September Sketch Fest Part 55

More selections from Sketchbook #29.

I like C-3PO.

I've been drawing Star Wars imagery since the first movie came out in 1977 when I would have been all of five years old (turning six in October of that year).

Preliminary sketches for (abandoned?) puppet show.

That's right: I was going to make a William Shatner-as-Kirk hand-and-rod puppet and perform Shakespeare monologues with it. I figured performing this material would be easy, since I could sorta do a passable Shatner impression and memorization* wouldn't be an issue because I could refer to the script while being hidden from view myself. I thought I might take it around to various venues in Prince Edward County, singing for my supper, so to speak...maybe open for real performers...

I hadn't (and still haven't) built a puppet of this kind, but once the idea entered my head and I started sketching, I grew more excited about the proposed project. Will it ever happen? Who knows? The night is still young...

Jim Kirk–on...tour?

It had to be Shatner in his Captain Kirk costume from Star Trek for recognizability and for fun. Making this kind of hand puppet would allow for a pretty good likeness, depending on my sculpting/modelling skills, but I began to feel that a sock puppet alternative would allow for greater expression. I guess it depends on the puppeteer; a good one could "act" well with the original design.

The inner workings.

Not that this was necessary, but my excitement got the best of me and I did this funny but redundant drawing showing how my hand would operate his head. It did, however, show potential scale issues relative to hand size.

WTF?

I don't remember exactly what this was supposed to be or what it was for, but a friend sub-contracted me to conjure up an illustration of a very complex geometric structure for a project he was working on. I realized this in the end in the computer using CorelDraw, but this preliminary drawing helped me to figure out what the heck was going on with all those curved planes. It's pretty –and pretty interesting, actually.

*Normally, my terror of having to memorize anything for a performance would sabotage any attempt at such and I would fail, miserably. I'm more confident speaking in front of a crowd if I know the material very well (like telling a story from my life) or if I could refer to notes (or both!).

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Axel Foley's Chevy Nova (1/25 scale model)

Multiple tributes, here. I remember first seeing Beverly Hills Cop on video at my friend Chris K's house, 'cause his family had a VCR and we'd watch tons of movies (and record music videos) together. The summer of 1984 was a special time for us (having created a strong bond in school since Grade 6 a few years before), going on biking adventures around the 'burbs and into the city, etc., and home video played an important role from then until I moved to the opposite end of Scarborough just before we started high school. We liked the movie a lot, both of us fans of Eddie Murphy from his Saturday Night Live days. I don't think I'd seen the movie since then (it would have been 1985, probably summer, since the movie came out in late 1984) and I became curious to see if it still held up. It did. It does. I found Murphy as charming as ever and the comedy (and even the action) holds up very well and its very re-watchable and very entertaining. Beverly Hi...

Small Pond Arts Puppet Wagon (1/24 scale model)

I dreamed up the Small Pond Shipyard for my fanciful scratch-built sci-fi airship creations (which still only exist in sketch/Photoshop mock-up form (and boxes in my closet) for now), but more and more ideas kept coming ( this wind turbine , for example, will be part of a rather elaborate diorama I'll be working on this winter). But the Puppet Wagon was a sleeper surprise, to be sure. [Really, though, I don't know why I was so eager to build this right away since I was planning to slowly develop my modelling skills with simpler builds first and the work my way up to more complicated projects.] Not all parts were used/needed. Most of these ideas have come from watching modelling videos online, and when I saw a review of this sweet little Japanese "Ramen Shop" food truck by Aoshima (right-side drive!), my brain started making jokes about customizing it to the weird food truck ideas I'd been posting on Facebook. But the more I thought about what the co...

City of Angels

17" x 11", watercolour and digital, 1999 Ah, City of Angels . I thought I was getting cool film noir but got a cheesy musical instead (Google it if you must). Still, it was fun to make the poster and associated images, mostly because the research consisted of watching real films noir and buying a great book on movie posters of the genre. I made tons of sketches and a few digital mock-ups. For the final poster above, I made three separate watercolour paintings (one of the couple and one each of the two black and white heads) and composited them in Photoshop, where I also added the text. In true movie poster fashion, I wanted the actors names to be the top two names, but I lost that battle and had to use the characters' names instead. It looks fine, but it implies that "Kingsley and Stone" are the lead actors in the show. Oh, well...it's only community theatre... By making the "angel" above half black and white and half colour, th...

The Naked Silo

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