Updates, set dressing for Maniacs and shut up you

If you are one of the 3 people who follows this blog, I thought I would drop in and give you an update.

I’ve got a few commissions on the ‘to do’ list right now, which is good because we always need a cash infusion. Some are for Goodman Games DCC RPG adventures, some are for Barrowmaze 2 (I don’t know when that is coming out, but yours truly did the cover and some monster illustrations so far; more to come)… and there are some others. Plus I am still doing the ‘drawing a day’ notebook (sample from earlier in the year at right — some are better than this, many more are pretty uninspired).

Because the non-profit I was working for has had some funding difficulties, I have had to go back on the job market, and that is eating up a lot of my time and energy. I’ve got some feelers out and have been trying to network; I’m looking for a production/creative position in Detroit Metro; I have photoshop and Indesign and Creative Suite skills plus a pack of good references, but I have never been the best self-promoter and I suck at networking plus no one seems to be hiring so doing the job market thing is an uphill battle.

I was watching the 1980 movie, Maniac, the other night. After feeling beaten down by the job hunt, there is nothing like watching a movie about a fat, pockmarked guy who lives a Norman-Bates life in a tiny, shitty apartment and who goes out at night and kills women and scalps them to help cheer you up. In the killer’s apartment, in addition to all the mannikins adorned with women’s scalps (it’s like Neverland Ranch in there), there is an abstract drawing on one wall that looks really cool and I was trying to figure out where it was from and how I could get a better look at it. I was pausing the video but resolution was low and it was slightly out of focus — it looked like a drawing of polyps and entrails in the style of this fucked up Alberto Giacometti sculpture that I like, but in 2d and in color — like something that someone drew when they were on acid and then their mom threw it out and someone from the movie found it and said, “This looks suitably creepy; let’s hang it in the maniac’s apartment.” I was hoping to find a still from the movie where you can see it and post it to the web and (hopefully) get an ID from someone who knows these things, but no luck so far. Who knows? It might have been something that the setdresser picked up in a flea market (I met someone who does set dressing for films, video and photo shoots, and she said that in the 1980s she could get unbelievably great stuff at mid-western thrift markets; she used to fly in from NYC and they would just buy shit and ship it back to NYC for prop use… since ebay, though, her ‘golden days’ of thrifting are over). What the artwork was and where it came from will probably remain an intriguing mystery. I think in the still of the film posted here of the Maniac looking at the newspaper, the drawing in question would be above the bookshelf with the dolls on it behind him.

That is all. Now I have to shut up and get back to work.