Change is Good II

well, i fucking LIED.
perhaps 2010 will hold more creativity.
cos i really don;t see anything happening before then.
fuck.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

The Ìkaron Seed

From the Latin Ìkaros, better known as Icarus.

Often times in life we will experience something once, something grand and magnificent, that we will never experience again. Not because it does not exist, but because it is no longer available to us. For example, driving someone else's car with heated seats in the dead of winter is enjoyable, but then you return to driving your own car that only manages to heat up by the time you reach your destination. One might say you would be better off not having experienced the luxury of heated seats in the first place. But the feeling isn't congruent with that logic. Rather, you find yourself longing for heated seats and cursing the worthlessness of your unheated seats. Something that once was an annoyance (in this case, a cold bum) is now a cause of frustration.

All metaphors aside, I see this concept in Untitled. The seed grows in a man who comes to know the Eternal Brother, or perhaps one of the many angels. (Side note. Angels the wives of the Eternal Brother; the mothers of the First Sons whose deaths caused the Eternal Brother to return to the Earth? Might get a little weird with the "expressive storytelling" later. A matter to discuss.) So, a man receives the Ìkaron Seed and begins to separate from the world. First he seeks comfort in his fellow man, but grows weary of their insignificance and of their impurity. The man escapes civilization and attempts to surround himself in pure, untainted earth, be this in caves or forests or even the unending oceans. But the man cannot escape civilization; it exists in him. So the man finally attempts to separate himself from the World; transcending to a place not known to the world. The World itself reaches a twisting spire of earth skyward after the transcendent man. Civilized man knows only stories of these remote spires, and knows less about what lies at the top of them.

Men can only see the physical result of the Ìkaron Seed. They see their sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, parents and grandparents afflicted with this seed abandon all earthly relations never to be seen again. The Ìkaron Seed is seen as a terrible curse by many in civilized society. They understand the effects to be the afflicted's desire to escape civil duties.

Perhaps the Ìkaron Seed refers to the name of the Eternal Brother, possibly one of many. For it would make sense that one who stands before Ìkaron might be infected with his seed.

That's all for now. We had better start laying some solid story out of these assets.

He created the World of his flesh...

The text reads:

"He created the Earth of his flesh; the rocks ans stones of his body, the rivers and oceans of his blood, and finally the air of his very breath. He then created all manners of life, grand and small, of plants and beasts and men. He breathed life into all that was created.
Satisfied, he turned to rest, and the world turned with him. All that he created slept sound that very first night.
Upon day, the world awoke and so did he. All that was left of him was the weight of a man. So he awoke and walked amongst all that he created; not God, the Lord, or Heavenly Father, but the Eternal Brother of Man.
For many years he walked amongst the people he had created. But a great sorrow grew inside him as he began to outlive his children.
That which he created, he was not. For a thousand days he stood unmoved, arms stretched out to the sun. Many thought he longed for that which he did not create. He returned to the Earth, whole once again."

I'll be honest. After re-reading it, I don't like it. It kinda flows like cinder blocks out of a cement mixer. I'm going to work at it.

Things I do like: "Eternal Brother of Man" and that he becomes a tree and some people take this as a sign of him longing to escape the world he created.

Hopefully I'll have a better draft up soon. I'm seeing something like this as backstory text rather than actual scripture.

Untitled

A page from my sketchbook.
I really need to not draw things like this right before I go to bed. I don't know how I'll sleep. E.T. scares the shit out of me.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas and best wishes from everyone on the Vectorevolution team to all of our reader.

Thanks Zack. You rock.

Climbing

Okay, fuck it. Here we go. I just finished posting on my buddy Zack's blog about Resident Evil inventories. So while I'm in a "people are idiots" kind of mood, I'm here to talk about climbing.

How hard is it? You hit a ledge with an angle between 150 and 270 degrees with 20% of your character's height above the angle and your character grabs onto the ledge (maybe while you hold B or something). With the same angles and 50% of your character's height above the angle your character will toss a leg up and pull themselves up. With 75%, the character simply takes a high step.
From 20% of your character's height being over an angle to the angle being 20% of your character's height above the top of the character, and within the angle range of 175 to 255, the character's arms with reach out to the ledge and the character will grapple the ledge appropriately.

Sounds complicated, doesn't it? I'll draw you some pictures.

See? When you look at it, it totally makes a little bit more sense. Okay, so maybe it's a little hard to describe, but I'm sick and tired of being expected to believe characters do not have basic human mobility.

Think about it. They almost always run forever, tirelessly. They can carry a dozen guns and access any one of them in often less than a second. They can smash traffic barriers in one swing of a crowbar. They fall and get shot and run into things and get hit with things and never ever get tired or weary or dead. This is a gameplay thing. Nobody wants to play a game where you need to catch your breath after running for a minute because you're wearing body armour and carrying a machine gun and 100 rounds of ammo. That would suck. But out of all the inhuman tasks we expect from our character, why don't we care that a six foot wall might as well be the Great Wall of China?

Counterpoint. Yeah, you do jump awful high. This is to compensate for your inability to climb. Some games allow you to jump as high as seven or eight feet in the air (unassisted). Well, I'm a six foot man with arms. That means that things over six feet, over seven feet, and over eight feet I can reach while standing comfortably. Things that are nine and even ten feet up, I can reach jumping. So, should we make the jumping standard 10 feet? No! I can't see anything past an 8 foot wall. I don't want to be able to jump up, have my shins say "umm, no fucking way, dude. There's a wall," and still be able to see, shoot, and kill everything on the other side before landing gracefully on the ground again.

So, why does this bother me so god damn much? Because so much time and energy is spent on making sure that the trees look good and the water shimmers and the light glows and the world is vast and expansive and the whole world is yours to see and explore and experience so long as there isn't a four foot tall rock in your way. Because heaven forbid anyone would actually climb rocks. It's unheard of. The bottom line is that too much time and energy is spent making things look good when no one has really taken the time to make it feel good.

Maybe this is why I liked playing Spiderman 2 so much. Sure, the graphics weren't stellar, the storyline was pretty quick, the 'sandbox' world quickly boiled down to "kill these robots," but there was never a time where Spiderman felt like a bounding box. I never felt like I was trapped, even on an island with nothing but ocean around it and no ability to swim. I was okay, because that made the game function. And you cannot argue that games function by not letting you pass objects that you can see over, but somehow cannot climb on top of. That's not acceptable limitation. That's just being lazy.

Okay, okay, business

Okay, so I read Hellboy the other day and it came across as a very real story for several reasons. These reasons I think each apply to one, if not more, of our projects.

Hellboy is not an extreme character. He is rational, but gets mad. But getting mad doesn't mean he loses all rational thought. Part of his brain is always thinking. Untitled needs this kind of middle ground character. Not pathetic, not God, not painfully average, not a prophecy... a protagonist that you actually like right from the get-go.

The story integrates and manipulates history. In fact, a grade school education would supply you with all the historical knowledge you need to follow what they allude to. Things aren't stated unless the story wouldn't make sense without it. In other words, being clever isn't overt. I think that's what I need to focus on when I write FbfM. Yeah, I've thought everything out, but I don't need to explain everything in detail, so long as everything is consistent.

Finally, Hellboy is the protagonist, but you love and appreciate Liz and Abe. They're all important, powerful, capable, and useful in their own ways. The protagonist just happens to be Hellboy. These secontagonists, or possibly cotagonists, are exactly what Untitled needs. Like this guy: The man with the long sided face.

So there are just a few things I noticed that I want to make sure we do. Also, I want to doodle more. This little guy is pretty fun.

Oh, also, I totally made up the words "secontagonist" and "cotagonist," although I think "cotagonist" should actually be a word... "Contagonist" is a word (sort of), but you heard it here first!

Cotagonist, (noun), \kō-ˈta-gə-nist\ - A character that is of equal importance to a story, but is not the protagonist.

When God closes a door...

No wonder it's so fucking cold.

Official News I

The Projects:
The Company, if you can call it that, feels it necessary to divulge some information about our projects to you, our non-existent audience; rather than complain about the lack of climbing for a change.
Thom and Alex met in late 2002 and have been working on numerous writing projects since mid 2003. A few of these were somewhat short-lived, but many aspects of these evolved into larger, more large, and extremely larger large projects.
Two days ago, the executives met about the current state of The Projects and have concluded the following:

Chronicles (volumes I – V)
Vectorevolution’s oldest project. A series of five dealing with the nature of friendship and the strain that time travel has on that bond. Currently, the first three volumes (Déjà Vu, Vhere's ze Dänger, and Vous N’étiez Jamais Aussi Futé; respectively) are written with the fourth script’s plot detailed. Currently, the first two scripts are deemed unworthy of the respect the company gives them; they are the oldest and despite having been subjected to numerous re-writes, they still reflect the style and humour Thom and Alex shared over five years ago. Chronicles currently sits on the backburners simply because the writers feel too pressured to be hilarious with every other line of dialogue and the fact that CI and CII need a screenplay’s equivalent of brain surgery.

Fireballs from Mercury
This is a project that has recently taken up the mantle of Thom’s oldest creative endeavour; FbfM was conceived sometime in 1996. This series is about the relationships that people have and how they change when an outsider begins to live with them. In space. Originally set as a space-comedy, FbfM has evolved into more of a space drama. The Company feels that the problem with Fireballs, again, is the restraints that the writers have placed on the project: it’s serious, it’s romantic, it’s funny, and it’s not going anywhere fast right now. Vectorevolution regrets to inform you that Fireballs from Mercury is sitting next to Chronicles on the backburner due to an extensive case of space-writer’s-block.

Remorse
This is the as “normal” as Vectorevolution gets. This project deals with the nature of romantic relationships and whether to sacrifice... wait no, that’s not right. This project deals with the strain a romantic entanglement puts on established relationships with... hold on, that’s not it. This project deals with romance and stuff. This project has actually been on the backburner since late 2005 simply because we feel that there is nothing more to add to the project and even if there was, we do not feel competent enough to complete it simply because we feel that it has to be that damn good. This is what the industry refers to as “development hell.”

[Untitled Fantasy Project]
This newest project has only surfaced in the past week, and deals with Old Gods that created the world only to have people lose faith in them, and sight of their humanity. We feel that it needs to exist in a very contained environment (as in no ludicrous amount of scripts, plots, and/or spin-offs) and scarily enough this will be the first project that does not include an overlapping character. Rather than putting restrictions on this project, the writers (and artists in this case) are going to... what’s the phrase? Go bat-shit crazy with the artistic and creative direction of the project. This is not a romance; this is not a space-drama; this is not a comedy. This is a new direction for the creative minds at Vectorevolution, and we are very, very excited.

So, we hope that this information session has sparked some interest in our projects and the nature of the Company, and we promise to actually get something done real soon. We promise. No, really.

VR out.

How we play the game

What kind of games do we play? What kinds of games do we like? What does this tell us about who we are?

Have you ever played a game that wasn't really entertaining, but you kept playing and working at it because you thought it would benefit you later? I think we've all been there. At least we all assume that when you first start a game it isn't wildly fun, but it will get better. Conversely, there have been games that open strong, then start again slow, but you work hard because you know it will get better. Something like Metroid Prime, where you have everything, then you lose it all and you have to work your way back up from practically nothing but in the end you have more than you started with. Life can be a bit like Metroid Prime.

And what about point of view? First person games always bugged me. I don't like the idea that I'm playing a game where I'm me through my eyes. I don't want to be a limited version of me. I don't want to be the hero that can jump 8 feet in the air, but has no feet and cannot fucking climb to save his life (some other day I will rant about this). If I was this guy, I want him to do what I would do. Like, I dunno, talk. I prefer 3rd person games. I like movies. I see the world from a distance. I don't want to be James Bond. No one is James Bond but James Bond. I want to watch James Bond run and jump and shoot and hide (especially hide). I did mention Metroid Prime before, and I will admit, that was an FPS that was done well, possibly because of the suit. The helmet would cause limited vision, and the only think between your character and the hostile environment is your suit. And you see the world through the suit. You have to see it through the suit. It was an exploration, too. Almost like a documentation through her eyes. She is the only one who saw the things she saw, after all.

Way off topic....
....

Fuck it. I'm going to bed. Maybe it'll come back to me later. That or a post about climbing. Seriously.

D&D

Why do we still play video games? Why do we play video games with so many people? Why do we accept the restrictions of a computer program and yet still constantly bitch about exploration, excitement, freedom, and replay value?

Dungeons and Dragons came out in the 70s and sustains a cult following... only it's the greatest game ever. I understand that as someone who enjoys it, I may be biased, but take something like cult films. I like Donnie Darko. I like Rocky Horror. I like This Is Spinal Tap. But I can see that these films are not for everyone. And D&D isn't for everyone either. But if you play Oblivion, if you play WarCraft, if you play any fantasy themed RPG and have an ounce of imagination then D&D is a hundred times more entertaining.

Maybe that's the problem, though. Kids these days don't like to imagine things.

But you don't need to dive into the deep end to play. That's what your DM is for. The DM can tell you details about anything, and you still get to imagine crushing your enemy's skull with a hammer, or driving your blade through their eye socket (just two of the kills of tonight's little escapade). It's wildly entertaining. And once I get a solid grip on the game mechanics (and maybe a few solid books) I one day want to be that DM. I want to imagine adventures and be just as entertained by the story that evolves from the characters as they are by the story that unfolds infront of them.

Some people may criticise that I'm getting too old to be playing games like that. I think I'm getting too old not to. Especially since I enjoy the thrill of creating worlds and scenarios so much.

Aftermath

Never again...

Star Wars-a-thon

7:00 a.m.

Here goes nothing.

Updates to come in the form of comments throughout the day!

More caps

I thought I had more but we shall add this to the bag!