Haunted Fire Studio :: Benjamin Hall :: Illustrator and Comic Book Artist

Here is the final version of the movie poster I did for my Buddy Barak Epstein's newest film Blood on the Highway

This weekend I had one of my all time geek fantasies come to life. I got to meet most of the cast of my favorite TV show, Mystery Science Theater 3000! They came to town touring under the guise of a 20 year reunion and performing as their new group Cinematic Titanic at this years USA Film Festival. It was a night I will remember for the rest of my life.
From right to left Josh Weinstein, Trace Beaulieu, Mary Jo Pehl, Joel Hodgson, Frank Coniff, and "RAD" Mary Jo's husband. Click here for a larger photo.

Whenever you meet someone you've idolized for most of your life you get hit with two separate feelings:

Holy Crap this can't be real, there he/she is!!! In the flesh!

and

Man, I hope he/she is not a douche in real life...

Luckily everyone who was involved with the Satellite of Love was a genuinely nice person and really, really off-the-cuff funny. I was a little disappointed to learn they all are in fact human and there were apparently some quarrels and bumping of heads behind the scenes, that they were all too gracious to talk about while the show was still airing, but I appreciated their candor. This is apparently what led to so many changes in the cast over the years starting with Josh Weinstien in season one. During the panel, we learned why each of them eventually left the show, except for Trace who joked he was fired at one point. Only Frank Coniff left to pursue other things. Fortunately, all of the group that appeared at the Film Festival seemed to really get along and enjoy each others company.

The night started with a Q and A panel in which the audience asked the cast a number of dumb questions, which somehow always resulting in revealing and entertaining answers. Even though I had a million questions, I couldn't come up with just one. Once I had one question answered, I would not have been satisfied until I had all of my questions answered... preferably over dinner and drinks, but since that was not going to happen, I sat back and watched in glee as the icons of my youth returned questions like "which was a worse movie this or that" or interesting, but unrefined questions in which the subject of the question had to be discussed at length before an answer could be made. One goob even had the cojones to stand up and accuse them of stealing a skit he sent them on video. They quickly reduced the man to a spineless puddle of goo like a pack of highly trained ninja let loose on a doddering old man. It was hilariously awkward.

I'm am always amazed at my fellow geek's inability to operate in a public setting. This activity was brought up again when we filed out of the theater after the Q and A to let them clean up, and then piled back in to enjoy a live performance of them riffing on the Roger Corman classic "The Wasp Woman". We enjoyed our original seats, having gotten there an hour early just to secure them, and wanted to return to the same seats for the movie. So instead of going to the bathroom or getting something to eat, we got right back in line, damning our aching bladders. When we were let back into the theater, the people in front of us took our old seats... no big deal, the other side of our aisle was still open so we quickly grabbed seats over there. When I sat down I noticed a small paperback novel someone had left behind and sat next to it. I did not realize that that one paperback was a beacon to any newcomers that the ENTIRE ROW OF SEATS was saved until we were verbally accosted by a group of nerds who accused us of stealing their place. When we apologized, and tried to explain that we tried to return to our original seats but they were taken so we sat in the next available chairs, their nerdish eyes glowed white hot with the fires of Mordor. They argued with us for a while (actually thinking we would move), cursed us in what may have been Klingon, begrudgingly took back their novel and found seats elsewhere in the quickly filling up theater. After the show, having finally gotten over their immature indignation, one of them finally apologized to us by telling us he hoped we enjoyed the seats and kindly waving both his middle fingers at us as he stomped to the restroom.

We, of course, did enjoy the seats... thank you kind sir.

As far as the actual show went, watching them perform live with a large audience was more enjoyable than any tv show that ever aired. I kept having to remind myself that they were doing this live and were actually in the theater with us. The audience howled and cackled at every single joke. Every... Single... One. And I felt like I was twelve again, laying on my belly in my parents front room as my whole family howled and cackled at Joel and the bots and the retched movie Dr. Forrester and Tv's Frank had forced them to watch.

It's was an amazing night.

The one and only down side of the event was the hilarious Kevin Murphy, who was scheduled to appear, canceled due to sickness. I've would have really enjoyed to see him, Mike Nelson and Bill Corbett as well (who were not scheduled to appear but have formed the equally hilarious Riff Trax ), but I count myself lucky I got to see as many of my favorite actors as I did. Afterwards, the cast shook hands and signed autographs out in the hallway. I stupidly didn't bring anything to sign, nor did I go talk to them. Instead I snuck a few photos and slunk back into the night with my memories. In my mind these people are legends... and you just don't meet legends.

Labels: new art

I bought a Wacom Cintiq this weekend.

That's right...

Jealous?

Even if you can part with the Nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars it takes to buy one of these things, just purchasing one can be a challenge in itself.

I went to buy it at at Fry's Electronics who put on a fairly big production for a single piece of hardware.  When I first walked through the door, I had a hard time getting an employee to look directly at me.  Once I cornered one, like a frightened rabbit, and asked for the expensive bauble, all of the sudden I had changed in their eyes from a bum with no money, to an unstable character who at any moment could explode into a parade of testicle-kicking and hardware thievery.

As if I didn't have enough guilt about purchasing it already, the utter freak-out involved in getting the damn thing out of the store made me start to think twice about the financial burden I was putting on my family. (It's really not all that bad, we have the cash, but the never ending flow of random medical bills from the baby are STILL rolling in which makes me jittery about large purchases)

In any case, the thing was not even out on the shelves, nor was there any type of sign saying they even carried it among the cheaper wacoms and knock-offs.  I actually had to find someone and beg them to point me towards the man in charge. They took me to the "guy with the keys" who then sent some poor sales associate into the "cage", as they called it, with a key and a flashlight to fetch the locked up item.  Once the young girl came back, lugging both the heavy 20 inch and 12 inch wacom because she didn't ask me which one I wanted (I had a hard enough time explaining what a Cintiq was), they still wouldn't let me have it!  They printed me out a ticket with my name on it and then raced it to the check-out aisle so it would be waiting for me.  (I'm sure I was not that hard to beat as I unfortunately chose the path jam packed with sweaty men in ill-fitting shirts, pricing Cat 5 cable and external hard drives on my way to the front of the store.  I finally broke free of them as they fell, one by one, to the sweet promise of caramel nougat at the candy aisle just before the check-out counter.)

When I finally tried to pay for the tablet, there was much curiosity displayed over what it was exactly I was buying and why anyone would pay that much for such a thing.  I began to rub my head and worried some more that I was wasting my new family's hard earned cash.

Once they begrudgingly gave me my receipt I ran to my car as though I had a suitcase full of gold bricks cuffed to my wrist and would be jumped, beaten and robbed at any moment in the parking lot.

Of course, once I got it home, it was totally worth the price!  It has taken a little getting used to, but man.... It's great.  I really believe my productivity will double with this cool little gizmo.

...

Least I hope it does.

I'm still learning how to use it.  I'll post some Cintiq work on Wednesday for review.

I'm getting back into the swing of things now. Yay!

Dave Justus and his lovely wife came over this weekend and we talked about getting Filthy Habit among other things back on track and out the door.  I did some sketching, he did some bitching and we all learned he freaking blows at video games.  Not just a little bit either, he's like the Sultan of Suck at it... at least that's what we heard.  He did not give us a demonstration of his horrid abilities.

Webcomics...

I've got so many comic projects I want to do and so little time to do them, I've been giving a lot of thought to turning one of my projects into a "long-form" webcomic.  A subject that is currently being discussed at length on the Panel and Pixel forum.  If you are interested in this stuff at all, there is some very cool info in this thread.

The very same thread made me check out Wowio.com again. I've been there before, but couldn't figure out the pricing structure.  Most everything was free, but I didn't understand how long it would be before I had to pay to download a comic.  The answer is NEVER.  Wowio has a whole list of completely free comics to download.  They are paid for with ads and you can only download so many a day/week, but they have some really good stuff on there.  If you like comics, you should really give it a look see.  I mean... it's free quality comics.  What's not to love?

Also how long has Amazon been selling subscriptions to comics?  Am I completely in the dark on this?

I finally got a chance to draw last night!


This is a part of a project I am currently working on.  Hopefully, I will be able to share it with you when it is done.

Half of her body disappears into blackness in the final, so I didn't find it necessary to draw her arm... and yet I still found time to draw her hip/butt... I wonder why that is.