Avengers: Infinity War (2018)Directed by Joe and Anthony RussoThe third "Avengers" is a highly anticipated release. Ever since @marvelstudios showed footage at Comic Con in July, we have been waiting for a trailer. An official trailer was finally released yesterday and it's nothing short of epic. Can't wait for the movie to be released! It would be the 19th Marvel Cinematic Universe movie (after "Thor: Ragnarok", and "Black Panther" which is releasing in Feb 2018). It's been 10 years leading to this, and in the hands of the Russos who gave us two of the best MCU movies ("Captain America: The Winter Soldier" and "Civil War") it is sure to be great. All our heroes would face off against the big bad, #Thanos (Josh Brolin). I drew him for today's #DailyMovieSketch, in 0.5mm 2B pencil and @prismacolor pencils. Here are my observations from the trailer, with inputs from @smaugthe_dragon, @kashyapchandra and @alphanumericwala. – Nick Fury starts the opening narration, followed by Tony Stark, Vision, Thor and Black Widow. – So good to hear Alan Silvestri's Avengers Theme. – Vision seen in human form. – Our first look at Spidey sense! – Thanos' lines in the trailer are epic. Am I the only one who thought the CG could use a bit of sprucing up? Maybe they'll tweak it for the final movie. – Great to see Doctor Strange along with Tony and Bruce. – So, Loki did take the tesseract at the end of "Thor: Ragnarok". – We see the Iron Spider Suit. – We see Thanos's Stargate type portal. – Cap with a beard, and T'Challa saying "Get this man a shield". – We see the Hulkbuster armour. – Black Panther fighting a creature. – Bucky is seen. – A terrific hero shot in Wakanda, with Team Cap (?) facing Thanos's army. – Eye patch Thor meeting the Guardians of the Galaxy! – Most importantly, if you see the version of the trailer on @marvel_india's FB page, it lists the release date as April 2018, which means, we will get this a week earlier than the US release date of 4-May-18. – Will the final Infinity stone be revealed in "Black Panther" or this movie? #AvengersInfinityWar #Avengers #InfinityWar #306 / 29-Nov-17
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The Punisher (2017)Created by Steve LightfootThe character of Frank Castle a.k.a. The Punisheer was introduced in Marvel Television / Netflix's "Daredevil" Season 2. I did a sketch based on it and wrote about how much I loved that show and this character. Jon Bernthal made it his own, and it is easily the best on screen version of the character. Castle is a war veteran whose family was killed, and he in turn set out to eliminate those gang members responsible. When Netflix announced a dedicated series I was excited.The series was released on 17-Nov-17, same day as "Justice League", and a few days later I finished watching all the 13 episodes.The show is brilliant. It opens with Frank living off the grid, having killed everyone responsible for his family's death. But when he's contacted by the mysterious Micro, it soon becomes apparent that the people he killed were just pawns, and those actually behind his family's death are still alive, and very powerful people with ties to his stint in Afghanistan. This is more self contained than the other Marvel shows, and only includes few references to other shows and characters. Maybe 13 episodes was a bit long to tell this story, it may have worked better had it been 10, but what we get is still excellent. It was very well done, brutally violent at times, always dramatic and involving. The cinematography in the earlier episodes I felt was rather unremarkable, compared to the contrasty and saturated look of "Daredevil", but later on I got used to it and it was good, noticed that some shots employed interesting framing (using golden ratio). I loved the opening sequence by Elastic (@artofthetitle should do a piece on it), the music and the writing. Jon Bernthal is fantastic here as well, which is why I drew him.Is this the best Marvel show? For me it's tied very closely with "Daredevil", the latter with a slight edge. The sketch is done in 2B 0.5mm pencil and scanned. Check @karthikabhiram for a colour tinted version. #305 / 28-Nov-17
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Welcome Back, Frank. Work in progress sketch of The Punisher. I watched the show last week and it was terrific. Will complete the drawing and post it soon. Would you like to see more in progress sketches like these, or should I just stick to posting the finished ones? #ThePunisher #DailyMovieSketch
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Justice League (2017)Directed by Zack Snyder [NO SPOILERS IN THIS POST | FIRST COMMENT HAS SPOILERS]I wrote a detailed review in the previous post, so do check that out.  Here are some more thoughts on the movie.I already mentioned that I really enjoyed it a great deal. I loved watching the characters on screen and there was just so much to like about it. I saw it on the Prasad's Large Screen (which was once an IMAX screen), and here the 1.85:1 aspect ratio worked really well. The slow motion opening credits scene with a cover of "Everybody Knows" reminded me of the opening titles of "Batman v Superman" and the Comedian funeral from "Watchmen". I liked this a lot.I liked this better than "Thor Ragnarok" – I felt the lighter tone there undermined the actual threat of Ragnarok. Here, despite the jokes, you never got the feel that there was any less threat from Steppenwolf, and the characters weren't taking it lightly either.I mentioned that I'd love to see Zack Snyder's original cut of the movie – unfortunately, it seems that with all the changes they made, we might only get an extended cut and not a true director's cut. That would also be superior, as characters would be more developed. As much as I enjoyed the movie, I didn't like that they are taking steps back from the universe established by Snyder over two entire movies – "Man of Steel" and "Batman v Superman". I love the serious tone and their take on these characters. The epic music also added a lot. They made "Justice League" lighter, I only worry that they'll cross the line and future movies would become insignificant like some of the worse non-Universe or standalone Marvel / DC movies.This is a drawing of Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman from one of the scenes in the trailer that didn't make it into the final movie. Here, she asks Bruce if Aquaman agreed to join the team, and he says "More or Less". She asks him, "More 'more' or more 'less'?" to which he says "More Less", and then she says, "He said 'No'" to which Bruce agrees.This was drawn in 2B mechanical pencil on Canson paper and this is a scan.See my Instagram story for a slightly extended version of the drawing! #304 / 22-Nov-17
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[NO SPOILERS]Justice League (2017)Directed by Zack SnyderRather than waiting for my sketch to be completed, I am posting a review with a WIP shot, because I so much wanted to put up my comments about this movie!I watched this movie on Saturday morning (Prasad's Large Screen). The movie has Batman and Wonder Woman assembling a team of metahumans to face the threat of Steppenwolf, who is after the three Mother Boxes on Earth, which will allow him to take over our world.It's impossible to write about this movie without mentioning the behind-the-scenes drama of the past few months – the studio calling in Joss Whedon to complete the film after a personal tragedy forced Zack Snyder to step back, the reshoots and altered ending, and the sub-2 hour mandated runtime.Despite all of this, I felt the movie turned out very well. The characters, despite not getting enough screen time to be fleshed out (Cyborg and Aquaman particularly affected), turned out great. I loved Flash and the strongest aspect of the film for me was Wonder Woman. The villain being criticised as weak? I didn't think it came off badly. The shorter length probably focused the film on the main threat, which was good. The biggest praise I'd give, is that it was such an enjoyable comic book movie. The tone was spot on, balancing the more fantastic and realistic aspects.However, as @kashyapchandra mentioned, this was not the film that "Man of Steel" and "Batman v Superman" were building up to, not the film the first two trailers promised. I, like many others, would love to see a 30 min longer Zack Snyder cut, reinstating the deleted scenes, which I'm sure will be epic and better than the film we saw. It's sad that the studio isn't allowing Snyder to carry out his vision. Danny Elfman's score suited the movie well, but was very generic, and certainly nothing as epic as the work Hans Zimmer and Junkie XL did with the previous DCEU films.There are two post credit scenes, and to their credit (haha), they are effective. There was a lot to like about "Justice League", I highly recommend it. It's an 8.5/10 for me.
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Deadpool 2 (2018)Directed by David LeitchThe marketing for "Deadpool 2" has started. We had a "No Good Deed" teaser released a few months ago. A few days back, a Thanksgiving themed official poster was released, and now we have a "Wet on Wet" teaser. This teaser shows Deadpool dressed as American painter Bob Ross, in a parody of "The Joy of Painting". They've imitated it perfectly and snuck in a good deal of dirty humour. This teaser has a few seconds of footage from the actual movie, so I guess a real trailer isn't far away. The movie comes out on June 1 next year, and I'm looking forward to seeing what all creative marketing they'll do for this movie, and of course I'm looking forward to the movie itself.This drawing was done with @Prismacolor pencils on Canson paper, I also used my 0.5mm 2B pencil, a 0.3 Pigma Micron pen and a white gel pen. I'm not happy with the rendering of the hair but otherwise I like the drawing. I'll probably change the profile picture to this! #303 / 17-Nov-17
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Mindhunter (2017)Created by Joe PenhallI recently binge watched this Netflix series (10 episodes of Season 1) and enjoyed it very much. The show is based on a true crime book, and is set in 1977, about two agents – Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) and Bill Tench (Holt McCallany) at the FBI's Behavioural Science Unit, interviewing killers, hoping to gain insight into their psychology, which would help real world cases. The show was pretty fascinating, the cinematography is wonderful, the acting and story are engaging. David Fincher is a Producer and he directed 4 episodes, and his stamp is all over the show – you'll find moments reminding you of "Se7en", "Fight Club", "Zodiac", and "Gone Girl". One of my favourite sequences is a montage that appears in Episode 2, which is superbly done. It's great to see Anna Torv back on screen, she plays Dr Wendy Carr who is a kind of mentor for Ford and Tench. I was a fan of "Fringe", in which she played a lead, so it was nice to see her again. The killers shown interviewed in the series are based on real life serial murderers (I didn't know how close the actors resemble the real life counterparts until after I finished the show and looked up a reference image for this drawing!). The most fascinating among them was Edmund Kemper, played by Cameron Britton on the show. He is an almost 7 foot tall, very articulate inmate, and the actor manages a mix of likeability and intensity in his portrayal. So I drew him, this is a 0.5mm 2B pencil sketch on paper and this is a scanned version of the drawing. You should check out @sripriyatham's drawing of him as well. #302 / 14-Nov-17
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Stranger Things 2 (2017)Created by The Duffer BrothersI wrote about "Stranger Things 2" in the previous post, so, not repeating it here, except to say that it was awesome and if you haven't watched it, you should! @varunabhiram made a video of me working on the previous sketch, which can be seen on his YouTube channel, and also on my personal account @karthikabhiram. Apart from that video he is also making a digital artwork incorporating my pencil drawing.This drawing of the Shadow Monster / Mind Flayer from the show was done for that. It was drawn with 0.5mm mechanical pencil on @cansonpaper, and this is a scan.#301 / 12-Nov-17
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[300TH #DAILYMOVIESKETCH DRAWING – THANK YOU ALL FOR THE SUPPORT!] Stranger Things 2 (2017)Created by The Duffer Brothers [NO SPOILERS]Last year, "Stranger Things" became a huge hit on Netflix, and I loved it for its superb characters, acting, music, and the engaging combination of science fiction, horror, and the kids movie. It was a love letter to all things 1980s. When Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) goes missing, his friends realise he is trapped in an alternate dimension called the Upside Down, with a monster that sometimes steps into our realm. Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) is a girl with psi powers who helps the boys, after having escaped from a shady government agency that experimented on her and used her powers to open a rift between our world and the Upside Down.Last week, the second season, titled "Stranger Things 2" (indicating that it's crafted as a sequel to the first) was released. A year after the events of the first season, a mysterious shadow monster, far more dangerous than the "demogorgon" seen earlier threatens Hawkins, Indiana, and it's up to the kids and a couple of new characters to stop it from invading our world. It's terrific entertainment – the character development (everyone gets their chance to shine) and story is great, the young actors give amazing performances, the horror elements are amped up, the visuals and music are all fantastic, the drama and action are perfectly executed.I watched the 9 episodes in one day, and loved it. Some people didn't like Episode 7 as it deviated from the main storyline to deal with a subplot. I felt the momentum slowed there, and it was my least favourite episode, but didn't take away from the show overall. Can't wait for the next season now!I'm very happy to reach the milestone of 300 drawings on @dailymoviesketch! I drew Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven, what an amazing actress she is – huge respect to the poise, nuance and intensity that she brings to her role.This sketch was done with a mechanical pencil with 0.5mm 2B lead, and @prismacolor pencils on Canson paper. This is a scan.@varunabhiram made a video of me drawing this, you can see it on his YouTube channel.#300 / 5-Nov-17
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[#Inktober2017]Stranger Things 2 (2017)Happy Halloween, to those who are celebrating! Today's sketch is a triple homage. It's a drawing of Sadie Sink as Max from "Stranger Things 2", who is dressed as Michael Myers / The Shape from John Carpenter's "Halloween", and it's also based on the #Inktober prompt word, "mask". So I binge watched the 9 episodes of "Stranger Things 2" on 28th October, and loved it. I thought it was a terrific sequel to the first season, the horror elements were amped up, the acting and the writing were amazing, all characters got the chance to shine and it was brilliantly done. Only Episode 7 felt out of place in the overall narrative as it focused on a subplot other than the main story. But overall, this is a fantastic show and I loved it. Once again this is a love letter to the 1980s so it's packed with nostalgia.This is the 299th sketch here, so for sketch 300 I'm planning to do another one on "Stranger Things 2". The 1978 "Halloween" is a classic in its own right, credited for introducing the slasher movie genre. It's a very well made movie and the killer wears a William Shatner mask, spray painted white by the movie's costume designer. That became iconic.This sketch was done with a Bic ballpoint pen and scanned. #299 / 31-Oct-17
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