Thursday, April 13, 2006

Sign Your Name

Yep. It's officially official......

Silent Devil to Publish Caption Box’s Empty Chamber

Los Angeles, CA: Silent Devil has entered into an agreement to publish Empty Chamber, a two-issue, action-espionage mini-series from A. David Lewis, Jason Copland and Caption Box. Empty Chamber centers on a conspiracy theorist and his mercenary protector; they are the country’s only hope in stopping a renegade American general from committing a puzzling genocide – one without firing a bullet, releasing a bomb or shedding one drop of blood.

Empty Chamber features writer A. David Lewis (The Lone and Level Sands at Archaia Studios Press, Mortal Coils and Silent Devil’s webcomic, Out of Sequence), artist Jason Copland (Hoarse and Buggy’s Western Tales of Terror) and grayscales by Jennifer Rodgers (Buzzboy and The Lone and Level Sands). “After working with Jason on Mortal Coils, I brought the idea of Empty Chamber to Christian Beranek at Silent Devil. I wanted to do a project that was not only fun and exciting, but would appeal to the sort of broad audience that enjoys 24,” says Lewis.

Silent Devil plans to release the first installment of Empty Chamber this fall. Visit Caption Box’s website at
http://www.captionbox.net/, Jason Copland’s website at http://www.jasoncopland.com/ and Silent Devil’s website at http://www.silentdevil.com/ for future updates on Empty Chamber.

And, I'd like to add, that the Empty Chamber Production Blog will indeed be coming soon. It hit a bit of a snag but it's fully recovered and is getting ready to roll as we speak! More on that very soon!

Last post's title was a song title from:
Reach The Beach by The Fixx

I was never really a fan of the band, I admit that, but they did have a few catchy tunes. The video for this song was pretty cool, too...... for the time it came out, that is.

Thursday, April 06, 2006

One Thing Leads To Another

Since I got a good amount of feedback the last time I did this, I'm posting another step-by-step look at another one of the panels that will grace the Empty Chamber book when it is released later this year.
As you can see, the inked version is pretty faithful to the rough version, but there were a few changes made in the penciling stage that needed to happen......
  • The image and angle of the first monitor was changed so that it was more in keeping with the previous panel.
  • The headrest of the chair was removed so that the second monitor wasn't so lost in the background.
  • The characters' shirt changed from black to white so it won't get lost in the background.
  • A monitor from the far right-hand side of the panel, that was going to be in the immediate foreground, was removed

I needed to have the last monitor showing the "progress bar" and didn't want to sacrifice any of the first 2 monitor images ( the 3rd image had to be there, too, so I couldn't change that one). I probably would like to have had something in the foreground but it might have just made the panel too difficult to read..... so I left it, as is.

Last post's title was a song title from:
Comes A Time by Neil Young

Neil serves up a much anticipated acoustic-based album touched with his country/folk leanings. "Look Out For My Love" is the album's stand out song, for me.

Saturday, April 01, 2006

Goin' Back

There's a line in the Bruce McCulloch song, "Doors", that goes:

"And if you want to be a Doors fan, don't just go buy a greatest hits album. Greatest Hits albums are for housewives and little girls."

And, although slightly misogynistic, its' sentiment does sum up my feeling about people buying greatest hits albums instead of diving in and getting actual albums from that artist. Or should I say it did sum up my feeling. It's come to my attention that I may have become the exact music consumer I used to hold in distain, back when I worked in the music retail industry. Here are the last 3 albums I've purchased recently:

Chicago - Greatest hits (Chicago IX)
Beasty Boys - Solid Gold Hits
April Wine - Greatest Hits

Do you see my dilemma (aside from my musical selections)? I'm on my way to becoming that person. Usually, I buy greatest hits albums to sample the overall body of work of that particular artist/band in hopes that it will give me an insight as to where I can enter that artists'/band's catalogue comfortably. Case in point, I bought a Roxy Music collection that spanned the entirety of the band's output and, through listening to the disc, found that I was very interested in the early material but cared much less for the later stuff. With that knowledge, I began picking up the older part of their catalogue, albums like For Your Pleasure, Country Life, Siren and their self-titled first album.

My purchase of the Chicago Greatest Hits disc was made with this purpose in mind, as well (mind you, this hits collection focuses on the early part of their career). After listening to it a number of times, I can tell you right now that I will be purchasing at least one of their first few albums. Truth be told, I love the whole disc from start to finish!

My purchases of the Beastie Boys and April Wine, however, were not made with such motivation in mind. With these discs, I was looking to just get the hits. Simple as that. I will say that I already own a Beastie Boys album (Check Your Head) and really enjoy it, but I just couldn't bring myself to buy the rest of their catalogue just to get the last few songs of theirs that I know I like (ie. No Sleep Till Brooklyn, Hey Ladies, Sabotage and Intergalactic).

The April Wine, on the other hand...... chalk that one up to the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) and it's 35% Canadian content regulations. 35% of all material Canadian radio stations broadcast must have Canadian origins. So, due to the lack of a significant number of Canadian performers, the radio listeners of Canada were give the same material from the same few bands year after year after year. Thus implanting an affection for bands like Chilliwack, Trooper, Loverboy and April Wine through constant repetition. So the bastards finally wore me down and I found myself wanting to soak up the sounds of my youth.

Who said you can't go back?

Last post's title was a song title from:
Sin After Sin by Judas Priest

This is a great album... and I'm not saying that just because it has a cover of a Joan Baez song.