Something to Cry About - An interview with comic creator Julz

The most tenebrous of Halloween greetings to you all!
To mark the occasion I've prepared an interview with Julz, a comic making lady from Cape Town, South Africa, and the artist and writer for the glorious spookycute webcomic Something to Cry About.

Something to Cry About focusses (so far) on three young ladies of the goth persuasion, cheerful Serah Tonin, sharp-witted Medi Kate, and main character Anne Aesthetic, a somewhat moody and introspective lass, who is dealing with the recent ending of a romance. Dealing with it very much like this:


I stumbled across this comic a few weeks ago purely by chance (I was browsing through someone's twitter friends and came across the StCA twitter, and my curiosity was piqued by the twitter avatar), and I can say in all confidence that I'm very pleased I did.
As someone who is myself very much a hopeless romantic (the operative word in my situation being "hopeless") I can really relate to what she's going through. Anne's starting to come around a bit though. Thankfully she has the aforementioned two friends to help her through this. The fact that its currently Halloween has probably helped her state of mind as well.
Personally, I'm a huge fan of the look of this comic. I love the big pupil-less eyes, the girls' various outfits, and the little details included within the comic, such as boxes of tissues being marked (t)issues. And despite it being rooted firmly within the aesthetics of "goth culture", the comic is very lively and genuinely funny. It has a playful sort of humour which I love to bits.
So I decided to email Julz and ask if she'd like to do an interview, to which she agreed to. I then sat down and tried to come up with some interview questions that were interesting to both Julz and anyone who might read the interview, and that would also make for an informative interview experience. Julz graciously emailed me back with some mighty fine answers.
But enough of my rambling and gushing. On with the interview!

Chloé Kovac: By the look of your site, and the subject matter contained within, its apparent that you have an affinity for the, shall we say, "spookier" things in life. What lead you down the path of spookydom? Was there a pivitol moment in your life that led you towards this particular appetence? Or was it a combination of things?

Julz: I was always a bit of a ghoulish kid, fascinated by anything spooky, even if it gave me nightmares. I always loved how ghost stories and the idea of monsters hiding in the closet stirred my imagination and gave me the shivers. I hope it doesn't sound too clichéd, but an awesome moment for me was the first time I watched Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas. It was just the perfect combination of weirdly eerie and totally loveable, and I've been smitten with Mr. Burton's work - and the spooky/cute aesthetic - ever since.


CK: Its always good to get a creator's thoughts on their comic. How would you sum up Something To Cry About?

J: I'm hoping it's something that will make people laugh and see the lighter side of some of life's big, dramatic, heartbreaking moments. And sometimes it's just an excuse for me to whine about something!


CK: How do you go about constructing each page? How long does a typical page take to do?

J: My methods are really primitive! Originally I wanted to do the whole comic by hand, but after scanning a couple of my character images and re-drawing them in FreeHand, I found the result was much smoother and easier to work with. So once I decide what's going into a comic, I draw the characters in their various poses in FreeHand, then drop those images into my PhotoShop template, which includes the 4 panels and their borders. The amount of time it takes depends on the content of that comic - the quickest so far has been 1 or 2 hours, and the longest took about 7 hours.


CK: How long have you been developing this comic?

J: I've been drawing pictures of Anne for a couple of years now, but she never had a name or personality. I started thinking seriously about working on a webcomic about a year ago, and eventually came up with the title, concept and characters in April this year. I spent a couple of weeks working on the first few strips and getting the site set up, before launching in May.


CK: Is this your first comic, or have you worked on other comics prior to this?

J: No, this is my first. Although I do have some rather insane and illegible childhood attempts stashed away somewhere.


CK: Besides drawing StCA, what are your other interests? Do you find these extra curricular interests infuse the energy of your comic in a helpful way?

J: I'm a graphic designer and copywriter, so I'm in a fortunate position where my work and hobbies blur into each other. I love drawing, scribbling and doodling, which sometimes helps me find the inspiration I need. Sometimes it helps to get away from my desk and get some exercise - I'm lucky enough to live close to the beach, so taking a walk there really clears my head. I'm also a voracious reader; beautiful prose often inspires me, and I'm totally mad about comic book art. Occasionally I also paint truly awful paintings and bake disastrous cupcakes - which really are worth crying about :)


CK: Do you have any creative pals and/or people who you find influential that you'd like to include some links to in this interview?

J: There are so many awesome webcomics and talented artists out there! Check out StCA's 'Links for the Lonely' section for a list of my favourites. Two webcomics I'm really loving at the moment are Eerie Cuties
(http://www.eeriecuties.com/), an adorable horror-comedy about teenage monsters in high school, and Evil Diva, (http://www.evildivacomics.com/) about a super-cute little demon who just wants to be good. Both of them have that spooky/cute combination that I love.


So there you have it folks. A little bit of background info on the creator and her creative process, which should serve you well when you go and have a look at the eldritch delights contained within the Something to Cry About website.

Chloé

[Something to Cry About © Julz. Images used with permission]

A Couple Of Creepy Animations.

Halloween is drawing near, so what better time to celebrate with a couple of fine filmic examples of spookystuff?
With that in mind, I've decided to post a couple of clips of a creepy nature. Creepy as in "designed to give the viewer goosebumps" not creepy as in "old man lurking around a park wearing nothing but a long raincoat" creepy. Hopefully its dark where you are so you can turn off the lights, put on some headphones and turn up the volume in order to enjoy the full effect. Mwooohahahahhaaa!

First up Smile, is a short CGI enhanced student film from Israel by Yuval Markovich and Noam Abta, produced at Bezalel Academy of Arts & Design in Jerusalem some time ago. Warning: the preceding link is to their showreel, which features various instances of at times rather graphic animated violence.



Egads, that cat!

Personally, I regard Smile as being a fine example of creeping paranoia in action.

Next up is a trailer for the excellent 2007 French animated film Fear[s] of the Dark (Peur[s] du noir) which is all kinds of gorgeous.



If you enjoyed that I highly recommend you track down a copy of it. Its masterfully constructed and works on a number of visceral levels, really worming its way into one's subconscious in a delicious fashion. You can read a bit more about it here.
Official website (in English) is here.
And (at the time of writing) you can see a segment of it on youtube right here.



☺ Chloé

Movie Remakes - What the F*ck For?

There are three main reasons why movies are remade. One is money. Two is that the producers/director/writer wants to present a new twist to an older version of a film. The third, and possibly stupidest in my opinion, is when a foreign movie is remade in order to be more palatable to the audience of the country(ies) remaking it. For example, the huge proliferation of Asian (predominantly Japanese) horror films remade for Western audiences.

Before I go any further with this post I'd like to point out that in most cases I hate remakes, and believe that in many cases they do a great disservice to the original movies. Having stated that though, there are a bunch of notable exceptions to this opinion of mine. John Carpenter's The Thing and the David Cronenberg directed 1986 remake of The Fly are two examples of remakes which I love to bits.
But for every well crafted movie that takes the original source material and does something truly outstanding with it there are a myriad of insipid, drivel riddled and asinine remakes of classic films that really, really fuckin' irk me, that drag the good name of the original film through the mud, and generally serve to make the culture of which I am a part just that more stupid. I mean, the Shutter remake? WTF was that? The original was genuinely unsettling, but the remake is about as scary as a plate of Grandma's scones.

Now me, I ain't no film snob. Sure, I love a lot of obscure, hard to find, esoteric, "arty" and non-mainstream/commercial films. A lot of films with (gasp!) subtitles, that aren't in English. A lot of films with subject matter/approaches that aren't considered to be all that palatable to a lot of folks. But there's a vast array of popular and commercially focused films which I love also.
I could say in all seriousness that I'm somewhat obssessed with films. I adore the act of watching movies, to me its not at all a passive experience. I get very wrapped up in it. A really good film to me is a life altering experience. A really good film can change a person, affect them deeply in their souls. A quality film sticks in one's mind long after its been viewed, rolling about in the conscious/subconscious. A good film can be watched time and time again, rewarding the viewer by revealing new elements/layers/things to discover about it with each subsequent viewing. A good film is a richly rewarding experience, and I spend a fair old amount of time and energy seeking out films to get into, and add to my collection, which is... large.
So in short, I'm very passionate about the medium of film.
And this is why the subject of cack-handed remakes raises my ire more than most.

Now, its no big revelation that studios can oftentimes be a pretty fuckin' lazy lot. There's the mode of thinking that goes like this; "hey, that movie was pretty successful. If we remake it its quite likely the remake will also be successful! Its a surefire winner! Why risk money on something new when we can just play it safe and redo something that was a proven winner the first time round?" Well, studio executive people, that original movie you feel would be so bankable if was remade, in the majority of cases it was the first version of that movie. Which means it wouldn't exist to be remade if a bunch of jerks had decided it wasn't worth putting money into to making in the first place.

I know all about the art vs commerce quagmire. I know how risky it can be for a studio to invest capital into anything that they don't have a good idea will make them money, or at least make back the money they invested in it. But Jesus Christ, if we just go on remaking films, or making films that are of a similar premise to other films (a la that whole "swapping bodies" pack of films; 1988's Vice Versa [itself a remake of the 1948 film directed by Peter Ustinov], 2003's Freaky Friday [a remake of the 1976 film. Notice a trend developing here folks?] the list goes on and goes on further still), then the medium of film itself just slides further and further on down into bland and homogenised rubbish, with all the excitement, entertainment and thought provocation sucked clean out of it. Then you may as well just give up and go watch television. Do we really want this to happen? Really?
So movie remakes are a (sometimes) financially successful enterprise. Whoop-dee-fuckin-do. Its pretty damned lame if you ask me.


So, on to the second main reason films are given the remake treatment, which is the old "filmmakers wish to present an updated/new interpretation of/alternate take on an existing film" scenario. Some of the films in this category are excellent, such as the two films I mentioned at the start of this post. Some are completely pointless, such as Gus Van Sant's almost shot-for-shot reamake of Hitchcock's filmic interpretation of the Robert Bloch novel Psycho. Most are pretty dire. Some of these remakes are made by the same directors or producers or writers (or a combination thereof) as the original (or the version of the film that immediately preceded it). For instance, the director of the 1986 The Fly, David Cronenberg, is the guy who's attatched to direct and potentially write the new remake. Whatever dude. The version of the film you did in the eighties is one of my all time favourite films, but if you think you can improve on it... Will you be inviting Jeff Goldblum back to reprise his pivotal role as Seth Brundle, as Goldblum's performance was one of the main things that made the movie so awesome? Will Geena Davis also be in this new version? Surely she doesn't have anything better to do at the moment right?
Please oh please don't screw it up Cronenberg. You don't want to break my wee heart now do you?
OK, enough rhetorical questions aimed at a guy who won't ever be reading this blog. Let's move on to the third main reason films get remade.

The "audience won't understand this/won't like to bother reading subtitles/are a pack of xenophobes" notion. Plenty of film remakes in this category. The American remakes of The Ring, and later The Grudge are both popular examples of this. Interestingly, Takashi Shimizu, the guy who directed the Japanese The Grudge (Ju-on 呪怨) series of movies also directed the American version. And Hideo Nakata, the director of the two Japanese Ring films, went on to direct the American remake of The Ring 2. He's also on board to direct the American The Ring 3, but who gives a fuck, right?
There are many many films out there that deal with the classic Japanese horror trope of the "vengeful ghost", including the original version of that movie Shutter that I mentioned before, though that was a Thai film.
Actually, if I may digress briefly, if you're a fan of those "creepy Asian ghost" films, I highly recommend you check out Honogurai mizu no soko kara (仄暗い水の底から or Dark Water in English), its very well done and is deliciously creepy. Of course, it too got the American remake treatment, but the less said about that the better.


I ask myself why there are so many non-Western films that get remade by Western film companies. OK, so a lot of people seem to dislike reading subtitles if the movie happens to not be in English. But a lot of such films also have versions that are dubbed into English. Personally I prefer to watch a film with subtitles if the film is in a language that I don't speak. Preserves the vibe of the film much better I reckon. But that's beside the point. No, the main reasons for the remake approach in this case, as far as I can figure out, are either that its just generally harder to find foreign films in places such as Blockbuster et al, and that a big chunk of the Western populace (I'm looking at YOU, mainstream America) really can't see past their own country and its culture, and are just plain uninterested in seeing a film that stars people from another country, especially a country that doesn't have English as its main language. Either they don't understand the culture of the the country where the original films come from, or they plain just don't wanna know about films from places they're not at all interested in familiarising themselves with. There's also a whole bunch of people out there who (whether or not they like to admit it) are a bunch of pathetic racists too, but let's not get into that today.
But take a film from overseas, remake it with a couple of popular actors (or at least actors that the audience is familiar with) and voilà, people will part with their hard earned to see it. It doesn't matter to them that the remake is often a watered down version of the film its redoing. These people won't ever bother to check out the original so they're unaware of what they might be missing.
Not that I'm saying that I think all the original foreign films that are remade are good films and all the remakes are bad films. But generally speaking I have a good point here eh?

There's a film that was made in South Korea back in 2006 called The Host (괴물 - Gwoemul) which I happen to think is bloody brilliant, and is one of my very favourite monster films ever. It was a huge hit in its native country, and yep, looks like its gonna get the Western remake treatment. If you, like me, happen to think the US remake of The Ring was pretty average, and the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels to be exercises in ham-fisted twattery, then you'll understand why I take such umbrage at the notion of Gore Verbinski quite possibly lousing up one of my favourite films. He's only slated to produce this remake, but still.
The point is, The Host is an awesome film as it is. It doesn't need to be remade*. It set a new record in South Korean box office performance during its opening weekend. By the end of its theatrical run in South Korea it had sold over 13 million tickets, in a country with a population of 48.5 million. This from wikipedia: With a limited American release starting March 11, 2007, The Host garnered very positive reviews, with a 92% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes. In addition it was ranked one of the top films of 2007 on Metacritic with a score of 85. The key words here being "limited American release". Its not a film that deals with esoteric elements of South Koran culture. You could take the plot and apply it to any country and culture. If it had been promoted more in the USA it would have done far better. I guarantee it. I'm psychic, remember?
*But then the studio remaking it won't stand to make any money off of it now will they?


Can you imagine a band you really like releasing an album, then a different band re-records the same album and releases it and a whole bunch of people go and buy the remake album because its more palatable? Of course, there are cover songs all over the place, but a whole album? Oh, wait...
OK, what if people started rewriting classic books? Umm, ahh.
And of course there are the vast amount of copies of paintings and such out there.

Will there be any place for original creative works in the future? Will everything be a copy of a copy of a copy? Will our cultural artefacts be homogenised to Big Mac™ proportions? I dunno about you, but such a scenario, as far fetched as it may seem at this point in history, scares the living daylights outta me.

Well guys, I reckon I've said all I need to say on this subject today. Thanks for bearing with me while I had this little rant. I don't usually like to get up on a soapbox about things to this extent, but this is a subject that is very dear to my heart, and quite possibly something far more enjoyable to read than other topics that really piss me off, such as humankind's intolerance to its fellow humans and so forth.

To finally ram home the points I have been trying to make today, here is a three page list of List of 60 Upcoming Horror Remakes. That's right, sixty. And those are just the films that go under the horror category (I dunno about Total Recall being on that list though, its more of a sci-fi thriller innit). A big chunk of these films are films that I believe to be quite fine just the way they are thankyouverrahmuch.

Read it and fucking weep.

⊙﹏⊙ Chloé

Kiwi!

Kiwi (kē'wē, pronounced [kiːwiː], "kee-wee").
The kiwi bird. Flightless, small, ancient. Endemic to and national symbol of New Zealand. And sadly, due to various factors such as introduced predators and the increasing loss of their natural habitat due to human activity, on the endangered species list.
I was born and raised in New Zealand and I've only seen a kiwi in the flesh once. In a zoo. Mind you I don't tend to spend any time in the sorts of places one might come across a kiwi in the wild. I have a great deal of affection for the ol' kiwi bird. It was walking about in New Zealand for far, far longer than any of my species have been.
Here are a few facts about the kiwi:

• The kiwi is the smallest member of the family of birds called ratites. This group includes some of the worlds biggest birds like the emu, ostrich, as well the extinct moa and the elephant birds of Madagascar.
• Kiwi cannot fly (I assume the great majority of you already knew that), and lives in burrows on the ground. Like all ratites they have no keel on the breastbone to anchor wing muscles, and barely any wings.
• They have a highly developed sense of smell, unusual in a bird, and are the only birds with nostrils at the end of their long beak.
• They're about the size of a chicken and live in pairs. They weigh from 2 3/4 to 9 pounds (1.25 to 4 kg). Once bonded, a male and female kiwi tend to live their entire lives as a monogamous couple.
• Kiwi eggs can weigh up to one quarter the weight of the female. The kiwi lays the biggest egg in proportion to its size of any bird in the world, roughly six times the size of that of a domestic chicken egg.
• The kiwi has a life span of up to 40 years.
• They're predominantly nocturnal, but in areas that are protected from predation they're quite often seen about in the daytime.
• They are featured on the New Zealand one dollar coin.
• Kiwi eat small invertebrates, seeds, grubs, and many varieties of worms. They also may eat fruit, small crayfish, eels and amphibians.
• There are five accepted species of kiwi (one of which has four sub-species), plus one to be formally described. The five accepted species are the Great Spotted Kiwi (or Roroa), the Little Spotted Kiwi, the Okarito Brown Kiwi (or Rowi), the Tokoeka and the North Island Brown Kiwi.
• The plural of kiwi is kiwi, not kiwis. Just so you know I'm not making any kiwi typos in this article.


The kiwi bird is a New Zealand cultural constitution. To the extent that the colloquial name for New Zealanders is "kiwi". When referring to New Zealand people as kiwis the s is used for the plural.
Back in the day before New Zealand television channels broadcast 24 hours a day, the clip below was played every night just prior to the end of the day's broadcast. Its ingrained in my childhood memory as deeply as Santa Claus.



D'awww, wasn't that lovely? This animation was played on Television One and Television Two between 1981 and 1994, with its last screening on October 19, 1994. I guess the kiwi and cat slept elsewhere on rainy nights. Its a fine example of humankind's proclivity to gloss over the realities of life with cutsieness. In reality of course, that cat would have eaten that kiwi the fuck up. Surely I was not the only child to have grown up with that particular thought in my mind about that animation.

Go to any tourist shop in New Zealand and you're guaranteed to find the kiwi's likeness plastered over all sorts of things, Tshirts, postcards, buttons, kiwi plushies of various sizes and so on. Its image is all over New Zealand really, from business logos to anti-littering signs to coats of arms and all manner of artwork.


One other thing I've noticed about the kiwi over the years is that it has a funny sort of pull on people. It tends to crop up now and then in some pretty random instances, not just in New Zealand but internationally. Like this drawing by a certain California based cartoonist for instance.

And it is with that in mind that I'd like to present these two animations. The first one is by this fellow here. At the time of writing its had 23,773,920 views. Wow I say, wow:


Pretty poignant huh?


And then.. then there's this fucked up thing:


Heeee hee hee that wee kiwi he so hyper. There are 3 seasons worth of these 4 minute animations. A kiwi in an animated Italian cooking show.
Fucking.
Random.

Hopefully you've enjoyed this brief write-up on the kiwi, a critter that is really quite dear to my heart.


And with that, I shall leave the final word to the kiwi itself.
You uhh, might wanna turn your speakers down a bit prior to clicking that link.
Chloé