#the ask i had in drafts had a bunch of like visual examples

[aibouart]

So I’ve had an anon in my drafts for like a year now asking how to get better at being fast at art since I can be a bit speedy (I used to be faster but I’ve slowed down in some areas to take my time BDBDS)

Anyways, I have been thinking abt it constantly since then and decided to just make a video about it, but Vegas cONSTANTLY crashes on me and when I was doing it, I couldn’t upload it anyways due to my terrible internet and the length

SO I’ve decided to just say a summary of it, cuz like, ultimately it’s a lot of things but the primary thing is:

Keyboard shortcuts (and tools)

Fr, you can get super fast at digital art just by navigating your program efficiently. You don’t even need to be fast at the art thing itself (that part is just practice unfortunately). If you learn and apply shortcuts in your program (sorry mobile users I can’t help u there rn) then you can easily become a LOT faster without even needing to get better at art itself.

For example:

We already know ctrl-Z, ctrl-Y (or ctrl-shift-z for some programs), ctl-X, ctrl-v, ctrl-c

But some other shortcuts I use (this is in Paint Tool SAI, so you can look up your program’s as it might overlap!) are:

Holding space: bro this shit works for like every single program i swear. hold space and click and drag to move the canvas around, a lot faster than going to the scroll bars or using the preview (unless you want a large movement)

Ctrl A: this will select everything on your canvas, it won’t select all layers though but in conjunction with ctrl-x, ctrl-c, or your fill shortcut (ctrl-f for me) it means you’re lightning fast to do what you’re doing without having to use magic wand tool or selection tool. ctrl-a + ctrl-c + ctrl-v is super fast to just, select it all, copy it, and paste it. 

ctrl-alt: idk abt other programs, but holding ctrl-alt on SAI brings up the brush size wherever your mouse is. you can adjust the size on the spot itself without going to brush tab 

ctrl f: i don’t even use the bucket tool i just use this. it’ll fill anything in your selection (or the entire screen if u don’t have anything selected)

alt: holding this down while using a selection tool will make it deselect. no need to use a deselection tool or anything if u just hold this down (really good in conjunction w magic wand tool). I use this to go even faster by being sloppy with my selection tool, going to my lineart, holding alt and deselecting the areas that go out of the lines. a lot faster for me than trying to get the perfect selection right away.

ctrl d: deselects

c: this auto selects the invisible/eraser setting for any tool you’re using, so I just use this when using a pen or something to erase instead of the actual eraser tool

v: this swaps between the primary colour selected and the secondary one

ctrl-e: merges selected layer w layer below it

ctrl-shift-e: merges all layers (can get funky w folders, but if you select the very top layer it should work) this is esp useful if you’re sharing art by pasting it into stuff like discord, ctrl-shift-e, ctrl-a, ctrl-c, all copied, no need to screenshot it at all.

right click: eyedropper tool, you can hold alt as well but i use right click

there’s even more than these (pretty sure there’s one u can hold to rotate the canvas for example but i never use it). honestly, half the battle w digital art is getting used to your program. if u have access to keyboard shortcuts, using them will allow u to just go ham once u have them memorised (note that these took years for me to figure them all out, i def didn’t memorise them all in one week or anything. over steady application to my habits i got them down)

here’s a fast tutorial on filling in lineart stupid quickly!: https://aibouart.tumblr.com/post/182793937136/using-the-magic-wand-tool-to-try-and-fill-every

filling in ur colour now becomes as easy as click, click, click, invert, ctrl-f. u may need to clean some corners but otherwise it’s basically instantly filled. if ur program has magic wand tool it’ll prolly do this

https://gyazo.com/a5efd8695e7e0bda6667063168612823 (really quick example of selection tool, magic wand tool, alt, ctrl-f)

[connorsnothereeither]

How do you make Virgils boards, is there a system or do you just like go ham? I find them very neat and am curious

(idk if this has been asked before but if it has i couldn't find it so-)

I don’t think it’s been asked but I would LOVE to ramble about it omg for sure-

It’s sort of a mix of both! I have the advantage of like,,, Virgil canonically thinks the way I think, when it comes to connecting dots, so it’s sort of just a visual representation of my brain and how I picture the lore, lol. In terms of a “process” though:

I tend to start with a list of important plot points, bits of information, and character details Virgil does know. And obviously most of the time, it’s a a bunch of questions that he’s asking, which I’ve woven those into

From there, I make a list of assumptions Virgil makes based off those facts. Sometimes those are correct assumptions that I know are right because they’re planned lore. Sometimes they’re things that I’m spitballing because we haven’t landed on an actual answer, and it’s sort of like,,, testing the waters with an idea I think is fun, but that might not be canon. Sometimes, my favourite, they’re just completely bullshit assumptions that make sense but are so wild and silly, either for the comedic effect or as a red herring.

Once I’ve got all of those, I do just sort of go ham sketching them out! I tend to cluster them based on vibe and theme, so it looks like an evolution of thought. Here is this idea, here is this idea that relates to it, kinda thing. I also try to make sure that there’s a drawing or diagram per cluster of information, to add more visual interest! I tend to shuffle things around once they're drawn out, trying to see what fits best where, the sizing of things, and whats like, an appropriate connection/space for things to go! (for example in the upcoming draft of the board, I had to decide if i put the section on Luxtant near Avianism, near the Avicane, near the Sorcerers, or near Vast and Rune!)

Also before I do the line art, I tend to add the strings on a seperate layer to test the placement! actually connecting things with the red string is less important to me then how it looks visually. I want “main things,” whether it’s drawings or notes, to be visible. Like I try my best to not have string lines being directly over the top of people, or important concepts! You can for example in the current board in Virgil’s office that like,,, the note about Kalia isn’t covered, or the pictures of Vast and Pietro, but things like random questions about Viviana are covered by strings, because they’re less important to notice upon first glance. It’s a lot of finding a way to use the strings to draw the eyes in places I want them to go.

Then the last step of the process is line art and colouring and finalising placement :D

That all makes it sound like it’s a properly like, thought out process but honestly it’s a big mess of back and forth editing and scribbling and deciding last minute to add things to fill up space and just hope things turn out looking okay lol! But I have a lot of fun with it, Virgil and his investigations and investigative process (especially upcoming with things like Void Sickness) are very fun to play out 🫶

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

wheezes i made. a game! a functioning playable game that i've had a lot of fun playtesting so far! sat down and made the core rules in one session yesterday, wrote up another few chunks for guiding/prompting the roleplay part this morning. and i have a bunch of variants drafting and those are definitely still in the works lmao, but the rules as they are are 100% playable and i am extremely proud of having gotten them down this fast.

there is definitely going to be further drafting etc, and i'm hoping to be able to format it with an actual graphical layout at some point. and also make like an actual proper intro post for it instead of just dropping it hot on my blog for whoever happens to be following me. in the meantime though here you go, if anyone decides to try it out have fun and i'd love to hear how that goes. enjoy!

[cws: horror, mentions of death, gore, and injury, possible themes of stalking. it's a game where you're being hunted down and have to prepare for what happens when you can't run anymore, so it has the potential to get real dark depending on how you play it lmao]

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Core Rules

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Guiding the Fiction

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(this section is probably a lot less coherent and has more repetition going on than i'd like, definitely is going to need a redraft or two, but i think it gets the mechanics across in a usable way as-is. meant to get further into the last set of examples, but i had to catch myself before i got carried away and ended up just filling out a d100 table. that'd be fun to do at some point but not by dropping it in the middle of the rulebook lmao)

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and that's the game so far! if anyone reads these and finds any specific bits to be confusing, please feel free to ask questions; i want to do my best to make sure my games fit together and are as clear as possible, with or without graphical gamebook format for visual aid, so fresh eyes are always welcome. in the meantime thank you for your time, and should you check it out may you have fun being chased by a Funny Little Guy

[squarebracket-trickster]

Well, more like a numbered list - with all the events that need to happen in order. Each event is described in paragraph form, in as much detail as I feel is necessary (so I don't forget anything important).

Every event develops the story in at least one way. Either plot happens, or a character learns something or makes a major decision (or a subplot, characterization moment, or bit of foreshadowing etc.).

I'm not really concerned with breaking things into scenes, or trying to make sure every scene does more than one thing. This is just a list of the developments that will get me from beginning to end.

I will also add in everything I want to happen (jokes, worldbuilding, dialogue, fluff, etc.), but I will connect each "want" with a "need". So like, "I want the characters to share a bed (and be Very Mature about it), but I also need them to discuss overthrowing the king. Oh! They can do both at once."

An entry will look something like: 9. To their dismay, there is only one patch of straw in the prison cell. Character A tells Character B to sleep on it, Character B asks, "why? are there rats?" Argument ensues. The dumbasses both end up sleeping on the floor out of stubbornness. Neither can sleep, so they plot how to escape together (very sleep deprived). Character B mentions that they should go try to find Rebel Leader down here before they leave. Character A says no, they will not participate in treason. Character B convinces them eventually - "the king already hates you, why the fuck are you still loyal?" They finally agree to sleep on the straw together because the floor is ouchy. They wake up in each other's arms the next morning and never mention it again.

My outlines aren't hard, and I often don't finish them. But I find that if I start trying to draft without a clear idea of 1. the steps to get from chapter one: establish the norm to the inciting incident (~30% mark) and 2. everything the inciting incident incites that will have to be resolved, I end up just pantsing 10-30k worth of scenes I don't particularly care for, and then I get stuck - I've set up a whole bunch of threads that might be interesting to another writer to explore, but none of them are the story I want to tell; and I have a direction in mind, but I am no closer to getting there. Everyone tells me to "just keep writing! Eventually you'll get unstuck." I think if I don't like the story after 30k I'm not going to, and it's a waste of time.

My outline for WIPVII got me to about the 40% mark, and then I had a clear enough idea of all the threads I needed to follow to get me to the "high point before the 3rd act breakdown" that I left the outline unfinished and pantsed the rest.

--

I've never found any other outlining method useful. I don't need help visualizing story structure or keeping track of plot threads/subplots etc. I will know, for example, that "so-and-so must make x decision in this scene". What I struggle with is figuring out, "how did so-and-so even get into this situation in the first place?" I know what needs to happen, the problem is details, and details require ideas, and generating ideas is the part I get stuck on.

I don't know of any outlining template or technique (or pantsing technique for that matter) in existence that can help with thinking up ideas (other than the good old fashioned "list everything that comes to mind until you find something you like" and "stare at the wall, take a break, scream into the void, kidnap a man a monologue to his terrified screams, wake up in a cold sweat at 3am"). Ideas come when they come, and I'm picky which doesn't help.

So, alas, I hate the planning stage. I hate being stuck, but I'm not really asking for help. I've just kind of accepted that getting stuck is part of my process.

(Oh, and the good news is, after about 4 and a half hours, I got myself unstuck!!)

I hate outlining I hate outlining I hate outlining I have been stuck on the same bullet point for four hours I hate outlining I hate outlining I hate outlining

[atouchofsass]

warning: the google doc i drafted this post in is seven pages long and I still didn't even remember everything I wanted to say. anyway here's essentially a journal entry on the caroline, or change revival at studio 54

My opinion

I fucking loved it lol. There was one weak link that we’ll get to later but I was NOT disappointed by this production. Go see it.

The vibe

The show was clearly purposefully livened up to make it more appealing to the mainstream, but in a way I would consider almost entirely positive. The appliances were less stoic, more whimsical, flashier and more fun. Instead of mainly standing in place behind their physical counterpart, they dance and move across the stage, interacting directly with other characters in ways that are sometimes metaphorical and sometimes just for fun. At first I wasn’t really sure about having the Moon physically flying above the stage, but by the end of the first act I was completely on board. I had heard it referred to as “intrusive” by a couple of people, but I think I have to disagree. It was only intrusive to me because it wasn’t my expectation; to a fresh viewer I think it would seem perfectly natural. In fact, I think it would seem odd to them that the Moon had ever not flown.

Moments of actual visual comedy have been added too, rather than depending on line delivery. For example, rather than have Rose alone when she’s on the phone with Mr. Stopnik, she’s across the stage from Noah, who is in bed. When she sings “the boy still hates me- I really shouldn’t be talking so loud,” instead of her just catching herself, Noah jerks his head to look at her after “the boy still hates me” and then after a beat she finishes the line and begins walking away towards the steps. At first, this stretches the cord to what you think will be its full length as she arrives at the stairs and pauses after taking a step down, but then she keeps going down the stairs, enters the “basement” area, and eventually stands all the way downstage, with the comically long cord stretched out behind her. I thought it was hysterical.

If you had asked me before seeing this revival whether Caroline, or Change needed to have more comic relief and bright colors and fun silliness, I would have been like fuck you don’t be a coward!!! but in practice it actually works very well.

The cast

Our playbills came with three notices inside: the first announced Jaden Myles Waldman as our Noah, the second gave us our Jackie (Alexander Bello [FROM JOHN MULANEY AND THE SACK LUNCH BUNCH!!! {the one who said he was Marlon Jackson’s son}]) and Joe (Jayden Theophile), and the third announced that the role of the Dryer and the Bus would be played by the cover Quentin Oliver Lee. Everyone else was the usual cast.

Sharon D. Clarke was magnificent. She didn’t read quite as cold as Tonya Pinkins used to, but still cold, sort of brittle. She approached almost all her high notes with head voice and didn’t seem terribly comfortable with them, but I’m not certain whether she always does that, if she might have been sick, or if she was holding back because we saw a matinee. Regardless of the reason, I got used to it quickly; I’d just as soon have a Caroline that DOESN’T destroy her voice anyway. It’s a very responsible approach and, again, did not detract from the performance the majority of the time (and even if it had, the unbelievable richness of her lower register, including her speaking voice, would likely have made up for it). Whenever she spoke instead of singing, you got the sense she was making the most of every syllable. She especially shone during the fight with Noah- the unbelievably measured way she handled those lines left a chill over the room. The pause between each phrase was brutal.

Jaden Myles Waldman was great as Noah. Though as usual with child actors you can very much see the effort he’s putting into his singing, his physical acting was very natural- only once or twice did you notice him actively trying to hit a mark. He was a more lively Noah, still shy, but one you might imagine having one or two friends at school. His entrance to Caroline’s basement at the beginning was energetic, he physically salutes her as the President of the United States, and she wordlessly tells him to stand at ease (it was ambiguous, from the distance I was at, whether she did so with annoyance or with the same scrap of indulgence that allows her to hand him her cigarettes. I would prefer if it was with annoyance, but I could see the utility of making it not).

There were a few times the energy clashed with the book, specifically the moments where Noah says something very ungrounded. “My father is a clarinet” didn’t suffer too much, but I did not buy this Noah saying “I did it… I killed her” and so on. He also spoke “I killed her” rather than sang it, which I’m not a fan of. But like, he’s also a child actor; it’s not really a big deal and he was good the rest of the time.

I could not get enough of Samantha Williams as Emmie. I wanted her to be on stage the whole time. She shone when her acting was allowed to get more physical- her dancing, her body language when playing with her brothers, and her proud, furious, glowing confrontation with the statue in the epilogue (staged with her interacting with the physical washing machine prop, arguing past it, slamming her hands on it, then finally climbing atop it for the finale). For this reason I was disappointed when she held onto the dinner tray for the entirety of her argument with Mr. Stopnik- I kept wishing for her to be able to put it down on the table, to see what she would do unencumbered.

Speaking of which, Chip Zien as Mr. Stopnik, naturally, was great fun. I wished for a little more bombast from him during A Twenty Dollar Bill and Why, but that was really my only complaint. A choice that jumped out at me was to make “let her stay” very forceful- instead of the subtext being “please” the subtext was “come on, really? Let her.” which I think plays nicer with Mr. Stopnik’s general refusal to be polite.

Caissie Levy was the obvious weak link in the cast. Her over-the-top, self-aware performance clashed terribly with the grounded feel of everyone else onstage. I read some reviews on the way home out of curiosity and saw one that called her performance “honest and believable,” which seemed so comically incorrect that I still want to believe it was a joke. She literally pointed at Caroline with both hands on “from now on, YOU keep it.”

If there are some people who should not act in period pieces because they have a face that knows about email, Caissie Levy should not act in period pieces because she has an affect that knows about Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. She was acting like she was on an SNL skit about karens. She was acting like Anna Kendrick. It doesn’t work. Because she is a caricature instead of a person, her moments of open distress fall completely flat. Her voice was pretty though.

I LOVED John Cariani as Stuart. He was perfectly awkward, getting carried away when playing the clarinet (which he is doing for real btw) and coming across deeply stiff and scripted at all other times. I could be totally off here, but I think MAYBE he was specifically making his voice more clarinet-like. I’m not super familiar with his work outside of The Band’s Visit so maybe he just sounds like that though. I also learned during the cast Q and A afterwards that he was already pretty good at the clarinet before the pandemic, but spent the intervening year becoming an absolute boss, came back, and SHOCKED the rest of the cast with how good he had gotten. I don’t really know anything about clarinet performance, but to my untrained ear it certainly was stunning. Also, he was hot.

Tamika Lawrence as Dotty Moffat was very enjoyable, though I think Dotty got hit hardest with the “talk slower so the audience can understand you” thing; she sometimes delivered lines rather slower than felt natural for the character. I loved her voice, especially in Moon Trio, and she had great comic delivery.

Joy Hermalyn and Stuart Zagnit were delightful as the Gellman grandparents. I actively enjoyed them the bulk of the time they were onstage, which is impressive considering these roles can fade into the background a little. JFK has potential to be a slow spot, but it was never in any danger in their hands.

Nasia Thomas, Nya, and Harper Miles were, as you may have already heard, fucking fantastic. Their vocals could not be better and each one handles the fleshed-out interaction between Caroline, the Radio, and certain other characters with gusto. Because of the group nature of the roles I struggle to say anything about them individually, but oh my god they were so good.

Arica Jackson as the Washing Machine was a delight to watch, as bubbly as her costume, but at times I wished her voice was a little less of a light silky pop belt and more of the full-throated fare Capathia Jenkins gave us in the original cast. That said, I think that’s purely a matter of preference and me being stuck in my ways; her vocal performance was very deft and there was nothing actually wrong with it.

Quentin Oliver Lee KILLED as the Dryer and the Bus (and briefly, spoiler alert, Caroline’s ex-husband). I would never have known he wasn’t the principle if the playbill didn’t tell me so. His voice was resonant and sweet, which as the Dryer gave a cruel contrast to his words and body language and as the Bus revealed sincere reverence and sorrow. I never looked away from him for a second when he was onstage. He was a more overtly sexual Dryer- rather than the original where the implication is delivered only through the music, this Dryer postures while manspreading (all the while seated on the physical dryer), caressing his legs and leaning forward hungrily. I would like very much to see how Kevin S. McAllister’s take compares, but I’m delighted to have gotten to see Lee. I am in love with him.

Finally, N’Kenge as the Moon was gorgeous. Her voice was flawless. Her gestures were rather repetitive, but given that she’s sitting in a half-bubble the entire time I think that issue lies with the direction more than her interpretation, and anyway she’s graceful enough that you don’t really mind if she waves her arms the same way a few times in a row. I am also in love with her.

Alexander Bello and Jayden Theophile obviously play bit parts as Jackie and Joe, but they were still great and one of them did a sick flip during Roosevelt Petrucius Coleslaw, which was very impressive. We all clapped, but I clapped first.

The stage

When you walked into the theater, the first thing you noticed was the sound of frogs and bugs. The second thing you noticed was the copper confederate statue, labeled “the south’s defenders,” standing center stage. The pedestal gives away that the statue on stage is based on (but is not a replica of) the real South’s Defenders Monument in the real Lake Charles, LA. The sides of the stage are covered in tall grass and reeds while the center is tiled. Hanging lightbulbs are strewn all about the edges. Above is the “upstairs” featuring a TV and phone on one side and Noah’s bedroom on the other. The two sides of the upstairs begin and end the show joined together, but are separated for the bulk of the run time (the symbolism is not subtle).

At the beginning of intermission the washing machine is left alone center stage; at some point during intermission it is replaced with just the pedestal of the South’s Defenders statue, plus the head and a confederate flag on the floor of the stage. Unfortunately, I was in the bathroom so I didn’t see when/how they switched them or if anything interesting happened :(

My one complaint about the set design and use of stage and lighting throughout the show is that it actually feels quite cool, not hot or stifling at all. Before the show, someone behind me joked that it felt like Pirates of the Caribbean at Disney World. They make things red and hot and small when the dryer is actively singing in the first scene, but not really at any other time. Again, a very minor complaint comparatively.

A brief top three visual moments utilizing the set and lighting:

The Bus’s entrance, in which the back of the stage opens with a blinding light and the bus and his passengers, hidden in shadow, slowly trudge in

Salty teardrops, where real water begins falling onto the back and sides of the stage

Lot’s Wife, in which as Caroline sings the final “flat” she is slowly but ultimately BLINDINGLY illuminated from behind with pure white light, as though being granted her wish and purged in holy fire. You could hear the audience gasping at the absolute splendor of it, I also gasped and physically covered my mouth with my hands (even though I was wearing a mask lol) and obviously everyone broke into applause immediately afterwards

The costumes

The costumes for the human characters are fitting but mainly unremarkable. I think this is for the best; making them any more eye-catching would have been a poor choice. A few costumes are very similar to ones from the original broadway production, like Emmie still wearing a brown plaid coat during I Hate The Bus, while others were completely original.

The costumes for the appliances and the Moon, though, were fabulous. The identical dresses and hairpieces for the Radio stunned every time- my favorite was the blue and silver for Salty Teardrops, but the white Christmas outfits complete with white wigs and the red and black numbers for No One Waitin�� were also gorgeous. The Dryer was perfect, wearing a dark jumpsuit with red-hot coils around his neck and splashed over his arms (the one on his neck neatly evokes a collar). The Moon had three (?) very similar dresses, each of which provided a slightly different effect when she gestured but all of which suggested roundness and grace by means of sleeves connected to the body of the dress. The Washing Machine’s bubbles were a bit of a weak point by comparison, but not distractingly bad.

My favorite was actually the Bus- his costume includes a license plate and headlights, as one might expect, but I was really delighted by the simplest part: an ultra-thin, bright line painted directly down the center of his face, suggesting the light peeking out from the crack between two bus doors on a dark night. It may be because the Bus is already one of my favorite parts, so I am undeniably biased, but I was obsessed.

The changes

The most noticeable overarching change from the original production is that LOTS of moments have their tempo slightly reduced. This makes sense given that Caroline, or Change has a lot of very dense lyrics sung very fast, so I can’t fault them, but it does unavoidably make those moments slightly less high-energy, less frenetic, less of an outburst. For example, “I think it’s a negro thing/A southern thing/A christian thing” is sung slower than it was in the original version, there is a rest between each phrase.

There were slight changes in the music at parts. During Dotty and Caroline, Caroline’s pitch is lower on “Dotty Moffat/high and mighty/going to college/every night.” During Moon, Emmie, and Stuart Trio the Moon’s “dona”s have been altered. And at the end of Emmie’s first bit in the Kitchen Fight, her melody and lyrics have been slightly altered from the furious, rapid “Come on, come on teach me what you know! Mama, teach-” and are now slower and almost desperate: “Teach me, teach me, teach me, mama, teach-”

Other changes were purely lyric-based. “Night, cheap beautiful music” has been changed to “Night, free beautiful music.” And a few very minor wording changes have been made to dialogue parts such as Caroline giving her perspective on Noah’s mother’s cancer. I don’t remember exactly what changed, except for the slight rearrangement of “Sometimes God eat people like a hungry wolf” to “God eat people sometimes. Like a wolf.”

Finally, during 1943, Caroline’s husband actually appears for the flashback. He wears a white sailor’s uniform and dances with her sweetly. They hold hands and romance each other at first, then becomes distant as babies are piled into their arms (and into the arms of the appliances). We do not see them hit each other- it is portrayed through flinches and, when Caroline retaliates, by her slamming a hand down on the washer.

Little Things

Roosevelt Petrucius Coleslaw is always a fun-act-ender, but it’s really emphasized as a whimsical showstopper here with lots of visual interest and even Caroline smiling and participating in the shower of money.

During Rose’s call with Dotty towards the end, Stuart is standing by her constantly trying to nonverbally communicate something to her but getting shut down every time. He’s clearly frustrated with how the call is going, but I couldn’t read what he was trying to get Rose to do- to be more harsh, perhaps?

When Grandma Gellman has Stuart play the clarinet after A Twenty Dollar Bill and Why, he is seated at the head of the table and comically whips the clarinet out from underneath and begins playing in the same motion and it’s really funny.

As previously noted, “I think it’s a negro thing/A southern thing/A christian thing” is sung slower and annunicated more, but there was one more interesting thing- “christian” is emphasized much more heavily than “southern” and “negro”. It lends a little more aggression to the interaction on Emmie’s part while also emphasizing the Jewishness/Christianity dichotomy of the piece.

Inside/Outside had a brief chaotic light show that to me was the only part of the show where the lights and colors went too far. It wasn't overly disruptive though, since the part is so short.

We attended a brief Q and A after the show, featuring Stuart Zagnit, Jaden Myles Waldman, Khalifa White (cover for Radio 1 and 2 and Emmie), and Timothy Quinlan (cover for Stuart, Mr. Stopnik, and Mr. Gellman). The first “question” managed to be a white dude giving a comment-not-a-question about how he “had his own Caroline” and stuff and I thought he came off a real dick but the moderator seemed into his story. Personally, I think if you want points for showing basic human decency to the black maid that raised you, you should probably at minimum write a Tony-nominated musical about her, but that’s just me.

Most of the other questions were good but very basic. The one answer that was pretty interesting was when someone asked about little things the actors picked up about the score that a one-time audience would never notice. Quinlan and White explained to us that after the Washing Machine does her bit begging Rose not to fire Caroline, there is a brief bassoon part which represents Betty “telling” Rose not to fire Caroline. It was unclear whether this was actually coming from Tesori or if it was White’s pet theory (Quinlan noted that White was the one who told him about it) but I thought it was pretty neat either way.

The audience

The audience was so excited to be there! It brought me a lot of joy. There was instant applause the MILLISECOND the lights started to go down. The guy next to me was, I think, competing with me to see who could scream the loudest during applause breaks. Audible gasps occurred at times, especially when Noah turns on Caroline- there were small gasps during his rant, then some BIG gasps after “I hope he drops his bomb on you!”

There WERE unfortunately laughs at “and hell’s where Jews go when they die.” My boyfriend patted me sympathetically on the back as it happened since he knows how I feel about that, but there were at least fewer laughs than you hear on the bootleg and they were more uncomfortable. Plus, Sharon D. Clarke’s acting was so captivating in the moment that I wasn’t able to be drawn out of the scene very much.

Conclusion

I could literally write about this all day but this is already a little excessive. I take credit for psychically willing this revival into existence, now go see it before it closes.

[indomies]

#showyourprocess

From planning to posting, share your process for making creative content!

To continue supporting content makers, this tag game is meant to show the entire process of making creative content: this can be for any creation.

RULES — When your work is tagged, show the process of its creation from planning to posting, then tag up to 5 people with a specific link to one of their creative works you’d like to see the process of. Use the tag #showyourprocess so we can find yours!

sabrina @lanwangiji​, my love, tagged me to share my process of making this typography edit! check out her explanation of her the untamed edit and her edit tag. 

1. PLANNING

i once opened lyrics edit requests so i can learn and practice typography. this edit was a request as well. i asked them which lyrics they wanted to have and the colors they’d like. since i got several requests and it was hard to keep tabs on them, i made a trello board so i could organize everything. i’m still using the trello board for every edit idea i have, the board makes my life easier.

above is what i filled the card in the board with. basically just information of the requests.

1.1 INSPIRATION

once i got the request, my first thought was to find the vibe the song/lyrics exude. “it’s an old curse” screamed witchy vibes to me, so i went to pinterest to find some inspirations. at first i was looking for witchy poster designs and i came across this. i liked how it has smoke-ish graphic and i thought the smoke suited the “old curse” lyrics. and tbh pinterest is a rabbit hole, they gave me suggestions after suggestions, like this and this which became my inspiration for the color palette (i added the gold from those pics) and the sun moon design gave me the idea to incorporate space stuffs too. i somehow landed on this too, and because i wanted to include space theme, i made a simple phases of the moon. ultimately the hero of this edit was the lyrics, i didnt want the graphics took the center stage. i was inspired to make a crystal ball and do this kind of typography but after several trials i couldnt get the the typography right, so i scratched that idea and went with the space theme instead.

1.2 PICKING COLORS

after i was feeling inspired enough, i went looking for the right colors. i usually just type “color name” and “palette” on pinterest. example “dark grey color palette” and i chose the one i liked best. when the request only asked for 1 color, i always searched for either a complimentary or contrasting color to give it a jushz, to add sprinkles. that’s why i added gold on top of the dark grey. 

1.3 FINDING FONTS

this is the hardest part. the fonts play important role to the design. they need to convey the vibes of the lyrics, in this case witchy/magic vibe. i needed to find fonts or font just as magical and a bit whimsical. tho i hoard fonts... i like to use new font for every typography edit lmao sue me.

i highly recommend going to creativemarket free goods site, pixelsurplus font freebies and behance to search for fonts. i always use 100% free fonts, that means i can use it personally as well as commercially. creativemarket gives me desktop license for the fonts, which means i can use it for commercial as well. the reason i do this because i want to open an etsy shop someday, and i want to have the right license when i sell my stuffs. i almost never buy fonts bc they are expensive lmao. 

the fonts in used are “Vintage” for the main typograpy (i think i was a freebie from creativemarket) and “Morganite” for the title of the lyrics and the name of artist. 

2. CREATING

once i have my materials and ideas, i open my illustrator and hope it doesnt crash every 5 min.

for this kind of typography edits, i use 600x700 px. tbh i dont like using 540px, the suggested tumblr size, as the width bc to me it doesn’t look as good in quality, so i up the px. but more on this sizing later. i utilize the artboards function in illustrator, and i use 2 artboards.

i use illustrator (ai) bc i’m working with vectors. when i work with vectors, the graphics/texts or whatever im making in ai wont become blurry or lose its quality when i enlarge or shrink it. in compare to photoshop, i need to make for example the moon graphic very big, so i wont lose the quality when i reduce and enlarge it again. with vector, i can start small and when i expand it, it’s still as good as when it’s tiny. 

2.1 GRADIENTS

i started with the gradients first. i created a rectangle as big as 600x700px and with the “freeform gradient” tool in ai, i played with the colors. below is the color palettes i used

2.2 LYRICS AND GRAPHICS

once the gradients are done, i worked with the lyrics and graphics right away. when i first doing this edits, i made typos a lot lmaooooooo. so i copy and pasted the lyrics on top of my artboard, so i wouldnt have any typos. 

i had 3 layers in my ai. one for the inspo pics and the OG lyrics. the rest for the edits themselves. i broke up “It's an old curse/dreamers diving headfirst” into to parts, hence the 2 more layers

i almost always started with the lyrics first then the graphics. but for this edit, i made the smoke first so i can layout where my text would be.

tbh the process of making the lyrics is a trial and error. i tried bunch of different stuffs and i chose whatever the best. but i worked like methodically, i made sure i finished the first part of the lyrics first then i could move on.

i was lucky with this font “vintage”. the font offers me several glyphs like these

and i chose the one at the bottom. you’re very lucky if you find a font and they have glyphs.

excursion: glyphs vs fonts

glyph is an individual character. It might be a letter, an accented letter, a ligature, a punctuation mark, a dingbat, etc.

A font is a digital file which is used to display a typeface, which contains the entire upper- and lowercase alphabet as well as punctuation, numbers, and other special characters.

after i was finished with all the lyrics i added some graphics to make the edit pretty like small stars or dots. i added the song title and the artist too, sometimes at the bottom sometimes at the top. and i added my watermark put it as small as i could and made it a bit invisible but still can be seen.

2.3 EXPORTING

exporting! this is where i’m going to go deeper with the dimension of my work. in ai, i always choose to save with “export as screens” function. it automatically divides the artboards i have and save them separately. i always save as png, bc the size is smaller than jpg but can maintain the quality.

now the export tab looks like this

see the formats? i always scale up my edits, 2-3 times the original artboard size. reason is, to maintain the quality. i have tried to save it as original, 600x700 px, but it turned out a bit blurry. bc everything in ai is vector, when i scale up it doesnt lose the quality. BUT once i save it as png, it’s not a vector anymore, and when you zoom in until a certain degree it’ll be pixelated. that’s why i always scale up, to avoid it becoming pixelated when it’s just zoomed 1 or 2 times.

2.4 FINAL TOUCH

i opened my photoshop and also pray it won’t crash. import the png of my edits, add some grains/noise. the reason i use photoshop is, the noise filter is way better than in ai. it’s smoother somehow. and then i export my edits.

(i have a timelapse of how i made one of my edits, it’s not this one, but it’ll give you a better visualization. find it HERE

3. POSTING

now the hardest parts are done, we go to posting!

i uploaded the 2 posters on tumblr as photos then i wrote the captions. for this typography edit, i always chose another lyrics that i like from the same song for the caption. i bolded the lyrics, add link to all of my typography gradient edits.

i always use this link to color my caption. i usually choose 3-4 colors, and i took the colors from my edit. but this was not until recently lmao. before i just took a guess and looked for similar colors that match the edit, but then i thought “why didnt i just use the color in the posters lmao”

ok after i have my html code for the caption, i go to this site to replace the “;” with “ “ so tumblr can read the code.

i’m not one who puts their edits in draft, bc i just cant wait to post it. i have to option here, either i post it immediately when the time is right (i usually post between 4-8) or i schedule it, if im finished before 4. 

i put all the necessary tags and click post! i am done finally!

i’m tagging:

@thetriangletattoo​ for this amazing series

@deludedandlostcause​ for this impressive gif

@half-lightl​ for this spectacular edit

@gayndrew​ for this stunning drawing

@thechampagnelovers​ for this cool collage

@cloudslou​ for this incredible edit

@heyangels​ for this incredible edit

[bedlamsbard]

Backbone: 5 and I'd also like to ask what the tent pole events for it are? :)

5: What part was hardest to write?

So the answer to this has less to do with the actual story and more to do with what was going on with my life back then, which, the short version is that I'd just had a very, very bad (platonic) break-up and I was having trouble writing at all and specifically with Backbone for reasons I won't go into in public. This was unfortunately right when I had a bunch of very complicated chapters -- 22-26. (The tail end of those also started writing into my issues with canon getting worse and worse.) Those chapters bounced through a number of different possible options (Hondo and the clearinghouse were not part of the original plan, for example -- there's a keystone scene from after the Ghost crew left the Empire that actually got dropped and never made it into Backbone even in draft form), but the most complicated part was probably the attempted assassination of Cham Syndulla. Usually my keystone scenes are very visual; this one was not, it was an event that I knew had to happen (it was planned back in July 2015; that chapter came out October 2017), but all the circumstances around it were not set until very, very late, and I've got earlier versions of it on my drafts where the setting was different, where the witnesses were different, where the would-be assassin was different. I tried for a really long time to fit it into a Synedrion meeting (a.k.a. all the fleet captains and clan leaders would have been (virtually) present), but it just never worked there. I can't recall if at any point the assassin was an Imperial agent or if it was always going to be a disaffected Twi'lek; I know it wasn't always going to be Mishaan. I can't really remember when I decided it was going to be her, though I think that was early enough there's set-up for her disaffection.

For the tent pole events for my fic -- that's just canon, especially with something like Backbone that's set during a specific point in canon where it's not going to have huge knock-on effects to that canon. Backbone covers about the same time period as the first eight episodes of Rebels. I think this is only really noticeable in that there are two events from that season that actually take place during the course of Backbone, which is the kyber crystal shipment from Breaking Ranks and the Empire Day parade from Empire Day. I really struggled with whether or not to put Jai Kell and Zare Leonis into this story because it does cover the events of Breaking Ranks, but ultimately it just did not work and would have distracted from the Ghost crew because having them there wouldn't accomplish anything. I think there's one or two sideways mentions of them in the relevant chapters.

...oh wait, I misunderstood my own concept lol. The tent pole event that Backbone is part of is the overarching TPM-RotJ Skywalker Saga that Rebels itself falls into. It's not a concept that transfers super-well outside of the whole TVA concept for Morning, but it is essentially how I think of it in the sense that like -- this is the grand story that's being told, this is the context it exists in, this is what's going on, these things have to happen. (This is the reason you'll very, very seldom see me write an AU where the major canon story arc doesn't happen. I actually can't think of a single case where I've done so; I don't think Dust counts.) In this case because Rebels has so relatively little to do with the events of the saga, it's not super obvious there. It's just the background against which Backbone is set.

---

ask me things!

[fictionadventurer]

Writing technique asks: 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12

2. What is your approach to worldbuilding?

Rule of Cool. I always start with imagery, aesthetics, and concepts that capture my imagination.

Figure out the plot, and mold the world so it facilitates the plot and conflicts I want to create.

Extrapolate. Think about how the big picture of the culture affects aspects of daily life. It’s always better to dig deep into the details of one concept than throw together a bunch of concepts that don’t get a lot of exploration.

Whenever there’s the opportunity to throw in a specific or interesting detail, do it. I may not know all the details of clothing, food, or cultural mores in this world, but if I mention a particular kind of shoe, an interesting food, a new animal, and show one character addressing another with a specific honorific, it’ll look like I have developed all the background behind these details, and the reader’s imagination can fill in the blanks.

3. What is your approach to research?

Gather together scattered bits of information from books/the internet/general knowledge/trivia for inspiration.

Read a few Wikipedia articles or children’s nonfiction books to get a basic grounding in an important concept.

After outlining/drafting, do scattered bits of research about things that require facts to make sense.

But mostly, just run in the other direction from story/character concepts that require significant research.

6. When creating characters, what comes first: appearance, backstory, motivation, personality, something else?

Role in the story: What do I need them to do?

Personality and motivation: Why are they doing these things? If they do these things for this reason, what kind of person does that make them? What personality traits are the most interesting for the role I need them to fill?

Appearance: I’ll start with a general idea of looks: body type, hair color. Since I’m not a terribly visual writer, it may never develop beyond that. If it does, it helps if I’ve developed other characters to compare and contrast them with. Or just start with a celebrity or a picture and tweak their looks from there.

7. What is one essential thing to remember when writing a villain?

Design them so they further your main character’s arc. Does the hero need to overcome a flaw? Give the villain the same flaw, pushed to an extreme that shows how wrong that mindset is. Or have the villain push the hero to try to overcome the flaw in the wrong way, only for the hero to discover the true path by the end of the story. It can even be useful to give them a similar background to your hero, and show them as someone that the hero could have become, or still could become, if they make the wrong choices.

8. What’s your philosophy on writing romantic relationships?

Figure out how they’re similar and how they’re different. Give them differences that complement and conflict with each other while giving them some underlying core similarity that draws them to each other.

If possible, make the main character’s major weakness the love interest’s strength. If she’s too pushy, he’s willing to listen to others. If she’s socially awkward, he socially adept. If he’s hot-headed, she’s patient, etc.

Restraint, restraint, restraint. Put as little mushy-gushy stuff in as possible. Never have them wax poetic about how much they love the other person. And never go into detail about how beautiful, hot, or handsome they find the love interest. Let actions, conversations, little moments of character connection, show how much they care for each other.

11. How do you name characters and places?

Characters: Baby name books and websites are good starting places. (I have a semi-ridiculous collection of baby names books). If I’m trying to name characters in a fantasy world, I may assign a real-world country to each nation and draw character names from the appropriate lists. Sometimes I’ll take real names and shift a letter or two (and most of the time, that winds up being a real name anyway, so I won’t worry too much about being totally original). Or I’ll look at random words on, say, shampoo bottles and take out or rearrange letters and see if there’s anything that suggests a name.

Places: When making up worlds, I usually just throw together random syllables. If I’m coming up with different cultures, I’ll try to make the place names seem like they could come from the same language as the character names. Sometimes I’ll take pieces of names from real-world towns. Or I’ll do the shampoo bottle thing and just rearrange letters until I stumble on something that sounds like a good place name. But sometimes, you can just name it something in English and call it a day. Like, the King’s City, that gets the message across. Depends on the world, though.

12. How do you choose chapter and/or story/book titles?

I’ll think of important objects, people or concepts in the story and figure out which words provide a concise, vivid and accurate picture of what the story’s about. When possible, I like my titles to have both a literal and a thematic/metaphoric meaning. For example, I just wrote a flash fiction I titled “Promise of Glass” because a) a character had literally promised someone a glasswork and b) a promise gets broken.

[commodorecliche]

Hey Lindsay, I've read a few of your fics and I love the way you write :) I've been trying to write a story but i'm just stuck at the outline. So, I was wondering if you could, perhaps, make a little tutorial or a walk-through your process? I'd like to have my story points defined before I start writing but I don't have a structure that I can follow and I really love your style *-* It's okay if you don't feel like it though. I understand. Thank you in advance ^^

hey there friend! i’m not sure when you sent this ask today, i so hope you haven’t been waiting all day for my reply!! i just saw it.

first things first - thank you so much for your kind words about my writing. they really mean the world to me. and i am SO EXCITED to hear that you’re working on your own fic. that’s amazing!! 

now to the meat!

so i don’t know if i have specific or... super organized... process, per se, and i don’t really do a ‘strict’ outline, in the most traditional sense of the word (meaning i don’t have a document full of numbers and bullet points and such). and everyone’s process is going to be a little different, so bear in mind, what works for me might not work for you. but once you get the feel of writing your story, you’ll get a better sense of what your own writing process is. and you’ll figure out what works and doesn’t work for you. the way i do things might not work for you, but that’s totally okay, you’ll come into your own as you go along. and hey, maybe this will work for you! who knows!

but what i generally do when i start a new fic is:

1: i type out my rough and basic idea. i like to do this (and most of my outlining/drafting) in all caps, it helps keep me focused and helps me organize what i have ‘drafted’ and what i have properly written lol.

so for example, um, In the House We Remain, my first idea was jotted out like this, at the top of my document: SAPPY GHOST STORY, AZIRAPHALE BUYS A COTTAGE THAT CROWLEY USED TO OWN, CROWLEY DIED THERE. CROWLEY WAS AN AUTHOR AND HIS BOOKS ARE STILL IN THE HOUSE, WHICH IS HOW AZIRAPHALE GETS TO KNOW HIM.

that’s my base level idea, and i kept it at the top of the document.

2: from there, i start thinking about what are some MAJOR scenes i want to have happen. not the minute details, just the major scenes that were popping in and out of my head when i was daydreaming about the fic. these can be as minimal or as thorough as you like. for In the House We Remain, i had a pretty set idea on how i wanted the story to progress from start to finish, so i had a lot of scenes already in mind.

using the same fic as an example, these are some of the scene ideas i wrote in my fic document, underneath my top line idea: SCENES: - AZIRAPHALE SEES THE COTTAGE (ANATHEMA IS THE REAL ESTATE AGENT) AND HE LOVES IT. HE BUYS IT THAT DAY. (DEFINE THE LANDSCAPE AND HOW THE COTTAGE LOOKS, PROBABLY WANT A POND IN THE BACK, THAT COULD BE HOW CROWLEY WAS MURDERED. COTTAGE SHOULD BE COZY AND DREAMY, A LOVELY THING SET OUT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE COUNTRYSIDE. LOOK UP PICS FOR REFERENCES.) - GUNNA HAVE TO MENTION SOMETHING ABOUT THE HOUSE THAT’LL CONNECT TO HOW CROWLEY DIED, SOME VISUAL INDICATORS OF HIS SPIRIT. MAYBE WATER STAINS ON THE FLOOR? LIKE DRIPPING WATER MIGHT POOL AROUND A WET PERSON’S FEET? AM I GOING WITH DROWNING AS CAUSE OF DEATH? DUNNO.***COME BACK TO THIS. - WHILE UNPACKING AZIRAPHALE SEES A BUNCH OF UNFAMILIAR BOOKS IN THE STUDY AND IS CURIOUS ABOUT THEM. - AZIRAPHALE TALKS TO ANATHEMA ABOUT THE BOOKS AND THE AUTHOR. LEARNS THAT CROWLEY IS THE AUTHOR, AND THAT HE OWNED AND DIED IN THE HOUSE MYSTERIOUSLY. - AZIRAPHALE READS THE BOOKS, LOVES THEM, FEELS A CONNECTION WITH CROWLEY. - AZIRAPHALE SOMEHOW CONNECTS WITH CROWLEY’S LINGERING SPIRIT IN THE HOUSE (DETAILS TO COME) - THEY START COMMUNICATING. CROWLEY REVEALS THAT HE WAS MURDERED - I WANT THIS TO BE AN EMOTIONAL SCENE, AZIRAPHALE VERY UPSET AND DISTURBED BY WHAT HE’S BEEN TOLD. ALSO AFRAID CAUSE HE’S MADE CONTACT W/ SOMEONE WHO’S VERY DEAD. MAYBE HE EVEN CALLS ANATHEMA AFTER TO REVEAL THE NATURE OF CROWLEY’S DEATH. - NEED SCENES OF AZIRAPHALE GROWING OLD IN THE HOUSE WITH CROWLEY’S GHOST, THEN EVENTUALLY DYING AND ACTUALLY UNITING WITH HIM. SAPPY, EMOTIONAL, THE WORKS. - AZIRAPHALE AND CROWLEY’S SPIRITS LINGER IN THE HOUSE, EVEN AS A NEW COUPLE MOVES IN.

those were my major scenes that i needed to write and that would make up most of my story.

3: flesh out the aforementioned scenes. break these scenes down individually and think about them, picture them like a movie in your head. when aziraphale sees the cottage, what’s happening around him? has he gotten out of the car? what is the weather like, is it a dreamy setting? should the wind be gently rustling the trees and his hair? is he in awe? does he take a moment to take in the exterior of the house. what does the house look like? picture that entire scene from start to finish, then jot down your thoughts. remember, you aren’t actually doing Proper Good Writing out. you’re just getting the ideas down and the draft ideas fleshed out. 4: once i have those scenes fleshed out (always typed in all caps for me lol), i start the actual ‘writing’ process. I drop the all-caps, start using proper grammar, and go into I’m Telling A Story Mode. I usually try to start writing at the beginning, because i tend to visualize my stories as movies that play in my head. i need to mentally see it progress as i write it, like i would do if i were watching a movie or reading a book. but sometimes that doesn’t happen - sometimes beginnings are the hardest part. if you struggle with the beginning, skip to the first most fleshed out scene you have, the one you feel most comfortable with, or whatever scene you feel REALLY ready to write. this writing doesn’t have to be perfect (it definitely won’t be lol). but you’ll start to get a feel for how you want to actually present this story and these scenes once they’re all finalized. you can edit it and make it prettier later, but for now, just get some words on the paper as if it were a story you were ready to tell. 5: once you have your main scenes fleshed out, you need to start making connections between them. stories need depth and background, so you need to be able to go “okay, i have aziraphale loving the house and buying it, then i need him to find the books in the study, how am I going to connect those two scenes?”

you can do this part either as you go along (example: you’ve written your first Major Scene, and you want to progress onto your next scene, so you write the connections first, then once you have the connection scenes done, you can then move on to the next Major Scene from your draft) OR you can get all your major drafted scenes written, and make your connections AFTER those scenes are done. you just gotta see what works for you. 

i prefer the first method, i try to write the major scenes and the connection scenes as i go along so that i have a natural flow. that also allows me to make some changes to a later Major Scene before i actually write it. (example: hm, i was gunna have Aziraphale do XYZ in the next scene, but with this connection, I think having him do ABC in that scene might work better).

if you don’t have a clear-cut idea yet for how to connect your scenes, go back to the all caps ‘drafting’ mode, where you’re just throwing ideas on the page in between, like: ‘AZIRAPHALE HAS JUST MOVED IN AND IS READY TO UNPACK, I NEED HIM TO BRING HIS BOOKS TO THE STUDY TO START UNPACKING THEM AND SHELVING THEM. THAT’S WHEN HE SHOULD NOTICE CROWLEY’S BOOKS THAT HAVE MYSTERIOUSLY APPEARED ON THE SHELVES.’ from there, go back into ‘proper writing’ mode when you’re ready, and flesh out that scene - what is aziraphale doing while he’s unpacking? are his boxes of books already in the study, or do i need him to have a reason to bring them into the study? maybe a mover accidentally placed one in the wrong room. this is your connector that will get you between scenes. 6: once you have all your scenes done in a proper first draft, go back, do re-writes, add new things that you think you might need, take out things that aren’t necessary, check your grammar and spelling, and do your final proofing. (read your story out loud too - it’s the easiest way to catch typos, errors, or weird phrasing)

7: don’t be afraid to write ANYWHERE. many of my ideas for scenes popped up in the middle of a work day, and every time that happens, i text myself. i send myself a text, all caps, with the scene idea, and i don’t open it until i’m ready to write. it helps me keep track of things. i did a lot of writing in notebooks, on post-it notes, wherever really. i even have googledocs installed on my phone so i could access a fic from anywhere if i had a sudden idea. and if i had something new to add to the document, i put it in all caps, so i would know i needed to address it later.

8: act things out! seriously, i’m not kidding. act your scenes out with yourself. especially dialogue scenes. have those dialogues with yourself, think about how you want dialogue to progress, and talk those ideas out in a way that sounds natural to you. that’ll help you write your dialogue later. (the number of times my husband has walked in on me running through some dialogue aloud......... goodness).

9: don’t be afraid of music :) maybe it’s silly, but i make a playlist for every fic i write because i like to listen to music to get me into the correct mood for what i’m writing. it helps me a LOT. maybe it won’t be as helpful for you, but always worth a try.

and that’s really.... the extent of my process. it’s a little messy, i know, and maybe it’s not the best advice. and i just hope that it at least a LITTLE bit of sense... but i hope it will at least be of some help to you! if you’re confused about anything, please don’t hesitate to message me. 

or if you want to chat one-on-one, that’s totally fine too. i 100% don’t mind if you send me a chat message. i’m always happy to help.

[cowardsanctuary]

Into the Object Hole:

Why is Nearly Every Object Show Flash-Animated?

(warning: a big, gigantic ramble generated by the mind of a comic artist)

I’m asking this question because I was bitten by the “Object Show” bug myself! It’s become a niche but easily replicated genre of its own within the animation community. Starting with the eponymous Battle For Dream Island (a show I think we’re all familiar with), we’ve seen many creators follow suit in the seemingly simple formula of having a bunch of inanimate objects participate in a game show-esque competition.

This is not to claim that Object Shows are unoriginal or overdone at this point: on the contrary. With the advent of resources for learning writing, animation, et cetera, I feel there’s a massive amount of potential that this community has, until now, mostly neglected. Battle for BFDI is, from what I can tell, reveling in its own, unique premise in the way it wants to. Inanimate Insanity’s second season has, as of late, recognized its potential to communicate a story about change and growth within individuals and the world around it. Unfortunately, I haven’t watched many shows, but I feel I’ve gotten my point across.

In another post, I asked about shows that didn’t use Flash, so i’m going to be responding to those before I embark on my tangent.

@apcwoc said:                                                                                                                            djshjksjhhdj most of the shows are probably done on flash because a lot of them were started when the og creators where much younger and flash is the easiest and most reliable to use when people start out animating            

that’s a common thread i’ve been finding!! one of the earliest object shows, Animation Island by legotd61, was created a year after BFDI—and at the time, legotd61 was 7 years old. granted the animation & visuals aren’t the most jaw-dropping thing in the world, but they were a kid so it’s automatically charming. in like, a kid sense.

@demi-gray suggested Modern Objects as a non-asset-using show!

Unfortunately, it still relies on assets for arguably the most important visuals: the characters! They do use the capabilities of Flash more extensively than other shows (that I know of), which makes watching the characters do their thing a lot more fun and engaging. The unique style compared to other shows definitely helps out a lot as well!

@payjayisgod said:                                                                                                                            i mean, i do frame-by-frame all the time, but for the sake of saving time i’ll be using assets for the bodies (gonna try doing everything else with frame-by-frame) in my own series i’ll be making with some friends ^^“ if you wanna see my animations my youtube is Icedog McMuffin :0c                            

PLEASE show me your show when you do it, because your animations are!!! really cute!!! also i’d LOVE to see stuff that takes the path of Modern Objects: with asset bodies, yes, but everything else is done according to the needs of the visuals. Use your medium to the best of its ability!

@dottival said:                                                                                                                            I once saw someone who Wanted to do frame-by-frame, but they never got their show off the ground. Mostly because they never really started??

you can’t just. tell me this. and not say who this person is (unless they want their identity under wraps, which i’ll respect)!!!! I’d love to ask them about their thought process towards their show, unless they didn’t actually plan much. I want to do some... ReSearch....

Speaking of planning, the thing that enchants and haunts me most about object shows is how much is going on behind the scenes. This is for any animated show, really, because as a bitty comic artist, I had no clue where to begin. I’ve started to draft and worldbuild for my own show, but I can’t help but wonder how much of it is done for other object shows.

(this is a thumbnail for a setting on my show!)

The medium, by default, demands attention on the characters at the forefront. The premise generates interest, the aesthetics (aren’t necessary but) lead viewers in, and the subject(s) of the show is what keeps audiences engaged. No matter what the creator(s) choose as the subject, they must make sure it’s polished to their best abilities, while ensuring other elements of their medium is properly balanced.

If you’re creating a character-driven narrative, for example, you’ll want to focus on the development of your characters. And, since it’s easiest to relate to concrete characters, that’s what novice content creators focus on developing as their content’s primary subject (and what professional content creators master).

However, the development of, say, a character is more often than not put into the hands of the viewers. How? Viewer participation: having the audience vote off who leaves a competition.

An interesting concept as, typically, animated shows require oodles of planning in order to convey the story it wants to the best of its ability. This makes the typical object show a challenge (forgive the word-play) to pull off properly, despite being deceptively simple enough of a feat on the surface. Character development can be volatile, as any character can be booted off (depending on how well you can predict a character getting eliminated).

Following this, the difficulty of creating a cohesive and well-written story through the Object Show format is very, very high. After all, you need to place time in your resources as wisely as possible, in order to avoid taking too much time on an end product you may not even like a little while later. The elimination of one character may upset a part or the entirety of the show’s plotline, if a creator is not careful.

Inanimate Insanity’s writing was able to excel at its greatest the moment viewer voting was dropped. One of the best shows in this genre (in my opinion), Modern Objects, isn’t even an object show: it’s formatted like a sitcom, and focuses primarily on characters and comedy. The one object show I was able to find that was primarily frame-by-frame animation (thank you, @bfb-basard!), Race to the Mansion of Tomorrow, is 100% script-driven; meaning, no viewer participation. This is the same for a few other shows as well, though I am not aware of them at this point of time.

(a snapshot of my animation process: this is for an animation of my OCs Milt and Malt, put to the audio of Big Bill Hell’s Cars.)

So why Flash? The answer is because it’s just easier. Not in the sense that the animators of these shows are lazier, but because animating in Flash saves time. Unless you’re putting all your stops into your show, or the contestants will always be present / aren’t quite as important to the narrative, you absolutely cannot afford to waste time and energy on things that can get thrown away later. Either that, or you don’t know where a character or a plotline or what have you will build up to, so you want to make sure whatever you do make isn’t wasted.

(Granted, I always feel there’s always time for weird plots to be resolved until it’s the very end, but retcons are also an option?)

You see this video? It’s a pretty simple animation of just a little softball walking around.

It took me 2 or 3 hours, give or take, to finish. Nearly every frame is unique, and I drew them all with my hands and my tablet, nothing else. All moving parts are either animated in 2′s or 1′s—the latter of which being 1/24th of a second. There are 35 drawn frames overall, stretched out onto 127 individual frames that constitute the entirety of the animation.

In other words, this clip is 5 seconds long.

If you want to finish an object show within your lifetime, let alone within 5 years, then Flash will be your best friend. It’s good, revolutionary technology that will make your life easier. With Flash, you don’t have to draw things over and over and focus instead on the motion, not the artwork.

Not only that, but being able to finish in a timely manner will help smaller content creators as, since we’re small and have small audiences, not everyone has a long enough attention span to hang onto you for decades. Certain shows like BFB and Inanimate Insanity have the advantage of popularity, so they can take their time with both the show and life (but they’re still rushed by their audience anyways so it’s a double-edged sword).

If you want to tell a story, consider what medium you tell it through wisely. Animation isn’t the only way, but I know for a fact that, if I get there, my show will be frame-by-frame. Why? Because I consider the artwork and the motion in my story just as important as my characters, if not moreso. You might not.

You can make it 3-d animated, claymation, traditionally animated, digitally animated, Flash, frame-by-frame, what have you. You can write your show as a novel, a script, a screenplay, a radio play, what have you. You can illustrate it as a children’s book, a comic, a graphic novel, or even an illustrated novel.

One of my favorite shows, up there with Modern Objects, is a comic by @swabsbloo​ called Escape From Abject Reality (which you can read on it’s own blog at @efarwebcomic​! Please read it! PLEASE READ IT! PLEASE!!! PL). Swabsbloo takes the premise of object shows and simultaneously puts it on its head while playing it straight: a bunch of objects wake up in an oddly absent field, only to figure out they’ve been trapped in a game show-themed death trap controlled (...?) by a(n apparent) sociopath named Snake Oil. You should read it. You should read their comic.

Hell, does your object show even need to be an object show? You can create stories that are beyond inanimate objects, or stories beyond competitions. Again, Modern Objects isn’t a competition show. You can base your characters off of objects as well, without needing to make them explicitly an object. The show I mentioned earlier, Race to the Mansion of Tomorrow, takes this latter approach for the most part!

As a storyteller, what I obsess about the most is storytelling. I love seeing all forms of it, and the potential that this community’s genre has astounds and fascinates me. The way in which we view the story doesn’t have to be important, but I find the ones I enjoy the most are the ones that utilize its medium to the best of its ability. It doesn’t have to be the best, it just needs to try.

So what do you want to try?

[huiting-nm3217]

Assignment 1

For Assignment 1, I had to present a visual abstraction for an image that I took with my mobile phone.

Introduction

I chose to go with an image of a cup noodle I cooked for supper. I thought that the image would be perfect for this assignment as the cup noodle package itself had a lot of details that I can play with. Cup noodles are also pretty common commodities that most of us would be able to recognise. True to its name, a cup noodle is usually signified by a cup filled with steaming instant noodles.

When planning for my abstraction stages, I first envisioned how I wanted the final stage to look like. I wanted to convey the idea and symbol of cup noodles as an object. For my final stage, I envisioned something very close to the icon of cup noodles I attached above. This can be seen in the final stage of my sketch draft. I then sketched out on paper how I would go about abstracting all details to reach my final stage.

A brief sketch/plan of my stages

My Workspace and Tools I Utilised

I completed my assignment using Adobe Illustrator, mainly using tools like pen, circle and pathfinder. I started by layering my source image below the frame for stage 1 with 50% opacity and locked it. Locking the image helped me keep it in place and ensure that I would not select it by accident while tracing the images. Utilising what we were taught in class, I traced out details of the cup noodle in the first frame. Subsequently, I did the same for the remaining frames, using the previous frame as a guide. For every frame, I referred to my sketch to know what type of details I wanted to abstract out and followed accordingly.

A screenshot of my workspace while working on my assignment

As I approached the later frames, I started to use the ellipsis tool instead of the pen tool as I wanted to keep the shapes as simple as possible. As there were many overlapping elements in the beginning, I had to use the pathfinder tool a lot to cut and combine shapes together.

I chose to use an optional colour of yellow as I wanted to focus on the noodles of the image. Despite the cup/image being predominantly red, I felt that it was not a representative colour of cup noodles. The colour of the cups are always different depending on its brand and flavour. I also thought that yellow would make the noodles more recognisable and easier to differentiate from just a bunch of squiggly lines.

Critique and Reflection

During our critique session on Thursday, some of my classmates and Zicheng gave me some insightful feedback.

First of all, Jermaine suggested that I refrain from filling the whole character black in the last frame, as it looked as though I was adding more to my stage than abstracting it.

Next, Yu Liong advised me to lighten the colour of the wooden chopsticks in the initial frames as the change from dark grey to white is too abrupt in the final transition. Furthermore, the colour of the chopsticks in the original image were already rather light, and do not need to be that dark in the initial stages.

Subsequently, Zicheng asked me what is the focus of my abstraction: cup noodles in general or the Nissin brand of cup noodles? If I were to focus on the brand of cup noodles, some details of the cup noodle packaging would be essential and should be in my final stage. The red colour could possibly take precedence over the colour of the noodles as well. On the other hand, If my intention was to capture the essence of cup noodles in general, certain details like the speech bubble and character(in the final stage) would not be as important as well.

Lastly, Zicheng also mentioned that there were some shapes in my fourth stage that were white, but were filled black in the final stage. Abstraction is usually more about subtraction, and not addition.

The feedback given by my classmates and tutor were excellent and made a lot of sense to me. Afterward, I took a step back to reconsider on my intentions for the assignment. I set out with the intention to portray cup noodles itself, but got sidetracked and added redundant details of its brand. I was too absorbed about abstracting each detail and stage that I missed the bigger picture. This also goes to show that motive and intent is crucial in the way we present. Everything from choice of colours, shapes and compositions play a huge part in the final product. While the audience's interpretation can be subjective at times, it is our job to convey our message as clearly and succinct as we can.

Final Adjustments

Taking into account the critique I received, I refined my work with all suggestions in mind. I ensured that there were no addition of colours from stage to stage and changes in colour shades were subtractive. As the original image had more light and vivid tones, I increased the values of most colours to better represent the original image. Last but not least, I removed all elements of the Nissin brand from the final stage to represent cup noodles in its simplest form.

Below, I will briefly explain the changes from stage to stage:

Stage 0 → 1

When I first started, I tried to trace the original image to the best of my abilities. Other than using the pen tool to trace, I also searched online for some fonts that best resembled the words on the cup. The fonts that I used are Trailer Park Girl and Baloo Regular from Dafont.

Stage 1 → 2

From stage 1, I removed small embellishments and textures of the shapes. This included the tiny circles on the character's headband, curves of the Chinese name, and small seasonings on the noodles, etc. I also removed the Chinese slogans and the word FLAVOUR as I thought that they were too small and served as embellishments.

Stage 2 → 3

Moving to stage 3, I tried to abstract out details of the image by using simpler shapes to represent them. Some examples were the simplification of noodles and character.

I also decided to remove all words and replaced them with placeholder shapes. It was hard to merge the 4 Chinese characters together without affecting the logo. Hence, I split the heading into 4 black polygon shapes. I found that doing so helped the transition to later stages look smoother.

Stage 3 → 4

The transition from stage 3 to 4 is very much similar to the previous transition. I tried to further simplify elements of the image, specifically the noodles and character. Other than that, I also removed all placeholders for words. I decided to keep the logo and character for stage 4 so that the transition would not be too drastic.

Stage 4 → 5 (Final)

In this transition, I removed all elements pertaining the cup noodle brand. I simplified the speech bubble into a generic cup noodle label and removed the inner circle of the cup opening. I also reduced the number of noodle strands and spread them apart a bit. Lastly, I lightened the shade of the cup to match the lid and chopstick to give a simpler and uniform look.

After many rounds of abstractions, I am proud to present my final stage as the barest representation of a cup noodle.

Completing this assignment taught me that every visual detail and component communicates meanings. Several elements of different shapes, sizes and colours can be arranged to convey messages and symbolisms. The process of abstraction not only helps us strip the object down to its barest form, but also uncover how our society and culture recognises the object. In this case, we see cup noodles as a lidded cup, with noodles and a pair of chopsticks.

[frangipanidownunder]

How to write fiction, XF-style

So I attended a creative writing workshop on the weekend and once again was reminded about how to craft a piece of fiction so that it shines. I’ve also been editing my own (non XF) work and beta reading a little lately, as well as meeting/reading emerging writers. So I had a little fun while I’ve been home sick and put on my XF hat to create a little list of writing tips. They’re under the cut because I don’t want to fill up dashes with condescending advice or to preach to the hugely talented bunch of writers who exist on this site. It’s just for fun.

Just write that first draft

Leap in Mulder-style and go for it. Don’t look, don’t check if Scully is behind you, don’t ask for permission, just write. There are no rules. Even if you have a clunky, grey-white fat-backed computer on your desk in front of the windows, or you have a laptop on your bed, or you write with your thumbs on your phone, just write.

Read. Read a lot.

And not just fanfic or David Duchovny or Gillian Anderson novels, but everything and read outside your usual mould - try The Lone Gunmen or Hanky Panky, the Great Mutato, Scully’s senior year thesis, Mulder’s monograph on serial killers or the World Weekly Informer. Read Moby Dick or Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Just read. Words are fuel for your brain.

Writing a story is just continually asking what if

Just like Mulder and his wild theories, you take a character and a scenario and you ask, what if, over and over. That’s pretty much all it is. Just be Mulder. Build your case.

But you must have conflict

Mulder doesn’t often argue with himself, because he keeps telling us he’s never wrong, so you must throw a Scully debunker in every now and again. You need to counter the flow of Mulder’s what ifs with some classic Scullyisms. And in a short story, pretty much every line, and most certainly every paragraph, should have some kind of tension or conflict. Whether it’s setting by dropping your city dwelling FBI agents into a rural cornfield, or character conflict by swapping their inherent belief systems so that sceptic becomes believer and believer becomes sceptic, or even actual conflict where your protagonists argue.

There should also be inner conflict – dilemma (should Mulder continue to look for his sister or accept her death/disappearance?), character flaw (Mulder’s propensity for believing without question or Scully’s logic and science even when she sees stuff she can’t explain) and outer conflict – physical obstacles (Scully being abducted and taken to Antarctica, Mulder’s brain being operated on), pitting your protagonist against an enemy (Krycek, CSM, Bill Scully, shape shifters).

Beginning, middle, end

Pilot, FTF-season five-season six, season 11+? You’ve got to set up your story, provide some character and plot development, throw in a few conflicts, and then bring it to a resolution. Introduce your character/s, throw them into a situation, make it hard for them, then make it even harder and then show us their world as they try to find their way to the end.  That doesn’t mean everything has to be neatly wrapped up. Don’t write The Truth. It doesn’t work like that. You can be open-ended. How did they get back from Antarctica? What was Mulder’s last wish? What presents did they give each other after ghost-hunting?

And don’t forget Chekov’s gun: If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off.

So, please don’t give us a character that watches a fire burn down a motel then a few eps later hates fire and then it’s never mentioned again. And if your character is colour-blind, make it a part of them to tell the story.

Show don’t tell

There’s nothing more dull than exposition and narrative instead of imagery, dialogue and scenes. The Truth, anyone? That courtroom trial was a giant info dump and nobody needs that.

In the show it’s easy to convey a setting through the visual: Mulder and Scully are walking through a forest on a winter’s night when they hear a strange sound. But in writing? That’s pretty dull. So, you need to paint that picture.

A beam of light picks out a dark shape  high in the tree canopy. Mist clouds the beam, smoky and fluid. A second beam crosses the first and a low rumbling growl fills the air.

“Mulder? Did you hear that?”

“I knew I shouldn’t have eaten that second burrito, Scully.”

The wind whips up and the leaves shimmer on their branches, like witches’ laughter.

Symbols and imagery, metaphors and stuff like that

The X-Files is full of it and it works well for the most part, but in writing it’s about striking the right balance. Centre your story around an image or use the symbolism that suits it but subtlety is everything. It still needs to develop the story though.

Mannerisms or traits, retrospectives and dialogue/language quirks are an interesting way to develop character. Mulder and his sunflower seeds – he’s a fiddler and he needs to do stuff with his hands and mouth (lucky Scully), his self-deprecating humour and bad ties all show something about his character. Scully and her sassy susurration, her affairs with older men, her faith, all do the same. The way they call each other by their surnames to reflect their respect is an interesting twist. You can give your story and characters the same treatment. 

Trust your reader

As a reader, we can be trusted to make links between conversations, descriptions, introspective passages and action with the movement of the plot or the growth of the characters. You don’t need to spell everything out.

For example, what if, in the Pilot, when Scully asks “What the hell was that about?”, Mulder says, “Oh you know, I like to jump out of the car, take out the aerosol paint cans I carry everywhere and paint the road with crosses to mark the exact area where something spooky just occurred.”

His answer, “Oh, you know… probably nothing,” is just enough to pique our interest. 

Edit

This is when you can get your Scully on. You need to take a step back and look objectively over your work. There may be darling little Mulderisms in there, words that sing, lines that are so poetic and beautiful that your heart melts, but if they don’t move the plot forward or reveal something about character, you need to raise your gun, aim and shoot.

           Unnecessary information: “You shot me.”

           Writer: “Yes, I did. You didn’t give me much choice.”

Finally, there is heaps of writing advice out there - my favourite book is Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott - but the best thing you can do is write, write some more and write even more. Writing is a muscle and it can be trained to be sharper, stronger and more defined.

[nathanielwharton]

My 2019 in Pop Culture

Same plan here as usual. I discovered this as a draft from back in January that I hadn’t found images for yet. Posting it now, without edits.

Top Forty Things From 2019

45. A Town Called Panic: Agricultural Fair I made a last minute dash into the city to see this at the New York International Children's Film Festival screening (I ducked in, huffing and puffing, as the lights went down), but I was so glad I did. I love these shorts, and this one was an absolutely bonkers, madcap wonder.

44. "Gotham City Guys" from The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part I enjoyed the second Lego Movie pretty well, but I loved this song.

43. Finding Drago This is an Australian podcast about the search for the author of Drago: On Mountains We Stand, a book about Ivan Drago from Rocky IV. It was a delight.

42. Crawl I had a pretty good time with a bunch of horror movies this year. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark made some good use of 3D realizations of Stephen Gammell's potent artwork. Ready or Not was a good cat-and-mouse with a fun ending to see with an audience. Happy Death Day 2U kept the comic frisson of the original, pushing it further into nutty science fiction, while slipping in some real emotion. But the one that probably gave me the most thrills was Crawl. An expertly nasty little piece of work, it efficiently keeps turning the screws up the the very end. Jesse and I remarked afterward that we basically alternated leaning forward with our hands on our faces and leaning back, bracing on the armrest, throughout the entire movie.

41. When They See Us Urgent and harrowing.

40. Mindhunter (Season 2) The rhythms of this show are so distinctive and engrossing. It's not exactly Zodiac: The Series, but it is fascinating in some similar ways and I hope they come back and make more of it.

39. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Season 4, Part 2) I might (okay, definitely) be underrating this final batch of one of my favorite shows on TV. Blame it on Netflix’s half-season strategy, and not on these episodes that were as overstuffed as ever with a breathtaking array of jokes delivered by a note perfect cast. I’ll miss if, but I'm grateful for those final moments. (The line "Your books make me feel safe” definitely made me tear up.)

38. They Shall Not Grow Old in 3D This documentary was fascinating as a look at the less-covered (at least in my lifetime) First World War, and it was AMAZING as a visual experience, watching 100 year-old documentary footage in such an immersive way. And the short documentary that followed my screening showing the process of making the film was worth the price of admission on its own.

37. Glass at the Shyamalanathon Few things can top the weird thrill of seeing the ending of Split before hearing even a hint about the ending (Jesse and I were audibly shocked and delighted, and then spent part of the credits explaining the reveal to the kids in front of us after they asked us about it). So I was pretty psyched for this one. I caught Glass at the end of a Shyamalanathon at the Alamo Drafthouse, where they showed Unbreakable, Split, and a preview screening of Glass, with a Q&A with Shyamalan himself. I had a GREAT time.

36. Amazing Grace I saw it with about 8-10 people in the theater, and folks were still witnessing with Amens and hallelujahs from the back of the auditorium. They were well warranted.

35. The Twilight Zone Revival I definitely preferred this to the last revival, and the hit-to-miss ratio felt pretty standard for an anthology show. Highlights for me were "Nightmare at 30,000 Feet," "Replay," and "A Traveler." Looking forward to the next batch of them.

34. One Cut of the Dead A twisty, surprising one-shot zombie thriller that reveals itself to be something much different (and much more charming) than you'd expect.

33. Star Trek: Discovery - Pike sees his future This season of Discovery had a number of really strong elements (and I'm super intrigued to see what they do with that setup for the third season), but the part that probably most moved me was in episodes 12, "Through the Valley of Shadows." Captain Pike (a wonderful performance all season by Anson Mount; definitely looking forward to that spin-off) is given a vision of his eventual fate, which we know from the original series, in which he is severely disabled in an accident. He is told that if he takes the time crystal from the Klingon temple to help save the day in the season's storyline that he cannot change this fate and is essentially dooming himself. And he gives the most moving, Starfleety performance in choosing the greater good over himself.

32. Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal This was a visceral, thrilling surprise. I caught the first four episodes as a screening at the Alamo and it knocked my socks off. The final episode of this initial run was also really rad. Pure animation.

31. Under the Silver Lake Seeing this one at a late night screening felt just right, as it creates such a bewitching, hallucinatory spell. As someone who enjoyed reading about conspiracy as a youth and recognizes but (hopefully!) avoided indulging the kind of solipsism on display in Garfield's character, I was pretty into this movie.

30. Missing Link This Laika joint was an easy lay-up for me (an adventurer helping Bigfoot to find a lost civilization of yeti? sold.) and it did the trick.

29. Frozen II It's not as clean a narrative as the original, and Kristoff's storyline is too sitcommy, but this still packed a lot of emotional punch for me, and I love that it's a huge Disney animated movie that interrogates colonialism and the way that our history can obscure misdeeds and trauma.

28. The Righteous Gemstones Another acridly funny and tonally daring series from the McBride/Hill/Green team. Loved this first season, and certainly excited to see where they want to take it next.

27. A Series of Unfortunate Events (Season 3) This show continued to be a really marvelous adaptation of the books and the adaptation of the final story (and the elements they included from the ancillary Snicket books) really landed wonderfully. I really wish Netflix had already announced the same team was doing an adaptation series of the All the Wrong Questions books (with Warburton somehow still involved as Lemony Snicket).

26. Klaus & Noelle Two streaming services served up two new Christmas movies this year, and I dug them both. Noelle doesn't quite pull of the same magic trick as Elf, but I found it charming and the cast (and the fact that it is set, in part, in Arizona) went a long way to endearing it to me. And Klaus was a gorgeously animated, very enjoyable surprise. Odds are decent that I pop both of them on again at some point next holiday season.

25. Deadwood: The Movie A bit of bittersweet nostalgia, a post-script, and an elegy. Just the right balance of warm and melancholy. And while the movie definitely didn't give us the Al Swearengen I expected, I was so moved by his story (and McShane's performance).

24. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Season 3) The obvious surface pleasures of this show (the costumes and set design, the snaky sinuous camera work, the charming and charismatic performances, the rat-a-tat dialogue) continued apace, while the storytelling continued to strike a really enjoyable balance between joyful wish-fulfillment and (semi-)realistic period exploration.

23. Adam Sandler & Eddie Murphy on SNL and in the movies The two biggest SNL alumni that had not been back to host (ever, in Sandler's case, or since he was still a cast member, in Murphy's) Adam Sandler and Eddie Murphy both returned too the show that had given them their start and pretty much lived up to decades of expectations. Sandler came back at the end of the 2018-2019 season and it was such a warm, funny homecoming that was really funny without just spending the time revisiting his old characters (the travel agent commercial he was in was one of the best sketches of the season and benefited hugely from his performance), and a genuinely touching tribute to Chris Farley. (And he capped his year with a fantastic, nerve-jangling performance in Uncut Gems, which was a Safdie special, exhausting and exhilarating in equal measure.) Then, following his really galvanizing lead performance in Dolemite is My Name, showing how hilarious and wonderful in a dramatic role he can still be, in the last episode before Christmas in the 2019-2020 season, Eddie Murphy returned to host, coming in with the enormous expectations that would accompany his return to the show at any time with the recent example of having seen it done so right. And they crushed it. His episode understandably featured more of the play-the-hits style of character reprisals, but they generally had clever ideas for using the characters (Mr. Robinson returned to a gentrified neighborhood, Buckwheat was a Masked Singer, and Gumby gave a hilarious Update rant) and, best of all, Murphy brought the necessary energy to make it all work. On top of that, he elevated the non-recurring stuff like a great Baking Championship sketch that he underplayed to perfection, or a North Pole newscast that he knocked out of the park. Both episodes were a joy.

22. Doctor Sleep I liked a lot of stuff in the book, but I think the movie improved on it! I love Mike Flanagan's style of horror story anyway, and it was a really good fit for Doctor Sleep. And the movie does a remarkable job of squaring itself with the Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick versions of The Shining, including a really moving appropriation of elements from the original book and potent movie imagery into a surprisingly touching combination.

21. Stranger Things 3 The run-up to this season was so much fun (special ice creams and store decorations at Baskin-Robbins, a whole Fun Fair set up at Coney Island), and then the season itself was a big summer blockbuster blast that Katie and I spent a whole day on.

20. The Lighthouse This one lingered! Two great performances, a beautiful visual scheme, and a bracing spiral into madness for a story.

19. Parasite Bong Joon-Ho with another what-genre-is-this masterpiece.

18. Watchmen on HBO This was so much richer and provocative than I expected. A compelling and mostly satisfying sequel to a book I didn't much demand a sequel to, it was one of the best shows I watched all year and honored the original by actually being about something.

17. The Farewell A warm and delicate story that really moved me, with a terrific performance by Awkwafina.

16. Jojo Rabbit I've been on Taika Waititi's wavelength since Boy, and this one worked for me as designed, which meant that I was delighted and then devastated.

15. Apollo 11 Like They Shall Never Grow Old, there was such power to seeing a new, vivid angle on major 20th century history.

14. GLOW (Season 3) This season, with it's Las Vegas setting and it stage-show status quo, created a bunch of new dynamics and fun developments (the Christmas Carol version of their show was a delight) while continuing to deepen the characters. Love this show.

13. Dumbo I am generally a Tim Burton guy, but I was surprised by how much I loved this movie. And every moment Michael Keaton was on screen was a great one.

12. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker This was a weird year for Star Wars, with Star Wars: Resistance coming to a satisfactory (but disappointing compared to the previous two animated series) ending and publishing having a handful of fun tie-ins to Galaxy's Edge and Rise of Skywalker, without anything particularly standing out. And all of it was capped off with The Rise of Skywalker, a film that definitely suffers from a bunch of competing storytelling interests. But the big moments that need to hit all pretty much hit for me and the final moments on Tatooine especially got to me.

11. The Irishman We went to see this movie during it's special engagement in a Broadway theater, which felt like an appropriate experience for such an epic. Surprisingly funny and, in the end, almost breathtakingly melancholy, this was a really special movie.

10. Lethal White Another cozy, gripping read. The mystery was less nasty/scary than the last one, but it was still pretty involving, and I certainly want to see what happens next for Strike and Robin.

9. Toy Story 4 This felt truly unnecessary (and even kind of unwelcome) when it was announced, but it turned out to be a genuinely worthy entry. It hits or improves on the expected Toy Story elements (the jokes hit and the characters are lots of fun, and it may be the most beautiful Toy Story, with stunning widescreen animation), and Woody's story builds to a surprising and very emotional climax. Once again, I'd be happy if this was where we left the characters, which is no small feat for a movie that has to push beyond the ending of Toy Story 3.

8. Disney+ (The Mandalorian, The Imagineering Story, Forky Asks a Question, etc) I was still working full time at school and working on my master's degree this fall, so it's not like I really needed a new streaming service to spend time on. But this was such a fun thing to explore. The Mandalorian immediately became appointment television for us (if that whole first episode hadn’t have done it, the final scene would have). But so was The Imagineering Story (one of the best showbiz documentaries I've seen) and Forky Asks a Question ("What? No!" definitely entered our daily lexicon).

7. Once Upon a Time...In Hollywood I loved it for the hang out (I want to watch Cliff Booth and Rick Dalton watch episodes of TV shows together!). I loved it for the incredible tension of the Spahn Ranch sequence. I loved it for the wry wistfulness of the neon sign sequence. I loved it.

6. Knives Out Such a thoroughly great time. I love Rian Johnson's movies in general, but this might be my favorite since Brick.

5. Us I'm reasonably receptive to the "bigger and more rococo" sophomore film, so I was ready to respond to this movie. But it still really knocked me out. I love it for all of the great surface pleasures (scary "monster" design, tense scare sequences, incredible dual performances by Lupita Nyong'o) and I loved it for the chewy thematic ideas it teases at. Peele is two-for-two, in my book.

4. Little Women I was only familiar with this story in a vague sense (like, I am sure I knew one of the sisters died in the book, but I didn't know which one going in). But I LOVED this movie.

3. Avengers: Endgame For this big, climactic year of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I had made note to include the Skrull reaction shots in Captain Marvel (Talos and the milkshake being the top of the heap), and Spider-Man: Far From Home was as consistently delightful as it's Spidey predecessor, but it's hard to think of a collective audience experience that was more fun than Avengers: Endgame. It basically played out as a series of huge payoffs and shocking moments for about three hours, and between the laughs and cheers and audible sobs, it really ran the full audience-reaction gamut. Hard to imagine another movie building up this kind of steam for a big finale again, and it was pretty special to see on opening night.

2. The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance I was pretty excited for this show. The original movie is dear to me, I'd heard really cool, encouraging stuff about the show, and the trailers were pretty gorgeous. And the show exceeded all of my hopes for it. It was funny and exciting. It developed the mythology of Thra in cool, intriguing ways. It was absolutely dazzling to look at. It jockeyed for position with the number 1 spot on this list. I adored it.

1. Godzilla: King of the Monsters I loved this. I wrote about it at SportsAlcohol.com. I saw it five or six times in theaters. A full meal for my imagination.

Top Twenty-Five Things I'm Excited About in 2020

Godzilla vs Kong No question, I'm spectacularly excited to see this one. I loved all three of the previous films leading up to it, and the status quo hinted at in the credits of King of the Monsters suggests some directions that I really hope to see explored further.

Animaniacs revival & Looney Tunes Cartoons Here's hoping that this is finally the year we get to see the new Looney Tunes they've been cooking up (seems like HBO Max will be a good place to put them...) and while it feels like a while since there's been new word on the Animaniacs revival that's due on Hulu, maybe that'll show up this year too. Looking forward to whatever Warner Bros. animation we can get.

Bill & Ted Face the Music One of the few decades-later sequels that I've actively been wanting to happen. I'm so glad this finally happened, and I can't wait to see what it will look like. I love the title. I love the details they've shared so far. And I'm glad to have an excuse to watch the previous two movies in the run-up to this one.

West Side Story Spielberg finally doing his movie musical! And it's a great musical! With a script adapted by Tony Kushner, no less. Sign me up.

Muppets Now I don't know enough about the format of this show to know how excited to be yet (they're generally good at improvising, but the notion of ad-libbed shorts doesn't sound quite like the Muppet Show revival I'd really like to see on Disney+). Still, new Muppets!

The French Dispatch Seems like this one should hit his year after a festival run. Really looking forward to getting a look at what he's cooked up this time.

Death on the Nile #thirtyBranaghPoirotmovies

Onward & Soul Two original Pixar movies in one year! Super excited about this. (Also pretty psyched for another original film from Disney Animation Studios in Raya and the Last Dragon.)

MCU at the Movies I glad to finally get that Black Widow movie this year, and I'm certainly interested to see The Eternals, which has a great cast and sounds like another new avenue to explore in the Marvel movie world.

MCU on Disney+ As excited as I am for the two theatrical Marvel movies this year, I'm also pretty into The Falcon & The Winter Soldier and WandaVision. Now that my beloved Captain America has effectively retired, I'm pretty excited to see what happens to his best friends as Sam Wilson becomes the new Cap. And the word on WandaVision (that it's going to be pretty weird), coupled with the hints that they are taking inspiration from Tom King's run on the Vision comic book, makes this one sound pretty special. The Mandalorian set a high bar for how exciting these Disney+ shows could be, so I'm looking forward to seeing what Marvel comes up with.

In the Heights Hamilton melted my brain five years ago, and the trailer for this movie adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first Broadway musical is so wonderful. Can’t wait.

Jungle Cruise Mulan looks super cool, but I've got pretty high hopes for Jungle Cruise. Jaume Collet-Serra is responsible for some wild genre excellence and I'm hoping he was able to bring some of that cracked vision to a big Disney adventure movie with the Rock and Emily Blunt. Sounds good to me.

Tenet Certainly looking forward to seeing Nolan return with another big, original genre picture with a great cast.

Dune Denis Villeneuve's last two science fiction films were aces and he's assembled a great cast here, so I'm hoping he'll do something special with this book.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife For as bad a taste as the ghost-bros left me with in their furor over the pretty fun 2016 remake, I'm loath to admit that I'm really looking forward to this. I liked the trailer, I'm excited to see the original characters return, I really like the new cast members, and I'm looking forward to a story with a different setting and everything.

Last Night in SoHo I like all of Edgar Wright's movies, and this sounds like an interesting change-up for him.

Star Trek on CBS All Access First up this year we know we’re getting Star Trek: Picard, and I’m particularly excited because this is a Star Trek that will be reaching past everything we’ve already seen and showing us a story set in the galaxy after the destruction of Romulus and Spock’s trip back in time. It looks really cool, and it’s pretty exciting to see Patrick Stewart playing the role again. Beyond that, we should have Star Trek: Lower Decks, which sounds like it should be a lot of fun, and the third season of Star Trek: Discovery which, based on the ending of the last season, promises to also explore previously unseen corners of the Star Trek universe/timeline.

Penny Dreadful: City of Angels I loved the original Penny Dreadful, and I'm pretty into the milieu they've set this...sequel? revival? spiritual successor? Pretty cool cast, too.

F9 Still really enjoying these big, wild, nutty movies. And I know my #family will be excited to roll out and see this one together.

Cosmos: Possible Worlds I loved the last Cosmos revival, so I'm really looking forward to seeing what they've come up with for this one.

Over the Moon Netflix is supposed to have a new animated film directed by Glen Keane this year, so I'm looking forward to watching it.

The Witches I love the book (and the original film version, for the most part) and I'm always rooting for Robert Zemeckis to make another stellar entertainment. Hoping this is one!

My Favorite Thing is Monsters Volume 2 Maybe this year!

Halloween Kills I loved the 2018 Halloween sequel, so I'm fully down to see the next two installments, starting with this one.

No Time to Die Daniel Craig’s swan song as Bond, this one has had some pretty rad trailers and a very cool director. Hope he gets to go out on a great one!

[danjaley]

Questions Tags

I was tagged in a number of those recently. And because I got behind and they were piling up, I decided to have my pick and answer those I felt I had something to say on.

Questions from @declarations-of-drama , @simcatcher , @sillylittlesimblr , @jepensedoncjesims , @trembling-hands , @mada-didi

Declarations-of-Drama’s questions

1. The boss of EA is in front of you asking for one statement about The Sims before he goes away and makes TS5. What do you say to him?

Ask @simcatcher about her ideal Sims game and do exactly as she says. (She suggested a Sims game with passing eras, and really I think that should be doable. Sim City 2000 was a bit like that - you could choose to start 1900, 1950 or 2000, and development would take place accordingly.)

2. Do your Sims know of you as their Sim God or are you the invisible deity to them?

More like the invisible deity, but I wouldn’t call it that. I see my Sims like fictional characters in writing or in a play. Even if the author is of course in charge of their fate, this doesn’t affect religiosity within the work of fiction. And even more abstract, those Sims in heavily scripted and posed stories I see as fictional actors playing the actual characters (not unlike the production of MKASONP ;) To those I’m the director, which makes it a lot easier to keep the right emotional distance for storytelling.

3. How do you see yourself connected to your Sims? Do those of you who say you love them, really mean this? How deep is your game?

I’m definitely feeling responsible and sometimes even overprotective about my Sims. Partly because that’s just my personality, partly because I started playing Sims 1 as a kid and there it was not so easy to keep a Sim alive and happy. And the way I understood games at the time, Sims dying meant: You lost!

Nevertheless, I’ve finally gotten rid of the habit to start every new household with making all Sims learn cooking in order to avoid fires.

4. What’s your Sims Secret? Is there something going on in your game that none of your screenshots will ever tell us? WHO IS LOCKED IN YOUR BASEMENT???? What are those secret Sims doing behind closed doors?

Nothing major. The weird stuff that happens is usually so funny that I post about it anyway.

5. Can we learn anything from our Sims to take away into our real lives? And/Or can you give us an example of how The Sims has influenced you outside of gaming.

When I finished highschool, I was really nervous about going to university, and playing the Sims 2 University EP was strangely therapeutic in this situation.

Simcatcher’s questions

1) What’s your favorite story/tale/scenario playing over and over in your head ? Gimme a glimpse ?

It used to be the central scenes of Chevalry, but not so much any more since I got them out of my system. It still feels so weird to think of this as a finished story.

2) What’s the screenshot/edited pic of yours that you’re the most proud of ? Can I see ?

There are so many screenshots I love... Here’s one of which I’m particularly proud of the editing:

3) I would want to read an unedited bit of your writing. Something you did, something personal or neutral, something that feels important. Cos it probably is. You can use your joker on this question. Or share your talent ♥

Most of my unedited stuff is German, so this is really random: It’s a fragment of a shortstory I never got to work properly. It’s supposed to be about a girl who’s haunted by a story. It’s a fairytale-ish story of love and adventure and she’s just waking up to the realization she’ll have no chance of this in her own life. She tries to avoid hearing how it ends, but wherever she goes she stumbles upon snippets of it. I wrote this in English because I meant to hand it in for the University’s English magazine.

The only way to flee from the story was down the stairs. My bare feet were freezing cold when I entered the kitchen. I could still hear a mutter from upstairs, but there was no other room I could go to. For the first time I realized how small our house was. I sat down on a kitchen-chair and sang to myself under my breath to keep me from listening. That's how Mama found me. “Hey, what was the matter with you just now? It's such a nice story.”

“I didn't like it.,” I told her curtly and hurried back upstairs. The story had unsettled me. My hands were shaking when I opened our bedroom-door.

“[...]”, Caroline beamed at me, when I entered. “[...]”

“Shut up!”

Luckily Caroline is easy to impress. She threw her blanket over her head and didn't say another word.

I went to sleep, I got up the next morning, I went to school. I was sitting at my desk sleepily. I had been dreaming of running away all night, but the faster I ran, the more clearly I heard the words I so dreaded. I wasn't paying any attention, so I was rather surprised, when my neighbour handed me a worksheet. “Read the following extract:,” it said. [And it’s an extract of The Story, of course]

4) What do you get inspiration from ?

Everything. History, houses I see in town, places I’ve been to, songs and misunderstood lyrics, listening to music on the train. Stories that I like, or dislike, or like parts of, or when reading a lame story and imagining it was a good one.

5) Do you sometimes want to create a sim story out of a dream you had ?

Not exactly a Sim story, but I have a collections of dreams written down that I’d love to make into stories. Unfortunately, they’re all completely crazy and surreal.

7) If you’re a writer/storyteller, what’s your working pattern ? What’s your routine, if you have one ? How do you write ?

I think the most work I’m doing when I’m walking somewhere or doing boring work. Especially since I started writing in dialogues, I practically know the scenes by heart and can fine-tune them wherever I am. It’s just important to write them down when I get back to my computer.

8) Which sim of yours do you like the most ? Why ? Feel free to tell me more infos about them, what’s their sign, religion, beliefs, what do you think is relevant ?

I’m finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish between Sims and Characters...

9) What is your favorite sim couple ? Yours or other simblr’s ? Why ? What specifically makes you want to see them together ? Becaaaaaause will not be taken as an answer*

I’m all for including @jepensedoncjesims ‘ Mazen and Ara Frost in the Ultimate List of Most Romantic Couples Ever. Y’know because they literally waited an eternity for each other, and lost themselves in the process beyond recognition and still there are sparks between them. And also they’re both very good-looking! And I’m so curious about how things are with their daughter!

10) Do you have a story you wrote/write/want to write that you want to tell me about ? I sure would want a link :)

There used to be one on the internet, I wrote for the above mentioned magazine, but it’s down...

Jepensedoncejesims’ Questions

2.  What do you look forward to the most, as you wait for your game to load?

That depends on which save I’m loading, but the most exciting is when I’m testing some self-made item for the first time and can’t really tell if it’s going to work as I imagined.

It has actually happened that when loading a playing save without special purpose, I found the book I was reading in the meantime more interesting...

3.  When is the last time you went in game AND what did you get up to?

The last time I opened The Sims 3 was when I did the What’s-in-my-Sim’s-bag photoshoots, and the very last time was when I drafting the posts and suddenly realized that Edward and Arthur should change bags. ETA: And by now I also did a story-scene.

5.  If you decide to actually do this…why are you even answering my questions?

Because I love question 2!

Sillylittlesimblr's questions

1. Why did you create a simblr?

I discovered simblr through cc-hunting, and then I saw that one could also post gameplay pictures there. I was just at the beginning of learning to make cc myself and this community felt like something I wanted to join (and that’s a rare feeling with me!)

3. When did you start playing the sims & which game (1 - 4) was it?

A friend from school showed me the Sims 1 on her computer when I was eleven, and I instantly loved it. I was super shy about asking my parents if I could have the game for Christmas - it was so grown-up! I had only played interactive learning games before. I got it though, and that's the reason why the ts1 buymode tune still puts me in a Christmas mood when I hear it.

4. Who is your favourite sim you have ever created?

Valea. She's perfect.

6. Mermaids or fairies?

Mermaids! Fairies! Fairies!! Mermaids!!

7. What’s the weirdest thing that has happened naturally in-game?  

Admittedly, this was mod-generated in its cause: The fist time I played a male pregnancy in Sims 3 I didn't know I’d need to install special clothing. So the poor guy became invisible from the neck down. Well, he lived as a floating head until the baby was due and then he floated off to hospital. Ten seconds later his sister, who lived in the same household and worked as a nurse, was called to hospital. They said, an emergency had just arrived...

8. Big pets (cat, dog, horse) or small pets (turtle, bird, etc)

Big pets. I always lose small ones - either in Sims' inventories, or through death or during household rotation.

9. What’s your favourite build you have ever done OR EA made build?

My favourite self-made build is Broadbent Manor. For once this turned out to have realist proportions and be playable, and look decorative.

10. What’s your favourite EA made neighborhood (can include the vacation ones too!)?

Dragon Valley! It's beautiful and it has so many interesting Sims in it.

Teltaodstool's questions

1. How many screenshots do you have?

Ah well, I'm a historian. I like archives. Windows says it's 19.596 files in 179 folders. That's not counting technical screenshots for cc; those are stored with the respective project. I actually deleted a bunch of those recently.

4. I know this is asked a lot, but which expansion did you get first?

Pets. Actually I bought Sims 1, 2 and 3 only after the Pets EPs came out, so I could get those right after the basegame. (When I started playing the Sims, one of my biggest wishes was to have a pet in real life)

5. Do you remember who your first sims were?

I have a visual memory of my first (or at least a very early) Sims 1 family. It was a single mother with her daughter (I wasn't good enough at the game to manage more than two Sims). I don't remember what they were called, but I think the daughter's name might have been 'Kiera'.

6. Have you ever accidentally killed a sim?

Yes, that happened once in Sims 1. More recently, my Cave Island Legacy founder was accidentally killed by the game (meteor), but I decided to turn it into a close call for the story's sake.

The classic thing of walking away without pausing happened to me once in the Sims 2. All my Sims survived, but served a large number of stuffed turkeys :D

7. How many sims are in your household usually?

2-6. One sim alone makes me claustrophobic (and causes the game to glitch), and with more than 6 Sims it gets stressful. That's for gameplay though - for storytelling, 8 Sims is a small household.

8. Have you ever tried to make a custom world? Whether by the Create a World tool or in a save, it doesn’t matter.

Well, making Bakafox's Howell Island DIY into my Maplethorpe Save counts, I guess :) Sometimes I work on a custom edit of the France WA world to resemble ts2 Veronaville, but I haven't touched it recently.

9. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve seen the Grim Reaper do?

In my own game: Playing with the little chickens. But the weirdest Reaper scene I've ever seen was on someone else's blog shortly after ts4 came out and there was that glitch that made Grim appear all over town. He came to a party and felt a pregnant woman's belly. (Sorry, I don't remember who posted that!)

Mada-didi's questions

2. What type of simmer do you consider yourself to be? Storyteller, builder, casual player, simsphotograph, all of them, none of them or other?

Storyteller. Even when I'm just playing.

3. Can you choose a near-future objective for you to accomplish as a Simmer? (Example: for me, it would be to finish the first generation of Ostracizing Humanity.)

I'm super excited for the Cave Legacy finale. But I'm going to take a short break from it first.

5. Imagine you have no responsibilities. Would you rather play the Sims a little everyday or spend two days a week playing as much as you want?

I'd rather have some responsibilities during which I can find new inspiration for (sim-)stories :)

6. In your opinion, what Sim resembles you the most personality-wise? (It can be created by anybody, may it be EA, you or another player.)

Marie-Constance by @aroundthesims - always completely frightened, especially in public and most particularly at parties.

[frameflax4-blog]

Writing Life

I really enjoy writing. You might not think that, given how infrequently I’ve been posting on this blog. That’s mostly because I’ve been producing a podcast, Leading Lines, that takes up most of my creative free time. But that’s also because I’ve been writing, just not for the blog. I finished the manuscript for my second book on May 1st, having spent a good chunk of the spring semester writing. And I really enjoy writing.

I wrote a proposal and draft chapter for the new book last summer, along with an detailed outline of the whole book. That’s my visual outline to the right, from last summer. I don’t have a title for the book yet, but I’m close to a subtitle: Using Technology to Support Student Learning. The goal of the book is to help college and university instructors make more informed, intentional choices about educational technology by mapping examples of creative and effective technology use to several key principles of learning. I wanted to take the stories and advice I share with faculty through workshops and consultations all the time and weave them together in a coherent package. I pitched the book to a publisher last fall. They were interested, so I signed a contract. (More details after their board gives final approval to the book!) I lined up a bunch of interviews with faculty across the country, to supplement the edtech examples I had already collected, and got to work.

During the fall, I tried blocking off a couple of hours every other day on my calendar to write, but that almost never worked. That time was always clobbered by my day job. Things changed when a colleague of mine mentioned her writing process to me at a campus event. She said that she goes on a two-day writing retreat each month. She clears her calendar, leaves campus, and writes solid for two days. That’s how she makes the time for her scholarly work. I thought that sounded smart, so I tried it this spring. It worked like a charm. I would actually spend the first half-day catching up on other work tasks, but by the afternoon I could reliably work on the book. And the second day was all writing. I could crank out four or five thousand words per retreat, when I really got going. I needed more than one a month, however, to meet my submission deadline. By April, I was spending more time writing than not. Luckily I wasn’t teaching this spring, and none of my other projects seemed to go off the rails, so I’ll call it a win.

Finding a good space to write took some experimentation. I got married January 1 (yes, it was a busy year!), and my wife and I were a two house family for a few months. I found I couldn’t write at my house, since there were too many distractions, but I could write at her house. Coffee shops were great, too, particularly the Fainting Goat and Frothy Monkey. I would often spend the morning at a coffee shop and the afternoon at Emily’s house, working productively on my chapters. Then we bought a house together, and that became my home base for writing. Her kitchen table, our house with its great kitchen windows, all my stuff in boxes. I was crazy productive. By the end of April, I was writing so many words. It felt a little like my dissertation days, the first time I discovered how productive I could be on deadline!

Tweeting helped, too. Some selections of my #writinglife tweets this spring:

Checking the correct capitalization of hokey pokey. #writinglife

Today’s word count brought to you by the Outlander soundtrack. @bearmccreary always makes for good writing music. #writinglife

Watching a 15-sec ad before a YouTube video I want to see >> Figuring out how to access a journal article while at my home office. #writinglife

I can’t write when I’m being watched. This apparently includes the dog. #writinglife

I really have no experience typing rhinoceros. #writinglife

My Outlander phase only lasted a week. Then I found “Run Wild,” an up-tempo, folk-focused running mix on Spotify. I’m pretty sure a third of my book was written while listening to that playlist!

What really motivated me, however, was finding new ways to talk about ideas and practices I’ve made a part of my professional work for years. I have a chapter on using technology to make visible “thin slices” of student learning, to use a term from Georgetown’s Randy Bass. I heard him talk about this idea years ago at a conference, where he described video projects his students produced. He realized that a lot of what they learned was left on the cutting room floor. That is, their decisions what footage not to include were just as relevant to their learning as what they decided to include. I realized while writing that I had my own experience with this idea. Well, second-hand experience. My oldest daughter made a short film last year, and I asked her how much footage she shot. She filmed 90 minutes of raw footage for every minute that made it into the final cut. That gave me a story for the introduction to this chapter on formative assessment, and it was very satisfying to pull these threads together in 800 words or so.

I really enjoy writing.

I’m hoping to do more of it here on the blog. (It would be hard to do less!) But first, revisions. My manuscript was submitted back in May, then went out to reviewers. I just received their feedback last week, and I know it will help make a better book. I’ll be revising bits and pieces over the next month, so I’ve blocked out some more writing retreats on my calendar. I’m not sure if I’ll write at my house this time. Emily and I have done a lot to make it a home, so it might be a little too distracting.

There’s always Frothy Monkey.

Source: http://derekbruff.org/?p=3324

[kierongillen]

Writer Notes: The Wicked + the Divine 28

Spoilers, obv.

I mentioned in the back of the issue that I was thinking that Imperial Phase Part I would just end with no climax. As in, what would be more proggy and self-indulgent than to do that? Just to assume that people would accept a whole year of issues as a single trade, and have that slow build. And if people are expecting a surprise, not having a surprise would be the bigger one?

Except I plotted out the fucker, and realised this issue would end the trade, and that works pretty well as a climax.  Not as big as any of the other ones, arguably, but wider and certainly a change of status quo. Plus it's an unexpected answer to the question of “Who's going to die?” undermining the assumption that it has to be one of our core cast.

This is probably a good example of how I talk about knowing everything in WicDiv, but the execution being more flexible. As in, all these beats are there, but working out how to play them came when planning these two arcs.

It's a hard issue for me, to be honest. WicDiv is definitely in a cause of anxiety place for me now, and thematically I can see why. WicDiv is always a juggling act, but I'm aware I'm juggling knives.

Jamie's Cover: The last of the first half of Imperial Phase. The design continues to the second half of Imperial Phase, with variations. I think this one is particularly beautiful, but pointed.

Elsa Charretier's Cover: We met Elsa when we were launching WicDiv in France. Glenat, our French Publisher, had commissioned her to do a WicDiv print. That was beautiful, and we asked her if she'd be up for a cover. And lo, this was born. The commission was glamour and sex – I think I suggested the idea of a sun in a martini glass. Elsa summoned this panorama that I just lose myself in.

It's also one of our rare Alt covers which is actually coloured by Matt Wilson, who took a pretty radical approach to the image. Matt Wilson for Eisner!

Page 1 Last time I talked about having a surplus of material and working out how to present it, and it actually all compressing down worryingly well. I had my list of things I wanted to happen before the party. I realised that some of them – mainly Sakhmet related – I could move into issue 29. Which left this, which I felt as an incredibly low-key mundane scene made a fun thing to hard cut from to the party.

Roehampton chosen due to me doing a seminar at the University there last year. I felt that Blake would be teaching in a place like it.

Jamie had a hefty re-write of this one when drawing it, and we chewed over the execution in chat a little. “The script is the start of a conversation, not the end of it.”

Wall stuff was also done in conversation. I gave Jamie a bunch of suggestions and we unpacked a little more.  Shall I go though and say what they all are? I'm not sure if I can recognise them in fragments. That's Girl's Generation, the K-Pop band on the left. They were the primary visual inspiration for the Valkyries. Oh – and Jamie tells me that's Katy Perry on the right.

Page 2 I am very fond of the side-eye of Blake in the second panel. Strong Jamie expression.

Behind Blake is... League of Legends, Ghost in the Machine and Voltron.

And another really strong face in the last panel.

Page 3 Oddly, Cassandra's habit of little encouraging asides to people seems to be a thing now. How will people read them in world? Actually sincerely or patronising? I guess it depends how defensive they were feeling on any given day.

Page 4 A call back to Larkin's This Be The Verse, quoted by Luci in the first issue, recalled by Laura in issue 6.

My first draft title was Pride, drawing a line between Blake's parental pride and Sakmet's pride of lions. And then we remembered it'll also call to mind Pride, which when there's a slaughter at a pansexual orgy, is definitely not a comparison we wanted to make. So we went to this.

I suspect these writer notes are mainly my “here are some of the landmines we nearly stepped on” log.

Page 5 Originally the line was a lift of Lady Vox's in Phonogram, but something more noxious was clearly better. I called for the cocaine-tool, and Jamie out-did himself. The mosquito-like device emerging from the helmet is quite the thing. I suspect this is a left over Iron Man idea.

The visual element of the performance of the colouring-stage added symbols came from Matt. He was playing with various overlapping shapes, which were beautiful, but didn't seem to be anything other than a cute aesthetic. And then we realised that if we made them all Amaterasu symbols it'll integrate into the whole book. And lo, it does.

When plotting this issue, it's very much a “okay, what order CAN they be in.” I suspect I'd have rather taken more time to get to the confrontation, but everything else is more important to be in its place. Space is the interesting one – I suspect given an infinite budget we'd have have played more space to introduce this party/temple, probably with a issue-8 style dance-floor shot. But we don't, so we go completely the other way with this very TIGHT open, and put you in the middle of this slightly disorientating party you build up piecemeal. 

Page 6 This involved some consultancy here, as I suspected (and I was right) that the original draft of Cassandra's dialogue let Woden off the hook too easily. We ended up tweaking a bunch to make her angrier to start, and still angry at the end, even after she takes Woden's point. I suspect I'd have gone even further given a chance to do it again.

(I mean, do you believe Woden that he didn't click? Plus that he knows the implicit threat by saying he didn't click – as in, he definitely could click if he wanted to. This is particularly noxious by Woden.)

End of the page is the closest we get to an establishing shot of the club/temple, btw.

Note that Jamie has moved away from a strict eight panel grid here, which suits the material. That panels two and five are these relatively smaller moments means that it would be dead space.

Page 7 And notice the strict eight panel grid here, which Jamie maintains as all these beats are basically of equal narrative weight.

Panel 7 is Jamie redrawing the splash from Brandon Graham's issue. Clearly relevant to what's coming further down the line.

In an issue of fairly bleak jokes, I think Woden's last panel takes the prize.

Page 8 The sequence is the last bit of set-up for the end of the issue. I suspect a re-read of the last couple of issues will see what I considered the necessary Sakhmet beats to get here. Next issue has more, but it's all very morning-after.

Special call out for Clayton for the second panel, which uses a PING! To basically split this panel into two panels in terms of reading. There's Amaterasu's first line... a small delay – and then the next piece of information. This is joined to the left-right movement across the panel from seeing the back of her head (I'm leaving!) to the right side of the panel (Where we then see she's looking at her phone.)

The softest beat of the issue, and probably one that I'd have stressed more if it was only a grace note, would be the reason for Baal's absence. Persephone assumes it's because that she is there, hence the segue in conversation on hurting people.

(In a boring practical way, Baal and Minerva not being here streamlines an issue which all the cast are present at. They don't need to be here, and their absence says more.)

The last three panels on the page are the closest that Sakhmet has come to a speech. Originally, there was about twice as much dialogue, but we worked it over obsessively to get to the core essentials (and try and avoid juxtapositions which we simply didn't want.) C and I shouting various takes and word-switches for about an hour in the living room.

All the WicDiv characters depress me. I think Sakhmet depresses me most of all.

Page 9 Anyway, yes, Sakhmet, that is a very good look.

Sakhmet's entry for the bleak joke competition, evidently.

Page 10 That we cut away from Casssandra means we get to cut back to her after the reasonable stage of an exchange and straight into this.

Hmm. There's something odd about this issue in terms of how pretty it all is, versus the emotions that are flying around. That's Amaterasu all over though.

The third panel was key for us to have Amaterasu's lines juxtaposed by Cassandra's response, so that it couldn't be taken out of context. A character responding to another character's incoherent racism is important context. I considered the archaic spelling “Moslem” but decided that while I'm sure that Amaterasu would use it, it wasn't worth putting in the text. It's offensive enough anyway.

Page 11 Some fascinating character work by Matt and Jamie on Amaterasu's speech to camera. The passive-aggressive nature of her threat is particularly sickly.

Cass' swearing is a delight.

I think I originally did something like “Clawing her eyes out” and tweaked as I) gendered ii) with where the issue goes, sets up all sorts of uncomfortable resonances with both Morrigan and Sakhmet. WicDiv is designed to be viewed as a hologram, so removing data strands that aren't intended is key.

(I mean, I talk about being anxious earlier? That's certainly a reason. There's so many moving parts in this fucker, and for all our efforts we can’t be sure that some of them are going to mesh awkwardly. We can always miss something.)

Anyway – there goes Cass, told to go home, the first of the people to leave the party. Everyone else gradually leaves, until it's just the people who remain. Woden doesn't get an exit, but let's be candid – no-one would have ever assumed Woden would be invited to the orgy.

And Dio takes over as the connective tissue. Hmm. Re-reading this after a few weeks is making me realise how tightly wound it really is. I had a friend write to tell me how many panels the last two issues had. 26 with 127 and 27 with 142. I did a quick count, and this one is (about) 119, so a little down, but when an average mainstream comic would have around 80 panels in (No more than a 5 panel beat, with average panel count lower than due to splashes, action pages, etc) it speaks to how compressed this is running on. No wonder I feel like it's going to explode.

Anyway, Dio. What have you seen?

Page 12 The main worry on this page was not making the storytelling too comic. The “someone leaves” And then “Someone unexpected follows pushing first person out of the way” can definitely come across as slapstick. Jamie doesn't do that, so phew. It's setting up for the destination.

The hyper-distorted close-up-to-reader Amaterasu symbols here are fascinating. Well done, Matt.

Page 13 And out in the street. Matt's glow from the door, into the cold blues of the street is strong. Immediate change of mood.

(Also, has me thinking of the break to darkness in issue 8 before going back to the party, as a structural parallel)

I don't actually use much contemporary slang in WicDiv. I suspect this isn't actually something people have noticed. As such, I had a good hard think before using Ghosting, but it's the right word and sentiment. And – well – Ghosting and Goths is an interesting line.

The goth kids absence from the comic have been notable. As they'd been major players earlier, they were always going to step back so other characters can move closer to the spotlight. I realised pretty early in planning Imperial Phase that the necessary retreat from the spotlight would be a way to explicitly introduce the plot. We could delineate their absence.

Page 14 Yeah, I'm uncomfortable too.

I don't think it's worth talking about this in any more detail now. Probably more later as we continue into the story.

Dionysus is the character who has most often surprised me in WicDiv. When he enters a scene, he goes in an unusual direction. He asks slightly different questions from most of the cast. “She chased him out the building and now he looks like this? Clearly...” seems a fair leap to make.

Page 15 “I love you, but...” is one of the more obvious bits of connective tissue in the issue.

Jamie does an interesting choice in terms of panel 4 and Persephone's response.

Another bit of peak Amaterasu here in the “What happened to my party?” response. Upset of her party not going according to her plans is, of course, how the arc starts for Amy as well.

Matt obviously gets the colouring interesting – all amber here – but Jamie is doing a lot to bridge the gap between two sub-scenes. That fifth panel re-sets it all, and hopefully Amaterasu's voice carries people back inside.

Page 16 The first panel landed very well. There's a lot of emotional weight that this has to carry, and suggesting of other things, and it seems to hold together. I suspect you can patch together all the Persephone Lines To Camera in WicDiv and get an interesting portrait of where she thinks she is.

(I mean, this is Jamie. It's never just about the line. I can't even imagine trying to write this stuff for another artist.)

My favourite person in all of WicDiv may be the guy in the hat in the bottom panel who goes “You know – actually, no, I don't think so. I think I'll have an early night” when presented with this offer. Good call, random person.

Interesting choice of panel breaking by Jamie on the last panel, which gets a sense of the rush of the response.

Page 17 Well, yes.

Page 18 When someone asked me about sex scenes a while back, this was already written and perhaps even being drawn, so I was aware of this in terms of a hypothetical WicDiv scene scene. Let's quote the thing here for reference...

We certainly don’t linger on the sex scenes. There’s an orgy in issue 11. There’s one beat where you see Morrigan and Baphomet in issue 16. There��s the repurposed Sex Criminal pages in 14. There’s very little kissing in terms of what you actually see  - there’s one in 20 and one in 24, so far. While at the same time, characters having sex with one another is one of the things which drives the plot.

Speaking generally, I’ve got no moral reservation about sex scenes in stories per se. It always speaks to the effect the story is trying to have. To state the obvious, in erotica it’s very much the point of the thing.

There’s a couple of problems specifically in WicDiv…

1) Seeings someone have sex has a tendency to make the scene about you watching. Our characters are often, in their own way, viewpoint characters. Anything which makes a character perform for the viewer is against our intent there. There’s times we’ve approached it, and Jamie has very much backed away when we approached the page, as it was just extraneous. Why do it if it serves no purpose? 2) Probably more importantly, sex is usually dead pages in terms of drama. The fight scenes WicDiv does are almost always not about fighting. They’re about a change of dramatic states, a visually interesting way to push the plot along. Go through a fight scene and note down what you learn about each character in it. You can certainly do that in a sex scene… but dramatically speaking, the “decision to have sex” and “how you feel afterwards” are the key beats. So we linger on them a LOT.

But there’s certainly sex scenes I’ve written in my notes, and they’re much more character driven things, one way or another. I suspect one will come up sooner rather than later, though watching how we do it will be the interesting one.

That “interesting” sits uncomfortably with me, as it sounds like I'm foreshadowing this awful mess, when I'm talking in terms of craft. How do you do that and stay to our aims? The things I'd point to here is primarily Jamie's choices – how he chooses to frame nakedness, how he chooses to frame sex. Generally speaking, this is an illustrative scene. The neutrality is key – Amaterasu's nakedness  in panel 6 would be a key one. There is no pose for the readers' eye's delight. This is a character who happens to be naked. Or at least, that's how we hope it's read.

(There's also other things – we thought that if Sakhmet is the first character to be shown naked just as she turns on a killing range, that has a lot of semiotics in there we'd like to avoid.)

Page 19 You know how life can just shatter in a second? I guess that's what we were going for here. Just one character being thoughtless, and...

(Fill in “That escalated quickly” gif, obviously)

For my money, perhaps Jamie's best art of the issue is the last two panels. The suspended glass, and then that close up – which is not one, but both of the best single expressions in the book.

Page 20-21 Amaterasu runs – I've seen some people think that Sakhmet killed her in this scene, which is one of those “you always must remember your audience is diverse in terms of how much they're aware of things like knowing what a character's power looks like, especially when a larger than normal percentage of your readers are new to comics.” I'm not sure there's much we could have done, except maybe a “come back!” from Sakhmet in the first panel. But  that feels too crass for the people who DO get it. Balancing what is too opaque and what is too crass is basically 95% of comics for me.

This spread was budgeted as a single page, in terms of the amount Jamie has drawn. I may have done it anyway, but it is a way to ensure that we have a page turn onto the image on page 22.

(Also visual symmetry with Sakhmet in issue 17, where the black out image is also used.)

Page 22 I like how careful Jamie is here as well. I suspect the page with the most colouring tweaks in it, as Jamie wanted it to have the correct level of horror to it.

I originally had a more on-the-nose element to the image – a message scrawled in blood – but as much as I like a good System Shock homage, it was decided it was just too much. It's a Grand Guignol beat, sure, but not like that. It seems that there is a thing such as “too unsubtle” even for WicDiv.

Page 23 When originally planning the book, I thought this flashback was going to be at the end of Rising Action. After writing it, we realised we didn't need it – Persephone terrible and resplendent, with all the awful potential didn't need anything else. This is probably a good example of what I talk about in terms of when we say “we know all the material – it's just a question of execution.” I find myself thinking of how movies are really made by the editor, cutting scenes around.

(There's certainly things I've wanted to get in this arc which I've lost as something else was always more pressing. You may remember me saying one of my worries about year 3 in WicDiv was it was mainly girls being involved with girls, and there wasn't enough male/male intimacy? That would be an example of something which I'd like to find a place for, but have failed to do so far. Still, onwards.)

As a craft note, I'd point towards “6 months earlier” as a choice worth considering for creators. If you just write dates to control flashbacks rather than stating the relative position, you will lose your reader almost completely. They don't remember what period a story is set in just via numbers. They need either word based hand-holding or something much more visual in the story. Be very careful with this shit.

Page 24 In an issue as compressed as this, a page of Ananke way back in issue 21 me a luxury. But for someone like Ananke, it's so rare I hope it's interesting. Some strong expression work in here.

Clearly the advantage of that mask of hers is that it means it's harder for people to see that she's been crying.

Page 25 A “free” page in terms of budget, though Jamie clearly committed to it  with the hand.

In the third year's hardback, we may include our somewhat hilarious lettering trial runs where Chrissy and Katie tried their handwriting. The final one is actually the work of Marguerite Bennett, who as a self-described Supervillain seemed a good person to ask to do it. Also, I've seen enough of her pen when signing issues of Angela, so knew she had a fascinating font. She was enormously ill and bed-ridden, so it was touch or go whether she would be able to do it, but thankfully it all came together. Thanks, M.

Page 26 A complete re-use of the opening of issue 21, with the final panel turned into a (tweaked) repeat of the penultimate panel. Once more we return and all that.

We'll be doing a little tweak to this page in the trade in the penultimate panel, to put a little glow on the machinery.

Page 27 We had to debate whether to put the present date or the flashback date here, but settled on this.

And that's it. Coming up shortly is the 455 AD special, which certainly fits thematically in with this arc and Andre (and Matt) have done wonderful work on. Then the trade in June, and back with Imperial Phase Part II in July.

Thanks for reading.