Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Old Vintage Sketches of Lively 004

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,

Lively Rough Work Uniform Concept Sketches

I was a very creative kid, and day dreamed often as a little child... but, I was much better at managing it, or multitasking while dreaming as a teenager....

I've worked several jobs in my lifetime, and have even been multiple times over entrepreneur since at least 1999 before I even knew what that word even meant.

But, when I started developing the dragon story concepts in college in 1999 I was already dreaming up things to do with Lively in the story... I actually have different stories which are not related, and in 2 of the stories I depict Lively as having a job. The job is very much based on a job I had in the 1990s in New Jersey working a the AMC Marlton 8. I was originally a concessionist, but I was also an usher. I refused to work the box office tho' due to health concerns. 

Honestly, even tho' the work was often times hard, and could be demanding, and the pay was awful, I actually liked that job a lot. Not every day was perfect, but I felt so lucky and grateful to have that job. I stopped watching the X-FILES because of that job because I felt it was the responsible thing to do, and I also had college classes on the weekend in the mornings in Philly on Scholarship, plus had to graduate from high school... add onto that the Titanic! Yeesh! 

I didn't have a lot of confidence for most things, altho' I think its normal to bluff about it when ur insecure.  But, I actually pushed my way into keep getting the gig as the usher. I felt it was the position I actually wanted, and I hated doing concession even tho' I had the best sales record. The trick to up-sales was JUST FOLLOW THE RULES. DUH. But, being usher meant u had some of the most disgusting jobs, like cleaning up vomit, restrooms, bubble gum, and also dealing with hostile patrons. 

Ushers seemed to be the "cool people" I guess, but so were the box office people whom often begged me to work with them since they were also often ushers, and with me.... also, the ushers were all young men, and really attractive, and funny. We were also very buddy-buddy with the security guards, and the Projectionists. Some projectionists worked either usher or box office, and when times were overwhelming, ushers had to take up slack for concession. 

I must also admit to some egoism here... because, when I first started out there, I was like NOBODY even tho' I already knew  some ushers, personally, especially since one was technically my ex... but, not that I was trying to.... but I did flirt with some ushers... however, they started it. You weren't really supposed to flirt with your co-workers... but, even subtle ways you could... I took a liking to 1, then others took a liking to me, probably because I took a liking to 1... then, one in particular really took a liking to me, probably to strongly, and too abruptly, and because of that, or him, I became included into everything, which also put A LOT of responsibilities on my shoulders. 

Let's face it, the guy was an alpha male, at least within that circle anyway, and it was due to him that I began doing usher jobs... and, as to that part about the egoism... well..... underneath the supervisors and the managers, ushers kinda ruled... We carried a porter & broom, or a big friggin' flash light, or had access to industrial leaf blowers (Titanic crowd was the worst trash making bunch) . And, if anybody made trouble, we sauntered on over to them and gave them "the voice" or "the tone": "Excuse me, is there a problem here?" 

Usually, that stopped everything... but, by holiday times you'd get people drunk or high, and stuff could turn into brawls, or nearly into Mortal Kombat, then security came, or cops got called.... Luckily that never happened... but, in a way, I guess I was somewhat on a power trip....  but, I wasn't abusive about it, at all, ever. 

We also got to watch free movies.  There were rules about it, but rules could be bent or broken on a whim... especially if the projectionist has a crush on you and begs you to "come help me with this". 

It's probably the only job I actually liked, or enjoyed, even tho' I often had soreness in my feet. 

The people would actually hang out, off the clock, and socialize, and it was very close and friendly. But, it was also a different world, and different era...  So, I do, still, have a fondness for that part of my life even if things don't turn out so well in the end.... 

 It is so very strange that some memories are so vague and I can't remember anything for parts of my life that one would think would be memorable... and, yet, I have SO many memories of that job, in such clarity and details, like it was yesterday. How very strange indeed!

 The story I wrote "Lively's Mini Unicorn" is actually a cartoonish version of how I wrote/conceived of the story in the dragon project story...

So, anyways, Lively's working uniform is somewhat loosely based on the one I used to wear.













Actually, a friend of mine, from that old job actually did the voice to a character that Djehkäujaa was in from college.


His name was Bob. Actually it was Babak because he was originally from Iran, and "Bob" was the NJ nickname. I actually never knew he was Iranian for almost a year because he seemed like a really funny white NJ kid. I also didn't know I was older than him either until he showed me his green card. Such a funny guy! he used to tease me with the funniest jokes, and I would crack up with laughter!

Back then, in NJ, everything was VERY DIVERSE and a whole blend of all kinds of peoples.

I wrote the character based on him, because of a character design class at AIPH. My teacher, Sam, encouraged us to make characters based on real persons we knew. Bob liked Spider Man, American comics, and a lot of things I also liked, and he was just SO FRIGGIN' FUNNY that I had to make the character of him the way he is in the cartoon.

Unfortunately, some idiots on DeviantART thought I made a Skinhead character! WTF??? And, if got flagged and removed! Jerks!

I have since then, thought of making the character a black dude. That might actually make him cooler. I dunno....

 I don't know what the heck happened to Bob, because we were always so cool as friends. He was even my first ever Facebook friend. He was always trying to be an entrepreneur since I knew the guy. But, out of the blue, he changed his name on FB to some nonsense random letters name, then deleted his account. I ran into him several times in NJ, and even got high w/him n some mutual friends via a relative of mine.

It was strange when he just up & disappeared off the face of the planet, because he even came up to Boston for a job interview and we were gonna hang out, but he got so high and wasted that he didn't show up... that was so unusual for him.... and, the last few times we talked on the phone, he was high as a kite, or drunk out of his mind...

I had a number of relationships from NJ around that time that also just seemed to bust like balloon... I've never understood why... I guess NJ people just did too much recreational drugs....

I often felt completely bewildered and confused, and didn't know how, nor why, it would just bottom out... and, there was nothing I could do about it.

If you've ever experienced the "Why me?" aspect of life, it often went that way... Honestly, I feel distrustful of NJ people now... :( It really hurts.





Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Old Romance Rough Sketches

Old Romance Rough Sketches

Found some old rough sketches. Just some rough, unfinished, or rough doodles. Not that great, actually... but, I figured I'd scan them for the heck of it...

It's all very rough, unrefined.

Anyways, I have rethought this stuff several times over... and I already have something reforming in my mind...

I don't have a set look for a love interest for Lively... I've redesigned it many times over, over the years. I think I should do more than one. And, I feel this aspect, for me, kinda has an almost European feel or vibe to it... meaning, the way European culture would portray the moods or presentations of the subject matter...

I think I prefer a more European presentation because of the subtleties and nuances.... like old comics from France, Belgium, or old German teen magazines... Not to dis Asian comics or novels, or American Comics etc.... I just don't care for their way of conveying moods or imagery... I feel that some Japanese or Chinese stuff is either too raunchy or to sappy or too emo or tragic... and never had a satisfactory ending...

American stuff usually leaves a lot of meaningful parts out, has way to much censorship, or cuts to the chase too fast, or drags things out too comically...

But, European styles of addressing emotions, intimacy, and even sexuality is much more beautiful, tasteful, and uncensored but not disgusting, or crude.
















Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Musical Moods For A Dragon

There's quite a good chunk of music from the mid-late 1990s that I feel very much fits the moods I'm going for... however, I want the music to be new and original, yet within those old styles...

The majority is electronic, but I also like some Tribal Fusion....


There is an album by Scooter called "Wicked" which really inspires a lot of the stuff for me... (among a number of other marvelous albums from that time period)  but, I don't want my project/product to be a Scooter project. I want it to be Kandice's project.

Scooter is also 3 men, and yet my project is feminine.

I also like the music by Yoko Kanno in Macross Plus, which is unlike the music in any other Macross projects/films/series.








Yoko Kanno is very diverse in her music styles that I am often supersized to find a song I like only to find out later that it was by her. Her music is so diverse and eclectic.


I like a LOT of German stuff. This is one of those bands/groups that was really innovative at the time, and at 1 point did a whole album in classical music.













I do also like Blümchen (Jasmin Wagner) whom was my ultimate favorite in the 90s! But, I feel much of her music is more of a mood for Lively than for Djehkäujaa:
















There's also a 90s album by Sarah Brightman that is quite lovely, and I also like the moods in it as well.


I also like the newer take on stuff, like Tribal Fusion. I really like Stellamara, and their Devotional Musical styles as well as their remixes, altho' they aren't 90s.





I am quite enamored with this lovely device: Roland Bassline 303 vintage (no longer in production). When it first released it was about $400 and now if you can get one, even a broken one, it costs THOUSANDS! Nothing else quite has THAT SOUND.






And...... I always wanted one of these KORG KAOSS Pads!



Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,

Old Vintage Rough Sketches n Doodles of Djehkäujaa 002

Here are some very old vintage 1999 sketches I did when I was at AIPH in Philadelphia.

I feel like Djehkäujaa is probably my most proudest character I've ever created. She's dynamic in many ways, physically, mentally, emotionally, metaphorically, and figuratively... So, if my project ever becomes anything, like a film or video series of shorts, I want it to be worthy and befitting of her.

Some of this stuff I actually don't like anymore...  or, it's not very good... oh well...














The Owl Motif

Unfortunately, the majority of my old concept work with owl motifs are pretty much lost forever... I often liked to work with symbolism, and motifs, when I was younger, and since I first started developing this story & characters, I kept incorporating owls... In the King James version of the Bible (which I did read in various parts as a kid) there's a verse that goes:

 King James Job 39:29 

"I am brother to dragons and companion to owls."

There are, however, so many other translations of this verse now, that I've seen it written all different ways... and not even as "dragons" or even "owls"...
As it turns out, the Bible doesn't actually say whatever you previously thought it did... there's much better translations out there now, and different original manuscripts also...

So, I feminized it and changed it to:

I am sister to dragons and familiar to owls....
or various other versions I scribbled out in other lost sketchbooks...

So, here's the only thing I could find, so far, of anything with the owl motifs:


At the end of the year (2015) in December I started to notice OWLS, but by New Year it was EVERY DAY... It was kinda freaking me out, actually.... But, literally, at least 1 random owl will show up throughout the day, online, on TV, radio commercials....  it's generally way more than that. Usually about 3 per day...

Back in January it kept happening so frequently than even my family began noticing owls also.

I kept wondering why... I'm not really New Age anymore.... but, I kept recalling that in my old Dragon film project (this one) that I often incorporated owls into everything with the dragon character... Now, here I am, scanning my dragon drawings....















Through the helped of a very wonderful friend of mine, I managed to get the new Free Open Source version of OpenToonz by Studio Gibli. I'm very grateful also.

I manged to get the thing to work...

I think perhaps after I am done scanning my stuff, eventually, I might play around with it...

I know which scenes I would like to experiment with.... but, I don'[t know how to create and arrange music to be exactly what I want....






Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,

Old Vintage Sketches of Lively 003

I also scanned some vintage 2007 rough sketches of Lively today
Sorry, I lived in China several times in the GW Bush Era, so I often practiced Chinese. I was too lazy to edit it out. Just ignore it...











I have experimented with different styles including a more Disney-like, or a more anime or cartoonish look... mostly because I was thinking of a manga version for one of my stories... I guess it
s good to be open to anything... right?

















Some of these sketches are incredibly painful to me.... In 2007/2008, I was trying to go to CALARTS and my friends in California were SO GOOD TO ME, and even tried to help me...

I kept struggling with my art, and I felt that it wasn't good enough, and I kept getting the proportions wrong because I spent too much time drawing furries/anthros the years before that...

I had several set-backs, including getting signed up for THE EXACT WRONG life drawing class to do a life drawing portfolio class in Cambridge for the Harvard affiliate Adult Education school. I needed a GESTURE quick poses life drawing class, and they put me into the LONG POSES class which was a a waste of time & money... I didn't even KNOW it was THE WRONG CLASS until 5 weeks in when I asked the instructor why he wasn't doing the gestures...

Basically, what happened was my spouse signed me up for the class, and his English wasn't very good, and when he was asking for the classes, he thought he got the right one, but didn't... and 5 weeks in, you can't get ur money back... they also drove a long time with me, and my portfolio all the way in Cambridge Boston and sat in the car at night, even in the snow, just so I could take THE WRONG CLASS.

I was so frustrated, and I often cried...I was so depressed, and even went through some very bad back-stabbing betrayals with a number of NOW ex-friends... plural.

I was also New Age "spiritual" back then, and it just seemed like everything was against me....

Then, literally, and actually, after I had already gone to California in the summer of 2007 and my 2 really great friends were so perfectly wonderful to me, and I came back to work on my portfolio, because CALARTS really liked me, the Economic Melt Down happened, and the Big Bail Outs...

I was devastated.

It was like everything I'd ever believed in was just shredded or nuked, and the fall-out hadn't even hit me yet...

I used to pray, and chant, and burn incense, and meditate... but, when it was all torn asunder, I couldn't meditate at all...

I used to have a Newspaper with the Front Page with the Headline "777" meaning the 777 point drop in the stock market for the DOW by September 2008.

And, from about 2007-2009 a number of relationships just popped off... some had to go, and others went badly without any warning... some people even died, or committed suicide, or lost their minds and became addicts...

When the stock market crashed, I KNEW it was ALL OVER. THE END.... that ALL of my work was in vain and naught... Our business and only JUST started to pick back up.... when everything just fell out...

I used to stay in bed crying from painful overwhelming circumstances... I felt so ashamed, and powerless...

And, when I sat at my business in the mall, with my sketch book trying desperately to DRAW, i was even more distraught to find that I COULD NOT DRAW.

I hope that YOU will NEVER KNOW what that FEELS LIKE. It's the worst feeling to ever experience...

No matter where you go, and what you do, that is always there... when you go into another room to get away from it, you find that you cannot... because you cannot escape it, and you cannot get away from yourself...

People are also incredibly insensitive... because if you have a young child, like I did, its as tho' you do not deserve to have any feelings, or dreams... and they will strait up tell you this to your face.

They will mock and demean you thinking its somehow helping you, and be completely oblivious of how sexist and cruel they are... they are even more obnoxiously rude if they also have a child, or more than 1 child, as tho' in their mind that somehow nullifies it...

They will even stoop so low as to say things nonchalantly like: "Shouldn't you go play with your kid?"

Meanwhile, everyone was leaving the state of Massachusetts that I was somewhat close to.... or lived far away... I had no biological family here, and my real friends (artists) lived far away....

I was very cloistered also.... 


All of this stuff is just so incredibly personal also.... I don't believe that anyone can understand it...
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Monday, April 4, 2016

Old Vintage Sketches of Lively 002

I've scanned many many sketches today... all old stuff....

Vintage Stuff from 1999:

Here's some old stuff from an old Storyboard scene project which I've written various versions of, or even did an animattic based on it:















Rough Pencil version


Rough Colored Version w/Music

That one is actually based on a dream I had when I was about 6 years old. This story I re-did for my Eyewitness project concept work... but, I actually was writing it, originally, for my dragon project...

It could fit to either one...

I've written a number of versions of the dream I had as a child, and published various short stories of it throughout the internet since the 1990s. I have no idea what happened to them since then, tho'...










Some old junk I no longer care for:












Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Old Vintage Rough Sketches n Doodles of Djehkäujaa 001

Let's be very clear about this: There are not 2 Djehkäujaas, there is 1! 

Djehkäujaa is a DRAGON! 

See? She's a DRAGON!!!! 

 But, then she screws up REALLY BAD... and THEN she's a Humanoid!


Actually, she looks just like a human, and smells very much like one, and there's actually a number of VERY FUNNY indirect things because of that!

Even tho' I DO NOT intend this to be a comedy, there's several FUNNY bits in the story, all about her!

For one, her name is Djehkäujaa... but, most people can't pronounce her name correctly!

So, not only does she hate being a human, and looks so much like a human, but the humans can;t pronounce her name! She gets REALLY MAD!

OK, for English speaking people It sounds like "Jeh-koy-yaa"

See the double "aa" at the end of her name? That is a Looooong held vowel.

But, for many Germanic language speaking people, they can ALL pronounce her name correctly! ^_^

If you've EVER taken basic lessons in standard High German (Hoch Deutsch) then you WILL be able to pronounce the name, ;P

It's kind of a parody of my own name (Kandice) since people often mispronounce it when I'm in other countries, or in America, people often my write my name and spell it some other way. In Germany, NO ONE AT ALL could pronounce my name, not in Nederland! SO I had to write my name like this: Kändiß or Kändiss... but, even when I wrote it THAT WAY the "i" as they pronounce it would become "ee" like Kandeess... or they would call me "Ken-diss".

Literally, my brother, father, and grand father are named Ken! WTF!?


And, in China, kandice becomes "Kan de si" which means "Able To Hack To Death".
Oh, great! :-/

Then, that was changed to "Kai di se" which kinda means something like "Hey! Fetch me some silk, yo!" or something...  But, I don't like THAT because in German "Kai" is a MAN'S NAME!!!!!

After reading a number of Chinese novels, and watching untold numbers of Kung Fu movies, and Chinese daytime & prime time soap operas... I was like Screw this!

I need a Chinese name. the Ming Zi standard kind. Not this dumb creepy or dorky foreigner sounding name.

So, my ACTUAL Chinese name is 任思麒 Ren SiQi.  There's a whole long story about that also....
AND, I'm SURE u can't pronounce it either!  LOL! XD

It's also a name I can use in other parts of South Asia, including Japan, Korea, and Indonesian areas where they use written Chinese, but all pronounced totally differently.


Another funny thing is her wings and tail...

Well.... she doesn't always have them..... she also doesn't know why.... (I do, tho')

When she first becomes a humanoid, she still has them, but they "burn away" like acid... Poof!

She's, of course, devastated & traumatized by this.... BECAUSE SHE'S A DRAGON.

But, then, they randomly can come back, painfully, and just pop right up... often at THE WORST MOMENTS... so, there's some comedy in there...




When Djekäujaa is a dragon, she's so free spirited that she's reckless and careless. But, as a Humanoid she's SO EMO, glum, depressed, or stern, because she's SO DEVASTATED, regretful, humiliated, and lost. Like grief within grief.

Also, she was never supposed to be among humans, and was originally very curious about them, but being stuck as a humanoid form is so revolting to her, because she thought so highly of herself as a DRAGON. And, she will tell you: I AM A DRAGON!

However, being stuck as a human form, means she must adapt... and, altho' she resents it at first, knowing dragons SHE LIKES SHINY THINGS! ....oh... and SHE Starts to get a MAJOR SHOE COLLECTING FETISH!

So, more and more, she starts to take on a lot of characteristics of a human woman, like going CRAZY for SHOES!















Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)