Yes, it is pouring with rain outside, but inside… another pouring situation is taking shape as part of my Sunday activity.
It’s a discussion about gravity. But not in the way you think.
-cvj
(For those interested, the hands and head were done on paper with pencil… then I connected them roughly digitally, which you see in progress…) Click to continue reading this post
You know how this goes: He’s not going to let the matter drop. He’s thinking of a comeback. Yeah, don’t expect to finish that chapter any time soon…
Hands have become almost as important as faces for helping communicate both ideas and emotions in the book. I’ve become a fan of constructing hands in various positions. In fact, I like it to an almost perverse degree, some might think, especially given how little people might even look at them. But then again, I’m known for actually enjoying -even looking forward to- dentist visits, so maybe this was predictable.
Of course you knew that I had to do this… Let me explain, perhaps for your Sunday reading pleasure.
The prevailing culture is surprisingly and frustratingly simplistic when it comes to graphic books and comics. As late as 2017, we’re still at the stage that most people in the USA (and the UK), if asked, will associate the form with the superhero genre: people in capes and/or masks fighting crime and/or saving the world. The other association is with the Sunday funnies. This is unfortunate, and, in case you don’t know, far from the case in other places such as various European and Asian countries where the boundaries between written and visual literature are less rigid.
The confusion of form (visual narrative on the page) with genre (the subject of the narrative itself) drives me nuts, as it makes it very hard to get people to […] Click to continue reading this post
Loving this looser, pencil-finish style. My only wish is that I’d discovered it in August. But of course I know that I needed to do what I was doing in August in order to get to where I am now. So there it is. Personal evolution is a wonderful thing, isn’t it ? (Click for larger view. More about the book here.) 
Now here’s an interesting coincidence! I came on to write a post about something I did earlier today – signing a contract for publishing The Book, with an exciting new publisher(!) – and then I was reminded of a post I did here exactly two years ago: it was about signing a contract with the previous publisher (who I later parted ways with – see this post).
Anyway, I had a picture in that post (have a look) of me signing the actual paper contract (in triplicate) that had been sent over the ocean on nice paper by pony and so forth, and then I sent it back over the ocean by return pony, and then a countersigned copy was sent over again by yet another pony… Instead, all I have to show you (above) is a screen shot of the electronic signing process I did this morning. Minutes later the countersigned version came back and all was done.
Anyway, in brief, because I should be working on the book (trying to finish a remarkable four pages of art today in one long 15 hour session in the office…), the back story is as follows: […] Click to continue reading this post
(This also constitutes an experiment in an alternative way of connecting blog posts to my public facebook posts…) -cvj
I love a diagonal vanishing point.
Click for larger view. The weird rim light on my hand is because I enhanced the contrast on the page so you can see the lines, but roughly masked my hand to keep the exposure the same there.)
This is to illustrate a scientific […] Click to continue reading this post
The connector between the blog and Facebook and twitter has been broken and I’ve not been able to make the time to fix it. It looks like I might have to install a whole new system and I’ve not found one that works as well as the old (now unsupported) one, so that’s (partly) why I’ve not posted any updates on anything much. Also, I’ve been very focussed on trying to do more on the book with even less time than I’d planned for the final months on it. (The reasons for the less are actually positive, but […] Click to continue reading this post
I’m neither a Hot Shot nor a Know-it-All, but I’ve agreed to appear as one or the other Saturday night (Sat. Dec. 3rd), in the company of real hot shots Joel Hodgson (from MST3K!), Sarah Silverman, Sam Phillips, and several others. It’s a fun event with the proceeds going to a charity, and tickets are still available! I think (I’m not sure) that I’ll be part of a team sitting at tables around the venue that people can ask questions about… you know, stuff. I imagine I’ll be asked physics questions…?
More information here. Or here.
For the record, I’m a know-it-some.
Arrived at your (Thanksgiving) destination yet? I hope all went well. Now, here’s some exciting news… This year’s Thanksgiving episode of Screen Junkies is another Movie Science special! This means, as usual, that I sat down with presenter Hal Rudnick to talk about some science ideas and portrayal of scientists in the movies.
This time, the film is Arrival. We actually had a great in-depth conversation, and a lot (not all) of it made it to the episode, so have a look. (Most of the episode assumes that you have seen the film since there are a lot of serious spoilers that will take away from the movies intended unfolding as you view… There are mild spoilers in the form of general discussion about the film to start, and then Hal stops and warns you that we’re going deeper into the details.)
The embed is below, and then after that I say a few spoiler-y things to end this post:
Click to continue reading this post
Yes, I’m still here. I realise that I paused posting for a while longer than I have in a long time (possibly ever!), and I’m sorry about that. There were a lot of things, not just the obvious one(s). Anyway, I’m still here… still drawing and painting away on the book, and working on a bunch of other things that I ought to tell you about at some point (some of which I need to get clearance for…).
The other day I went comfortably old school, pencil […] Click to continue reading this post
Always a bit annoying when the rough sketch done on the subway looks way more vibrant a drawing than the finished one for the book. Sigh. Seriously thinking I ought to do one story entirely in rough drawings…
Anyway, this share is also to reassure you that […] Click to continue reading this post
All change! Last week another style change took place, in service of a new story/chapter for the book. I’ve transitioned to a looser style, with final line art done with a charcoal-like finish, and the colour done as watercolour. (Click for a slightly larger view.) It turned out that back in March when I went and hid for a week to work on the book, I thumbnailed and roughed a lot of pages (on two stories I think?) in a pretty tight manner, and so I’ve decided that I’m simply going to go in and sketch the final material all by hand, with no elaborate construction work for placing backgrounds (neither analogue nor digital), no measurements, no drawing of perspective grids, etc.
This turns out to mean that I can get the pre-colour work done pretty swiftly on some pages. Rather than take this as an opportunity to sprint ahead and make up some lost time, I decided to […] Click to continue reading this post
No, I’m not here to knock on the door of the Big Five*.
I was a couple of doors down at the Simons Foundation….
-cvj
*P.S. But I do hope to have exciting news to report on the publishing front soon… Click to continue reading this post
