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.
London premiere sketchbook
Just got back from the Prince of Persia movie press junket in London and Moscow. For readers curious about what that was like, I’ve posted these pages from my travel sketchbook.
The idea of a junket is to bring the talent — which in this case included Jerry Bruckheimer, Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton, Sir Ben Kingsley, Mike Newell, and me — to one destination so the press can come to us, instead of sending us on a tour from place to place. Having the global premiere of Prince of Persia in London rather than L.A. made it a short trip for European journalists, but a longer one for those from the U.S. and South America.
The junket took over several floors of the Dorchester hotel in London, where the interviews and press conference were held.
An inevitability of press junkets is that although the journalists come from different cities and countries, with a range of interviewing styles, you nonetheless tend to get asked the same questions, sometimes thirty or forty times in a single day.
The premiere was Sunday night at the London Westvue.
Not pictured: Gemma dancing barefoot in her princess gown at the afterparty.
Seeing the “Coming Soon” signs for Prince of Persia in the Odeon Leicester Square gave me tingles. That’s the theater where I first saw Raiders of the Lost Ark in the summer of 1981, right out of high school, in a packed house. It set the bar for my summer moviegoing experiences to date, and was one of my major inspirations in creating Prince of Persia on the Apple II a few years later.
Next: On to Moscow.
