More Developments

Why am I blogging so much at the moment? Truth be told, it's so I can avoid that freaking drawing table!

OK. I've completed the cover image for Robotoon 2. It's not scanned yet, so it's also not coloured. That just means that you don't get to see it. Yet. I'm getting a little closer to getting some of the other pages finished as well. It's the strange way I work - instead of just concentrating on one page, finishing that then moving on, I'll jump all over the place. Do a panel here, a detail there. So technically I still have 19 or 20 pages to finish, but some of them are very close while others are no where near, so it's tough to judge just how much I have left to do. Too much for how short an amount of time I have.

I have my four day weekend coming up next week, which hopefully will get me a lot caught up on my schedule. The way my job works, since I'm casual, is that I get two days off every week. But those two days are never regular, and can be on any day of the week. So, if you plan it correctly, and take off the last two days of one week, and the first two days of the next weeks, you essentially get four days off in a row, but still get all your shifts for the weeks. I booked this weeks ago, and it, just like the deadline, came up much faster than expected. I'm going to try to get all the initial pencilling done on all pages before then. So I only have to transfer and ink after that. No simple task, but I'm trying.

You know, I often wonder why I do this to myself. I've been self publishing for about four years now, trying to get a new book out every year. I've only had to miss one year, when I just couldn't get the book done on time. I go through all this stress, put off doing anything else I might want to do, spend all this cash on ink, paper, printing and what not, and for what? I'm lucky to make 20 bucks at one of these cons. The thing is, watching people read my stuff, smiling, giggling, looking like they are enjoying it - that seems to make it all worth it. I think that's the feeling I'm addicted to. When I've honestly given people something that entertains them, knowing they're enjoying something that I've created. It's a hell of a feeling.

Anyway. It's half 3 in the morning. And I have inking to do when I wake up. Oh, by the way. If you enjoyed my Freddy vs Jason vs Ash post, at some point I'll write up my idea for Spider-Man 4, 5 and 6. Every now and then I'll throw another one of these ideas up, just to get them out there.

Goodnight Y'all.

Freddy vs Jason vs Ash

Two blogs in one day? Aren't you lucky!

One of the tricks I have for practicing on writing stories and scripts is to come up with either ideas for sequels or film ideas for popular franchises.

One film that I had a lot of fun watching was Freddy vs Jason. I'm a big fan of the Bogeymen - Freddy, Jason, Michael, Chucky and to a lesser degree, Leatherface. Not long after hat movie became successful, a tentative sequel was announced, pitting the two characters against Ash from the Evil Dead franchise. If you don't know who that is, he's the guy with the chainsaw on one hand you see on a lot of T-shirts nowadays. Anyway, I got real excited about that and started thinking about it. A lot!

Below is a brief outline of the idea I came up with for the film. I had a chance to read the actual script that was written before the film was canned. A few of the ideas I came up with crossed over with the final draft, but there's alot of stuff in my version that's all my own. Enjoy

My version started off in Springwood. The place is completely deserted. It's pretty much trashed as well. The military was sending in several units to Freddy's house. Armed to the teeth. They all converge on the Elm street house. A squad goes in. They check the entire house. Nothing. Suddenly, out of the house across the street, bursts Jason. He goes through the soldiers like a hot knife through butter. This is revealed to be a video tape the army has. Springwood has been fenced off and quarantined. The military has watch towers all around it and a big base at the entrance. A General is talking to a politician, showing him the tape and talking about what to do. The politician asks about getting a specialist in. The general takes him to a warehouse which is filled with all the stuff recoved after sending "Specialists" in. There is all manner of shit in this place. Swords, shields, bows, crystals, wands, staffs, proton packs - you name it. They've called everyone they can find and they all failed. There's no one left. The politician's aid speaks up. "Actually, I've heard of this guy . . . "

Change to a bar in Michigan. Two MIB's stroll in and talk to the bar tender. He points them to a booth in a corner. A guy is sitting in the shadows so you can't see his face. They start talking, but they get told to leave. They keep talking. They shadow guy reaches out, and with a robotic metal hand crushes a metal table ornament. They two MIB's are a little freaked out, but then they offer to go public with the story of Professor Knowby and the Necronomicon and the cabin in the woods, telling the world it really happened. Ash leans forward out of the dark. He's suddenly interested.

Back at Springwood, all of the Military are prescribed Hypnocil, the anti-dreaming pill. One doesn't swallow his tablet, casue when he sleeps he gets visited by a beautiful dream girl who claims to be a victim of Freddy's. He tells her everything that is going on. The girl turns out to be a puppet of Freddy's. Literally. He has string attached to his finger blades and uses that to manipulate her. Freddy has heard of Ash and knows he was the guy who last had access to the Necronomicon. Freddy somehow manipulates Jason to get his hands on the book. It gives Freddy the power to come out of the dream, but still with all his powers. Freddy actually absorbs the book into his chest of souls.

The final battle takes place in a shopping mall that was under construction when Springwood was deserted. Ash is the only guy stupid enough to realise that if you pull Freddy out of the dream and then kill him, he just goes back to the dream. So Ash prepares a big Scooby Doo trap to capture Freddy under tons of concrete. In the battle, both Freddy and Jason fall into the trap and get covered. Ash is mortally wounded. As he lays there, dying, a great tunnel of light opens up in front of him. A woman's figure can be seen in the light. It turns out to be Ash's girlfriend that died in the woods, whose name escapes me. She - LINDA! - she takes his hand, tells him his battle is over and leads him up to his final reward.

Ends with 10 years later. Springwood is up and running and thriving again. A group of schoolkids is standing in the main square, being told the end of the story you just heard by a pretty female teacher. She tells that the town was saved, Freddy and Jason never came back. That's why they have the statue. They pan up and here is a statue of Ash, like the Army of Darkness poster - Chainsaw, boomstick and cocky grin. One of the kids asks what happened to the concrete that Freddy and Jason were in? The teacher says that there was a rumour that it was used as the pillar for the statue. She laughs. Suddenly there is a brief earth tremor. A slight crack appears in the Pillar. The teacher and the kids all quickly walk away. We have a close up of the pillar. A slight crack appears. A chunk breaks away, revealing one of Freddy's finger knives. As we slowly pan in, the knife moves.

The End.

The Failed Trasharama - Final

This damn thing has turned into War and Peace. Let's try and wrap this up, shall we?

OK. So that night Tony and I went through and edited the footage. It was tough, because there wasn't really much of a through line with it. But I managed to get something reasonably coherent out of it.

The next day, once again, I was hoping everyone would show up at 10. I think around 1 my friend Liana showed up to help. She couldn't come over the previous day because of a previous engagement. I told her we were just waiting for Lisa to show up and our Camera Guy and we could get started. Not long after CG arrived. I tried getting in contact with Lisa again, but to no avail. I think I was starting to get a little pissed off at this point.

We showed Liana and CG the rough cut. Liana got a kick out of it. I don't remember too well what CG's reaction was, other than to say it wasn't complimentary. Around three or so, one of the guys from yesterday finally showed up, so we decided to re shoot the ending of Tony's little opus. We quickly decided on how it would look and got to work. I was a little stricter this time. Giving CG the amount of latitude I had yesterday didn't work, so I reigned in the leash a fair bit. We got the new ending shot, and I tried Lisa one more time. Nothing. So, around 4 or so, with the light fading fast - again - we headed back out to the graveyard to finish the film.

We got to the graveyard and got set up. I was kinda furious by this point. We shot everything we needed, which I think involved all the footage for the big effects shot towards the end. CG was still shutting me out as much as possible, but I tried to maintain things as much as possible. We got what we needed, packed up and left. I quickly stopped on the way home to take a photo that eventually became the poster for "Why Not?". At home, we reviewed the footage to see what we had. CG had screwed up a shot again which we were quite ticked off at, but I decided to ignore it. I showed CG some of my other stuff, something bad and something good, we talked about possibly teaming up for some other stuff and that was it. I went back to the editing suite, we made up the best short we could from the footage we had, and that was it. Tony thought the final film wasn't too bad and asked if we could enter it in the competition anyway. I refused. I knew we would have something to enter one day, but when we did I wanted it too be the best thing we could make with what we had available. There were just too many compromises made during this shoot and I really didn't think it was representative of what we could do.

A few months after, I got my high end camera, which turned out to be a better make and model than CG's camera. So, they way is open for our own entry, which will succeed or fail on our own merits, rather than the bullshit games caused by conflicting egos.

Anyway. Here's what came out of that weekend. it's not great, but . . . well, it's not great. What the hell, we learned.

The Failed Trasharama Part 3

Jesus Christ. I've been inking like a motherfucker for days on end now, and I need a break. Time for a little more story telling then, shall we?

OK. So we arrive at the graveyard. Now, the special significance of this place, is that it's the site of a little know local legend, known as Sarah's grave. as the tale goes, this Sarah lady was either raped or raped and murdered. She died cursing all men. so now, any men who visit the graveyard at night can feel her presence, in the form of mysterious scratching and an overwhelming feeling of being unwelcome. Women don't get off lightly either. Seems Sarah had a bit of a taste for the shiny stuff, as girls often have jewelery swiped of their person while in the vicinity. It's a load of horse shit, for many reasons. I've been there many times and never felt anything. It's just a great, old cemetery that looks really good on film.

A key phrase among my friends who have worked with me before is "You're not doing it right!" Apparently I have uttered this on several occasions, and it signifies my tendency to take over. It's hopefully not an arrogance thing. I just get frustrated when I see someone doing something that I feel I can do quicker or easier, and try to get it done as efficiently as possible by doing it myself. Nowadays I'm very conscious of this, so I try to leave others to do their thing as much as possible.

Now this was Tony's baby. He came up with the idea, he'd done some storyboards - it was going to be his film. Our camera guy had arrived, some of the others were there - I'd asked Camera Guy - who from now on will be referred to as CG - just to get some shots of the graveyard while we talked through some of the shots. He went off and started doing his thing. I had every intention of letting Tony be in charge, and just helping out when I could. After all, I still had my film to direct tomorrow, or so I thought. I was acutely aware of how quickly the light was fading, so I tried to hustle things along.

"OK Tony. What do you want first?"

"I have no idea"

Exactly the words I was looking for! Tony really trusts my judgement on these things, so I took over.

"Right! CG! This is what were going to do first . . . " I started quickly trying to run through the film in my head, working through the shots, seeing what we needed - I ran through some of my ideas with Tony, he was fine with it, we got to work. I quickly got everyone lined up, run through the shot, then explained to CG the camera position and the angle I wanted. That was the point I realised that this wasn't going to be as smooth as I thought.

This little shoot taught me a very valuable lesson. If you're trying to become a film director, NEVER work with outside people who want to be film directors. Now, I'm not talking about healthy quid pro quo situations, where they help you out if you help them. It's a strange situation. Out of about every 10 people you meet, 7 or 8 of them would like to be a film maker. Out of those, maybe 1 or two actually have the drive to do something about it. That last one or two are the ones that you want to work with. Because at some point, they will get their shit together, organise a project and need your help. which means they are quite happy to help you with yours. These guys I LIKE working with. Because you learn a lot from those guys. There is a really healthy case of back and forth in those situations that everyone benefits from. The other 6 are the dangerous bastards. They never want to have to go through the trouble of organising anything, they just kind of want everything handed to them on a plate. So when an opportunity like this does come up, they start thinking to themselves "Hey! There's a film being made! I wanna be a film maker! I'll just make this one mine!" A recent situation came up with a friend of mine who tried to organise some people to do something, and had 6 or 7 offers for possible 'directors'. And unfortunately, our camera guy seemed to fall into this last category.

Now, lets say I told camera guy I wanted to do the shot low, down and from the left. He would immediately move the camera around until he had a completely different shot, usually completely opposite from what I had asked. The first time he did this, I wasn't happy, but I let it go. Like the kid who was playing with the other kids cricket bat, I couldn't really complain. But more and more and more he would do this. That wasn't the only thing that I was getting my back up about. We'd have the camera set up, I'd be talking through the shot with the actors when CG would ask what exactly I wanted. When I explained it to him, he would reply by telling me he already had that and we should move on. Other things as well. He'd set up the camera, I'd try to look through the viewer to see if the angle worked or if it was the shot I needed and the guy would block my view. If he didn't understand what we were trying to achieve, then an attitude of it being stupid would present itself. Two or three other things. I was really starting to get the shits.

Now a lot of this might sound really petty. "Oh, he wouldn't let me do things my way. What an asshole. Boo Hoo me." The thing is, when you're directing a film, you have the thing worked out in your head. You know what you want your audience to feel, and you strive to convey that. The shots and angles you pick are very important to that. They might be right, they might be wrong, but that's the way you saw it and that's the way you try to shoot it. There's really no right answer in creative situations. When someones not on board with that, or is messing up the way you envision it, it throws the whole project in doubt.

So we got as much as we could shoot done. I had raced to try and get everything done before the sun completely disappeared. I think all up we had only shot for about half an hour. I had planned to be shooting since about 11 that morning, and we had shot for half an hour. I wasn't happy. We got back to my place and started to set up for the final few shots for the end of Tony's film. Still no word from my main girl, so I wanted to get at least something completed that day. Tony had the last shot in mind based on the cover of an old issue of Justice League. He explained what he wanted to CG - I had moved back to the background here - and ran through it with the actors. CG point blank told him that the shot couldn't be done. We discussed it over, came up with an alternative, and got the last shots in. Then we sat down and watched the footage. We weren't happy.

Except for the two or three shots where we had forced out point of view on him, nothing had come out how we wanted it. We tried to keep it to our selves, but by the end of the tape, we we're becoming very vocal about our displeasure. We ended the night, agreed to meet back again the next day and CG and his cronies left. We walked them out to the car, where Cg blamed any of the problems on the fact it was a crap idea, that we were just really amateur, so on and so forth. Tony was at least gracious enough not to voice his growing hostilities until we were back in the house. My other friends took off, and Tony and I went and tried to edit something out of the mess.

We quickly cut together the footage to see what we had. The end scene completely didn't work, so we decided to redo that altogether. A few other things. I tried to cut it as best I could, but it didn't work. Tony was a little happier with it though and asked if we could finish it off tomorrow if we had the time. Why not, I thought. Hopefully when my main girl showed up, we could quickly get Tony's shots in the morning and mine down in the afternoon and into the evening.

I was oh so optimistic. More to come.

Late night rambling

I remember now why I was never much of a diary keeper. I way too often just had nothing to say, or had something to say but wasn't in the mood to write. Whatever.

It's 10 past one in the morning. It's raining rather heavily at the moment. I just got home from work and I'm tired, but restless. So I might stay up for a while. Tell you the truth, I have no idea where this post is going to take me. So hey, just enjoy the magic carpet ride as it takes us.

I started work today on my turbo mini jib. For the uninformed - which, quite frankly, is me. I have NO idea where the term jib comes from - a mini jib is a fancy term for camera crane. This thing doesn't have that much of a range - say the top of a street sign down to the ground - but it should help getting some more fluidity in some of my shots. To tell you the truth, I really get a kick out of making some of this stuff my self. It's never perfect or really that neat when I make it. I'm no carpenter. But there is just a feeling of accomplishment when you build something and it works. Maybe it's just another side effect of the whole creative thing. Granted, I'm nowhere near as good as My very beautiful girlfriend, Vanessa. That girl's amazing. some of the things she's constructed - all form her designs too. She plans them, builds them, figures out how to make them work - there's nothing that girl can't do once she puts her mind to it.

I'm sure I'm starting to make some of my friends bored by talking about her all the time, but I can't help it. Ness is , without a doubt,on of the most incredible ladies I've ever had the pleasure or meeting. The fact that I was lucky enough to have her in my life. I still have a little trouble believing it. I'm just looking at her photo which I ave beside my bed and grinning to myself. makes the stream of evil succubus's I had to go through before her seem almost worth it.

OK, enough rambling on about Ness. What else have i got for you. Ah! Of course. The Bunny.

Robotoon issue 2 is proceeding rather well, if not quite quick enough. I still have only 4 pages finished, but have a lot more on the way to finished. I'm trying to get a least something done every single day. The last two days were a write off though, cause I had friends over, and I always think it's kinda rude to just go off drawing when you have people around. Tried to make up for it tonight at work by getting some stuff done. I got some work done on this one page that has a very high perspective shot of the city, that's really a fucking nightmare. Seriously! I come up with this shots or angles in my head, without thinking that I have to draw the damn thing. Backgrounds are a huge weakness of mine as well, but I really wanted to show that all this was taking place in Sydney. So I have all these Sydney background shots that are going to slow me down. I could cheat, I know this. It wouldn't be hard to take the drawing reference photos I have and adapt them in photoshop, but that just feels wrong to me somehow. I feel like I'm ripping the audience off in some way. I'll see how well that sticks when I'm closer to deadline though.

Christ it's raining. It's pissing down outside.

That reminds me. I bought a dryer. I needed one with all this bloody rain. It's been making me think though. How do you suddenly find yourself at a point where you get excited over buying white goods? I remember when I was first looking for my own place, after breaking up with my ex. I had moved out with her originally, and she pretty much had taken care of getting a lot of the stuff we needed. (Of course, she had bought the most expensive models of things she could find, got them all on credit, then let the interest free period expire before she had paid them of, which put her even further into extraordinarily serious debt. Fucking idiot.) So when that stuff arrived, it really meant nothing to me. OK, big deal, it's a fridge. But when I was moving out, I started buying stuff that i would need. And I was getting such a kick out of it! I couldn't believe how much pleasure I got out of simply buying my own mop. It was a freaking mop, for Christ's sake! But I got no manner of joy out of it. Then came the other things. A microwave. A deep fryer. An iron. Even a vacuum cleaner. Most of this stuff is still in it's original box, packed up at my parents place eagerly awaiting the day I move into a new place where I'm going to need all of this. I think just the fact that it was mine - that I had used my money I had earned to buy myself the things I needed for my home. Made me feel - I dunno. The term 'grown up' keeps popping into my head. It's like you finally have achieved some measure of hard won Independence. Of course, I'm sure a big part of it was also the joy I was getting from finally getting out of that nightmarish four year relationship.

God, I still can't believe it was that long. Four god damn years of my life spent trying to be something I wasn't, all to keep someone else happy. Some one who was NEVER going to be satisfied with me no matter what I did. She had this stupid fantasy in her head of what things should be like, and if I didn't fit into the fantasy, or wasn't playing my part right, then it was all my fault and I was the bastard. Four years of not being allowed to my own emotions, or being denied the right to get angry or upset or frustrated, because how dare I ever imply that she was ever anything less than completely perfect. How dare I suggest that anything was ever in any way her fault. Constantly being accused of not putting enough into the relationship, of not including her in my life. Jesus, the only way she could be any further in my life was if I had her surgically attached to my hip. Of being lied to, and manipulated, and blamed and taken advantage of. Never fucking again, I tell you.

Sorry. Still have a few unresolved issues over that one.

OK. It's now 2.15. I've been typing on and off for over an hour. Think it's time to go to bed. I'll get back to the regular stuff in my next post.

Wollongong Zine Fair

This Sunday, the 13th of April, I'm heading down to Wollongong for the Zine fair down there. This is a free to exhibit event, so we often take advantage of them. Myself, Tony, Possibly Vanessa are going to be manning a table, along with the lovely people from Scar Studios. Owen from Storm Publishing may make it down depending on how well he has recovered from driving back from Brisbane. I'll have lots of copies of Robotoon for sale, so if you're around, please drop by.

The Failed Trasharama Part 2

So I'm all good to go, and now I'm just waiting patiently.

Tony was the first to arrive. I don't remember if he came over that day, or crashed the night before, but I do remember he was there. My girlfriend at the time was working that weekend - thank Christ - so it was just us. Tony had talked through an idea he wanted to try and shoot if we got some time. I didn't think we would have, but it sounded like a cool idea that we could do at a later date. So we waited.

And Waited.

A couple hours later, the camera guy finally showed up. He brought the camera, a mic, some lights and a few other home made bits and pieces. We all sat down, discussed the project, went over the storyboards. I discussed some some of the shots I wanted to do, and how we were going to achieve them. Camera guy suggested getting a few shots done, but everything was dependant on Lisa, our main girl, arriving.

A little while later, more of my friends showed up. They had to come out on public transport, and they were held up. That's what took them so long to arrive. I asked if they had heard anything from Lisa, but she hadn't contacted them. I tried calling, but she wasn't answering. It was getting later, and I was worried about getting the outdoor shots we needed before nightfall.

Around 4, we went and grabbed something to eat. By the time we got back, another friend - Ryan - had finally showed up. It was quickly getting darker, and I was getting pissed off. I knew how much trouble I had to go through to arrange this weekend, and the thought of getting nothing done was annoying me greatly. Finally I turned to Tony and asked if we could get some of his idea shot with the people we had available. He said why not, we ad-libbed a bunch of costumes from some stuff I had and took off for a local Graveyard we had always wanted to shoot in.

Then the real fun started. More to come.

Supanova Brisbane

Just thought I'd mention. Tony and Owen - I think Hayden as well - are all exhibiting at Brisbane Supanova this week. I couldn't afford to go, but I will be represented. Tony has copies of both Robotoon and Welcome to Woodville available.

If you're in the neighbourhood, drop by, say hello, buy a comic. Get in on the ground floor of the craze that's going to be bigger than the Ninja Turtles.

Shut up. I can dream.

The Failed Trasharama

It's late, I'm tired and I feel like telling a story.

So in my last post, I mentioned the slight mishap that our … oh, who the fuck am I trying to kid. It was an absolute fucking shambles. Complete shagging disaster from the get go.

The plan was this. I had this idea about a girl being stalked by a hooded killer type - you basic 80's bogeyman along the lines of Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers. He follows her home, sneaks into her house, follows her upstairs and attacks her in the shower - yes, I was planning a nude scene. Or at least I was going to fake one. But the film was going to end with the girl throwing the body of the stalker - I think I was going to call him Pumpkin Jack - onto a pile of other killers in the garage. So she was a serial killer killer.

What the hell. Seemed like a good idea at the time, if I could have pulled it off.

At the time, I had not yet purchased my High Def, funky as hell camera. However, I had recently met another guy who had his own, Hi Def, Funky as hell camera that he was complaining about not getting enough use out of. Trasharama was coming up, I had my brilliant idea, so we decided to collaborate. I Called some of my friends to come and help me out cause I was going to be needing a crew on this one. I arranged to get the time off of work. Cause of the nature of my job, if I ever wanted a full weekend off, I had to book at least three weeks in advance. So it was a big deal to arrange all of this. I needed to be able to get everything I needed shot on those two days, cause it would be at least another month before I would get anther opportunity to shoot. So a lot was riding on this.

The day arrives. I told everyone to arrive around 10, which I thought was fairly reasonable. If I had my way, I would have had everyone there by 7. I'm not an early riser at all, but when I've got something to do I like to get stuck into it. I had my script ready and printed, and most of the shots storyboarded. I'd set my alarm, gotten myself up and ready, and was now just waiting on the others to arrive.

More to come. I'm tired and going to bed.

Trasharama

Ok, so the Trasharama Film Fest is coming up again.
Last time we tried to enter, I took a couple of days off from work, arranged to borrow a camera, had cast ready to show up and was all set to go. Best laid plans, though. I'll go on more about that later. I'm going to try entering The Lot and see what happens, but I really want to try and come up with something else as well. Something a lot gorier. I've just gotta come up with the idea.

Gotta go to work.