Long John

Sketch Fridays #48 – The Beast

A quick surfacing from the the depths of academia with a quick sketch recreating a shot from the live-action Beauty and the Beast remake by Disney. The movie was an interesting experience, as it was, I’m sure, for most of its viewers, because of how familiar I was with the original animated movie (having grown up with it). The utter devotion the filmmakers showed to the original movie was both impressive and, in parts, a little upsetting. I felt the latter for the single reason that seeing a shot from the animated film perfectly replicated on screen but with a live actor and a lot of computer-generated artwork seemed futile rather than iterative. I feel the same way about musicians who cover songs; if I want to hear the song exactly as it was recorded, I’ll listen to the original song. If you’re going to cover a song, make it your own.

To that end, however, the new movie added and changed a lot from the original movie to make a different movie, not better or worse––just good.

I had fun with the grays in this piece, recreating a halftone pattern––or what’s called in comics “zipatone” or “screentone”––just to give it a little oomph. Screentones were/are sheets of greyscale rendered into dots that you would cut out and lay over your inkwork for printable shading. While rendered a bit obsolete by computer techniques, seeing the lost art in practice is rather impressive. My fake use of it was inspired by the astounding artwork of an independent artist who recently blasted onto the comics scene, Daniel Warren Johnson, whose screentone use is inventive and inspiring.