Sunday, 3 August 2008

On Suing The Energy Companies

This just came to me while I was ironing, as is my wont of a Sunday - but what is the feasibility / possibility of the energy companies being sued by 'The People' in the same manner as the Big Tobacco companies? I mean in the capacity for their continuing complicity in behaviour detrimental to (and I'm not being hyperbolic here) the entire human race, when information has long been on the table that their entire businesses were based around short-sighted, profit-mongering ways that were only going to end in tears in the long run.

I speak, of course, of the end of the fossil fuel era. Something that, for most people, is going to happen in the far, far future, when they and their children's children are long dead... but for the rest of us, is going to happen, whether we like it or not, in the next decade or so.

But the end of fossil fuels is not new. Even Global Warming is not new. And the threats posed by the two to our society and way of life (however messed up it might be) are very real, and very large. But these are NOT NEW IDEAS.

I remember clearly picture books I had as a kid - Usborne ones, probably, and another one about where LEGO bricks come from and how they're made. They stated, quite matter-of-factly, that oil and coal were going to run out within my lifetime. Most of the estimates were pegged at another twenty years, tops, which means for my four year old self, we are now running on fumes.

Which means twenty years of profits devoted to continuing and supporting an infrastructure whose only aim and purpose was to squeeze all of the rich resources and wealth it could out of diminishing fossil fuels - and then abdicate all responsibility and retire to its collective wind-powered farm with its gold-plated gains. In fact, we could go further back - to the first oil crisis of the 70s, when fuel stations ran dry and people began seriously talking about using alternative fuels.

Then the Middle East opened up its wells again, and all talk of alternatives was forgotten. Imagine the world we could be living in if, say, America had decided to reject oil in the late 70s. Granted, its possible we could be living in an irradiated hellhole by now from all the sub-Chernobyls that would have been built to support the energy infrastructure, but the point does still stand: aren't the big energy companies now complicit in the End Times of fossil fuels, and the chaotic upheaval that is now likely to consume Western society for the next five to ten years?

There is no problem or technology that can't be cracked with a judicious application of money and time. I just fear that, as always, things have been left until a distant problem becomes a crisis - and, while that usually results in more money being thrown at the problem, that we're three decades behind already (at least!) just means that the solving will be a hell of a lot more painful than many people were expecting.

That is, unless Shell and British Gas and E-ON and all the others turn around in two years time and unveil the plans they had for a calm switchover all along... They were just waiting to wring the last enormous price hikes they could before turning out the lights on the fossil era.

This is definitely a vent and a rant, of course, but it's not so much about the prospect of paying 35% more on my next gas bill, but more about paying that money for no reason more than that's how much gas costs now. I could just about stomach paying higher prices for everything until my early thirties IF the money is going towards replacing what is never going to be replaced. I don't want that 35% to go towards extra rigs in the North Sea, or new pipelines in Alaska and the Russian wastelands. Gas and oil aren't coming back, folks. They really aren't. Not unless you're willing to wait a few million years. Solar, wind, wave - these are all technologies that, with the application of your 'profits', could easily be turned into viable alternatives for the whole of Europe - and beyond - within the next five to ten years.

I read in the paper last week that by carpeting a large area of the Sahara in solar panels, all of Europe's energy needs could be met, via next-generation DC-current pipelines (more efficient than AC cables over long distances). And it's desert! Nobody's using it! It's not displacing populations or putting a nuclear reactor in somebody's backyard! And yes, enormous terrorist target, and all that, but that's why you have the UN and NATO - to patrol hotspot areas of great civilian value. Furthermore, if you've got a giant area of shiny stuff where previously you had flat and absorbent sand, you end up with a net gain on the global warming front, as more of the sun's rays are reflected back into space. Hooray.

See, this is the kind of stuff that people should be getting behind and getting excited about. If I were in charge of Labour (or ANY of the parties in government), this is the hot-ticket stuff I would be RAMMING through the House of Commons right now. Stuff about making sure that every home is generating a little bit of its own electricity (and most of its heating) by 2012. Stuff about switching cars over to electric alternatives, powered off the mains by these new sub-Saharan sources.

Remember the Millennium Bug? Remember what a huge problem that was going to be until the government decided to spend billions in the years between 1996-2000 reprogramming loads of crap?

Well, how about some of that pre-millennial spirit? SHOW some balls, policymakers, SHOW some forethought, SHOW some optimism, get out there and spread the message. I don't give a shit about the Olympics that are going to happen round the corner from my in four years, I want to see some of that 'National Spirit' being channelled into something that will potentially benefit the lives of everybody on the planet. Oh, and, you know, create BILLIONS of skilled jobs in the creation and maintenance of its new infrastructure.

But that's just me. So can we sue them? I don't know. They're massively complicit, greedy and short-sighted, but that's what corporations are SUPPOSED to do. Charity work is only there for tax dodges and PR stunts. At this point, I'm more interested in who will be the first to step up and do the right thing. In our age, it's not going to be a wartime stiff upper lip, it'll be whoever can snatch the best publicity and post-fossil fuel consumer base from the jaws of economic defeat. When British Gas and Thames Water and Scottish Electric start taking out full-page ads in the freepapers announcing their changing their names to something green and non-specific, and launching amazing new cut-price deals using alternative energy sources... it'll be because every single penny will have been squeezed from a bunch of dead, compressed organic matter - and it's time to look into something new.

Let's bloody hope it's next year sometime, because I'm sick of holding my breath and hoping that somebody with the actual POWER to do something about it will step up to the plate.

I Aten't Dead...

Last post: November. Superb, brilliant, well done, etc. I stopped posting on the blog because I started working on my novel, but that seems to have stalled in favour of a lot of other, smaller projects, so I might as well see about getting the blog back on track in the little slivers of time that crop up here and there.

We'll have no more of this 'song lyrics as titles' malarky, which was causing a great deal of procrastination when all I wanted was to just post a short snippet of something.

Instead, I'm looking forward to just posting simply and straightforwardly on whatever pops into my mind when I've got a few spare minutes at the keyboard - and whenever I've just finished some kind of arty / crafty project thing that I seem to be doing a lot of at the moment.

Not quite sure why I woke up this weekend with an urge to update my web presence, but there you go. Hopefully I'll shake a few things out and get this motor running properly again...

Tuesday, 20 November 2007

TMNT Meet The Simpsons

I promised an update to this post back in November 2007, but clearly it's taken me a while for me to come back to it! These pictures were created on a whim for the puzzle pages of the now sorely-missed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Comic

(which passed away with issue #13). These images are two different versions of the Turtles dressing up as the Simpsons, wallpaper-sized to 1024 and 1280 dimensions. Enjoy, if you haven't already...

Thursday, 18 October 2007

Angel Art - Finished Version

I finally finished this last night, after a fairly epic colouring session. Of course, after all that, you really can't see that much of the background because of, you know, all the characters obscuring it. But it's nice to know that it's there, eh? I like the way everything fits together on the final piece, but I think if I'd thought the composition through more thoroughly, I would have had Spike holding the severed limb in his left hand, to give the whole piece a little more symmetry. As it is, Spike and Gunn share many similarities in pose, which could prove a bit distracting, although it does unify them in purpose.

Here's the background as it looked before I added the characters, and before I colour-corrected it (darkened it and added a blueish tint), and before I added the rain (which ended up being applied in three layers so it could fall behind and in front of the characters). Obviously the shadow under Illyria was added after this stage as well.

Finally, here's a version of the image in wallpaperable format, with added axe and logo. Just the thing for sprucing up the desktop of today... Anyway, I've got no idea what I'm going to do next, but I hope you've enjoyed this little peek into my (clearly overindulgent) working practices.

Tuesday, 16 October 2007

Angel Art Update II

So I still can't quite believe that this is all I really have to show for the best part of two and a half hours work (this and the completed shot of Gunn, below, of course). This is one of the reasons a large percentage of professional artists don't draw backgrounds, folks - and of course they have chain gangs to deal with the ink and colour side of things as well. This is also one of the reasons why Dubious Tales had to take one on the chin - it just takes too damn long to do things the way I want to do them.

What takes so long? Well, for I start, I've been doing colour knock-outs on background lines for probably about a year and a half now, and there's no easy algorithm to take out the 'colour-replacing every black line with a different line of colour' part of the equation... Especially when you bring chain-link fences into the reckoning. Those are a real bugger.

But things are going well, and I've definitely taken a big chunk out of the colouring tonight (although my mouse is on its last legs and squealing for batteries, so I'd better remember to pick up some of those tomorrow). Gunn certainly looks a lot more dimensional than last night - and I'm really happy with the highlights and shadows on his skin. Tomorrow night: turning the odd cell-shaded alleyway above into a properly lit and moodily colour-corrected scene. At this rate, I'll be lucky to get into compositing and laying down the rain, but I'll pretend to be optimistic! If I don't get it finished tomorrow night, it won't get done until the weekend, and we all know what a slightly pointless, self-imposed deadline does for my aggressive desire to get things finished...

Monday, 15 October 2007

Angel Art Update

Perhaps it's the blogging equivalent of 'blowing my wad', but I'm quite fond of these 'work in progress' jobbies in other places, so here's a quick look at what that Angel image is looking like two days later. I spent a large proportion of Sunday simultaneously listening to the DVD commentaries on Angel Season 5 and inking the pencils I showed earlier (a genius concept I wish I'd thought of earlier, given that I'd never watch the commentaries just on their own... and amazingly my laptop doesn't fall over and die when I simultaneously colour and have a DVD running. Unprecedented!).

So, what's new since last time? Obviously all the main figures have been inked (they're all still completely separate entities, by the way - all drawn on separate sheets of A4, scanned and composited later, or when I want to check how I'm doing). On top of that, I've pencilled and inked the background, which is as accurate as I could make it to 'Not Fade Away' without actually going into the episode and doing screengrabs, which I couldn't be arsed to do. I used good ol' Wikipedia and some Buffy/Angel mags from work instead. I'm most happy with the fact that Illyria looks well-integrated with the scene... And in fact, the boys do too. I didn't intend for three of the characters (the ones I drew without legs) to be popping out of the frame, but I like it a lot at this stage, so that'll probably make the final composition. Much more action-y, especially as my photo-referenced stuff probably comes off as a bit stiff.

Other than that, three of the characters are now fully coloured (at least in isolation) - my favourite bits, and the trickiest parts, were Illyria and Spike's hair - shading the brown undertones of Illyria's hair as well as the blue highlights is difficult and time consuming, but they look good when they're done. And I decided to knock back the black outlines in Spike's bleached hair to make it pop more.

Still to come, tomorrow night: I need to colour Gunn (and probably fix some of the shadows around his face - either with colour holds/knock-backs like on Angel's face or with some subtle re-drawing on-screen). I also need to work out what's going on with the background, lay down a unifying tone to bring the colours of the principals together, place some rain over the whole scene, and work out how to present it. Epic poster, anybody?

More tomorrow, then.

Out This Week - DC Universe Presents Batman Superman #2

On sale 18th October, UK. 76 pages, £2.60

The second issue of DC Universe Presents Batman Superman was utterly trouble-free, to the extent that I can barely remember working on it...! I've started charging ahead on the copy for these issues, what with the Christmas schedules coming up and all. I've already pushed up through issue #12 for Justice League, and #7 of DCU is sitting on the server — bar the letter columns, of course, which do actually feature real readers...

Anyway, story-wise, each of the three strands is still finding its feet (plenty of action, just no immediate signs of resolution), which is what you'd expect from a selection of second chapters. Superman/Batman: The Enemies Among Us features Batman with a flamethrower, Lois Lane punching herself in the face, and Superman battling a caveman. The Brave and the Bold counters this insanity with a visit to an incredibly-detailed gambling world, an utterly gratuitous upskirt shot, and Hal Jordan perving on an intergalactic teenager. Yes, he knows it's wrong. Finally, Supergirl kicks off her own series proper (last issue was the reprint of Supergirl #0, which was in turn a reprint of Superman/Batman #19... That's how things go sometimes) with a recap of her nude escape from her homeworld, and then a few pages of going toe-to-toe with the surgically-enhanced proportions of Power Girl from the Justice Society of America.

Truly, something for everybody.

Next issue: Superman goes crazy / gets possessed... again! Batman teams up with my favourite new DC superhero - the Blue Beetle! And Supergirl punches the Teen Titans for 22 pages straight! It's all good.

Out (Last) Week - Justice League Legends #5

On sale 11 October, UK. 76 pages, £2.60

Playing catch-up once more: this latest issue of Justice League Legends barrelled onto the shelves last week (roughly the same time it thudded onto subscribers' doormats, thanks to the postal strike). It marked the most editorial-heavy issue yet, which caused a few little problems, as well as the first issue of JLL from our new printers, which meant that it all looks a heckuva lot nicer than the first four issues. The colours in the Justice League and Green Lantern segments practically pop off the page... which is what you want when you're dealing in four-colour superheroics.

Story-wise, what goes down in this issue? Well, I kick things off with Justice, which peels back a few more layers of the global criminal conspiracy that's been taking out the heroes one by one, we get a bit more of an insight into Black Canary and Green Arrow's sex life than perhaps we might have liked, Wonder Woman feels the brunt of Cheetah's cosmetic surgery, and Superman lets Batman have it with a sickly left hook. It's all fairly epic-feeling, with Alex Ross's typically painted artwork laying a big budget sheen over the whole shebang. Penciller Doug Braithwaite manages to rein in the worst of Ross's excesses, although his heroic titans still suffer from 'portly aging neighbour' syndrome in a number of panels.

Justice League of America on the other hand, begins with a jolly visit from Basil Exposition, as reborn-again-and-again-with-a-different-personality villain Solomon Grundy explains why he's all smart this time around, and wants to squash himself into Red Tornado's android body, so he can live forever. Or something. Needless to say, this all ends in fisticuffs. And first-person narration panels. Endless first-person narration panels.

Green Lantern gets all explode-y, as the villain(s) of the piece are revealed (old Manhunter robot and shiny new Manhunter robot, respectively), and Hal Jordan gets a bit of an ass-whupping. Still in the old 'eleven pages is all you get' format, but this episode does feature Hal crushing a robot with a ring-formed fighter jet, and then swinging an energy sword, so you still get your money's worth.

As for the extra bits this issue, well, we had a nice double-page spread advert from the lovely peeps at HeroClix, and then I got to play around with various editorial elements, including another DPS featuring the winners of the graphic novels competition we launched in #1: we didn't get that many entrants, as you had to write a short paragraph on your favourite member of the League, but we got a nice batch of winners, and I managed to dig up some good pics to illustrate them. It marks a nice change of pace... and also probably the last selection of extra features for a goodly few issues.

I also launched a new competition this issue, and was a bit concerned about the lack of entries, until I checked my email this morning and they started flooding in. I learned my lesson from the first issue, and as such, all the readers have to do is email in their details to be in with a chance of winning. Fingers crossed it's a successful comp!

Lastly, the letters page was crammed with extra post this issue, which I like: we've cut down on the illustrations and upped the actual content. More things to read! Always a fan.

WakeUpMillwallpapers

A colleague of mine saw the pictures I did of the Harry Potter characters (see older posts, below), and wondered whether I'd like to take a shot at doing some wallpapers for his satirical football website, Wake Up Millwall. So, of course, I said yes...

These were actually some of the trickier images I've done in a while, particularly where the references and likenesses were concerned. Luckily Ricky, the creator of the site, was chuffed with them...

Not being either a Millwall supporter or a football follower in general, I was glad Ricky went to the trouble of finding me the appropriate likenesses, although the pictures were pretty low-res and interestingly cropped... so I had to make up whole lower halves of bodies, etc. on some of the players. Which was an interesting challenge!

I'm still exploring the 'hard shadow' art style on these pics... A lot of which was prompted by the resolution of the reference - when I couldn't make out detail around the eyes, etc., I just pushed for more shadow - and I think it works. It transmutes the players into something more iconic than the prosaic newspaper shots I was drawing from.

Of course, one of the side effects of my unfamiliarity with these players (as compared to characters from TV shows I've followed religiously, or people and friends I see on a regular basis) was that the likenesses needed a lot of tweaking in 'post'. I was drawing from the screen to pencil, and then inking without the benefit of checking my reference again, so I ended up moving around a lot of lines before actually going to colour. Still, it all seems to have worked out nicely in the end.

If you'd like to see the full range of wallpapers, as well as check them out in full-screen format, head on over to Wake Up Millwall, where I believe they'll be posted soon.

Saturday, 13 October 2007

Angel Art Preview

Hi all, sorry for the lack of the promised regular updates... I'm sure I'll get back on that next week. Anyway, I've been doing the odd piece of art (some weird football wallpapers to show you in a day or so)... but in honour of finally finishing the whole of Angel, I thought I'd knock up a post 'Not Fade Away' image... Before the comics series comes out in a month and picks up the baton 'for reals'. Click to embiggen.

I haven't inked or coloured this 'un yet (and I've still got to draw the alleyway backdrop), but I've spent a happy afternoon struggling with poses and likeness, and I thought I'd scan the results in to play around with the composition. I'm really happy with the Spike pose (truly frightening photo reference on my part)... and it looks like I'm starting to get the hang of drawing coats. Could still do with a bit of work, but I'm enjoying drawing folds these days.

And shadows, too! There's definitely an evolution going on here, away from the Dubious Tales style. I'll just have to do more drawing, more regularly, and find out what it is.