SR 1 PAGE TWENTY-NINE

Have you ever seen the video for the song “Lick It Up” by the band KISS? 

You haven’t? 

OF COURSE YOU HAVEN’T. That thing came out forty years ago! It’s not even a famous videos like “Thriller” or “Take On Me” or the one where clay trains drive over Peter Gabriel’s face. Frankly, it’s weird that I’ve seen “Lick It Up.” What a weird reference, obscure and dated even in 2003. This page needed a link for people to click, or perhaps an embedded video like this one (WARNING: EVERYTHING): 

So yeah, the video’s obviously hideous.

But hey, if you like KISS, that’s awesome! Please continue enjoying your life! It’s hard enough being happy in this world, I don’t want to go throwing acid all over your joy. I like tons of mockable stuff. Did you know some people even make fun of goth things? Incredible but true! I’ve seen it happen with my own eyes!

But I still agree with Sera’s key point here: KISS is false advertising. If you’re going to look like GWAR, you should sound like GWAR. Frankly, Sera should consider KISS taking off the monster gear to perform “Lick It Up” as a step toward greater honesty on planet earth.

SR 1 PAGE THIRTY

You know, I don’t think I did enough with the ogres. “Big blobby guys aimlessly stacking boulders” is a fun idea. Should’ve set at least one more scene here. Ah well.

These guys feel very ZIMMY, don’t they? Something about the mouths with the teeth sticking out, maybe. And the eyes popping out of their heads, which is more of a ZIM thing than a me thing. Some of the kids on these two pages are super ZIMMY with the eye-pops.

Looking back through my old sketches, it’s noticeable how incredibly ZIM-like my personal work became during my first few months on the show. (For those just joining us, I was a character designer on Invader ZIM.) My CalArts stuff was very soft, rounded, and dimensional, then all of a sudden I started drawing Sera all angular, graphic, and flat. I didn’t even notice it happening at the time.

Here’s an example: 

But it was inevitable, right? If you spend eight hours a day trying to master a specific style, that style’s going to influence your own work. How could it not? One of the reasons I started the SR comic is that I wanted to put something out there in my own style, something a little meatier than random sketches in a blog. Now it’s clear to me the comic did more than that, though. It helped me recapture my own artistic personality at a moment when it was starting to melt into general ZIM-ness.

Sometimes I hear stories about people who’ve worked on long-running animated shows for decades and slowly lost their own style along the way. Like if you draw Homer 70,000 times, eventually everything is Homer. The job security is enviable, and if you have kids to support you probably don’t care, but there’s definitely a cost to be paid.

My comics will always have visible ZIM style-scars, and I’m not sad about it (Carry them proudly, in fact!), but I think it was good for me to have an artistic outlet outside the show. Always have your own thing going!

BACK TO THE PRESENT!

Plugging away on the second draft of SHOCK CITY book two this week. All coming together pretty well… Should be able to reveal the cover of book one before long, so any time you want to start holding your breath, go for it.

COVID UPDATE: I still don’t have it! Ami seems to have weathered the storm and is testing negative now, so I think we’re all good? I spent the past week and a half sleeping on the couch FOR SAFETY, which means I spent a lot of time dozing off in front of the TV. It creates a nicely hallucinatory experience, especially if you choose your shows wisely. I’d never seen the old 1970’s Tom Baker Dr. Who’s, for example, and it turns out those are perfect for fading in and out of consciousness in a darkened room.

Also been going through the “Cat Movies” collection on Criterion Channel, and if you have access to that, can I get your help real quick? There’s one called The Cat, a Hong Kong movie from 1992. It seemed to be about an alien who comes to earth in the form of a black cat to fight The Blob (gory ’88 version). The human hero is a sweat fetishist who lives in a house constructed from old books, The Blob becomes The Terminator for a while, and the centerpiece of the film is an epic puppet/animation/yikes battle between the cat and a normal earth-dog. Directed by the guy who made Riki-Oh: The Story of Riki.

Can someone check and make sure I didn’t dream all that? Thanks in advance!

NEXT WEEK: SHAMELESS IDOL WORSHIP.