I'm a genius. Remind me never to write a journal entry on a bad day ok? Bah! No excuses! I'm just not the brightest crayon in the box.

I was visiting with the folks for the past coupla weeks. I had a lovely time and was very sad to leave. While I was there I did some painting. I'm planning on selling some work at a convention at the end of the summer. An ANIME convention. (OMGOMG)
I'm having a lot of fun attempting to put my own spin on already established characters. But I'm so timid about it that I don't think I have any real style showing through. Eh, I'm working on it! However, I can't help but to wonder if that's what people want in fanart. Do they look for something unique? Or do they want it to stay faithful to the original style? Which would sell better?
During vacation I saw some good cartoons! The Triplets of Bellville, The Clerks animated series and an anime called Tokyo Godfathers.
The Triplets of Belleville was pretty wierd plot-wise. But that's probably due to the lack of dialouge. The visual style was wonderful I especially loved the backgrounds and the overall color pallet. The animation itself wasn't anything spectacular, but still good. The little old lady was just adorable. The son was scary-looking though. He looked like a horse, though that was the point. Thinking about it now, I understand how smart it was to make him look like that. Ties in with the plot.
I was watching the extras on the Clerks dvd and in one of them the creators were talking about how they wanted to go for an old comic book style for the backgrounds; using black as a color basically. The concept art they showed for it was wonderful looking. Its a shame it wasn't implemented in the final product. I'm really not to fond of the thick-lined flat color style that the show was drawn in. And I wonder where it originated because I'm seeing it more and more. The earliest show I can think of that was drawn this way was "2 Stupid Dogs" and "Daria." I wonder if its the work of a particular artist or if its just the easiest way to animate, like all the 70s Hanna-Barbera cartoons that looked the same. Please don't tell me we're heading into another cheap-ass animation era.
Oh yeah, Tokyo Godfathers was funny. Typical anime about 3 homeless people who find an abandoned baby and try to return it to the mother. It was cute. Some nasty language though.
Yeah...I'll stop now.