So, Three Months Later...

I feel vaguely hypocritical - having given Hannah Newcombe a scolding for letting her blog lapse, I find myself having done the same thing (albeit not on such a grand scale).  Three months have passed since I last posted on here.

What's happened?

• I've helped build a conservatory.
• I've finished the second season of The Murkum Show, plus spin-off Greasy Food With Gonce, and been putting in some brain-juice on the third run.
• I've made progress towards filming the next set of Papercuts episodes.
• I've started writing Cylinder and Miserable Series 4 (as threatened earlier).
• I've put in a few months of doodling on my second Papertowns drawing.
• I've bought a new camera - a Nikon D7100, which is very, very nice, and will be used for all future instalments of Murkum Show, Papercuts etc.
• I went to Root Hill again - my 9th time.  Really starting to feel like part of the woodwork now.  Enjoyed it very much.  Was able to take a car for the first time.  Also took the D7100, and had a horrible moment where I thought it was broken, but fortunately it turned out that the £900 camera was fine, the problem was with the £20 memory cards, which were in fact fakes and have now been sent back and refunded.
• I launched a new website for YBC... and then had an embarrassing hiccup where I forgot the admin password.
• Probably other stuff I've forgotten to mention.

So, there you go - a quick recap of all the stuff that I never got round to blogging about in more tedious detail over the last quarter of a year.

Oh... and I might have slightly started writing A Salesman Beneath again, after a nearly-3-year hiatus.  Hm...


- The Colclough

Expanding the Paper Horizon

I finished a drawing last Tuesday.

Normally, finishing a drawing isn't such a big deal, as I do quite a few of them.  But this one was different: for starters, it was a whole year (a year plus four days, in fact) in the making.  It's impractically large, at nearly 1.2 metres (4') long.  The scariest statistic - which I only just finished calculating tonight, a week later - is that it contains 150 people.  Although when I say 'people', I don't mean fully-detailed humans, I mean little box people in the same vein as the cast of Papercuts.

I drew a bunch of pictures when I was about 9 to 11, showing various small towns populated by fictional creatures of my own design.  I enjoyed them at the time (all 15 of them!), but in retrospect there are all sorts of problems, such as there being far too many doctors' surgeries despite very few people appearing to be sick or injured, or such as a depressing lack of architectural variation from village to village or from building to building.  But somehow, despite the numerous flaws, I still have a bit of a soft spot for these creakingly awful doodles - but I'm still not publishing them.  I bring this up because in some ways, my new work is essentially the same project, just being tackled again 16 years later by an older and wiser version of me.  Okay, so I've transferred the whole thing into a different fictional world, re-populated it with a different species, and generally shaken everything up, but the basic idea of drawing a portrait of a fictional high street remains unchanged, and the new picture contains all sorts of (usually inconspicuous) little nods back to what I was drawing in the late 1990s.

But despite the fact that it radically reboots my "Let's sit down and draw a town off the top of my head" project, Papertowns: Desmonton isn't a whole new world coming into being from scratch, but is actually an expansion of another world which I began a couple of years ago and which I'm very fond of irrespective of its relatively small size: the world of Papercuts.

The seven Papercuts episodes released so far collectively form what I've started referring to as 'Phase I', and they're pretty self-contained, with few or no hints at what the surrounding world might be like.  I'm planning a few changes for 'Phase II' (Episode 8 onwards), such as making an alteration or two to the title-sequence visuals and letting Tim remix the theme tune; another change which has been less consciously planned, but which I suspect will happen anyway, is an increasing awareness of the bigger universe.  Tim's written a script for Phase II which name-drops Desmonton, for example - in the context that Desmonton, as you see it in the new drawing, is the nearest town of any significance to the Papercuts characters' residence.  I've started thinking through details such as how their currency works, which is briefly hinted at in Episode 7 Debt of Gravy-tude and might become more significant in future instalments.  I haven't yet decided which story will lead the charge on Phase II, but I'm very much looking forward to seeing how the new material develops, hopefully later this year.

Meanwhile, their world is growing in other directions, the first and most significant of which you can see here:

  
That's Desmonton, sorta - I don't know why Blogger has darkened and dirtied the image so badly.  I'd very much recommend that you go and look at the higher-quality version I've uploaded to DeviantArt, and click the picture there for full resolution.

And I've already started sketching another town... but more on that later.


- The Colclough

In Which I Waffled

In case you were wondering how the heck Papercuts ever got made, here's a little peek behind the lens... thought I'd blog this before hurtling off into other projects.




- The Colclough

Ta-da!

I mentioned last time that I was nearly finished with Papercuts Episode 7, with the last remaining components being of the audio variety.  Well, today Tim finished and delivered his ninth composition for the series, I plugged it into the edit along with a handful of other freshly-minted audio elements, and Debt of Gravy-tude was finished.  And released - you should see it embedded a paragraph or two down from here.

I hope you've been taking note of the music in Papercuts.  Like the visuals, every last bit of it has been specially created for the show - no stock footage, stock score, or stock anything around here: I took the decision relatively early on in Production Block A, last spring, that since I was going to so much effort over the project anyway, I may as well go that bit further and record all my own sound effects too.  But the point is, Tim's actually been building up quite a broad-based collection of cues over the seven episodes, ranging from a slow, minimal guitar solo in Episode 3, up to rather more complex and breakneck-paced chase theme in Episode 6, via music for a windmill and a flower, for China, and even for outer space.  You can convey a lot with hand-drawn visuals (if I say so myself), but sometimes there's just no substitute for having a composer on hand to help with the scene-setting or (as is more common in this series) with the 'punctuation' of a scene.  The main point of this post, apart from showcasing Episode 7, is to offer Tim a public thank you for the Papercuts score.  So: thank you, Tim.



In case you were wondering, yes, the vlog is still coming.  Just taking a while to edit.  Keep watching this space!


- The Colclough

Not Much of a Wrap Party

As you might have heard already if you follow me on Facebook or Twitter (I tweet now - sorta - @TheColclough), I just finished up filming on Papercuts Production Block C; Episodes 5 and 6 have already been released, and 7 has taken another crucial step towards its completion - I'm still hoping to be able to have it finished by the end of 2013.

I think I've mentioned before that for some reason I don't tend to get much of a buzz from finishing a film; it just happens, I feel a bit meh, and I move on to the next thing.  This time, though, it's gone beyond mere "not getting a buzz": in the half-hour since the camera shutter fell silent, I've actually started feeling a tad depressed about the whole thing.

Why?

Well, this might be a good time to explain that Episode 7 is, to all intents and purposes, the end of Papercuts as we know it.  I decided a couple of months back that the physical cutout process is too fiddly and time-consuming, so after finishing Block C (i.e. Episodes 5 to 7), I would pack it in, and produce any future episodes using a digital process.  I'd still create the various elements with paper, ink and photography, but the cutting-out and movement stages would take place inside the computer.  I've also considered making one or two revisions to the title sequence, and Tim's made noises about wanting to rework the theme tune, so there's looking to be quite a distinct break between Episode 7 and Episode 8 - the end of "Phase I", and the start of a "Phase II", if you like.  It struck me, a minute or two after finishing the closing shot, that that right there might have been the last time I ever did any work for this show using the physical-cutout technique (which I first dabbled with nearly three years ago), and that was when the almost-sad thing came in.

To be honest, I don't even know what the storyline for Episode 8 will be, or whose pen it'll come from - there are various ideas I've had, and various stories which have been pitched in various forms by one or two others (you know who you are), but nothing that's ready to film yet as far as I'm aware.  The Murkum Show is a different matter, as I've got several new episode scripts ready to go, but as far as Papercuts is concerned, I just finished shooting the last known script, and I suspect the unknown-ness of the next instalment was a contributing factor to my little bout of unhappiness.

Anyway, I think I'm getting over it now.  Just need to do a little bit more editing and audio work, and wait for one new music track from my resident composer, and Episode 7 will be ready to show off to the world, which is a very happy thought!

And in the meantime, since I haven't posted them on this blog yet, here are Episodes 5 and 6.  Enjoy (again, if applicable)...





...and have a very Merry Christmas and (in case I don't see you again before then) a happy New Year!


- The Colclough

The Slate, November 2013

I'm not entirely sure where the phrase 'the slate' came from, but these days it seems to refer to the list of projects which a film studio is either working on now or planning to work on in the near future.  I thought this would be a good time to publish my own slate (or M.C.Media's, depending how you look at it) - so here goes...


Current project: Papercuts Production Block C (Episodes 5-7)

I've got a trio of scripts which came together around late summer, comprising the show's first two-parter, written by Tim, and a one-off episode by me.  Dialogue recording is complete, and the photography and editing stages are well underway for all three instalments.  The production block also includes some additional material: a short prologue to Episode 5, and a vlog showing the filmmaking process for Papercuts, specifically following the progression of work on a single new set which needed to be built for Block C.

 A moment from Papercuts Episode 5... coming soon!

The prologue was originally going to be the opening scene of Episode 5, but I felt that it wasn't necessary for the story and was slowing the episode down; initially I was going to tell Tim to just delete it, but then I decided I actually liked it in itself despite it not really being needed for the overall story, so I thought I'd go ahead and film it anyway, and release it separately as a prologue (inspired by the 'prequels' which Doctor Who has been doing for the last 2 or 3 years), under the pretext that it's a marketing thing.  It's finished, as of this morning, and you can see it here:



The production vlog will probably be the next thing I release, followed by Episode 5 itself.

Beyond the release of Episode 7, I don't really have any fixed plans for Papercuts; I'm open to doing more episodes in 2014 or later, but it all depends on getting scripts ready.


The next few projects: Fifteen-Minute Fortresses, Inanimate HD and The Murkum Show Series 2

This part is subject to change, but here's what I'm currently thinking in terms of my next work beyond Papercuts 7:

First up, you may or may not remember a little video I did earlier this year, titled The Fifteen-Minute Fortress?  Well, I might do a couple more of those.  Revise the parameters of the exercise, but still keep it broadly similar in spirit.  Watch this space.

Meanwhile, thinking even further back, you might recall my five-minute live-action short Inanimate from 2006.  This summer, armed with a vastly better camera and a friend who knew how to make said camera behave itself, I staged a remake of the film, now in shiny HD and starring Tim.  At some point, I need to knuckle down and edit the thing, and once the edit's complete, I'll take the logical next step and release the film.  Inanimate HD is rather more definite than Fifteen-Minute Fortress II, mostly because it's already been filmed, but the editing process could prove to be rather slow.

 Tim Johnston in the new version of Inanimate

And finally, the third and probably biggest thing on my near-future-projects slate is a second season of The Murkum Show.  The first was a lot of fun to make, and there's a lot of momentum building up for the second: I've already got a good idea of what the set will look like, and got seven episode scripts lined up (fun fact: all four of the people who wrote for Series 1 have already got scripts in the queue for Series 2).  It's very unlikely that Murkum Show S2 will see the light of day before next year, what with the work that remains to be done on my current projects, but I'm 98% sure it'll be happening in the first half of 2014.

 

Doctor Murkum in a recent adventure - expect more in early 2014

Other stuff that may or may not happen next year

I've got a few other bits and pieces on the go.  These include Improbable (a very odd little cel short, which I released a teaser clip for several months ago), Empire of the Pond (a remake of Fishy Business, a 2003 short whose storyline I thought was alright, but whose animation was so embarrassingly bad that I'm never going to let you see it), and a perhaps-over-ambitious CGI production titled Golden Cube, about a robot who works in a strange, futuristic dolly-mixtures factory.  No particular release schedules for any of those yet, but since I'm publishing the slate, it seems only fair to mention that they're on it - albeit down at the bottom.

 No, it won't start making any more sense when you see the finished film.

- The Colclough

From One Weeks' Vantage

Okay, been a week (what, already?) since 2012 shuffled off its mortal coil.  I always said the Mayans were wrong and I'd make it to Event 2013, and here I am.  Here, more to the point, we all are.

Thought I'd do a little write-up on the past year, and have a brief ponder on what might be coming up...


2012

I turned 24.  I remained weird.  I also remained single.  I didn't remain unemployed though, as you might have read in these pages back in February.

I nearly lost my computer.  But it got fixed in the end, so all's well, and all that.

We obtained our seventh hamster back in January, and he has been entertaining us with his nuttiness ever since.  And chewing the carpets.

The Jubilee happened.  Celebrations in my area got rather washed out, but sometimes that's life.  Now I'm busy rooting for Her Majesty to reach the end of her 64th year on the throne and overtake Victoria as the longest-reigning monarch in British history.

The Olympics happened.  I enjoyed the event, mostly.  It was interesting to see that that at one point the USA decided to report the medals table using a different algorithm to everybody else in order to pretend that they were on top, when really we all knew China were leading - almost as if the whole nation was throwing a huge collective strop because being in second place out of 200-odd nations just wasn't good enough for them, dammit Jim.  Us Brits, meanwhile, were perfectly happy with third rank - or at least I was.  I thought the closing ceremony was a washout - okay, it's some overpaid morons singing naff songs; even Imagine is massively over-rated, what's the fuss about here? - but thought most of the opening show was brilliant, and the actual sporting in between managed to grip even me, who hasn't a drop of sporting blood in my body.

I made some interesting discoveries about animation - most importantly, the fact that paper cutout animation is actually a lot slower and more difficult than you might think.  My animation output for 2011 comprised 13 episodes of Arbitrary Stopframe, but 2012 managed only 4 episodes of Papercuts.  Although to be fair, Papercuts episodes feature dialogue (with the consequent burden of lip-synch work), and each have three times the runtime of actual animation (i.e. not counting title and credit sequences) of an AS episode, so when you do the maths they work out relatively close.

That was my film output - what of the intake?  Records indicate (yes, I keep records) that I went to the cinema four times in 2012, to see The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists (visually top-notch, as one would expect from an Aardman feature, but disappointingly weak in the story department, and less funny than it should have been), Avengers Assemble (don't get me started, I could eulogise for ages, especially about Phil 'Agent' Coulson), Brave (not quite Pixar's best, but still pretty good), and finally The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (overlong, yes, but largely enjoyable, especially the performances of Martin Freeman and Andy Serkis.  Sorry about the inevitable disagreements betwixt us, Sam, but I did like it).  I've lost count of all the things I've seen on TV / DVD / Blu-ray, but highlights have included Galaxy Quest on Blu-ray, Sherlock season 2, the first half of the first season of The West Wing, my first time watching full seasons of The Apprentice (s8) and Young Apprentice (s3), and of course Seven Samurai.  Not so much a highlight, but still of note, the first few episodes of Star Trek TNG.  So far, at least half of them have been really awful - but I kept watching because I'm a bit of a completist sometimes.  The Dreaded Moffat has been very cruel and only given us six episodes of Doctor Who this year, instead of the 14 we should have had, but at least the first half of Series 33/7 has been an improvement over the sloppily-written debacle of 2011's Series 32/6.

I finished publishing Cylinder and Miserable Series 2, and started on Series 3.  Didn't end up resuming Grace and Caffeine or starting my planned Brothers in Shells prequel spin-off yet.

I also met a guy called Wayne, and we've been writing a sitcom whose basic premise is The Screwtape Letters mashed up with The Terminator, and laced with a liberal dollop of up-to-the-minute financial corruption.  More on that later, maybe...

And to round things off, I won 2 out of 5 podium spots for best post, and second ranking on the Best Blog of the Year list, in Sam's 2012 blogroll review, which I have to say was a very nice cap to the blogging year.


2013?

In short, goodness knows.  There are 51 more weeks to go before 2014 starts, and 51 weeks is a very, very long time, both in politics and elsewhere.

On the animation front, I'm hoping to get X-Battles GT5 finished soon.  Beyond that, Papercuts episodes 5 to 9 are all in various stages of being written, but none are ready to go yet, so I might be taking a break from the show and producing something else next.  Possibly more AS, and/or possibly the long-brewing Empire of the Pond, given a helping hand by my new graphics tablet.  Or maybe something about Murkum, animated entirely in Lego - but I don't have a workable screen story for that project yet, so you'll have to wait.  On a related note, Tim, Sarah and I finished Alpha One's Winter Wonderland back in the summer, and shot a fifth X-Battles GT short in October (nearly finished, just waiting for some more sound-editing work).

Hoping to finish writing Cylinder and Miserable Series 3 this year.  Might get round to doing one of those other comic-strip things I mentioned.  Might not.  Don't know.

Looking forward to Iron Man 3, Thor 2, Monsters University, and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.  Waiting to see what the reviews are like.  Need to catch up with Skyfall on DVD/BR sometime.

I've known people who took less than 51 weeks between meeting their future spouse for the first time ever, and getting back from their honeymoon.  Not to say I expect to marry in 2013; far from it, I've long since given up any actual hope or expectation on that front, but I know enough about probability - and about God's sometimes inexplicable sense of humour - to recognise that I can't absolutely rule out any traces of possibility.

Can but wait and see!


- The Colclough

The Storm Has Subsided

My goodness, that was slow and awkward.  Script written in February, voices recorded in June, and it still took until December to complete the fourth episode of Papercuts.  I usually count the production time from the voice recording session, which gives Pedroelectric a total of nearly six months, shattering the four-month record set by Episode 2 Germination Without Authorisation back in the summer.

I think the killer factor was the technical complexity - or rather, not so much the technical complexity in itself, but more the fact that the complexity made the task seem more daunting, and put me off from knuckling down and getting on with it.  As I wrote in the episode's YouTube description: don't write animation scripts with thunderstorms in them.  The rain, thunder and lightning did nothing to ease the convoluted process of bringing this story to the screen.  This might have been a good opportunity to point out that unlike the previous three instalments, which I wrote myself, this one was co-scripted by Tim... but then again I don't think I can shift the blame for the thunderstorm, as that was my idea anyway.  Tim was the one who suggested that they should be watching TV, and that Pedro should be sent up the aerial to fix it, and that the Captain should try to make some commercial use of Pedro's electrified condition, but I have to hold up my hand and admit that the basic concept of Pedro getting electrified in a thunderstorm was entirely my fault.

The previous three episodes were achieved almost entirely through an honest-to-goodness single-pass cutout process (the passage-of-time ideograms and the space scene in Episode 3 Jalapeno to the Skies were exceptions), with any given frame usually being a single unaltered photo.  But this time round, something like half of the film comprises multi-layered material, with the stuff on the TV screen, the rain, the various lightning flashes and electric sparks, and the non-speaking extra in the penultimate scene all being either composited or outright computer-generated after the fact.  That probably went a long way towards slowing me down, because it not only requires twice the amount of material to be shot, but requires both plates to be designed with a view to synchronising them in post.  It's finnicky enough designing a set to function at the right scale and so on even when it's only for a single-layer shot.

But as I also mentioned in the YouTube description, I think it was worth the effort.  Not only am I pleased with the storyline, I also think Pedroelectric has turned out as the most visually interesting episode to date, and perhaps the most aurally interesting as well.

The soundscape includes all sorts of weird and wonderful things this time round: a rainstick, a sheet of cartridge paper (the lounge set, as a matter of fact), white noise artificially generated by Audacity 2, a stapler, a cushion borrowed from our leather sofa being smacked really hard with a metre stick, my grandparents' un-lubricated driveway gate several years ago, the plug of the family vacuum cleaner (you wouldn't believe how hard it was to record the sound of a cable being picked up or put down), me eating Doritos a lot louder than I usually do, and me doing a move which I can only describe as trying to spit as sharply as possible from somewhere underneath my tongue.  Also watch out for Millimetre's dialogue - somewhere in this episode is the first occasion where I actually thought about what he's trying to say, and based his screeches off an actual sentence or two.  I'd be very interested to hear whether you can figure out where or what any of these items are...

Musically, Pedroelectric retains the main theme as usual, and revisits Pedro's heroic sting from Episode 1 Lemon Juice for the Captain, but also introduces the longest new piece of incidental music to date, titled Windmill and Flower.  I don't know if the show the trio are watching on their TV is a documentary about green energy (which is what the script says) or if it's metamorphosed into a really bizarre meta-cartoon within the cartoon, per Itchy & Scratchy.  I'll leave it to you to decide which interpretation of Windmill and Flower you prefer.

It seems I never got round to embedding Episodes 2 or 3 on the blog, so I'll do that first, and then wrap up the proceedings for today with the debut of Episode 4:








- The Colclough

All Quiet at the Front End of the Camera

It's been a mere (yeah, right) three and a half months since I recorded the dialogue for the first two episodes of Papercuts, way back on the first of March.  I've had several patches since then when I felt as if there was far too much work involved in the project and it was all taking far too long and I wanted to just pack it all in and cancel the show.

However, after 48 hours of focussed work on the project (it's amazing what you can achieve in 48 hours of focussed work sometimes), I've fnally finished Episode 1, and very nearly finished Episode 2... and then jumped straight back in and started recording dialogue for Production Block B (i.e. Episodes 3 and 4).

A large part of Thursday was spent filming the last bits of Production Block A: specifically, Ep 2 Scene 10, then the last snippets of the title sequence with the ink barely dried on the background I was using, and last but not least Ep 2 Scene 11.  Rounded off the day with a bit of editing.

Yesterday was all about the noise.  Depending what time of day you dropped in, you would have seen me scuttling in and out of my room clutching various ill-gotten gains including the old clock of the mantelpiece, the cutlery drawer, a plastic bucket full of dirt, a full watering can, and a trowel... not to mention the various strange sounds I ended up making a capella.  I also pestered Tim into writing a snippet of incidental music for Episode 1, so that I could complete and publish the episode.  Which, about an hour after I should have been in bed, is just what I did.

Here's what all the fuss has been about - or at least, the first instalment of it:



Episode 2 is complete apart from one track of incidental music, which I'm hoping Tim might be able to sort out while I'm in Kent over the next week, and the general plan is to publish the second instalment about two weeks after the first one, followed by the third as soon as it's ready.  Beyond that, I don't really know yet.  If the scripts for episodes 5, 6 and maybe 7 are ready to go by the time I finish making 4, then I might go straight into Production Block C.  Otherwise, I might look at re-starting Arbitrary Stopframe.  But don't take any of that as final - the only definite decision I've made so far is to stick with Papercuts until at least Episode 4 is finished.

I'm really hoping the second pair of episodes won't take as long as the first did.  I do have a bit of a head start this time in terms of major sets already existing, and things like that.  Watch this space.


In unrelated news, I've been meaning to do a post about how I might have handled certain challenges from The Apprentice Series 8, but that'll have to wait for at least another week, if it happens at all.  And I'm sure I've got some drawings and paintings that I haven't shown you.  Must try and remember to do that before too long...


- The Colclough

Filming Report: Day Four

It's taking longer than I expected.

After four days' filming, I've managed to get through most of the 20-second-long title sequence, about half of Episode 1, and three short scenes for Episode 2.  There have been a lot of things taking up time, but the real killer so far has been the 'sets' - I've had to complete the main exterior and dining-room interior backgrounds before I can make any episodes at all, and they've taken forever.

The good news is that those two - which will almost certainly be the largest and most troublesome drawings in the whole project - are now finished, and both have been used for some filming.  There's a third major set which I need to complete before I can film the last component for the title sequence, but it hopefully won't be as big as its two predecessors.

Quick breakdown of what happened on which day:

1. Parts of the title sequence using blank backgrounds; main title photo; two 'ideogram' elements (a clock and a calendar, used to denote the passage of time instead of captions saying 'ten minutes later' or whatever)
2. Scenes on the main exterior set for title sequence and Episode 1
3. Ep 1 scene 3 (drystone wall cameo set); Ep 2 scenes 3, 5 and 9 (wait and see!)
4. Ep 1 scene 2 (dining room)

All of the remaining Episode 1 scenes (4, 6 and 8) take place in the dining room, so the plan is to finish those off next and then do some scenes for Episode 2 which happen in a patch of waste ground.  Meanwhile, design and draw that other major interior, and get the missing title sequence shot whenever the set is ready.

And once I've animated both episodes, then I just need to do some extra sound effects recording, and wait for the music to be delivered.

And then I've got two more scripts lined up for the second production block.

More preview pictures coming when I get round to it.

Y'all had better appreciate this blasted toon when it comes out...


- The Colclough

Cameras Have Rolled

Well, not in the most strictly literal sense, i.e. photochemical film stock passing through an exposure gate at several (usually 24, 25 or 30) frames per second.  Like all of my video and animation work, Papercuts is being shot digitally.  But the point is: it's now actually being shot.  After I don't know how many weeks in pre-production, I've finally started animating some stuff for the new show.  Admittedly, all I've got done today is part of the title sequence and a couple of other very small bits and pieces, but it's still a start.  It shouldn't take too much work before I can shoot more of the title sequence and a couple of short scenes for Episode 1.

The downside is that in the process of animating what I thought would be the beginning of the title sequence, I discovered that it actually wouldn't be the beginning.  I decided there would have to be another shot up front - and then I decided that said shot ought to be on the sofa.  The sofa doesn't appear in any of the scripts until Episode 4, so I wasn't going to have to worry about drawing that right yet... but now I need to draw it up front so I can finish the title sequence for Episode 1.  Darn.  But then again, once the main sets are drawn, they're drawn, and what slows down the production of the first couple of episodes should speed up production on the second pair.  Swings and roundabouts and all that.

The main thing is that I'm pretty happy with the material I filmed today, even if its runtime is a bit on the fleeting side.

And to prove that I'm not just bluffing here, and I really did shoot stuff, here's the very first frame to be recorded: Papercuts Main Title Sequence, Shot 2, Frame 001, otherwise known as "DSC_6019.jpg".

Watch this space!


- The Colclough

Still Alive

Time since last post: about five weeks.

Stuff achieved in that time: job worked, money earned (such a beautiful sheaf of purple banknotes...), Arc Phase Variations no. V partially inked, more Cylinder and Miserable written (just five days to go until Series 3 begins publication, in case you missed the announcement on the comic's homepage), Papercuts elements drawn... and computer reformatted.

I spent today wiping the C drive of my just-over-four-year-old PC, affectionately known as 'Beastie', and reinstalling my software, all in a bid to eradicate a nasty virus called Zeus which infected the machine last Wednesday and proved near-impossible to kill.  Fortunately, it only infected software files (not images, music or other media files) and only infected things on the C drive (not my other two hard disks), so I was able to back up my documents and stuff to the external drive, format C, and reinstate most of the stuff I want to keep.  Haven't got round to reinstalling my video editors or games yet, but I've got everything I need for my planned C&M writing binge tomorrow - picking up in the middle of the conversation I was writing last week when Zeus forced me to stop.

The first 24 hours when AVG first started telling me my files were getting infected, and before I'd managed to analyse the damage and work out a plan of attack, were somewhat traumatic.  I occasionally have dreams where I switch on my computer and instead of starting Windows like it should, it goes off and does loads of really weird stuff that doesn't make any sense at all, and what with me being the creature of habit and logic that I am, I tend to find those dreams quite upsetting.  So to actually have a program running around with a mind of its own and breaking things was pretty much a nightmare come true.  However, the nightmare is over, and although I might have lost the odd file here and there, I've been able to preserve all the files that I felt any attachment to, and the reformatting has had the beneficial side effect of clearing up quite a bit of software rot.  As I sit writing this, Beastie feels much like its old self... just a bit less cluttered.  And I've got Dusty the Hamster scuttling round my room, as he often does of an evening.  So things seem back to normal, or as close as makes no difference, and I can now look back at the whole escapade a bit more philosophically.

The week without a functional computer did have its downsides, but it actually had several upsides as well.  Among other things, it prompted me to spend more time working on the analogue stuff, and I've been very happy with some of the drawings I've got done - especially the exterior of the Papercuts house, which I'm quite looking forward to showing off once the rest of the drawing is done.  I also began reading Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones' book on "True Happiness", from Psalm 1, just hours after getting the first infection alert, which I have to say made a very interesting contrast.

All in all, I couldn't help thinking that quote from Portal seemed quite appropriate as today's headline.


Hopefully, normal levels of Colclough-ness will be resumed soon - I mentioned earlier that C&M will restart on Monday, and despite the fact that Papercuts seems to be creeping along very very slowly, the project is actually more alive than the casual viewer might be led to believe.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go and evict Dusty from on top of my pillow.  Again.


- The Colclough

Things Begin!

I've been starting some new things today.

First off this morning, I began pencilling the general layout of the fifth instalment in my series of circly drawings - which, by the way, I've decided to call Arc Phase Variations.  Also worth mentioning that I completed the fourth drawing the other day, and I'll try and get a photo up sometime.  Then, sticking with the arty theme, I painted the background layer for Stained Glass VII.

Then I fired up the computer, and got down to work on the HTML conversion for my Cylinder and Miserable spin-off storyline The Lemonsmith Correspondence.  The new mini-series is fully canon, and partially bridges the gap between the completed Series 2 and the upcoming Series 3.  It comprises 75 emails, supposedly written between Cylinder, Albert, the eponymous Claudia Lemonsmith, and one or two other characters, and I've uploaded the first 8 to the website as you can see if you click this link here.  I did the first 8 as a batch because it was a narratively logical stopping point; some of the other batches will be a lot bigger.  Not sure when the next lot will go online, but I'll try and make it soon.

And finally, my last creative act of the day (apart from writing this blog post, obviously) was to sit down with my microphone and a couple of scripts, and record all the voice work for the first production block of my new cartoon, Papercuts.  Production block A comprises the series title sequence plus episodes 1 and 2, and production block B will comprise episodes 3 and 4.  As for block C, we'll have to wait and see (or wait and C?  No, sorry; that was a bad one), because no more episodes have been written yet.  But the point is, the work has progressed beyond the script-writing stage, which means that the successor to Arbitrary Stopframe is now officially in production!  Watch this space for release date news...


- The Colclough

Strangulation, Stock Checks, and Sleeplessness

It's a funny old world.  I had my first formal job interview back at the beginning of January - all suits and CVs and that - and although it was an interesting and useful experience (not to mention a bit scary), I didn't get the job.  Two weeks ago today, on t'other hand, I began a week's unpaid work experience at the local DIY shop, and word must have gotten out that I'm not too bad with computers.  That, and I obviously didn't annoy too many people.  Because sometime on the Friday, the owner asked if I would come back for a couple of days each week, starting from the next week, and beat their computers into submission, and get paid for it.  I accepted, and handed over my National Insurance number card.

So it was that last Monday, the 13th of February, at the age of 23 years and 359 days, I finally embarked on my first regular paid employment, having got myself the position without showing a CV or wearing a single tie - which is good, because I hate having anything tight around my neck - and I spent the day counting compression fittings for copper pipe, and setting the digital records straight as to which supplier we buy them from, what re-order codes they use, how many of each item we had (the database said we had -120 ish of some things!), how much they cost, and various other facts and figures.

My excuse for having not written a blog post in over two weeks centres around the aforementioned fact that I've spent seven days at the DIY shop.  On top of that, I spent half a Saturday in Kent for Josh's birthday, followed by a Wednesday morning at the church, moving the sound desk across the room with all the rewiring and stuff that entailed, followed immediately by having Tim staying for three-and-a-half days, involving some pretty late nights, and concluding with my own birthday do.  Which didn't leave much time for sitting down here to tell the world what I've been up to.

That's not to say I haven't made any progress on creative output.  I mentioned around the middle of last month that I'd written the pilot script for a new animated series, and I've now got four scripts in the can - the first three written on my own, and the fourth co-written with Tim last week.  The show is called Papercuts, and I'm planning to start dialogue recordings and animation tests in the near future.

That's a beginning, but I've also been getting close to a finish line: I'm nearly at the end of the storyline in my short Cylinder and Miserable spin-off series, which I'm hoping to complete soon and publish at the end of this month and/or the beginning of March.


- The Colclough