Thursday, June 25, 2009

Team USA: Royal Pain For Spain


Given no chance by pretty much the rest of the world, the US National Men's Soccer Team yesterday defeated Spain, the Number 1 ranked team in the world, 2-0! After losing the first two matches of the 2009 Confederations Cup Tornament, Team USA is now playing in the tornament final this weekend.

Looking at the picture above, one can see how hard Clint Dempsey (number 8) had to work to score. It's also a good metaphor for life. Talent will only get you so far. You have to keep working at something to achieve it, be it a game, a degree, a home, and yes, even a comic book!

I've heard many great comic ideas from friends and associates but I see nothing getting published. It's important to be able to finish what you start. It may not be perfect, but I'll let you in a secret: nothing is perfect. Try your best and the rest tends to sort itself out. Just have a little fun along the way!

Update: Someday Team USA will beat Brazil!

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Frozen Alive Girl!


Here are two different icy business models:

Business #1: The Still Life Corporation delivers life-like mannequins to department stores to display merchandise for customers to buy. Still Life doesn’t charge anything to the buying public; the stores pay Still Life for the mannequins.

Business #2: The Frozen Girl Alive Exhibit displays a scantily-clad woman frozen in ice at a science fair as an “advancement in biotechnology,” as the public pays for merchandise, refreshments and services the fair provides. The Exhibit doesn’t charge anything to the buying public; the fair pays the Exhibit for the entertainment.

Of course, the Still Life example is from my Pretty Vacant comic book. Still Life finds suitable women, plasticizes them for mannequin molds, freezes them to be used later, and sells mannequins made from molds of these women to stores at a profit.

However, Frozen Alive was an actual attraction in the early 20th century, with the auspicious exhibit shown in various carnivals and even the 1939 World’s Fair.

The exhibit would last almost until closing time when a barker (probably the owner) would announce that they would now cut through the ice and the woman would come out of her frozen state, standing, shivering and smiling to the applauding crowd, only to re-freeze this woman for the next show, as the owner would sell souvenirs and collect local merchant fees for a profit.

And some people think Pretty Vacant is far-fetched! Some stuff just can’t be made up…

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Objet d'Art

Alongside Dodger Stadium, the Getty Museum is one of my favorite places to be in LA! I do like art, and every once in a while art can inspire, like this sculpture between the main buildings and the gardens:
Aristide Maillol’s Torso of Summer is an artwork that snuck up on me. I finally got to take a picture of it during my last visit to the Getty. And believe it or not, it was the pose that caught my attention, not its other attributes…
… which leads me to my Pretty Vacant comic. When Still Life first inspects the plasticized Gigi after the mannequin mold-making machine opens, I didn’t want a standard mannequin pose (like the standard stand-at-attention-arms-at-side pose). I wanted an something artistic, one that would make her stand out from the other “body molds”.

I can create an exciting story and throw in high brow reference like Gigi’s artistic “pose” just for the fun of it. It's a small touch that makes working on this comic cool!