000097 - i was swamped in june

i ended up entering the 24 hour oz comics challenge after all. i'm glad i did, since i felt really inspired to do something whenever i see and read some of the entries every year. i had very little chance but browse thru other participants' entries this year but the random inserts gave me a lot of ideas. i'm so glad i choose to use manipulated photos instead of drawing my entry this year, since i needed all my pencilling strength for my freelance job later in the week.

overall, i'm very happy with the 14 pages i got done this year. i wanted to do something dark and mysterious and in a kind of "sin city" style. i used to read quite a bit of mystery thrillers, like lawrence block*, andrew vachss, and michael connelly. the researching of the various reference photos of gory murder scenes and victims really got me whincing at point but i'm determined to get this story finished soon since i have a really good ending i want to get it out there.

you can view my entry "trigger" here, but only if you're a registered member of the pulp faction forums. as it contains quite a bit of mature content, NWS and i'm planning to finish and have it published hopefully, i won't be directly linking the image files here for quite a bit. please make sure to check out all the other great entries this year. and i'd also like to acknowledge what a great job the organisers for the 24 hour comic challenge did this year as well!

(*speaking about block, i'm really looking forward to the new keller book "hit parade" coming out. the original "hit man" was one of the inspirations for knight-edge)

my sleeping schedule went even more wackier earlier in june due to the world cup soccer. at one point, i stayed up watching the socceroos get thru their group and then watched the game with the south koreans afterwards! the soccer was definitely a great companion for me while i worked the nights away digital colouring illustrations in photoshop.

haven't had much chance to play any games due to the heavy work schedule in june, except maybe sneeking in an hour of animal crossing: wild world on the ds now and then. lots of sales on recently haven't helped either, i got killer 7 and soul calibur 3, i even tried to go back to play some shin megami tensei: lucifer's call (nocturne) earlier this month, too. had a couple of goes at guitar hero and boy, i'm pretty sure that's yet another game i want to add to my purchase list!! :(

saw superman returns last friday. i thought it was really good and awesome visuals. some minor crits i have would be the editing was way too choppy at the beginning of the film, it just jumped around a lot. at points the movie was kind of a like a chick flick, too, i thought and was it just me, but did superman/clark kent seem almost like a stalker?!

spiderman 3 teaser trailer looks pretty good, i'm looking forward to seeing how they'll have peter/spidey come across the symbiote costume in this movie version. the transformer teaser isn't much. i can get more from watching that citreon car ad! i wonder if michael bay is into pop & lock?!?

last week, i made a big decision (and investment) and bought myself a macbook pro! i've been eyeing and itching for a mac ever since they brought out those delicious titanium powerbooks. and then after using G5s for most of the last 2 years from my uni course that i did, i finally decided i needed a computer upgrade and a step towards the light (my uni friends always joked that PCs are the "dark side" simply because our studio had put all these PCs along this wall that hardly anybody used).

i'm very very happy with this baby so far. although, it didn't exactly go very smoothly for the first 72 hours. let's just say it involved lots of kernel panics, numerous calls to apple care, and another macbook pro that was eventually declared DOA!!

and i'll talk more about my work stuff in my next post if possible.