A Professional Look

Another quick update. This is a photo I took last week to use as my portfolio ID. Don't I look like I know what I'm doing?

Film Noir

**Caution: Excessively long explanation ahead**

Those of you who know me well, know that I'm a big fan of film noir and that I've been wanting to do something in this genre for a long time. I've come up with and subsequently thrown out one idea after another for the last ten years. There have been a few seed ideas that I had held onto feeling that they could work if I could just figure out how to make them grow properly but always had trouble with getting the idea to germinate.

I held onto those ideas knowing that someday I'd be able to make them grow into a good story. Last week I sat down with renewed determination to bring one of those few ideas into a full fledged concept with a clear direction and enough information to begin proper research.

One seed idea I had is a neo-noir set in the not so distant future with a detective on the trail of a faceless assassin. Another idea I had was less a story and more a scene set in a more traditional 1930s noir period. That scene was actually a dream I had and it was pretty intense considering it had only two characters and one of them was a bloody dead mess. It was vivid enough that I was able to write it out in detail immediately upon waking. It was that idea that I started to work on after all, I already had a strong opening scene loaded with story potential.

The problem was that it was an introductory scene and usually the best place to begin writing any story, especially a mystery is with the ending. You need to know where you're going before you can get there otherwise you're just wandering in the dark and will end up with nothing more than a disheveled mess and you will lose your audience before the second act has had a chance to get started.

So I had some questions to answer before I could go anywhere with the story. Number one being, How does this end. But in my scene I already had all the dialog, in voice over of what was running through the protagonists head at the gruesome scene before him. His dialog was very detailed, dramatic and revealed a lot of information about his state of mind and relationship with the victim but it posed more questions than three seasons of Lost and they all needed to be addressed.

When I started working I was in the mind set that the protagonist was a private investigator who found himself on a case that was far bigger than he could have imagined. That idea alone kept me from being able to answer most of the questions posed by his dialog. Some of the things that ran through his mind didn't quite fit with the small time, strait arrow P.I.

So hitting a road block I decided that rather than throw out what I had managed to develop like I had previously done, that I would instead step back away from it for a moment and look at the bigger picture as I would an illustration. I looked back at my other seed ideas and came across the neo-noir with a detective on the trail of a faceless killer and then it hit me. The man isn't a P.I. or detective but a man out for revenge and not for the death of the victim from the opening scene, that was an unfortunate casualty of his personal war.

Along with that I learned exactly how the story ends, while it will end as I had first determined I now knew much more of the details. I also learned that this story leads directly into that detective story with the faceless assassin which is great because it answers a lot of questions related to that story.

Now I'm very excited because I can finally start some serious research on a story in a genre that I've wanted to work in for a very long time. In addition to research I can also start sketching up ideas which is where the accompanied art comes in. It's more a scene from the second story which begins where the first ends.

Oh, yeah. I drew it in Corel Painter X with a custom calligraphy pen.

Nothing Hurts Like My Back

If you like vampires raise your hands. If you like music raise your hands. If you like vampire music videos raise your hands. I personally don't care one way or the other but I did have the opportunity to work on a vampire themed music video last week with Oh Rio! Productions. I worked as a production artist putting the set together and moving things around as needed for the shoot and I was also the stills photographer. It was a lot of fun but a lot of work that had to be done in a very limited time frame.

The song is called "Nothing Hurts Like Love" sung by Jimmy Demers and written by Diane Warren. The video also stars in addition to Jimmy, former supermodel Cheryl Tiegs, and Hollywood actress Amy Smart. I don't know how long it will be before the video is completed and available for viewing so don't bother asking me, I'll share that info as soon as I find out. The song is about three minutes long and we recorded hours of footage so the editing process could take a while.

While I took hundreds of photos I will only be able to share a handfull with you at the moment but I will share lots more eventually.