Paul Newman has left us last September 26 2008. He's gone with the same style with which he lived all his life, and with the memories of a golden age of Hollywood. Newman was born in Ohio (USA) in 1925. His passion for being an actor had its origin in the world of theater. He joined a theater company from Illinois called "Woodstock Player's", where he met his first wife Jacky White, with whom he had 3 children and divorced in 1958 after 9 years of matrimony. In 1953 he made his debut in Broadway with "Picnic", and his performance called the attention of some executives from Warner Bros, that contracted him. The following year, he did his first movie, "The Silver Chalice", a movie that was rather criticized and even Newman himself felt ashamed for having done it. But he had enough time to show how brilliant actor he was in more than 50 movies that he did later. In 1958, he married Joanne Woodward, without a doubt the woman of his life, with whom he has shared everything until the last moment of his life. It has been one of the most solid matrimonies of Hollywood, in spite of Newman being a sex-symbol for many during decades. With Joanne, he had 3 daughters. Far from the superficial way of life of Hollywood, Newman was always a very compromised man, with many kind of charitable causes. He was also against drugs, because his only male son died of overdose. He also fought against racism and against wars, being a representative of his country in the United Nations. He also directed 6 movies. With all this brilliant career, Newman was 8 times nominated for the Oscar, but only got 2: one for "The color of money", and the other for all his successful career. It's surprising and unjust how such an actor has only got 2 Oscars in all his life. From his more than 50 films, I selected ten: 1- Cat on a hot tin roof 2- The sting 3- Message in a bottle 4- Absence of malice 5- The towering inferno 6- The color of money 7- Torn curtain 8- Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid 9- The long hot summer 10- The verdict Cat on a hot tin roof, is based on a novel by Tennessee Williams. It had 6 nominations for the Oscars. An old rich man gathers his heirs together. They all think in the possible inheritance. All they hate each other. Fears, hate, vengeance, mistrust... all this happens under the staring eyes of the old man, that plays his last trick. The sting, Illinois in the 30's. In the middle of a world ruled by gangsters and criminals, an old rascal tries to retire from crime. But he won't leave it without passing all his "knowledge" to a young and smart apprentice, and make his last big sting. Message In A Bottle, A divorced journalist with 3 children goes for a walk in the beach and finds a bottle with a love message inside. She decides to search for the author of that message. And she finds him, a widowed sailor man that lives with his father and tries to forget his dead wife. What begins being a common interview turns into something more, as that message in a bottle changes the lives of many people. Absence Of Malice, Directed by Pollack in 1981, and starred by Paul Newman, Sally Field, Melinda Dillon... An ambitious journalist accuses a gangster's son of the disappearance of a man. The gangster's son makes a plan for demonstrating that he's innocent and getting revenge on the journalist. The towering inferno, A building of 128 floors is inaugurated, in San Francisco city. In the night of the inauguration party, there are many important guests and politics. Everything has to be perfect. But a fire spreads quickly, and the big building turns into a towering inferno. The color of money, Directed by Martin Scorsese. Newman plays the role of a veteran pool champion. He is retired, and meets a boy called Vincent (Tom Cruise), an excellent pool player that loves bets, and is always followed by his girlfriend. Maybe he has very much to learn. Torn Curtain, Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Newman plays a nuclear physicist that is asked by the government to get the secret formula of a German scientist. He will pretend he is a betrayal to his country, even under the surprised eyes of his future wife (Julie Andrews). Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, Two men steal a train. They are recognized bandits. One has the ideas, the other prefers action. And they will have an entire army chasing them. One is Paul Newman and the other Robert Redford. A clash of titans. The long hot summer, Ben Quick arrives to a small village. He comes fleeing from another city, where he was accused of provoking a fire. Ben is a very ambitious man, arrogant and extremely attractive for women. The verdict, A lawyer with many failures in his career decides to take a case that he thinks that will lead him to success. The case is a medical leniency done by a famous hospital. They offer a lot of money to the family of the victim to not go to a trial. Without a doubt, it's the case of his life.

Hellboy is a character of Dark Horse Comics. Dark Horse Comic is an independent publisher created in 1986 by Mike Richardson. Richardson had some comic shops in Portland (Oregon - USA). With the money earned in these shops, he made his dream come true: create a comic publisher company. Other successful comics published by Dark Horse are: 300, The Mask, Sin City, Barb Wire. All these comics were turned into movies, as has happened with Hellboy. In 1994 Mike Mignola creates Hellboy, a character that mixes the Norse and Greek mythologies with a big influence from Lovecraft. Mike Mignola has always been very fond to the comics world. He worked in Marvel and DC Comics, and entered in contact with the most important authors from those publishers. For Mignola, Hellboy was an important personal project. To create his own character was a very important step for him. He always drew the characters of others before that. Mignola also collaborated in some cinema projects like Blade II, and there he met Guillermo Del Toro, that is the director of Hellboy movies. Hellboy has a Gothic terror aura. This is not strange because the last work of Mignola before Hellboy was for a Batman story. The story of Hellboy is the following. During World War II, the Nazis, very interested in everything related to super-natural, make an experiment lead by Rasputin. The experiment was called Ragnarok, the apocalypse in the Norse mythology. During a spell, a demon child appears, and is captured by the USA army. They will call this child "Hellboy". Professor Trevor Bruttenholm will became the adoptive father of Hellboy. When he reached adulthood, he worked for the USA government with other super-natural beings. In each one of his adventures, Hellboy gets to know more about his essence and about his destiny. All this torments very much Hellboy, but against it he has a strong will. Other characters of these comics are: Abraham "Abe" Sapiens, an aquatic being, extremely intelligent. His powers reside on his intelligence and in the psyche, that allows him to sense the past, the present and the future. Elizabeth "Liz Sherman", who is apparently a normal girl, but literally explodes when she is angered. She has serious mental traumas. The first time she exploded, all her family died in the fire. Trevor Bruttenholm, who is the adoptive father of Hellboy. Karl Ruprecht Kroenen. Died due to his masochist deliriums. He's an expert in mechanics and a lover of clocks. Herman Von Klemp, who is a mix of vampire (as he feeds on blood) and mad scientist. Baba Yaga, a witch allied to Rasputin. Rasputin. If you want to know more about the real personality of Rasputin, read this article. In Hellboy, he is who made possible that Hellboy arrived to the Earth. He has resurrected, and his destiny and Hellboy's will be linked forever. Hellboy is a big lover of cats. Between the powers of Hellboy there's his super-human strength and the extremely fast recovery from wounds. The first movie about Hellboy was shown in 2004. As curiosities of this first movie, both Guillermo Del Toro and Mike Mignola appear in it, one dressed as a dragon and the other as a knight. This first movie tells the origins of Hellboy and won more than $100 million. The second movie about Hellboy was shown in 2008. It was also directed by Guillermo Del Toro, and the plot, as in the previous movie, was also written with the collaboration of Mike Mignola. In this second movie, appear elements of fantasy like elves, trolls... Images (in order): Hellboy, by Gantian1988; HellBoy, by Rub-A-Duckie;HELLBOY, by NiteWorlf-749;Hellboy, by The Aphex.

Final Image Preview: In this tutorial you will learn how to convert a photo into a retro comic. You can use this technique with your own photos and get surprising results. Even more, you can create entire comics with this. In this case I use a photo of New York. This photo belongs to Goosehonker-Stock you can see her work in her gallery of Deviant Art. I'll also use Photoshop, but you can do this tutorial in your favorite application (Gimp, Paint Shop Pro...), following similar steps. Open the photo in Photoshop. Then apply a filter: Artistic/Cutout. With this image, this settings work well: number of levels 5, edge simplicity 2, edge fidelity 1. But you can choose the settings that you think are best. In this case, I used these. With this modification, it has lost the appearance of being a photo. To intensify the cartoon effect, we will apply another filter: Artistic/Poster Edges, with the parameters: edge thickness 10, edge intensity 0, posterization 4. I will also add noise to emulate the texture of paper. Use the filter Noise/Add noise, with these settings: amount 12,5%, distribution uniform, y monocromatic unchecked. In addition, I also alter the image colors to make it have a more cartoonish color palette. Use the menu Imagen/Adjustments/Hue-Saturation with these settings: hue +33, saturation -13, lightness -4. This is the result: Now we will make the comic blurb. For that, we will use the elliptical marquee tool, in another layer that we create. And then we use the tool polygonal lasso tool adding to the selection, to draw the pointed triangle of the blurb, as shown in this image: Fill the selection in white. But it looks better if you use a white with a little of yellow, for example #ECECD0 Once you have the blurb finished, you can use the text tool to write inside it. I used the Comic Sans MS font. You can duplicate the layer that contains the blurb, flip it horizontally (Edit/Transform/Flip horizontal), and add more comic dialogs. To make the "AAargh!" I used the polygonal lasso tool, and then rotated the pointy blurb and the text together linking the layers. You can add narration boxes using the rectangular marquee tool and filling it with color. Then add the texts. Remember to link the layers that contain the texts with their blurbs or boxes so you can move them together. Click the final image to watch it bigger. That's all, you have turned your photo into a retro comic style.