ANIMATION – Can the General Public Tell the Difference Between 2D animation and CG animation?
The Simpsons Quote:
Homer: This place looks expensive. I feel like I’m wasting a fortune just standing here. I better make the most of it. [Homer burps]
Something has come to my attention that’s kind of odd to me working in the animation industry, but I found this to be relatively true. I’ve asked on my Twitter page about this and my Google+ page and I found a few things out, but it’s still inconclusive.
So here is what bothers me.
The general public, the non-animation aficionados or geeks or fans or employees don’t really know the difference between 2D animation and computer generated animation.
That’s what this post is video/post is all about. You can watch the video or read the transcription below:
It all Started at Figure Drawing
I was speaking with a friend of mine at figure drawing at work. On Tuesdays, we go figure drawing. We got to talking and one of the things that my friend, Richie Chavez, said kind of struck me as odd, which was, that the general audience doesn’t know the difference between CG and 2D animation.
I didn’t believe him. I’m like no, that can’t be right.
An Eye Opening Conversation at a Kid’s Birthday Party
But then I went to a birthday party for a family friends’ kid. Now this is a family friend. They know what I do for a living, okay? They know I work in an animated cartoon.
At this children’s birthday party they were showing The Owls of Ga’Hoole and Lilo & Stitch. That was what was on TV. And while they were watching Lilo & Stitch I decided to go up to one of my friends.
It was his child’s birthday. They were watching the cartoon. And I went up to him and I asked him so, do you know how this is done? Do you know the difference between the hand-drawn 2D stuff and CG? And he turns to me and he says,
“Well, now that you mention it, I kind of have an idea that there is a difference, but I’ve only recently become aware of it,” And I asked him,
“This cartoon, Lilo & Stitch, CG or 2D?” And he’s like,
“I’m not sure,” I mean seriously, he didn’t know. He did not know the difference between hand-drawn.
Explaining the Difference
I told him one is, you know, a computer generated puppet that you move around. There’s more to it than that, but it’s generally, the gist of it is that you have a computer generated puppet and you move him a little bit and then you take the picture and you move him a little bit and take the picture.
Sort of like that. It’s not really how it happens, right? But I just kind of wanted to get his head in, thinking that way.
And then I told him in 2D, you do the same thing but with drawing. You hand draw the thing and then you put it under the camera. You take a picture and then you do the other drawing. You take a picture. Then once you have 24 drawings of those or 12 drawings of those exposed twice, for 24 frames there’s one second and the same kind of goes for CG.
Sometimes they go with 30 frames a second, sometimes with 60 frames a second. But I was trying to explain to him the difference between a hand-drawn thing and a CG thing and the difference in the way it looks.
What’s Your Experience with Non-animation Fans?
By looking at the movie, you should be able to tell the difference. So I guess my question is, is your experience the same as his? Can you tell the difference?
When you’re a fan of a thing you tend to be really into the thing. So you kind of know more than the general public.
But if you are part of the general public or better yet ask your mom that’s not in to this stuff. Ask your spouse, whoever it is that is not into this stuff. Ask your friends who are not into this stuff. Ask them if they know the difference between 2D and CG animation.
I would love to know the answer because if you are a fan then you are not the person I want to hear from. I want to hear from the people who aren’t fans, because I would love to know if they can tell the difference.
So yeah, leave a comment at the bottom of this blog.
This is the sequel to Man of Steel. I would have liked another stand alone Superman movie before they introduced other Superheroes, so we could flesh out Superman’s character a bit more.
Batman is arguably, more popular, he’s going to overshadow Superman in his own sequel.
Normally you’d think that if Superman and Batman fought, it’s no brainer, Superman wins right? Well, no. For the last 30 years, just about every time Superman and Batman fought, Batman would win. So…yeah.
If they keep to this tradition then Superman would lose to Batman in his own movie. That would suck.
I was going to do a video about why all this bothered me but then I saw the video below. This guy says EXACTLY what I was thinking and feeling about this whole thing. EXACTLY. It’s amazing.
He cusses a lot so be warned. Oh, the only thing I don’t agree with is that Christian Bale should play Batman. I actually don’t want him to, otherwise, I agree with what this guy says. He basically said it all for me.
What do you think?
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“I’m not normally a praying man, but if you’re up there, please save me, Superman!” ~ Homer
So I’m a big Superman nerd. I’m a big Superman fan. I love Superman. And I thought I’d give you my two cents on Man of Steel and all the things around it and all the arguments I’ve been getting into about the movie.
You can either watch the video or read the transcription. That said, there’s A LOT of links and videos below. LOTS more. This video only covers SOME of what I’ve got to say. So scroll down for the rest of it:
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My Favorite Superman Movies
Now, Man of Steel and Superman. Like I said, I’m a big fan of Superman. I love Superman. My favorite Superman movie is All-Star Superman.
What? It’s not the Christopher Reeve Superman that everybody else— the Donner Superman— what’s going on? What is wrong with you?
No, All-Star Superman is my favorite Superman movie, okay? You now know my tastes and where I’m coming from and how different my tastes are. My second favorite Superman movie is Superman vs. the Elite. I love that movie and the story in it.
I like the Donner movie just fine. I liked watching Smallville. I watched all 10 years of Smallville. I’ve watched and own all the episodes of the Bruce Timm Superman animated cartoon. I watched Superman in Justice League and Justice League Unlimited and in Young Justice and in Legion of Super Heroes, all those animated cartoons.
I’ve seen every single animated movie that they’ve made of Superman. And on top of that I also happen to read the comics as well.
What I DIDN’T and DID Want to See in Man of Steel
Okay, so I go in to watch Man of Steel. Here are the things I do not want to see. Let me start with that. What I don’t want to see from Man of Steel going into the theater is:
The Donner movie. I do not want to see the Richard Donner Superman movie redone. I want this new movie to have nothing to do with the Donner movie. I don’t want the actor to look like Christopher Reeve. I don’t want to see Lex Luthor being a big joke. That’s great for the Donner movie. It worked great for the silver age. Fine. I didn’t want to wait half an hour before I got to see Superman or an hour before I got to see Superman because he’s living his life in Smallville. So here’s another thing I didn’t want to see.
I did not want to see Smallville The Movie. I did not want to see young Clark growing up, pining over Lana, having relationships with his teenage friends, growing up on a farm, discovering his powers. I saw that. It was called Smallville. It went on for 10 years. I don’t want to see that again in a movie. It’s been done.
So already, two things I did not want to see from this movie, Smallville: The Movie and the Richard Donner version of the movie remade. What did I want to see?
I wanted to see Superman punch somebody in the face. I wanted to see Superman have superpowers and fly around and have super fights and be super. That’s what I wanted to see. I wanted to see that Superman. If he was Clark Kent sometimes fine. But I just wanted him to be mostly in the suit being Superman, fighting giant gorillas or whatever almost like an updated version of like the Fleischer shorts where it was basically just an excuse for Superman to be super. That’s all I wanted to see in this movie.
So I go into the movie and guess what I got? Pretty much everything I wanted to get from this movie. To the point where it was almost too much of everything I wanted.
So in a lot of ways be careful what you wish for. On the other hand, I can’t complain because I got it everything I wanted and I got too much of what I wanted which was okay with me. I left happy.
So if you haven’t seen the movie I am going to spoil it now. Stop reading if you haven’t seen the movie. You can come back to this later, but at least now you know two things.
One, I liked it and
it’s not Smallville: The Movie and it’s not like the Richard Donner movie.
Now that you know that, you can go watch it and then come back and read the rest of this.
The Spoilers Begin
I’ve gotten into all kinds of arguments about this movie with friends who basically wanted this to be the Richard Donner movie. And because it doesn’t hit every beat it’s no good.
It’s like a bunch of people who grew up with Batman: The Movie from the 60s and then going to watch the Tim Burton version or the Chris Nolan version and deciding that it’s too dark and where’s the zap and the pow? Right? I have a problem with people that keep trying to shove the Donner movie into this movie because that’s not what it is.
Superman, the Dick Donner movie, was done in the 70s. It’s done. Superman in the comics has moved on from that, gone past the silver age into the bronze age, into the iron age, into the modern age, into The New 52.
He’s a different character. In its trappings and the way it feels there’s lots of different stories. Man of Steel felt a lot more like a comic by the name of Superman: Earth One . The first volume felt a lot like this. It had a lot of similarities to it. In Superman: Earth One Vol 1, Clark was even pushed into becoming Superman because of an alien invasion just like in the movie.
What I Didn’t Like
A few things I didn’t like about the movie and very there are only a few.
Yes, there are plot holes as big as a truck but I’m going to link below to some articles that defend the movie.
This Superman movie was great, BUT I’m also going to link to this hilarious critique of the movie done in almost a MAD Magazine style and it’s hilarious. There’s just a lot of, kind of goofy stuff about the movie that just kind of doesn’t work, but that’s okay. I completely ignore those things because Superman got to have super fights in this movie.
But the one thing that really, really, really bothered me was Jonathan Kent and his portrayal. And I’m going to link to two really great videos from Smallville, that really shows what I would have liked Jonathan and Clark’s relationship to have been like in Man of Steel:
And here’s one of my all time favorite scenes from Smallville where Clark talks to Jonathan’s ghost years after his death:
And that’s me comparing Man of Steel to that Smallville, but here’s the thing about Jonathan that I thought kind of needed to be there. I wanted him to be much more supportive and less paranoid.
It’s okay to be guarded and trying to protect Clark, but I did not want him to be so negative to the point where it was as if he did not believe in Clark and did not believe in his son. And it was just like, what? You saved a bus full of kids, maybe you should have let them die. I mean, really? And it’s like, “yeah, don’t save anybody, ever.” Really?
You could have at least had him go,
“Well, uh, you know, find a way to do it without being seen,” or something like that, right? But it was really cold. It was a very cold portrayal of the character who is traditionally very, very, very supportive.
And the way he ends up dying was lame. It was dumb. Everything, everything that Jonathan did in that scene in the hurricane before he dies he could have allowed Clark to do and he wouldn’t have had to use his powers.
Jonathan wouldn’t have had to die. Clark couldn’t die. It was a win-win. It felt so forced and lame. There wasn’t a good reason why Clark shouldn’t have been doing what Jonathan was doing while Jonathan protected his wife.
The Two Biggest Critiques of the Movie
The two big critiques of the movie is Superman kills Zod and Superman doesn’t save people while he punches Zod into buildings. Besides the giant plot holes that you can drive trucks through, that one is the main complaint. The the death toll and Superman kills Zod.
First of all, let’s not forget that the Tim Burton Batmankilled a ton of people and eventually tied a gargoyle around the Joker’s leg and threw him off a building. So yeah, Batman in that movie killed people.
In the Chris Nolan version he indirectly kills Ra’s al Ghul, you could argue. He didn’t save him, right? But he has a code against killing mostly because at least, my logic is that, he experienced murder. He knows what killing is like. He understands the pain that death and killing somebody leaves, what it can do.
In the Man of Steel this Clark Kent doesn’t. In Man of Steel, you don’t get a fully formed Superman until perhaps near the end of the movie when he’s destroying the drone. Perhaps that is the fully formed Superman we were waiting for and he really only has a few lines of dialogue.
In the rest of the movie, Superman is not complete. He is not Superman. Just because he’s wearing the suit doesn’t make him Superman. It just makes him Superman in training.
So, the first time he’s ever let loose was on Zod’s face.
“You think you can threaten my MOTHER!” and he starts whaling on him, right? He’s never been in a real fight. He’s always been holding back. So he starts getting into a fight with a bunch of Kyptonians.
He knocks them into an empty place. They knock him back into Smallville. And then he has a big fight, it’s all he can do to be fighting much less saving people. He can barely save himself, right? He’s barely trying to hold on and do what he can.
Same with Zod. He fights Zod. He punches Zod into outer space. Zod comes back and knocks him back into Smallville. I don’t know if it was Smallville or Metropolis, I would have to see the movie again. But the point is he knocks Zod into space, tried to get clear him of the crowds and the places and Zod takes him right back.
You could argue that Zod strategically picks this, Metropolis, to fight in because he’s a tactician. Superman is not. Superman is not thinking and he’s knocking, punching Zod across into buildings and stuff because he’s not thinking. He’s just fighting Zod.
He’s trying to survive. He’s trying to deal with the matter at hand. He is not Superman. He doesn’t think the way Superman thinks yet because he hasn’t been in a situation like this. He ends up killing Zod in an impossible situation.
Zack Snyder has said that the reason why they put that into the movie even though originally it wasn’t, Zod was supposed to be sent back in the Phantom Zone with all the other Kryptonians, was because he wanted to show the reasons why Clark doesn’t kill, why Superman doesn’t kill.
He basically killed the last Kryptonian. He understands the pain of what he did. He doesn’t want to ever go through it again.
The flaw, of course, being that he didn’t get enough chance to grieve about it. We never got to see him really, truly process it and grieve. It just kind of— the movie turned happy too quickly, so you didn’t get that effect.
But that was the logic behind it. I was okay with that logic, as long as you pay it off in two ways in the next movie:
He makes sure that the next super fight he has, he tries not to have the same thing happen again to Metropolis, and
He doesn’t kill again.
It sets up Lex Luthor great. It sets him up as the savior of Metropolis who put Metropolis back together after the two aliens destroyed it. It creates a great antagonism.
So I think that, to me, as long as it gets addressed in the next movie, it would make it okay. There’s nothing I can think of, unless they put more flashbacks with Jonathan, that can fix Jonathan at this point. I thought Jonathan was really poorly written.
The Stuff I Really Liked
Overall, I loved Man of Steel. I loved it. I thought it was great. I had a lot of fun watching it, except for Jonathan Kent.
I liked Jor-El being an action hero. I liked how he was a maverick, so maybe he was trained to fight by Zod.
I liked how Clark got his suit. Where did that suit come from? Come on, man, where did the food come from in Star Trek? Replicators, right? Who’s to say that there’s no replicator room or was an ancient piece of armor or the armor can’t be created by the machine run by Jor-El? I don’t have any problems with that stuff.
I don’t mind Lois immediately pretty much knowing who Superman is from the very beginning. Not having the traditional Lois doesn’t know that Clark is Superman thing. Yeah, let’s skip that. Go straight to the other thing. Because if Smallville has taught us anything, it’s that if you don’t know Clark’s secret, you are pretty much a useless character in the show. And you look like a big dope because you can’t help Superman out.
So yeah, I liked Man of Steel. I thought it was great.
I think you should read the comics to get acclimated if you only know the Donner movie. Nostalgia doesn’t make Man of Steel bad. It just makes you nostalgic.
If you liked the Donner movie, buy it and watch it. But if you want something else, go watch Man of Steel. It’s a different movie. It’s a different take on Superman. It’s still Superman. It’s just not the fully formed Superman that flies out of the fortress of solitude in the Donner movie fully formed. We’re watching the actual formation in this movie.
Some Last Thoughts
All right, I’m sure you disagree. There’s many of you who disagree. Chime in. I don’t mind.
Oh, if you don’t like how long those fights took there’s a video of a very well choreographed fight that is very, very similar to that fight. I put it down below. Go watch it.
One more thing, somebody on Facebook wrote this about the movie:
I had some problems with the movie, but at the end of the day I’m willing to cut Snyder a little slack. He only had to bring the most iconic and difficult to adapt superhero to the screen for a 21st century audience, satisfy the nerdboys like us who were going to dissect everything he did, and bring in the casual fans who they really need to make the movie profitable. As Hollywood movies have ballooned in costs, this one cost right at about 450 million to make and market, I’m sure some artistic choices were sacrificed because he had the studio up his ass. Let’s not forget that The Dark Knight was the second film of the trilogy, after Nolan had established that he could sell his Batman Universe and was given some leeway from the suits. Batman Begins was nowhere near as ambitious. Textbook origin story.
All in all MOS satisfied my summer movie requirements, and like you said Graham the effects were very well done. And there are much worse superhero movies in the Cosmos. Green Lantern anyone…
All right so, I think that pretty much sums it up. And those are pretty much my feelings, too. Give it some slack. All right. That’s my incredibly long rant on Superman.
Superman having an epic battle in metropolis, destroying the place and punching villains through buildings is nothing new. It’s just new to some. Case in point:
Seemed familiar right? A lot like this? (Don’t watch if you haven’t seen the movie):
And here’s the cover art for Action Comics #3 of the New 52, showing how happy people are at Superman for being an alien that tends to destroy their city. Pay close attention to the newspaper subheading the guy is holding at the bottom of the drawing:
And let’s not forget that Superman kills Zod in Superman 2:
I don’t know about you but I think the Man of Steel version had more of a reason. I mean, Zod was helpless in Superman 2.
Also, as flawed as Man of Steel was, at least it didn’t have “what the heck?!” moments like this:
Also, the first episode of Superman the animated series from the 90s had a very action adventure Jor-El as well:
Hi. Today I’m going to talk to you about having worked on Lisa the Vegetarian. You can watch the video below or read the transcription:
How Much Do I Remember?
It was season seven directed by Mark Kirkland. I’ve been asked to talk about this. Apparently it was a topic of discussion in the NoHomers.net site. To be quite honest I don’t remember working on the show in such a way that it is a clear experience in my mind as to what I did and how I did it. I do remember having watched the show recently, in fact only two things or areas in the show that I worked on…well, three.
The first when I was watching it I’m like,
“Hey wait a minute I did that scene and I did this section.”
B.Y.O.B.B.
It was when Homer comes in with the B.Y.O.B.B. little note with the pig note. And Bart says something about cartoons are about getting hit in the head and all this other stuff, after having watch the Itchy and Scratchy cartoon. And then Homer slams the door open on him that was all me.
I remember having worked on that show, having done that scene and doing the Bart acting. There’s a lot of hand acting in it.
At the time I was trying really hard to animate and really act out stuff. So you’ll notice in that scene where Bart is talking about the cartoons then he walks over and he’s using his hands a lot. I use my hands a lot.
But Bart’s using his hands a lot and you see him moving around and moving his hands. And to me having worked on that scene it looks so spastic like I was trying so hard to act. I was acting. So yeah, I over emoted.
And then Homer comes in with his note and then I remember just basically tracing over the model sheet for that scene, for that pig invite prop and then just adding some dimension to it and adding Homers hand around it I think.
“That was a typo,” you know, his little gag.
You Can’t Win Friends with Salad
This doesn’t look like my art. I think someone revised my drawings.
So I do remember that definitely. And you don’t win friends with salad. I don’t remember if I did that scene or not. I believe that I did bits. I worked on some of it but not all of it. So that is vague.
I don’t recall all of it. I mean I would’ve remembered – it seemed like something that would be something really involved, a pain in the butt and that I would of remembered working on. But that section was mine so it must’ve been me. I just don’t remember now.
Lisa Eats a Hot Dog
The other scene that I do remember working on was in act three where Lisa goes and finally gives in and she eats a tofu dog in the Kwik E Mart. Apu tells her that it’s a tofu dog. I remember working on the scene where she sees the hot dog.
I remember working on the scene where she grab the hot dog and that close-up of her with the dog I remember drawing that. I remembered drawing the view of the hot dog coming over to you. And then it would just get bigger.
I remember doing that scene and taking a bite and eating it and she says, “There I did it! Are you happy?” I remember doing that. I think it was a match cut and it was a pullout and it was a huge pain – it was very technical and a pain in the neck.
I think that’s where I stopped. I don’t think I did the rest of it. I don’t remember doing the part with or did I do the part where they open the door to the non-alcoholic beer? I may have worked on that scene to and then they go upstairs.
Revisions
So those are the only two scenes I remember working on. I remember working on revisions in the earlier scene in the barbecue where everybody was eating. I did do some revisions on some characters there. I believe I did some revisions on Wiggum.
“I can’t seem to get up my own energy”…or I forgot what it was.
I do believe I did a little bit of that scene or there was some kind of revisions that needed to be done. I did not remember anything in act one that I may have worked on.
I Was a Rookie at the Time
You’ve got to understand that at the time I was very new still. I had just gotten rehired so I was still very much a rookie and they weren’t giving me a whole lot to do. My artwork in those scenes I did; those characters just weren’t as good, well drawn, as they ought to have been.
So yeah that’s my recollection. That’s pretty much what I can remember working on Lisa the Vegetarian. Good times. I like watching the old shows. They are a lot of fun to watch and sometimes they trigger my memory.
Want More Simpsons Info?
So that’s it for me today. Sign up for my newsletter.
I tend to talk a little bit more about the Simpson on my newsletter than on my blog generally so if you like that go ahead and sign up. Also you’ll get a free copy of my Art of Book. It’s a digital download and if you like it enough maybe you can purchase the print copy on Amazon once I get it up there. It’s coming soon.
I’ll let you know on my blog once it is ready to purchase through Amazon when it happens. Okay and that’s all from me today.
THE SIMPSONS NEWS – Simpsonized Game of Thrones
Artist Adrien Noterdaem tends to Simpsonize a lot of characters from pop culture. Here’s his version of the Simpsonized Game of Thrones characters.
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WRITING – Four Things to Think About When Writing a Novel Part 4 of 4
Simpsons Quote:
Bart:“Hey, writers! The Da Vinci Code just sold another hundred copies!” (loud moan from the writers).
Hi. Welcome to video four of “Things to Think About When You’re Writing a Novel”. These are four things to think about when you’re writing a novel. Today we’re going to be talking about dialogue tags and I’m here with my wife, Alesha Escobar.
You can either watch the video or read the transcription below:
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About Dialogue Tags
Luis: I’ve been editing my wife’s third book out of the trilogy, which is of The Gray Tower series. One of them…
And yeah, so we’re going to be talking about dialogue tags today and what do I mean by dialogue tags?
Alesha: Basically, he said/she said after a character speaks.
Luis: Yeah. I personally don’t like them. And I just kind of became aware of them in the way that they work without them after I listened to author Michael Stackpole, which – who used to be a – what’s the word. A host of the podcast The Dragon Page where he often gave a lot of writing advice, and one of the writing advice – one of the things of advice that he gave about dialogue tags is this: he’d rather see a character described doing some kind of acting or action and then in the way that a dialogue is said. For example, and here’s like an exercise that he gave out and I thought that it was really interesting. If you could write a dialogue between two characters and the way you write them indicates cadence or accents or expression or emotes and you can just through dialogue know who is talking without having to have a dialogue tag then – I mean, that’s a good exercise that helps make dialogue flow and feel a little bit more natural, right. But it’s just an exercise that in and of itself.
Another exercise he said was what if you were sitting say across the room in an office and you were looking at two people having a conversation between a wall of glass. Like here’s a glass and another wall of glass. You couldn’t hear what they were actually saying at all, but you can tell exactly what everybody was saying and how they were saying it just by the acting and the body language. So if somebody was mad or angry or upset, just through the description of their body language in and of itself you can tell what the conversation might be about, what it’s possibly about, what they’re acting talking about, what the conversation might be about.
So if you’re that good of a description – if you have that much description in the character’s body language then a bit of dialogue might very well be clear at least in an emotional level.
So that’s what I – so when I look and I read through Alesha’s book and the manuscripts I try to find places where you can get rid of the dialogue tags, but here’s the thing…she doesn’t agree with me.
Alesha: I don’t agree with you, Luis. And I’m going to tell you why. Okay, first of all, when you have more than two people speaking in a scene you’re going to have to use tags at some point just to indicate who is speaking. Or if someone who has spoken before has stopped speaking and letting others speak and then they rejoin the conversation I think that’s acceptable. It’s still kind of I guess you would say standard to have dialogue tags, but I do partially agree with you in the sense that it’s not always needed like just straight down the line and I think that’s what you’re trying to say. And there can be times where you would just use body language or description to communicate to the reader who’s speaking and maybe even how they’re speaking and indicating their tone but, you know, I still use he said/she said and I think it’s fine. I think it’s fine, Luis.
Luis: Again, I would much rather read a book that doesn’t. I’ve become hyper aware of it. I just think the pros works better and it feels better somehow. I wish I had the book with me but it’s upstairs with the baby and I don’t want to wake him up. It’s a book called Daemon. I guess the author’s last name is Suarez – I
forgot. I forgot his first name. But I’ll link to it on below but, yeah, the – it’s his first novel and the book is like this big monstrous book like that and there are scenes where there’s a room full in a meeting and people are talking back and forth and there’s six, seven character having a discussion and throughout the entire book, if you look through the entire book, he never once uses any dialogue tags in the entire book. And everybody that has some kind of dialogue is clear who is speaking and I thought, see, it can be done. Like that’s – and it really – you don’t notice it. You just don’t notice that he didn’t use any dialogue tags. I mean, after I read that I’m like, see, it’s possible. It’s possible. It totally works. I sometimes just – it’s just much more difficult not to do the dialogue tags. I think that’s the biggest problem and if you don’t do it well it gets really confusing. So, I don’t know. I mean, that’s what – you know…
Alesha: I think if someone can write without using dialogue tags then go for it, but…
Luis:Well let’s see in the Tower’s Alchemist a section where dialogue tags weren’t used and how it would work.
Alesha: Okay.
Luis:Do you want me to read it?
Alesha: Start right here.
Luis:Okay. So here’s a little bit. I don’t even know who’s talking this time but it says:
“You had to go all the way up north?”
Ken nodded. “So I get there, and I find out that the guy had been guillotined.”
“Ouch…” I frowned. I supposed the SS wanted to break up the monotony of firing squads.
“But I found out he had left three notebooks of ciphers with his assistant before being arrested.”
“Where was the assistant?”
“Erm…in jail, but he was in Mantes.”
“Wait, didn’t you start off in that area?”
“I know, makes you want to punch something, doesn’t it?”
Bernard laughed. “He’ll probably end up punching me.”
“You two know each other?” My gaze went between Ken and Bernard.
“Do I know him?” Bernard shot Ken a quick glance. “If it weren’t for me, Drake wouldn’t know how to make it down the street in Paris.”
So, I mean, the whole time you didn’t use any dialogue tags and it was just like: “Bernard laughed,” you have, “my gaze went to Ken and Bernard” after her dialogue. You know, “I know him, ‘Bernard shot Ken a glance.'”
So that’s kind of like what I’m talking about. Like the entire time you tag it without specifically saying “said” or “I said” or whatever and you just add like a moment of action. And it kind of works like a dialogue tag only you’re doing it with a moment of action. I turned, Bernard laughed, he looked up, scratch – I don’t know. Scratched his head, you know, something. And so, it can be done. It’s just so much, much, much more difficult to do it that way and it can be confusing if you don’t do it well.
Okay. Well you got both our points of views and this is real obvious, so.
Alesha: Let us know what you think.
Luis:Yeah. Yeah. Right now the Tower’s Alchemist is free for the Kindle at the time of this video. I don’t know, it may not be free later on but right now it is.
Luis:Okay. And I’ll see you guys next time. I’m not even going to plug my newsletter where you can download my free book. Go to my blog and find out how you can do that. All right. So we’ll see you next week from Luis.
Alesha: Bye.
Luis:Bye.
VIDEOS – Superman vs. Thor
I thought this was fun. For a fan movie with no budget (?), this is pretty darn good. Enjoy:
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The Simpsons Quote:
, Clark was even pushed into becoming Superman because of an alien invasion just like in the movie.
. I guess the author’s last name is Suarez – I 
