Kylo Ren...

Thank GOD we finally have a good Star Wars movie again. Now we can forget those plasticky green-screen monstrosities called Episode 1-3.

And Kylo Ren is a really good bad guy.

Cheerio. And may the forks be with you.

Just collecting some of my own stuff here

Progress of "Giant Ymir"

Here's a progress image of "Giant Ymir". I'm getting more and more comfortable doing illustrations digitally, but I STILL prefer doing the first sketch with pencil on a piece of paper. If that makes me old-fashioned then yes, I am.

Had fun doing this one. I focused on shapes and light and mood... and I feel that I managed to take another step forward.

Cheerio.

Confession...

I have a confession to make.

I've watched Fifty Shades of Grey.

And yes, I'm totally aware that I told many people that I'm not going to see that movie under any circumstances (I believe the sentense "I'd rather take a vinegar enema than watch that movie" was said at some point), but when the opportunity presented itself, my thought process was pretty much like... I can have couple of hours with my wife, no kids running around, in a movie theatre, watching couple of young, fit and beautiful (in a sort of low-fat kinda way) people "doing the nasty" on big screen... How bad could it be, right?

And I have another confession to make too.

... it's really not that bad. No, don't get me wrong, I'm not implying it's a GOOD movie, because it isn't. I'm just saying it's perfectly on par with most of the slice-of-life-romantic-comedy-drama-stuff I've seen on screen. In fact, I quite liked the way the whole movie was shot. The color palette and lights and camera angles were very good and the movie was visually quite beautiful.

But... there was also big problems. Mainly 1) story and 2) characters.

Now, I don't have any problems with the "sexual awakening of a young woman -theme" (even though as a forty-something, father-of-three I'm probably not in the core target group), or the "filthy rich, powerful and handsome young dude falls for the pretty virgin who looks like she stole aunt May's wardrobe" -theme. But the story lacks all... dynamics. I mean the guy has all the money and power in- and outside the bedroom. And the girl has, what? A right to say no... and that's it. There's no real balance of power between the main characters. I also found it quite unrealistic that a girl with basically no sexual experience whatsoever is so OK with some dude she met couple of weeks ago tying her up and doing god knows what to her. I think 99.9% of people would freak out big time in that situation... I know I certainly would (but then again, I'm not into young, rich dudes anyways). And then there's dialogue. Oh, Lord. I damn nearly ruptured my spleen trying not to laugh out loud when the dude said the legendary one-liner: "I don't make love. I fuck. Hard."

The other big issue was the characters. They are beyond paper-thin. They are more like sketches of an idea of the  characters. We have the innocent yet surpisingly open-minded young working-class student girl who is sucking and biting her lower lip like it's essential part of her diet, and then we have the young business tycoon billionaire control freak dude with the personality of a cardboard box, who looks like he's suffering from constipation all the time. And the names then... Christian Grey is almost ok, but Anastasia Steele? Jaysis, that sounds like a heavy metal singer or a bloody porn star!

Above all else though, I think the biggest problem of the movie was the lack of focus. I found myself wondering more than once what was the meaning of the movie. To shock me? To arouse me? To intrigue me? To tell a good story? It didn't do any of those... but at least it beats staying home and scrubbing the toilet.

Right?

Right.