So, Sidewards ended this morning. Again. This time, Tim assures me, it really is over. And once again, I think I believe him.
Unlike the previous 'ending' at Episode 086, this one at Episode 152 actually makes sense as a closing-out point for the series, as it explains who the sandwiches are/become, and leads back into the events of Cylinder and Miserable Series 1, although the fact that they seem to have attacked Doctor Mallard instead of Cylinder is an unexpected twist to the tale.
And now, as the creator of Cylinder and Miserable and the final authority on what did or didn't really happen in the Geometriverse, I face a very interesting challenge: the decision on if and how Sidewards fits into the overall 'mythology'. It can't be fully canonised, as it has some discontinuities with the parent show, e.g. the fact that it depicts the creation of the WSDMRF (and, by implication, the Fungal Temple), without leaving any space for the longish back history implied for the organisation in C&M. But there are some aspects which I definitely want to call canon, especially the existence of Field-Marshal Store. I know he's only a supporting character, but he amuses me.
So I'm going to have to have a long hard think about how it could fit. Possible explanations could include Sidewards being a fully-accurate history from a parallel Geometriverse, or an altered set of memories posessed by one or more characters after a neuroprogramming accident. But I'm not sure whether I really want to go down either of those routes.
Whatever I decide, it'll probably be revealed during the course of C&M Series 3, which I've recently started writing, and which (if I've got my maths right) could start appearing online early next year.
Watch this space!
And if you haven't yet ingested the bizarre adventures of the psychotic, industrial-sabotage-committing bacon sandwiches, their neuroprogrammer overlords and their fungal enemies/allies, then please, clicky on this link here and go and fry your brains. Right. Now.
And Tim: it's been a great ride. Thank ye.
- The Colclough
Showing posts with label Sidewards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sidewards. Show all posts
Friday, 15 July 2011
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
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
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