It's Good For You!

Laser Pony Studios presents The Horseman's Tale
with special appearance by kcgeep

I can't even express how good Dan Hipp's blog has been lately. I've also been nosing around Natalie Nourigat's internet homes. Wish her congratulations on joining the good folks at Periscope Studios. I, of course, discovered Natalie through Emi Lennox who was also an intern at Periscope.

Check out my Feb 18 Sketch Diary!

I'm still buzzing through Emitown's archives, soon to be thumbing along the Between Gears archives simultaneously. I get a kick out of retracing timelines, especially people's online journals, noting where their time and attention went, what phenomena they were aware of, how their rituals change over time.

Kazu Kibuishi gives us a glimpse of his layout process at illustration.org. And here is an advance look at the forthcoming Thundercats reboot. If you like that, you might like this CGHub thread about revamping the Thundercats chara designs. I really like the designs by Iconic.

This weekend I snoozed through a long playlist of movies in my backlog such as Brazil, Eastern Promises, Time Bandits, The Cotton Club, The Spy Who Loved Me, and Shock Corridor and The Expendables. I really would have liked to get out in the sunlight. I am, however, glad I got some drawing in this week. Next week I hope to post my Magic the Gathering comic. It's now technically Monday, so I leave you with my new favorite youtube cooking channel.

Format

So while SAN is still bouncing around in this inchoate form (there's the vocab word of the day) I thought I'd start talking about structure. I'd like to say that I had an epiphany that I'm a formalist, that I've always been, but I'm not really sure that's true. I do know I love recurring design. For instance I've always enjoyed how anime tv shows almost always have 1) an opening theme song 2)an eye-catch, 3) an ending theme song and 4)a preview trailer for the next episode. Some shows go out of their way to use these conventions creatively. Once upon a time cartoons that I (and maybe you) grew up with always started up the show with an origin story (e.g. Thundercats, Wheeled Warriors, Smurfs, Kidd Video. Or even check out this X-Men Cover Gallery and notice how certain cover design conventions came into existence, such as the modern title font, or the headshots in the top left corner. What do you call these, framing conventions?

Well whatever term we decide on, I want to point out that these recurring designs are often the flavor and spice of our content. And with this blog, I know I'm heading in the direction of a pastiche theme, but format-wise I still feel like I'm drawing a blank.

So here's random stuff:



Kinetic Typography from samskee.



Little Gems
Picasso
Jean Shepherd
Astrid Lindgren