Martini Lab

So ends season 2 of The Variants

Martini Lab — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:27:11 -0600

The Variants

LOL Variants

By the end of this season, I finally got to know the processes and intentions of our new Director and Director of Photography Jason Chinnock and Jim Slaughter. This was the easiest and most fun episode to edit. And I think it really came down to several factors, not including the previously mention understanding: everyone had fun. It’s amazing what everyone can accomplish when we’re all on the same page.

Season 3 is going to be even better. Until then, I’m hanging my editors hat for a few months. Too many other projects have been getting dusty.

“The Sellouts”
A potential investor and his attorney turn the store upside down. Can the Zeus employees handle their scrutiny, or will they throw each other under the idiot bus in pursuit of vacation days and dental? Season finale. Guest starring Curt Franklin and Chris Haley of Let’s Be Friends Again.
source

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Boldly Gone web comic

Martini Lab — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:11:52 -0600

Boldly Gone

Arlynn D’Resh. You heard me.

Kevin Church and Ming Doyle are back with a new funny web comic set in the Star Trek universe. Boldly Gone is an ongoing comic strip set during the days of Kirk but in a slightly less glamorous ship than the Enterprise. The USS Mandela, a freight vessel and its crew may not be the leading cast from the show, but Star Fleet is Star Fleet no matter what the mission. Everything from the too-short-for-comfort duty uniforms to the multi-ethnic vision of Roddenberry, Boldly Gone embodies the kind of fandom even the most ardent Trekkie can appreciate.

Agreeable Comics, Kevin Church’s hub for his ongoing web comics, adds a new title to the list with artist Ming Doyle, after their recently concluded The Loneliest Astronauts. The web comic has a long narrative with a story arc currently developing into something really interesting. If The Loneliest Astronauts is any indication of where Church and Doyle are (boldly) going, prepare to stick around for the long haul.

From the Star Fleet Technical Manual

It’s not often that new ideas come from old properties in geek circles. Too often, geek curation blogs and comic sites focus on what’s already been done; a kind of cultural regurgitation that makes minimal effort to find a clever punchline or re-imaging of the same thing (see Big Bang Theory). Rare are the artists that breath new life into what was long established as old or classic. Church and Doyle are doing just that.

The ship’s design comes from the 1978 non-canon Star Fleet Technical Manual’s illustrations by Franz Joseph, and later reproduced into a 3D model by David Metlesits.

I rendered some angles of the USS Mandela for the strip and included a fan-art wallpaper, which looking back I’m not very satisfied with. The glowy zenith effect that comes from atmosphere light scattering should taper off, so it just looks too strong. But it looks great on my iPad.

There may be more work I can do for them if they call upon me. But in the meantime, check out Boldly Gone. Set your RSS readers to stun.

My fan rendering for the Mandela

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What Might A Conservative Comic Book Look Like? We already know.

Martini Lab — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 12:39:53 -0600

ACC Studios Publication

Liberality For All #1 Variant cover (Hannity riding a missle)

In an recent series of posts on the site Bleeding Cool, Darin Wagner imagines possible books that will save the comic book industry from itself. Putting aside the unique view that he imagines liberal readers view conservatism, Wagner posits his world view with the aide of existing characters like Namor and Aquaman—clear tools for “escalating statism, mandatory multicultural indoctrination and environmentalism” ruining comics as we know it.

Readers, surprisingly, have been enjoying conservative comics for while now despite the collapsing trade. Look at the political leanings of writers to get an idea how their world view is put into their respective narratives. Bill Willingham is a good example of a conservative writer, and his ongoing comic book Fables reflects many conservative ideals: self-reliance, criminal justice, survival of the fittest, etc. Even with these conservative traits, Fables is an immensely popular title among all readers, liberal or otherwise. Why is that?

When liberals pick up the latest issue Fables and realize it’s an analogy of Israel, they don’t immediately react to the pro-Israel bias, exclaim to the shop owner about the lost sale, and stomp out the door to the nearest Starbucks and blog to their latte-sipping elite cabals. No. They buy it. It’s a great book.

Having books lean left or right isn’t what fills readers’ pull boxes. It’s good writing. Red-state readers consternating over their favorite “capes” not meeting politically-aligned expectations is the same kind of fanatic reaction that avid readers have been having since… forever. Be it politics, continuity, obscenity or violence, coming out of the closet, or even costume changes. It’s the same thing. The inability to look past these objections makes for poor reading. Such a shame.

If the call for conservatism alone is what really drove the market, Liberality For All would be still be ongoing, collected in Absolute edition, and in its third iteration of the movie trilogy adaptation.

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Five Predictions About The Immediate Future Of Comics

Martini Lab — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 12:10:48 -0600

More of this: Oni, Viz, Avatar, Boom, Archaia, Fantagraphics and a few actual publishing houses having less share in the direct market than Eaglemoss, a company that packages partwork magazines with little Marvel and DC character figurines. A less perfect illustration of what comics stores are actually interested in selling, I cannot find today.

Five Predictions About The Immediate Future Of Comics Warren Ellis

Perhaps a better illustration of what customers are willing to buy.

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2012: Year of The New

Martini Lab — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 15:04:47 -0600

What last year’s trends will only get better, and others I hope end very soon.

Last year really was the year of the protester. In Egypt, Sudan, and around the mid-east, citizens stood up at the risk of death for freedom and democracy. “Occupiers” forced big media to pay attention to the corrupting effect that large companies had on laws that enable stark disparities in our economy.

However, none of this would have happened, or at least have been as effective or sustaining, if it weren’t for social networks and the sharing virility of content. Up until recently, online sharing was associated with piracy, torrenting, and downloading.

Student protests in Iran, and the efforts of their government to shutdown the internet¹ highlighted an unforeseen value to Twitter—that access to communicate through social networks isn’t just a way to keep in touch with friends, but lets you get your message out to everyone.

Unfortunately, our own government’s attempt to clean up the internet resulted in SOPA, an intentionally loosely worded bill that protects media companies from foreign web sites sharing their IP illegally. SOPA’s language is open enough that any site, for any reason, can effectively be shut down at the demand of Disney or Time Warner. And while SOPA will most likely not pass (this congress’ first year passed fewer laws than the “do-nothing” congress of 1948²), even if it does, sharing will continue unabated.

Torrenting aside, users are sharing more and more data through active blogging, and passive app usage. Sharing has become so ubiquitous in online usage, that everyday activities such as eating at a restaurant has changed from putting in a reservation to Tweeting about the wait, or Yelping a review, TwitPicing the entrée, and updating facebook about how much was eaten. To the user, it’s just sharing, but to the apps and devices it includes valuable information to sell. Personal information is currency.

Tumblr is a great example how sharing stories has become the delivery mechanism for popular information. It’s rapid popularity even got Obama’s blog to use it as a platform. Tumblr’s founder, Marco Arment, left Tumblr to create Instapaper, an app that saves articles for offline reading. This method of accessing the web, and then sharing it through various social API’s only emphasized the growing trend that content isn’t exclusive to the it’s originating source—that one site’s content will be shared on other sites and apps and devices.

With sharing functions found in sites, apps, and operating systems (iOS 5 has its own Twitter API), given enough distribution or re-blogging, the original author gets lost and the content wrongly becomes fair use. Comic artist Jamie McKelvie had already dealt with his work getting lifted before in the past, but even the re-blogging of his art got so out of hand he had to remind fans to keep the credit of authorship in—as it’s usually the first to disappear³.

That was back in June. It hasn’t gotten better. Even with the recent advent of reverse image lookup, there’s no guarantee of authors getting properly credited for their work. Today, Tumblr is wrought with photographs missing credits, sometimes photoshopped out. No effort is given to find the author, or verify that their work is even authentic.

The Mary Sue posted a story of what is probably the epitome of last year’s LGBT progress with the end of DADT and can be considered photo of the year: the Navy’s “First Kiss” of 2 female naval officers. Unlike most sites however, this site forgot to correctly attribute credit to photographer Brian J. Clark, or at the very least, Associated Press. Were the photographer not known, a basic Google search would have resolved that. Another example is this post of 80’s cartoon characters wearing fashionable clothes. It’s too bad the work consists entirely of traced photos from fashion catalogs and photographer portfolios and without credit (and assuming permission). It’s probably likely that artist Fabian Ciraolo didn’t obtain licensing permission from Hasbro for the 80’s cartoon references either.

This isn’t to lay the burden of source-checking on one blog whose subject matter is pop-culture, it’s the problem in pop-culture itself that’s not only removing artists from the equation but stifling creativity. It’s called IP Recycling.

Some recent examples of IP Recycling include The Lion King reenacting the The Dark Knight Rises trailer, or Firefly characters posing in The Breakfast Club poster, or Calvin and Hobbes grown up, or Portal Cube cakes, or My Little Ponies as The Watchmen, or AT-ATs doing… anything really. It’s the mashing of two properties to add new context and it needs to stop.

This isn’t to say these properties aren’t good or should be avoided. Quite the opposite in fact. Enjoying popular culture requires a weekly fix of comic books, knowing that there are only three Star Wars movies, recognizing Thorin’s swagger, and understanding that Paul Atreides never spoke back to the Reverend Mother like that during their first encounter in the book itself. Having geek cred in pop-culture is important, but as clever as the Doctor Who wallets sold on Etsy may be, none of them are licensed through BBC. That’s not celebrating pop-culture. It’s theft, not sharing.

There needs to be a way to enjoy our pop-culture as it is right now without being so blatantly derivative about it.

Licensing and IP ownership aside, the attention many of these mash-ups received in the past couple of years compared to new and fresh ideas is unfortunate. As a society of art and music and performance, we need to start celebrating new works without the nostalgia factor. We need new blood! We need to be more curious about our entertainment. We need something new, not re-imagined. These are the things really worth sharing. Plus, they’re SOPA immune.

¹ Finding a way around Iranian censorship - Hiawatha Bray, Boston Globe 6/19/2009

² Acts of the 112^th United States Congress vs. Acts of the 80^th United States Congress

³ On reblogging - Jamie McKelvie 6/20/2011

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The Infographic Plague

Martini Lab — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 11:21:22 -0600

Kevin Marks

“Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Y U no like HTML, just pix?”

Infographics have duped me on occasion as well. For the reader, facts, footers, or citations aren’t asked because, I suspect, the method and delivery of the message is presented so visually that it’s mere appearance says, “This must be true because it looks great!”

The rise of so-called infographics has been out of control this year, though the term was unknown a couple of years ago. I attribute this to the favourable presentation that image links get within Facebook, followed by Twitter and Google plus, and of course though other referral sites like Reddit. By showing a preview of the image, the item is given extra weight over a textual link; indeed even for a url link, Facebook and G+ will show an image preview by default.

Kevin Marks

My only problem with this argument is that outside of social networks, most bloggers and journalists are incapable of writing HTML. Not because it’s difficult, but because slapping together pixels in Photoshop is easier.

Take a look at any popular blog, unless they staff their own web designer, their site’s code is atrocious.

So what’s the answer? People need to learn HTML, or better blogging software?

Hat tip Future Journalism Project

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Starting a New Chapter

Martini Lab — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 13:19:37 -0600

Christopher Kennedy

Christopher Kennedy on the market

In the short time that I’ve known Chris Kennedy, his knowledge and coding skills of Expression Engine rapidly grew way past my own understanding and experience (which was pretty good to begin with, but now I doubt I could catch up).

And now he’s in freelance. God help us all.

Hire him.

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The Myth of the 99 Cent Book

Martini Lab — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 09:30:02 -0600

The problem is not that the prices are too high. The problem is that instead of fixing the content, thus making it worth paying for, the publishing industry is only looking at the price.

Every other type of product cost more today than 10 years ago. A bottle of milk costs more today than in the past. A bicycle costs more than in the past, a meal at a restaurant cost more today than ever before. The gas prices are off the scale (but for other reasons as well.)

Content is the only industry in which the price of content has dropped. In many cases, a yearly subscription now costs less today than in the 1960s. Every other product costs more. Content costs less.

Thomas Baekdal

Baekdal describes the “Long Tail” principle for 99 cent books

Today’s rumor of IDW going day-and-date with most of their comics line at full retail price is already getting mixed buzz on social networks. Many folks believe that because something is digital, it is automatically cheaper in cost by default. Therefore, it makes no sense to them why digital should cost the same as print.

Today, I give you “The Myth of the 99 cent book”, by Thomas Baekdal.

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Step 1: Digital, Step 3: Profit!

Martini Lab — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 15:41:10 -0600

Brian Hibb‘s spun off his own article from a noisy comment thread on one of the other comic bloggers.

Right, so, first off, a little “old business” first - first off, Heidi is clearly wrong that the DM has not grown. Here’s your chart to establish that. Chris Hero points out that that units on periodicals has shrunk, and that is true, but that’s pretty directly a result of dollars shifting from one format (periodicals) to another (books), but each and every person anywhere who says “print is dead” or “goodbye to physical objects” or any of that other stuff is clearly not arguing with actual real facts.

Digital product X will eventually cost less to make and sell than it’s printed counterpart. Right now, many of these companies are in start-up mode. They are most likely still in the red. Their profits don’t yet offset their initial costs. It’s entirely off the record, but I know that one of the digital publisher companies had to move their scanner staff (of one btw) to full-time salary because the hours he put in were too much to be part time.

I’ve worked in my fair share of start-up tech companies. One of them even produced an iPhone/Android app. It was insanely expensive to make.

There’s this idea that an app is instantly profitable without taking into consideration the cost of development. Marvel app was just updated. Do you think this happened automatically? This misnomer that digital is some sort of bottomless well keeps being thrown around. It’s simply not true.

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Live Art Show and Charity Art Auction

Martini Lab — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 12:40:16 -0600

Robert Wilson

Live art show and benefit poster

Even been to a live art show? They’re quite fun. This upcoming one I’m a part of with the cast and crew of The Variants with Chris Haley and Curt Franklin of Let’s Be Friends Again webcomic at Billiard Bar in Dallas this Friday.

This live art show is a benefit for the Genesis Women’s Shelter in Dallas. The proceeds of the event as well as donated toys (we’ve already set up a donation box at Zeus) go directly to the shelter. The services they provide to women and children of domestic abuse are all the more important during this holiday season.

It’s going to be a great show, we’re going to have fun that night and it’s all for an important cause.

Billiard Bar
1920 Greenville Ave
Dallas, Texas
(214) 826-7665

21 and up, no cover. Come out! read more

Jason Chinnock

Let’s Be Friends Again creators Curt and Chris, and The Variants cast Richard, Keli, Ken, and Barry

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