Saturday, May 30, 2009

The Vendor Client relationship - in real world situations

Sorry no images this time... just found something that I had to share.

So here I was perusing my standard blog reading material and I ran into this over at Tom Richmond's "The Mad Blog" (if you haven't checked out his stuff you'll probably recognize his work pretty quickly, especially if you know who Alfred E. Neuman is.)

I don't think I can say anything more than what Tom says about this video. It's a great piece of work, just click on the link below to Tom's blog and catch the video.


Let me know what you think!

-Jacot

Community Dance Project 2008: Silent Confessions

Last summer I had a great opportunity dropped into my lap. Early in 2008 I was speaking with friend Matt Bebermeyer and we got talking about combining fine art and dance. Little would I know that this would turn into a fantastic project come summertime with the Community Dance Project (a fantastic project put together through Happendance)

I got partnered up with Andrew Amos to help combine dance and traditional art. Upon our first meeting we immediately went into the concept of providing imagery to help set mood for the dance. We quickly found that we were going to need to tell a story to make this work. we each brainstormed and soon had a concept: The five stage of grief. Now cam the hard part how to make it work. Well he ended up getting five dancers involved, one for each stage of grief.

Now all we had to do was tell a story

I quickly surmised that each of the stages (dancers) needed a corresponding color.

Well this is kinda how the story came out. (in lieu of video I'll explain the story after each image.) During the production I queued the images to come up with each piece of music, one for each image. So kinda in the same respect you'll see the image first and then the events that took place. Just for informational posterity the piece is titled "Silent Confessions"




We start out at a funeral where one of the dancers is lying dead (this dancer will represent denial, color: orange) The other four dancers (each representing a different stage of grief) are standing above her body. Denial seems to get up and finds herself confined and doesn't understand why. The other dancers exit the stage


(Enter anger, color Red)
Anger confronts Denial and starts a very combative sequence where we find Denial defending herself from anger onslaught. Anger exits and Denial lays down at the center of the stage.


(enter bargaining, color: green; and depression, color: blue)
Denial is sleeping, Depression is fawning over her wishing he could be with her, bargaining is throwing herself and depression. Denial gets up and starts going about her day. Bargaining continues to throw herself ad Depression but he only sees Denial. upon getting to close Denial notices Depression and rebukes him, Depression slowly breaks down as his world has been destroyed. Bargaining consoles Depression but his worlds already come crashing down. Exit Bargaining and Depression (depression exits while convulsing) Denial lays at the center of the stage again.


(Enter acceptance, color: white) 
Acceptance comes and stands over the lifeless body of denial. She starts playing with body in sort of a playful, comedish, morbid sort of dance that's a little disturbing but fun none the less. Denial is limp the entire time and eventually acceptance has had her fill of fun, she places the body back at the center of the stage.


(Enter Anger, Bargaining, and Depression to join Acceptance on the stage) 
Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance all stand over Denial's body as at the beginning of the dance. Each stage of grief exits the stage exhibiting physical emanations of the stage they represent. Leaving Denial alone on the stage as the lights go down and the image fades.

It was really fun to work on this project and I hope to find a video of this to share with everyone but for now you must live with my images and rough story of the events that transpired. In the end we wanted to leave the audience questioning "Why was denial dead?" and "Who did it?"

It was a great experience that I was glad to be apart of.  It was amazing to see the music, dance, and images blend so well together and tell a story.

Hopefully I'll get another crack at a project like this again soon.

-Jacot

Monday, May 25, 2009

Page 2 Colors

So here we are, nice, brief, and as promised...

Page 2 colored by Jonathan D. Gordon... 

(click on the image to open in a new window)

Enjoy,

-Jacot

Knights of Columbus Pages

So it's Memorial Day weekend, and Jonathan D Gordon and myself made a plan...

To start work on our allegory of our trip to SPACE... with a few twists...

I won't go into to much detail but this is the first real work Jon and I have done together so we wanted to run a few tests...

Here's the first one... 

Art by: Jacot

Colors by: Jonathan D. Gordon

Now with how well those turned out I turned to Laying out the pages for the story itself... Here's the first two I completed... the funny thing they're actually page 2 and 3.


Page 2: Art by Jacot; Limited Colors by: Gordon

Page 3: Art by: Jacot

Page 4 Art by: Jacot

Jon's working on colors for Page 2 as we speak... I'll post 'em once he's done...

One word... WOW.

-Jacot

Sunday, May 17, 2009

MOTOR CITY COMIC CON 2009

First things first... A huge thank you to everyone at this year's Motor City Comic Con it was a very successful event for me and I'm glad I got a chance to meet so many new people.

I was lucky enough to be placed around a great group of creators. To my immediate left was Rob Forest from E.G.G. Hardboiled Detective. To my right was Ryan Claytor of Elephant Eater Comics. Beside him Eric Wilmoth from Archetypal Images. Behind us Jeremy Bastian, whose book will be coming out shortly titled "Cursed Pirate Girl", and David Peterson of Mouseguard fame.

Joining me on both Saturday and Sunday was Jonathan D Gordan who started experimenting with using the Marvel Essentials Books as coloring practice (If he posts some images I'll link to 'em). The pages he colored turned out amazing!!!

Saturday went splendidly and was day of selling issues and prints (as well as one con sketch to a friend Steve Jencks of Lost Highway check out his stuff at www.dchighway.com). Saturday night found me printing more business cards and hunting through my house for more Hulk and Wolverine prints (I had 3 remaining out of 18 that I started with Friday).

Sunday was incredible, not as busy as Saturday but I spent most of my day doing con sketches for some patrons. Here's what was requested in order (each time they came back to check the progress new sketches were added on) Powergirl, a Hulk, a Wolverine, and a battle worn Supergirl. I was able to snap some photos of them before I said goodbye to these pieces and without further ado I present them now...









Thanks again everyone who attended, this was the best year yet that I've tabled at the Motor City Convention.

-Jacot

Monday, May 11, 2009

The Tao Snarky Compilation

The Tao of Snarky Compilation is now available on Indy Planet.

Click here for more info or on the image below.



Hope you enjoy...

-Jacot

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Saturday...

So here I am after a great day of fun...

Ironically it involved Jonathon Gordon again.

Jon and I spent about six hours up at The Grand Cafe/Sir Pizza in Lansing "Old Town" district. I blue-lined three pages for the next issue of Snarky,  almost completed the background for a new Snarky image (to be displayed here soon), and finished the day by seeing and absolutely amazing "reboot"of the Star Trek franchise.

Seriously, if you haven't seen Star Trek yet then make time in your busy lives to sit down and enjoy this movie. Well written from beginning to end this is a movie for "Trekkies" and people who have never seen a single moment of any Star Trek ever. Truly amazing, I'm only sad I can't watch the next instalment right now...

In other news I will be at Motor City Comic Book convention this weekend, look for my table, I should have Comics Obscura issue #4 back from Ka-Blam.com by the show, I also have copies of The Tao of Snarky Compilation still available. (Post will be made regarding both of these objects later this week).

Before Jon and I left The Grand Cafe I wanted to draw a quick little diddy...

To give a little background Jon asked me a question, "If you could only write and draw for one character in the Marvel Universe who would it be?" Without hesitation my response was "Hands down... Wolverine." followed shortly by..."Though I would really enjoy to give Cyclops the credit he deserves a a character and how much he's grown over the years." Now after saying this I was staring at my supplies and looking at my Copic gray tone markers and had an urge to work with them... A few minutes later I was gray-toning an inked Cyclops image... and here it is.




Until next time...

-Jacot

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Free Comic Book Day

Just a real quick update...

Thanks everyone who came out to Clem's Collectibles for free comic book day. It was a great chance to meet you and see some familiar faces...

Hope to see everyone again next time I'm up there.

One other thing...

I finished up a Green Lantern Sketch that a gentleman commissioned me for, so here' the first look at it for the public...


-Jacot