Started on a new crew this week. Going back to what I was doing in show 2. Working on getting a story reel ready for show 4, to show the producers. We have three weeks to do this. The pressure’s on…again.
FAMILY
We had a very active Memorial Day weekend. The kids were kept very busy. Beginning on Friday, they went to work with mommy for half the day and had a great time. Then on Saturday, we went out of our way to take them out for a walk at Victoria Gardens where they got to ride on a choo choo train and ate ice cream. On Sunday, we went over to a get together at Alesha’s uncle’s house where the place was specially set up for all the kids that were coming. Our kids had a blast.
Unfortunately, the kids had TOO much fun during those day because, come Monday, they wanted to go out and do more. Alesha and I, on the other hand, just wanted to stay home and rest, in our own way. To me, this pretty much meant, spending the day reading comic books. At one point during the day, I took Munchkin out and we rode around on my skateboard and played in the play ground but when we got back I just sat down and began reading. Well, the kids wouldn’t have it. They wouldn’t leave me alone to read. They were going to play with me no matter what. So most of the time, when I was on the couch trying to read, the kids where playing…on ME. They were jumping, dancing, yelling, screaming, running, climbing, on top of me, the entire time I was trying to relax and read my comic book. What am I, a juggle gym? I think Monday was a busier day than all the other days put together for me. I was glad to come into work on Tuesday so I could get some rest.
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Working late for two days straight again this week. Need to make up the hours because I’m going to be missing a day of work to take care of the kids for a day. My work load isn’t too crazy but the scenes I need to do are pretty complicated. I’m working on a new crew right now. I’m helping out for the week. I’m not sure what happens afterward. Hopefully I get put on a new crew. Right now, the show I’m helping out on, is a show from last season. This is their last week to ship everything. I’m feeling the pressure.
FAMILY
Big day for Carolina’s family last Saturday. Angelita, Carolina’s youngest daughter, did her First Communion. We were all very happy for her. Afterward we gathered at their house and had a First Communion party. Munchkin had a fantastic time. She had so much fun that when it was time to go, she left crying.
Meanwhile Dante and Alesha had to stay home. Dante had a fever late last week. He wasn’t doing very well at all. Still, in spite of the fact that he was burning up, he insisted on sitting down to eat. He also wanted to walk around and play. He wanted so much to do what he always does, but the poor boy found himself not being able to do much. By the end of the week, he was back to normal. He just needed to spend at least one weekend at home without going out anywhere.
CATHOLICISM
I went to get my lunch on Monday from the kitchen at work. As I was walking back to my desk I overheard a conversation at a table in the kitchen from my fellow co-workers talking about the whole Obama/Notre Dame thing. Of course, most of the people I work with are on Obama’s side of the debate; and of course, they saw it as a purely political thing. “Conservative Catholics” vs. “Liberal Catholics”. Their conversation was also the typical anti-Catholic prejudice, you hear everywhere. “Those Catholics don’t know what they’re doing, they have it all wrong, they’re holding on to ancient things that don’t mean anything”…etc. It ruined my lunch. All I heard was a couple of sentences but it got me sooo steamed up it just ruined my lunch. I couldn’t stop thinking about all the things I would say to them and how I would say it. How “I would SHOW THEM”. How my arguments would make them look foolish. How I would show how much smarter and more intellectual my view was. How arrogant, heartless and mean an angry Catholic could be…which is, of course, the reason I couldn’t do it and didn’t do it. I was too angry to say anything that wouldn’t have done more harm than good. It wouldn’t have been a conversion about the topic at hand so much as an exercise in arrogance and pride on my part.
I wondered though, if I HAD said something in a calm, collected, and charitable way, if they would have seen it as a political argument rather than a logical one anyway. I wonder how much I would be able to say to them that wouldn’t have sounded as if I was politically “Conservative” instead of just Catholic. Why is it that if you live your faith as it is taught by the Church you are automatically “a close minded, ultra conservative, right winger”? Why is it that being unfaithful to your Church and faith is celebrated as being “progressive” and open minded? Yes, I understand that there are political Conservatives that are Catholics. I also understand that there are political Liberals that are Catholics. Yet, that really shouldn’t be the issue. The issue should really be about whether you are a FAITHFUL Catholic or not. You shouldn’t put you parties or political views ahead of the dogmas of your faith. If you do, it only goes to show which one of the two is your REAL Religion. In the end, it just made me sad.
MOVIES
I used to like Star Wars more than Star Trek. I thought that Star Wars, in general, was a bit more fun and Star Trek was a bit to “hard sci-fi” to be as fun. Then George Lucas released his Star Wars prequels and pretty much ruined the fun of Star Wars by making three movies that never actually captured the fun of the original three.
Along comes the new Star Trek movie and does to Star Trek what Lucas couldn’t pull off with Star Wars. It updates the Star Trek franchise, makes it fun, captures the essence of what made the original Star Trek work (the characters), takes away the dryness of Star Trek, adds some action and makes it cool to like Star Trek. Yes, the intellectual parts and the hard science, that made Star Trek truly geeky, are missing, but what we get in it’s place is a good fun time. Hopefully, some of the intellectual stuff will make an appearance in the next movies, for now, I’m happy with what they gave us.
BOARD GAMES/VIDEO GAMES
Haven’t written about games in a while so I just thought I’d write about a board game that will become a video game and some video games that have become board games.
Andy and I played a game of Dungeon Twister last Friday. He beat me, but I think the game would have kept going. On hindsight I think we messed up a rule that would have changed the way we saw the last move of the game.
Andy really likes the game. He’s liked it ever since we played it for the first time months ago. It’s a dungeon crawl-ish chess game with a modular board whose parts twist around. There is no luck in the game. It’s all tactics and strategy. Here’s the Description of the game:
Dungeon Twister is a 2-player high level strategy game where 2 teams of adventurers with various powers are trapped in a dungeon. The board is composed of 8 rooms that can be moved and rotated by the players. Each turn, a player is able to spend actions to move around the dungeon, pick up and use items, battle with the opponents team, or turn and move the rooms of the dungeon.
The goal is to reach 5 victory points. Points are collected by moving adventurers out of the dungeon or by killing an opponent’s adventurer. Treasures are disseminated across the whole dungeon and will bring the adventurers well-needed powers.
Each player has the same characters, each with different powers. Some run fast, some fight or disarm traps. The cleric heals, magician burns everything in sight and the goblin is so weak that the simple fact of getting him out will bring you two victory points.
Combat and actions are managed via cards. To move, fight, heal or turn a room, you must manage action points obtained by playing cards. Those cards are not drawn but selected from a set of cards by both players. Both players have access to the same panel of cards at the beginning of the game so the game is really about managing the resources and adapting to the changing environment.
It has recently been announced that a new version of the game is coming out called: Dungeon Twister 2: Prison. This version of the game will actually be different and yet will still play the same as the original and it will be “backwards compatible” with the original. It will be coming out in December. The interesting part is that the game will also be released for Xbox live through Hydravision at the same time.
A few years back, when the first Advance Wars game came out for the GBA, I bought it and totally fell in love with it. I played that game once for an entire night. I started playing it at around 7 or 8 pm, looked up after some hours had gone by and discovered the sun was rising. It was just such a fun game. I didn’t buy the new ones that came out after that, Mostly because (like the Street fighter games) the new games where pretty much, more of the same and I hadn’t (and still haven’t) unlocked all the maps in the game I have, and the original allowed you to make your own maps as well. Theoretically I can keep playing the game without needing to buy a new one. Besides, I haven’t played the game in a few years.
Just found out from the Purple Pawn website that someone has made a free print and play version of the game called Skirmish Wars: Advance Tactics. They put it up on BGG and I downloaded the pdf. It looks great. They made the maps modular so you can create your own scenarios and everything. I’m so going to print it out. I just need the figure out how “fancy” I want to make my version. I’m sure Andy will be up for a game. I just hope the game doesn’t take too long to play.
Above is a screenshot of what the original video game looks like. Below is the board game version.
Just looking at the picture make me want to play it. It looks so fun.
From the mind of Reiner Knizia comes FITS. It’s Tetris the board game. It sounds great. He really came up with a great way to translate the game into a tabletop game.
FITS (Fill In The Spaces) is essentially a multi-player Tetris. Each player has an inclined board on which they place different polyominoes – like Blokus pieces, with three, four, or five squares. Cards are drawn from a pile to tell the players which piece to take. The pieces may be rotated and reversed before they slide down the inclined area to dock to other gaming pieces, but unlike Tetris cannot be slid horizontally once dropped. Scoring is based on quantity and configuration of squares left uncovered.
Unlike original Tetris there is no time pressure but like Tetris there is no player interaction as every player is engaged with his own board.
This game is now on my Wishlist under “Must have”. Definitely looks like a game most people will want to play if I was to bring it out.
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This week started out crazy. I hadn’t quite recovered from Mother’s Day weekend (more on that below) and I went to work tired and groggy to finish up the work I need to do. My deadline to finish everything for this crew was Tuesday. Yet, that Monday, I was going to leave work at 12:30 pm and I wasn’t gonna come back that day (more about that below). Knowing that would happen I had stayed late the week before to make up the hours I would miss. This still didn’t help me get over how stressed out I was.
I finished what I could that day and left. The next day I drove myself to work and was even more tired, stressed and groggy than the day before but I kept moving on. Late last week we had gotten some help from other crew members when production realized that three people wasn’t really enough to get the reel looking as good as it could. I still had my chunk of work to do and I had also found a “Post It” note on my computer, when I got in, telling me I had been given even more scenes to work on, on top of the ones I had already. I managed to finish all my work by midday and I was given more work to do as a reward for my effort (which I expected). I had worked, without a break (including a lunch break) all day and I was feeling pretty worn out so I decided to take a breather. I went out to the parking lot, called Alesha and rode my skateboard around as I talked to her, for about 10 minutes. This helped a little. After getting back I managed to finish all the work I was given and even some work that wasn’t exactly assigned to me since I knew, no one would do it, so I took it upon myself to get it done. That was that. Once done, I was told what crew I was going to help out the next day and I packed my stuff and went home.
I was exhausted emotionally, mentally and physically. The last three days had really worn me out a ton. I discovered from a text Alesha sent me, that we were out of diapers for Dante so I stopped off at the store. While at the store, Alesha sent me another text telling me that Munchkin refused to go to bed until I got home. The exact words of the text where: “Your daughter is waiting for you. She says she has to wait for daddy.”
I hurried with the shopping and got on my way home. Finally pulling into the house I got out of the car without getting any of my things out and went inside. When I opened the door Munchkin was standing there excitedly hopping from one foot to another, waiting for me with an enormous grin on her face. I bent down and she came up to me and gave me a hug. I picked her up and I held her tight. Then she asked me:
And my day was worthwhile.
FAMILY
Mother’s day Alesha flew out the door to go to church and then came back for a few minutes before she flew out the door again to be with her mom. Meanwhile the kids and I got ready to meet my parents, my brother, Deborah and Paolo at church. We had plans to go to the Griffith Observatory that day. After church, we had a quick snack and we were on our way. We all had to take separate cars. The observatory parking was full and the kids and I had to park on a side road at the bottom of hill, quite a ways from the observatory. It was a long hike up the hill with the two kids and a heavy diaper bag. I regretted not bringing a stroller along. After barely surviving the trip up with only some scrapes and bruises on Munchkin, we met up with everyone and went into the observatory. I hadn’t known they had remodeled it since the last time I was there. It was great. I had a fantastic time and so did the kids. Munchkin was was really into it. Dante was a little under the weather but he started feeling better after a while.
After our day at the observatory was over, we headed back to my parent’s house for dinner where we were joined by Alesha, my cousin Carolina and her family. Much playing was had by all the kids. Later we all ate dinner and that was really fun too. Unfortunately we had to leave fairly early because it was a Sunday and I had work the next day. Munchkin went to bed late that day. Alesha did also. She still had some last minute corrections to do on her thesis. She need to turn it in the next day so she could graduate and get her Masters Degree. Especially since, her graduation WAS the next day.
I worked from 7 am to 12:30 pm Monday because Alesha dropped me off and was picking us up to take us to her graduation. It took place in the amphitheater at Universal City Walk. Tired and stressed, I was not looking forward to it. Especially since I was going to be taking care of my very tired little kids who were still recovering from the day before, by myself (or at least till my parents showed up to the graduation). Dante had the sniffles.
Having learned my lesson from the day before, I brought the double stroller with me this time. I walked he kids around City Walk and Munchkin was fascinated. I couldn’t help wondering what she would think if I was to take her to an amusement park. Dante was very sleepy and groggy. We all ate some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I had made for us as we walked around.
I was keeping in touch with my parents the whole time because I didn’t know if I’d be able to handle the kids by myself once we got in the theater. I went in eventually, and I discovered that I couldn’t. Once in the lobby, I took the kids out of the stroller and they were so happy to be free that they were running around everywhere, causing chaos, making people trip all over them and bumping into everyone. Munchkin is now potty trained and when she needs to go, she lets you know. Well, she needed to go, so off I went with the kids the diaper bag and Alesha’s purse (which she left me to look after) to the bathroom where I processed to help my daughter pee while making sure Dante didn’t get into any trouble. It was darn crazy. I wasn’t happy at all. Especially since, I needed to change Dante’s diaper because he had pooped and I needed to go to the bathroom myself. Meanwhile I still hadn’t gotten a seat in the theater because I was waiting for my parents to show up.
Turns out they were in the theater sitting down, right around the corner from where I was at the lobby. After meeting them, I had some much needed help and I went I got to change Dante and when to the potty. Meanwhile the graduation had started and I was missing it all. To make a long story short, half our time was taken making sure the kids where okay and the other was taken trying to see bits of the graduation and listening to bits of the speeches.
We ended up meeting up with all the rest of Alesha’s family when it was all over and Alesha had made plans to go to the Cheesecake Factory restaurant in Pasadena. I was not looking forward to doing that since the kids where already in pretty bad shape and the dinner was scheduled to take place at Dante’s bedtime. Thankfully, my parents offered to take the kids home with them instead of going to the restaurant, which helped a ton. We went to the restaurant and generally had a good time. I say “generally” because around that time I checked my phone only to discover that the assistant director of the show I was on, had given me call and I had missed it. I called him back, only to get his voicemail, so I left a message. The rest of the dinner I was worried about what the call was about and all kinds of horrible things were going through my head. Later I found out that he was just wondering what scenes I was working on so he wouldn’t hand those out to someone else.
We got home late that night after picking up the kids at my parent’s house. I was really beat and not looking forward to another long day, but as you read above, it turned out okay.
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This is the last full week I have to work on the the episode I’m on. Tuesday, my work load doubled. I have more work than I think I can do. Still, I’m going for it. I have to figure out a way to get it all done. Wish me luck.
Okay so, as of the time of this writing, this is the last of the drawings we’ve done of the superhero versus thing. Once again, Tommy drew something I can’t put up on my site so if you want to see it, you have to go CLICK HERE. When he showed me the pencil drawings I was planning to put it up, and then he colored it and added some details that I thought were a bit inappropriate so…
Paul‘s drawing I can’t put up so here’s my last one:
I drew Spider-man (Marvel Comics) Vs. Batman (DC comics). Yeah, this is reeeaaally stretching it. They fight because their main mode of transportation, in their respective comics, is swinging around the city. Which is to say, I was using any excuse to draw these guys together. I couldn’t help myself and gave Batman “Astro Boy” boots.
Interestingly enough, after I finished the drawing and handed a copy to Paul. He told me I should ink it. Paul is really into inking right now. I told him I might but I’d rather start drawing new drawings than keep working on ones I just finished. I then said, I’d probably go back and ink all the other drawings I’d done, just so that I can get some practice in at some point.
The next day, when I got to work, I found this on my desk:
It seems Paul had gotten a bit of extra time and decided to ink my drawing. Not only did he ink it but since he has been obsessing over inking and he’s been studying Michael Golden‘s work, he decided to ink my drawing in Michael Golden‘s style. The thing I found most interesting about the drawing was that he fixed the things I was most annoyed about in my drawing, namely, that the black had pretty much covered up most of the details of the characters. Paul took in upon himself to add a secondary light source when he inked the drawing, adding a new dynamic to it. Only after seeing what he did, did I kick myself over not having thought to do it myself. It was a good choice on his part.
COMIC BOOKS
A kinda of weird thing happened to me this weeked. It started sometime last week. I was listening to a Role-playing game Podcast were in there was and interview of a game designer. I’m not sure which podcast it was or who the designer was, but they were talking to him about his superhero roleplaying game. He mentioned that he had made “stats” of some public domain superheroes and put then in his game. I thought to myself, “Public domain superheroes?” So later in the week, I recalled the interview and decided to look up these superheroes and I found them. About 100 or so Golden Age superheroes that were never copyrighten and that had fallen into the public domain.
I then discovered how there had been attempts over the last ten to twenty years, by different companies to use and revive these character, without much success. After reading the characters’ their bios, I got excited and wanted to do a take of some of these characters of my own.
May 2nd was Free Comicbook Day. I went to the comic store with Dante, my Brother, his wife Deborah and my little nephew Paolo. Among the comics I picked up was a free issue of Savage Dragon by Erik Larsen, and lo and behold, one of these Golden Age public Domain characters was in the comic. That was a pretty big coincidence. Then doing more research, I discovered that these same characters had made their way into Alan Moore‘s hands (of Watchmen fame) a while back and he had written them into one of his Tom Strong comics (issues 11 and 12), which I owned. I took out my copy of the comic and was blown away. I had read the thing before but I didn’t know that the characters had been public domain. Then I discovered that Alex Ross was having a go at these guys too in his Dynamite comics run, currently on sale. So it seems everyone knows about these guys and I’m really behind the times.
In any case, I think that’s pretty cool. It makes me want to try to do something with them. I think I have an idea for one of them already. We’ll see if I can actually get off my lazy bottom and do it.
FAMILY
My mom got mad at me because I forgot to write about my nephew Paolo’s baptism last week. I had forgotten all about it. Work is really stressing me out right now. It’s almost all I think about. It was a nice baptism. Hurray for Paolo! She also got mad because I didn’t draw a cartoon about it. Well, I only have so much time in the day. I’m working on a commission right now that’s taking up all my drawing time. I wish I could do some cartoons but I can’t.
In fact, I wish I had the time to draw a cartoon about what happened THIS weekend. My Godmother’s daughter Lili, her husband John and their daughter Stella came over to visit from out of state. Stella is the same age as Munchkin and they are both very energetic little girls. I was really excited about their meeting. I wanted Munchkin to meet Stella so bad. I’d seen and read a lot about her from the photos that Lili sends my mom. Well, I won’t go into much detail right now because maybe at some point I might have the time to do that. What I WILL say is that the day was full of fodder for cartoons I don’t have the time to draw. Here’s hoping I can at least get ONE done at some point in the next couple of weeks.
Love you Lili, John and Stella! It was great seeing you.
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