Geoff Johns on Green Lantern: The Greatest Modern Run in Comics

Geoff Johns on Green Lantern

The Greatest Modern Run in Comics

 

 If there is any character that got me into reading comics beyond the Marvel pond and into DC, then that character is definitely neither Batman nor Superman. That character is Green Lantern (Hal Jordan).

Blockbuster Films: One Upping Each Other...But Falling Into Plot Holes

Blockbuster Movies

One Upping Each Other

...But Falling Into Plot Holes

Lat week I had the great pleasure of viewing Star Trek Into Darkness, not once but twice.The movie was a roller coaster ride of entertainment, as can be vouched by my own review. However one thing generally popped up, plot holes.

Snap! Crackle! Pop Culture!: Star Trek Edition

Snap! Crackle! Pop Culture!

Star Trek Edition

This past weekend saw the release of the latest Star Trek film in the USA; Star Trek Into Darkness. A riveting action packed sci-fi I enjoyed last week (who doesn't love world wide releases before the states) twice. In lieu of its release, follows my own Pop Culture funkiness regarding Star Trek.

My Memes

I'm not going to comment like last time, since I guess it ruins the jokes. For Non-Trekkies or those who don't know anything about Star Trek, sorry.

Didn't You Know?

Gene Rodenberry, the creator of Star Trek actually meant to call the Enterprise; the Yorktown.

Captain Kirk is actually Jewish. 

Apparently there are no washrooms in the Star ship Enterprise, the waste disposal is Space. What do you know? After Earth, we'll all start polluting the final frontier. No just kidding, the early designs had no washrooms but eventually Paramount in 1973 released new blueprints with listed places for washrooms.

Uhura in the series never really had a first name until...the 2009 Star Trek movie. Now she is known as Nyota Uhura.

Will Wheaton (some of you may know him from Big Bang Theory) who played Wesley Crusher in Star Trek The Next Generation, voiced Romulan villains in the 2009 Star Trek Movie.

Spock's legendary Live Long and Prosper Sign is a Jewish sign, yup Kirk is Jewish, the hand signal is Jewish and Spock still doesn't get Hanukkah cause its not Logical for him.

Your Star Trek Character=Your Personality

 

Captain Kirk-You're narcissistic and a ladies man/gentleman's woman, you like to lead but are also to confident. Most would question your leadership by asking; What would you do for your crew?

Spock-You use logic to get out of sticky situations, you have slight understanding of social norms and are constantly ignorant to emotions

Uhura-You have got a talented tongue (get your mind out of the gutter!) and love the linguistics. There are no language barriers for you, except since your not Uhura then you don't understand alien.

Bones-That person who likes spouting some wacky phrases and the idiot who actually thinks being a doctor will be fun

Chekov-You just love people's weird accents or your probably the genius kid who graduated earlier than expected

Scotty-The big dreamer to be an engineer on a space ship! It's not possible...or is it?

Sulu-You got a mean hand with a sword, some bad ass attitude hidden behind an innocent look 

Art Gallery

 

Finally the art gallery, if you haven't seen my latest line up of work; check it here. For this edition, I highlight the most important character in Star Trek (and no it's not Kirk or Spock):

    

Yup the star ship Enterprise, one zoomed version and one with the full picture. Enjoy!

Trailer Trash

And If you yet haven't watched the film, then here's some convincing;

So...


...Live Long and Prosper

Aneesh Raikundalia

Art Gallery: Digital Painting Part 1

Art Gallery

Digital Painting Part 1

 

Welcome to the opening of my first ever Art Gallery (Blog post), today I will show you a few of the artworks I have created alongside my major component; A Digital Painting.

Remember the Game of Thrones painting from before, I have yet to fully complete it. However here I will show you a similar Digital Painting of Liam Neeson from the poster for his underrated and under watched film; The Grey. Enjoy this main attraction and more from my gallery;


The Grey Liam Neeson (Digital Painting)

 
This is the original poster for the Grey.

And this is my work. The first digital painting I did, it hasn't come out perfectly right with some distortions and limitations in the 2D painting format. One of the worst things I did was to gain instructions in creating snow from a sample picture where the snow fell sideways rather than straight, the way it is in the original picture. Still it isn't so bad for a first timer.


Photoshop Poster Design (Avengers 2)

 

I created this poster as a homework piece in helping me how to learn to use the blending modes on Adobe Photoshop. I cut the Avengers title from the previous films poster and adjusted it to blend with the background picture. With the title I added the sub-title for the movie and did the same, however to a much lesser effect.

The big picture is of Thanos, the purple man seen at the end of The Avengers. I took a smaller picture of him from a comic book cover and cut it out while also resizing it to mega proportions to cover the film poster.

Below you will also see a date tag for the movie, these came from the poster of the first movie with the last number 2 for 2012 being flipped into a 5 for 2015. Cool Huh!


Vector and Clipping Mask (Framing a Picture)

 

So this picture was adjusted through the use of vector and clipping masks. I'm not going into detail on how to this, but its simple.

I took a picture such as this magnificent Flash vs. Zoom artwork by Stanley Lau;

 I created this through the use of shapes to include a vector mask after which I created a border for the said shape and then linked the layers. I went about copying the original image and sending the copy as the top layer, then hiding the original. 

A clipping mask on the copy image layer soon produces framing on the image, which I can place anywhere I like. Then grouping this copied image and the linked layers, I copy the group and move the copied frame to a different position. I do this until I have multiple frames after which I make the original image visible and change its color and tones, in this case making it purple. 

Comic Book Cover (Halo Season 1 Issue 1)

 

 
This is the cover for my comic Halo set in what I like to call; the Heroverse. I will explain the story including scripting to you in Writer's Block, but before that I will also present you a detailed world building plan on the Heroverse and Halo. It's a passion project which I wish to publish one day as both a comic book writer and artist. Enjoy!


That is it for this week, I'll try see if I can get another art gallery set up for some of the other works you guys might have seen on my SCPC pages, but for now this is it.


'Nuff Said

Aneesh Raikundalia

Reel Reviews: Star Trek-Into Darkness

Magneto's Movies

Reel Reviews

 

Fair Warning! I'm not a Trekkie, but I know some of it's more famous things such as red shirts getting killed first and I have watched some of the movies such as Wrath of Khan but this still means I will not be adding a review for the source. And for this review, Spoiler Alert!

Movie: Star Trek Into Darkness

Release Date: May 16th 2013

Director: JJ Abrams

Cast: Chris Pine as Captain/Commander James T. Kirk, Zachary Quinto as First Officer Spock, Benedict Cumberbatch as Commander John Harrison/Khan Noonien Singh, Zoe Saldana as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, Karl Urban as Dr. Leonard 'Bone' McCoy, John Cho as Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu, Alice Eve as Dr. Carol Marcus, Anton Yelchin as Pavel Chekov, Simon Pegg as Lieutenant Commander Montgomery 'Scotty' Scott, Bruce Greenwood as Admiral Pike and Peter Weller as Starfleet Admiral Alexander Marcus

Genre: Science Fiction

Score: 7.9/10

Pros:-Mind blowing Visual Effects

        -Respects the source material

        -On a deeper level, the parallel universe changes make sense

        -More dramatic touch and better interactions of and arcs for characters

        -Splendid performances from the leads

        -Doze of exciting and viable twists preventing the movie from becoming dull

        -A satisfactory balance of comedy and darker moments

Cons:-Can alienate casual viewers, due to its source heavy narrative

         -Uneven story pacing

         -Poorly written female characters

         -Deus Ex Machina ending  

         -A few poor performances and also badly performed death scenes

         -Confusing action and motives

         -Director doesn't take advantage of the alternate universe set from the previous film, film is re-tread of older events

Best Scene: The emotional scene between Kirk and Spock, as Kirk lays dying.

Best Performance: Benedict Cumberbatch as John Harrison/Khan

Best Dialogue: 'You're my Friend'-Spock, to a dying Kirk. This is a paraphrase of the quote

Coolest TV show reference: The look on Chekov's face when Kirk promotes him to chief engineer and prompts him to wear the dreaded red shirt. In the TV show, the first characters to die were those that wore red shirts.

From below SPOILER WARNING!!!

TV's Biggest Week: The Mother Revealed!!!

TV's Biggest Week

The Mother Revealed

Okay, so this title may just be a sham. In all honesty it isn't the biggest week on TV, but it is the biggest week on TV for fans that waited 8 seasons for this:

 

Smile for the camera!!!

Writers Block: Detective Noir

Writers Block

Detective Noir

Welcome to the place that I call the Writers Block (a double entente) where you-my blog readers-will get a chance to read the ideas that sprout from my innovative mind. Instead of giving a lengthy introduction I'll just jump right in to an idea I had for a series of graphic novels...

 

Detective Noir

It's the 25th Century and the year is 2447, Neo-India has just won the third Cyber War. The country is a mixture of futuristic metropolises and beaten down slums. 

Propaganda tries to convince the world and its inhabitants that Neo-India has become a hub of peace and prosperity, yet the dwelling conditions for the poor are naught and crime and corruption are in full swing. 

Detective Noir tells the tales of a middle class Detective and former Patrol Officer; Sameer Hansraj. He quit the force years ago after seeing his partner die in action for incurring the wrath of Gang overlords in Mumbai, and soon realizing how corrupt the system was.

Rather than fight, he chooses a life of recluse and eventually became a Private Detective for hire. This is a man that knows the true face of the country. Due to his initials, Hansraj among the slum districts and seedy underworld is known as the Indian Sherlock Holmes.