I’m forcing myself to blog. I’ve entirely lost the habit of it. I mean it’s been gone for a while, but a few months gap between posts is silly. My online focus is largely bluesky – though even then I’m nowhere as online as I once was, I hesitate with personal stuff now in a way that I used to just blurt it all out. I’m finding myself asking “do I really want to put this online” when online stuff is slurped up in to the ai machines.
That said, here’s some recent thoughts:
I’ve been spending some time looking into reddits aicomics threads (KNOW YOUR ENEMY) and it’s fascinating. Part of what’s interesting is where that group intersects with comic writers who’ve spent years building a comic world, with mad ideas about characters and politics and tech and not really given much thought to story. A lot of aicomics are these long rambly wikipedia like comics that seem to go nowhere. As though a writer meeting an artist is a requirement for the writer to knuckle down and create a story and not an imaginary encyclopaedia of their world. There’s also a good chunk of comics that are “ai haters” vs “ai ‘creators'” – suggesting that at some deep level a lot of the aicomics crowd are absoloutely sore at not being conisdered real artists by comics artists (who, by and large, are tired, and fed up with being considered the lowest form of artist, only for ai artists to stomp up with their computer generated comics claiming that they’ve put in the work just as much even though the average artist has been drawing since they were 5 years old).
Lots of the aicomic creators are also focused as much on the how-to of making ai comics, building spreadsheets, fretting about drift (where things start changing slowly over the course of the comic) and “styles” (because they get to pick from a limited menu of art styles, all of which slowly begin to look similar enough you can smell ai art from a mile off)
In comics news: I’ve finished a chimpsky strip that starts in 2000ad at Christmas, I think. Also, DOG TAG #6 is coming soon, and that marks that story complete. New York Comic Con is this weekend, I won’t be at it (boo!) but I should find out the fate of my Terrran Omega: The Ghosts of War Harvey Nomination for Best Digital Comic at it.
Books: Read Ursula K. Le Guinn’s Paradises Lost. Good, short book. I have to read short books cus reading takes me forever now because I don’t spend any time reading. I should fix that.
Film: While inking, recently, I decided to do a film binge, and watched in rapid succession:
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (I thought I knew it, it turns out I did not – great film, but a film that feels like a bunch of connected vignettes and the bit i assumed was the end was the middle…)
The Sting. I liked the casting and fancied some more. The Sting was great. Another film I assumed I knew but didn’t. Then I thought there was a sequel, and there IS – but it’s a dreadful, made for tv style affair with everyone recast. Just awful (admittedly I just watched the trailer but that was enough)
Get Carter. Another film I assumed I’d seen, but had not. It too was good, though a depressing watch, the stylish music (reminded me a lot of Oceans 11 remake soundtrack) lifted the mood somewhat.
From Dusk Til Dawn. Saw it on release. Was much more, on this rewatch, a film of two halves, the first a cracking, tense film and the second half a bonkers gonzo monster movie. I like both. I’m not sure they joined together well though – visual effects in the second half felt like a smorgasborg of everything they could think of, including a fantastic matt painting at the end. Loved the cast, and may be my favourite Harvey Keitel role, operating against type (though still a bad ass).
We Dive at Dawn. WWII sub. Starts as a fun little bunch of story lines about the ships crew and their various love lives, until it heads off to sink the Bismark. Sorry, the Brandenberg. Lot funnier and better than expected. Tense war stuff.
And that’s it. Time for a rethink on the blog (what, another one?) maybe simplify it down to a portfolio site, with a news sections.
