Liquid Words – the blog of Living Silver

The Little Mermaid remake

We watched soon after learning that our friend worked on the film. As you maybe or may not know, my opinions of these remakes have been hit-or-miss. Some of them were great and had something unique to offer that the original didn’t, The others were akin to a community theater performance of a Broadway production: it’s good because it reminds you of how great the original was.

This movie was the former. The original film was one of those movies that defined a stage of my childhood, where the songs were not just the soundtrack of the film, but of my life. I wanted to be a part of something bigger than what I had, and as I was still shy at that point, I wanted to connect with people in a way more meaningful than what I was capable of. And the original movie captured all of that, propelled by it’s amazing songs and score. It didn’t occur to me until just now, as I write this, that Ariel’s experience of being voiceless mirrored my own. Except she eventually found what she was looking for, so no wonder I enjoyed it so much. I thought this new version did a great job at capturing these elements, but did it differently than the original.

Melissa McCarthy absolutely killed her role as Usual and was just amazing! I had no idea she could sing, and her version of Poor Unfortunate Souls was better than the original. As I recall, I haven’t thought any of the new versions of the songs were better then the original, so kudos to Melissa. The things that I most appreciated about her performance was that she truly played Ursula, and didn’t bring any of her trademark comedic personality to the character. When Jim Carrey did Grinch, or Will Smith did Genie, it was like “here’s the Will version of Genie”. Or, “It’s the Grinch, only he’s wacky and slapstick like Carey”. I didn’t know Melissa played the character while I was watching, and wasn’t even sure if it was her or an actor that looked like her until we got to the credits. And seeing as how the sea witch is one of Disney’s most charismatic, iconic villains, that’s an impressive feat.

One other piece of this new version that warned my heart was the sequence in which Jodie Benson (the original Ariel) handed a dinglehopper to Halle Bailey’s version of the character. Jodie will always be the iconic voice, but Halle is a human face that looks fast more authentic as an actor than any of the theme park versions which try to look like a real life version of animated Ariel. I really works, having an actor of different ethnicity than the original. And despite that, she still looks and feels like her animated counterpart! I was original okay with them not using a white actor simply because Halle looked great as the character. Once I saw the movie, however, I realized the change was far more significant than just one character. They expanded the original theme, of wanting to belong to something foreign, to a literal explosion of other cultures. I’m other words, we’re not just limiting this to mythical creatures anymore: we’re talking about real peoples in the world today. They took Sebastian’s Island accent and used a Caribbean culture as the dominating local culture! They kept Eric anglo, but made it a point to identify him as adopted. And that lead to a depending of his character, as it gives him motivation for his drive to explore. I don’t know any adopted person who hasn’t been curious at some point about their birth parents, especially when their own ethnicity different from the rest of their family. Eric’s character plays a larger, appreciated role in this film, breaking the Disney tradition of “generic hottie” romantic interests. Flounder plays less of a role, Flotsam, Jesom, and Vanessa didn’t even get named, but Scuttle plays a larger role and even gets a musical number(?).

Lastly, and I won’t spoil the ending for anyone reading this who is now Chris too check the film out, but there is a subtle yet significant change during the climax that is well appreciated, and quite honestly should have been done in the original. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Inktober | day eleven

There’s a story behind this one. At work, snacks appear randomly in the workroom. People have accused the Clinic Manager of placing them there, but he denies being the one who brought them. What he does, though, is claim that the snacks were left there by a snack criptid. So when the prompt for today was “snacks”, I knew that I should attempt to illustrate what our particular snack criptid looks like. Of course, this is just a guess, as no one has ever seen the criptid before.

This one was done on an iPad using Procreate.

A fantasy beast, with the head of a chicken, the arms of a sloth, the torso of a snake, and the wings of a dragon fly is reaching out to snacks that are placed on a table.

Inktober | day ten

I made it to day ten! This one was a fun one to do. I never do scenery, so it used a photo for some ideas. I didn’t straight reference it, but I wasn’t also making plants and rocks up out of my imagination, like I normally do. The prompt was “nomadic, so I just put an unhoused guy traveling with his companion. When I run, I like to get away from the neighborhoods and find trails in the unincorporated lands. More and more often, I see people like this guy. I figured I’d try to capture the adventurous piece of his life.

I used a brush that was thicker than I would have liked, but it ended up working well with the mood of the scene.

We see a backdrop mountains meets short tresses and shrubs sprawling across the level lower ground. An unhoused man is seen in the lower left corner, pushing his shopping cart full of his belongings. His dog follows behind him.

Inktober | day nine

With a prompt like “sun”, you knew that Krypton’s last son was the first thing that came to mind. I was not happy with this drawing at all; I pushed through the pencils, opting not to fix any of the mistakes, as it was “good enough”. And then when it came to inking, I pushed through those quickly, as well. I am finding that I am spending too long on each of these- I should be pumping out at least two a day. Instead, I’m spending more than one day on single drawings.

As an example of a mistake: I drew the picture with the intention of having a giant sun lighting Superman from bottom left corner. I messed up and accidentally put shadow too far to the left, meaning that I now needed to move the sun to the right hand corner, making it necessary to shrink it as well. It’s not fair to call that light a “sun” anymore, so now it’s just a giant light that he’s flying over.

Once I fixed a lot of things in the inks, I’m happier with the results. This is one of the few drawings that I’ve done for this project that I want to add color to. So expect to see this one return. Also, my wife suggested that I add stars via Procreate, and I like how they came out. I am also proud of the “S”, as I drew it and inked it completely freehand (no tools or rulers used).

Superman is hoovering in the air in front of a backdrop of stars across the night sky. Below him is a bright light, that lights him from below.

Inktober | day eight

I have been getting bored of the prompts, as they all have a travel/exploration theme. When I saw that today’s prompt was “hike”, I immediate knew that I would draw something related to football, simply to escape the pull to draw yet another person exploring a landscape.

Needless to say, I wasn’t thrilled with the subject (in my mind, sports are for playing, not drawing), but I think I was able to find an approach that kept me interested. I originally hated the drawing, but I did all of the texture and shading directly in ink. I really enjoy working with brush and ink; this drawing was a mixture of that and ink pen.

A football player is hunched over, holding a football to the grass in front of him. Behind him, the legs of the quarterback can be seen.

Inktober | day seven

The prompt for this day was “passport”. My thought was a person passing between countries, and I drew a casually dressed guy hoping over a gigantic barbed wire fence. I intentionally wanted him to contrast the grossness of the fence.

Drawing the fence itself was a pain: I originally used a brush to ink that part, but it was too hard to keep the lines as consistent as I needed them to be for something as uniform as a fence. The problem with this, is that it’s hard to create depth using a line of uniform thickness, and I wanted to some dimension to convey of the scale of the fence. I was surprised that I was able to do this to a degree.

A young man is vaulting over a tall, barbed wire fence, as one would expect to see along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Inktober | day six

The prompt for this day was “trek”. Originally, my plan was to draw a space ship inspired by Star Trek. As I drew, however, it became a smaller ship, and soon an exo-suit. I drew the arm pieces, and got bored with all of the tech, so I decided to just have his regular legs sticking out of the bottom. I know it doesn’t make physics sense, but I like the final result.

A man wears an exo-suit, and is walking on a rocky surface. His suite is bulky, and has wheels that reach the ground at the end of his arms. The suit does not cover his legs, and he instead wears jeans.

Inktober | day five

I don’t know if I’m catching up, but at least I’m posting daily. For this prompt, “binoculars”, I chose to work on one of my weaknesses: consistency across the same character in different drawings. It’s an essential piece of being a comic artist or cartoonist when using “Sequential Art”, as Will Eisner named it. So I used the prompt to practice it. The wink is my blatant acknowledgement that I’m weak at it.

A cartoon owl perched on a branch is drawn as if seen through both lens of a pair or binoculars. The owl looks the same through each lens, with the exception that owl seen through the right lens is winking.

Inktober | day four

I really didn’t feel up to drawing today, but I pushed myself. I’m four drawing behind now, and I took too long to do this. I should have sketched out something quicker. This was my second drawing using the iPad to ink. It still feels like cheating to me.

I also chose the wrong ink style for the drawing I was trying to do. Maybe because I was lazy, and looking to do something quick? I did slick, 90’s comic book style hatching when I should have done something more textured and nuanced to capture the creature I was trying to illustrate. I’m playing around with designs for a fungus-type creature for one of my stories: not exactly something you define with slick lines. Whatever. It’s done, and that’s all that I care about.

Oh, and the prompt was “exotic”. I figure that a fungus person is exotic enough by my own definition.

A creepy looking mushroom character is depicted heavily in shadows.

Inktober | day three

I’m working on catching up. Over the weekend, I worked with my best friend and partner in crime on our superhero comic book. In that work session, I finalized the design of one of the important early characters: The Recluse. To finish of the drawing session, I did a fast ink drawing to share as my Day 3 drawing.

The inspiration was “boots”. Since we were working on costume designs, and superheros tend to wear boots, I thought this fit well with the prompt.

I was working with a brand new brush, and I didn’t quite have the feel for it yet. It kept behaving in ways that I was expecting. This is also the first time in over a year that I’ve inked with a brush. Despite all that, I’m not disappointed with how it came out.