Posts Tagged ‘daniel landerman’
“Fire Dragon Mountain!” OMG!!
Monday, May 23rd, 2011
I rewatched Lodoss Wars a while back. I loved that series as a kid. It was the closest I could get to a Lord of the Rings movie, that was good, until Peter Jackson fulfilled all my hopes. At any rate, I loved the concept of a dragon living in a volcano and I always loved the designs of their dragons, so when I had a couple days to kill I decided to do my own take on Shooting Star, the demon dragon of Fire Dragon Mountain!!
(click to enlarge)
Had a blast doing this. Hope y’all dig it.
Cheers,
~D/L
Wonder Woman…?
Friday, November 26th, 2010
By now, I’m sure many of you have seen the Newly Imagined Wonder Woman…
…
…
Um. So! The new Wonder Woman. Or Wonder Girl in the case of the now 21-22 yr. old slip of a thing. Somehow the answer to the feminists’ plea for credibility was to cover her up and make her hip… if Mariah Carey’s first #1 hit was being introduced by Casey Kasem. I feel like all the Greek references have been culled out, which is odd since she is, after all, an Amazon princess. One of the things that bugs me the most about the new angle is that she’s dressed like a girl from 1992 with some items that have a vague Wonder Woman motif. The problem I see with this is the fact that there is no “uniform” happening. It seems they have done away with any sort of transformation concept and just made her Wonder Woman Girl all the time…? In which case… does she just wear the same clothes every single day? Cause if not then she’d be changing her clothes every day or twice a day and then any kind of “new design” would be pointless because she’d look different all the time. Right? And if that is her “uniform” that she changes/transforms into then it’s the most anticlimactic change EVER! I understand, after reading Straczynski’s ideas, what they wanted to achieve. The design failed. If she’s supposed to have a foot in each world, the world of Gods and the world of Mortals, then she either needs to reflect that all the time, or have two selves. She can be badass all the time, but I would imagine that her Amazon Goddess self is who she truly is, but maybe she’s better off hiding that around us little folk. In which case I’d imagine that when she goes into badass mode the Goddess is revealed and unleashed, at which time maybe she should look something like a Grecian Warrior Goddess. Right?
So, my take on the daughter of Hyppolyta was a more Spartan approach. No, she’s not just in a helmet and a cape. That’s my private version of Wonder Woman. I did, however, also pay attention to them wanting to modernize her a little. But that doesn’t have to mean putting her in modern clothing, never mind that with this newfangled internet thing the younger generations are not limited to imagery from comics. With DVD special features being a huge craze and concept art books popping up left and right they’ve been introduced and exposed and inundated with imagery spanning the last thousand years. I don’t think anyone’s going to throw down a comic because Wonder Woman isn’t their age and she’s not still in her pilates outfit. At any rate, sorry for the rant.
Now I would never say that mine is the end all be all of anything. But I DO like it. I also feel it stays true to the concept of the character that was based in Greek Mythology, much more so than the current take and I feel that when she reveals this side of her, the Goddess side, it could possibly have an effect in the landscape instead of just making bad guys want to slip her roofies.
Cheers,
~D/L
WW
Thursday, November 25th, 2010
I’ve been doing some sketches for DC Universe Online. Nothing huge, just stuff for poses far various characters to go on websites. But it got me in the mood to draw more super heroes, so here’s Wonder Woman as filtered through my brain. Not entirely happy with her design. She’s a tough one to re-imagine unless I want to move very far away from her actual design. Still, it was a fun little challenge. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Cheers,
~D/L
Discipline in Practice
Friday, November 12th, 2010
For those that don’t know, it’s National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo.
www.NaNoWriMo.org has the details you might be interested in.
I’m using it as motivation to complete a DAKOTA RAWHIDE novel. I don’t intend to finish the novel this month, just to be clear. I just want to use the support of the NaNoWriMo crew and my own determination to deliver once I set out on a path to get a huge chunk of the book done by December 1st. The book starts where DAKOTA RAWHIDE BOOK 1 started, with some major changes and it will proceed to take the reader through a roller coaster tour of the Range Moons as the seedy criminal underbelly headlongs into the backstage goings on of elite government powers. Those that follow my doings, as seldom as I seem to announce/post/publish them, know that Dakota Rawhide has been a labor of love for me for the last two years. Most of my off-work hours have been spent exploring Dakota’s universe, developing the story and characters and designing Dakota’s fashion and I have never tired of it. I love it more than when I first started. The characters feel like people I know, in part because they’re somewhat based on people I know, but also, after hundreds of hours of putting them through all manner of adventures and challenges, I feel I know how they will react in nearly any given situation. That being said, every story has a tipping point at which time it takes on a life of its own. As the writer you sometimes feel like no more than a scribe, typing out some scene that’s unfolding just as fast as your fingers can move and with each word you are more and more surprised or excited or shocked or sad or angry. As well as I know the Range Moons and Dakota and Seth and Dorian I am still surprised as I write. Details of their past doings that I wasn’t aware of, gritty moments in the story that tell of the dark times people are living in, betrayals I never saw coming. This is the moment at which the story takes hold of the author and doesn’t let go until it’s finished.
Many people participate in NaNoWriMo every year. We’re talking in the tens or hundreds of thousands. And I’m surprised how many of them never intend to try to publish what they’re writing. Part of me admires their ability to tackle the 50k words in a month simply because they want to. Another part doesn’t understand taking on that challenge with no intention of seeing it through to a finished product. However, I want to be very clear that, in this case, I am a firm believer in “to each, their own.” It’s just not my way to tackle something that I’m not serious about on a professional level. There’s a seriousness that drives me to push myself beyond what I thought I was capable of when I attack a project with the intention of putting it out in the world as a professional representation of what I can do when left to my own devices. I do my best work in that capacity because I end up doing what I love. People respond to it time and again. This is all to say that we should always take our dreams seriously and take on the challenges that stand in our way with determination and discipline and deliver the best product we know how.
I started freelancing as a sketch artist and concept designer after my first term at Art Center back at the end of 2003. The opportunity presented itself and I seized it before I could convince myself I wasn’t ready. In some respects I wasn’t. But I never would be ready unless I started doing it so rather than seeing a Catch 22 that I had no answer for I had to take my ability to see the big picture, to see patterns between things that weren’t readily related and use that ability to learn as much as I could, as quickly as I could. I was going to mess up, I knew that, but the key is to do your best to never repeat the same mistake. Acknowledge your weaknesses and waste no time learning how to strengthen them. When I picked up writing again late in 2007 it became very clear, very quickly that it was a skill I absolutely wanted to cultivate and ultimately make some kind of living with. It was also very apparent that I had a lot of learning to do and very little time to do it. I started reading. If your mind is anything like mine then you know that the spongey nature can lead to trouble if what you’re taking in starts to show itself unwittingly in everything you do. To fend off this tendency I would read about 10-15 novels in a two or three month period. I wouldn’t write. I would just study what authors I admired were doing and why they were doing it and why it spoke to me. Then I would ponder it and digest it and naturalize it for a month or so, then I would write for several months, taking my time and doing my best to create pages I was proud of. I’m picky about what I read because my time is very precious to me. If I’m going to sit and read, then I need the book to change my life in some way. And when I read, unless it’s purely informational reading, I don’t speed through it because I want to take the time to analyze how an author is setting up certain situations. I’ve managed to take in roughly 65-ish novels in the last three years. That’s not many compared to some folk and it’s a lot compared to others. It’s not necessarily how much you read, but more about how you read it that determines how much you learn from it, right? Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. And in case you were wondering, no, I didn’t have a point in mind with this post. This is me thinking through the keyboard and sharing with my loyal friends and fans what’s going on, though I suppose the constant in this post could be “discipline in practice.”
I used to have a goal of writing for an hour each day, or at least 500 words a day. That became rather easy rather quickly and prompted me to bone into the fray of NaNoWriMo with its 1667 words a day. That, too, has become an easy mark to hit. Hell, this post is already near that mark. There’s nothing wrong with building up slowly. Set goals and get used to achieving them then get used to surpassing them. Sketching, painting, writing, it doesn’t matter. It’s all creativity. It takes seriousness and discipline but that does not mean it can’t be fun at the same time. Sure, there are some days where everything’s painful, but those are few and far between. Discipline, the dreaded “D” word that all children hate and most adults seem to think is antithetical to staying young, is actually the only thing that ever allows us to push the boundaries of knowledge. The difference is that when it comes to doing something you love, it’s not usually difficult to practice at it every day. The discipline might come in stepping away from what we love each day. But that’s a necessary step, too. We need to clear out minds to make room for new information. Sometimes we need to put the learning on hold for a time and just learn to apply what our new knowledge and naturalize it and take what works and leave what doesn’t. This all takes seriousness of practice, will and determination to succeed. Many people are afraid to take creative endeavors too seriously and their weak-ass reasons come in all shapes and sizes: fear of failure, fear of success (yes, it’s a real thing), fear of geeking out, fear of being too serious, fear of this shit just not being fun anymore. If it’s not fun anymore then it’s probably not for you. The other reasons have more to do with our concern for others’ perceptions of us and you should just get over it and stop worrying about other people, so I’ll say this and we should all heed it: Do what you love because you love it. If you love what you’re doing, believe me, others will too. If you’re doing it to try and impress others you’re not fooling anyone and all you’ll create is something contrived and cliché. Of course the challenge later becomes how to monetize what you love. I’ll let you know when I figure that part out. Until then… Thank you friends and fans and strangers for the support and the help and the excitement. It adds fuel to my fires and keeps me going. Big love to all of you.
Cheers,
~D/L
