The Last Express remembered
Gamasutra posted a great interview with Mark Moran and Mark Netter about the making of The Last Express.
I’m writing this from London, where the Prince of Persia movie is shooting now. The Pinewood studios, originally built in the 1930′s, still feel very much of that era, at least to my L.A.-accustomed eyes. The contrast between the dilapidated physical infrastructure, and the state-of-the-art technology being used inside the stages, is striking.
Whereas the state-of-the-art technology we used to make The Last Express is now as quaint and dated as the 1914-era steam locomotives that were still in service when the Pinewood stages were built.
Pinewood is in an industrial park west of London. To get there, you take the A40 highway, which was originally a Roman road. It was already old in the sixth century, when Prince of Persia is set.
Jet lag makes me think about stuff like this.
Game to movie to graphic novel
This month’s Game Informer magazine has an opinion piece I wrote about the creative process of adapting a property across different media. You can also read it here.
Drawing from life
This life drawing workshop was a cool way to spend a Monday evening. I got a lot of inspiration seeing the other artists work. Some of them were really good.
I did this page during the breaks and actually like it better than my drawings of the model. It’s more interesting to draw people who are doing something, than a model who’s holding completely still.
Ouarzazate
Sometimes I add sepia ink wash to my sketches afterward. I’m always nervous that I’ll ruin a perfectly good line drawing, but it’s amazing what a difference even a touch of color can make.
Down the rabbit hole
One of my most hopeful daydreams as a kid was to discover a secret compartment in our house, perhaps in a wall or under the floorboards, containing a cache of old papers that would set me on the trail of a long-hidden secret. (Since the house was built in 1970 and we were the first occupants, this was about as likely as finding a dinosaur fossil in one of the metamorphic rocks in the woods around our house; but it took me a long time to give up on that search, too.)
A few months ago, my friend Barry Isaacson actually did find a cache of old papers hidden in a secret compartment in his house. The real-life horror story they revealed is enough to give any child, or parent, nightmares.
Here’s Barry’s story as he wrote it for the LA Weekly.
