"That's what Jimmy kept yelling."

The guys at Roosterteeth are doing a Freelancer art contest. I decided to do the original badass Freelancer moments, where Tex rips out poor Jimmy's skull and beats him to death with it.

For those not in the know, up there is Agent Texas, of the Freelancer program, in Roosterteeth's hit machinima series Red vs Blue. Tex is the only Freelancer that was there from season one. I'd recommend going and watching it, at least from season 6. I'm going to say some big spoilers coming up here, but all you need to know is this. Season 1-5 are all comedy. The foundation for a few of the story elements in season 6-10 are laid down, but it's pretty much pure comedy. The quote above is from season 1. Season 6-10 is where we learn pretty much everything to do with the freelancers.

Tex up here is the best of the Freelancers, an elite team of badasses tricked out with the best equipment and training, using experimental AI to help operate said equipment. She's kind of in a relationship with Church, and she's kind of dead, and she was kind of never alive, and it's all very complicated.

So, big plot spoilers ahead. I mean REALLY big. So Project Freelancer was told to do experiments with AI, but were only given one AI and told to deal. It follows the Halo rules for AI, which means that the AI is based off of a human mind. There's a whole thing I can go down with how this affects everything, but there's no point. The person that the AI, the Alpha, is based off of once had a girlfriend who died, someone connected to the person so thoroughly that the process "brought her back" sort of, a fractured mirror image of her.

She's a bitch and she's the best. Both of these things have put her at odds with the two teams I've seen her on. The only person I've seen her get along with is Agent York, and their team ups aren't as frequent as I'd like and unlikely to increase in regularity. She's died a few times, but it never seems to slow her down, and I doubt the last time she died is actually going to stick. She's kind of a badass, and her voice actress is somewhat higher up in the company, the character having been there for ten years.

I'm not sure what episode the above quote is from, I kinda got reminded of it during a Red vs Blue marathon and didn't write it down, but it's early on in season 1.

A Kick to the Face!

Hey! I did it! Here's the complete picture.

Now, I've been listening to a lot of professional artists in the comic industries lately, so I feel the need to say something. I said this would be done on Friday. And I could have put it out there on Friday, I had a finished version ready. But since this was personal, and practice, I felt that I should fix some things. So the same problems didn't arise again.

All that being said, this is far from my perfect vision. I've just sort of dabbled in colouring thus far, and I now think I'm starting to get good at it, but since this is my first pic where I think I understand what I'm doing, I didn't really start paying attention to and/or understanding what other colourists were doing until I had almost everything done. I read the recent Batman over the weekend (for the fortieth time) and I started to pick up things I'd never noticed before.

Now, I could scrap this and recolour. Or I could draw another pic and see what I can do there. I've got six days left in the Roosterteeth Freelancer competition, figured I'd see what I can do with that.

Less-Than-Creative Complaints about my Creative Talents

I  have a Korra picture on my Deviantart page, it's her jumping to the left with  FIRE. I said, when I put  the picture up, that I was working on a background, and I am. The thing is, it's kind of a practice pic for a whole bunch of things. First, it's a picture with an actual background, buildings and such. I generally don't do buildings. My first picture on this account, "His Acrobatics, My Ballet" was actually my first stab at it, and lucky because I accidentally positioned it in a way where the horizon line wasn't necessary, I didn't know jack about horizon lines at the time. I've since been to a class and know... something, at least.

For this picture that's not an issue so much as detail. I'm not much for architecture. I've always been more of a people person. People  are round and squishy, you can do line on them that are wrong, just a little, but don't detract from the picture. Buildings have their own problems. Texture, colour, shape, position, it's all important. An argument could be made for character on that, and my having more experience there, but shut up. Smart ass.

Another thing I'm new at is multiple person pics. That Avengers piece I put out a few months back... even at the time I thought it wasn't very good. If I'd been able to pull back, give characters more space, it would have been better. Of course, I was using a regular shaped piece of paper at the time (idiot). Were I to do that today I have some lovely massive sketch books to screw around with. In fact, that doesn't sound like a half bad idea... Multiple people means multiple limbs and multiple individual details that need to be dead on. It's messy and complicated, and usually I draw for fun. Two people was a stretch for me, until recently. Since that Batgirl/Nightwing pick I've been going more and more at it. Add to the four people in this pick the fact that two of them have power effects, and worse yet elemental power effects, and adding in a character I've already drawn... This piece got complicated just because I threw Korra in there and didn't have the space I thought I needed.

Which brings in composition. I don't know where to put shit. I just put it where I think it looks good. I'm playing around with it now, mostly because I think I'm good enough to be a comic book artist with just a few tweaks to a few fields and a decent portfolio, and I think I got it, but putting Korra somewhere where it helped the flow of the page, and the upcoming tweaks I'm going to have to make to the picture, it's held me back.

The least problematic of the piece is that I just finished a series of Photoshop tutorials that filled in a lot of gaps my self-taught skills had jumped over. The picture of Korra was my first picture to practice this, and I think it's an incredible improvement. The colouring will speed things up... probably. But most importantly it'll make everything look a little less anime, a little more good cartoon (It's opinion, anime fans. Calm your shit.).

All that being said, almost the entirety of the pic has taken me two days (Took the weekend off. Watched cartoons. Played D&D. Didn't sleep Sunday so wasn't productive Monday. Good times.), I just need to do the shading and a little bit of editing to give the pic a bit of momentum and I'm done. Three days at most, probably closer to an early two.

So, yeah, everything above was just my dumping on myself for my inadequacies. But I can counter that by saying I'm awesome.

On Doing a Batman Movie Right

No art today, unfortunately, I've got half a million things to do and no time to do 'em. But here's a little rambling from lil ol' me, brought on by the recent return of the Joker to the DC Universe.

I don't believe that Nolan did Batman right. That isn't to say he didn't do an entertaining trilogy, and the Dark Knight still stands as one of my favourite movies, but Nolan's opinion of what makes Batman tick and the message he wanted to send didn't really click with the Batman I've grown to love.

First, Batman's crazy. Whether you want to say he's a schozophrenic, has a severe identity crisis, or is simply so introverted and driven to the point of ignoring vital aspects of his life, Batman is probably the most dangerous psychotic since his counter, the Joker. Like a lot of Super Hero stories, there's a distinct duality to him, Bruce Wayne and Batman, two separate personalities. "Which one is real? The one that hides your face? Or the one that is your face?" Green Goblin, Spectacular Spider-Man. But Peter Parker simply lets loose a little when he's Spider-Man. Bruce Wayne and Batman are distinctly different, and it rarely has anything to do with him putting the mask on.

Here's the thing. Bruce Wayne snapped when his parents were murdered. This privileged kid was knocked down for the first time. When this happens to most of us it's a small reminder of our mortality, or learning not to trust implicitly. We all have that fall at some point, usually pretty young, but most of us aren't as well off as Bruce Wayne and have our parents to fall back on afterwards, and while Bruce had Alfred, he still had to go from higher than most of us ever get to lower than most off us will have to go. That fall broke Bruce, gave birth to Batman.

In order to truly do Batman right you have to acknowledge that. Nolan made Batman driven, made Bruce Wayne be unable to stop being Batman, but it was Bruce Wayne's compulsion. Batman was barely in the movies, it was Bruce Wayne's show.

There's been a common issue with the Batman franchise with Batman being less interesting than his villains. For those who read the comics, we don't get this. Like I said, Batman's crazy, but the issue comes down to us not getting a good look at who Batman is. In the comics there's a massive supporting cast of people Batman has brought in, Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl, Red Robin. But in the good movies all we've gotten is Alfred. Nolan's films had us learn about Bruce Wayne pretty much exclusively through Alfred. Rachel really didn't give us much, and Dent gave us a little bit more, but Alfred was the only one who knew both halves of him personally (Rachel practically ignored Batman, which meant she only got half a person out of Wayne).

The reason the army of teen (and one preteen) sidekicks is important is simple. First, we see Bruce Wayne's sympathy pushed on Batman's war on crime. Wayne wants to save these children, Batman wants soldiers, so they compromise with each other. Then we see how Wayne's traumatic experience has affected him. He's a father to practically all of these kids (The Robins, anyways). He adopted three of them, and is the genetic father of the fourth. And he does not get close to them. He pushes them away on a regular basis. Because he knows what his life will lead to and he knows the pain they'll feel from it.

Then there's Batman's view of the kids. They're soldiers to him. I've heard the argument that Batman's waging a war on Death itself, that's why he sticks to the code of no murder, that's why he has such rage in him whenever one of these murderers succeeds. I like this theory. Batman needs these kids to do their job, to wage his war, simply because he can't do it alone. He raises these kids with his ideals as basic training and then pushes them just far enough to keep an eye on them, so he can know that they've used his training to fight his war. This is why Jason Todd is his second greatest failure, because he died in training, and then came back as an agent of the enemy. The greater failure being the Joker, one small screw up leading to the greatest weapon of the enemy.

You might notice how close those two are to each other, in action alone. That's why he's rarely directly called schizophrenic, most of the time Wayne and Batman are together in what they're doing.

And then there's the Joker. I keep bringing up the Nolan movies because it's the closest we've gotten to a fair interpretation of the the comics, and the Joker is fairly close to the comics. They touched a little on how important Joker is to Batman, their connection ("You complete me." "We're destined to do this forever."), but the Joker, while crazy and incredibly well done in the movie, isn't the comic book Joker. The comic book Joker once said "He's real, like God. But worthy of respect." while the movie version said "I'm an agent of chaos. You know the thing about chaos? It's fair."

That's the fundamental difference between the two. The Joker wants people to lose. He believes in god, he believes in a higher power, but believes that god is a joke, a quack, a little pathetic being that simply has failed. He wants everyone to lose because that's the greatest affront to god, and the allmighty isn't going  to do a damn thing about it. The Joker in the movie simply causes chaos for chaos's sake, he wants to flip the worlds ideals, show everyone how fragile their beliefs are, how everyone's as crazy as him with a little help, simply to sow the seeds of chaos. That isn't to say that's not close to how the Joker is, of course, that's pretty much how the Killing Joke paints him. But that's taking it solely from one source and twisted to fit Nolan's mold.

Most importantly, the Joker in the movie isn't the polar opposite of Batman. He's one more adversary, though his greatest, the Joker doesn't really call the darkest recesses of Batman's mind into question, even the one morally questionable device Batman makes to catch the Joker is destroyed once it's done, and they don't bother bringing up the slippery slope of using that device to begin with. Maybe they would have brought this up, and delved deeper, if Heath Ledger was still with us. Instead we got the third movie, which kind of disappointed on that end.

And the third movie is kind of my greatest argument here. In the third movie we're introduced to the mediocre villain of Bane, and the league of shadows. What we get is a long story of who Wayne is and what he's willing to do to save his city. Which, yeah, great, except it might as well have been a Spider-Man story with less puns. Wayne was knocked low and just kept charging in. We didn't see him dealing with fundamental issues of the conflict in his personality, the morally questionable actions he'd made in the previous movie, or even the cost of Batman on his body. Wayne went into hibernation until Batman was needed again, which is another showing of how Wayne and Batman aren't really two people. In the comics, when Batman was retired Wayne would still go out. In Batman Beyond Wayne was still somewhat in the public eye. Batman went to sleep because his war was being  fought without him. Wayne went on living Wayne's life.

In order to truly get an accurate Batman movie Warner Brothers has to address just how crazy Batman is. You have to have one of his sidekicks, preferably Dick Grayson or Barbara Gordon, be there to show different sides of the Dark Knight. And, finally, you have to show how his villains hit his rules and how they affect him. Batman can be the super hero that shatters peoples beliefs on super heroes, and I think we're getting to the point where that'll happen. But I'm also willing to bet that happens when Marvel does Daredevil.

Avatar Korra

Well, furk. It's been a while. Unfortunately I've been trying to do something professional, which has sapped all my time and still moved nowhere. So I figured I'd actually finish a piece to show I'm not dead.

So, yeah. Avatar Korra. Before I go on explaining who Korra is, and the whole Avatar series in a couple paragraphs, here's my opinion on the show. I loved the second half of Korra. The first half, with the Pro Bending and the boy troubles, that was pretty off-putting, considering what the Last Airbender was. Now that it's all done I can see their reasoning for this, they needed a first act before the inciting incident kicked in, but the first act took a little too long in my opinion. But that is my only complaint, besides Mako, and it gets blown away before the end of the season. I like Korra. I can relate to her a lot better than I can Aang, and the fact that it has been cleared up to season 4 makes me so incredibly happy.

If anyone's unfamiliar with the Avatar cartoon series, it's awesome. You should watch it. The Last Airbender movie was... I've honestly never been more angry at a movie, in part due to the incredible mistakes made on the cinematography end, but mostly because they were handed a great story and furked it.

Avatar: The Last Airbender, IE the original cartoon, was an incredibly done story about war, cosmic entities, spiritual balance (not religion, for those of you who'd be put off by that), and a group of characters who I care more about than most live action television series aimed at adults. The basics of the story are that there is this world, called the Four Nations, where people can control ("Bend") the four elements, Earth, Water, Fire, and Air, through varying forms of martial arts. These different elements make up the four nations, with cultures and societies based on some in our world. The Avatar is a single person who can control all of the elements, chosen by the spirits, and is sort of in charge of making sure everyone is playing nice, and keeping the world in balance.

The Last Airbender ended a while ago, but I recommend going back and watching it before moving onto the Legend of Korra. Not that you'd need to, you could probably pick up what you need to without, but it will help. Korra is short enough as is, you don't want to throw a learning curb into it. Korra is the story of the Avatar after Aang, the one in the previous series, and a big thrill is seeing the logical evolution of a lot of the things introduced back in the hundred year war. Korra herself is a lot more relatable than Aang, at least for me, in that she's a lot more talanted in certain areas than others. Aang was pretty well rounded in what he could do and his beliefs. Korra's really good at the fighting half of the Avatar and terrible at the rest, which has given her a more aggressive stance on things than Aang.

Also, I love the water tribe. Big fan of the Inuit inspired designs and culture.