Quick seasonal romance commission I was coerced into completing over the weekend. I'm always up for playing the role of cupid.

Always been a fan of Marcos Chin's work and in this case I was very much influenced by his one piece. I wasn't given much liberty here I must say, but I gave it a slight personal touch. I hope it worked out for the love stuck individual.

-King

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After completing my Sabbatical into 3D. Taking a little time to use my 2D art skills before they fall into complete entropy, or was that atrophy, is a must. I need to brush up on the vocabulary as well. Back to my favorite past time, which includes watching visually engaging films with a pencil in one hand and a bowl of cereal in the other. Last night it was the Korean film Old Boy. It sells itself and if you haven't seen it I'm not going to put any effort into selling it. Several images stand out for me but none other than the hallway fight. For times sake, whatever I discuss here will mostly be on the visual side, story and all that will have to pass on this one.

People tend to make big deals out of singular takes these and I'm not even sure they know why. Mostly(but not always) it's backlash from they over edited sequences of popular film making. I find often times, that people treat singular takes as more than they are simply because of that fact. I, however don't really care how many cuts a sequence has as long as it's interesting. In some way's keeping fluid continuity during a sequence is at least twice as difficult when it's cut and stitched together. That being said, the cinematography(and editing) was pretty sweet in this. Also, tracking shots are always a good idea. A camera that moves with or along the action just makes everything all the more sweeter. CW-Park's direction has a very distinct marker for me. He cut's to a somewhat surreal image that looks frozen, and then there's movement. On top of the crazy context of this film, that style really pushed the imagery over the top for me. This was adapted from a manga comic and I appreciate that Par made the characters and scenery look as such.

As for the scene itself, it's just an interesting watch. Hard for anyone to turn away, it's so interesting. Very important; all the timing feels real. People aren't simply waiting their turns, and if they are it's cause they have to. Weather it be the lack of space or the fear they feel, it really works. To see some of the worst turn taking in the history of cinema, look no further than Dark Knight Rises, yikes. I also appreciate the respect of hthe characters fists, few films really convey what good strong boxing can do.When the knife goes in his back it just takes over the movie for me. Sorry, can't explain it.

I almost look forward to the Spike Lee remake if only to see him demonstrate where he actually stands next to a director like Park. David Fincher needed this film, Wolverine needed this direction...

-King

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I found the time to sketch this piece in during a particularly long render wait. It's self explanatory. A prawn from district 9 marked as tribute. Considering Hunger Games is all about poor districts, there is no district more impoverished than the South African ghetto occupation of District 9.

As for the Hunger Games as a film. I found the first half was very well made, however, the second half was completely amateur, and the ending was a cop-out and incomplete. Why more films don't go the Shawshank route and translate their voice over material from the original work is big prideful waste by my estimation and it hurt this story. Even the first Twilight had the good sense to keep it. I notice in every review, fan or otherwise, people are outlining issues that would have easily been resolved if they had simply gone this route. Starting with both the love interests and the little girl companion. Peeta not receiving any help from their mentor and how he felt about that was always interesting in the novel, sadly, there's no mention in the film. The books greatest accomplishment for me is that the same ploy used to win the protagonist some sponsors and sympathy is also deployed on we the audience. Haymitch chooses to focus on Everdeen because audiences love to route for females in love. Everdeen uses this until the lines are blurred and then in the end she blindsides all of us. The movie does something strange with this and to be honest I'm not sure if Gary Ross himself knows exactly what. And the villains, my goodness the villains(sucked that is). In the end it was an engaging film. Lawrence was great, everyone was actually, everyone but Woody Harrelson that is. I still would have liked to see Hailee Stanfield in the role personally.

It's a crime how far and in between the updates have been on here this year. However, that just means I'm busy, which is always a good thing(for me). I've got a lot of things going on at the moment and I've had to push my personal projects schedule back a year. Big plans though, stay tuned.

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Mother always said not to. She never said why though.

The concept here being an obvious one, taking an urban myth and mixing it with some kinetic energy and movement. Initially the kid had both hands on the couch with the remote in the air. I felt that gave me the highest n.r.g. to image ratio, but the communication didn't quite work. Not enough cause and effect.

The Final

-King

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Surviving High school

 Saving the world

Every Saturday morning 

-Peace

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So I needed to relearn After Effects for an up and coming project and decided what better way than to cut together a leica for those superman boards I conceived a few months back. I can safely say I've gotten the dude out of my system at this point. The most frustrating part was trying to build and edit everything together all while my workstation would crash when I hit save.

But hey, it all worked out in the end and more importantly I'm proud of my work.

SUPERMAN: Gravity from King Mugabi on Vimeo.

It's quite the joy to finally see this plotting in motion. It's always stronger to convey your vision when you can control how long your audience views each panel/frame. Pacing really becomes apparent when you have a leica over 5 minutes, it really forces you to be away of scene that drag. Replay value goes down the longer the story so you try and fill it with interesting visual situations.

My favorite parts were the scenes I fully developed in real time. Mainly the car rescue. It's always cool playing with super speed and geography. When you do it in lieca form it really helps you convey your ideas...in "real time."

I've never been good with plotting hand to hand fights, and I don't do much to disprove that theory here.

What I really like about this piece is that within the span of 10mins(I know ridiculous), we cover some nice corner stones in typical superman narrative. The Kid stuff, the Lois stuff, the Lex stuff, some attempt at Humor and a few power displays. I also always love playing with traditional narrative; this is the story of a teen remembering when he was a kid having a vision of his future..or something pretentious along those lines.
 

I'm done with Superman for now, well till the movie comes out anyway. 

-King

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Last story in for this particular line. I'll give this another shot with when I happen upon another line with potential.

-Peace

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 The third story in the series, come by way of some very minimalistic changes, and mostly to setting.

 Murphy spends his Sunday's feeding the birds, in a past life he used to test all sorts of products on animals. 

 And no he's not homeless...he's got a cane.

-King

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...as a man he chased the red Ferrari, as a younger man he chased the lady in the red Dress...as a boy..well..

-King.

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"It's difficult to tell an original boxing story, someones always down on their luck,"

The next story in this little series comes by way of a boxing manager and father.
Working with family is always tough I think, and nowhere is this struggle more present than in this relationship. Throwing in the towel is always an option, that's what the say to each other anyways.
This piece was inspired by a photo I saw once.

Something I've been finding when working with the story of this curve is how much humility I see in it. There's a scenario (perhaps down the road) where this line tells an imposing type of story but for now I just don't see it.

 One line turns to two and the characters follow suit

This last piece I think tells a really intimate story, the right things are hidden and the lines converge where they may. It's here that find find ourselves backed into a corner.

 One of my favorite films is Million Dollar Baby. It tells the excellent story of a man looking for a daughter and a daughter looking for a dad. Check it out some time.

-Peace

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Story of a Line is a neat little series of drawings all based on this curved line. All the drawings are based on this line and strangely enough they are all quite similar with minor changes to attire and setting as minimal as that is already.

  A line drawing is built around the curve

 Then some flat tone is applied to give it the allusion that I actually put some work into this sketch and presto. 

Malcom's a good kid paying his way through med school, he likes to clean messes, He finds it relaxing..

-Peace

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Adjective: Bad-tempered, argumentative, and uncooperative.

 Always found the idea of retirement homes fascinating. A thing that only exists in the west I assume. These people raise their kids in their homes and then when it's time, the kids send them to a different home instead of returning the favor.

This piece is called Cantankerous and it's a story about an old war vet that is sent off to live with a bunch of his old war enemies. He literally still drives his beat up infantry truck everywhere, including right through the front gate. Not so original a concept I know but a great venue for caricature and cliche.  

As satisfied as I am with the above composition, I decided it needed a fix along with some simplicity.

The Final

-Peace

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Some grabs from a short story entailing the first artist creating his universe, finding a partner and crawling into his grave

                






  
-King

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