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The final night before I head home from this lousy semester just ended, but I was reminded earlier about something that God implanted within me ever since I gave my life to Christ. Because in the end, the one thing that mattered most was Jesus, who gives all those who follow Him true, worthwhile purpose for their lives. And yet I wasn’t being undignified enough to share with others this revelation…
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Utterly boring. That’s what I saw in the woods and the sky along the expressway when I was driving back after seeing James Cameron’s new 3D movie. Because if there’s one thing about perceiving color in real life, it’s immediately recognizing post-production values that set new records for my eye’s dynamic range. Things initially jostled back and forth: good visuals, or good plot? Strong lead protagonists and flat antagonists, or level-headed characters everywhere? Do I really need 3D, or will normal cinema suffice? Hint: I didn’t prefer the new tech.

But Avatar, a ~161-minute movie with costs higher than the smart-as-wood Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, at least managed to get some of the things I longed for in an adventure-action film correct. Not the majority of points like the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but more than enough to pass a year-end science fiction movie quality test. Want to spoil yourself? Jump, and don’t miss…it’s a long fall from here!
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Call me silly after viewing the horror that was Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, but when I heard there was well-paced and intense mecha combat in District 9, it quickly ramped my interest up again. Way up. Because I already heard that the film was pulling in a healthy number of great reviews, but now it has robots! After seeing it tonight, though, it’s one of the good things that I can jot down about what makes a strong science fiction movie. With great lead characters, fluid and very realistic CGI, a smattering of original ideas, and good pacing, it held the plot in without many major leaks. But here’s the kicker: with a mere budget of $30 million, Peter Jackson and Neill Blomkamp have done a marvelous job at producing what was easily the best mature sci-fi film all year long. Take that, RotF and your $200 million black hole!

Don’t leave it to me to spoil the plot for you – go watch it yourself, or at least read what follows alongside the Wikipedia entry. I’ll give a quick rundown of what made the movie great in my eyes, what faltered, comments that fit neither, and overall what I think of this as a Christian film watcher.
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…isn’t even related to my major, which again begs the question of why so many of us have split interests between multiple passions. For the past two weeks, myself and the rest of ART 220 have been working feverishly on our last and biggest assignment, a multi-figural composition on any mediums and methods of choice. So…I chose to do a 40″ x 30″ drawing of giant robots and a pilot in a cavernous underground base, titled “Hangar A-1.” Much more technical information and a short fictional description are on the related deviantART post here.

With the piece due yesterday, my in-class critique went off without a hitch. Slightly surprising, though, was that almost no one gave me open advice about what to revise (compared to almost every other student before me, who on average received 3-5 strings of improvement commentary); sure, the technical parts have their presence, but there’s still a lot I see that isn’t quite right. Joe Sherman, who isn’t even in the class (yet?), suggested that I should add in more features and textures to exemplify the dilapidated, dark environment the ‘bots are searching through, but it was already obvious that time wasn’t enough. Honestly, I still need a lot of practice drawing human anatomy, environments, and internal mecha parts, and I ought to rework this project some day so it truly reflects the gritty mood it was originally meant to show.

In the midst of final projects and essays…I still gotta find time to draw and write for enjoyment. Here are a couple of quick GIMP 2.6 mech sketches for concept work.

Concepts, as in ideas for a story titled “Journeys” that I’ve been planning to write and illustrate in the past few months. More information is available via the Visual Fiction link in the top navigation bar.