is just filled with jokes about the real me, but no one knew that).

I do have to finish the second script to my comic.  If it's rejected I just have to get it published somewhere else.  So no matter what I'll have to get those scripts done.  It's just so complicated and filled with stuff I have to put into every page that it is daunting to write.  But I have every scene plotted out for the whole first series.

Plugging

One of the best friends I have made down here is appearing on several shows soon.  He is one of the most driven people I ever met, and in my whole life one of the few who got me.  Plus ladies like looking at him.  Anyway, he is appearing on the Fox show Surviving Jack this week and next.  So watch it, because more ratings never hurt.  I think its a small part, but we've known each other since we both moved here and I've seen the guy do everything and I can tell you it's just the first of many roles.  Anyway, look for Chad, he's the jock guy(I think, I hope I didn't screw that up).  My whole idea for us working together is to show people exactly what this guy is capable of.  He's one of the few people I've met who I'm sometimes jealous of their acting prowess.  Where I do better the more scared or uncomfortable I get(somehow that works for me, maybe it's just that I like overcoming that),  he has a commitment I have rarely seen in any actor.  Also one of the most directable actors I have encountered.  This is just the start and I encourage everybody to pay attention, because one day it will be impossible not to.

Drawing

And for people who know a lot of comic artists, I sort of sketch things out really roughly with a gesture that I constantly redraw and refine, in that really scribble way that John Buscema called the "wandering line", which ironically is very different than the way most comic artists are taught, by Buscemas own book, How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way, the style where you draw a sort of mannequin armature and then build on that with cloths and stuff.  Burn Hogarths books do all this, and yes I own all these because they are still great for these qualities but I feel an artist should learn the wandering line method first because in the end it's what you see, the design, not the architecture, the under structure, that makes a good drawing.  

Having said all that it doesn't mean I do any of these things right myself.  I had to relearn gesture, and drawing what I see because of that training and I've seen others stuck in it, the looseness of gesture not present.  

So I draw with this wandering line which is really nothing more than a scribble of forms and gestures like a lump of clay that you play around with until it forms what you want.  When that molds into the shape I want(in these ones it's mainly people, or humanoid things)with the general feel and shape of the clothes and whatever they are holding, I scribble in all the major forms and muscles and then then shapes and forms in the clothing, like buttons, or armor, or different kinds of armor to make it exotic and not true to Earth.  That scribble only sort of hints at what the final thing will look like, but it has a bunch of shapes to turn into things like belts, pockets, vests, jewelry, masks, and whatever other shape looks cool and appropriate.

After I do that I go over the outline, something I saw in my various concept art books and when I saw J. H. Williams draw once, and it's a really great step.  It makes it more what you would see without all the logic of what's under the clothes(although the scribble gave a good idea of what is there).  Then I adjust it all to what is under the clothes.  

Then I go over it all to make it tighter and bring out details.  After that I start inking it(in comics, with a crowquil pen and brush, in sketches, storyboards and character design I uses pens, markers, and brushes for speeds sake).  I do all the thing lines first.  With crowquil pens I can vary the width a lot.  But with pens they stay very even, and I only use a few sizes, because I can adjust it later with a brush to flesh it all out.  

Then I scan it, or take a picture, and upload it.  For work I have to scan everything for absolute clarity, but I have a huge Mustek scanner.  Of course I draw huge, because I'm a dick, so while that could scan most comic pages, it still takes at least two scans for my normal comic pages.

And usually I do this while watching some tv.  When I write I listen to my iPod. 

Acting

I've been playing Eddie in Hurleyburley for my class at school.  He's basically a drunk guy who is constantly on coke and his life is falling apart.  My partner is my friend who I sent on a car ride to screw another of my friends.  But he went crazy and threw her out of her own car.  And now she's pissed, but I'm totally fucked up and selfish and unfazed by all this.  The whole scene we're both pretending to do drugs and acting crazy.  I did it today and was surprised at how not nervous I was.  I was still nervous, but after doing this at least every other class for a year and a half, I at least know how to deal with it.  And I remember how much more nervous I was.  So much more nervous.  It's that progress that really makes me feel good.  

But we only have a few more months of school and I know I'm going to bawl my eyes out at the thought of all of us not being in the same room together acting or just hanging out again after graduation.  I've made life long friends there.  Some of the best.  Regardless, it will always be the greatest when I see them on screen.

Adrian For Hire

So while I'm still looking for jobs while I work on trying to get this comic published, I am taking commissions and doing various gigs(Storyboards, Character design, writing, acting, directing, I'm editing this week, for example).  My art pay scale is $50 for a inked drawing with a few characters and and environment(9X14), $75 for a detailed drawing with environment(11X17), $150 for a painting(acrylic, acrylic ink, colored pencil, guasche, or watercolor), $300 for oil paintings.  The paintings take a little while, and the oil paintings take a longer while(oil paint takes a while to dry in general).

My art site will be update with samples(and I need to update the art page here too, I'll get to it).  The address is: www.adrianriveroart.blogspot.com

Me Out

I have more to say and that book review of the Steve Ericksons confounding but incomparably epic Malazan books.  Reviewing them is almost as hard as reading them.  Because explaining why I read them is for some reason really difficult.  There is a lot of stuff I did not like, but I still ended up somehow loving it as it went along and got more confusing yet made more sense.  And if ever there was an author who refuses to give you what you expect it is Erickson. And that's the double edged sword I can't seem to make a review into.

Anyway, I just need to get more art out there like a breath of air.  It's the art side of me performing.  Instead of the performing side of me trying to make art.  But they are a mix and something I can't seem to live without.  Which is fine with me.  

Adrian