Sunday Music Muse Day - Al DiMeola. Gilah Hekelman, my Warped Sky - Stray Clouds

I back after a summer break in August, due to a vacation, and basic summer laziness.  But, I did manage to pick up some new music to share. So, first up is Al Di Meola Elegant Gypsy and More Live. This latest CD from the jazz fusion guitarist best known for his work with Chick Corea's Return to Forever, the pioneering Jazz Fusion group in the 1970's and beyond.  This CD finds Di Meola revisiting tunes from his early solo album, Elegant Gypsy, made after he left RTF. for the most part the material holds up nicely.  I not overly impressed with the drummer.  (Also, I think Al's cover pose is pretentious)

My second pick is from one of the new generation of jazz guitarists, Gilad Hekselman Ask for Chaos.  I think I came across him on jazz post spotlighting new talent.  This CD is actually is just being released next week, Sept. 7.  it must have been a reviewer's copy.  Lucky I found it.  I can heard strains of Bill Frisell and John Abercrombie in his playing, and that's not a bad thing.

Here's another original tune as part of my Warped Sky - Stray Clouds project is Why Should I care? Warped Sky - Stray Cloud, is a combination of songs from old tapes and new renditions of original tunes written and played by me in the 1980s. . This started are just a collection of chords and no lyrics. This video has my first complete version played against a Band in a Box backing tracking. I have to admit musically it goes nowhere. I can't even label it "elevator music". I was trying for the feel of a Pat Metheny I like "Tell Her You Saw me", or Jeff Beck's "We Ended as Lovers, but I just couldn't pull it off. Still, it's another song off my incomplete list.

Hopefully I can stay on a better schedule with upcoming blog post, as Fall arrives. Enjoy.

Dime-a-Dozen Project - Preview

I posted this for Throwback Thursday, on Facebook, this video is a pre-preview of my Dime-a-Dozen Project on this blog, where I'll be taking my old drawings, characters and concepts and use them to, hopefully, get the creative juices flowing again. Galaxic Tallgunner is based on a storyboard of a short film idea I started in 1978. You get the idea, a dime-a-dozen idea.

Here's are this original thumbnail storyboard sheets.

I have ton's of unfinished projects in the form of character sketches, incomplete written outlines, half drawn comic pages, and full illustrations.  I feeling the need to catalog for my own sanity and for simple record to leave my kids, and as I say above, along the way rekindle my creative juice and start drawing again.  Stand tuned.

My Art File Archives - Doctor Apollo and Ion

One of the thing about being artist is being a pack rat when it come of keeping old drawings.  Luckily I managed to keep many sketch books and drawing from the early teens when I was just drawing for fun, and finally decide to try to be a professional artist.  Mainly it was because I like comic books, and being inspired by the just emerging Marvel Comic creation of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, and others.  I would try to make up my own superheroes and other characters.  You have to remember this was before there were any Black comic book characters,  Marvel's Black Panter appeared in Fantastic Four #52 in July 1966), so that must have influenced creating these guys. But, as life progress most of these never saw the light of day. I think it's time to rectify that.  So I'm starting a post to showcase these old drawings of original characters, in the hope of sparking my creative juices to work on them some more.  I have a list of original characters I made awhile ago, sort of a partial inventory of random ideas.  Here's the list:

As I proceed I'll try to remember concepts, origin stories, powers, etc.and what inspired them.

Doctor Apollo and Ion

Best I can remember Doctor Apollo was inspired by Solar, Man of the Atom, the original Dell Comic.  Like a lot of superheroes, and villains, he was a scientist who experiment went wrong and result in him getting super powers, which included flying shooting energy bolts out of his hand.  His name is a nod to the Apollo the sun god.

 Ion, was Dr, Apollo's brother who got caught in the same accident.

 These are page from this 1966 sketch book (I was 16 years old at the time).  There will a spot drawing of Doctor Apollo or Ion the a page, plus other character I will feature later.

 These two pages show the last drawings I done of Doctor Apollo, , in 2008.

 I'm looking to enjoy this.  Check back if you do too.

Thundercats Tuesday - Odds and Ends - The Shadowmaster script and Storyboards, and Well of Doubt Storyboard samples.

As promised here's some odds and ends for Thundercats Tuesday, in the form of a picture of my original story outline, first draft and recording script for TC #125 "Shadowmaster".  You'll note the original title was "Day of the Shadowmaster".  Things always change during production. Followed by a small sample of storyboards pages from 'Shadowmaster" and "Well of Doubt". 

 Here's a note the production team wrote about how the planned to handle the Brute the multi-faced Shadow beast in the show.

The storyboard artist was Shigeru Ohmachi.  A web search shows he worked on The Spiral Zone animation series from the 80s. I've have friends who work on that show on the U.S. side.  I'm sure he worked on a lot more. An interesting thing about the storyboard is how loose the style is in comparison to storyboard produced today.

 Here another storyboard sample form TC #129 "Well of Doubt".  Storyboard art by Tameo Kohanawa, who's online search states he work as a director on several anime series.

So, that the week's post.  These are the only storyboards saved, of course because I wrote them.  Also each board is like 70 pages of 11" X 17" paper, so they take up a lot of room.  To be honest, at the time no one thought any one would be interested in them out side of  production team.  So, thanks for your interest, Thundercats fans.   I'll see what other odds and ends I can dig up.  Enjoy.