This was one of my favorite paintings I brought to SDCC; I've forever been into drawing and painting animals with anthropomorphic attributes--but I am compelled to stress I am NOT a furry-- and I dunno, a rat in a hat just seems adorable to me. I feel a little hokey admitting that yeah, I did like this thing I did... I'm not trying to toot my own horn. I just sometimes surprise myself-- I'm a huge critic of my own work.
A girl bought him along with 2 or 3 other pieces, much to the detriment of a guy-- from Baja California, if I remember his badge correctly-- who came looking for it literally an hour later. I sold him a print I just happened to have made of it for a chunk less. He said he would like to see more like it, and I said, "Sure, check my website and blog". So maybe he's seeing this now.
So if he is-- hey dude! I'll paint some more stuff quite soon and put them on my etsy shop! So check back. Now that SDCC is over, I have a loooot of free time on my hands with which to focus on projects and artwork.
....as it stands right now, my brain is incredibly fogged up. It's no secret that every year I go to Comic Con, I leave with some sort of cold or sinus malady. I guess it's going from a hot, humid climate (NYC and now Louisiana) to a dry and more mild one. And then sitting in stale, freezing air conditioning for the extent of the con. This year was no exception but somehow along the way I also developed a helluva allergic reaction. It started on Saturday and I basically itched through the end of the show and a plane ride until I went to the doctor, who declared I'd come into physical contact with something.
I've come to the conclusion that it was one of those scratchy, blue, cushioned chairs I hijacked from the concession stand to use at the table-- I did in fact touch it on Saturday. It's really the only thing I can think of. With the thousands of people coming into contact with those chairs I wouldn't be surprised if Freeman sprayed them down with heavy duty germ-killing chemicals.
So anyway, I'm totally hopped up on industrial strength antihistamines and prednisone and we came home to discover the AC was not working so... let's just say I'm out of it.
But I wanted to say, for any of you checking in, that Binkus will be going into a second run soon enough. We were a couple dolls shy of selling out completely but had a lot of interest online before the show, so we're going to be putting information up soon enough on how to buy one. Just FYI.
The designer toy website, Plastic & Plush has a little blurb on Binkus in advance of SDCC. So that's awesome. It's cool to be featured elsewhere... and while I admittedly was not 100% familiar with the site before, I've come to realize it's a pretty great resource, especially to the collectors updating their "Must Get" list for San Diego.
I've about had it with polyresin today. I got it all over my pants, got it all over my leg, my arms, my fingers, maybe on the dog, and it kind of smells like a musty basement while the liquid is curing.
I mean, that said, it's awesome to be learning a new craft, despite the learning curve. Despite the hideous, off-putting feeling of a thin layer of plastic surrounding your thumb that you just cannot scrub off. I think I'm going to stop at 30 plastic sculpts. This will be a Comic Con ~exclusive~ if you will. Each one takes 30 minutes to cure (harden) in its mold, then you must meticulously break each one out. Then comes the dremel fun, the sanding, the priming, and the painting.
This is not to say it's not fun. It is! Mostly! It just is time consuming. Limiting the number of sculpts makes them a little more special. I will perhaps, after Comic Con, continue to produce them, but between now and Preview Night, I'm unsure if I can really breach the 30 mark. I also have mini paintings and cards to paint/print/etc.
Cramming for San Diego is like having a freelance job with a breakneck race to a deadline, which I appreciate. Since I'm totally unemployed.
Anyway, here's a grainy iPhone pic of most of my sculpts of the little critter.
I'm already thinking about my next possible sculpts, and other designs I could possibly work from. It's.... it's pretty rad.
When we have a nice, finished, painted one, I'll post that. So you have a better idea of WTF you're looking at.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
If they weren't so alienating and profane, I'd have half a mind to do a bunch of decorative prints with the Mel Gibson hate rants on them to sell at Comic Con, but I think I'd have to apply for a special "Mature Content" card or something.
I make no promises about the outcome of these photographs. I know what I am aiming for, and I have a fair amount of faith in that outcome. But I also know that jinxes exist so therefore I shall not get into the details.
But I'll know more about how it's turning out in say, 48 hours.
In related news, I have a LOT of stuff to do for Comic Con. Just over a week left. Yoinks.
I don't know what this is. But I'm calling it Dinohamster because I guess that's basically what it looks like.
Monday, April 26, 2010
So like, these are some things I drew. That's Heidi Fleiss in the middle, before she went on to star on Celebrity Rehab, and Sober House, and my nightmares.
I'm posting this video until Youtube makes me take it down.
Casey Tatum, u so fine.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Today was a lot of "hurry up and wait", if I may quote, well, at least a dozen people today. Guys, making a movie is hard. Me, I was just standing around while stuff happened around me, so I was perfectly fine waiting. My job wasn't the hard one.
I was an extra in SUPER, primarily because I had a full free day and because, really, I like observing. I was torn between film and 2D animation when I entered college, then debated a double major, then opted for the cheaper, quicker option, which was a single course of study. I did make some delightfully vapid student films in the film classes I did take.
I also know how much I enjoyed being an extra in 'A Time to Kill' when I was a teenager (and entirely violating child labor laws because no one checked my ID when i showed up for 2 weeks of work). I liked the fact that I was doing my French homework and Oliver Platt chatted with me about it, and I liked watching Kevin Spacey put on reindeer antlers and dance and sing because it was nearly Christmas. I really liked the fact that even though I was sheared off the left side of the screen in the television-formatted pan & scan, when my part of the movie comes up, you can still hear me go "NO".
fast forward to 2:00
Eh. It was fun. It's the little things.
Never mind the fact that 'A Time to Kill', upon its release, painted everyone in not just my hometown but entire home state of Mississippi as either a racist or a hick. And none of us owned air conditioners. They kept spraying our faces with baby oil to make us glisten. "But the Madison County courthouse HAS air conditioning," we'd say, half joking, half wishing they'd stop spraying us with baby oil. The funny thing is, as cringe-worthy as it all is-- Kevin Spacey's horrible accent especially-- everyone was so proud of that movie. People saw that movie as a stepping stone to bigger and better things, things that in most cases, never really came. One kid was even profiled on CBS' 48 Hours; they came and did a feature on how the town of Canton came alive with a flurry of activity surrounding the film. I had a piece of paper "autographed" by all of the guys who played baliffs; they were all planning on getting agents. Canton was, the film commission hoped, going to be Hollywood South.
Of course, it wasn't, and for the time being, I'm again in Hollywood South. Which is, in a way, ironic, because I swore to myself two things: I would never move to Hollywood I would never move back South
One or two people today were grumbling, because it was cold, or because they'd been standing or any number of things. They'll forget that when the movie is released, and 15 years from now, they can point out where they're either visible or oh hey, there's their shoulder! or just the general area of the screen where they think they should be.
The morning of that scene above in the youtube clip, I woke up late for the 5am call-time and we sat in holding for 5 hours. I had a sinus infection, and maneuvering behind some scaffolding to avoid the crowd of extras, I physically ran into Kevin Spacey and may or may not have accidentally stabbed him with the pencil I had been doing my French homework with. I got on camera because I'd become friends with the second second assistant director. It was a pretty good day.
I hadn't set foot on a movie set since then aside from walking past sets in New York but this was a pleasant experience and it made me wonder if I shouldn't have pursued a double major after all. The thing is, I enjoyed myself today, because I was watching the people actually making the movie. So I didn't mind hurrying up and waiting.
It's like this: the fairly badass James Gunn wrote this fairly badass script, a hilariously dark take on a man who attempts to reinvent himself as a superhero. It's starring equally badass actors Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Liv Tyler, and other household favorites.
Rainn Wilson's character, Frank, is... well, I don't want to say sadsack, but he hasn't got a whole laundry list of things going for him. What he does do, is he likes to draw, and tape those drawings up to his wall.
That, ladies and gents, is where I step in.
"But Danielle!" you cry. "You can draw real good."
"I know," I say. "I do draw real good."
Thing is, Frank doesn't. A local studio in town is working on some vfx for the film and due to my close, personal ties with "someone" working there, when their initial passes didn't cut the mustard (ie, they were too good), I decided to give it a go. I basically drew as I did when I was 8. Which was really quite fine for an 8 year old, but pretty bad for a 30 year old professional artist.
James Gunn liked them.
I lost count of how many drawings I did that weekend-- I was told on Friday I was working on the project, and on Tuesday we had to deliver something like... I don't know, 100 drawings? James gave us a list of about 50 things to draw, and the rest we just started brainstorming. They became rather ridiculous. All the while, they all had to look like how I'd been drawing. With 3 different people that can be difficult so I'd end up redrawing some things. We put in one 14 hour workday, and at the very end, we were emailing drawings of one shot to James, and he was writing back saying, "They're too good, make it simpler..." I was so exhausted, I had lost the ability to be truly awful.
Wednesday morning of that week was the first day of shooting. The first scene being shot was a wedding scene, and they needed someone on set to draw. I went out there, in 30 degree weather, and surprisingly managed not to snot all over the drawings. They were filming inside of a local house, so the art department, where we were finishing up some work, was the bathroom, which we actually had to clear out of when one of the star needed to use it.
And I can't very well show you photos of my artwork, or how it looks in the movie. You'll have to just wait for the theater. Or! Or! How about, how about you buy it on bluray and we'll freeze frame it! And then look at it! Rainn Wilson told me not to get too attached, since it'll be in there for like 4 seconds, so I think that's what we just hafta do guys.
