Zombie Pets & Naughty Barbers

This is an assignment for my Illustration class, for a story. The story I chose was Masque of the Red Death by Poe. This is the point in the story where it lifts its mask (modeled after a victim of the disease) to reveal who it is. Prince Prospero is in the middle, looking a little indignant.

Nearing the end of the semester, getting busier! The comics are coming along. I've finished Sweet Hell, and have posted the first page of another comic called Red Riding Hood. It's a part 1, lasting only a few pages, after which I'll continue whenever the hell I want. It was the next assignment in my class after my Sweet Hell one.
We're headed to Devils Lake for the weekend, the last weekend we'll make it up before Christmas. I've got a couple designs for the bass Derek & I want to make.
What have I been watching in the meantime? Just 2 movies for now:
Fido: Set in the 1950's, some time after a zombie infestation, a corporation called Zomcom has made strides in improving life for the living and domesticating the dead. A housewife with a "keeping-up-with-the-Jones'" mentality gets a domesticated zombie for her family, which consists of a lonely boy and a father who's terrified of zombies. The zombies themselves have collars that curb their flesh-hunger and make them more or less retarded helper monkeys. The boy names his zombie Fido (come on you saw that hobbling up a mile away), and befriends him. The mother begins to see the zombie more as a once-human thing as well. A bunch of other stuff goes on (no spoilers here) and it turned out to be a well-made movie. Carrie-Ann Moss and Billy Connolly are in it.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street: This is the 1936 version starring Tod Slaughter--yeah, I shit you not, that's the actor's name. I even linked it so you could see for yourself. It was pretty good, twisted for a movie made in 1936. It was directed by George King, but reminded me of a Tod Browning movie. And what a creepy, evil cackle this guy has!

Stinky Feet, Our First Delicious Turkey, and What's With All These Zombie Movies?!

It's just some feet.

I've noticed that I've been watching an awful lot of zombie movies lately. It's probably a psychological thing. Zombies and vampires play on our fears of disease and whatnot, and between me and my family/friends we've all had massive head colds, flu, pink eye, and ear infections.

Wanna know what I've been watching again? I got 3 more movies for ya:

Stink of Flesh: Life in a zombie-infested world. A Mexican dude (though you can't tell he is until is says he is) wanders around, looking for food and zombies to kill. He practices martial arts, carries a hammer and spikes to use on the zombies, and considers killing them a 'workout'. He comes upon a home out in a secluded-but-barren area, and shacks up with a couple there. He performs nightly sexual acts on the wife while the husband sits three feet away, looking on. The wife's freaky sister comes out at some point during these trysts and slaps him in the ass with one of those plastic hotwheels race track thingies. She has a twin sister attached to her stomach, visible only as a nasty looking head, though she still manages to find short-lived (literally) love in this movie. There is even a naked zombie chick chained up in a shed for the husband to look at, and at one point he rapes her.

Yeah, I'm describing a real movie here. You may have to see it to believe this one.

Blacula: Can you believe I've gone all this time without seeing Blacula?? African prince Mamuwalde and his wife visit "Count" Dracula around 1780 to discuss the end of slave trade in his land. Dracula is having none of that, and bites Mamuwalde. Mamuwalde is officially cursed with the name Blacula (corny), and imprisoned in a coffin until present day (1972), where it is bought by interior decorators for who-really-gives-a-shit. Blacula is released form his coffin, enjoys some night life, sees a woman he swears is the reincarnation of his wife, and makes her his vampire bride. She's killed, he goes out into the sun, and...at some point there's a sequel I haven't seen, so somehow he survives. It was a crappy movie, but seems like one that needed to be done back then, at least so it was out of the way.

Zombie Night: A couple of graverobbers (one of them Ron Jeremy) steal an amulet from a corpse, unleashing a horde of zombie. The victim of the theft appears to be a vampire, though I don't think that's ever comfirmed. He is balding horribly. Typical stupid teenagers find a cabin once used for a horror movie (apparently a shitty one) and want to party in it. Two go off to have sex. They haven't really got down to any partying before some shit starts happening. The couple is taking an impossibly looooooooooooong time getting around to sex--so long, in fact, that they don't fuck and are instead interupted by the vampire/zombie/amulet wearing/baldy and scream and run. Ron Jeremy and the other grave robber (who must play the part of "Ron Jeremy's cock" in the old porns arrive and help fend off the zombies. Arguing between the graverobbers and teens, more zombie stuff, we find out Ron Jeremy took the amulet (now called a medallion), more zombie action, the chick smashes the medallion, vampire/zombie/medallion wearing/baldy is destroyed. Everyone but the quarterback jock (everyone knows the quarterback's the smartest on the team) and the tough blonde-but-not-too-hot chick dies. That is all.

This year, we decided to do Thanksgiving at home instead of going to parents' houses. Karissa made her very first turkey, and it was awesome. It was my first time carving, and I butchered it some, but we got a whole lot of meat off it, so I think I did fair enough. After Isabella and I got one illness/infection after another and finally got better, Karissa caught a flu. She wasn't sure she'd be up for making turkey. Despite my suggesting we could do it later in the weekend, or even skip it completely (you don't want me making dinner, I've tried and FAILED in the past), she toughed it out. Some stuff was store-bought, but the turkey and mashed potatoes were all homemade. We still have leftovers, and they're still yummy. After dinner, we went to Bee Movie, which turned out badly. Isabella got bored halfway through and decided it was more fun to run around outside of the theater. The movie was boring anyway, I don't really blame her for getting antsy.

Last, but not least, I got the final page of Sweet Hell up on Saturday. It's a little late, but I'm finally done with that story and can move on to my other ones. I have a couple stories started, it's a matter of finishing them while working on my big 8-page story. Hopefully I can go back to posting a page a week, but with three more of these stories, it could take a while before we see Golden Brown again.

Bringing Back Some Oldies...

These two illustrations are old, I did them a year ago. I'm just rehashing them until I get some more stuff drawn.

Kevin, Derek and I found the DeSoto this shot was based on at Kevin's uncle's farmstead out in Valley City last year. I turned up the contrast to fix the ugly marker lines.

This one is based on a page from a Hellboy comic.

Again, I turned up the contrast to take out some of the visible marker lines. The moon is especially luminescent.

Hey, Hey! Gimme a Hand Here...

It's been a long week already, and I have no idea if I'll have the last page of Sweet Hell done by Friday or not.

This week's focus in figure drawing is the hand. This particular shot is an extra credit assignment. Cigar, anyone?

I caught him in mid-doorknob reach...

Doug's "Creation".

Put 'er there!

He might be trying to bloody-knuckle you. Keep your hand away.

Weekend Tragic, Movie Magic, and An Innerer Earrr...Thingy

I gotta go all the way back to last week again, huh? Okay. We had Joel Lovelein's family staying with us last week. If you don't recognize his name, google it. Pretty sad story. His adoptive mother and his birth mother were here. I talked to his stepdad every morning around 5:30--most of it just shooting the shit, but he did talk about Joel quite a bit. The adoptive mother cam down the first morning they were here, and saw his picture in the paper. She said, "That's my boy" to us and tried to hold it together. They left Monday morning and thanked us for everything, remarking that we made them feel like they were at home here, which is the best compliment we could get, expecially from a family hre for a funeral.

What the hell have I been watching lately? Here's a little list.
SpiderBaby: Before Halloween, I managed to finally watch this one, which is fucking awesome and twisted. I can't really even give a good synopsis of it. Sid Haig's first movie, crazy to see the contrast between this character and the one in Foxy Brown.
Dead Clowns: A bunch of clowns killed decades ago in a sunken caravan come back to wreak havoc on people because they were forgotten. Not really a good movie, though the gore is pretty decent and the decayed clown faces offset the big feet.
Behind th Mask: Th Rise of Leslie Vernon: 3/4 of the movie is a mostly-mockumentary about a guy aspiring to be a masked serial killer. The last 1/4 turns into full-blown movie and brings the documentary crew in as characters. Sounds dumb, but it is a very well-done movie. It's structured great, keeps you guessing while letting you recognize some familiar slasher-flick tricks (like how the killer manages to catch the running victim by walking), and comes together to make a great ending. Karissa even liked it.
Andre the Butcher: Ron Jeremy (that's right, THE Ron Jeremy) plays a supernatural butcher who ends up killing some cheerleaders. Pretty much all you need to know. See it to believe it.
Hide and Creep: Based on short film titled Birthday Call, it's a very cheaply made typical zombie movie, much akin to Dawn of the Dead. That being said, it was actually pretty good. The make-up was horrible, the effects were okay, but overall, I enjoyed it.
Emperor of the North: A little different from all the above-mentioned movies. It's about two hobos--one a legend, one a pretender, trying to ride "Shack's" train. Shack is a conductor (played by Ernest Borgnine) who hats hobos and states that no hobo will ride his train for free. Trust me, it's a cool movie, and anyon who hates Borgnine can lick me.

I got a wicked cold over last week, and it's just now starting to abate. I also had an ear infection which casued my right ear to compress and stay that way until I could get super-expensive mdication to fix it. I had the worst week of sleep I've had in a looooong time--it felt like sleeping in a submarine on the ocean floor.

There will be a new page of Sweet Hell out today. My laptop decided last night that my printr didn't exist, so I have to fix it, but then you guys'll have your next page.

Watch Out, I'm Armed!

Yes, I forgot to rotate it. Sue me.

I really let him go towards the bottom. Oops.

These are "bathers". We were supposed to do this without lifting out the charcoal. Lifting out is where you use an eraser to create highlights. The substitution is a white charcoal pencil, which I'm not too good at.

The Princess Chainsaw Massacre

Yeah, she's a little psycho...

Candy Apples and Razorblades...

The good news? I will have more illustration stuff popping up here and there on here. The bad news? No comic this week. Sorry! I've been busy with so much that I haven't even started penciling the next page of Sweet Hell. For those who are curious, there will only be two more pages of it. After that, I've got another 4 or 5 page comic coming. Golden Brown will continue to wait with Papa, but I've got some good story for them on the back burner...you know, the on I sit on because the smell of bacon gets my brain pumping...
The Ozzy concert was awesome. Fucking Hooters made us late for the concert by providing shitty service (it wasn't that full, and I got better service at Texas Roadhouse), so we missed In This Moment, who I was really looking forward to seeing. We did catch Rob Zombie, though, who may have been drunk or tired or something. He blew a few lyrics and every now and then had trouble keeping up with the tempo.
Ozzy was oddly energetic. The last time we saw him, he was nursing a broken whatever and hobbling around the stage. This time, he was all over the place. He moved like he was 40. Zakk kicked ass as usual.
Afterward, we stopped off at Rick's bar. I was a little anxious at first because it was full of people, but after a beer and Derek letting me sit by him (he just the keenest!), I was put at ease. It turned out to be a very fun night ending with everyone cramming into a cab driven by a slightly disgruntled-but very friendly guy in a tux.
For Halloween, we pretty much just took Isabella to the Alerus and followed the line that gav us candy. They could easily have had a bolt gun at the end and it wouldn't have mattered. But Isabella had fun, at least.
Huh, this post had nothing to do with candy apples or razorblades...maaaaybe it was just me swiping a Misfits lyric to be cute.