The broadband at Yateley Baptist hasn't been working very well for the last couple of months. It broke down, stayed down for a fortnight or so, got fixed, stayed working for two or three weeks, and then broke down again - and it's been down for about three weeks now. An engineer's coming on Tuesday.
Not very helpful when you've got sermon recordings to upload, or if you'd been planning to screen World Cup matches with free food as a getting-to-know-people-in-the-community exercise, and the screening was going to be done via the web.
However, I had an email last night which offers a timely dose of perspective:
I've recently been helping to prepare some booklets for printing, on behalf of YBC's missionary Ian, who makes radio programmes in French (mainly for broadcast into Francophone Africa) and writes up summaries of the teaching in booklet form. It's an interesting exercise when I barely speak a word of French, although I can sometimes trace a few words back through their Greek or Latin roots and get some idea of what a sentence might be saying. But the latest instalment gets even more interesting - it's not the French version (already published), but a translation into Lobiri. I think I might have heard the name once or twice before the book turned up, but I've got to admit I haven't even got round to Googling it to find out what part of Africa it comes from! The script uses some Latin characters, but also several others that don't appear in English and don't look much like Greek or Cyrillic, so I can't even guess at what's being said - I have to take it on trust that it's a straight translation of Ian's writing and doesn't contain any raving heresies.
I've been sent the translation in PDF format and it's proving difficult to transfer back into Word for processing, so I've asked if I could have a .doc version. Then the reply came back, and this is where I return to my original point: apparently my request should be possible - except it might take a while, because the guy who translated the book into Lobiri doesn't have electricity. The nearest town with electricity - never mind the Internet, just basic electricity - is at the other end of 25km's (or 15 miles') worth of dirt tracks.
Which makes my little gripe with BT Broadband seem a bit puny, doesn't it?
- The Colclough
Showing posts with label Writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Writing. Show all posts
Friday, 13 June 2014
Tuesday, 30 April 2013
End of a Pixellated Era
I actually did it. After the best part of 2 years' on-and-off work in the current phase, and nearly 7 years after starting the project overall, I finally wrote the 2126th episode of Cylinder and Miserable this afternoon, completing Series 3.
I have to admit, at this point, to a strange act of... well, unwarranted strangeness. I actually picked episode 2126 as the end-point for Series 3 several years ago - at the same time (I think) that I picked 1448 as the end-point for Series 2. Which was before I'd written very much of Series 2. And for no objective reason that I can put a finger on, I actually stuck with those two completely arbitrary numbers, ending Series 2 on Episode 1448 nearly three years ago, and Series 3 on Episode 2126 today. It must be getting on for half a decade that 'Episode 2126' has been lurking at the back of my mind as a semi-mythical future event - much like 'Star Wars: Episode I' must have been to many moviegoers up until about 1997, before The Phantom Menace got released - but now it's an actual, honest-to-goodness fact, sitting on my hard disk as a .gif file. The long-gestating third phase of my huge, unwieldy and frequently bizarre webcomic project is finally over.
It hasn't always been easy - the finished article bears a scar or two from the processes of its own creation, and I owe Tim a debt of thanks for getting me to let go of some elements which (without my realising it) were dragging the comic down - but on the whole I'm pleased with the outcome. It ended rather well, if I say so myself - I'll be interested to see whether you agree with me on that point, when the newly-minted episodes get published around this time next year.
I want, and need, a break. I've got a narrative masterplan for Series 4, but I won't start writing that for at least another year, simply because it's hard work writing such a big project, and I can't keep it up continuously. So don't go expecting news of work on Series 4 in a hurry. In fact, if I've got the maths right, I think I might end up finishing publishing Series 3 before I've had as long a break as I want or started writing Series 4, which would be the first time since writing Episode 0001 that I completely run out of unpublished strips. But we'll have to wait and see on that front.
In the meantime, if you're not doing so already, you can find Series 3 still publishing over at http://cylinderandmiserable.webs.com...
- The Colclough
I have to admit, at this point, to a strange act of... well, unwarranted strangeness. I actually picked episode 2126 as the end-point for Series 3 several years ago - at the same time (I think) that I picked 1448 as the end-point for Series 2. Which was before I'd written very much of Series 2. And for no objective reason that I can put a finger on, I actually stuck with those two completely arbitrary numbers, ending Series 2 on Episode 1448 nearly three years ago, and Series 3 on Episode 2126 today. It must be getting on for half a decade that 'Episode 2126' has been lurking at the back of my mind as a semi-mythical future event - much like 'Star Wars: Episode I' must have been to many moviegoers up until about 1997, before The Phantom Menace got released - but now it's an actual, honest-to-goodness fact, sitting on my hard disk as a .gif file. The long-gestating third phase of my huge, unwieldy and frequently bizarre webcomic project is finally over.
It hasn't always been easy - the finished article bears a scar or two from the processes of its own creation, and I owe Tim a debt of thanks for getting me to let go of some elements which (without my realising it) were dragging the comic down - but on the whole I'm pleased with the outcome. It ended rather well, if I say so myself - I'll be interested to see whether you agree with me on that point, when the newly-minted episodes get published around this time next year.
I want, and need, a break. I've got a narrative masterplan for Series 4, but I won't start writing that for at least another year, simply because it's hard work writing such a big project, and I can't keep it up continuously. So don't go expecting news of work on Series 4 in a hurry. In fact, if I've got the maths right, I think I might end up finishing publishing Series 3 before I've had as long a break as I want or started writing Series 4, which would be the first time since writing Episode 0001 that I completely run out of unpublished strips. But we'll have to wait and see on that front.
In the meantime, if you're not doing so already, you can find Series 3 still publishing over at http://cylinderandmiserable.webs.com...
- The Colclough
Monday, 20 February 2012
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
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
Wednesday, 28 September 2011
Stuff I Made: September 2011
Been a while since I did one of those several-different-paragraphs-on-unrelated-subjects blogs...
1) Arbitrary Stopframe: I mentioned the other week that I was working on an idea for Episode 11. Here it is.
2) Painting: did a little painting the other day, experimenting with paint surface effects and trying to make it look like running water, but I forgot to photograph it yet. Also did more to the kingfisher - new photo follows.
3) Root Hill on Camera 2011: pretty much finished editing the Concert reel (runtime circa 70 minutes). Might go back in and add some video filters on one little segment, but otherwise I think the Concert's all done and dusted.
4) Writing Megastropulodon: now nearly 2/3 of the way through the third draft for the opening episode. Haven't decided yet whether my next move will be the third draft for Episode 5, or starting work on a first draft for Episode 2.
- The Colclough
1) Arbitrary Stopframe: I mentioned the other week that I was working on an idea for Episode 11. Here it is.
2) Painting: did a little painting the other day, experimenting with paint surface effects and trying to make it look like running water, but I forgot to photograph it yet. Also did more to the kingfisher - new photo follows.
Untitled Kingfisher Painting - now with some paint on the kingfisher!
3) Root Hill on Camera 2011: pretty much finished editing the Concert reel (runtime circa 70 minutes). Might go back in and add some video filters on one little segment, but otherwise I think the Concert's all done and dusted.
4) Writing Megastropulodon: now nearly 2/3 of the way through the third draft for the opening episode. Haven't decided yet whether my next move will be the third draft for Episode 5, or starting work on a first draft for Episode 2.
- The Colclough
Monday, 11 July 2011
On the Tip of My Brain
Do you ever get that feeling like you've had a brilliant idea, and it's sitting on the tip of your brain waiting to be thought, but you can't quite get it to take shape and come out in words? Do many people get that? Is it a normal feeling, or is it just me being weird?
Well, in this case it's a whole fictional world that won't co-operate. I mentioned Frozen Bones in passing way back in this post from December, and stated that it had spent quite a while in 'development hell' - film-and-television terminology for the state where you're trying to get a project together, and it isn't working. As often as not this has more to do with a lack of money than a lack of script, but in the case of Frozen Bones it's the script. I've got a load of characters and things, and it feels like they should all fit together to create a strange but entertaining whole, but it's proving perversely difficult to write a story around it.
I'm currently on the second attempt. A couple of months ago I thought I'd got it, and I wrote three episodes, which introduced all of the characters and were intended as the jumping-off point for a longer series. Then I showed them to Tim, and he said it didn't work. And then I re-read them, and I realised that he was right: the first two-and-a-half scripts read like a bunch of introductions, and not much else. There was precious little time spared for either story or humour, which completely defeated the object of the series. There was the odd moment, especially towards the end of Episode 3, but nowhere near enough.
So I threw the whole lot out, re-tooled several of the characters, and started again, and after much brain-racking, I've got several promising snippets for a new Episode 1, but the overall story remains infuriatingly elusive. Grr.
- The Colclough
Well, in this case it's a whole fictional world that won't co-operate. I mentioned Frozen Bones in passing way back in this post from December, and stated that it had spent quite a while in 'development hell' - film-and-television terminology for the state where you're trying to get a project together, and it isn't working. As often as not this has more to do with a lack of money than a lack of script, but in the case of Frozen Bones it's the script. I've got a load of characters and things, and it feels like they should all fit together to create a strange but entertaining whole, but it's proving perversely difficult to write a story around it.
I'm currently on the second attempt. A couple of months ago I thought I'd got it, and I wrote three episodes, which introduced all of the characters and were intended as the jumping-off point for a longer series. Then I showed them to Tim, and he said it didn't work. And then I re-read them, and I realised that he was right: the first two-and-a-half scripts read like a bunch of introductions, and not much else. There was precious little time spared for either story or humour, which completely defeated the object of the series. There was the odd moment, especially towards the end of Episode 3, but nowhere near enough.
So I threw the whole lot out, re-tooled several of the characters, and started again, and after much brain-racking, I've got several promising snippets for a new Episode 1, but the overall story remains infuriatingly elusive. Grr.
- The Colclough
Thursday, 16 June 2011
Two Bits of Wood
You may or may not be aware that I have, once again, left the old lair (maybe you noticed that Cylinder and Miserable has taken yet another one-and-a-half-week break from posting, or maybe you didn't). Well, this time I'm doing something a bit different for a few days, namely helping my Grandad fit a new kitchen.
A reductionist description of today's achievements: we've cut two bits of wood to size.
That's not exactly a fair summary though, as it fails to mention that the bits of wood in question are the main sections of worktop, and they've had to be fitted with millimetre precision into a room which doesn't even have properly square walls. And there's a nice complicated joint where the two bits fit together. And they weigh a ton or two each (figurative tons, admittedly). And there was a whole sink in the way, which needed to be removed before we could make any further progress, and which has now become a lawn decoration. And the router pretended to break down, which raised some doubts as to whether we'd be able to make that nice complicated joint at all.
I think every single measurement must have been double-checked, triple-checked, quadruple-checked, re-checked, cross-checked, counter-checked and generally checked-to-within-an-inch-of-its life. Or rather, to within half a millimetre of its life. But it all paid off, as the joint is about as tight as it could possibly have been without the use of computer-guided laser cutting tools.
No, I admit it, I didn't deploy a computer-guided laser cutting tool. In fact, as much as this fact may shock you all: I don't even own one. I should of course point out that this sad fact is a result of financial and logistical constraints, rather than choice on my part. I'd quite happily have a big shiny computer-controlled laser cutting tool if you wanted to give me one. Don't know what I'd cut with it now that the worktop has been chopped, but never mind that.
I digress.
You should have seen the amount of sawdust we generated (well, Grandad did the sawdust-generating, mostly, but I share the guilt by implication). I can now inform you, from experience, that making a 3655mm-long cut with a 12mm router bit is a bad idea, unless you've got a pre-planned use for an Atlantic-sized ocean of powdered chipboard.
I've also attempted, and largely failed, to fix Grandad's old PC. We formatted C and did a clean install of Windows ME (yes, yes, I know - that's just the installer disc we had available). It's now locked itself into 16-colour VGA mode, and I can't find anything that'll let me change it to a proper colour palette or a decent resolution. Very weird. Never seen a computer do that before. What's really odd is that I've tried a Ubuntu live CD on it, and that runs 24-bit colour depth perfectly well. It's just Windows ME being strange and difficult. Then again, maybe Open Source kicking Millennium Edition's sorry behind isn't really that odd after all...
In other news, I've finished the second draft of Megastropulodon Episode 6, and started the next phase: unsurprisingly, *drumroll* third drafts, beginning once again at the beginning with Episode 1. I've decided to try doing this round on paper rather than just being glued to the word processor all the time, and that's involved printing out the 29-page document. It feels much more of an achievement when you see it take the form of a huge wad of paper, compared to when it was just so many kilobytes of digital data. Now I need to convert it from a neatly-printed wad of paper to a profusely-scribbled-on wad of paper, and tighten up the narrative yet again. Oh joy.
I think that's all for now. I might blog again if the DIY gets too slow and boring.
- The Colclough
A reductionist description of today's achievements: we've cut two bits of wood to size.
That's not exactly a fair summary though, as it fails to mention that the bits of wood in question are the main sections of worktop, and they've had to be fitted with millimetre precision into a room which doesn't even have properly square walls. And there's a nice complicated joint where the two bits fit together. And they weigh a ton or two each (figurative tons, admittedly). And there was a whole sink in the way, which needed to be removed before we could make any further progress, and which has now become a lawn decoration. And the router pretended to break down, which raised some doubts as to whether we'd be able to make that nice complicated joint at all.
I think every single measurement must have been double-checked, triple-checked, quadruple-checked, re-checked, cross-checked, counter-checked and generally checked-to-within-an-inch-of-its life. Or rather, to within half a millimetre of its life. But it all paid off, as the joint is about as tight as it could possibly have been without the use of computer-guided laser cutting tools.
No, I admit it, I didn't deploy a computer-guided laser cutting tool. In fact, as much as this fact may shock you all: I don't even own one. I should of course point out that this sad fact is a result of financial and logistical constraints, rather than choice on my part. I'd quite happily have a big shiny computer-controlled laser cutting tool if you wanted to give me one. Don't know what I'd cut with it now that the worktop has been chopped, but never mind that.
I digress.
You should have seen the amount of sawdust we generated (well, Grandad did the sawdust-generating, mostly, but I share the guilt by implication). I can now inform you, from experience, that making a 3655mm-long cut with a 12mm router bit is a bad idea, unless you've got a pre-planned use for an Atlantic-sized ocean of powdered chipboard.
I've also attempted, and largely failed, to fix Grandad's old PC. We formatted C and did a clean install of Windows ME (yes, yes, I know - that's just the installer disc we had available). It's now locked itself into 16-colour VGA mode, and I can't find anything that'll let me change it to a proper colour palette or a decent resolution. Very weird. Never seen a computer do that before. What's really odd is that I've tried a Ubuntu live CD on it, and that runs 24-bit colour depth perfectly well. It's just Windows ME being strange and difficult. Then again, maybe Open Source kicking Millennium Edition's sorry behind isn't really that odd after all...
In other news, I've finished the second draft of Megastropulodon Episode 6, and started the next phase: unsurprisingly, *drumroll* third drafts, beginning once again at the beginning with Episode 1. I've decided to try doing this round on paper rather than just being glued to the word processor all the time, and that's involved printing out the 29-page document. It feels much more of an achievement when you see it take the form of a huge wad of paper, compared to when it was just so many kilobytes of digital data. Now I need to convert it from a neatly-printed wad of paper to a profusely-scribbled-on wad of paper, and tighten up the narrative yet again. Oh joy.
I think that's all for now. I might blog again if the DIY gets too slow and boring.
- The Colclough
Wednesday, 8 June 2011
Mixed Stuff
Yay for anthology blogs! At least this time I've got a keyword that conveniently helps describe all of my points...
Mixed Reactions: Tim told me yesterday that he has written the last-ever episode of Sidewards - again. This time, I'm told, it really is the end, and there are only a few weeks left before the final instalment of the strange but hugely enjoyable sandwich-assassin-fuelled weirdness is published online. I'm really looking forward to finding out how the plot resolves, but there'll be a little sandwich-shaped hole in my internet life for months afterwards.
Mixed Media: speaking of webcomics, yesterday I finished illustrating Fort Paradox episodes 67 to 70, using a technically complex art style that gives a parchmenty look (appropriate, considering the subject matter - you'll see what I mean when I publish the strips in a few weeks' time), which involved hybridising pencil sketches, an ink drawing, a failed attempt to incorporate oil pastels, and quite a lot of digital manipulation and arty-farty typography.
As a random side note, the new episodes are the longest consecutive run of FP strips to use the Candara font - the previous record being three, for strips 26 to 28.
Mixed Shades of Green: remember that pencil-on-canvas sketch of a kingfisher in action, which I mentioned a couple of posts back? I said in my last post that I'd painted the sky in, and this morning I've done a second, rather more involved round of painting, this time focussing on the vegetation. It took five different tubes of paint (only one of which was green) and five different brushes to create what could be described, in a reductionist analysis, as a big blob of green. But I'm quite pleased with my big blob of green, so I've decided it's time to take another photo and show you my progress:
Mixed Quality: I saw the Doctor Who 'mid-series finale' A Good Man Goes to War the other day, and I feel compelled to comment on it. I'm amazed that a certain sheep-liking ginger person hasn't blogged on this topic yet, what with her well-documented obsession with all things Whovian, but that's beside the point.
The point is that for me, AGMGTW was a very mixed bag, brilliant and depressing in equal measure. It had some excellent lines (I found Rory's final remark before the title sequence particularly funny), and lots of lovely VFX stuff, and so on and so forth, and in several places it showcased the usual Steve Moffat cleverness. And that Sontaran was hilarious. But there were problems, on a scale I haven't seen before in a Moffat-scripted episode. Spoilers follow, so if you haven't seen it yet, you might want to skip the rest of this post - if you're going, then take a biscuit, and I'll see you next time. Otherwise, you're in for some ranting and railing.
Moffat, like Davies before him, seems to have something against the Church. Yes, I know, that's common enough, but it does get depressing when one's favourite science-fantasy telly show feels it has to join in the bashing. Granted, Moffat's bizarre depiction of the 51st-century 'Church', as a pseudo-faith-based interplanetary military organisation, seems to be stabbing mainly at Roman Catholicism (what with a reference to 'the Papal Mainframe') and high-church Anglicanism rather than the smaller, more down-to-earth Baptist congregations like the one I belong to, but it still irks a bit.
Some of the supporting characters were frankly unnecessary. Lorna came across (IMO, anyway) as an insipid example of the 'person who is in awe of the Doctor and desperate to meet him' archetype, and I really couldn't work out for the life of me why 'Thin One' and 'Fat One' had been included at all. I don't think they added anything interesting to the plot whatsoever, and they should have been cut from the script before the episode got anywhere near the filming stage. I've written some screenplays, and I know a thing or two about writing out unnecessary side characters, and I'm sure AGMGTW would have been better off without those two.
So, that's the thematic and narrative problems whinged about. And finally: anatomy. Yes, you read that right. The thing is, I'm a great stickler for basic anatomical plausibility in fictional creatures. I can accept the hypothetical existence of a faun, a unicorn (provided you assume the horn doesn't grow until after birth, so the baby doesn't rip the mother apart from the inside), a dragon, and many other things, but there are some fantasy critters out there whose anatomy just doesn't make any sense. As I explained in this post back here, I dislike centaurs on the grounds of their badly-thought-out physiology. You try to figure out the skeletal structure or the position of the major organs, and you'll quickly find out that they just don't fit! Which is where the Headless Monks go wrong as well. The phrase 'Headless Monks' does sound rather funky, but the literally-headless chaps in AGMGTW have a few fundamental anatomical glitches. You've got to wonder: how do they eat, drink, taste, breathe, smell, hear or see? Most known higher life-forms do all those things with their heads, and if the Monks don't have a head then they could face some serious difficulties. Well, not 'face' the difficulties as such, since the face is part of the head and they therefore don't have one, but you know what I meant. My suspension of disbelief can stretch to cover the Weeping Angels, the Vashta Nerada, the Star Whale, the Pandorica, Sardick's sky machine, the Silence, and many other things, but people who stay alive without heads? Sorry, Steve, you've lost me.
Here's hoping the monsters in the next few episodes make a bit more sense.
And, for those who are still reading: sorry about the whinyness.
Have a biscuit.
- The Colclough
Mixed Reactions: Tim told me yesterday that he has written the last-ever episode of Sidewards - again. This time, I'm told, it really is the end, and there are only a few weeks left before the final instalment of the strange but hugely enjoyable sandwich-assassin-fuelled weirdness is published online. I'm really looking forward to finding out how the plot resolves, but there'll be a little sandwich-shaped hole in my internet life for months afterwards.
Mixed Media: speaking of webcomics, yesterday I finished illustrating Fort Paradox episodes 67 to 70, using a technically complex art style that gives a parchmenty look (appropriate, considering the subject matter - you'll see what I mean when I publish the strips in a few weeks' time), which involved hybridising pencil sketches, an ink drawing, a failed attempt to incorporate oil pastels, and quite a lot of digital manipulation and arty-farty typography.
As a random side note, the new episodes are the longest consecutive run of FP strips to use the Candara font - the previous record being three, for strips 26 to 28.
Mixed Shades of Green: remember that pencil-on-canvas sketch of a kingfisher in action, which I mentioned a couple of posts back? I said in my last post that I'd painted the sky in, and this morning I've done a second, rather more involved round of painting, this time focussing on the vegetation. It took five different tubes of paint (only one of which was green) and five different brushes to create what could be described, in a reductionist analysis, as a big blob of green. But I'm quite pleased with my big blob of green, so I've decided it's time to take another photo and show you my progress:
Untitled Kingfisher Painting (still a work in progress... but this time with more progress!)
Mixed Quality: I saw the Doctor Who 'mid-series finale' A Good Man Goes to War the other day, and I feel compelled to comment on it. I'm amazed that a certain sheep-liking ginger person hasn't blogged on this topic yet, what with her well-documented obsession with all things Whovian, but that's beside the point.
The point is that for me, AGMGTW was a very mixed bag, brilliant and depressing in equal measure. It had some excellent lines (I found Rory's final remark before the title sequence particularly funny), and lots of lovely VFX stuff, and so on and so forth, and in several places it showcased the usual Steve Moffat cleverness. And that Sontaran was hilarious. But there were problems, on a scale I haven't seen before in a Moffat-scripted episode. Spoilers follow, so if you haven't seen it yet, you might want to skip the rest of this post - if you're going, then take a biscuit, and I'll see you next time. Otherwise, you're in for some ranting and railing.
Moffat, like Davies before him, seems to have something against the Church. Yes, I know, that's common enough, but it does get depressing when one's favourite science-fantasy telly show feels it has to join in the bashing. Granted, Moffat's bizarre depiction of the 51st-century 'Church', as a pseudo-faith-based interplanetary military organisation, seems to be stabbing mainly at Roman Catholicism (what with a reference to 'the Papal Mainframe') and high-church Anglicanism rather than the smaller, more down-to-earth Baptist congregations like the one I belong to, but it still irks a bit.
Some of the supporting characters were frankly unnecessary. Lorna came across (IMO, anyway) as an insipid example of the 'person who is in awe of the Doctor and desperate to meet him' archetype, and I really couldn't work out for the life of me why 'Thin One' and 'Fat One' had been included at all. I don't think they added anything interesting to the plot whatsoever, and they should have been cut from the script before the episode got anywhere near the filming stage. I've written some screenplays, and I know a thing or two about writing out unnecessary side characters, and I'm sure AGMGTW would have been better off without those two.
So, that's the thematic and narrative problems whinged about. And finally: anatomy. Yes, you read that right. The thing is, I'm a great stickler for basic anatomical plausibility in fictional creatures. I can accept the hypothetical existence of a faun, a unicorn (provided you assume the horn doesn't grow until after birth, so the baby doesn't rip the mother apart from the inside), a dragon, and many other things, but there are some fantasy critters out there whose anatomy just doesn't make any sense. As I explained in this post back here, I dislike centaurs on the grounds of their badly-thought-out physiology. You try to figure out the skeletal structure or the position of the major organs, and you'll quickly find out that they just don't fit! Which is where the Headless Monks go wrong as well. The phrase 'Headless Monks' does sound rather funky, but the literally-headless chaps in AGMGTW have a few fundamental anatomical glitches. You've got to wonder: how do they eat, drink, taste, breathe, smell, hear or see? Most known higher life-forms do all those things with their heads, and if the Monks don't have a head then they could face some serious difficulties. Well, not 'face' the difficulties as such, since the face is part of the head and they therefore don't have one, but you know what I meant. My suspension of disbelief can stretch to cover the Weeping Angels, the Vashta Nerada, the Star Whale, the Pandorica, Sardick's sky machine, the Silence, and many other things, but people who stay alive without heads? Sorry, Steve, you've lost me.
Here's hoping the monsters in the next few episodes make a bit more sense.
And, for those who are still reading: sorry about the whinyness.
Have a biscuit.
- The Colclough
Wednesday, 26 January 2011
Building Worlds
I've just been re-reading some of the posts from my old Tailcast blog (no longer online; I've got them backed up in a Word document), in particular a three-part ramble about fictional worlds of my own making, which I posted in mid-2009.
The basic gist of the thing was about how I've moved, and am still moving, through a series of different fictional worlds, and generally heading along an upward spiral in terms of their self-integrity and publishability. There was commentary on some of my earliest and least coherent efforts, and on the relative merits of the Geometriverse, and it all wrapped up with some vague remarks about hopefully going on to build new and better worlds which might actually be fit for release on, say, TV.
It made quite interesting re-reading, and it's inspired me to have another ramble on the topic, covering the developments of the last year or two.
The Geometriverse, for starters, is still going strong. It's been half a year since I last wrote any Cylinder and Miserable strips, and it'll be a few months yet before I restart, but it's a deliberate and controlled hiatus, and I'm still hoping to start work on Series 3 sometime, maybe as early as this year. While the webcomic is mostly an exercise in arcane humour, the narrative glue holding the plot arcs together is getting stronger and stronger with each new series - my plans for Series 3 are already shaping up to be the project's most tightly-written run yet.
But that's an extension of a world which I already knew about when I penned my earlier treatise. What's more talkable-about is the fact that, as predicted back in mid-2009, I've got new fictions in development, and they look likely to become my best yet.
Megastropulodon, for example. The existing short film, conceived in the first months of 2010, is just a precursor to the bigger narrative, a tiny little sample of the monster-fuelled weirdness of my planned TV series. The basic plan is that the story in the 15-minute film will be stretched out to become the overall narrative framework for a 6 x 30 minute series, with numerous other subplots and side stories being built into it. I've recently gone back to work on writing the series scripts, and I've now finished the first drafts for Episodes 1, 5 and 6, so I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel in terms of getting the bones of the story out on paper for the first 'block' of episodes. Sure, there'll be a load of rewrites to do before the stories are ready for the cameras, but the important first step has been taken.
Now you might ask "Why have you written Episodes 1, 5 and 6 first? What happened to Episodes 2, 3 and 4?"
And that leads me on to what I think is one of the most interesting developments in my fictional-world-building of late: the strange and fascinating process of co-creation.
I've left the middle three episodes of Megastropulodon unwritten for now, for one thing because I've got a clearer idea of what should be happening in the three framing episodes (due in part to their re-use of scenes and plot threads from the short film), but also because I'd like to keep some room open for other writers. Yes, the show is my brainchild, but in the world of television there are relatively few series creators who then go on to write every single episode on their lonesome. Gerry & Sylvia Anderson wrote only the pilot episode of Thunderbirds, leaving others to scribe the next 31 instalments. Doctor Who has had seven different writers per season for the last few years (I counted, I'm a geek). Thus far, I've got someone pencilled in for Megastropulodon Episode 4, but the other two episodes are at a bit of a loose end - but it's early days, so I'm not too worried about the gap at the moment.
What it comes down to is that two heads are often better than one. I don't need to explain the principle, do I. Suffice to say that it holds true for TV writing, and sometimes for comic strips as well. They're probably right when they say that "too many cooks spoil the broth", but with TV writing you can assign each writer their own episode(s) to work on, and then each cook contributes their own semi-independant broth to a big, exciting multi-soup smorgasbord. I'm not sure if that mixing of metaphors (or mixing of broths) made any sense to you, but I think it more or less says what I wanted it to say.
Looking back over my previous fiction-making career, I seem to have come full circle, from worlds shared with Cat back in the long-gone days when we used to play with snail shells and cuddly toys, via a period of more solipsistic work (e.g. the aforementioned Geometriverse), and now back to co-developed universes, albeit in a slightly more sophisticated form e.g. Megastropulodon, and the oft-harped-on-about Fort Paradox.
Speaking, or harping, of which: sorry to have to mention my pet subject again, but it happens to be the prime example of what I'm on about here.
The project was my idea in the first place. As in, I was the one who first said to Tim and Sarah, "why don't we get a load of our characters together and write a big, confusing cross-continuity comic?", and I was the one who came up with the name. But I never wanted it to be a solo thing. Right from the outset, I wanted it to have not just a plurality of characters representing different species from unrelated universes, but also a plurality of writers and viewpoints, illustrators and art styles. And that's what we've got. There are some places where we can't even remember which bit was whose idea, because we've built so many layers on top of each other's initial concepts. Three brains have definitely made a better broth than one. And even now, it isn't intended as a closed-membership club. So far it's remained an exclusive circle in practice, but that's simply because nobody else has expressed any interest in joining in, not because we're intentionally keeping it that way. I intend to address the issue in a bit more detail on the Fort Paradox blog next week, next time it's my turn to post an episode and do the Weekly FAQ feature.
So... I think I've said my piece. I shall leave you to chew over its implications. Or to ignore it and get a cup of tea instead, if that's what takes your fancy.
- The Colclough
The basic gist of the thing was about how I've moved, and am still moving, through a series of different fictional worlds, and generally heading along an upward spiral in terms of their self-integrity and publishability. There was commentary on some of my earliest and least coherent efforts, and on the relative merits of the Geometriverse, and it all wrapped up with some vague remarks about hopefully going on to build new and better worlds which might actually be fit for release on, say, TV.
It made quite interesting re-reading, and it's inspired me to have another ramble on the topic, covering the developments of the last year or two.
The Geometriverse, for starters, is still going strong. It's been half a year since I last wrote any Cylinder and Miserable strips, and it'll be a few months yet before I restart, but it's a deliberate and controlled hiatus, and I'm still hoping to start work on Series 3 sometime, maybe as early as this year. While the webcomic is mostly an exercise in arcane humour, the narrative glue holding the plot arcs together is getting stronger and stronger with each new series - my plans for Series 3 are already shaping up to be the project's most tightly-written run yet.
But that's an extension of a world which I already knew about when I penned my earlier treatise. What's more talkable-about is the fact that, as predicted back in mid-2009, I've got new fictions in development, and they look likely to become my best yet.
Megastropulodon, for example. The existing short film, conceived in the first months of 2010, is just a precursor to the bigger narrative, a tiny little sample of the monster-fuelled weirdness of my planned TV series. The basic plan is that the story in the 15-minute film will be stretched out to become the overall narrative framework for a 6 x 30 minute series, with numerous other subplots and side stories being built into it. I've recently gone back to work on writing the series scripts, and I've now finished the first drafts for Episodes 1, 5 and 6, so I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel in terms of getting the bones of the story out on paper for the first 'block' of episodes. Sure, there'll be a load of rewrites to do before the stories are ready for the cameras, but the important first step has been taken.
Now you might ask "Why have you written Episodes 1, 5 and 6 first? What happened to Episodes 2, 3 and 4?"
And that leads me on to what I think is one of the most interesting developments in my fictional-world-building of late: the strange and fascinating process of co-creation.
I've left the middle three episodes of Megastropulodon unwritten for now, for one thing because I've got a clearer idea of what should be happening in the three framing episodes (due in part to their re-use of scenes and plot threads from the short film), but also because I'd like to keep some room open for other writers. Yes, the show is my brainchild, but in the world of television there are relatively few series creators who then go on to write every single episode on their lonesome. Gerry & Sylvia Anderson wrote only the pilot episode of Thunderbirds, leaving others to scribe the next 31 instalments. Doctor Who has had seven different writers per season for the last few years (I counted, I'm a geek). Thus far, I've got someone pencilled in for Megastropulodon Episode 4, but the other two episodes are at a bit of a loose end - but it's early days, so I'm not too worried about the gap at the moment.
What it comes down to is that two heads are often better than one. I don't need to explain the principle, do I. Suffice to say that it holds true for TV writing, and sometimes for comic strips as well. They're probably right when they say that "too many cooks spoil the broth", but with TV writing you can assign each writer their own episode(s) to work on, and then each cook contributes their own semi-independant broth to a big, exciting multi-soup smorgasbord. I'm not sure if that mixing of metaphors (or mixing of broths) made any sense to you, but I think it more or less says what I wanted it to say.
Looking back over my previous fiction-making career, I seem to have come full circle, from worlds shared with Cat back in the long-gone days when we used to play with snail shells and cuddly toys, via a period of more solipsistic work (e.g. the aforementioned Geometriverse), and now back to co-developed universes, albeit in a slightly more sophisticated form e.g. Megastropulodon, and the oft-harped-on-about Fort Paradox.
Speaking, or harping, of which: sorry to have to mention my pet subject again, but it happens to be the prime example of what I'm on about here.
The project was my idea in the first place. As in, I was the one who first said to Tim and Sarah, "why don't we get a load of our characters together and write a big, confusing cross-continuity comic?", and I was the one who came up with the name. But I never wanted it to be a solo thing. Right from the outset, I wanted it to have not just a plurality of characters representing different species from unrelated universes, but also a plurality of writers and viewpoints, illustrators and art styles. And that's what we've got. There are some places where we can't even remember which bit was whose idea, because we've built so many layers on top of each other's initial concepts. Three brains have definitely made a better broth than one. And even now, it isn't intended as a closed-membership club. So far it's remained an exclusive circle in practice, but that's simply because nobody else has expressed any interest in joining in, not because we're intentionally keeping it that way. I intend to address the issue in a bit more detail on the Fort Paradox blog next week, next time it's my turn to post an episode and do the Weekly FAQ feature.
So... I think I've said my piece. I shall leave you to chew over its implications. Or to ignore it and get a cup of tea instead, if that's what takes your fancy.
- The Colclough
Thursday, 13 January 2011
Free Sample Time!
You know those little nanoscopic jars or packets of food or cosmetic products you get handed gratis sometimes, in an effort by the manufacturers to get you hooked and make you spend loads of money buying their stuff?
This is a little bit like that, except that I don't have any financial incentive whatsoever, and this particular free sample might addle your brains a bit: I've decided to share with you the newly-penned 12th chapter of a rather odd short story which I've been writing on and off since mid-November (provisionally entitled A Salesman Beneath), just because I feel like it.
I have no idea how much sense this might make to you reading it in isolation, and I'm equally unsure how much sense it might make even in the context of the previous 11 chapters, but here goes anyway...
*****
A few minutes later, Pone found himself being handed one end of a long length of flexible piping, whose other end was attached to the top of the stove. Meebrick and Nodroz each had one too.
“What’s this for?” he asked.
“To breathe,” said Nodroz, sounding terribly matter-of-fact.
“What, the stove’s exhaust fumes? Aren’t they usually poisonous?”
“It’s a connective stove,” Nodroz said, with a withering stare as if it should have been plain and obvious.
“Oh, I see: so they’re connective exhaust fumes!” Pone drawled. “But of course. That makes me feel so much better about gassing myself to death, if I can do it connectively.”
“Was that sarcasm?” asked Meebrick.
“Take an educated guess,” snapped Pone.
Nodroz gave them both an even witheringer glare, and stuck the end of his own pipe in his mouth. There followed several minutes of pointedly heavy breathing, as the old man sucked the stove fumes deep inside his system, clearly eager to demonstrate that it would have no ill effects. After the first few breaths, Meebrick chowed down on his pipe, and started tentatively puffing. Neither of them shrivelled up or went purple or turned into a guinea pig, so eventually Pone decided to risk it.
The result was terribly disappointing: the fumes smelled and tasted of absolutely nothing whatsoever. In fact, the gases coming off the stove were cool and fresh and impossibly clear, like what you would expect to be breathing on the top of a huge mountain in the middle of a vast unspoilt wilderness. Pone gave himself another headache on top of the one he already had, trying to work out how it was possible for exhaust fumes to smell so un-exhaust-like. But it didn’t last long, due to the healthful influence of the fumes.
“Are you yet satisfied with your breathing?” asked Nodroz.
Pone nodded very reluctantly, and clung to the railing for dear life as his host turned back to face the wall of bold red jelly overlapping the prow of the boat.
“Come then,” Nodroz mumbled through a mouthful of breathing tube, “Let us go henceforth into the core of Wobble!” He raised his arms in a dramatic gesture, and as if in response the inert front-left engine glimmered back into life. Then he intoned a loud and forceful “HUMNNN!” and flung his arms forwards to signal the intended direction of movement – and the Contradictorium slowly but surely started to push its way deeper into the gelatinous micro-planet.
“By the way,” Pone queried, “why does this asteroid or planet or whatever it is have such a dumb-sounding name?”
“It’s made of jelly, and jelly wobbles,” remarked Nodroz with his usual, irksome serenity, “so they called it ‘Wobble’.”
Pone groaned inwardly beneath the burdensome weight of this new knowledge.
“Bish ishho exhitig!” Meebrick giggled through his breathing tube. And as if that wasn’t undignified enough, he clapped his hands like a little child.
A moment later, Pone found the jelly approaching just inches from his nose.
“What is it with me and jelly lately?” Pone wondered. His hair was still full of blobs of goo from his recent encounter with the invertebrate shoal. But the blobs were soon lost to sight as they amalgamated into the greater mass of the micro-planet Wobble.
The stuff was more yielding than he might have expected, and once it had got itself on the move the Contradictorium seemed to have little trouble forging a path through it. The jelly flowed back into place behind the boat, leaving only a negligible wake of tiny bubbles to show where they had been. Pone became profoundly grateful for the stove hose.
The journey into Wobble seemed to go on for quite a long time, and there weren’t any landmarks on the inside. Pone started to despair of ever escaping. He attempted to distract his suffering brain with thoughts of financial outlays, profit margins, sales commissions and tax bands, and when that failed he turned his thoughts to his paternal aunt and her frankly terrifying collection of tea-cosies. She had thousands upon thousands of them, and was always after more. The surest way of making her happy was to give her another one, and the next surest was to give her a teapot to put inside one so she could display it properly.
Many centuries passed, and what with the lack of landmarks and the impossibly clear air he was breathing, Pone started to feel that he was drifting outside of the space-time continuum altogether. He started to doubt the existence of the outside world, and to wonder if maybe this surreal jelly was all there was, and all there ever had been.
Those centuries were actually two and three-quarter hours.
And then he was rudely pulled back to reality by the sound of Meebrick squealing a few feet away, muffled a bit (but nowhere near enough, Pone thought) by the surrounding semi-solid dessert.
“What’s wrong with the blighter now?” Pone asked himself.
He turned to look, and saw that Meebrick was pointing and staring straight ahead.
Ahead of the ship, deep inside the jelly, he could faintly see the outlines of some sort of transparent structure. There were rooms, and doorways, and what looked like stairs – and he even thought he could glimpse a pot plant or two.
Minutes later, the boat glooped its way out of the wall of a large room inside the jelly, and drifted to a stop in the middle of the floor.
The space was filled with all sorts of scientific equipment – microscopes, telescopes, orreries, burners, test tubes and flasks, rulers and tape measures and callipers, vices and tweezers, and books upon books upon books. It was hard to tell whether everything in the room really was made of copper and bronze, or if it just looked that way because of the red jelly which comprised the walls, floor and ceiling surrounding them. And Pone had been right – in another room at the top of a short, broad staircase, he could see a real, live pot plant. He wondered (with good reason) whether it had a funny name and whether it was going to be rude to him.
And in the middle of it all, not looking remotely pleased about having visitors, stood a very small girl in a long pink dressing gown, with a glowing magenta ponytail and a ferocious scowl. And a monocle, which didn’t really go with the rest of her look.
Meebrick gave an enthusiastic greeting, but sadly forgot to remove the breathing pipe from his mouth first, so it didn’t come out very well. He was glared at like something the cat dragged in. But being Meebrick the misnomer, he wasn’t much bothered by this and just kept on grinning and waving.
“GRANDMOTHER!” bellowed the little girl.
“I am so sorry to intrude,” began Nodroz the Third, “but might I take this opportunity to introduce…”
“GRANDMOTHER! I need you in here RIGHT NOW!”
There was one of those difficult silences.
And then a couple of minutes later, a tiny, hunched old lady oozed out of the ceiling and dropped onto the gelatinous floor just in front of the Contradictorium.
“How many times must I tell you, Grandmother – USE THE STAIRS!” shrieked the little girl.
“Sorry, dearie,” croaked Grandmother. “I did remember, but I’d already sunk my legs into the floor and it was too late.” She looked around, and realised how close she had been to impaling herself on the prow of the visiting boat. “Ooh, my word!” she chirped. “We’ve got some company!”
Meebrick grinned and waved again, and Grandmother waved back.
“I’ll go and put the kettle on,” she said.
“Thank you, Grandmother,” said the little girl.
Grandmother recovered her cane from where it had stuck in the jelly floor next to her, and wobbled off towards the kitchen.
The little girl glared at the intruders again.
“So who are you, and what are you doing in my laboratory?”
“I am Nodroz the Third,” began Nodroz the Third. Pone rolled his eyes again – he was getting tired of hearing him introduce himself. Nodroz pointed to the plant pot up front, “this is my faithful vegetable companion Yaseez, this…” he pointed at Pone, but then Pone decided to interrupt.
“My name is Pone Crustley,” announced Pone Crustley, “and if anyone tells you I’m called Woshling…” he paused for a second to give Nodroz a warning with one eyebrow, “… they’re telling you lies.”
“You look more like a Woshling to me,” announced the little girl. Pone slumped back against the stove and lost interest in the conversation, while she pointed at Meebrick and demanded to know who he was, and got the usual “it’s a real delight to see you!” greeting (thank goodness he’d taken his breathing tube out now).
“We are seeking to decipher the secrets of Wobble,” intoned Nodroz. “Humnnn.”
“Don’t you swear at me!” snapped the little girl.
“Basically,” chirruped Meebrick, “we don’t have a clue what we’re looking for, if anything, and we’re going for a road trip inside this jelly asteroid thing just for the fun of it. And then we spotted your place – can I just say, I absolutely love what you’ve done with the decor – so we thought we’d drop in and say hi!”
“I see… very well, then. Fortunately you haven’t collided with any of my extremely important scientific equipment. I am Professor-Emeritus Poppy Darlingsby,” announced the small girl. She adjusted her monocle and squinted at Meebrick. He gave a good-natured squint back.
“Um… what are you researching?” Pone asked, as he felt her gaze move over to him.
“Never mind that yet,” said the Professor.
Another very long silence.
This time, it was broken by the sound of shuffling feet and clinking chinaware.
“Here’s the tea!” chimed Grandmother from somewhere nearby.
“Excellent,” said the Professor. She started heading for the short staircase. “If you would all please follow me to the living room?”
*****
I don't plan on posting the whole story on my blog, but if you want to read more then I'm sure I could arrange to send you the back issues and keep you up to date with new chapters as and when they get written =]
(Random aside: for those who read Fort Paradox, we're still waiting for some questions for the new Weekly FAQ feature! Come on, ask questions, darn it!)
- The Colclough
This is a little bit like that, except that I don't have any financial incentive whatsoever, and this particular free sample might addle your brains a bit: I've decided to share with you the newly-penned 12th chapter of a rather odd short story which I've been writing on and off since mid-November (provisionally entitled A Salesman Beneath), just because I feel like it.
I have no idea how much sense this might make to you reading it in isolation, and I'm equally unsure how much sense it might make even in the context of the previous 11 chapters, but here goes anyway...
*****
A few minutes later, Pone found himself being handed one end of a long length of flexible piping, whose other end was attached to the top of the stove. Meebrick and Nodroz each had one too.
“What’s this for?” he asked.
“To breathe,” said Nodroz, sounding terribly matter-of-fact.
“What, the stove’s exhaust fumes? Aren’t they usually poisonous?”
“It’s a connective stove,” Nodroz said, with a withering stare as if it should have been plain and obvious.
“Oh, I see: so they’re connective exhaust fumes!” Pone drawled. “But of course. That makes me feel so much better about gassing myself to death, if I can do it connectively.”
“Was that sarcasm?” asked Meebrick.
“Take an educated guess,” snapped Pone.
Nodroz gave them both an even witheringer glare, and stuck the end of his own pipe in his mouth. There followed several minutes of pointedly heavy breathing, as the old man sucked the stove fumes deep inside his system, clearly eager to demonstrate that it would have no ill effects. After the first few breaths, Meebrick chowed down on his pipe, and started tentatively puffing. Neither of them shrivelled up or went purple or turned into a guinea pig, so eventually Pone decided to risk it.
The result was terribly disappointing: the fumes smelled and tasted of absolutely nothing whatsoever. In fact, the gases coming off the stove were cool and fresh and impossibly clear, like what you would expect to be breathing on the top of a huge mountain in the middle of a vast unspoilt wilderness. Pone gave himself another headache on top of the one he already had, trying to work out how it was possible for exhaust fumes to smell so un-exhaust-like. But it didn’t last long, due to the healthful influence of the fumes.
“Are you yet satisfied with your breathing?” asked Nodroz.
Pone nodded very reluctantly, and clung to the railing for dear life as his host turned back to face the wall of bold red jelly overlapping the prow of the boat.
“Come then,” Nodroz mumbled through a mouthful of breathing tube, “Let us go henceforth into the core of Wobble!” He raised his arms in a dramatic gesture, and as if in response the inert front-left engine glimmered back into life. Then he intoned a loud and forceful “HUMNNN!” and flung his arms forwards to signal the intended direction of movement – and the Contradictorium slowly but surely started to push its way deeper into the gelatinous micro-planet.
“By the way,” Pone queried, “why does this asteroid or planet or whatever it is have such a dumb-sounding name?”
“It’s made of jelly, and jelly wobbles,” remarked Nodroz with his usual, irksome serenity, “so they called it ‘Wobble’.”
Pone groaned inwardly beneath the burdensome weight of this new knowledge.
“Bish ishho exhitig!” Meebrick giggled through his breathing tube. And as if that wasn’t undignified enough, he clapped his hands like a little child.
A moment later, Pone found the jelly approaching just inches from his nose.
“What is it with me and jelly lately?” Pone wondered. His hair was still full of blobs of goo from his recent encounter with the invertebrate shoal. But the blobs were soon lost to sight as they amalgamated into the greater mass of the micro-planet Wobble.
The stuff was more yielding than he might have expected, and once it had got itself on the move the Contradictorium seemed to have little trouble forging a path through it. The jelly flowed back into place behind the boat, leaving only a negligible wake of tiny bubbles to show where they had been. Pone became profoundly grateful for the stove hose.
The journey into Wobble seemed to go on for quite a long time, and there weren’t any landmarks on the inside. Pone started to despair of ever escaping. He attempted to distract his suffering brain with thoughts of financial outlays, profit margins, sales commissions and tax bands, and when that failed he turned his thoughts to his paternal aunt and her frankly terrifying collection of tea-cosies. She had thousands upon thousands of them, and was always after more. The surest way of making her happy was to give her another one, and the next surest was to give her a teapot to put inside one so she could display it properly.
Many centuries passed, and what with the lack of landmarks and the impossibly clear air he was breathing, Pone started to feel that he was drifting outside of the space-time continuum altogether. He started to doubt the existence of the outside world, and to wonder if maybe this surreal jelly was all there was, and all there ever had been.
Those centuries were actually two and three-quarter hours.
And then he was rudely pulled back to reality by the sound of Meebrick squealing a few feet away, muffled a bit (but nowhere near enough, Pone thought) by the surrounding semi-solid dessert.
“What’s wrong with the blighter now?” Pone asked himself.
He turned to look, and saw that Meebrick was pointing and staring straight ahead.
Ahead of the ship, deep inside the jelly, he could faintly see the outlines of some sort of transparent structure. There were rooms, and doorways, and what looked like stairs – and he even thought he could glimpse a pot plant or two.
Minutes later, the boat glooped its way out of the wall of a large room inside the jelly, and drifted to a stop in the middle of the floor.
The space was filled with all sorts of scientific equipment – microscopes, telescopes, orreries, burners, test tubes and flasks, rulers and tape measures and callipers, vices and tweezers, and books upon books upon books. It was hard to tell whether everything in the room really was made of copper and bronze, or if it just looked that way because of the red jelly which comprised the walls, floor and ceiling surrounding them. And Pone had been right – in another room at the top of a short, broad staircase, he could see a real, live pot plant. He wondered (with good reason) whether it had a funny name and whether it was going to be rude to him.
And in the middle of it all, not looking remotely pleased about having visitors, stood a very small girl in a long pink dressing gown, with a glowing magenta ponytail and a ferocious scowl. And a monocle, which didn’t really go with the rest of her look.
Meebrick gave an enthusiastic greeting, but sadly forgot to remove the breathing pipe from his mouth first, so it didn’t come out very well. He was glared at like something the cat dragged in. But being Meebrick the misnomer, he wasn’t much bothered by this and just kept on grinning and waving.
“GRANDMOTHER!” bellowed the little girl.
“I am so sorry to intrude,” began Nodroz the Third, “but might I take this opportunity to introduce…”
“GRANDMOTHER! I need you in here RIGHT NOW!”
There was one of those difficult silences.
And then a couple of minutes later, a tiny, hunched old lady oozed out of the ceiling and dropped onto the gelatinous floor just in front of the Contradictorium.
“How many times must I tell you, Grandmother – USE THE STAIRS!” shrieked the little girl.
“Sorry, dearie,” croaked Grandmother. “I did remember, but I’d already sunk my legs into the floor and it was too late.” She looked around, and realised how close she had been to impaling herself on the prow of the visiting boat. “Ooh, my word!” she chirped. “We’ve got some company!”
Meebrick grinned and waved again, and Grandmother waved back.
“I’ll go and put the kettle on,” she said.
“Thank you, Grandmother,” said the little girl.
Grandmother recovered her cane from where it had stuck in the jelly floor next to her, and wobbled off towards the kitchen.
The little girl glared at the intruders again.
“So who are you, and what are you doing in my laboratory?”
“I am Nodroz the Third,” began Nodroz the Third. Pone rolled his eyes again – he was getting tired of hearing him introduce himself. Nodroz pointed to the plant pot up front, “this is my faithful vegetable companion Yaseez, this…” he pointed at Pone, but then Pone decided to interrupt.
“My name is Pone Crustley,” announced Pone Crustley, “and if anyone tells you I’m called Woshling…” he paused for a second to give Nodroz a warning with one eyebrow, “… they’re telling you lies.”
“You look more like a Woshling to me,” announced the little girl. Pone slumped back against the stove and lost interest in the conversation, while she pointed at Meebrick and demanded to know who he was, and got the usual “it’s a real delight to see you!” greeting (thank goodness he’d taken his breathing tube out now).
“We are seeking to decipher the secrets of Wobble,” intoned Nodroz. “Humnnn.”
“Don’t you swear at me!” snapped the little girl.
“Basically,” chirruped Meebrick, “we don’t have a clue what we’re looking for, if anything, and we’re going for a road trip inside this jelly asteroid thing just for the fun of it. And then we spotted your place – can I just say, I absolutely love what you’ve done with the decor – so we thought we’d drop in and say hi!”
“I see… very well, then. Fortunately you haven’t collided with any of my extremely important scientific equipment. I am Professor-Emeritus Poppy Darlingsby,” announced the small girl. She adjusted her monocle and squinted at Meebrick. He gave a good-natured squint back.
“Um… what are you researching?” Pone asked, as he felt her gaze move over to him.
“Never mind that yet,” said the Professor.
Another very long silence.
This time, it was broken by the sound of shuffling feet and clinking chinaware.
“Here’s the tea!” chimed Grandmother from somewhere nearby.
“Excellent,” said the Professor. She started heading for the short staircase. “If you would all please follow me to the living room?”
*****
I don't plan on posting the whole story on my blog, but if you want to read more then I'm sure I could arrange to send you the back issues and keep you up to date with new chapters as and when they get written =]
(Random aside: for those who read Fort Paradox, we're still waiting for some questions for the new Weekly FAQ feature! Come on, ask questions, darn it!)
- 11 For 11 status: 9 down, 2 to go - I reclaim the lead in the race again! Won't be surprised if this is the last time I'm ahead...
- Latest book read: no change since the last post
- Latest film/TV watched: How Do They Do It?
- Latest music listened to: no change since the last post
- Latest food/sweets/whatever eaten: lunch = chicken sandwich, crisps and half an orange
- Programs and web pages currently running: Outlook 2007, Word 2007, Windows Explorer, Skype, Firefox (tabs: MatNav; Blogspot Create Post; Blogspot Dashboard; my last post)
- Webcomics posted today: no change since the last post
- The Colclough
Friday, 3 December 2010
The Answers!
Last week, I did a little research project in which I tried to work out what proportion of my creative output I've actually got round to sharing with people. The average answer, from four responses, was 51.25% - which has the interesting implication that I've only shared about half of the things I've ever created.
Anywho, for the benefit of anyone who found themself staring at that list and wondering what on earth I was yakking about, I shall now divulge The Answers, i.e. a new version of the list featuring the same 50 names, but now with added notes and things to explain who/what those 50 entities are.
The Primary Culprits
Before going onto the list itself, here's a brief(ish) overview of the major groups:
Universe XGT – a collective handle for a huge continuity co-created with my best friends Tim and Sarah. Some of the more important bits of it have emerged into the public view in the form of stopmotion short films, including Alpha One’s Megalomaniac Quadrilogy, X-Battles GT, and The Probe Has Succeeded, but there’s also a big sprawling mass of largely unpublished back-story, most of which would be bad for your head. Accounts for 10 of the 50 names on the list.
Cylinder and Miserable – my main webcomic; updated five or six times per week from late 2006. Features lots of random weirdness. Accounts for 7 of the 50 names on the list.
Grace and Caffeine – the weekly Christian comic strip which I produced for my church from late 2006 to summer 2010. The principal cast had all appeared in other places first, but Grace and Caffeine was their biggest starring role. Along with some smaller related projects, accounts for 5 of the 50 names on the list.
The Martian Ballet Trilogy – a series of computer-animated films, co-created with David Allwright, and revolving around the career misadventures of an inept Martian called Mike Half-Left. We planned to make a fourth film, but it all seems to have ground to a halt, so I’ve taken to referring to the existing films as a trilogy. Accounts for 4 of the 50 names on the list.
Megastropulodon – a short live-action film made for the final year of my BSc in Media Production, and a TV mini-series which I’m currently writing based on the same concept. The name is borrowed from the big ugly mutant creature at the centre of the story. Accounts for 3 of the 50 names on the list.
Intergalactic Hamsters - my BSc Media Production dissertation film. Well, technically, Intergalactic Hamsters is the film within the film, and my dissertation (full title The Making of "Intergalactic Hamsters") is a spoof behind-the-scenes documentary chronicling the collapse of the Intergalactic Hamsters project. Accounts for 2 of the 50 names on the list.
The List Explained
...and here are the notes!
So, there you have it. I hope you feel all enlightened and stuff. And for those who've got catch-up to do, happy reading!
=]
- The Colclough
Anywho, for the benefit of anyone who found themself staring at that list and wondering what on earth I was yakking about, I shall now divulge The Answers, i.e. a new version of the list featuring the same 50 names, but now with added notes and things to explain who/what those 50 entities are.
The Primary Culprits
Before going onto the list itself, here's a brief(ish) overview of the major groups:
Universe XGT – a collective handle for a huge continuity co-created with my best friends Tim and Sarah. Some of the more important bits of it have emerged into the public view in the form of stopmotion short films, including Alpha One’s Megalomaniac Quadrilogy, X-Battles GT, and The Probe Has Succeeded, but there’s also a big sprawling mass of largely unpublished back-story, most of which would be bad for your head. Accounts for 10 of the 50 names on the list.
- Alpha One's Laser Cafe (2008)
- Alpha One's Quantum Shampoo (2009)
- The Probe Has Succeeded (2009)
- X-Battles GT4 (2010)
Cylinder and Miserable – my main webcomic; updated five or six times per week from late 2006. Features lots of random weirdness. Accounts for 7 of the 50 names on the list.
- Cylinder and Miserable (2006 to date)
Grace and Caffeine – the weekly Christian comic strip which I produced for my church from late 2006 to summer 2010. The principal cast had all appeared in other places first, but Grace and Caffeine was their biggest starring role. Along with some smaller related projects, accounts for 5 of the 50 names on the list.
- Grace and Caffeine (2006 to 2010)
The Martian Ballet Trilogy – a series of computer-animated films, co-created with David Allwright, and revolving around the career misadventures of an inept Martian called Mike Half-Left. We planned to make a fourth film, but it all seems to have ground to a halt, so I’ve taken to referring to the existing films as a trilogy. Accounts for 4 of the 50 names on the list.
- Martian Ballet: Fifth Anniversary Special Edition (2003, 2004, 2008)
- Martian Olympics (2006)
- Martian Medicine (2008) is not currently available for online viewing, due to music copyright issues. A HD remastered version with a new score is pending. (Edit, 20th of May 2011: just rediscovered this post and decided to update it with a link to the film, which is now back online as promised)
Megastropulodon – a short live-action film made for the final year of my BSc in Media Production, and a TV mini-series which I’m currently writing based on the same concept. The name is borrowed from the big ugly mutant creature at the centre of the story. Accounts for 3 of the 50 names on the list.
- Megastropulodon Attacks! (2010)
Intergalactic Hamsters - my BSc Media Production dissertation film. Well, technically, Intergalactic Hamsters is the film within the film, and my dissertation (full title The Making of "Intergalactic Hamsters") is a spoof behind-the-scenes documentary chronicling the collapse of the Intergalactic Hamsters project. Accounts for 2 of the 50 names on the list.
The List Explained
...and here are the notes!
- Acid Gulps: a dodgy but popular soft drink from the Martian Ballet Trilogy (first appears in Martian Olympics, 2006).
- Albert S. Broccoli: an artificially-sentient broccoli from Cylinder and Miserable (first appears in Series 2, 2008), who acts as manager/butler/chauffeur/whatever to Cylinder the Cylinder.
- Alex Lanning: a biologist from Intergalactic Hamsters (2010); in the original story plan, Alex was supposed to be brilliant, but lacking in dress sense and other social graces, although this didn’t come out very much in the finished film.
- Arthur the Pensioner: a nice little old man, whose only appearance to date was in Arthur & the Punk (2006).
- The Blue Danube, with Walnuts: a random video I made back in 2007, which features me smashing up a tableful of small semi-edible walnuts with a claw hammer, in time to the closing couple of minutes of Strauss’ The Blue Danube waltz. It wasn’t as wasteful as it might seem – we salvaged and ate most of the walnuts afterwards.
- The Binary Triumvirate: an alternative/experimental electronic music trio from Cylinder and Miserable Series 2 (2009).
- Black Antarctic Cryogenics: a huge cryogenics plant located underground in the middle of a desert, from Cylinder and Miserable (first appears at the end of Series 1, 2007).
- Bradley Stanton Park: a blindly patriotic American mountaineer, from a little animation project called Frozen Bones that’s been languishing in ‘development hell’ for quite a while.
- Cylinder the Cylinder: the ‘alpha protagonist’ of Cylinder and Miserable (first appearance 2006); also stars in Fort Paradox (2010 onwards).
- Distant Prayer – Fragment III: one of my very few musical compositions (circa 2005 ish).
- Deep Glass: sculptural work, made from stoneware clay with a hotter-than-usual biscuit firing, and the crushed remains of a Shloer bottle (circa 2006).
- Doctor Murkum: cyborg, drug-addled, hopelessly incompetent wannabe antagonist from Universe XGT, easily identified by his grey environment suit and its bulky helmet and breathing apparatus (first appearance circa 1998).
- Dyngaria: the name of two almost-but-not-quite unrelated stories that I’ve started writing. The first incarnation was years and years ago, and unspeakably bad. The new one is still in its infancy, but much more promising. 'Dyngaria' is also the name of one of the main settings of the newer book.
- Edwin (full name Edwin Leonard Hall): the thin, grumpy old chap with the white hair and the gardening skills, from Grace and Caffeine (2006, first appearance in other stories 2003); also stars in Fort Paradox (2010 onwards).
- The Essence of Fandom: a mixed-media drawing/painting thing I did a couple of years back.
- Emily Arkley: the purple one with the Vespa, from Day-Glo! (2007).
- Empire Theatre, Mars City: the theatre where Mike Half-Left’s troubles began, in the Martian Ballet Trilogy (first appears in the original version of Martian Ballet, 2003).
- Establisher II: the unmanned titular space probe from The Probe Has Succeeded (2009).
- The Fifty-Seven Meme: myself and certain friends of mine have noticed that the number 57 appears more often than most others, sometimes in the most unexpected places, leading to the theory that it is in fact woven into the very fabric of the spacetime continuum, and/or is deliberately stalking us around the universe. I’ve made several intentional ‘57’ references in various media, in a tacit acknowledgement of its presumed metaphysical importance.
- First Dabox: the homeworld of the pragmatically-minded Grud race, in Universe XGT. The orange chap with the five eyes in The Probe Has Succeeded (2009) is a Grud.
- Forkley: a fork-lift-truck type individual, from the ‘Ganaraner’ race of sentient machines in Universe XGT (first appearance circa 1998); also appears in Fort Paradox (2010 onwards).
- Fort Paradox: the name of both a recently-started cross-continuity webcomic, and its principal location. I won’t tell you what the Fort actually is, as that would spoil the surprise for when we reveal it in the comic strip B]
- Gastropo Thrush: a molluscoid athlete from the Martian Ballet Trilogy (first appears in Martian Olympics, 2006).
- Gavin the Head: you don’t want to know. Suffice to say it’s from Universe XGT, and if you’re going to try and comprehend Universe XGT, Gavin the Head is a very bad place to start!
- Greenchester: a little game I wrote in Visual Basic 6 in 2008. Windows only.
- Harry Dixon: sort of cheating, this one: Harry was the main character from the short student film One in a Million, which I directed, from a script by course mate Stephen Boulter (2009).
- Hooper (full name James Richard Boris Montgomery Hooper): long-suffering assistant to the failed megalomaniac villain Alpha One, from Universe XGT. Unlike most of UXGT, Hooper and Alpha’s misadventures have been published: in the stopmotion films Alpha One’s Laser Cafe (2008) and Alpha One’s Quantum Shampoo (2009). A threequel is in production.
- The iKon Cinema: many years ago, back in the days when I used to make towns out of Lego and cereal packets, I decided I wanted to build a cinema. It worked too, sort of, thanks to a system of paper strips with different scenes on them, which could be fed through a little ‘gate’ setup to emulate a screen. The films were a bit rubbish, but it was an achievement at the time. I could show you a picture of the remains, but they're really dilapidated, so it'd be a bit embarrassing.
- I See the Light at the End: my last and greatest sculptural work (to date, anyway… never say never): a 5 x 7 foot mosaic (btw, there’s that number 57 again, see?), built from over 400 custom-designed and hand-made tiles, at Farnborough Sixth Form College (2007).
- Jason Meddings: the reluctant ‘Chosen One’ from Megastropulodon Attacks! (2010).
- Lost in Minehead 2006: the official video from one of our church youth holidays. I didn’t do the camerawork, but the project was turned over to me for post-production.
- Mark Coleridge: student filmmaker protagonist of The Making of “Intergalactic Hamsters” (2010).
- Matilda Ferguson: from a not-yet-published storyline in Cylinder and Miserable (due to appear online in 2011).
- Metaphysical Violation Drive: a type of airship propulsion technology from Cylinder and Miserable (first appears in Series 2, 2008, as part of Cylinder the Cylinder’s new vessel the Excylindrical).
- Mike Half-Left: ill-fated protagonist of the Martian Ballet Trilogy. The serial job-failer first appears in the original version of Martian Ballet, 2003).
- Pascal Davis: a computer-nerd character who first appeared in his own strip, Pascal Davis and the Machines (2005), and then made a few guest appearances in Grace and Caffeine (2007 – 2010).
- The Prayers of Thousands: sculptural work, featuring plaster casts of people’s hands (2005).
- Quantum Shampoo: the titular substance from Alpha One’s Quantum Shampoo (2009) – I won’t tell you what it is here. You should go and watch the movie!
- Redwood 257: one of the locations from a fragmentary script which I’ve been picking at on and off for four-and-a-half years.
- Rhugestian Swamp Dog: an omnivorous egg-laying mammalian creature, the size of a large dog or a small pig, with a long prehensile nose. Those who recognise the species will probably know them as the green thing from The Probe Has Succeeded (2009), but in the wider context of Universe XGT, they are said to hail from the planet Rhugestis, not from Harcom-1, the setting of the stopmotion short.
- Ron Haggard: the self-proclaimed ‘Sidekick’ from Megastropulodon Attacks! (2010).
- The Square: a new-but-unwanted cargo ship surreptitiously rescued from the scrapyard and transformed into a notorious guerrilla warship, in Universe XGT.
- The Suitcase: the favourite biological weapon of the so-called ‘Evil Terrorists of Doom’, from Cylinder and Miserable (first appears in Series 1, 2007).
- Tarberford: setting of the very short-lived comic where most of the main cast of Grace and Caffeine began their existences.
- Tasmin (full name Anna-Beth Tasmin Linden): a new character who I’ve added to the in-development TV-series version of Megastropulodon.
- Tharryk: a massive and impenetrable prison galaxy in Universe XGT.
- Tom (full name Tom Thomason): the nice chap with the hooked nose, the bald scalp, and the liking for tea, often found behind the pulpit of Volesford Free Church in Grace and Caffeine (2006, first appearance in other stories 2003). Also stars in the animated short film Goin’ Teapotty (2009).
- Turbo Gran: aged but invincible protagonist of the interactive short film of the same name (2008).
- TW-A42: a subcategory of the Doorwarden-series robots. The A42 itself hasn’t yet made any public appearance, but it will soon enough, and one of its successors, the TW-C75, appeared in Vs. Doorwarden (2003) and its sequel (2005).
- West Spottlington: a largeish fictional town fifteen miles from Volesford, which is mentioned a few times in Grace and Caffeine (2008-ish onwards), and is also the setting of Megastropulodon Attacks! (2010) – although I couldn’t really say whether or not these two stories both take place in the same version of the town, or if they just happen to share the same name. It’s never been stated in any published film or comic strip, but I've also decided that West Spottlington is the home of Pascal Davis.
So, there you have it. I hope you feel all enlightened and stuff. And for those who've got catch-up to do, happy reading!
=]
- The Colclough
Thursday, 2 December 2010
Writing, Drawing, and Both
This post is basically a collection of little updates on different projects I've got on the go.
Megastropulodon, the TV Series version: I've hit writer's block with the first draft for the closing episode. Written a couple of dozen words in the last fortnight, if that. Getting annoying. It's not that I don't know what I want to happen, it's just that it doesn't want to happen on the page.
The Root Hill video: I re-did the intertitle graphics this morning, as I wasn't happy with the way they'd turned out when I did them the first time a few days ago. New version is much better. Video definitely getting there now.
My surreal semi-untitled story about a failed packet-mix salesman: going well, albeit sporadically. Wrote chapters 7 and 8 on Tuesday, which took the word count into five figures. Chapter 8 ends with one of the most random sentences ever - and it's only 3 words long, so its randomness-per-word ratio is through the roof. I do have a plan for how to start Chapter 9, which will make some sense of that random sentence, and I'm looking forward to penning it. Just haven't got round to it yet. I could email you the book so far if you ask nicely =]
Alien President: most of you probably haven't heard of this one yet. Last time I saw Tim, back in October, I asked the random question (probably influenced by sleep deprivation): "What if George Darlan became the next president of the USA?" Darlan, for those not in the know, is a notorious extraterrestrial inventor and self-proclaimed philanthropist, from Tim's webcomic Brothers in Shells. Tim seemed rather taken with the suggestion, and I've started writing a short webcomic series dealing with this bizarre hypothetical scenario. I've finished 8 episodes so far, with scripts written for quite a few more, and I'm planning to start posting the series online next week.
'The Answers': coming along nicely. Will hopefully be on here by the end of the week.
Um... yeah. I think that just about covers everything!
- The Colclough
Megastropulodon, the TV Series version: I've hit writer's block with the first draft for the closing episode. Written a couple of dozen words in the last fortnight, if that. Getting annoying. It's not that I don't know what I want to happen, it's just that it doesn't want to happen on the page.
The Root Hill video: I re-did the intertitle graphics this morning, as I wasn't happy with the way they'd turned out when I did them the first time a few days ago. New version is much better. Video definitely getting there now.
My surreal semi-untitled story about a failed packet-mix salesman: going well, albeit sporadically. Wrote chapters 7 and 8 on Tuesday, which took the word count into five figures. Chapter 8 ends with one of the most random sentences ever - and it's only 3 words long, so its randomness-per-word ratio is through the roof. I do have a plan for how to start Chapter 9, which will make some sense of that random sentence, and I'm looking forward to penning it. Just haven't got round to it yet. I could email you the book so far if you ask nicely =]
Alien President: most of you probably haven't heard of this one yet. Last time I saw Tim, back in October, I asked the random question (probably influenced by sleep deprivation): "What if George Darlan became the next president of the USA?" Darlan, for those not in the know, is a notorious extraterrestrial inventor and self-proclaimed philanthropist, from Tim's webcomic Brothers in Shells. Tim seemed rather taken with the suggestion, and I've started writing a short webcomic series dealing with this bizarre hypothetical scenario. I've finished 8 episodes so far, with scripts written for quite a few more, and I'm planning to start posting the series online next week.
'The Answers': coming along nicely. Will hopefully be on here by the end of the week.
Um... yeah. I think that just about covers everything!
- The Colclough
Thursday, 11 November 2010
Two down, one to go... and then, redrafting
Finished a couple of things today.
One was writing the first draft of Megastropulodon! Series 1 Episode 5, Eggs of Devastation. At the final count, the draft comes to 29 pages, 65 scenes, 6400-and-something words. Obviously, it's far from being ready to shoot, and it'll take a lot more drafts before it's good to go, but I've got it past the first hurdle: the bones of the story are out there on the paper. (Word-processor, actually, but never mind.)
So now, I can get started on Episode 6. And once that's done, it'll be back to Episode 1 to start on Second Drafts. And so on, and so forth...
My other achievement today has been to finish reading this paper on 'the Distant Starlight Problem' - an objection sometimes raised against Biblical creationism. In short, the author does some clever stuff with Relativity theory, and eliminates the problem. But it's taken me nearly three days to read, because it's one of the two most confusing things I've ever tried reading, and I had to keep stopping for long breaks to prevent my brain melting.
I should point out that it's not really Dr. Lisle's fault that it's confusing. The confusing-ness is down to the Relativity-Theory-based nature of the article, so it can largely be blamed on Einstein and/or on the fabric of the universe itself.
The other most confusing thing I've ever tried reading was Donna Haraway's 'Cyborg Manifesto'. If you've never read it, don't bother. If you'd never even heard of it until you read this paragraph, be very grateful. It got inflicted on me during the second year of my media degree, but I never finished reading it, because it was making no sense at all, and I was getting the melting-brain feeling without any worthwhile payback. It was a prime example of mere human philosophy (possibly drug-induced, judging by the psychedelic pseudo-logic involved) setting up frameworks and theories that had no practical bearing at all on the real world, despite an impressive-sounding claim to be able to explain basically everything.
The big difference between that, and Dr. Lisle's paper, was that Lisle is talking about the real world and his arguments are built on established scientific principles (mostly Einstein). So despite the sensation of molten neurons starting to trickle out of my earholes as I read, I felt that I was getting something worthwhile out of the exercise. Namely, an answer to the 'distant starlight problem'. I don't think I could really summarise what he said without confusing you, but if it's an issue you've ever worried about then I'd recommend taking a look at the paper - just make sure you pack your head in ice first to stop it going up in smoke.
Be ye warned: the rest of this post consists of a couple of thematic left turns...
Yesterday, my best amigo Tim posted the 86th and final episode of Sidewards, his bizarre but rather enjoyable spin-off from my main webcomic, Cylinder and Miserable. The ending caught me by surprise, as I didn't know how many strips he'd actually written. But it's been great fun reading the comic. I mean, it's about squabbling, half-psychotic bacon sandwiches committing industrial sabotage... what more do you want?
Speaking of webcomics, have you been reading Fort Paradox, and if so what's your reaction? Has your grey matter survived so far?
And finally, on another not-really-related note, a quick update for the RH crowd: I went through the various segments of the video the other day (I'm editing it in 4 different parts to stop Vegas crashing) and added up the runtimes - and the total came out at 33 minutes 19 seconds, which is within 4 minutes of the 30-minute target runtime. So the good news is, the video might actually be closer to completion than I'd realised! The next step will be to watch through the segments, check for boring bits, and trim accordingly. Once that's done, I should hopefully have got the runtime down to 30 minutes by natural wastage, and then it'll be time for my Workflow Pudding - designing and making the nice shiny chapter-heading graphics and things. If you thought the 2008 video was good, you ain't seen nothing yet!
- The Colclough
One was writing the first draft of Megastropulodon! Series 1 Episode 5, Eggs of Devastation. At the final count, the draft comes to 29 pages, 65 scenes, 6400-and-something words. Obviously, it's far from being ready to shoot, and it'll take a lot more drafts before it's good to go, but I've got it past the first hurdle: the bones of the story are out there on the paper. (Word-processor, actually, but never mind.)
So now, I can get started on Episode 6. And once that's done, it'll be back to Episode 1 to start on Second Drafts. And so on, and so forth...
My other achievement today has been to finish reading this paper on 'the Distant Starlight Problem' - an objection sometimes raised against Biblical creationism. In short, the author does some clever stuff with Relativity theory, and eliminates the problem. But it's taken me nearly three days to read, because it's one of the two most confusing things I've ever tried reading, and I had to keep stopping for long breaks to prevent my brain melting.
I should point out that it's not really Dr. Lisle's fault that it's confusing. The confusing-ness is down to the Relativity-Theory-based nature of the article, so it can largely be blamed on Einstein and/or on the fabric of the universe itself.
The other most confusing thing I've ever tried reading was Donna Haraway's 'Cyborg Manifesto'. If you've never read it, don't bother. If you'd never even heard of it until you read this paragraph, be very grateful. It got inflicted on me during the second year of my media degree, but I never finished reading it, because it was making no sense at all, and I was getting the melting-brain feeling without any worthwhile payback. It was a prime example of mere human philosophy (possibly drug-induced, judging by the psychedelic pseudo-logic involved) setting up frameworks and theories that had no practical bearing at all on the real world, despite an impressive-sounding claim to be able to explain basically everything.
The big difference between that, and Dr. Lisle's paper, was that Lisle is talking about the real world and his arguments are built on established scientific principles (mostly Einstein). So despite the sensation of molten neurons starting to trickle out of my earholes as I read, I felt that I was getting something worthwhile out of the exercise. Namely, an answer to the 'distant starlight problem'. I don't think I could really summarise what he said without confusing you, but if it's an issue you've ever worried about then I'd recommend taking a look at the paper - just make sure you pack your head in ice first to stop it going up in smoke.
Be ye warned: the rest of this post consists of a couple of thematic left turns...
Yesterday, my best amigo Tim posted the 86th and final episode of Sidewards, his bizarre but rather enjoyable spin-off from my main webcomic, Cylinder and Miserable. The ending caught me by surprise, as I didn't know how many strips he'd actually written. But it's been great fun reading the comic. I mean, it's about squabbling, half-psychotic bacon sandwiches committing industrial sabotage... what more do you want?
Speaking of webcomics, have you been reading Fort Paradox, and if so what's your reaction? Has your grey matter survived so far?
And finally, on another not-really-related note, a quick update for the RH crowd: I went through the various segments of the video the other day (I'm editing it in 4 different parts to stop Vegas crashing) and added up the runtimes - and the total came out at 33 minutes 19 seconds, which is within 4 minutes of the 30-minute target runtime. So the good news is, the video might actually be closer to completion than I'd realised! The next step will be to watch through the segments, check for boring bits, and trim accordingly. Once that's done, I should hopefully have got the runtime down to 30 minutes by natural wastage, and then it'll be time for my Workflow Pudding - designing and making the nice shiny chapter-heading graphics and things. If you thought the 2008 video was good, you ain't seen nothing yet!
- The Colclough
Thursday, 4 November 2010
Verbosity for a Good Cause
I've ended up taking an unplanned break from the Root Hill video edit over the last couple of days. I was away from home yesterday (as per the blog post about demolishing Godalming), and today I ended up writing my monster movie script instead.
If you've been reading this here blog for any length of time, you'll have come across my ramblings about Megastropulodon Attacks! - and some of you might also have gotten wind of my plans to write a TV mini-series using a hugely expanded version of the same story. By 'hugely expanded', I mean that the events shown in the existing short film will be stretched out across the whole 6-part series, to become the ongoing narrative arc which ties the different episodes together, rather than being condensed into a single lump as per the current form. The existing characters all appear, with a few new additions - some who stick around for the whole series, others who only appear in one or two episodes.
I've got the basic ideas planned out for what will happen in each episode, and I'm currently working on first drafts for three of them. I'm hoping to rope in other writers to do some of the mid-series episodes, but I'm doing at least the first one and the last two myself. So I've completed the first draft of Episode 1 (29 pages, 6700-and-something words), and I'm currently beavering away on Episode 5. For several days, if not weeks, it got stuck around page 11, and I thought I'd written myself into a cul-de-sac, and would have to scrap half of what I'd got and write something different. But yesterday, I suddenly had a few minor epiphanies, and added together they pretty much got the storyline back on track. After having one more spark of inspiration shortly after breakfast this morning, I spent a lot of today writing, and came up with over 2000 words - 8 or so script pages, or more than quarter of an episode.
The evening has gone downhill a bit, and the successful-writing-spree euphoria is already wearing off, but at least now that I've blogged about it I'll be able to look back later and bask in the retroactive smugness of having made so much progress before the day soured.
And if you're one of the Root Hill crowd, don't worry - I'm sure I'll get back to the digital scissors soon.
- The Colclough
If you've been reading this here blog for any length of time, you'll have come across my ramblings about Megastropulodon Attacks! - and some of you might also have gotten wind of my plans to write a TV mini-series using a hugely expanded version of the same story. By 'hugely expanded', I mean that the events shown in the existing short film will be stretched out across the whole 6-part series, to become the ongoing narrative arc which ties the different episodes together, rather than being condensed into a single lump as per the current form. The existing characters all appear, with a few new additions - some who stick around for the whole series, others who only appear in one or two episodes.
I've got the basic ideas planned out for what will happen in each episode, and I'm currently working on first drafts for three of them. I'm hoping to rope in other writers to do some of the mid-series episodes, but I'm doing at least the first one and the last two myself. So I've completed the first draft of Episode 1 (29 pages, 6700-and-something words), and I'm currently beavering away on Episode 5. For several days, if not weeks, it got stuck around page 11, and I thought I'd written myself into a cul-de-sac, and would have to scrap half of what I'd got and write something different. But yesterday, I suddenly had a few minor epiphanies, and added together they pretty much got the storyline back on track. After having one more spark of inspiration shortly after breakfast this morning, I spent a lot of today writing, and came up with over 2000 words - 8 or so script pages, or more than quarter of an episode.
The evening has gone downhill a bit, and the successful-writing-spree euphoria is already wearing off, but at least now that I've blogged about it I'll be able to look back later and bask in the retroactive smugness of having made so much progress before the day soured.
And if you're one of the Root Hill crowd, don't worry - I'm sure I'll get back to the digital scissors soon.
- The Colclough
Saturday, 4 September 2010
Rest in peace, Grace and Caffeine
So, it's all over.
I began writing Grace and Caffeine more than three and a half years ago. It's been with me since before I started my degree. It's been a major element of my life for what feels like forever.
Back at the beginning of August, I wrote the 178th and last strip.
And this afternoon, I completed and uploaded the new-look archive site, containing every single strip ever written, along with colour versions, development sketches, cartoonist's commentaries, a brief guide to the characters, a revised and expanded FAQ, and the 20-episode run of Grace and Caffeine's precursor Games Baptists Play.
Thing is, there is now absolutely no work of any description left to do on the whole 45-month-long project. And it feels really weird trying to get my head around the fact that one of the two longest-running creative projects I've ever undertaken is now done and gone. It hasn't really sunk in yet. It might take days, maybe even weeks or months, before I really get a grip on the fact that my pet project isn't there any more.
It didn't really end very spectacularly. You always want these things to end in a blaze of glory, with fireworks and trumpets and one last massive achievement. But it didn't. It all ended with a tiny - almost insignificant - fix to the HTML code on one of the new pages. It was a very small glitch that had snuck in ages ago and I'd forgotten to change at the time, so after making all the dramatic moves (logging in to the server, wiping out the whole of the old site and uploading the 388 files which constitute the new one), I then found myself going back into the abandoned house for a few moments to tweak a few characters of the source code, re-save the page... and with that tiny little gesture, it was all over.
I'm nearly finished with Megastropulodon Attacks! and The Making of "Intergalactic Hamsters" too. Once they're done, nearly all of the old threads will have been severed, and I'll be well and truly off the end of the map and wandering out into the post-college-era void, trying to pick up the threads of whatever new tapestry is heading my way.
The other thing is, I'm left wondering if anyone besides me actually cares. I made it known a month ago that the project was coming to a close, and nobody's said a thing. No "Do you really have to stop?", no "So why've you decided to pack it in now?", no "Well, it's been an interesting three years"... not even "Thank goodness you're giving it up at last you miserable *beep*!" Is there a single other human being on the surface of this planet who is remotely interested by the fact that I won't be restarting Grace and Caffeine this month as I have the last three Septembers? I don't know. I hope there is, but if they're out there then they're keeping really, really quiet about it.
Anyway, enough self-pitying rambling. If you are one of the minority who are at all interested, the shiny new archives are now open at the usual URL, http://gc.mattghc.com - feel free to take a look around and offer any feedback that might come into your head.
Now, what's the next project going to be...
- The Colclough
I began writing Grace and Caffeine more than three and a half years ago. It's been with me since before I started my degree. It's been a major element of my life for what feels like forever.
Back at the beginning of August, I wrote the 178th and last strip.
And this afternoon, I completed and uploaded the new-look archive site, containing every single strip ever written, along with colour versions, development sketches, cartoonist's commentaries, a brief guide to the characters, a revised and expanded FAQ, and the 20-episode run of Grace and Caffeine's precursor Games Baptists Play.
Thing is, there is now absolutely no work of any description left to do on the whole 45-month-long project. And it feels really weird trying to get my head around the fact that one of the two longest-running creative projects I've ever undertaken is now done and gone. It hasn't really sunk in yet. It might take days, maybe even weeks or months, before I really get a grip on the fact that my pet project isn't there any more.
It didn't really end very spectacularly. You always want these things to end in a blaze of glory, with fireworks and trumpets and one last massive achievement. But it didn't. It all ended with a tiny - almost insignificant - fix to the HTML code on one of the new pages. It was a very small glitch that had snuck in ages ago and I'd forgotten to change at the time, so after making all the dramatic moves (logging in to the server, wiping out the whole of the old site and uploading the 388 files which constitute the new one), I then found myself going back into the abandoned house for a few moments to tweak a few characters of the source code, re-save the page... and with that tiny little gesture, it was all over.
I'm nearly finished with Megastropulodon Attacks! and The Making of "Intergalactic Hamsters" too. Once they're done, nearly all of the old threads will have been severed, and I'll be well and truly off the end of the map and wandering out into the post-college-era void, trying to pick up the threads of whatever new tapestry is heading my way.
The other thing is, I'm left wondering if anyone besides me actually cares. I made it known a month ago that the project was coming to a close, and nobody's said a thing. No "Do you really have to stop?", no "So why've you decided to pack it in now?", no "Well, it's been an interesting three years"... not even "Thank goodness you're giving it up at last you miserable *beep*!" Is there a single other human being on the surface of this planet who is remotely interested by the fact that I won't be restarting Grace and Caffeine this month as I have the last three Septembers? I don't know. I hope there is, but if they're out there then they're keeping really, really quiet about it.
Anyway, enough self-pitying rambling. If you are one of the minority who are at all interested, the shiny new archives are now open at the usual URL, http://gc.mattghc.com - feel free to take a look around and offer any feedback that might come into your head.
Now, what's the next project going to be...
- The Colclough
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