well, i fucking LIED.
perhaps 2010 will hold more creativity.
cos i really don;t see anything happening before then.
fuck.
November 6, 2009
April 17, 2009
Holy Shit, a Chronicles Update
sort of.
i just updated an old Chronicles pic and made it into a nice widescreen wallpaper for all y'all.
not like i did any ACTUAL work on the projects.
still, it's something.
peace out, t.
February 12, 2009
Change is good
We went through CI the other day and cut out all of the shit that we thought was funny a half a decade ago. It was a lot. I mean, a lot. I think we reduced a 36 page script to 14 pages of salvageable material. On the forefront of the cuts were Thom and Alex. I sometimes wonder if these characters are merely the sinews that keep the meat of the characters together. I think it is time to reinvent them.
Perhaps they need to be based on other people, much like the Fashion Police are now characterized by who they are "played" by. Unfortunately, we are not the Owen and Luke Wilson (was that who was going to play us? I know one of us was Owen Wilson... maybe it was Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn...) that played the alternate versions of us. Perhaps an amalgamation of several characters?
I see Thom as Jim Kuback (Mission Hill), Peter Venkman (Ghostbusters), Hellboy (Hellboy), and Harry Lockhart (Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang) all wrapped into one.
And, after much discussion, Alex is sort of an Egon Spangler (Ghostbusters), Tony Stark (Iron Man), Martin Blank (Grosse Point Blank), and Roger Murtaugh (Lethal Weapon) all mixed together kind of character...
With this in mind, I think new characters will bring CI and CII back to life.
Perhaps they need to be based on other people, much like the Fashion Police are now characterized by who they are "played" by. Unfortunately, we are not the Owen and Luke Wilson (was that who was going to play us? I know one of us was Owen Wilson... maybe it was Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn...) that played the alternate versions of us. Perhaps an amalgamation of several characters?
I see Thom as Jim Kuback (Mission Hill), Peter Venkman (Ghostbusters), Hellboy (Hellboy), and Harry Lockhart (Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang) all wrapped into one.
And, after much discussion, Alex is sort of an Egon Spangler (Ghostbusters), Tony Stark (Iron Man), Martin Blank (Grosse Point Blank), and Roger Murtaugh (Lethal Weapon) all mixed together kind of character...
With this in mind, I think new characters will bring CI and CII back to life.
February 8, 2009
Chronicles Re-read
I've discovered some things about Chronicles when I re-read it.
1) Gil and Nigel are way funnier than Thom and Alex.
2) I can't remember who The Velvet Avenger is played by.
3) The Velvet Avenger should be played by Val Kilmer ("Try more knits.")
4) The Fashion Police are more properly characterized than I thought. I wrote them before I knew who played them, and now it fits beautifully.
5) We need to start making frames of things that are gold.
6) I and II are really really bad.
1) Gil and Nigel are way funnier than Thom and Alex.
2) I can't remember who The Velvet Avenger is played by.
3) The Velvet Avenger should be played by Val Kilmer ("Try more knits.")
4) The Fashion Police are more properly characterized than I thought. I wrote them before I knew who played them, and now it fits beautifully.
5) We need to start making frames of things that are gold.
6) I and II are really really bad.
January 5, 2009
Space Travel
Okay, I'm going to make this short and sweet before I forget about it.
Spaceships (can) travel by expelling an ion jet into an ion cloud (I like ions because they are small). The same way a rocket works, more or less, only rockets push off from the cloud formed by their own jet, which already has a negative vector (with respect to the vector of the rocket). By producing a cloud at the same velocity as the body you are moving, you can increase thrust (or so my limited knowledge of high school level physics and logic would suggest).
Does this matter? Not really. Maybe a little for engine design.
The important thing is the ion trail that is produced which can obviously be tracked. If someone picks up your ion trail, they can determine how long ago you were there (or somewhere. the trail will obviously move in the opposite direction of the spaceship) based on the dispersion of the ions and, I'm sure, a number of other technical criteria.
How does one avoid being tracked? Simple. Use your main ion thrusters to get you going in a direction that isn't exactly where you are going (most useful if it appears to be headed somewhere else) then dart using standard gas thrusters in very short bursts. Your pursuer will track your ion trail in a straight vector. Meanwhile, while moving in roughly the same direction (your forward vector will be constant in space unless you add a counter force which simply cancels all the energy you put into firing your ion thrusters) you are now on your way to a destination that becomes increasingly different the longer you drift. More darting means a harder track to follow. However, a trained gas dynamic physicist/astro-navigator/three-dimension trigonometric analyst may be able to detect the unusual small gas pocket that you have expelled in the opposite direction and deduce from dispersion pattern the age and origin of the gas and, when compared with the vector given by the ion trail, the new vector of the ship.
Ohh sweet science, how I missed you!
Funny, I thought of this while I was thinking about relationships...
Spaceships (can) travel by expelling an ion jet into an ion cloud (I like ions because they are small). The same way a rocket works, more or less, only rockets push off from the cloud formed by their own jet, which already has a negative vector (with respect to the vector of the rocket). By producing a cloud at the same velocity as the body you are moving, you can increase thrust (or so my limited knowledge of high school level physics and logic would suggest).
Does this matter? Not really. Maybe a little for engine design.
The important thing is the ion trail that is produced which can obviously be tracked. If someone picks up your ion trail, they can determine how long ago you were there (or somewhere. the trail will obviously move in the opposite direction of the spaceship) based on the dispersion of the ions and, I'm sure, a number of other technical criteria.
How does one avoid being tracked? Simple. Use your main ion thrusters to get you going in a direction that isn't exactly where you are going (most useful if it appears to be headed somewhere else) then dart using standard gas thrusters in very short bursts. Your pursuer will track your ion trail in a straight vector. Meanwhile, while moving in roughly the same direction (your forward vector will be constant in space unless you add a counter force which simply cancels all the energy you put into firing your ion thrusters) you are now on your way to a destination that becomes increasingly different the longer you drift. More darting means a harder track to follow. However, a trained gas dynamic physicist/astro-navigator/three-dimension trigonometric analyst may be able to detect the unusual small gas pocket that you have expelled in the opposite direction and deduce from dispersion pattern the age and origin of the gas and, when compared with the vector given by the ion trail, the new vector of the ship.
Ohh sweet science, how I missed you!
Funny, I thought of this while I was thinking about relationships...
January 3, 2009
Playing God
I came to the revelation that the reason why the Untitled story is so hard to map out is because I don't care. I like the ending a lot, and I like the beginning a lot. But the in between parts... the protagonist could hand down the shard of the Eternal Brother for generations upon generations so far that the universe would collapse not before the shard was ejected into a wormhole in space so that when the next incarnation of the universe took its infinite breath the shard would reappear and become the meteor that struck our Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs and then I found it one day after a complete retelling of my entire life up until the point where I turn out to be the main character that finishes the story.
Talk about your run-on sentences. But that's what the middle of Untitled feels like. "And then he did this, then this, then that, then this, and this, and then that..." His life will remain the same if he backs down from the story. So why does he do it? Maybe because he feels like he should? What if he feels like a sandwich? Should he stop? The answer is no!
Okay, let me get to the goddamn point already. There is no pressure. There is nothing at stake. The situation is not time sensitive. He can do what he wants when he wants if he wants.
Unfortunately, I don't know how exactly to fix this. But here are some ideas:
1) The demi-goddesses girl with red hair is required by an underworlder who wants to take her place in order to be closer to the Eternal Brother. The protagonists witnesses her capture during the parade that occurs during his return to town in his search for answers about the shard and is compelled to save her.
2) The underworlders raid the parade for specimens of all of the Eternal Brother's creations which they are attempting to fuse together to recreate the Eternal Brother. This can get complicated by a lot of things such as the redhead being a captive, the information that restoring the Eternal Brother will devour the rest of the planet in the process, and the fear that his colleagues from the dig might be involved somehow due to their uncanny discover of a gateway to the underworld and mysterious disappearance.
3) Underworld explorers stumble into town during the parade and cause mass panic. The overworlders begin to mobilize for a "counter-attack" to remove these abominations. The underworlders conversely attempt to teach "forced students" the ways of self transformation. Obviously these worlds cannot be allowed to fully collide and balance must be restored by isolated division or divine unity.
The protagonist has to be forced into action for more reasons than one. It makes for a much better story if you know that he has to do something. It also makes it easier to write a developing character when he is forced into action, or at the very least that the results of acting quickly will differ from the results of taking one's time. The protagonist must be allowed to explore these choices or we will never understand who he is. I will never understand who he is.
I don't create characters. I discover them. I have honestly written things where I was surprised by my characters' actions. This is far from characters acting out of character. Characters are people that live inside your head. You can collect all the paperwork in the world on them, but you'll never really know who they are or what they will do until you watch them. Characters are the children of imagination; the more you tell them what they have to do, the worse they are. The really good ones do it all on their own.
What I'm asking here is for a catalyst to let me understand who this protagonist is. I mean, I don't even know his name!
I want to put him in his world and watch him.
Talk about your run-on sentences. But that's what the middle of Untitled feels like. "And then he did this, then this, then that, then this, and this, and then that..." His life will remain the same if he backs down from the story. So why does he do it? Maybe because he feels like he should? What if he feels like a sandwich? Should he stop? The answer is no!
Okay, let me get to the goddamn point already. There is no pressure. There is nothing at stake. The situation is not time sensitive. He can do what he wants when he wants if he wants.
Unfortunately, I don't know how exactly to fix this. But here are some ideas:
1) The demi-goddesses girl with red hair is required by an underworlder who wants to take her place in order to be closer to the Eternal Brother. The protagonists witnesses her capture during the parade that occurs during his return to town in his search for answers about the shard and is compelled to save her.
2) The underworlders raid the parade for specimens of all of the Eternal Brother's creations which they are attempting to fuse together to recreate the Eternal Brother. This can get complicated by a lot of things such as the redhead being a captive, the information that restoring the Eternal Brother will devour the rest of the planet in the process, and the fear that his colleagues from the dig might be involved somehow due to their uncanny discover of a gateway to the underworld and mysterious disappearance.
3) Underworld explorers stumble into town during the parade and cause mass panic. The overworlders begin to mobilize for a "counter-attack" to remove these abominations. The underworlders conversely attempt to teach "forced students" the ways of self transformation. Obviously these worlds cannot be allowed to fully collide and balance must be restored by isolated division or divine unity.
The protagonist has to be forced into action for more reasons than one. It makes for a much better story if you know that he has to do something. It also makes it easier to write a developing character when he is forced into action, or at the very least that the results of acting quickly will differ from the results of taking one's time. The protagonist must be allowed to explore these choices or we will never understand who he is. I will never understand who he is.
I don't create characters. I discover them. I have honestly written things where I was surprised by my characters' actions. This is far from characters acting out of character. Characters are people that live inside your head. You can collect all the paperwork in the world on them, but you'll never really know who they are or what they will do until you watch them. Characters are the children of imagination; the more you tell them what they have to do, the worse they are. The really good ones do it all on their own.
What I'm asking here is for a catalyst to let me understand who this protagonist is. I mean, I don't even know his name!
I want to put him in his world and watch him.
January 2, 2009
Untitled Origin
okay, New Years' resolution: contribute to my own fucking blog.
Untitled is the result of a dream i had about a month ago. it's strange; i hardly ever dream, and you're damn sure i never remember if i do. so the fact that i remember this, and that it was so unique, inspired this new goin-nowhere-fast project. here is what i can recall:
started out with me at an archaeological dig headed by Alex and Nik (his older brother) the dig was located in an almost endless plains-land of thick, dry grass. in the corner of the digsite, under a tree, there was a tree with a few crumbled statues underneath it. one, a half broken man with a shield had a splinter of wood cluthced in his hand, and i took it. Nik set up a tarp over the statues because the sunlight had broken through the very overcast sky and was shining on the statues. as he put up the tarp, the sun shone through it, unaffected. at this moment, from over the hills to the south, came a group of creatures that looked like a cross between a turtle and a beetle and wouldn't have looked out of place in a Zelda game. the archaeologists took to their crossbows (as was the norm in such a situation i suppose), and let fly their arrows. after the turbeetles were defeated, i was advised to take the splinter to the nearest town. as i ran over the hills in the east, Alex uncovered a large tooth roughly three feet long.
the town was small: a bar on stilts (as the town was nestled in the hills, next to a river), a watermill, and a cemetary. clearly the only logical thing to do at this point was to get a drink, so i went in the pub. the barmaid, with her flowing red hair, recognized the splinter, and took me to the cemetary. turns out, she was a ... i suppose the best way to describe her was a Demi-god. the only way she could explain to me the significance of the splinter (and subsequently the history of the universe) was not through an elaborate story (i guess my brain would have exploded), but through feeling. i had to know what she needed to tell me. and that meant sex in the graveyard!
the splinter was all that remained of the creator of the world. he had floated out in space and created the world, and everything in it, from his clay flesh. when he was done, there enough left of him to walk amoungst the people. after the sorrow of outliving his children, he turned into a tree to watch over his world. over time, he was forgotten, and cut down. all that remained was the splinter.
as i arrived back at the dig, i saw that everyone had vanished into the ground. all that remained was the jawbone of an enormous fanged creature which served as the entrance to the underworld.
and so i woke up. god damn.
so this is the basis of Untitled. we're really working throught the creation and way the world is rather than characters at this point (probably cos it was me in the dream) and that given what we know in the project, the myth is the best bit.
so stay tuned for updates and drawings (will update with a map, the splinter, the statues, and the dig). they are coming.
Untitled is the result of a dream i had about a month ago. it's strange; i hardly ever dream, and you're damn sure i never remember if i do. so the fact that i remember this, and that it was so unique, inspired this new goin-nowhere-fast project. here is what i can recall:
started out with me at an archaeological dig headed by Alex and Nik (his older brother) the dig was located in an almost endless plains-land of thick, dry grass. in the corner of the digsite, under a tree, there was a tree with a few crumbled statues underneath it. one, a half broken man with a shield had a splinter of wood cluthced in his hand, and i took it. Nik set up a tarp over the statues because the sunlight had broken through the very overcast sky and was shining on the statues. as he put up the tarp, the sun shone through it, unaffected. at this moment, from over the hills to the south, came a group of creatures that looked like a cross between a turtle and a beetle and wouldn't have looked out of place in a Zelda game. the archaeologists took to their crossbows (as was the norm in such a situation i suppose), and let fly their arrows. after the turbeetles were defeated, i was advised to take the splinter to the nearest town. as i ran over the hills in the east, Alex uncovered a large tooth roughly three feet long.
the town was small: a bar on stilts (as the town was nestled in the hills, next to a river), a watermill, and a cemetary. clearly the only logical thing to do at this point was to get a drink, so i went in the pub. the barmaid, with her flowing red hair, recognized the splinter, and took me to the cemetary. turns out, she was a ... i suppose the best way to describe her was a Demi-god. the only way she could explain to me the significance of the splinter (and subsequently the history of the universe) was not through an elaborate story (i guess my brain would have exploded), but through feeling. i had to know what she needed to tell me. and that meant sex in the graveyard!
the splinter was all that remained of the creator of the world. he had floated out in space and created the world, and everything in it, from his clay flesh. when he was done, there enough left of him to walk amoungst the people. after the sorrow of outliving his children, he turned into a tree to watch over his world. over time, he was forgotten, and cut down. all that remained was the splinter.
as i arrived back at the dig, i saw that everyone had vanished into the ground. all that remained was the jawbone of an enormous fanged creature which served as the entrance to the underworld.
and so i woke up. god damn.
so this is the basis of Untitled. we're really working throught the creation and way the world is rather than characters at this point (probably cos it was me in the dream) and that given what we know in the project, the myth is the best bit.
so stay tuned for updates and drawings (will update with a map, the splinter, the statues, and the dig). they are coming.
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