Okay, so the title is not a great start.
I know, you're thinking that it's fine. You're thinking the little dash doesn't make any sense but that's okay. Maybe it's a typo. That happens. Right?
It's not a typo.
I saw Captain Marvel yesterday. The title is a pun. I am so sorry. I am in no way sorry.
Look, it was a great film and I loved it and marvellous sums it up for me.
It was the best Superman film DC / Warner Brothers never made
Honestly, it was exactly everything you expect from a Marvel film these days; funny exciting, dramatic and the action was pretty spectacular.
Captain Marvel aka Carol Danvers is a powerhouse and impressively smart for a superhero. Not Tony Stark super-genius smart, but Indiana Jones pragmatic smart. She tends towards the simple solution (in Indiana Jones' case that was shooting a sword wielding villain in the Lost Ark) rather than an unnecessary convoluted plan/fight.
It's refreshing to see, just as it was when Indy did it.
Flerkens are also a lot of fun and I love them.
We should also address the de-aging tech they used on Coulson and Fury in this film (as the characters are a solid 20 years younger) which now seems to be freakishly close to perfect.
We all remember the horrors of X-Men 3 and a very stiff puppet like scene where plastic Magneto and Professor Xavier talk Jean Grey's parents. Some of us still have nightmares about it. Not me. I'm fine. I don't dream about plastic X-Men characters as the Cenobites from Hellraiser. Other people probably do. I don't. Just so we're clear.
Anyway, the technology has moved on so much. We saw Tony Stark in Civil War and thought, "yeah, that looks good" but were not completely convinced. We saw Ego in Guardians Of The Galaxy 2 and thought "yeah, this is getting pretty convincing now" and Marvel-led (forgive me) at how one day this tech could really change everything.
Now we have Nick Fury in Captain Marvel.
Nick Fury is in Captain Marvel for most of the movie as one of the main characters and apart from the intellectual knowledge that they de-aged him you do not doubt it for a second.
I don't now how it will compare in a few years time but at this moment in time turning a pensioner (Samuel L Jackson is 70 as I write this) into a man in his late 30s/early 40s is one of the most impressive special effects I've seen in a long time.
Anyway, this is generally an art blog so to summise - great film, impressive effects.
Here's a drawing I'm working on:
I'm about half way through and it's drawn in pencil an ink (until my eraser does it's job on the pencil). So far it represents about 2 hours work and I'm hoping to take it to it's final drawn version at some point, though whether I colour it remains to be seen.
The drawing came about as a task in my art class where we analysed a classic painting (in my case I opted for Frank Frazetta's cover for Conan the Buccaneer) and then drew something based on what we learned. In my case the Frazetta painting was Conan battling a pyramid of barbarians and villains so I flipped the composition and relaxed the restraint I usually show in art class for not freaking people out with drawing wrong things.
It's worth noting that I also used the time to face up to one of my greatest artistic weaknesses - hands!
Because why not.
Anyway, here's another picture:
I recently, and at long last, purchased Corel Painter - a program I have been besotted with for years but could never justify buying (my computer is barely able and I wouldn't touch it until I had a vague grasp of painting).
This is officially my first painting on it.
Admittedly not amazing, but I was on a steep learning curve as I painted it (the best way to learn any program is to play about a bit).
It is an impressive program and having used a little bit of real paint over the years it feels surprisingly authentic. I think it's gonna be a lot of fun to get to know it.
My next experiment will be cheap a home version of Coreldraw ('cos I resent spending £10 a month on illustrator for a lot of professional features I'll never use). I'm not a big vector drawing fan but it can be a lot of fun when I do it in work.
I'm off to do that now in fact.
Wish me luck.
I mean, you were bored by now anyway so we may as well end the blog here.
You can stop reading now. I'm not writing anymore anyway.
Bye.
Seriously, stop reading now. It's getting weird.