On A Sincere Note Though, You Guys Do Know That 22 Is Not Old And 30 Is Not Ancient, Right? Like Yeah

When you have the first good sleep youve had in like a week I’m on mobile someone add a pic

THEY JUST KEEP JUMPING ON THE COUNTER. AND CRAWLING UP HER LEG. THIS IS THE GREATEST PROBLEM YOU COULD EVER HAVE

Albus Severus Potter and the curse of the awful name.

"It is our names, Albus, that show which child our parents really hate, far more than our abilities"

“best stuff first” is probably one the dumbest things this website has ever done

I’m really tired of seeing people broken up into labels of absolutes.

People are not just “good” or “bad”.

People are not a list of labels. 

People are complex, situations are complex.

I know, that makes it a lot harder when you want to just write off everything someone’s ever done as bad – but that’s not how people actually are, and it would do everyone good to stop pretending they are.

I am tired of hearing about the fear people have in putting themselves out there. And it is a scary thing! Putting yourself out there means subjecting yourself to people who want a really good reason to tear you down, who will jump at the first chance to feel “good” by labeling someone else as “bad”.

I reject this. I reject the idea that there should be fear in speaking up and talking about experiences and trying to reach an understanding of a situation.

I’m unhappy to see people spitefully urging others to cut off ties with their friends under the guise of “well, that person’s just inherently bad, so if you talk to them you’re bad too.” That is fucked up. You definitely have the right to let the friend know you don’t want to hear about whoever troubles you, but you do not at all have the right to decide who their friends should be. This includes guilt trips.

Anyway, just try to be more aware of others. Everyone else is a person like you. They might not have the same experiences as you. They might not understand how their words are harmful, or how what they’re doing is wrong. They certainly won’t if you never tell them.

Most people are trying to be good, but they’re going to mess it up sometimes. Try to keep that in mind. Even when people do really fucked up shit, sometimes they are trying to do good. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” and all that.

Nothing gets solved, no growth happens when you put people into a box from which you’ll never let them escape.

Yes, you absolutely must be careful about people who have tendencies and patterns that are harmful to you. Sometimes people try to overcome those patterns and they fail, and you have to distance yourself from them: that is the sad reality of life. Sometimes though, they can overcome it. But they certainly won’t if the first thing you do is write them off after a fuck up. 

Be sincere. Use your best judgment.

what

Theory: Frank Miller's recent work is good, but DC have no idea what to do with it

Above: I recoloured that recent Wonder Woman cover Frank Miller did for DC last week. Mine on the left, DC’s on the right. I did this to demonstrate a theory I have that despite the general critical consensus, there’s actually nothing wrong with Frank Miller’s recent art- it’s just that DC don’t know how to treat it.

In January of this year I tried out to be a colourist for Frank Miller at DC. Not because being a colourist for the comics has always been my dream, or because I’m the world’s biggest Frank Miller fan, but because I kept seeing some pretty awesome drawings of his being critically savaged. He’s a good artist, but people were talking as if these recent drawings were the scrawlings of a lunatic. I felt like I needed to step in.

Below is one of the Miller covers I recoloured for DC. My colours on the top, and DC’s original on the bottom. Here you can see the discrepancy between the potential I saw in these drawings, and what was actually being published.

I spoke to a couple of editors at DC and the consensus seemed to be that they loved what he was turning in. So why did every blog I read think it was the worst work he’d ever done? I believed that the colour treatment DC was giving to his art was in no way flattering to the type of work he was doing.

My friend Julian Dassai said it best: “His work is dynamic and, in some cases, verging on abstract. Trying to color his stuff with representational lighting and rendering is pointless, whereas a flat, graphic approach (or just leaving it in b&w) allows the energy to jump off the page.” My colour job, followed by what DC actually published:

Frank is an artist who is constantly evolving, and his new work seems to be somewhere between Jim Mahfood, Sergio Aragonez and Ralph Steadman. It doesn’t make sense to colour him as if he’s an Image comics artist from the 90’s, all gradients, shadows and shiny metallic finish.  

Here’s another one. Again: my work on the top, DC’s on the bottom.

All these images I’ve posted so far have two things in common- they were all widely dunked on and derided when they first went online, and they all prompted responses of “WHOA, COOL!” and “I LOVE THIS!” after I recoloured them and circulated them amongst my friends. So what happened here is ol’ Frank became the butt of everyone’s joke when actually, there was nothing wrong with his drawings.

So how did this happen?

Well, check out Frank’s work in the Sin City comics. When Frank works in black and white, he’s a one-man band. But when he works in colour, he hangs back and gives the colourist a lot of space. He knows that colours and inks are two halves of a whole.

Above is a page from 1986’s The Dark Knight Returns. You can see just how much trust Frank placed in his colourist, Lynn Varley, to finish his work. As you can see, some of those panels aren’t even THERE in the original inks. Panel 6 is just an empty box. 

This approach has been proven to work very well, but the problem is it places the burden of the image’s success or failure squarely on the colourist’s shoulders. And if the colourist and Frank aren’t on the same page, we end up with terrible covers that are the laughing stock of the whole internet.

It’s funny- even Lynn Varley could screw up colouring for Frank. Two years after their critically acclaimed work 300, they made their most widely panned book of all.

Lynn’s computer colouring on Dark Knight Strikes Again has all the invention and nuance of her colouring on Frank’s earlier work. However, her experimental digital art just isn’t a good fit for Frank’s traditional, brusque inkwork. The artwork in the book suffered a generally poor reception from fans and critics alike.

I took a pass at colouring DK2, too. I include this not to throw shade on Lynn’s work, or to say that I’m a better colourist (I’m not), but just to support my claim that there’s nothing wrong with Frank’s pencils and inks in even the book that was generally regarded to be his worst. His lines have character and energy and do everything they need to do to tell the story, and with the right treatment would have looked pretty great.

We can apply the same lessons to Frank’s most recent work. I’d read a whole comic that looked like either of the recoloured images below.

DC liked my stuff, but they’re happy with the guy they already have colouring Frank’s work, and so my experiment has to run its course. Still, I want to believe that there’s something in here that we can all learn from.

It’s important to pick the right team, and to utilise a stylistic approach that’s harmonious with what the rest of the group are doing. If you don’t, you might just end up with something terrible even though you worked your butt off. As we’ve seen, it can even happen to an exceptional talent like Frank. That’s a scary thought.