sketchbook: absinthe (2/3)
Feb. 12th, 2007 10:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
egypturnashToday I went out to get a blank pad for purposes of drawing this thing. I'm seriously considering doing it in the calligraphic, clean-line style of these pen doodles (at least the ones that work; I'll be doing loose pencils beneath first!). I have some idea of what size I want to do it at, and how much I want to scale it down.
On the way back I stopped at Cardullo's in Harvard Square. I wanted to get a slightly-exotic bottle of something to drink. They were having problems with their cash register; the woman at the counter was mostly writing UPC numbers on a strip of register tape, for their records, and adding the prices up on a calculator. This became harder when the person who was trying to help get the cash register working again rebooted it - while the drawer was closed. Guess what controls the lock on it?
They'd been having problems, she said, ever since they got this new system in at the beginning of the year. It slows down over the course of the day, and almost always locks up in busy times. She couldn't get back into it after the reboot because nobody in the store knew the password. It was built on top of Windows, with a full keyboard balanced perilously next to the more traditional register keyboard.
There's something to be said for putting that little bit of extra work in to make a system that works well even when it's not working well. I bet if she'd known the password, she would've had to fumble through the Start menu to get the cash register running again.
Anyway. On with more drawings.
I've wanted to do this sort of thing ever since seeing Mike Kazalah do weird collage dialogue balloons for a beatnik poetry reading scene in Captain Jack.
After a fashion, at least. Mix occasional dashes of Noveau style with a fantasy comic, and Oz is going to come into the picture in one way or another.
She'd been kicking around for a bit in the basic outlines and needed some design.
Her relationship with Absinthe suggested something different than the first drawing.
Trying to design the Big Boss. Every noir needs a Big Boss. We already had his Thug but no idea what the Big Boss would be in a world like this. He wasn't Jim Smith.
Nor was he Clint Eastwood.
Nor Sidney Greenstreet gone fey.
Nor was he![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tugrik, though some thoughts from that would inform the final version.
"More presidential", Nick suggested as I gave him this one. Those authoritarian old men.
And then it hit me, after I dispensed of my initial impulse to reach for the Cartoonist's Favorite President, Abraham Lincoln. Ben Franklin. Ben fucking Franklin. As a power-that-be in a pirate skyland. It's so absurd it works. I need to do some actual image research, of course.
The Big Boss settled, I turned to the Governor of the skyland a lot of this takes place on. This one was way too girly.
Egon from the cartoon version of 'Ghostbusters' wasn't it either.
I went and fiddled with merging the two ideas for the Archaeologist instead.
I would like to note at this juncture that nobody in this world is smoking tobacco. She's probably smoking cloves. It's anyone's guess what other people are being depicted inhaling at other times.
Governor again. And a hint of patterns I found emerging in my designs.
On the way back I stopped at Cardullo's in Harvard Square. I wanted to get a slightly-exotic bottle of something to drink. They were having problems with their cash register; the woman at the counter was mostly writing UPC numbers on a strip of register tape, for their records, and adding the prices up on a calculator. This became harder when the person who was trying to help get the cash register working again rebooted it - while the drawer was closed. Guess what controls the lock on it?
They'd been having problems, she said, ever since they got this new system in at the beginning of the year. It slows down over the course of the day, and almost always locks up in busy times. She couldn't get back into it after the reboot because nobody in the store knew the password. It was built on top of Windows, with a full keyboard balanced perilously next to the more traditional register keyboard.
There's something to be said for putting that little bit of extra work in to make a system that works well even when it's not working well. I bet if she'd known the password, she would've had to fumble through the Start menu to get the cash register running again.
Anyway. On with more drawings.
I've wanted to do this sort of thing ever since seeing Mike Kazalah do weird collage dialogue balloons for a beatnik poetry reading scene in Captain Jack.
After a fashion, at least. Mix occasional dashes of Noveau style with a fantasy comic, and Oz is going to come into the picture in one way or another.
She'd been kicking around for a bit in the basic outlines and needed some design.
Her relationship with Absinthe suggested something different than the first drawing.
Trying to design the Big Boss. Every noir needs a Big Boss. We already had his Thug but no idea what the Big Boss would be in a world like this. He wasn't Jim Smith.
Nor was he Clint Eastwood.
Nor Sidney Greenstreet gone fey.
Nor was he
tugrik, though some thoughts from that would inform the final version."More presidential", Nick suggested as I gave him this one. Those authoritarian old men.
And then it hit me, after I dispensed of my initial impulse to reach for the Cartoonist's Favorite President, Abraham Lincoln. Ben Franklin. Ben fucking Franklin. As a power-that-be in a pirate skyland. It's so absurd it works. I need to do some actual image research, of course.
The Big Boss settled, I turned to the Governor of the skyland a lot of this takes place on. This one was way too girly.
Egon from the cartoon version of 'Ghostbusters' wasn't it either.
I went and fiddled with merging the two ideas for the Archaeologist instead.
I would like to note at this juncture that nobody in this world is smoking tobacco. She's probably smoking cloves. It's anyone's guess what other people are being depicted inhaling at other times.
Governor again. And a hint of patterns I found emerging in my designs.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-13 04:06 am (UTC)(hoards them in her reference folder)
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Date: 2007-02-13 04:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-13 04:22 am (UTC)I FUCKING LOVE YOU. OH MY GOD YES.
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Date: 2007-02-13 04:44 am (UTC)Ben was a hell of a character. There's a lot to swipe from!
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Date: 2007-02-13 05:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-13 05:19 am (UTC)Franklin's rakishness was so notorious that I remember it even coming through in Ben and Me, a child-aimed biography of him told from the point of view of a mouse who was his pet. There is so goddamn much material to work from in this man it's not even funny.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-13 05:26 am (UTC)I really think a musical needs to be written about Ben's life (1776 aside)...
no subject
Date: 2007-02-13 05:02 am (UTC)