Man of Steel...or Man of Extremely Destructive Capabilities?

Hey Internet, it is MovieDragon009 back again with a new blog post.
It's been a while since I last wrote or posted, hasn't it? First off, I want to apologize for the lack of activity here; not a lot has been going on in my world, other than readjusting to life at home after another semester at BYU-I. I also want to apologize for the lack of art on this blog; I'm currently lacking a suitable scanner at the moment, but I figure that I should be able to take some photos of what I've been working on and post them here later as a sneak peek.
But that's not the reason I'm writing this blog; tonight, I've finally gotten the chance to view the reboot to the Superman franchise, Man of Steel, and I present to you, oh so patient audience, my thoughts on it after waiting so long to see it. Normally I'd be doing this as a video, but if you've seen my Desolation of Smaug review, you'll know why I didn't.
First of all, this movie was not what I had expected, and I don't think anyone was expecting either when it came out; I mean, YEESH, the advertising made this seem like the greatest superhero film to hit theaters since The Dark Knight. Let me tell you, it sure as heck got me excited (you can see the videos I posted on YouTube for proof of that), and while a ton of situations got in the way, I looked forward to being wowed by it.
Now that it's come out now, people either seem to love or hate this movie; it's a very divided group. Some people shout out, "This is the greatest thing ever!", while others shout out, "This is TERRIBLE! How could Zack Snyder do this to my hero?"
Me? I'm kind of in the middle ground between the two extremes.
Let's talk about the plot first (SPOILERS AHEAD); obviously it's the story we've all heard for years and years, so the basic premise hasn't changed so much; Krypton is dying, and Jor-El and his wife manage to send their infant son to Earth before it explodes; on Earth, Cal-El, or Clark Kent as he becomes known, comes in touch with his super side and takes up the red cape to defend the planet as Superman. You know it, I know it, we all know it. But then there's the extra stuff that they add in there to make this story distinct; apparently there's a big military coup led by General Zod towards the last days of Krypton right as Jor-El is about to rocket his son away, PLUS he manages to insert this Codex thing into the very cells of Cal-El, preserving the genetic material of Krypton and ensuring its survival. This factors later in the movie when Zod escapes the Phantom Zone with his lackeys and heads to Earth with the intent to terraform the planet to become a new Krypton. On top of that, apparently Kryptonians have been genetically engineered to fit a certain role in society with no love-making between individuals involved (how in the heck did they enforce that??), but Cal-El is the first natural-born Kryptonian, making him extra-special and all that stuff.
So, with Zod ready to destroy Earth as we know it, Superman must rise up to stop him.
That's about as much of the plot as I can surmise, but you can probably look it up on the Wikipedia article. The best parts about the movie is when they are showing Clark Kent's childhood, and what it must be like to grow up with his super powers. Maybe they should have kept in that direction and, instead of throwing him straight to the lions, just have him start out small and work his way up...or at least they could have if Smallville didn't already exist.
I like the ideas that David S. Goyer, the writer, puts forward, but he seems to be just that: an idea man. Many of the things they bring up, unfortunately, seem to be brushed aside rather quickly in the name of big action (I'll get to the action later), which is rather disappointing; I feel that if they had simply decided to take their time and actually talk about these ideas, such as freedom of choice and responsibility, the movie probably would have benefited enormously. However, there's also a lot of plot points that made me scratch my head and say, "Why in the world would they do that??", the no-sex ruling being among them. For example, there's a scene where Zod is telling Superman his evil plan to wipe out mankind, and to illustrate it the scenery around them shows a huge wasteland filled with human skulls. Why did that seem like a good idea? Why would you show the guy who's lived on earth and considered himself one of us the end result of genocide? It's a good visual, but terrible thinking on Zod's part (or rather, Goyer's part). Earlier, when Superman is surrendering himself to Zod's minions, Faora demands that Lois Lane come with them; why? They explain later that they look into her mind and find out important information, but couldn't they have done that with Superman, as they VERY CLEARLY SHOWED THEM DOING?? Come on, at least make your villains intelligent.
There's also the execution of the ending; if you've seen it, you'll know that, in order to stop Zod once and for all, Superman has to break his neck and kill him. That, I don't have a problem with; again, it's a good idea for the plot, to show that there are difficult choices where the only option is the lesser of two evils, and that sometimes there are choices with no easy answer. You'd think with an outcome like that, the ending of the movie would show Superman dealing with the ethical and emotional ramifications of his actions, and they do...for a few seconds. The rest of the movie, it seems like he completely forgot all about that (along with the major destruction and loss of life, but we'll get to that later)! You just killed one of the only two members of your species left! I think that would deserve some closure! But nope! The movie's just like, "We'll that's over with, we'd better get to the other stuff, now."
And then there are issues with the plot just in and of itself as a whole; first of all, why do Kryptonians have to be the bad guys in this movie, and not a second one? I haven't seen the original Superman movies with Christopher Reeve in them, but from what I understand, they introduced Zod and his minions in the first movie, and then had them take center stage in the second movie. That I understand; the first movie pitted Superman against Earth's worst, to show that he could stand up to anything we could throw at him, and then the second movie raised the stakes to show he could take on anything his own homeworld could throw at him. Here, taking down Zod first just shows that he's pretty much invincible; who would try taking him down after he took down his own equal? Anything the sequels try to do will pale in comparison to this (unless they introduce Doomsday...). And of course, if you've seen How It Should Have Ended on YouTube, you'll know about the other plot holes, such as why didn't Superman just throw the black-hole thing into the enemy ship in the first place, and of course Zod should've just colonized Mars.
A lot of people criticize the good majority of Superman's actions in this film, but as far as I'm concerned, this is Superman starting out; he's going to make mistakes, but he'll probably learn from these in the future, so I'll forgive them.
Now let's talk about the acting; I think that each and every one of the actors in this movie took their job dang seriously, and that it shows in their performances. Henry Cavill does a great job in this movie, and I don't think a lot of people can pull of what he did and still make it feel like Superman, so I applaud him. The rest of the cast does a good job too, but the guy playing Zod, I feel, seems to go a little over the top with his performances at times. There were also times when it felt like some of the actors, namely Russel Crowe as Jor-El, didn't really seem like they were giving it their all or giving the right reaction that they should have been (Come on, guy, you got stabbed! Flinch a little!). Other than that, the performances didn't bother me at all.
I also like the look, design, and effects of the movie; I'm glad that Krypton doesn't look like a sterile world of crystals, and that it's clearly a world capable of supporting life (up until it explodes, of course). The tech that the Kryptonians are carrying also looks pretty darn unique and awesome; especially the particle-assembled holograms and stuff. They very clearly worked their butts off to make Kryptonian technology very distinct from what we've seen before. With the costumes, I get a very Neo-medieval vibe from them, with everyone running around in suits of armor, which is pretty cool. A lot of people complain that the movie looks too dark, especially given that this is Superman we're talking about (seriously, the Dark Knight trilogy had brighter colors than this), but while I was watching, that didn't really bother me; I get that the filmmakers were implying that this is a much more serious version than before, and I'm willing to go along with that.
Of course now we have to talk about the action, and good-golly wally, Zack Snyder has a violence issue; I think that even Michael Bay would be having an intervention with this guy, and he's pretty destructive! It starts out pretty cool, but as the movie builds and builds to the climax, it just gets more and more obnoxious and ridiculous at times, and really makes you question how one indestructible person could be capable of causing this much damage (seriously, he manages to topple an entire building just by being thrown through it! You'd think all that would do is result in a big hole, but no!), not to mention the obviously huge amounts of loss of life that must be going on during one of these battles. Seriously, don't make everyone duck and cover; have the entire city evacuated before you let loose one of these raging cannons! Again, this is Superman's first time as being Superman, so initially I can forgive him, but come on, Snyder! You don't need to have them trashing an entire town to have an action sequence! But all this damage, including the loss of life, seems to be swept aside and forgotten about by the movie along with Zod's death; not ONE mention, not ONE scene where it would imply that Superman dealt with the consequences of such actions, not even a scene showing him helping to clean up the mess he made. Again, I really doubt that if Superman existed he, or any other members of his species, would be capable of doing this kind of damage in real life. But, who knows? Maybe I'm wrong (but I hope not).
I haven't seen any of Snyder's other work, but after watching this movie, I get the very strong vibe that he's more of a visual kind of guy; a lot of the shots look awesome (just refer to the trailers), but the execution doesn't quite pan out. Maybe he should stick with art direction, cinematography or something, I dunno, because from what I understand, he's clearly not a writer guy, and probably shouldn't be behind the camera (he really likes to zoom in at really obnoxious moments). But it's very clear that he's very passionate about his work, I'll give him that; what's weird is that Chris Nolan, who was one of the producers on this film, didn't take him back and say, "Now now, let's just chill for a little bit and think this scene through..." You'd think that would have an influence, but nope! What's even weirder is how much Snyder and Goyer are trying to make it look like a Chris Nolan film with the non-linear storytelling; they are very liberal with how many flashbacks they sprinkle into the story, and it gets kind of out of hand.
Well, that's enough ranting for one night; let's have the final conclusion. Is it a fantastic movie? No, at least not the one that I was expecting. Is it a terrible movie? No, it has it's good points. I think that its a situation similar to what must have happened with the Star Wars prequels, with a lot of good ideas and passion being put into it, but without the right execution to pull it off. And hey, with the Superman/Batman movie coming out in 2016, maybe Snyder will have learned his lesson and toned down for that. But we'll just have to cross that bridge when it gets there.
This is MovieDragon009 signing out.

A Pre-Christmas Present

Merry Christmas, everybody!
I realize that I've been away from this blog for WAY too long, but in my defense I've been super busy, what with college finals and all that, but now that it's over, I'll be on a very long vacation until spring gets here, and so I'll have more time to devote to my creative endeavors. I'm also going to be seeing The Desolation of Smaug tomorrow as part of a dear family tradition of mine, so look forward to that as well.
In the meantime, let's look at something new I've cooked up, recently: A COMIC! This past semester I bought an 11x14 sketchbook, and I decided to devote it to drawing comic pages. Here's page one!

Let me know what you think, and once again, Merry Christmas!

"May I have some Originality, Please?"

Hey Everybody, it's MovieDragon009 back again, with another blog.
Before I get into showing off some new art, I do have to say that I love the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. His Middle-Earth is so fascinating, and the adventures he painted can be so endearing, it totally wraps up the imagination (Shoot, now I have to read LOTR again!). What fascinates me is the races and creatures he crafted for this legend of his; from Elves to Orcs, and from Ents to Hobbits, each group of beings is just a wonder to study. Which brings me to the point of this blog entry,

FANTASY TODAY IS ABSOFREAKODICULOUSLY UNIMAGINATIVE IN CREATURE CREATION!!

Don't believe me? Well then, let's list off some of the races that Tolkien used for his epic series: elves, dwarves, men, hobbits, orcs/goblins, wraiths, etc. I challenge you to go online, look up a major fantasy franchise that arose sometime in the '90's to today, and tell me that not one of them used at least three of these creatures for their universe. Heck, I can list a couple off the top of my head; World of Warcraft, The Elder Scrolls, Dungeons and Dragons, the list goes on.
Don't get me wrong, I don't mind it if people use one of the above races in building their fantasy world. What does get me is if they don't try to find some way to present them in a way that's new and innovative; when I find the words elf, dwarf, and orc in fantasy fiction today, what I usually find is the same thing that Tolkien came up with; elves are pointy-eared, graceful, die-hard killers that are usually the hottest people in the kingdom, dwarves are short, hairy guys who can make really cool stuff out of metal, while orcs are going to be the bastardized version of the elves, while keeping the pointy ears (Honestly, that never made sense to me; what purpose, other than distinguishing the species, do pointy ears serve?). Oh sure, they do some things to their wardrobe (I can't believe how much designers go out of their way to dress up the she-elves like prostitutes when it really wouldn't make sense in the context of their world), but other than that, it's still the same freaking stereotype!
 I do have to acknowledge, however, that Tolkien did base his versions of these creatures off of Norse Mythology, and didn't do much to change their overall image. And I also recognize the existence of archetypes; some characters, and sometimes entire species, are going to fulfill certain roles in the story, I know that, and I understand that it can be unavoidable, sometimes. I'm not saying do away with the archetypes, I'm just saying do away with the stereotypes!
Personally, I am tired of hearing the words elf and dwarf and similar jargon popping up everywhere I go, though; for the most part, it shows that the author doesn't have a lot of imagination when he has to resort to using Tolkienian elements to spice up the story. Come on, people, this is FANTASY we're talking about; the very definition of the word implies that the author did whatever the heck he wanted! Writers and artists should have the guts to not just base their worlds and creatures off of a preexisting mythology, but to make their own. One of the best examples I can think of off the top of my head is The NeverEnding Story, by Michael Ende. I haven't read the book or seen the movie myself, but just listen to some of the creatures he's come up with; things like rockbiters, nighthobs, greenskins, and more! Why can't we have stuff like that??
And I know what you're saying, "Oh MovieDragon, if you're so annoyed by that, why don't you just come up with original creatures, yourself?" Well, as a matter of fact, I am. But that's for another day.
And now, here's the art I promised:

 This first one is the most recent piece that I've completed, titled, "Stage Fright". You can probably figure out why.

This one is entitled, "The Real Prince of the Forest." Again, I'll leave it up to you to figure out why.

Until next time, this is MovieDragon009, signing out!

I Have Returned, and Bear Tidings!

Okay, I just want to straight up apologize for not having attended to this blog for so long; stuff has tended to get in the way so much, it's absofreakodiculous. But now I'm here to put an end to that. Let there be much rejoicing among my brave and few followers.
 Quite a bit has happened this past week alone; for one, my birthday came and went this past Wednesday, so now I am officially twenty-two! It was a good birthday; nothing big or fancy, I just went out to dinner at Applebee's with my family and had a good time (and for those curious in presents, one was a brand new iPod Nano. Thanks, Mom and Dee).
Obviously, Halloween came up right after that, and this time I got around to dressing up after two years in a suit and tie. The result?

 ...Eh. I'll admit, I was really lazy this year, and just took a sharpie marker, drew a couple of patterns, and attempted to throw a blanet on and call it a cape; the Grey Rider, I called myself, but it lost its novelty. Sadly, I did not go trick-or-treating, but I did briefly attend a dance here on campus. Personally, I'm glad the sharpie came off.
I've also discovered this hilarious channel on YouTube: Glove and Boots, a series of vlogs hosted by Fafa the Groundhog and Mario, the odd little red guy with a beard and a deep voice accented like Peter Lorre, with occasional appearances by an ape named Gorilla and others (yes, they're all puppets, in case you're wondering). They are pretty random, but all in all, very hilarious. Go check them out if you've got the time.
Updates: I'm still plumbing along with the script for my graphic novel; I've made a few changes from the original narrative to make the characters more believable, but I am considering more changes. How to fit them into the story at my current rate of progress is still to be seen. Progress on illustrating the kid's book has been stalling, however. My mom suggested that I try to get the attention of some publishers with a sneak peek and make it so that they would PAY me to finish it. That's a good strategy, but first I believe I need to get an agent first, and I have no idea how much that would cost. Well, I'll never know until I try, right?
I'll bet you're saying, "Alright, enough of your personal life, now how about some art, buddy?"  And that, my friends, is an excellent question, and thankfully, I've got some new ones up for you:

Ah, the start of a new sketchbook; nothing quite so exciting or as frustrating. This sketch embodies all that I've got in store in the coming days.

 Earlier last month, I discovered that the bookstore had started selling brush pens, and BOY, I did not wait to grab one of my own. Brush pens are cool in that you can create a line of varying widths almost effortlessly; you just have to be very precise. Brushstrokes are actually something that I've been attempting to replicate with technical pens for a good long while, but it is so satisfying to actually work with an actual brush. You can see how well it worked out; I'm still practicing with it, but thus far, it's been treating me well.

This is the second sketch to receive the brush stroke treatment. FYI, that's Snow White in the center of all those dragons. Believe it or not, there's actually a variation of the Snow White tale (from Albania, I believe) where she hangs out with FORTY DRAGONS. Holy smack. Just imagine how epic a film THAT would be (if the original tale weren't so already rife with bloodshed. Seriously, even Snow has her hands dipped in blood at some point!). For the purposes of this sketch, I reduced the number of dragons to seven, in keeping with the original story that everyone's familiar with. If there's one regret I have, it's not sticking in an Oriental dragon to the crowd. That would've upped the diversity level quite a bit.

As I understand it, the BYU-Provo museum has a far more interesting museum than we do here in Idaho, but we've still got some pretty cool stuff here, including this Allosaurus skull that I sketched from real life.

This is one that you may have found on Deviantart before I pulled off, and I feel that I must explain the background for this one again; back in the '90's, there was a Gatorade commercial where a pair of Velociraptors from Jurassic Park went up against a basketball player (I'm pretty sure he was from the Toronto Raptors), and ohmergawsh, it was so COOL. Years later, I had to draw a basketball-playing raptor, with some scientific accuracy thrown in for good measure.

I'm just going to come straight out with this; this piece was directly inspired by The Lord of The Rings, along with this other obscure short film that I've seen online (I'll give credit when I can figure out what it's called). When coming up with new creatures, I'll often imagine them playing a certain role in a movie and try to shape them from there on paper. For this one, I went with a giant demon rat, the result of hideous magical experimentation.
 This is normally the part where I close off the blog, but first I have to bring up an idea;
For those of you who may not have figured it out, I love Pokemon. And I have been excited to see some gameplay footage of the latest generation, Pokemon X & Y; the 3D graphics are really unique to see for a Pokemon game, though I miss the 16 bit sprites from the previous generations, and they really give a new dimension to gameplay, no pun intended. But I've got to say, I'm pretty sure the battle mechanics could be better.
 Here's my proposal: what if, when battle started, you literally started to control the Pokemon you've put into battle? Not just select the move to use and watch the results, but to actually play the game like you would in a legitimate fighting game like Street Fighter and the like? For a point of reference, I remind my gamer audience of Super Smash Bros. Brawl; one of the characters you can play, the Pokemon Trainer, has three Pokemon, Charizard, Squirtle, and Ivysaur, that go into battle, and can be switched out quite swiftly to take advantage of their differing elemental powers.

 Just imagine that applied to a legitimate Pokemon Game; in battle, the A, B, X, and Y buttons on the 3DS can be used to unleash different moves, and increasing the speed of play, which would require faster thinking on the part of the player. To use items or to make other decisions, you could pause the action mid-battle and freeze time to allow you to make your decisions. I'm pretty sure internet critic Linkara has expressed similar sentiments regarding the games.
 To justify this, you could say that scientists have finally perfected the means to allow the minds of trainers and their Pokemon to link when the Pokemon is released from the Pokeball and let into battle. I'd think it would certainly justify the fact that this is basically legalized cock-fighting we're talking about; instead of trainers shouting from the sidelines, the partners would share each others' thoughts and feelings psychically, leading to a stronger bond.
HOW COOL WOULD THAT BE??
Write your comments down below, and be sure to invite your friends to follow and do so as well. Have a good week (I promise I'll be more consistent with these blogs!)

Glimpses into Fantasies

My apologies for going on a rant about my love life previously.
This week has been eventful; I went to three dances last weekend, and let me tell you, it kind of messed up my biological clock--but I did get some benefits out of it. And on that note, I was also set apart as the Family History Consultant for my apartment this week! I should've figured that would happen to me sooner or later...
So, how's my day? Eventful, that's for sure; I woke up this morning with only half an hour before my first class and, after the necessary preparations, managed to arrive on time with about five or so minutes to spare (better than yesterday; I had only fifteen minutes before first period when I woke up. It was a good idea to shower the night before), but after that, things went swimmingly for the next few hours. My psychology class was odd; to learn about operant conditioning, we had to train a baby chick to peck at a red dot. I've got to say, the little birds were cute, but that's the last time I work with chickens.
This evening I attended a seminar--type thingy for a Disney College Program. I'm really leaning towards that, but I'm going to talk to this guy here at BYU-I to get a good idea of whether or not it would be a good idea for me to apply. If I do, I won't be able to apply for an animation class/program (for another year, anyway), but I might as well shoot for a character performance gig (total anonymity. That would be awesome).
So, enough blabbing on about my life, I bet you wanted to see some new art, huh? I'm going to be straightforward; I've been running a little dry as far as new ideas for sketches are concerned--which sucks, considering I've started new sketchbook. I guess it's a sort of "in the moment" thing, huh?

 This one made my mom proud when she saw it; seriously, she posted it on Facebook, saying "Look what my boy can do!" It kind of makes me feel like a little kid again. I came up with the concept back in the mission and even did a little rough sketch of the idea. Fortunately I managed to save it, and I was able to pick it back up when I got home. What makes this one especially cool is how I got to use markers with varied sizes of pens to fill in certain details; I couldn't have done a lot of this with your typical sharpie pen. I'm trying to get around to coloring this on Photoshop here on campus.
Anyway, I think this would be a cool cover for a new edition of "Alice in Wonderland"; she comes back out of the rabbit hole with all of her weird experiences, and with the key invites the viewer to share the adventure.

 This one I completed back on the mission. If you look closely (and also depending on whether you're a good art history student or not), you can see quite a few references to Salvador Dali, one of my favorite artists. I also threw in a subtle reference to Douglas Adams, if anyone cares.

 This seemed like a real fun idea at the time, following a group of boys as they go hunting for giants, not realizing that what they're looking for is right under their noses--literally. Looking at this, I could've gone into detail way more, especially on the trees, and make the place a real old growth forest.

 This one's had a bit of a mixed history; I originally set out to go with one background, but then I realized that wouldn't have worked out, and so I went in another direction, but the core characters remained the same.
I hope you guys get some sense of irony from this piece. Just go into serious analysis mode, and see what I mean.

 As you can see from the note, this was done as a birthday gift for a good friend that was away in Germany at the time. I got the idea for it after listening to Katy Perry's "Firework" song, and just wanted to put into ink and colored pencil the emotions that were being expressed.

And now, for the first time ever, a sneak peak at one of the pages of my upcoming children's book!

  And that's all your going to get. Have a good week!

Love can be a $(#*!

I don't usually put personal stuff like this on the blog, but for some reason, tonight I felt like it:
You know, I was actually there when the First Presidency announced the lowering of missionary ages to 18 for men and 19 for women. Quite literally; I was getting close towards the end of my mission in the Family & Church History Headquarters Mission in Salt Lake City. I remember my reaction, and in the ensuing weeks I discussed this with my fellow elders who were also nearing the end of their missions. We all, to some degree, expressed concern over the fact that we could be dealing with a whole bunch of rowdy 18 year-olds, which would make things difficult for trainers and zone leaders alike--but then we all had a good laugh as we declared, "Not our problem!"
Over a year has gone by, and now I'm starting to realize that it really is my problem, but in a different way.
Don't get me wrong, I think that it's a great thing that the Lord is trusting people of a younger age to leave on missions, but that makes things difficult here at BYU-I, an entirely LDS college. Since young women are allowed to go on missions sooner, a lot of them have been taking advantage of that, which puts me, a young RM, in a tough spot. The pressure's on for me to get dating and eventually get dating; how am I supposed to do that when part of the girls around my age are practically packing their bags? It's bad enough that a good majority of the girl's I'd be interested in are already paired up with some guy; my current roommate has a girlfriend back in Canada, and they talk over Skype all the time (I swear I'm not kidding!)!
This fact hit hard tonight; I went to this country dance, and while there I met this really cute redhead girl. She was really friendly, and quite energetic; lucky yours truly managed to get in two dances with her! I tried to get her number, but then she told me that she was putting in her papers, and didn't feel that it would be fair for her to date someone prior to that. I don't blame her; I already know some guys who got 'Dear-Johned' on their missions (even I was indirectly dear-johned on my mission, but that's another story); how bad would it be for a girl to get that kind of treatment?
I am in no way trying to be desperate and plea for help; I realize there's plenty of fish in the sea, but I just couldn't help but voice my frustration. If you bothered to read this long rant, then you get some points.

New Art, New Sketchbook!

I've officially started on a new personal sketchbook today. I'll admit that it's kind of bittersweet, given how I don't have much art to show anyone in person, but it's nice to have a fresh start.
On that note, how about some art from my recently completed sketchbook (which, by the way, took me over a year to finish. Wow.)?

With 'Little Giant', I decided to do some contrast in terms of size. It's kind of similar to another sketch that I did previously, which I will post pretty darn soon.

In psychology, there's a major question over human consciousness; individually we know we're human beings, but how do we know that the people around us think like we do? How do we know that they're not in fact a really well programmed android? I had already thought about this question in regards to a sci-fi short story, but the question was intriguing enough to put into art form. Hence the title,
"Will the Real Human Please Stand?"
(P.S. The guy in the front right was supposed to have red eyes too. I don't know how they turned brown in the scanner.)

 "Checkerboard Woman" is the follow up to "Beneath the surface". I originally set out to do her hair in rainbow colors, but I figured that would make the piece way too busy, so I went with reddish orange hair instead.