Commissions: ROUND ONE.

Hey all. Just a quick note to let you know I’ll be working on the first round of commissions later this week, so if you’d like something sooner rather than later, let me know right quick. I probably won’t get to the next batch until roundabout the end of next month.

ALL THE DETAILS LIVE HERE.

I’ve gotten some interesting requests so far… Hopefully I’ll be able to post some of them when they’re done.

In other news: Hooray for No Country for Old Men! Hooray for Anton Chigurgh! Hooray for Sweeney Todd’s production design! Hooray for Ratatouille but sorry, Persepolis! (You should’ve gotten the Foreign Language one.) Boo for no King of Kong nomination! And hooray for that really pretty song from Once, a movie I didn’t see but immediately added to Netflix! Such is the dazzling power of Oscar. Or, at least, the part of the Oscars that wriggled into my consciousness while I was coloring pages.

(By the way, if anyone knows where I can find nicer versions of all the animated short nominees, I’d love to see them. From the clips I saw last night, each one of them looked like asome pretty little hand-made-low-tech bit of happy.)

Coraline the Tease!

A wee teaser for the movie my lovely and talented Gofflin worked on all last year:

Looks good! All deep textures and spidery creepinesses, spookycutes and all that. I like it! And I’m really glad they decided to go with stop-motion instead of CG for this one (but then, I’m always glad when they go with stop motion instead of CG for anything). After Sandman, Coraline is probably my favorite-ever Neil Gaimany thing, so at first, I have to admit I was a bit worried how this thing would turn out - especially when I heard they ditched all the original Dave McKean designs. But from this teaser and some of the other little bits and pieces I saw up in Portland last year, I think things are going to turn out just fine.

IN THREE DIMENSIONS, even!

My Stereotype Weekend!

SO!

If you were to guess at what a guy who draws “dark” comics does on his weekends… it would probably look very similar to what I did this last weekend. Usually I spend my Saturdays and Sundays glaring at passersby and cursing the cats for not preparing my meals, but this time I (holy shit!) actually went out and lived the “horror person” stereotype.

SATURDAY! On Saturday the Gofflin and I ventured deep into the filthy heart of Hollywood to see two of my favorite goth ladies bring smiles to the faces of the terminally spooky. Which actually isn’t as difficult as it seems, but still, Melora Creager (of Rasputina renown) and Siouxsie Sioux (of “That woman cannot possibly be 50 years old” renown) rocked the ever-lovin’ socks off the Henry Ford theater, its assorted black clad protomass, and me this past weekend. Just an amazing, amazing show. But what really struck me was how different the two performances were, while still both coming under the heading of “goth.” Rasputina with their intensely cool “19th-century American prairie punk” look and snarky-but-swooping cello recital could not have been more different than Siouxsie’s slinky “goths in space” look and charging synth-spook-RAWK. Totally distict, but both absolutely beautiful. I couldn’t help but think of the “all goth shit is the same” people and how painfully, embarrassingly wrong they are. To be totally fair, though, (and apologies if I’ve said this before) I guess when you’re on the outside looking in, things do tend to blur a little bit. Like, for instance, if I really took the time to examine the romantic comedy genre, over time I’d probably be able to pick out all the subtle variations of plot and tone among the movies. Instead of seeing it all as one big undifferentiated pudding of McConaughey.

(Anyway, if you’re a Siouxsie fan, her new album is as big, HI-GAWF, and ridiculously catchy as her glory days with the Banshees, so buy it! And if you’re a Rasputina fan, well, YOU BETTER BE. And buy their exquisite new offering, as well.)

SUNDAY! On Sunday I went and saw George Romero’s new zombie movie, Diary of the Dead. Yeah, he’s got another one already! And… well, it isn’t his best by a long shot, but it was fun. Zombies are my bestest favorite, and no one knows zombies like Uncle George, so I couldn’t help but be entertained. I do love my zombies… And I know exactly why, too. “Barricaded in your house while mindless hordes of slobbering, violent bastards claw at the door trying to either destroy you or make you one of them” is… pretty much how any given introvert sees the real world at any given moment. It speaks to me. Similarly, I’m really strongly drawn to any scenario in which a person wanders around big, empty spaces that are normally filled to the rafters with humans. So of course, Dawn of the Dead is one of my all-time top-favorite films. Diary isn’t really up to Dawn standards, though, unfortunately. If I had to complain - and I don’t but here I go anyway, because it’s the internet - I’d say this time he had his patented “social observations and zombie mayhem” recipe mixed a bit too heavy on the former and too light on the latter. Every minor observation was explicitly spelled out, underlined 80 times, doused in 40 gallons of fluorescent marker and lit up with a flamethrower, every time. Sometimes that can be part of the fun, but, well, not this time…

Still, nobody destroys ghouls like George Romero, so even if you think you’ve seen every possible way to bloody up some shamblers, I guarantee you’ll find something fresh, new and intensely cool in this one. (Acid, kiddies, is a woefully underused item in the zombie genre.) And even if the commentary gets a little “Yeah, WE GET IT, George” at times, the points are still valid and fun to roll around the brain. So go put some money in the man’s pocket and see Diary of the Dead - if you, y’know, can find it. (The Nuart has it until the 21st.)

Cool poster, too.

SOME BUSINESS:

Little bit of business to attend to… If you tried signing up for the FORUM within the past 6 months or so and were never able to log in… um, try again. If you want. The problem was that I never really had the time to sift through all the thousands upon thousands of spambots in the user list (it was getting really, really bad in there), dig out all the real live humans and activate them. But hey, it had to be done, so I finally do-ed it. Sorry about the horrible delay. I actually recognized a few of the names from my LJ and Myspace accounts, which is sort of embarrassing…

Speaking of the forum, we recently put out the call for moderators, so if you’re interested (or just want to vote for someone else all democratic-like), swing right on over HERE.

AND FINALLY: “Good Guys Wear Black” is now en-YouTubed, for all your sharing and commenting needs. You know how it works:

Not sure why I did that… just thought it should be there, I guess.

Now back to cursing at cats!

-a

AT LAST…

“…MY ARM IS COMPLETE AGAIN.”

Hello and welcome to the new HEART SHAPED SKULL! I think it’s version 4.0 or something… Maybe 5.0… Whatever, what I do know is that this is the biggest site update ever, all kinds of large, and way, way overdue.

Come, let me count the new:

1. She’s blinking again! That’s pretty good, eh?

2. HEART SHAPED RADIO is back! Until the company hosting it gets sued to death!

3. There’s a BIO page!

4. And a CHARACTER page!

5. And a tiny little dollhouse version of Sera’s STORY so far!

6. A swanky, near-professional-looking STORE! And yes, I am taking commissions at the moment. My Wolverine is to die for.

7. Kids today with their slide whistles and hula hoops and social bookmarking… GET OFF MY LAWN! And take your “RSS feeds” with you!

8. A fan art HALL OF INFAMY!

9. THIS!

10. Miscellaneous other things!

11. Does Sera look different to you? I can’t even tell anymore…

12. That burrito from earlier ain’t sittin’ right…

13. …

14. …

15. OH YES! …the webcomic! Almost forgot… Serenity Rose, local witch, is returning to web-comic form exactly one month from now via Serenity Rose Vol. 2: Goodbye, Crestfallen! Her sequential-type adventures began in the inter-aether, if you remember, and to the inter-aether she has returned - for 120 pages of spookycute (and not-so-cute) mayhem doled out over the next 12-14 months or so. The plan is to put out at least two pages a week, but I can’t promise paid work won’t get in the way… What I can promise is that I won’t leave you hanging mid-scene or anything dreadful like that. You guys have waited way too long for this story, and I can’t wait to show it off.

Witches and monsters and goths and punks. G-men and night terrors, badly misshapen conjurings and hideous facial disfigurements… Massive absurdity, eccentric behavior, and bloody, bloody horror… And a sarcastic little introvert just like you and me, right in the middle of it all.

And goblins demanding spare change for tacos.

It all starts on March 14th.

If all goes well, the book will be published in dead plant form in early-to-mid 2009, long after all you lucky internetty sods have already had your big 120-page eye-binge. But we’ll just have to wait and see, eh?

Thanks again to everyone who’s waited so patiently so far… You guys deserve the coolest Serenity adventure there ever was, and that’s what I aim to give. Right after I take a nice, eight-day nap on the floor here.

-a