WE HAVE MOVED!

I've moved my blog to my main website:

Emmacoats.com

Currently it is undergoing a great period of upheaval, but will settle down in a week or so. I'm off to Comicon - see some of you there!

Comicon: tee-minus eight

I don't know exactly what t minus comes from, but everyone says it in movies when they're looking forward to something (or dreading it), although it's usually something more technical than a herd of comic book and entertainment industry geeks descending upon San Diego.

I thought I would try for a post every day this week, talking about something awesome that will be at Comicon, which you maybe don't know about or if you do you'll be like "WOO! I AM GOING TO DO THAT ALREADY!"

And a drawing.

But anyway! Tonight I am talking about Eville Press, which is going to be booth #1534, and will have Pixar story guys Ted Mathot with his Rose and Isabel books and Derek Thompson with, I assume, his 365 Monsters 2007 book. They'll also have Afterworks 1 and 2. I am definitely stopping there.
Derek's monster books are awesome, he goes from cute to freaky to what-the-hell-is-that, and there are 365 drawings in them, so there's always something to find and get inspired by when I open it up. Anyway.

Here's a drawing.

Harry Potter tilts his head

I was sketching this morning, doing warmup sketches, and I was noticing how little stuff, like the tilt of a head, communicates a lot. It also seems like head tilts, turns, and looks up or down make the drawings come to life. I think those things definitely make the drawings more interesting. So I said hey I bet I can write a post on it, and sound like I know what I'm doing, and like people should listen to me! I'll do some samples!

Also, some sketchcrawlers went to see Harry Potter 5 last night, and it was pretty great. They packed a lot of stuff in and left a lot of stuff out, but it was one of the better performances out of Daniel Radcliffe and the end was just fantastic.

So I drew Harry Potter talking to his bud Snape, to illustrate my point of head tilts being better and more interesting. Then I discovered that my point really wasn't valid, because each of the following drawings, instead of getting progressively more boring like I thought they would, just communicate different things. Whaddya know?


Subtext: "My dad did WHAT?"


Subtext: "You can't get away with this, Professor! Sooner or later YOU WILL PAY!"


Subtext: "Holy degreasifyin shampoo, Batman!"

So... failed hypothesis, but interesting discovery. I guess the point that I can pretend I was trying to make from the very beginning is that all these things communicate different things, just in how a character orients himself to another character, and it's good to mix it up and use them to drive home your points. Now that I look at it, Snape should probably have been oriented away from Harry and looking back at him, not facing him... more in character, I guess.

Guerilla blog-updating

Kind of scribbly, but if you consider that they were done on a rocking train, they're not bad. Designs for my project thingy - photographed and resized by a completely leet haxxor using only command-line wizardry. You realize how much you take Photoshop for granted when someone goes digging around in linux typing stuff like resize 620x480 instead of using the little pie slice to drag the image to the size you want.

I am, unfortunately, not the leet haxxor mentioned here. It is Joshua, who could pretty much give all three of the Lone Gunmen a run for their money and bandwidth.

Flight has just released their fourth volume of comics! Apparently they're available at chain bookstores but not comic stores yet - I went and read it at Borders, so I can gush about the art but actually buy my copy from the table at Comicon. The best of both worlds! Reagan Lodge did a page spread in the front, and on the inside are of course wonderful comics. The slick Little Trouble in the Big Top by Vera Brosgol and the sketchy Binny by Lark Pien were my favorites - and the tree-head igloo-head guys (go buy the comic to see what I'm talking about!).

Definitely something to pick up and get inspired by.

Is anyone else looking forward to Comicon this much? It's like the yearly refill at the pumps of comic and illustration inspiration and enthusiasm.

Sketchbook pickings

Was meaning to print up a sketchbook for Comicon this year, but didn't have a definite direction until a couple of weeks ago... and now I think it's a little too late. I'll plan on one for next year. I'm looking forward to the con - catching up with awesome artists and cramming into a hotel room with awesome artists and buying the books of awesome artists at their booths (or through a bookstore for awesome artists who are overseas).

But I scanned some sketchbook stuff. There!



I am completely blown away by the drawings of Gipi. He's an Italian comic artist, but as far as I know his only book that's been translated is Garage Band, about a garage band and the four guys who are in it. His drawings are simple and complicated, and the eyes always jump out, completely alive. The above drawings were me trying to figure out what it is he does to the eyes to make them so catching...

The Devil's backbone

Guillermo Del Toro's Devil's Backbone is great. It's what I think of as real horror - the way people treat each other, with just a little bit of ghosts floating around. There's some amazing prosthetic work in it, too. So well done. Also peg legs... and babies in rum!