Toronto
Just got back from my first-ever visit to Toronto, a city I’ve long wished to visit for many reasons, yet somehow, amazingly and despite being from New York, never did until this weekend.
It was a whirlwind, too-short 36 hours including
- Ubisoft’s Toronto studio launch party Sunday night
- giving the keynote Monday morning for Interactive Ontario (talking about one of my favorite subjects, Prince of Persia)
- doing a TIFF “Film and Games” panel later that afternoon with Jade Raymond and Jon Landau (a really nice, down to earth guy who produced two small yet profitable indie films, Titanic and Avatar)
- standing ovation for Catherine Deneuve after the premiere of “Potiche” (her 109th movie according to IMDB)
The Toronto International Film Festival felt welcoming, spiffy and well organized, like Toronto itself. I left the city by an airport on an island in the middle of downtown that you take a ferry to get to. Now that’s cool.
Sketching in cafés and airports
Some more sketchbook pages for no particular reason. This was in NY a few months ago:
and this was the week Alice in Wonderland opened at El Capitan:
and this was last week at Dorval airport:
Weirdly, I spotted the guy with the mustache again a few days later, at a bar in LA. Sketching people makes you pay close attention to them; I doubt I’d have recognized him otherwise. I wonder how many of the strangers I pass by every day are people I’ve seen before, maybe many times before, but I just don’t notice.
Airport security
Did these quick sketches while standing in line for airport security screening. It was way too early in the morning and all I wanted to do was get on the plane and sleep.
PoP released for IMAX and iPhone
I woke up this morning thinking “Today’s the day!” One that’s been emblazoned in my mind for weeks now, thanks to subtle reminders like this one:
But it wasn’t until I picked up my iPhone and blearily checked email and Twitter while making breakfast (compulsive habit, I know; I’m trying to break it) that I received the surprising news that today is ALSO the release date of the original Prince of Persia for iPhone/iPad.
You’d think such perfect timing would have to have been coordinated months in advance, but it wasn’t. If there was a mastermind, it could only have been some unsung Apple employee with a sense of irony.
This weekend might be just the occasion for me to try playing through the game for the first time in 20 years. I already have my fallback strategy: If I can’t get past level three, I’ll blame the touchscreen controls. It couldn’t be aging reflexes. No way.
And I promise not to play my iPhone during the movie after the lights have gone down.
Moscow sketchbook
This is the plane that took us from London to Moscow for the Prince of Persia press junket. It was the nicest plane I’ve ever been on. I felt like Tony Stark for a few hours.
Every fun, relaxing hobby ought to contain an element of danger; for me, drawing people I know at close range is the halfpipe of sketching. When the result is a bad likeness, unflattering or both (which it often is), there’s nowhere to hide. In this case, several of the people on the plane with me were world-famous, so the stage was basically set for a spectacular wipe-out. But I had to try.
The ones of Jerry and Mike Newell (above) are at least more recognizable than some of the others.
None of the ones of Gemma really look like her. Girls are harder to draw than guys to begin with, and the more beautiful they are the harder it is. It often ends up either looking like a generic “pretty girl” or a different girl entirely.
Gemma got her revenge, as you can see from her rendition of me on the right-hand page above.
The press junket, premiere and afterparty were on Tuesday, so I didn’t get to do any sketching that day. Wednesday was our free day; Mike Newell and I began it with a three-hour tour of the Kremlin’s incredible armory.
This was my first visit to Russia, a country I’ve long wanted to visit. At three days, it was much too short.
Solomon’s Thieves released
I’m excited to announce that Solomon’s Thieves, my first/second, First Second graphic novel illustrated by the terrific LeUyen Pham and Alex Puvilland, is now on sale in bookstores and on Amazon. It’s just gotten its first review on Newsarama.
Based on the historical events of the fall of the Knights Templar, Solomon’s Thieves is a swashbuckling adventure about a bunch of outlawed knights who band together to attempt the greatest heist of the 14th century.
It’s the first book in a trilogy — and a career first for me, in that it’s not based on a video game. I hope Prince of Persia fans who like graphic novels and/or historical adventure fiction will check it out.
You can read more about it here.
