MORT finally begins

I have started a new project on my new blog http://mortstory.wordpress.com

As a special treat for you, I have added the first post here (I hope you join me over there for the full story):

the day was warm bordering on hot. The bright sun shone through the window and made mom look like an angel. She picked me up and put me on her knee.

I looked up at her with a wide grin. We looked at each other for a second, when I saw a shadow creep across her face. I whipped my head around and saw a geek looking at us through the window. His lower jaw was hanging by a fragile piece of flesh and his massive rotten tongue was lulling on his neck. A murky drip of saliva was running down his torn shirt and his mangled hands were pumping against the glass. Mom got to her feet, tossing me onto the floor. I started to cry, but stopped when I saw two more geeks in the window. I was just about to scream when Mom grabbed me by the shoulders and shouted “hey Mort!”.

But her voice was weird, it was rough and way to deep.

I looked at her confused, but she just bellowed: “Mort, seriously, you need to get up”

I blinked my eyes once and Mom was replaced by Desmond. He stood over me red faced and panting. I ignored him, turned on my side and pulled my blanket over my head, hoping to fall back asleep.

I shouldn’t have done that, though, because suddenly my blanket was gone. The cold hit me like a ton of bricks and my eyes shot open. It took me a second to adjust to the light and a second further to understand what that meant

“Son of a…” I cursed as the realization hit me; I was late. I got to my feet quickly, but I had to stop as the world started to spin..

“you OK?” Desmond asked because I had started to cradle my head with my hands.

“yeah, I’m fine I just…” I said cutting myself off as I heard the distant sound of church bells.

I started dressing in a hurry. Desmond just, kind of, stood there and watched me as I struggled to get into my worn jeans and tattered sweatshirt.

Be both knew that we had a little under 5 minutes to get to the cathedral or we would be facing overtime, and nobody wanted that.

Desmond and I lived in a rigidity old shed at the edge of sector 4, where no one would bother us.

We didn’t have much, but it was fine. We had two beds… well madrases, an old oil-drum for fires and a bookshelf where Desmond kept all of his books. I had come to love it here.

I was actually supposed to come wake Desmond up this morning. I was a very light sleeper, which meant I usually woke early enough for work. Desmond must have woken just a couple if minutes before I did.

These were all things that flooded my head as I put on my socks, with Desmond still glaring at me. Finally, as I was shoving my last shoe on, Desmond lost patience and just hauled me out of the door by my arm.

 

Tired days

I can’t tell you why, but ever since the conference I have been completely spent. It may be the influx of information or it may be the realization that the best place for me is the game industry,  whatever the reason, I have not been able to pull myself together since then,
To add to that, I decided to watch “indie game tge movie” today, which just made everything that much more overwhelming and the gest thing I could draw was this.

I have a thing for feminist superheroes.

It probably doesn’t come as a shock, but the more butch and manly a female hero is, the more I like her.

What bothers me the most in comic-books, and more so in movies, is when artist make their female protagonist into a babe, when nothing about the character calls for it.

The movie “Wanted” with Angelina Jolie is a great example of this. in the movie Angelina Jolie plays an awesome assasin who is good at kicking ass and taking names. This involves allot of physical prowess, and in the movie Jolie looks as if she hasn’t eaten in weeks.

This means that whenever she punches a guy in the face and he falls to the ground, the entire scene looses its validity. She wouldn’t be able to punch anyone, she can barely hold her own arm up. At worst her punch would feel like someone throwing cotton-balls at you aggressively

So my question is, why can’t catwoman be a bit more muscular? I would think it would be necessary when she has to scale those buildings, and why can’t wonder woman be a Lesbian? everything about her seems to suggest it anyway.

My hope, is that some day I will be able to create a character that is awesome and has the appropriate musculature to support the action she get into.

page of a comic that will never exist

a couple of months ago I tried my luck with drawing one page of a twilight inspired comic. It went surprisingly well, but for some reason I never followed up on it, so today I decided to check out if I would be able to do the same again.

 

I had allot of fun with this work, even if it isn’t the most inspired in the world. I might even take this further and make a full comic… I might, no promises.

 

Nona

 

This is actually not my first drawing of this character. In fact, I have drawing her a few times in the history of the blog and I encourage you to scroll down to find those drawing.

However, this is the first time I have drawn this particular character since really starting to take myself and this project seriously.

What I am realizing with this project, is that I an fact have very little idea of what it is that I want to create, so though I have a story, which need many revisions, I don’t really have a product.

That is why I am trying to figure out what kind of book/game/story/movie I want to create and just how these things fit together.

So, in short, while this particular drawing is a step in the right direction, it is far from the goal.

 

… By the way, thank for sticking with me through such a scattered post, I will be back with something more fun in the morning.

narration

I love audiobooks.

Well I love books in general, but audiobooks are really were I get my kicks.

I love that with an audiobook, you can concentrate on other tasks while someone wpood feed your a great narrative. I usually put on a good audiobook and then sit down and start drawing. During these sessions I mostly do figure drawing; these kinds of occasions are great for really honing my craft.

Besides being a great activity, I find audiobooks particularly engaging because I love stories and I really always have (this is actually one of the reasons that I am writing on this blog). As far back as I can remember I have always been transfixed by stories and storytelling.

It is, however, only when I became a bit older that I realized that if I wanted to become part of a narrative business I would have to hone my skill and really step up my practicing.

One of the ways that I like to practice is to ingest as much narration as I can. It might sound like the direct way to plagiarism, to read other peoples work and get inspired my them, but I find that it really helps me find out the do’s and don’ts of writing. If I find a book infuriating, or even worse boring, I usually take note what the author did to make the story so.

This is why I find listening to an audiobook while I draw such a great experience. In a sense I am killing two birds with one stone. I am drawing, which is a win in itself, but I am also getting a healthy dose of narration, which will hopefully boost my knowledge and understating of what it means to be a writer

colour your teeth clean

for the last two weeks I have been working on a project for the municipality in Kolding Denmark.

In the municipality (where dental care is free until the age of 18) they have a real problem with teenagers being careless wit their dental hygiene. Through a workshop of 2 weeks we came up with a solution that would benefit the teenagers teeth and the teenager him/herself.

We found that the people who have the most positive dental hygiene, are the ones who share the daily routine of brushing with people in their lives. We thought that this might be applicable to the place that the teens spend most time of the day: The school.

So we created a concept for a tooth-brushing station that would be placed at the back of classrooms. This station would encourage the teenager to brush by making giving them funky toothbrushes and pastes that both look and taste odd.

In this fashion we hope to create a positive routine for a new generation that will hopefully have better teeth than the last.

an introduction to Mort

I a currently working on a new project, which for once is independent of my school work.

To be honest, this is a project that I have had on the back burner for a little while, but I have decided to bring it out into the light now.

I call the project Mort and it is my very own post apocalyptic dystopia.

the pitch goes something like this:

the zombie apocalypse leaves the human population struggling for survival for over 150 years, until only a handful of human populated cities remain. heavily guarded, these societies are thrown back to the middle ages in terms of technology. The largest stronghold of these is Rome where the Vatican is the seat of power. One day the ruling pope has a message from god, that transforms the fate of the human race. The pope discovers how to harness power from the earth and the luck human race turns on a dime.
We pick up the story about 50 years later as the human race is trying to regain control of the earth by reclaiming lost territories one large city at the time. Our story follows a boy names Mort, as he is sent on a reconnaissance mission through sector 34D of saviour city along with a small group of like-minded teenagers.
believe me, it is allot more complicated than I am leading you to believe here; really.

currently, I am working hard on writing this story. I hope to have a couple of chapters ready for you soon, but until then I hope you will enjoy this drawing of one of my main characters, Nona

A game of grief – the strategy guide