THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Well, it seems that the “special project” I worked on a few weeks back has gotten the green light, so it’s moving forward.  I’m currently doing Character Layout work on it.  I’m not sure how this is going to effect my revision work next week.  I haven’t done Layout in a while and it’s a LOT of work in a very different way than doing boards.  I  hope I can get my work done by the end of the week, just in case.

In the meantime, at least it seems this thing I’m working on will get seen at some point.

VIDEO/WRITING/BLOGS

Disney artist Chris Oatley from at the Paper Wings podcast has posted a blog post called: How To Lose A Fan In Ten Seconds: The Common Flaws Of A Comic-Con Pitch. It’s a post on how to best pitch your story ideas and the pitfall you should avoid.  It also contains this video:

Go to the article to download the pdf of the tips as well as a more organized written version of the info in the video.  Also, leave a comment for them if you found his information useful.

MOVIES

My wife Alesha and I got to do something we don’t often get to do now a days, namely, go to the movies.  Alesha REALLY wanted to go see THE HUNGER GAMES, which we both enjoyed quite a bit.  I wasn’t as gung ho as she was but I went along because she was really excited about it.  Neither one of us had read the books but we both thought the premise was interesting.  This isn’t to say that the premise was original, especially since there was a Japanese movies, years ago, called BATTLE ROYALE, with a similar premise. But THE HUNGER GAMES was a lot less twisted.

In my mind, what really set THE HUNGER GAMES apart from BATTLE ROYALE was that it wasn’t ABOUT the actual games.  It almost felt as if the games themselves where secondary to the set up.  This isn’t to say that the games weren’t interesting. It’s just that without taking all the time the movie did in setting up the characters and the universe before showing the games, I don’t think it would have been as good of a movie.  In fact, it’s  the lack of set up that makes BATTLE ROYALE much less interesting. Also, BATTLE ROYALE was much more gruesome, while HUNGER GAMES, which also dealt with a similar subject matter, didn’t relish in any gore.

I found myself thinking of stories like 1984 and BRAVE NEW WORLD  while watching THE HUNGER GAMES. When watching BATTLE ROYALE, I wondered why I was watching it at all. Because of this, I concluded THE HUNGER GAMES was BATTLE ROYALE done right.

I will note one observation that came to me as I watched HUNGER GAMES. Much has been said about the commentary this story makes on society when it comes to materialism, media, and the devaluing of human life.  I mean, part of the story is about how a desensitized culture gets together to watch young people kill each other for entertainment.  This works very well in book form, since it’s written words on a page, without the reader partaking in the entertainment in the same way the people in the story are. The thing is, I couldn’t help but notice the irony of sitting in a movie theater and paying to see exactly the same entertainment that the these “bad people” where tuning in to watch.  As movie goers, we participate in and condone the entertainment put forth by the story as wrong and bad, when we’re entertained by the games ourselves.  Because of this, I think the movie adds a extra element of reflection, that the story in book format didn’t.

What do you think? Am I off on this point?

ART

Don’t know what to say here except that I’m slowly narrowing the gap and getting closer to finishing page 7 on my script. I think next week I’ll be “off script”. What I’ll have to board will be something new that I have no script or treatment to work off of.  It will be completely off the cuff.

I’m actually excited about it. For now though, here are my latest thumbnails.

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