largento

Update! Back with family to support my little brother while he's undergoing his chemo treatments. Couldn't bring my computer, but am able to write on my iPad, so I'm going over the scripts for the three episodes and polishing them up. It occurred to me the other day to check on the original airdate of the Star Trek episode, "Amok Time" and by coincidence, September 15th is the 45th anniversary of that original airing. Now I've got a day to tentpole the whole thing around. I want to have everything up and online by that day and hopefully I can use it to get some stories on Star Trek blogs and podcasts.

Hmm... I re-downloaded the broken project, deleted that CP and rebuilt it. The 5 point patch button lit up, but no patch was made when I clicked it. So I opened the file again, with the issue still there, deleted that CP again and rebuilt it, and the second time, it worked on the first try. So... it seems to be tempermental or something. Anyway! Thanks again for taking a look at it and helping to track down the issue... and enjoy your Twinkies! Are your normals facing the right direction?

After having rested and had some time to recover from the marathon of doing the "Stalled Trek" part, I am finally ready to get this webseries finished and up! Having had considerable time to think about it, I've opted for making this first "season" three episodes instead of five. This based mostly on the fact that I think the audience will better appreciate waiting through three episodes than five. The only real reasons to do it in five episodes are: 1) I get more episodes for my buck; 2) Episodes are shorter. To be honest, I don't think the two minutes will be make or break. Having looked at both alternatives, the segments end in much better spots with this configuration. For those of you who have seen "Stalled Trek: Amutt Time," the segments end up being: 1) Opening --> Fade out after the sickbay scenes 2) Bridge Scene-->McGruff's "Typical" Line. 3) T'Poodle's "Fight to the Death" Speech-->Ending They work much better than the breaks I was having to make for the five-part version. And hey, one of the big plusses when you're the guy doing everything is you are King and get to make your own calls. :-) One of the things that got my engines going was working freelance a couple of days last week. There's nothing like being forced to do other people's work to get you excited about doing your own work again. :-) During the downtime, I doodled some ideas for a new main set and for the exterior of the ship. Spent a little bit of time modeling the latter. Probably going to add some windows and stuff, but thinking this basic shape/configuration. ship.mov

Very nicely done, Matt!

I wasn't aware of it, but Killer Bean Forever was released a few months ago as an Android game called "Killer Bean Unleashed." It's had over a million downloads, but the game is free. I'm thinking he might have worked to create this just as a promotional tool so that he could sell more DVDs. I'd hope that he doesn't regret having done Killer Bean Forever. He took a chance and did something he wanted to do. He seemed to be able to jump back onto the work wagon afterwards. I suspect he may have run into the same problem I've run into. I happily killed myself to create Stalled Trek, but now that I'm in the phase of trying to promote and sell it, I'm miserable. I did a small comic book show over the weekend that I found out about at the last minute. It was exhausting to me and I told the guy next to me, "It's so much fun making these, but it's no fun trying to sell them to people." I'm not a salesman. I should be out looking for every opportunity to sell this, but I'm naturally an introvert and making cold calls to possible outlets is excruciatingly difficult. I can wear all of the creative caps, but the business caps don't fit me at all. "If you build it, they will come" only works *inside* the movies. :-) [EDIT] Digging deeper, I see that Killer Bean Forever is advertised as purchasable via the game for $6.99. It's unclear whether this is a digital download or just a link to order the DVD from Lew's website. [EDIT2] Found a forum thread. Jeff Lew is doing the game himself and it is physical DVDs (since he's still trying to get rid of them all.) The forum doesn't continue past March and he seems frustrated with Android (apparently problems getting game to run on so many different devices.) Still no iOS version, which makes me wonder if things have stalled completely.

@Sean: That may be the case, Sean. I'm toying around with things, maybe one will stick. @Katt: Thanks, Katt. I'm sure it will happen.

Very cool!

Hey Mike, these might be too basic for you, but I did a series of core concept spline tutorials (in comic book form) that can be found here.

Congratulations, everyone!

Thanks, all! The Mad Fold-Ins would be pretty easy to do and once you set one up, it should work by just loading in another image to allow you to use it over and over again. I did consider 3D, but so few people have glasses. I also liked that there was some visual interest in the movement. I purposely set up the cho with only one klieg light to cast shadows onto the parts. Thought they added a layer of realism.

Came across this cool blog Al Bigley does with all kinds of comics and stuff from my generation and thought I'd contribute to it. I took the cut-out table-top diorama from this post and put it together in A:M. I made a YouTube video of it and it's now included in the post. Like I said, nothing fancy, but a fun little project that was basically done with cookie-cut decals (after I clipped the images out in Photoshop.) Despite my mentioning that I did it in 3D, he originally thought it was the real thing filmed with a camera. :-) If you'd like to do one, there were a bunch of them printed on the backs of the old over-sized Treasury comics and if you go through the gallery here, you can download the images.

Yikes! Characters look cool, though!

I'm in Gerry's group. I enjoy working by myself and do better when I have autonimity. I don't mind working with others, but it can be frustrating. I'm an introvert, so my normal state is inside my head. I find it takes much more energy for me to be social.

I think there's something to that, Will. I think part of the hold up is that I haven't written anything and I've been toying with the idea of just doing a "my eyes only" comic book which would allow me to write as I go and maybe get over the blank page problem. I was looking around for drawing apps for the iPad, thinking it would be fun just to do it on that.

Thanks, everyone. Especially for the well-wishes for my brother. My brother still lives in the same town as my parents. He's got the support of his wife and kids as well as our parents. I went out there for a couple of weeks in June when he first found out what it was and plan on returning in August for a week or so. He started his first chemo treatment yesterday. The doctor says that even though he is in stage 4, his chances of surviving are 90%. We're all staying positive. That's extremely lucky, Robert. My brother's lucky in a way, too, since it's treatable. Thanks, David. I'm usually pretty good at that (doing a little each day), but I'm just coming up blank for some reason. I should try to get away, Nancy. I have some freelance work that I finally got paid for, but with the uncertainty of the rest of the year, I've been planning on hanging on to it. I've even toyed with the idea of just staying in a hotel for a couple of days and see if I could do some writing. Writing for me usually comes easily, but I need isolation to do it. The tiniest interruption destroys my concentration. I'm sure I'll get out of this funk, though. I'm just going to stop announcing new projects in threads until I'm sure. :-)

Man oh man, I've had post project blues before, but never for this prolonged a time. It's a weird thing. You work on this project that takes up all of your time and it's the reason you get up in the morning and the reason you are so late going to bed. Then in the last stretch, it's exhausting and it's tough sticking with it to the end. And then it's over ...and that's it. Suddenly you don't have to get out of bed in the morning, your reason for being seems to have just checked out. I've been trying to jump back into another project, but I can't seem to break out of this funk. Part of me just thinks that it was such a prolonged marathon of work that I just need more time to recover. There's also that element of the pain of the last part of it being too fresh in my mind. Some friends and I used to go canoeing once a year when we were in high school and college. By the end of the trip, I was usually horribly sunburned and exhausted and trying to remember why I thought this was fun. But then, a year later, I'd forget about all the suffering and want to do it again. I don't guess enough time has passed for me to have forgotten how hard it was to do that last project. :-) Add to it all the normal life problems (my younger brother has been diagnosed with hodgkin's lymphoma, a highly treatable cancer, but one that still will require six months of chemo and he's symptomatic, so he's in pain and shrinking down), and I'm just not being able to turn over the engine with my worn-out spark plugs. I'm certain it will pass, but I'm going to stop announcing projects until I have one that makes it past the initial "hey, that'd be fun to do" stage.

You're right (about it adding up), David, and it will certainly shine through in the final project!

Happy Birthday, dude!

Happy Birthday, John! Hope you're having a great one!

I'm coming in late on this, but is this what we're talking about? The shaded frames in the timeline? 'Cause the ones out of range of my choreography appear pink on the Mac, which is really easy to see.

Thanks, Darkwing. I think the TNG parody is going to be on hold for awhile. I did finally come across a post on a forum by Rick Sternbach which basically said that records of the original paint colors weren't kept. That when touch-ups were necessary the crew just tried to match them as well as possible. There also seems to have been changes to the bridge set over the seasons, so the first season wouldn't necessarily match the 4th.

Happy Birthday, Paul! Hope it's a great one!

No problem, dude ...worth waiting for. :-) Thanks! All things are still on the table. I think doing this comic book parody is going to be my priority since launching the web series in the summer isn't a good idea (less web traffic with colleges schools out). With another con coming up in late October, I want to shoot for getting this new one done in early September. Then maybe launch the web series sometime around October and look at what I want to do next for the show in January. If I can keep the schedule, I'll have 4 DVDs finished by next May's Dallas Comic Con. Working on different elements for the super-hero bodies, because the genre demands it. Going to look a little more muscular and the static hand pose will be a fist. I think this one will have huge appeal with kids, plus having the classic source material will appeal to old comic book fans like me.

Fantastic, Nancy! All of them have your flair and style.

Thanks, guys! I think this is going to be a fun challenge and as intimidating as it will be to actually do, I can't wait to see a dozen animated puppets fighting a giant puppet island. :-) I think this will have even more appeal to kids, too. They might not get the satire, but like Stalled Trek, there'll be a lot of slapstick humor, too.