Labels: "Dream Life", Art, av, design, ideas, layouts, media, podcasts, tools and trade, video

Well, i had wanted to be further along with the book than this by now, but a cool 7 page story came across my desk that i could not pass up - it will be in a very very big, high profile book this summer, just had to do it. But just the same, progress on Dream Life, while slowed a bit the last two weeks, has been very gratifying.

This character and the giant woman who appeared in Charlie's dream just before were inspired by some reading about Pablo Picasso i did a while back, and some of the interpretations of his use of the Minotaur and the Maiden motif in his work.

When John and i first worked on this story together years ago [at the time called 'Nuts'] he came up with the idea of a 'blocky thing' that would torment Charlie at different points though the story, play tricks on him and challenge his assumptions. At the time it was a great but unspecific creature, with no described form. I loved the idea of it, but it was always a shady non specific idea at the time for me.

Later when i dusted off those old bits of story we had worked on together and started re-working it into Dream Life, the blocky thing - while a very cool abstract literary idea, was really hard to give form to as a character for the comic.

I tried a lot of different approaches but none of them ever resonated for me that strongly.

It wasn't till reading about Picasso's minotaurs that I worked it out. I forget who it was who wrote the notes that cinched it for me, but their descriptions of what it stood for was exactly dead on for my interpretation of the Blocky Thing.

Labels: "Dream Life", Art, design

Labels: "Dream Life", Art, Comics, design