Fire and Goth

Back by Popular Request

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Drawn by Blowing Ink and then Adding Leaves with a Brush

Corset and Opera Gloves

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A study for a posible animated sequence

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Jack Nance

I was watching Eraserhead the other night (now that you can get it on DVD from davidlynch.com) and I wondered if the main actor had ever done anything else. The iconic image if his face with his tall, bushy hair backlit and expressionless should be familiar to most film fans, even if they are unaware of who Jack Nance was. Was? Yes. Jack Nance was killed (?) after he mouthed of to a couple street toughs. He told friends that he was punched in the face (he did have a bruise) and was found dead in his apartment the next day. He apparently died from injuried related to this assault.

But why didn't he make any other movies? Actually he did. He was in most of David Lynch's films. His appearance changed pretty drastically from the Eraserhead look. He sported a grey mustache and thinning gray hair. He was short and had a gravely voice. He was part of Frank's Gang in Blue Velvet and he was one of the standees in Big Tuna in Wild at Heart. He spoke of his dog and how, "My dog barks some." and that Lula was picturing, "Toto from the Wizard of Oz". That is Jack Nance.

Jack had serious serious substance abuse problems. He cleaned up once with the aid of Dennis Hopper, but was back on the bottle again. He would need to be picked up and driven to the movie set and was showing up drunk at 11:00 AM. He really didn't seek out roles and only would act when someone went out of their way to track him down. Lynch tracked him down for a role in most all of his films except for Dune and Elephant Man. Jack Nance was one of the stranger characters to show up in Lynch films and it is a shame his life was such a wreck. I learned all of this after wondering, "What ever happened to the Eraserhead guy?"Š

Fabulous Gothic babes

Womenwhowearblack.com Sign of the Apocolypse#5463778 Nascar has teamed up with Halequin to produce Nascar themed romance novels.

Good Night

Drawn with the mouse right into photoshop

We lost Nadya today

I will miss her. She used to hang out on my shoulder when I worked at the drawing board and computer.

EC Anime Goth Girl

Again, she cried!

women who wear black dot com

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A Rainy Day

More abstract art

My approach to abstract art is one that involves a bit of geometry and symbology. I would hope my abstracts make the viever feel an intended way. Whether it is energry, anger, motion, sadness... it should have a point. Just a pretty design is not enough. The picture below of the girl is somewhere between an abstract and my usual "cartoony" style. It is representational art broken down to its most basic geometric shapes. I typcally don't get to cubism, but use angles and an approach that should be an agressive line and not usually soft. I'm not one for impressionism or round lines. Angles cause tension and conflict. My abstract work is often black and white and I like zip-a-tones and other tools of cartoonists. In fact, we created an abstract designed cartoon on Is This Tomorrow. It like it quite a bit. The intent was to capture the feeling of motion that Tezuka achieved in his work without drawing like Tezuka. I feel it was successful. It seems to be a fight/flight scene but nothing is representational in the drawings. If you are looking at one of my abstracts, there is something there. You might not see it, but maybe it will affect you subconsciously. At least that is my intention. Oh, and if you would like this design painted on a large canvas because it matches your living room... that is fine as well. Make the check payable to Woody Compton.

O.K. Back to two...

Due to complaints...

Back by popular demand...

Corpse Bride and OldBoy

Maybe the mate of the woman below? Corpse Bride is very much like The Nightmare Before Christmas. The songs aren't as good and the stop-motion animation is far better. The improvements in the animation makes me wonder if stop motion animation can get a any better than this. I'm not sure. This films seems technically perfect. If you enjoy Tim Burton's dark vision, this is it in its purest form. He co-directed and designed the characters. I quite enjoyed it! Oldboy is a Korean film that I saw last night due to insomnia. Yet another fresh film from asia. It seems as if there are no rules in asian cinema, and the sushi restaurant scene seems to prove that. A great revenge film. Another nice trend lately is Hollywood is making some overtly political movies again. After years of cowardice, our polpular films are starting to reflect the times we live in. With the war, corruption, and deceipt we are exposed to nightly on the news, it is about time that a few films addressed these issues. Syriana, Good Night and Good Luck, The Constant Gardener, and possibly Lord of War (I haven't finished it yet) are a sign of more challenging films coming out of Hollywood. I've seen The Constant Gardener and it doesn't have a happy ending. Films with happy endings rarely reflect reality, and hardly ever cause one to think beyond the credits.

Not particularly goth...

Popular in Asia?

Strange as it seems the whole goth look is very big in japan. They also combine that look with a victorian "lolita" fetish look that is very elaborate. The cosumes seem very expensive and are most certainly custom made. The drawing above is of a more modest asian goth. Just black clothes like you's see in the states.

New James Bond?

Jason Statham should have been the new James Bond. In a way, his character is a 21st century version of Sean Connery's coolness. In The TRansporter and The sequel, Statham's well-kept deameanor and fighting prowess actually make most Bond films look quite lame. Statham has more intensity and screen presence that most actors and his fight moves look greaty on screen in a way that most wetsern actors can't pull off. Van Dame and Seagal look a bit silly after seeing Jackie Chan, Michelle Yeoh, and Jet Li go at it. I know XXX was supposed to be the 21st cenury James Bond, but those films suck. Suck bad. Most american action films get it wrong. Luc Besson and Statham are european, so I won't call this an american film. Luc Besson also produced Wasabi, a great flick with Jean Reno. If we really want a new type of James Bond, he should be a bit meaner, and but rougher. It he is going to be super-suave, Brosnan was doing a fine job with ludicrous scripts and corporate-made direction. The action in Transporter 2 is clearly over the top and influenced by Hing Kong action flicks. The car scenes don't work as well as the hand-to-hand combat work. This Statham handles very well. He appears to have done many of his own stunts. Long shots are used, and you clearly see his face during action scenes. American films edit action scenes to the point of unintelligeability. This was mostly done to hide the stunt actors in the edits. The fight scenes are clearly influenced by Jackie Chan's found objects ending up as weapons. The fight with the firehose is worth a look, even though his female nemisis is disposed of far too quickly once their hand-to-hand begins. Unfortunately, you can't escape bad CGI anymore. When the plane crashes at the end, you are inserted into more lame CGI. Either it needed another few passes in the computer, or maybe they could have used miniatures and actually fooled us. I'd like to see a Transporter 3, but maybe with an asian director and an R rating.

Like a Banshee!

If I am to be adding the goth babe of the day, I must drop in a picture of Susan Dallion, Siouxsie Sioux herslef. From her early years in the birthtime of punk to her recent work with The Creatures, Siouxsie is the Mother of goth. If there was a gothic chess set, Robert Smith would be King and Siouxsie the queen. The Banshees alaways had lyrics about death and dark fetish facts, and her look pioneered the appearance of girls who like Sylvia Plath. I love miss Sioux. She married a great drummer-- Budgie-- with whom she makes records as the creatures. They get rid of guitar players like Kleenex and she doesn't seem to give a damn about commercial succes. The Creatures records seem to be made with no concern for radio play or mass consumption. They just make primal, thundering music with mostly just Siouxsie's voice and Budgie's drums. The Creatures albums don't sound similar from one to another, except that they are all very unique and very good. I just ordered a european DVD of their 2005 show performing with an orchestra both Banshees and Creatures material. It is the PAL format, so I will have to use a DVD player that converts it to NTSC (more and more common now), but I am very excited about this DVD as it is always enjoyable to see Budgie perform. I have seen them live three times and all the shows were excellent. Right about the time I started getting into Siouxsie, I saw them at the first Lalapalooza. I was introduced to The Creatures by an Ex who played their second album for me and I just locked into the drums. The drums!!!! After that, I became a big Banshees fan and I like all of their records since Budgie joined. Even the Rapture has its moments though it is rather poor overall. Their performance as Lalapalooza was by far the best of the night and it was accompanied by a beautiful sunset during their performance. Let's hear it for Siouxsie Sioux. A true punk pioneer, a fabulous babe, and a woman still making important, vital music while most of her contemporaries are middle-aged has beens. I'd start with Tinderbox or Kiss in the DReamhouse if you'd like to try a Siouxsie and the Banshees album. Anima Animus would be a nice introduction to The Creatures.

Back to fabulous babes.

Babe of the day...

Thank God for Goth Girls.

Gratuitous Sex Anyone?

Thought I'd spice it up to develop interest in this blog.

Mare's Leg?

A mare's leg is a cut down lever action rifle. The stock is shortened and the barrel is cut down to make the gun just a tad longer than the pistols of the old west. The name came from a Steve McQuen TV show, Wanted: Dead or Alive. He said it was like a Hog's Leg, only not as wild. Nothing says western like a lever action rifle and the mare's leg is a unique variation on the traditional rifle. I assume that if these did exist, they were custom made. You can get one made today for around $3000 if you are so inclined. It seems to be be an impractical weapon, but it certainly looks cool in Once Upon a Time in the West. I also noticed the Zoe carries one in the film Serenity. I've been interested in the wepons used in movies for as long as I can remember, and I find the mare's leg quite intersting as they are hard to come by and illegal to make one yourself. If you bought a lever action rifle and cut it down to make one of these, the ATF would be none to happy if they found out about it. So, i guess I won't have one laying next to my Zatoichi cane sword any time soon.

Who is this guy and why should you care?

Tomisaburo Wakayama gained fame in the world of Samurai films in Japan. Wakayama is best known throughout the world as the samurai warrior Ito Ogami in the famous Lone Wolf and Cub series. The series began in 1972 and after six films the series had ended with an unfortunately poor installment. Yet Tomisaburo would have a followinf not only in Japan, but throughout the rest of the world. Before the Lone Wolf series, Wakayama appeared in one of the Zatoichi films, fighting his very own brother, who played the blind masuer. He also starred in a series of Ninja films in the mid-60's and went on to make over 100 films in his career. He would go to become a versatile actor in the 80's and early 90's (even appearing with Michael Douglas in the action thriller Black Rain and Bad News Bears Take on Japan), until his death in 1992. However, most Americans with know Tomisaburo Wakayama as Ogami, the Lone Wolf. These films are brutal, dark, ugly and a bloody as films get. It leterally sprays on the camera. The manga are excellent as well, and it's a real blast to the see the comics so literally traslated into a series of 5 excellent films. Do yourself a favor and skip the final film, White heaven in Hell. It is a real shame they never finished the story of Ogami Itto in these films. In fact, in japan the Lone Wolf and Cub story is far more familiar from the TV series than hese films. They were re-edited into the Shogun's Assassin film released in the states. It is mostly blood with very little plot, but it's fun in a sshlocky sort of way. The disco soundtrack is funkalicious and great to groove to as heads and body parts go flyin'. The fact that Wakayama's brother is the actor who played Zatoichi is a mind-blowing discovery to a huge fan of the Zatoichi films such as myself. This all came to mind as I was watching the Sleepy Eyes of Death: The Chinese Jade where Wakayama plays a bald monk who fights ninja and samurai alike with his bare hands! It's a sight to see and Raizo Ichikawa makes a super-cool samurai in a James-Dean sort of way. He's definately got charisma to burn. Recomended. Now, I'll go back to watching Sleepy Eyes of Death. I hear that he is in part 4 as well and sports an Elvis style pompador! Actually I've been watching Animal Crackers and laughing too much. It might be hard to switch gears to a samurai film. The Marx Brothers humor holds up very well I think, and this could be my favorite movie of theirs. I often have a film on while I work. I've used CNN in the past, but their lack of reporting on real issues and focusing on tabloid nonsense of no substance is infuriating. It's impossible to work and watch subtitles, so foreign films are out as a work companion. I end up watching a lot of documentaries. I recently saw The Weather Underground which covers the history of a radical, violent, anti-vietnam group. It was quite good and I learned a good deal about a subject that was mostly new to me. It makes me wonder where the radicals are today.

Silliest Hairdo???

Ever wondered about the samurai topnot and where and why and whatnot? Well, it was originally worn to make the helmets worn in samurai armour more comfortable. These helmets were very hot and uncomfortable. To allow their heads to breathe, samurai shaved their heads except for the center that was folded over on top. This allowed the topknot to pad the head from the weight of the helmet and the shaved area was given room to breathe and allow heat to escape. Most anyone who has worn a hat can tell you that you release most of your body heat out of the top of your head. This is why so many hats are vented on the top, like baseball caps. Eventually this hairstyle was adopted by others in Japan until 1876 when samurai were outlawed. No carrying of swords in public and no topnots. Only Kabuki players and sumo wrestlers were allowed to wear them. Maybe next time I'll explain the mystery of the black teeth you see on older women in samurai films. If you like westerns, try a samurai film. I've found more good samurai films than westerns... and I like westerns. In fact I saw Open Range, and Tombstone this weekend. Open Range is not bad but it has a tossed in love story that really feels tacked on, and a hollywood happy ending where everyone gets what they want. Robert Duval is great and there is a very down and dirty gunfight that feels realistic and not made to be overly dramatic. It's worth a look but it is no Pale Rider. Tombstone is a film I enjoyed years ago. It is a big budget Hollywood western with a cast of thousands. It is pretty entertaining and Val Kilmer actually makes a movie better! Usually he is so godawful I laugh outloud. I once had a laughing fit during The Saint that threatened to kill me. The Saint isn't a comedy. Clint made a number of good westerns and Henry Fonda is a great villain in Once Upon a Time in the West. The opening scene of that one is pure genious. Tombstone is a nicer, cleaner version of a western. A good popcorn flick, but it doesn't leave you raw like a good italian western. Still, they do shoot people in the back. That seems to be the first indication tou are watching a post John Wayne film.

Tom Yung Goong

Not the spicy Thai soup. The movie. I once heard a cult film defined as "a film whose obvious flaws are far outweighed by other unique and exceptional elements". For example, it might be hard to defend Evil Dead 2 as a masterpiece, but the humor and Bruce Campbel's performance make up for any plot holes or lack of production values. Blade Runner is well loved due to its unique vision of the future depsite pacing issues and a confsuing plot. I also like films that are entertaining, even if they are clearly awful. I'd rather watch Showgirls again than a boring, talky foreign film any day. It is with that in mind that I love Tom-Ying-Goong. I feel that most all of the Hong Kong action films should be judged by cult film criteria as the acting can be very broad, and the plots seem made up as they go along. Special effects are often very bad and production values poor. But entertaining??? Hell yes! Check out Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain for some serious way-out entertainment. I'd prefer that over most Hollywood films. It is unlike most anything you have seen before. Tom-Yum-Goog is even more entertaining that Ong Bak. The stunts are wilder and the camera work is better. There is a scene where Tony Jaa's character heads up a long winding staircase to the top of a casin0/nightclub. The scene consists of one long steady cam shot that is at least 3 minutes long. That is a long time with no edits in a film. Especially when a scene consists of a large number of stunts and a camera following Tony through many different rooms and combat scenarios. It's pretty impressive and even if the rest of the film wasn't full of amazing stunt work, this scene alone would make it worth seeing. How they can top this one, I don't know. this film might not be out in the US for quite a while, but look for it. Does it have great acting? No. A great story line... No! Do I care? No. Is it more entertaining than a Merchant-Ivory film. Again...YES!!! Like Hong Kong cinema, check your head at the door and have fun. Would I rather watch RoadHouse than Ghost.... Uh... yes!

Character Revision

For those of you who are interested in a work in progress... This is the more sinister version with combed back hair. We both agreed on a widow's peak and a slimmer (not much) loojk. This character will be rail thin and tall. Kelly is a real slave driver and I'm trying to meet his back-breaking schedule. If I wasn't so well paid, I might complain! This will be serialized at www.isthistomorrow.com

Another character?

What a profile!

A Sneak Preview

A character design that I am working with for a long-form project to be serialized in Is This Tomorrow? Just some initial ideas. These will probably change before the project strats being serialized.

DAKIOM to the rescue

I'd like to add a plug for an intersting product. It is made by a company called Dakiom that makes an odd little box that parralels you speaker wires out their output. This thing claims to stop fluctuations in the negative feedback used in most amplifier designs. The cost is around $100, and they make most cheap amplifiers much more listenable and musical. So if you have inexpensive equipment, give these a shot. They have a money back guarantee and if they don't work... send 'em back. They will even pay shipping both ways. Negative feedback is used to make amplifiers more efficent and to test better when reviewed by Consumer Reports. Old tube amplifiers offen show greater amounts of distortion, but sound much more musical. One of the best amplifiers I have ever heard used NO negative feedback. So there is something to this. Negative feedback was actually developed by Harold Black for the amplification of telephone signals. The technique requires that part of the signal from the amplifier is fed back and compared with the input signal. Theroretically, distortions caused by the amplifier are corrected and eliminated. Therefore, the amplifier can be made to appear without distortion despite fluctuations in the power supply and other electronic components. So, our amplifiers aren't designed for beautiful music, they are designed to test well and look good when you read a spec sheet. Too bad, I want beautiful music. So why not just buy an amp without negative feedback??? The start at $2000 and go up. Way up. And that is just an amplifier, you will need a preamp as well. Oh, and there are no negative feedback home theater receivers. So just buy the Dakioms, and see if they work for you. New equipment always sounds better after it breaks in. So let them play a day or or two while you are at work and then evalaute the difference.

Just for Atmosphere

This was done just for fun. To add a bit of Atmosphere. I keep drawing in black and white as this site design seems to demand it. Maybe I'll add a shock of color in the future.

Ultimate Godzilla Fighting!

So I'm watching the new Godzilla movie, and look who is in it! Don Frye. The Ultimate Fighter Don Frye. The guy that looks like Tom Sellick. He was one of the very first cross-trained fighters in the UFC. He brought a combination of wrestling with great boxing skills. Many of the early UFC fighters were focused on a single discipline, and Don Frye in UFC 8 showed that grappling skills combined with striking make for a formitable foe! Don's muscular physique and handsome features (not to mention his winning record) made him an early UFC star. He's also got a gravely, low voice and a good sense of humor. He seems like a natural for an acting job. I don't know why it didn't happen sooner. There was also a cameo by Gary Goodrich, who KOed Don with a high-kick in his last fight. The new Godzilla Final Wars is a fun, old fashioned rubber-suit Godzilla flick. They threw in almost every monster ever seen in a Godzilla movie (except Matthew Broderick) in the opening montage. They did leave out personal favorites Mecha Godzilla and Mecha Kong, but I'll forgive the omission. This is Godzilla the way it's supposed to be. There is some CGI stuff going on, but it's mostly a guy sweating it out in the suit. There is something about CGI that is just cheezy. Poor CGI is unbearable. Poor stop motion or practical effects are funny. No matter how expensive the movie, some crappy CGI sneaks in. In the last (horrible) Exorcist movie they had CGI angry wolves. We have wolves. Real ones too. Do we need to CGI them? And yes ,they looked horrible. They had very bad stop motion animation in Basket Case. But that was creepy and funny. The effects in Return of the Living Dead were great. Would CGI halfdogs have worked? Robocop was awesome. But now, they would have relied on CGI for ED-209 and screwed it all up. You can tell when something doesn't feel right. It doesn't seem real. Give me a guy in a rubber suit over some cornball CGI nonsense. Van Helsing sucked because of crappy CGI run amock. We need to stop the CGI madness. It's not the solution for all movie monsters. Long live Harryhausen!

The people you draw-you know?

Do I know the person drawn above? No, but when you spend time staring at a person, you develop a bio for them. Many drawings are loosely based on what I see in the mirror. Most artists keep a mirror around to help with facial expressions, and I know animators use a mirror frequently. The woman above, to my mind, is a 40ish half-asian villainess of the James Bond variety. Is that what you see? Maybe not. But as I draw, I develop a background for the character. When the bio doesn't fit the story you are working on, it ends up in the scrap heap, or the back of your portfolio. I don't really have a portfolio anymore. Almost everything I draw is intended for publication of some sort, so it is all scanned into the computer and ink smudges and goofs are Photoshopped away. I haven't used white paint to correct mistakes in quite a while. Also, digital Zipatone is a miracle. Imagine having to buy this stuff and cut out adhesive sheets to apply to your art. They also had sheets that you applied by rubbing a pencil over the top of the sheet. These were quite frustrating as the dots rubbed back onto the Zipatone sheet as easily as the rubbed onto the art. I tried it once and gave up!

More Tony Jaa in 30 Minutes!

My hand can't seem to take more than 20 minutes of detail work. You need feedback from you hand to draw or paint. When my hand goes numb, I can't control my inking and it starts to fall apart. It is the same with drumming, when you can't feel you hand, and speed or finese is lost. So, these were done very quickly. Thankfuly the brush adds personality when my hand shakes or goofs. Pens and quills seem to just look rough and sloppy. This is why I almost always ink with a brush. My sloppy work looks more like a style than a mistake. To further speed things up, I also don't fill in any large black areas when I am inking. That is alll done in Photoshop with the "paintbucket" tool. I also correct any errors, or ink smudges. When you are inking rapidly, blowing constantly on your paper can keep you from ending up with smudged ink on your palm. I read that the early comic book artists inked with a brush because it dried faster than a pen. Speed was the primary concern back then as many 20 page stories were dashed out ver a weekend. The brush inking in comics was a huge influence on me, and it is interesting that it was not an aethetic concern that made that the standard!  Often black and white can look flat or the reader can have trouble dicerning the foreground from the background. Great cartoonists like Milton Caniff or Jaimie Hernandez can do straight black and white without gray tones and pull it off. Not me. My stuff becomes hard to dicern. So I usually add gray tones in Photoshop. If I use dot tones like you see in these Tony Jaa drawings, it is to give it a distict comic book appearance. Most black and white comics use the "zipatone" patterns to give the drawings some depth. Underground comics use these quite a bit and the Japanese manga artists are masters of zipatone. We don't really need to use them anymore as printing of all sorts has gotten much better. I use them simply to give a certan look, so I often make the dots larger than they should really be. The other issue with dot patters is that if your computer monitor's resolution isn't the same as mine, the dots might not appear as dots, but break up into random patterns.

A T-Shirt Design from Zazzle.com

I have posted some fun t-shirt designs on Zazzle.com. Here is an example.

Tony Jaa!!!!! Again!!!!

A quick sketch of Tony Jaa. India Ink by brush with tones added later. Finished in 30 minutes. 15 minutes is all my hand can take right now for drawing. Toning and computer work is easier on my hands. Please go rent Ong-Bak. Did I mention Tony Jaa is amazing?

The Worst Character Trademark Ever

This is it. Take a moment to let it sink in. Really look at this. Yes, It is a Bigfoot (yetti, stink ape, etc.) with hot dogs for feet. He's got a funny hat and looks like a hippy. This is the worst...ever. Ever! If you have worse, please send it along. I'm offering this as the worst and as a challenge to others.

Mystery E-Mail Poetry

These are strange e-mails I have receicved. I am assuming to get around spam filters, they are randomly generated. warranty near scythe meditates but omphalos behind bounce a grain of sand surprised raping penetrating freshest girls in their blossoming make you lose your head gonad from ski lodge secretly admire pork chop beyond then defined by hockey player daydreams food stamp defined by wheelbarrow daydreams a photon of hides; however, for toothache compete with...

A T-Shirt Design from Zazzle.com

I have posted some fun t-shirt designs on Zazzle.com. Here is an example.