The missing shoot and the current goings on.

Ola folks,

Updates have been a bit sparse of late but we assure you we are hard at work and plan to continue to update the blog more and more as time permits. What's all the fuss? Well, we're still negotiating a deal relating to EBEJEEBIES and it appears we might be nearing the end of talks hopefully we can get cracking soon. We're not holding out on posting, we've just had nothing to report... yet.

Clearly we've been shooting a lot of photos of Detroit. This 2042 Detroit project is turning out to be an important project and we've had nothing but fun developing it so far. The photo shoots have been a complete blast as we've been exploring our city with an attention to detail we never considered before. I thought with this current update I'd talk about one of the past shoots that failed ot get some well deserved attention in the posts here, because it was crazy.

April 11th 2005, the fifth Detroit shoot and the most wacky and surreal by far. This shoot started out innocent enough, beginning in JLA, the tunnel, the spiral tube (now a fav location), and then moving out to the exit near the freeway (see photos below) and then the silliness and strangeness began. The first incident was while we were shooting near the highway, some guy in a van see's Gina and catcalls to her out his window (hey, we don't blame him really). Ok, fine nothing all that odd really except this clown nearly drove his van into the wall, now that would have been a wee little problem trying to explain that one to police. We all had a good laugh, especially Gina, and moved on.

As we progressed deeper into the city we continued to joke, act a tad silly, and just have fun. Walking down the sidewalk we shot the city as we went. As I was just about to shoot a building, I thought was pretty interesting, some guy comes up and says "NO photos, this is government property." I hadn't taken any shots of the building so all good, I didn't realize it was a court building. Gina knew it was and was going to tell me but the court guy intercepted us first, can't remember if he was armed or not which leads me to this...

A ribbed door, with this little window next to it sporting a neon CAUTION sign caught my attention and I began to line up a shot and just then this door opens and out comes a bunch of SWAT guys with bloody machine guns! As soon as they saw my camera they put their hands up in the "No, no you don't. No pictures for you or we'll shoot your ass" gesture. Needless to say I lowered the camera instantly. The idea of getting vented with an M-16 didn't appeal to any of us so we sheepishly walked on in a state of shock and demented amusement. These guys looked intense as the took up stations on either side of the building. What were they doing? Security for large money transfer, pretty simple but unnerving to see. As much as it was intimidating Jeff and I wanted to get some shots of the Penobscot from the corner so Jeff went up to one of the SWAT guys and asked him if it was cool we took some pics so long as we didn't photograph him, he gave us permission, all was well in the world, cepting the heavy artillery out in the open. After some photos we moved on only to walk past the Detroit office of Homeland Security, uhh yeah... we didn't take any pictures, enough guns for the day. It was pretty wild to say the least but we still had fun and it makes for an amusing story I guess. I only wish I'd posted this sooner as my recollection would have been sharper, still it happened pretty much as I described. After all the crazy we rode the People Mover, visited the Guardain, ate some Quiznos with little incident. All in all it was a pretty short shoot but quite a lot of fun and harrowing, well something like that.

Quite a lot of rambling there, all this for an animated TV series development project and finally, after all this time, I'm posting a peek at some artwork for the project (there's now a good deal of art in process soon to be revealed), an image of Vox Kali, based on the apparently dangerous, in the near vacinity of any highway, automotive hazard Miss Stevens. Man that was a crazy day O_O

Below are are a few images taken by me of the April 11th shoot and several great photos taken by Gina, on her camera phone, during some of her trips with us to the city, for a camera phone I think she got some really nice shots. Jeff and I also had another shoot at Comerica Park yesterday but I'd like to compile some of that before I post it. More to come for sure folks. Take care everyone.

And finally, here's a peek, albiet in-process and unfinished, of some image art for the show. What are all the photos about, well this little project. Showing the city in a genuine way is very important to us and it will be reflected more and more in the coming illustrations. Ironically the backgroud on this one is all fiction, I just made it up. Here we have an image of the character Vox Kali, based on Gina Stevens. 

Here we have one of several great photos taken by the fab freeway terror Gina Stevens (A.K.A. Vox Kali in the show character art above). The, again, very spacey Logan's Run-ish Joe Lewis arena tunnel. Mad 60s funky space vibe. Camera phone image.

A nifty shot of me on the People Mover with an omnious fish looming over my head. Photo by Gina, camera phone image. 

A very atmosphereic shot of Jeff on the roof of John King books. Photo by Gina, camera phone image. 

A cool shot of the skylight of the Joe Lewis spiral tube. Groovy light bloom going on through the roof there. This location has such a cool vibe we're more than sure we will have a set piece occur there in the show. Photo by Gina, camera phone image. I dig.

A very cool shot of me shooting from the roof of John King books. This was taken on the first shoot in the city Gina came along. Something about the hazy quality of the images is kinda cool, almost a security cam vibe. Photo by Gina, camera phone image.

A rather nice shot of the JLA spiral tube-tunnel-thing and Jeff shooting 35mm shots of his own. Photo by Gina camera phone image.

I dig this building's crazy cool sculpted walls. The designs are wild. I keep forgetting to check the name of the building though, doh! As you can see we have the gang posing for our pic here. Photo by me, April 11th shoot.

The cover of the next Koncrete album. Time to water the pipe garden, ja. Silliness aside, this is one of several photos taken on the concrete ledge where the JLA spiral tunnel exits. This was a very cool location that the city promptly erected a fence around after our shoot that day. Davecat has the suave going on here, Gina looks startled, might be the fact that some dude almost rolled his van heckling her, craziness. Photo by me, April 11th shoot.

Here we have Gina and Davecat debating who is indeed "bad" (note whimsical graffiti). At press-time we still don't know who won the competition of badness. Let's just say they're both bad, yo... and stuff. Photo by me, April 11th shoot.

Were they abducted, WERE THEY?!!

Hello good infobahn surfing humans, were we abducted indeed?

Did the real EBEs get pissed at us and drag us off to beat us over the heads with some kind of probes cause we made fun of them?

Were we arrested by mammals with badges for various crimes against sensibility and etiquette?!

Did we paint Jeff's mini-van Black with a red stripe on the side thus christening our venture into the world of mercenaries. I'm not gettin' on no plane!

Naaw.

It's been some time, hmmm... A BLOOMIN MONTH to be exact, since the last update! Well, firstly we have been pretty busy on various things, studio related and otherwise and that has delayed some posting here but the primary problem was my good ole PC, oh plucky little PC I love you so as I pummel you insensate. Seriously though, my PC had been doing random shutdowns at increasing frequencies while we, myself and folks with far better computer tech savvy than I will EVER have, attempted to sort out the cause. Anything from the obvious, bad power supply, to chip battery dying, to a virus or trojan. Just when we thought we had solved what might be the problem, the obvious power supply, poof it shut off yet again and blew up my Windows 2000 op system... bugger all. This knocked me out for awhile until I could get a good friend, Mark Dudley of Drunken Style Studios, over to sort out what is causing this. After the sort-en-nin-ing was sorted it was the next best thing in obvious, the bloomin CPU fan bee all full-o-dust, DOH! More puter savvy folks out there are pointing and going, HA HA! I know, I know, I just draw with the things, I don't fix em, Mark on the other hand can so I thank him greatly as I'm up and running, quite smoothly here and things can get back on track. Computers, oui!

Well, what have we been up to? Quite a bit actually. There have been 3 more photo shoots in our fine city of Detroit (see spiffy pics below), all of which were a total blast due to the fact that everyone just had a lot of fun while we went about pointing at stuff like silly tourists snapping images away wildly... "Ohhh, lookie that! Ohh that's cool! Aw man what a sweet building! Lookie, a little tiny car-art-installation-thing. Ewww, this alley smells like..." And there was much rejoicing... yaaaaay! Really though, even with this technically being work, it was more fun than work, a little chaotic, utterly amusing, and just a great time was had. All three shoots were myself, Jeff, Gina, and Davecat (click the link for more info on the trip from Davecat's perspective. He also mentions theNicolet Townhouses which we also shot images of for location setting for his character Dorian in the show) and we hashed out a lot of good stuff as far as ideas for the project.

So far there hasn't been any art posted outside the initial rough concept piece of John King books, there is art on the way we assure you and we think it will be well worth the wait. Now that I can rest easy with a PC that won't shut off while in Photoshop I've been cranking away at getting some of this art going. We'll show some of it soon.

On the EBEJEEBIES front we're almost at the end of sorting out the paperwork and contracts for our new venture staring out little alien friends. So far this looks VERY promising and when we can pass along the scoop we will. For now I wanted to drop in and give you this update of the goings on so far. Till next time.

This litte guy is just cute, yeah I said it cute. This is something I think our pal Gleeb would rather enjoy cause it looks soft and squishy, like a gummi bear. June 2nd shoot.

The scrubbing bubble looking rather groovy in warm orange tones, note his slimming verticle stripes. Fashionable. This one is rather cool though. Although we've barely scratched the surface of Detroit's graff, something that will be alive and well in the 2042 of this project's setting, we're already becoming rather fond of our little hero, the scrubbing zombie bubble. Keep on keepin' on little fella. June 2nd shoot.

This is just, well, kinda messed up. Here we see Davecat and Gina looking over this scene below. There's some spiffy graff on a rather rundown building, no really, you don't say? And then, further below, a big-ass pile of boxes that someone just decided to, I don't know, dump off the overpass here O_O Better yet, just beyond where I'm standing to shoot this pic the cement wall of the overpass was knocked away so some other group of classy folks could dump even more crap down there. Let's all pitch in and clean up the city kids... riiiiight. June 2nd shoot.

It's good to see the scrubbing bubble representing in Detroit, though I'm rather disturbed to see he has joined the ranks of the undead O_o June 2nd shoot. 

Here we have a fella that's clearly thrilled to show us his pig on a spigot. Isn't it a riot how he's holding up the flaming brisket of his slightly singed friend the pig there. Makes one truly feel alive no?

Uhhh this... kinda speaks for itself. Eastern Market Detroit and the chicken that looks rather threatening looming over this buildings arched entrance. June 2nd shoot.

Ok this one I had to post (from our shoot we just had yesterday, June 2nd), just can't resist. There's an amusing story here beyond the obvious. To the left we see Jeff Lilly, our intrepid scribe of EBEJEEBIES and this new Detroit TV series project, to the right we see our good friends Gina Stevens and Davecat looking rather amused, photo by me also amused. Clearly we have a man caged here, thwarted from joining his commrades but beyond that we have some utterly assinine city planning at work for you see that sidewalk Jeff is on leads to A BLOOBY IRON FENCE! Huh? Yes folks, he's on the road to nowhere. Classic.

Some Detroit graff. 3 little fellas, or... maybe the same little fella with a serious eye condition. I dig these little guys. 

Here's a shot of the spiffy art deco Elwood Grill, situated right near Comerica park. It was moved from the corner of Elizabeth street and Woodward Avenue (which is where it's mane comes from, El-Wood) then restored thus saving it from demolition. It's a good thing too cause it's a rather cool piece of deco Americana. Note, colorful little art-auto sitting there on the sidewalk.

The crazy Joe Lewis Logan's Run-tube-thing (see photos from previous post) exits near the freeway here. On one of our previous shoots we took some photos from the other side of the fence that has magically appeared thus killing the fun we once had. Where is the fun... where? We found it amusing that they put this fence up since our last shoot wondering at whether we had anything to do with it. Maybe it was that dude in the truck that whistled at Gina behind this fence erecting, the fear of a multi car accident due to mid-lifer men who can't keep their eyes on the road. In a wacky Yoda voice, "Rock on G, true power you have, yes hmmmm ?"

One, of many, little auto art instalations that are scattered throughout the city. Their paints range from appearing much like a real car to wildly colorful and abstract. It was fun finding them all over the city. There's even one that looks like a Tex Avery cartoon character and it's singing into a parking meter, cAraaazy.