Fun with Zombies

A Few Weeks Later

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I’ve had an incredibly busy few weeks, reason #1 why I skipped out on blog posts the last few weeks.

I did have time to put together this collage. A zombie walk of sorts. I’ve been doing a lot of work in Photoshop lately. Also finished up some illustrations for a book by another author and am trying to format the book with the best illustration sizes and such. Trying to figure out images in eBooks has been my latest challenge. Sure it sounds easy, but getting them a small and readable size is not the easiest, especially considering how illustrations or photos are so different depending on how they are created.

Now that I’ve bored you, let me bore you some more. I added a new blog post to the ArmLin House blog. Note that my editor and artist (non-horror related.) name is Wendy Spurlin. How to Standardize the Punctuation in a Manuscript Before Submitting or Formatting Your Book is all about what it says. It’s a pet peeve of mine to read a book and find all different types of punctuation like straight quotation marks vs slanted, the later being the correct format for a published book.

I watched Five Nights at Freddy’s, and it’s a fun horror movie for kids as well as adults. I added kids because I found it very light horror, and one of the main characters is a child. I’ve decided to continue watching horror movies I haven’t seen because the holiday season has begun and there will be plenty of themed horror movies to watch. Finding new ones will be challenging though!

Sorry, nothing new on Angels Dark and Dumb other than chapter 2 was handed over for critique. It needs a lot of work. I thought about doing NaNoWriMo this year, but I’m in the middle of too much with ArmLin House, so it didn’t happen.

All I got for ya this time. Have a great week!

The Zombie Stage & Artsy Horror Movie

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This week’s horror collage, although it’s more of a stage scene. I’ve moved to Photoshop, so this is less choppy. I find this corny, but it was a great practice. As an afterthought, I probably should have painted in some mist. My favorite part is the hand at the bottom right. I also like the combination of hues with the teal and orange.

What shall I do next. Unfortunately, I’m not really feeling much Halloween inspiration this year. Not sure why, considering it’s my favorite holiday.

For my Halloween movie/show viewing pleasure this week I watched a really cool movie and Jack Osborne’s Night of Terror. Reminder I’m only watching stuff I’ve never seen. We’re All Going to the State Fair was more of an art/horror piece. Everyone will come away from it with their own interpretation. At first I expected more paranormal activity, but I came away terrified about how people take advantage of each other via the internet. But I’m also more afraid of the living than the dead. Night of Terror was another fun ghost hunting show. I love Portals to Hell, so I loved Jack Osborne’s new show.

All I got for ya. Have a GREAT week!

I Can’t Stop Thinking About Zombies

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Yep, I got zombies on the brain. That’ll tell you how much I love them. Could also be because I started reading Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep?: A Neuroscientific View of the Zombie Brain by Timothy Verstynen and Bradley Voytek. So far it’s blowing my mind on how the brain works. I also did the collage to the right recently. Lots of fun and one of my favorites so far.

Very exciting news on my Amazon followers. I have 44. Okay, not so impressive, but if you had asked me before they added the number to Author Central, I’d have said I likely have only 3. I guess they added it a while back, but I just learned about it. Forced me to also spend some time there, updating my author profile. I’m not a huge fan of the new look and feel of the author pages though. Oh well.

And speaking of being an author, book covers are still in the works for the first 3 books. Everything else is ready to go. Trying to make sure I meet a May 15th release date. Still giving out Warrant for Damnation for free if you want it. Go to the Contact page to make a request.

Have a great week!

The Missing Ladies of Horror

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It occurred to me that I haven’t posted the 1st two Ladies of Horror here in the blog, so that’s what I’m posting this week with my usual status or rant. As you can see, it’s Lilly Munster and the Bride of Frankenstein. One thing I’ve noticed is that they are getting better with each one I do. Everything was flat for these ladies and I’ve been playing with gradients with the more current ladies. I’ve also been getting braver on making changes to some of the line work. I finished Elvira, but you won’t see her here until next week or so. She’s up on Deviant Art @meanwinniejean if you want to see her there. I’ll always reveal the new ladies there first going forward. BTW, Lydia Deetz is in the works.

What else is up? I’m trying to find direction or training on how to draw zombies. I have this expectation that zombies need to look the scientific way of decomposition and that someone out there has created detailed instructions on how this works and how it should be drawn at various stages. Seems I’m sadly mistaken or need your help finding what I’m searching for. I spent a number of hours last week looking for blogs or YouTube videos that instruct in this way, but couldn’t find what I was looking for. I did find How to Draw Zombies video by David Finch that I should mention. Best part of the video is early on, when he goes over the usual stances for zombies. I found the rest of the video okay. It just got a little boring to watch because it was so long. I also felt the main zombie he drew was washed out. I really want to learn how to draw flesh wounds and shrinkage that pops.

Otherwise, covers are still under renovation, and there are a few other projects in the works that you’ll have to wait to see and hear about until next week. See you then.