Zombie Killer – Qu’est-ce Que C’est?
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How about I start off this post with a meaningful (pretentious?) quote…?
Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.
~~ William Shakespeare ~~
Yeah – nice one… that’ll do.
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So… WHY would anyone be afraid of greatness? I mean wouldn’t it be… I dunno… great??? OK, then consider this… What if you were born great, but didn’t know it? And then at some point–having made no effort to achieve greatness–it was suddenly–and violently–thrust upon you? And what if this all happened to you when you were less than 10 years old??? Hmm… yeah. That could be just a little scary – don’t ya think?
So, there you go – that’s the basis of the back-story for our hero, Blue. Fleshing it out a bit more I figured it went something like this…
The Zombie outbreak surged to a global crisis just before the girl’s 9th birthday, and the defenses which had been keeping her community safe, abruptly and completely failed… As all hell broke loose, the Emergency Broadcast System announced that the Catastrophic Incident Evacuation Plan had been initiated, and so her family set out for the nearby waterfront in hopes of escaping aboard one of the Coast Guard-commanded vessels that had been prepared for this contingency…
At the waterfront, instead of finding salvation they found nothing but chaos and horror… The Coast Guard and their evacuation craft had been overwhelmed by the Walking Dead, and throngs of arriving civilians, caught up in the desperate stampede for survival, found themselves swept forward into the jaws of a nightmarish feeding-frenzy… Panic-stricken people ran blindly in all directions – bodies slammed violently into one another and the world moved at dizzying speed… Clutching his daughter in one arm and holding onto his wife with the other, Blue’s father struggled to keep his feet as he sought an escape route for his family… And suddenly – time slowed…
Blue felt the massive jolt that spun her father completely around… She felt herself slip from his slackened grasp as she was sent airborne… she saw the awful look in his eyes as–still reaching out in an attempt to save her–he went down under the pile of bodies…
On the ground now, she staggered to her feet… she glanced around wildly but could see no sign of her parents… her tear-filled eyes began to burn with heat… a high-pitched white-noise filled her head… her limbs and spine stiffened… and from the pit of her stomach to the tips of her fingers and toes a bright tension drew steadily, relentlessly inward… and just when she felt as if her body was on the verge of collapsing in on itself… the tension released in an outward rush of brilliant light and wind…
Blue felt like she was falling from a sky-scraper, only horizontally – and without moving… she could see nothing but brightness, and though she was sure she was engulfed by flames, there was no heat… no pain… only a deafening roar… through which she imagined she heard horrifying shrieking…
OK, wow – I wasn’t expecting to write all of that. I’d said I was going to keep these posts short, but it looks like I just can’t be trusted. At any rate…
Some time later, Blue opened her eyes and found herself strapped to a stretcher in the back of a military helicopter flying over the ocean. The rescue team had found her unconcious at the scene of the massacre… the sole survivor, surrounded by hundreds (possibly thousands) of incinerated corpses. They’d decided there must have been a chain reaction of explosions which had ignited the thousands of gallons of marine diesel stored at the site… but damned if anyone could explain how this little girl had survived… it could only be a miracle.
Oh by the way… if you’re one of the friends who’ve been reading these posts, but you haven’t been clicking on the pictures to see them at their full-size… well, that’s just not right.
Please go back to the beginning and re-read every word of every post, and this time follow instructions and “CLICK FOR FULL-SIZE” like the nice blogger said to.
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ZOMBIES!?!? What WE need is a hero!
The DEAD walk the earth!
NO living soul is safe!
Can ANYONE save us from the ZOMBIE hoards?
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Alright… so, I’m thinking this is a good time to stop and clear something up…
I DO NOT JUST DRAW ZOMBIES & other creatures of the night!
Yes, I know… if all you have to go on are the pics I’ve posted to this blog so far… well, I can see how you might get the wrong impression.
But the truth is, these pictures that I chose for starting off my blog, just happen to be based on a theme… which just happens to be a hypothetical Zombie Movie.
The fact that Zombies are the subject is really just a coincidence… I mean – I draw all kinds of stuff… seriously. Don’t believe me..?
Well then, just look at the picture in this post!
That’s not a Zombie – now is it?! No… no it is not.
OK, granted… so this IS another sketch from my “Zombie Movie Concept Art” series… BUT… there are NO MONSTERS in sight! Not a one!
So there you go then… proof-positive that I’m a pretty awesome guy, and you think hanging out with me would be pretty cool… and not creepy… or disturbing… and stuff.
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So this sketch is another quick character study.
I had decided that the hero of the story should be a young girl, and that she should have a slight melancholy mystery about her (faint emotional scars from a past she doesn’t talk about, maybe?) and the subtle suggestion of a deep strength–possibly a dormant fury–not to be taken lightly.
This one has a destiny, oh yes… and it’s bad news for the Zombies. Ooh… dramatic… right? Shades of ALICE…? Perhaps…
Though I honestly didn’t realize that until I saw RE:E for the 1st time last week.
Now, it probably shouldn’t surprise anyone to hear that this drawing began with the eyes. In fact, the eyes are the only part of this drawing that I spent any real amount of time on… looking to convey that mystery-quiet-danger-girl thing.
Craig saw this picture and started calling her “Blue”… which seemed fair enough.
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And ZOMBIE makes III!
Not every Zombie is of the vacant-expression, shuffle & moan variety. In fact, some of my favorites have been the ferocious, screaming & hurtling sort, like the ones in the 2004 ‘Dawn of the Dead’ remake.
<< NOTE: Fast Moving Zombies (FMZ’s) like those in the 2K4 DOTD, should not be confused with the rage-virus-infected ‘Ragers’ seen in flicks like ’28 Days Later’! FMZ’s are undead… ‘Ragers’ are alive. These are 2 very different threats, which require very different tactics if encountered (educate yourself) This has been a PSA from seangallo_designs… we now return you to your regularly-scheduled blog >>
It occured to me that my first 2 Zombies–while they were certainly ghoulish enough–just didn’t look as though they’d be all that difficult to escape from. Either one of them on their own, or even both of them together, probably wouldn’t pose any sort of urgent threat.
Of course as the world slowly & steadily fills up with more and more of these shambling, starved-for-brains creeps… well, at some point it doesn’t matter how fast you can run, cause wherever you run… there they are. And of course it’s exactly that slow but exponential escalation of danger that’s the real genius behind the traditional Zombie flick.
But then… seeing an undead creature that wants to eat your brain (and your leg… and your face) sprinting at you at top-speed… well, there’s something very special and immediate about the kind of primal fear that speaks to.
And so, that’s where this guy comes from… here representing for all the FMZ’s… Zombie number 3.
- … the better to EAT you with!
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ZOMBIE!!! Too (2)
I thought about it for a little bit and decided to do one post for each of the Zombie-series sketches, and to post them in the same order that I drew them.
Not a huge decision, I know… but maybe seeing these in the order they came to life (or is it death…?) will mean something to someone… maybe not. Either way, now I won’t have to spend any time thinking about which one do I post next, and then which one do I post after that… I hate unnecessary thinking :|
What can I say…? I’m lazy. But don’t mistake that for a bad thing.
“…prepare your mind and your body for any contingency you can anticipate. It’s the lazy person’s way–and I do hope you are wise enough to be lazy…”
~ Chuck Jones quoting his father, in my favorite autobiography, ‘Chuck Amuck‘
I also decided that, like these drawings–deliberately done quickly & w/o too much thought–these posts will be brief and more or less off the cuff. But I tend to ramble once I get started, so we’ll find out together how well that works out.
So without further adieu (ah-doo?) here is the 2nd of my walking corpses…
You uh... ya got a little something on your chin there...
In this one I feel like I got a little too distracted by playing with some of the little details… like the slobber, the cracked window, & the earring… and as a result, I missed the target a bit… something is off with the whole. The balance, energy, motion… kind of “meh”.
But in the end, I like some of the things I did here… I surprised myself with the color work, for one thing… and it reminded me to be more immediate, and to let the details take care of themselves.
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ZOMBIE!!!
So I was talking with my friend Craig, from the KatiesOpinion project (blog on that soon) and we got to jawing about Zombies… which isn’t really all that unusual, since Zombies have been a serially-recurring topic of conversation between me and Craig since like… forever.
Now it’s not like Zombies are our primary common interest… I mean, we don’t talk about Zombies everytime we hang out or anything like that. But it’s also not random or strange for one of us to just spit out a question like “OK – so what’s the best weapon in this room, if the Zombies came right now?”
And please keep in mind… it’s not a question of whether Zombies might come… cuz they are coming, alright.
It’s only a question of when will they come… AND when they do come… will you be prepared?
So anyway, me and Craig got to jawing about Zombies, and he was telling me again (cuz he’s told me before) about how much he would love to make a really great Zombie film.
Now Craig has some really sharp ideas about what would make a really good Zombie flick, and so we ended up spending the next hour or so going over plot devices, settings and storylines for the world’s BeSt EvaR ZomBie movie.
On the drive home later my head was filled with images of the Living Dead, so when I got home I started in to sketching, and this gentleman [below] is pretty much the 1st thing that came out.
Now in the interest of full-disclosure, I did come back to this drawing and clean it up a couple of times after the initial sketch, but I tried to leave it pretty much the way it was born.
I liked this one so much, that I followed it up with a few others… not all Zombies, but all character drawings based on the very loose storyline Craig and I whipped up that night. I’ll post some of the others soon.
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My Wife is a Blood-Sucker
I can’t remember whether Kim read ‘Interview with the Vampire’ before or after the movie came out, but what I do know is that her natural affinity for dark fantasy creatures combined with her love of a great novel was kicked into overdrive when she saw that jerk-off Brad Pitt…
(and for the record, I call him a j/o simply because I feel that any guy so rich & famous and so universally adored by the women of the world NEEDS to be hated on by his fellow men… otherwise he’d eventually go completely insane and become a danger to himself by taking up activities like attempting to walk from his yacht to the shore or levitating from his penthouse apartment to the street below… so I’m just doing my part to keep the guy’s feet on the ground, so to speak)
…when she saw that jerk-off Brad Pitt play the part of the dangerously-sexy yet irresistibly-compassionate vampire Louis on the big screen alongside that jerk-off Tom Cruise (now HIM I call a j/o for altogether different reasons.)
After ‘The Vampire Chronicles’ I think there was a long dry-spell… but then came the ‘Twilight’ series, which spawned its own movie, and somewhere in there HBO gave us ‘True Blood’ (a fresh new season just started up last night) and then most recently Kim became madly addicted to the Vampire Wars game on FaceBook.
At this point, I think it’s clear that it’s only a matter of time before I wake up to this sight…
She does make a hot vampire though, doesn’t she? I’d let her bite me… I think?
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