THE SIMPSONS NEWS
Last week was my first week doing story reel work and I didn’t really get a lot done. Mostly because I had to stay home to take care of baby Ambrose who got sick. This week has been really hectic for me because now I have to work hard to catch up on the hours of work I missed. It’s been a bit stressful. Since I haven’t done any story reel work since Show 1 (The Fool Monty) of this year, I had to remember what the job entailed and what I needed to do, on top of everything else. It’s been a busy week.
In other news, Banksy put up the rough boards he did that I used to work off of in order to do the final version of the story boards for his Couch Gag, on his site (CLICK HERE). Take a look:
I wish I could put what I did you could compare.
FAMILY
I stayed at home this week on Thursday and Friday to take care of baby Ambrose. He caught a cold or a flu or something. I’m still not sure exactly what it was. He had a temperature, diarrhea, sneezing, and a runny nose. To make things worse, he’s also teething. I’m not sure if he had a temperature because he was teething or because he was sick. He definitely didn’t have any energy at all. I made sure to give him plenty to drink and let him sleep as much as he could. I felt so bad for the little guy. He was miserable.
By Sunday he was all better. You have no idea what a relief it was to see him back to his normal self.
ROLE PLAYING GAMES
Played some more Dungeons and Dragons 4E this weekend at our house. I also ran another mini adventure for Elizabeth and Dante. This has me thinking about role playing and specifically, “Game Mastering”. In other words, running adventures. Specifically for Elizabeth who keeps asking me to run games for her. It’s fun to do, but last time I thought it was a bit tedious so now I’ve got to come up with a way to not only make interesting for her, but I have to make it interesting for myself. It’s tricky since she’s only four and doesn’t exactly go out of her way to write a back story for her character for me to work off of.
Coincidentally, on one of the game sites I usually go to, Purple Pawn, had a article on a book on Game mastering that could be downloaded for free online. It’s distributed under the creative commons license. I downloaded it and it’s actually really good. I recommend it for anyone who is thinking about game mastering a role playing game. It teaches you all you need to know to go about doing it. There’s a lot there that I agree with. Check it out:
(For those of you coming in late to these posts, if you want to read what my project is about, CLICK HERE to learn about the general world the story takes place in, and CLICK HERE if you want to know the story itself.)
Below is an excerpt of what I wrote the last two weeks, as set up for what I’m writing about THIS week, in case you’re interested in following along with more depth:
Right now, the theory of story that I like to use to flesh out my plot is the DRAMATICA theory. Unfortunately the DRAMATICA theory is so complicated and convoluted, that I can’t really sum it up in a nut shell. If you want to get an idea of what DRAMATICA is all about, click the link below:
As I did the last two weeks, I’ll put up the DRAMATICA Table of Story Elements in order for you to understand what I’m talking about and so you can follow along. For a clearer pdf version of the chart (download chart now):
I’ve decided to start breaking down each scene. The Robert McKee book (Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting) suggests I write out a one or two sentence statement, describing what happens in each scene and how it turns on cards. I don’t have any cards so I’ll just type them out. The McKee book also suggests I write what part of the story each scene fulfills. I’ll see if I can do that too.
The DRAMATICA system suggests Elements that will be in conflict in each of the scenes I write. Here’s the thing, DRAMATICA also suggests that if I’m writing a short story (which I am) I shouldn’t breakdown the story as far as I have. In other words, I SHOULDN’T breakdown my story into the Elements level the way I’m going to do just now. I think it’s because you can’t possible stick 24 scenes into a short story. Okay, then I’m going to see how many Element comparison I CAN put in and be satisfied with that.
First, I’m going to look at what I have already written as the four Story Throughlines for Act 1. Using that as a guide I’m going to then start breaking the scenes down for Act 1.
Act 1:
OVERALL STORY THROUGHLINE
Memories- The main character, remembering how good the hot dogs at a certain hot dog vendor are, uses the money he struggled to get, to buy one. While always being cautious of the memories of all the times he’s been attacked by the Sorcerers that are after him.
Memories ======> Type 2. Impulsive Responses- Not realizing that those very Sorcerers have spotted him and remember what he has done to their fellow Sorcerers. The Sorcerers confront the main character who knows what’s coming from the memory of his past experience. They’re hatred of him cause such anger inside them that they impulsively attack him.
MAIN CHARACTER STORY THROUGHLINE
Obtaining– Rob has happily obtained the Hot Dog he’s been wanting for a day and a half. He looks forward to eating in peace and quiet.
Obtaining ======> Type 2. Gathering Information– As he sits down to eat and is confronted by the three Sorcerers. He tries to find out from them, what he could do, in order to have them give him a few minutes to eat his lunch in peace and quite. When they tell him, he gladly does it.
IMPACT CHARACTER STORY THROUGHLINE
Conceiving an Idea– The Lead Sorcerers tries to convince Rob that Rob is evil. That the Sorcerers are truly the just and justified between the two of them.
Conceiving an Idea ======> Type 2. Developing a Plan– Rob dismisses the idea so the Lead Sorcerer then puts forth that he should let himself be imprisoned by the Sorcerers, so that he could be watched and not become what the prophesy says he will.
MAIN vs IMPACT CHARACTER STORY THROUGHLINE
Past– The Main Character and the Lead Sorcerer share a collective conflicting past. Many of Sorcerers the Lead Sorcerer knew, have been beaten by the Main Character. The main Character knows who the Lead Sorcerer is (or at least his type) based on his passed dealings with other Sorcerers. While the Lead Sorcerers knows the main by the reputation of those who have fought him in the past. This instills tension between the two parties. Especially since there is an incomplete understanding of what REALLY happened in the past that the Main Character attempts to clarify without success.
The Past ======> Type 2. How things are Changing– Their collective negative past immediately lead to distrust, hatred and aggression. Especially since their past is so misunderstood, which leads the Lead Sorcerers into attacking the Main Character.
Act 1 Themes: False/Suspicion
Scene 1 (Equity/Projection)
Rob waits for his hot dog impatiently as his stomach grumbles. Once he gets it he sits down and to eat it. He decides to share it with is White Raven.He’s about to cut it in half when he sees the Sorcerers coming toward him and gets bummed out, knowing he’s in for a bad time. (Introducing the characters)
Scene 2 (Inertia/Order)
The Sorcerers confront Rob about his past and his future. Rob defends by explaining the circumstances behind those moments. If left alone nothing would happen. They try to convince him to turn himself over to the Sorcerers so they can lock him up and keep him from becoming evil. Rob tells them he has no intention of taking over the world. The lead Sorcerer tries to convince Rob that his cause is just. Rob just want to be left alone. The Sorcerers won’t do that. Rob asks if he could at least have ten minutes to finish his hot dog. They discuss it among themselves and grant him ten minutes on the condition he hand over his weapon. (inciting incident)
Scene 3 (Speculation/Inequity)
Rob hands over his weapon believing the Sorcerers will keep their word leaving him out numbered and without protection.The Sorcerers laugh at the weapon and throw it in the bushes.Just as he’s about to cut the hot dog they attack him. (First Act climax)
Well, I was only able to create three scenes. It’s suppose to be eight scenes per Act but I couldn’t fit anything else in. To be honest, I don’t know if I broke thing down into scenes or just broke down ONE scene into three parts. I also didn’t quite stick to the one or two sentence description of each scene format.
I found it very helpful that I’d written out the description of each Story Throughline. It reminded me of stuff I’d forgotten. I think it’s turning out okay so far. I’ll see how Act 2 goes. I wonder if there’s going to be more than three scenes in that Act?
For more comic and stories written by me, CLICK HERE.
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Interesting week this week. I was taken off of Storyboarding because there was nothing to revise. I was on Show 17 last week but there doesn’t seem to be a Show 18 or 19. Show 20 has just been storyboarded and now it’s going into the story reel process. Since that was the job I had before I started on storyboards, I was put on the story reel crew until it’s done AND THEN I’ll be working on the revisions for the show after the rewrites are done. I have a feeling this is going to happen with both show 18 and 19 too, so I better get used to doing story reel work again.
Meanwhile, today (Thursday), I stayed home to take care of baby Ambrose who is sick.
FAMILY
Tio Carlos passed away in October of 2010. His death has me paralyzed. I don’t know how to deal with it. I don’t know why. It’s like I don’t want to believe it and I’ve been hiding from the reality of it. This video made by his daughter Lily, forces me to confront it. It hurts so much:
Love you Tio Carlos. Please pray for him and his family, especially my Godmother (his widow).
ROLE PLAYING GAMES/BOARD GAMES
Alesha and I have gotten into a gaming group that occasionally gets together to play Dungeons and Dragons 4E. I’ve never been in a steady role playing gaming group before. My friends and I used to role play once in a while but there was nothing steady or consistent about our games. We’re having fun with this new group.
Well, it seems our kids have gotten curious about it all and wanted to do it too. Especially my daughter. Keep in mind she’s five years old. My oldest son will be four this Month and he wants to play because his big sister is playing. I own a LOT of role playing games but what Elizabeth gravitated to was a the game DESCENT: JOURNEY IN THE DARK by Fantasy Flight games. It’s a dungeon “hack and slash” board games that’s meant to put four player (who play heroes) AGAINST the “Overlord” (the person who runs the dungeon). It’s a very visual game and comes with a bunch of miniatures and tiles that allow you to create lots of different environments.
Well, the game, as written, is a bit over their heads BUT, I thought there would be no reason why I couldn’t use the simple battle rules as a basis for a fun and simple role playing/story game for them. I would just take the traditional role of playing the “Storyteller”or “Game master” and take them on an adventure. This I did, and they LOVED it.
Their first adventure was a generic “find the treasure in the dungeon” game. They fought some Beastmen and Giant Spiders, defeated them and where rewarded with a treasure chest full of…candy. Yes, candy. When I told them there was money and jewels in the chest I didn’t get a reaction but when I said candy and treats where in there too, suddenly their eyes lit up and they got excited. From that point on, I knew what I was going to do when we played again.
Their next big adventure was to help an old lady get a cake back from an ogre. They got very serious about that. It was obvious that, to them, it was bad to steal someones yummy cake. It was very funny to see how important it was to them.
I enjoyed running these games for them. The mechanics that DESCENT uses for resolving conflict is very visual and simple. The kids caught on to them real quick. They love the tension of the dice rolling.
Speaking of tension, they call the game “the scary game” because they have to fight monsters and because it gets very tense for them. Also, when they first started playing, I would build up the atmosphere by describing the look, sounds, and smells of the place. This got them a little scared. When they got up to a door for the first time and I told them they heard growling on the other side, my son’s reaction to this information was to run out of the dungeon. I convinced him to stay and open the door, but then they discovered Beastmen on the other side of the door and my son decided to run out of the dungeon again. My daughter, on the other hand, stood her ground and fought them off because, according to her, she was “a Superhero”.
One of the more entertaining parts of the game was when confronting Giant Spiders, my son ran out of the dungeon AGAIN leaving Elizabeth to fight all the monsters alone. When he say she was fighting alone, he stopped his character of the exit to the dungeon and said,
“No, I won’t run away. I’m going to help,” turned his miniature around and went to help out his sister. I laughed on the inside because I had just seen my son accidentally take his character through a dramatic story arch.
Another time, in the cake adventure I mentioned above, when they finally found the room where the Ogre was, the Ogre told the kids he wouldn’t give them the cake he’d stolen. Elizabeth then went off on a huge heroic speech about how they would get it back because it wasn’t his cake. It was really funny how long and serious it was.
Now the kids are always asking me to play and I don’t always have the time nor the energy, but I’m glad they do. I just have to make sure to play the game with them, more often than I don’t. It’s just difficult because my daughter wants to do it all the time. I’ve created a geek.
WRITING
(For those of you coming in late to these posts, if you want to read what my project is about, CLICK HERE to learn about the general world the story takes place in, and CLICK HERE if you want to know the story itself.)
Below is an excerpt of what I wrote the last two weeks, as set up for what I’m writing about THIS week, in case you’re interested in following along with more depth:
Right now, the theory of story that I like to use to flesh out my plot is the DRAMATICA theory. Unfortunately the DRAMATICA theory is so complicated and convoluted, that I can’t really sum it up in a nut shell. If you want to get an idea of what DRAMATICA is all about, click the link below:
As I did the last two weeks, I’ll put up the DRAMATICA Table of Story Elements in order for you to understand what I’m talking about and so you can follow along. For a clearer pdf version of the chart (download chart now):
Alright, so I’ve hit a very confusing section of the DRAMATICA system. I’m STILL not sure how to break up Act from Sequences in the chart. Here’s what DRAMATICA says about it on pages 137-139:
Scenes
By the time we get down to scene resolution, there are so many cross-purposes at work that we need to limit our appreciation of what is going on in order to see anything in the clutter. First, however, let’s touch on some of the forces that tend to obscure the real function of scenes, then strip them away to reveal the dynamic mechanism beneath.
Resolution and Sequence
Earlier we spoke of plot in terms of Types. We also speak of plot here in terms of four resolutions: Acts, Sequences, Scenes, and Events. Both of these perspectives are valid appreciations depending on the purpose at hand. Because all units in Dramatica are related holographically, no single point of view can completely describe the model. That is why we select the most appropriate view to the purpose at hand. Even though looking at plot in terms of Types is useful, it is true that “plot-like” twists and turns are going on at the scene resolution as well. However, these dynamics are not truly part of the scene, but merely in the scene. An Act, Sequence, Scene, or Event is really a temporal container — a box made out of time that holds dynamics within its bounds. Much like filters or gratings with different-sized holes, the resolutions “sift” the dynamics trapping large movements at the highest levels and allowing smaller nuances to fall all the way down to the Elements.
What’s in a Scene?
At the scene resolution, the effects of Types and Variations can be felt like the tidal pull of some distant moon. But scenes are not the resolution at which to control those forces. Scenes are containers that hold Elements — anything larger cannot get crammed in without breaking. So the richness we feel in scenes is not solely due to what the scene itself contains, but also to the overall impact of what is happening at several larger scales.
What then does a scene contain? Scenes describe the change in dynamics between Elements as the story progresses over time. And since Elements are the building blocks of characters, scenes describe the changing relationships between characters.
Characters and Scenes
Characters are made up of Motivations, Methodologies, Means of Evaluation, and Purposes. These terms also describe the four major sets of Elements from which the characters are built. The driving force of a character in a given scene can be determined, such as whether their argument is over someone’s motivations or just the method they are employing.
6 Goes Into 24 Like Theme Goes Into Scenes
We have spoken of the three and four act appreciations of story. It was illustrated how both divisions are valid to specific tasks. When dealing with scenes, we find that no scenes ever hang between two acts, half in one and half in the other, regardless of a three or four act appreciation. This is because there are exactly 24 scenes created at the Element level: six per act in a four act appreciation, eight per act in a three act appreciation. In both cases, the scenes divide evenly into the acts, contributing to the “feel” of each act break being a major turning point in the progress of the story.
Sequences, on the other hand, exist as a six part partition of the story. Therefore, they divide evenly into a three act appreciation but not into a four. Since the four act view is objective, sequences — as they define Thematic movements — are truly an experiential phenomenon in the subjective appreciation and lose much of their power objectively.
What has me stumped is that the whole:
6 Goes Into 24 Like Theme Goes Into Scenes
I just don’t know quite what it means when it comes to the chart. I mean, all the quads under Truth, Evidence, Suspicion, and Falsehood when compared to each other DO break down into 24 comparisons, like this:
Truth
Knowledge/Thought
Knowledge/Actuality
Knowledge/Perception
Thought/Actuality
Thought/ Perception
Actuality/Perception
Falsehood
Equity/Inequity
Equity/Projection
Equity/ Speculation
Inequity/Projection
Inequity/Speculation
Speculation/Projection
Evidence
Ability/Desire
Ability/Aware
Ability/Self-aware
Desire/Aware
Desire/Self-aware
Aware/Self-aware
Suspicion
Order/Chaos
Order/Inertia
Order/Change
Chaos/Inertia
Chaos/Change
Inertia/Change
Then DRAMATICA says:
This is because there are exactly 24 scenes created at the Element level: six per act in a four act appreciation, eight per act in a three act appreciation.
So am I suppose to assign 8 of these comparisons to an Act? If so, how? By using the Sequence breakdown as a guide? It’s not clear. Even if I DID do that though, I still don’t know exactly what the comparisons actually mean.
Here’s the closest answer to the question I’ve found, which is in pages 68 and 69:
What’s In a Pair?
Finally, we can use our Chess Set of Elements to learn something more about our character’s relationships. In each quad of Elements, we find not only Dynamic (diagonal) Pairs, but horizontal and vertical pairs as well. Horizontal Elements are called Companion Pairs, and vertical Elements are Dependent Pairs. Each kind of pair describes a different kind of relationship between the Elements, and therefore between the characters that represent them.In addition to the three types of pairs, we can look at each Element as a separate component and compare it to the overall nature of the quad itself. This Component approach describes the difference between any given Element and the family of Elements in which it resides (quad). Therefore, the degree of individuality the characters represent within the “group” can be explored.
Dynamic Pairs describe Elements with the greatest opposition to one another. Whenever two opposing forces come together they will create either a positive or negative relationship. They can form a synthesis and create something greater than the sum of the parts or they can simply tear away at each other until nothing is left (destructive). Within a quad, one of the Dynamic Pairs will indicate a positive relationship, the other a negative one. Which is which depends upon other story dynamics.Companion Pairs contain the Elements that are most compatible. However, just being compatible does not preclude a negative relationship. In a positive Companion Pair, characters will proceed along their own paths, side by side. What one does not need they will offer to the other (positive impact). In a negative Companion Pair, one character may use up what the other needs. They are not against each other as in a negative Dynamic Pair, but still manage to interfere with each other’s efforts (negative impact).Dependent Pairs are most complementary. In a positive sense, each character provides strengths to compensate for the other’s weaknesses (cooperation). Together they make a powerful team. In its negative incarnation, the Dependent Pair Relationship has each character requiring the other in order to proceed (codependency).Components describe the nature of the Elements in relationship to the overall quad. On the one hand, the individual characters in a quad can be a group that works together (interdependency). The group is seen to be greater than the individual characters that comprise it, at the risk of overwhelming the individuality of its members. This is contrasted by identifying the disparate nature of each character in the quad (independency). Seen this way, the characters are noted for their distinguishing characteristics at the risk of losing sight of shared interests.Dynamic Relationships are the most familiar to writers, simply because they generate the most obvious kind of conflict. Companion and Dependent Pairs are used all the time without fanfare, as there has previously been no terminology to describe them. Components are useful to writers because they allow characters in groups to be evaluated in and out of context.By constructing characters with thought and foresight, an author can use the position of Elements in the Chess Set to forge relationships that are Dynamic in one dimension while being Companion and Dependent in others. Characters created with Dramatica can represent both the structural Elements of the Story Mind’s problem solving techniques and the dynamic interchange between those techniques.
Summary
Altogether we have outlined four dimensions of characteristics, each fostering an aspect of the eight Archetypes. Each of the Archetypes can be sub-divided into internal and external Elements resulting in a total of sixteen Elements in each dimension — a total of sixty-four characteristics from all four dimensions with which to build characters. Complex character can be created by stepping out of the archetypal patterns and relationships.
The thing is, what’s written above is specifically talking about Character Elements, which are EXACTLY the same Elements that Scenes are created from, BUT in the Character Element level, your suppose to use ALL the Elements in a “Class”. This means you actually end up with 64 Elements, which, again, is very confusing.
I’m trying to put two and two together here. My clue is from the part that reads:
Characters and Scenes
Characters are made up of Motivations, Methodologies, Means of Evaluation, and Purposes. These terms also describe the four major sets of Elements from which the characters are built. The driving force of a character in a given scene can be determined, such as whether their argument is over someone’s motivations or just the method they are employing.
Pages 64 – 67 explain about Motivations, Methodologies, Means of Evaluation, and Purposes but I won’t post those pages here. However, since I need to move forward and from what I have gathered from Robert Mckee’s book on writing, Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting, where he states:
In each scene a character pursues a desire related to his immediate time and place. But this Scene-Objective must be an aspect of his Super-Objective or Spine, the story-long quest that spans from Inciting Incident to Story Climax.
and:
A scene causes changes in a minor, albeit significant way. A Sequence Climax is a scene that causes a moderate reversal — change with more impact than a scene. An Act Climax is a scene that causes a major reversal — change with greater impact than Sequence Climax. Accordingly, we never write a scene that’s merely a flat, static display of exposition; rather we strive for this ideal: to create a story design in which every scene is a minor, moderate, or major Turning Point.
From these thoughts I have come to a decision as to what I’m going to do.
I THINK that Scene, tend to be MOSTLY about character SO, I’ll use the Elements as a guide to describe the conflicts between characters in my story and how they play out. Especially since the Elements, is what DRAMATICA characters are made up of. ALSO, DRAMATICA uses the Elements quads to point out the Problem, the Solution, the Focus (Symptom), and the Direction (Treatment) of the story. In MY story it breaks down like this:
The Problem in my story is:
(Wrong) Perception
Solution to this problem is:
Actuality
The Focus or rather the Symptom this problem causes is:
(Erroneous) Thought
The Direction or rather the Treatment used to fix the problem is:
Knowledge.
DRAMATICA says (in page 192):
Change Characters and the Crucial Element
In the case of a Change Main Character, he will either contain the Problem or Solution Element. In the case of a Steadfast Main Character, he will either contain the Focus or the Direction Element.
So since my character is a Steadfast Main Character he will contain the Focus or Direction. I chose Direction. This says to me that however I breakdown the Scenes, the Element “Knowledge” must be in the Major Turning Point Scene. The Scene where the story climaxes.
Okay, so here’s what I’m thinking. Using the example about of the Major Turning Point scene above, I’m thinking that the where ever in my story it occurs, the Element comparison will be:
Knowledge/Actuality
Those two Elements are found in the Truth Variation quad. Looking back to my Sequence break down from last week:
Act 1
Falsehood/ Suspicion
Truth/ Suspicion
Act 2
Truth/Evidence
Falsehood/Evidence
Act 3
Truth/Falsehood
Suspicion/Evidence
I see that a Truth Variation can be found in Act 3, so I will assign Knowledge/Actuality to Act 3, leaving me with seven more Element comparisons left to assign to that Act. I will do that to every Variation until I have the 24 Scenes. I’m thinking, without an actual description of what goes on in each Scene, this will be a difficult and abstract process SO, I think I’ll begin to actually write out a quick description of each scene and see what Element comparison best fit it, or vice versa.
What do you think of my solution? I don’t think I’m doing it right but it’s the best solution I could come up with. Do you have any suggestions? I’d be happy to hear it. Please leave a comment in the comments section if you do, that way you won’t be limited by any Social Network limitations, like the ones Twitter and Facebook have.
For more comic and stories written by me, CLICK HERE.
If you like what you read, please consider signing up to my rss feed.
Wow, I had a nice vacation in spite of the fact that I spent Christmas in bed. I SOOO didn’t want to come back to work, even though I have a great job. I came back and it didn’t take long before I was under the gun. I was given Act 1 of show 17 to finish by the end of the week. It has the most changes out all the acts on the show. Hurray for me.
In other news, I was asked by Director/writer Luke Gray a few questions earlier this week about the show. One of them being about drawing ourselves or family and friends in crowd scenes on the show. In answering the question, I remembered that a friend of mine had drawn me in one of the shows because he thought it would be funny. He drew me getting pushed down by Mark Hamill in the show he was a guest star in. Here’s the clip where I show up. Look for me at 0:08 seconds. I’m the long haired guy with the brown hair, in the black t-shirt:
Wow, fellow CARTOONISTATed Seko ROCKS! The guy does some fantastic things. Check out all the cool things he makes. He’s a production machine AND he does handmade comics to boot. Sooo cool! Get ready to be inspired:
PODCASTS
So I thought, before I began writing about writing, I would let you know that I was on the COMICS ARE GREAT! podcast. In it, Jerzy and I talk about writing, so if you want to LISTEN about story, rather than read it, I recommend you go over a give it a listen.
(For those of you coming in late to these posts, if you want to read what my project is about, CLICK HERE to learn about the general world the story takes place in, and CLICK HERE if you want to know the story itself.)
Below is an excerpt of what I wrote the last two weeks, as set up for what I’m writing about THIS week, in case you’re interested in following along with more depth:
Right now, the theory of story that I like to use to flesh out my plot is the DRAMATICA theory. Unfortunately the DRAMATICA theory is so complicated and convoluted, that I can’t really sum it up in a nut shell. If you want to get an idea of what DRAMATICA is all about, click the link below:
As I did the last two weeks, I’ll put up the DRAMATICA Table of Story Elements in order for you to understand what I’m talking about and so you can follow along. For a clearer pdf version of the chart (download chart now):
Alright, now that I’ve broken down the three Acts, the next step it so break those Acts into sequences. We do this by looking at our chart and seeing what quad has my theme in it, which is Truth. This would be the Memories quad. Inside that quad is Truth. I’m going to use that “variations” (in this light gray quad) to breakdown my Acts into sequences. I will do this by comparing all the pairs in the quads with each other. Doing so is suppose to get me a well rounded thematic argument. This is what I mean by “comparing the pairs to each other”. I’m going to compare:
Truth/Falsehood
Truth/Evidence
Truth/ Suspicion
Falsehood/Evidence
Falsehood/ Suspicion and
Suspicion/Evidence
How do I compare them? Well, from what I can understand from the DRAMATICA system, I’m going to ask these questions in order to compare these variations:
Truth/Falsehood
Which is better, Truth or Falsehood?
Truth/Evidence
When Truth is the issue, how do we rate Evidence based on those who espouse it?
Truth/ Suspicion
When Truth is the issue, how do we rate Suspicion based on those who espouse it?
Falsehood/Evidence
When Falsehood is the issue, how do we rate Evidence based on those who espouse it?
Falsehood/ Suspicion
When Falsehood is the issue, how do we rate Suspicion based on those who espouse it?
Suspicion/Evidence
Which carries the most weight when it comes to Truth?
Somewhere within the telling of my story, these questions have to be answered. Since they are six questions and I have 3 Acts, I’ve decided to give each Act two of the questions to answer. This is how I broke it down:
Act 1
Falsehood/ Suspicion
Truth/ Suspicion
Act 2
Truth/Evidence
Falsehood/Evidence
Act 3
Truth/Falsehood
Suspicion/Evidence
So that’s going to be the themes running though the three acts of my story. The order is not written in stone so I’ve left myself an opening to change my mind as the process dictates. I’m thinking of keeping these in mind when I actually start writing, but I’m not going to answer the questions right now. It seems better and more fun for me to answer the questions as part of the spontaneous writing process.
Now that I have that done, I have to decide if I want to break my story up even more. It’s a short story and I’m not sure if I can or SHOULD do so. The next step according to DRAMATICA is to breakdown the sequences into scenes. Each Sequence is broken down into four scenes which would leaves me with 24 scenes. That’s 24 scenes I may not have room in my story for. Unfortunately, as of the time of this writing, I haven’t got the slightest clue as to how to breakdown the sequences into 24 scenes even if I WANTED to.
Can you help me out and read pages 138 and 139 in the DRAMATICA book? Maybe YOU can figure it out. I’m a bit stumped.
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Well, we got Friday of last week off and the rest of the week. I managed to finish what I needed to revise before I went home. I’m proud of that since I managed to finish in spite of the four day week. I have yet to see what the rest of the board fixes look like for the rest of the show. Since my old board revision partner left on to do better things out of his own free will, my new partner isn’t quite up to speed yet. It seems I MIGHT have to revise the whole show, which is something I’ve never done, nor do I think it can be done unless the rest of the show has very few revisions. There’s a reason that there’s two of us. I hope he gets up to speed soon.
MY WEEK
Merry Christmas to me. I spent Christmas alone in bed, sick with a horrible cold that made it almost impossible for me to get up and do anything. My wife and kids went off to Christmas gatherings while I lay in bed watching Battlestar Gallactica on Netflix, playing Gameboy DS games, sleeping and reading comics. Which normally would have been my idea of a party, but except IT WAS CHRISTMAS and I just ended up feeling lonely. The next two days where any better, but at some point during the third day, the “off switch” was pressed and I suddenly felt better.
It’s one thing to be sick in bed. It’s another when you know that BECAUSE you’re sick in bed, your spouse (whom you got the cold from and who is recovering herself from the cold) is having to take care of all three kids by herself PLUS you. I felt like such a heel for getting as sick as I got. At least on day four I got her, her Christmas present.
“On the fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me, a replacement for the wedding ring I lost”.
My wife now looks married to me again.
WRITING
(For those of you coming in late to these posts, if you want to read what my project is about, CLICK HERE to learn about the general world the story takes place in, and CLICK HERE if you want to know the story itself.)
Below is an excerpt of what I wrote the last two weeks, as set up for what I’m writing about THIS week, in case you’re interested in following along with more depth:
Right now, the theory of story that I like to use to flesh out my plot is the DRAMATICA theory. Unfortunately the DRAMATICA theory is so complicated and convoluted, that I can’t really sum it up in a nut shell. If you want to get an idea of what DRAMATICA is all about, click the link below:
As I did the last two weeks, I’ll put up the DRAMATICA Table of Story Elements in order for you to understand what I’m talking about and so you can follow along. For a clearer pdf version of the chart (download chart now):
Alright, so last week I broke down the MAIN Character story throughline and the IMPACT Character story throughline. There is now only one throughline left, MAIN vs. IMPACTStory throughline. This throughline’s point of view is meant to be as if you were sitting in the sidelines watching what’s going on. This is how it’s been broken down. I think it’s far more meaningful:
MAIN vs. IMPACTStory throughline:
Act 1 – Past
Act 2 – How things are Changing
Act 3 – Future
Act 4 – Present
ACT 1
Signpost #1
Type 1.The Past
(The Past Definition: The Past is not unchanging. Often we learn new things that change our understanding of what past events truly meant and create new appreciations of how things really fit together. A Story that focuses on The Past, may be much more than a documentation of what happened. Frequently, it is a reevaluation of the meaning of what has occurred that can lead to changing one’s understanding of what is happening in the present or will eventually happen in the future)
The Main Character and the Lead Sorcerer share a collective conflicting past. Many of Sorcerers the Lead Sorcerer knew, have been beaten by the Main Character. The main Character knows who the Lead Sorcerer is (or at least his type) based on his passed dealings with other Sorcerers. While the Lead Sorcerers knows the main by the reputation of those who have fought him in the past. This instills tension between the two parties. Especially since there is an incomplete understanding of what REALLY happened in the past that the Main Character attempts to clarify without success.
Journey #1
Type 1. The Past ======> Type 2. How things are Changing
Their collective negative past immediately lead to distrust, hatred and aggression. Especially since their past is so misunderstood, which leads the Lead Sorcerer into attacking the Main Character.
ACT 2
Signpost #2
Type 2. How things are Changing
(How things are ChangingDefinition: How Things are Changing concerns itself with change: what direction and how fast? It is not so important where things were, are, or will be, but rather how the struggle between inertia and change seesaws over the course of the story.)
The Main Character tries desperately to convince the Lead Sorcerer to listen and understand that things aren’t as they seem. The Lead Sorcerer insists that just because he isn’t completely evil yet, it doesn’t mean that it will stay that way. Things are always changing.
Journey #2
Type 2. How things are Changing ======> Type 3. Future
The Main Character understands that things change but it doesn’t automatically mean that the future the prophesy holds, is the true one. The Main Character says that the future is also changing.
ACT 3
Signpost #3
Type 3. Future
(FutureDefinition: A story focusing on The Future concerns itself with what will be. This does not require the story to be “set” in the Future – only that the Future state of external and/or internal issues is the subject that is addressed by the story. A character centered on The Future may be trying to discover what will be, or may be trying to achieve a particular state of affairs down the line. In both the Story and Character sense, the end is more important than the present, although it still may not justify the means. )
The Lead Sorcerer insists that the Main Character will enslave the world whether the Main Character says he will or not. The future is set, according to the prophesy. The main character insists it’s wrong, it’s false, it can’t happen.
Journey #3
Type 3.Future ======> Type 4. Present
In order to prove to the Lead Sorcerer that he’s not what the prophesy of his future says he is, he forces the Lead Sorcerer to notice how he acts here and now, by NOT treating him the same way the Lead Sorcerer treated, him. He doesn’t kill or hurt him once he’s down and powerless.
CONCLUSION
Signpost #4
Type 4. Present
(Present Definition: “The Present” does not refer to the way things are going, but to the way things are. It is a here and now judgment of the arrangement of a situation and the circumstances surrounding it. A story that focuses on the Present is not concerned with how events led to the current situation nor where the current situation will lead, but defines the scenario that exists at the moment.)
Because of the way the Main Character treated the Lead Sorcerer, for now, the two characters end up, not as friends but not exactly enemies. There’s a type of mutual respect for each other that exist for the moment, that wasn’t there before.
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Started up on show 17 this week. I was put on Act 3 since it had the most changes. The changes weren’t as crazy as they were in show 16 but, we’ve only got a four day work week, so the pressure is still on. I’m planning on finishing it this week if I can.
In other news, we got a Christmas present from Matt Groening this week. It was a copy of SIMPSONS WORLD: THE ULTIMATE EPISODE GUIDE.
It’s cool because I wanted a copy. I don’t own any version of the Episode guides. The sad part is, that it’s already outdated since it only covers seasons 1 -20. Still, it’s awesome. Thank you Matt Groening.
I flipped through it and it’s sad that I don’t remember all the shows I’ve worked on. I look at some and think, “Did I work on that one? Looks familiar.” On the other hand, some of the screen captures in the book are from scenes I drew, which is fun to see.
VIDEO
Director and co-writer of the Mocumentary STORY OF THE MIMERS sent me a link to his movie. I thought it was great so I’m posting the link here so you can see it too. It’s a pretty darn funny “Mocumentary” of the best Mime artists of all time:
WRITING
(For those of you coming in late to these posts, if you want to read what my project is about, CLICK HERE to learn about the general world the story takes place in, and CLICK HERE if you want to know the story itself.)
Below is an excerpt of what I wrote the last two weeks, as set up for what I’m writing about THIS week, in case you’re interested in following along with more depth:
Right now, the theory of story that I like to use to flesh out my plot is the DRAMATICA theory. Unfortunately the DRAMATICA theory is so complicated and convoluted, that I can’t really sum it up in a nut shell. If you want to get an idea of what DRAMATICA is all about, click the link below:
As I did the last two weeks, I’ll put up the DRAMATICA Table of Story Elements in order for you to understand what I’m talking about and so you can follow along. For a clearer pdf version of the chart (download chart now):
Last week I posted up my breakdown of the OVERALL story throughline. This time, I’ll put up my breakdowns for the MAIN Character story throughline and the IMPACT Character story throughline. Pay really close attention to how the story tends to change, depending on the perspective we are seeing it through. The OVERALL story throughline is a “birds eye view” of the entire story, while the MAIN Character story throughline is what we would see if we WERE the main character. The IMPACT Character story throughline is the view we would get if we were following the Impact character around.
Below is the breakdown of the types followed by how I fleshed them out:
MAIN Character story throughline:
Act 1 – Obtaining
Act 2 –Gathering information
Act 3 – Doing
Act 4 – Understanding
ACT 1
Signpost #1
Type 1.Obtaining
(Obtaining Definition: Obtaining includes not only that which is possessed but also that which is achieved or lost. For example, one might obtain a law degree or lose an election. One can also obtain a condition, such as obtaining a smoothly operating political system or loosing the love of a parent. Whether it refers to a mental or physical state or process, obtaining describes the concept of attaining.)
Rob has happily obtained the Hot Dog he’s been wanting for a day and a half. He looks forward to eating in peace and quiet.
Journey #1
Type 1. Obtaining ======> Type 2. Gathering Information
As he sits down to eat and is confronted by the three Sorcerers. He tries to find out from them, what he could do, in order to have them give him a few minutes to eat his lunch in peace and quite. When they tell him, he gladly does it.
ACT 2
Signpost #2
Type 2. Gathering Information
(Gathering InformationDefinition: Gathering Information describes the process of acquiring knowledge. It is not the knowledge itself. When a portion of a story focuses on learning, it is the gathering of an education that is of concern, not the education that ultimately has been gathered. Gathering Information need not be an academic endeavor. One might learn to express one’s feelings, or learn about love. Gathering Information does not even require new information, as sometimes one learns simply by looking through old information from a different perspective or with a new approach. It is not important if one is learning to arrive at a particular understanding or just to gather data. As long as the focus in on the process of gaining information, Gathering Information is the operative idea.)
The Sorcerers betray him and attack. The Rob defends himself and his lunch while desperately looking around for a way to escape.
Journey #2
Type 2. Gathering Information ======> Type 3. Doing
Discovering there’s no way out. He decides the best thing to do is to eat the Hot Dog, right there and then.
ACT 3
Signpost #3
Type 3. Doing
(Doing Definition: Doing is the process of being physically active. In and of itself, Doing does not require any purpose, but simply describes engaging in a process, task, or endeavor, whether for pleasure or by necessity or compulsion. )
Unfortunately the Lead Sorcerer destroys his Hot Dog, which forces him to pick up his weapon and fight them off or die.
Journey #3
Type 3. Doing ======> Type 4. Understanding
After dispatching all the monster and the other Sorcerers, he has the Lead Sorcerer in a weakend and vulnerable state. Understanding that the only way to show the Sorcerer that he’s mistaken about who he thinks he is. He chooses to let him go free.
CONCLUSION
Signpost #4
Type 4. Understanding
(Understanding Definition: Understanding is different from knowledge. From knowledge one gets awareness, from Understanding, one gets meaning. To obtain meaning requires not only knowing the substance of its nature, but the context of its essence. In other words, one must not only define what something is, but how it fits into the larger picture as well. To this end, Reason describes the function and Emotion defines the purpose. So Understanding is not just an intellectual pursuit, but requires an empathy with the meaning as well. It is useful to note that many Eastern and ancient philosophies define Understanding as “becoming one with” that which is being considered. Until one joins a subject in unity, one cannot understand it.)
Rob realizes that it’s possible to change the minds of the Sorcerers and that gives him hope, that the attacks might stop and he’ll get the peace he wants. He also knows that every time he uses the warhammer, it gets more and more difficult to control himself and it.
Alright, now it’s time to do the same with the Impact character: IMPACT Character story throughline:
Act 1 – Conceiving an Idea
Act 2 – Developing a Plan
Act 3 –Playing a Role
Act 4 – Changing one’s Nature
ACT 1
Signpost #1
Type 1.Conceiving an Idea
(Conceiving an Idea Definition: Conceiving an Idea is the process of arriving at an idea. If there were no artificial light in the world, one might conceive the need for some form of electric torch. That would be conceiving. But the design of an actual incandescent bulb versus a fluorescent one would require conceptualizing a specific implementation of the idea one has conceived. Conceiving an Idea need not come before conceptualizing. For example, a common dramatic technique is to give a character a very clear mental image of an object or arrangement that holds the solution to the story’s problem. But the character does not know the solution lies in the conceptualization. It is only when she finally conceives of the need for a particular kind of solution does she realize she had the answer all along. Simply put, Conceiving an Idea defines the question, Developing a Plan clarifies the answer.)
The Lead Sorcerers tries to convince Rob that Rob is evil. That the Sorcerers are truly the just and justified between the two of them.
Journey #1
Type 1. Conceiving an Idea ======> Type 2. Developing a Plan
Rob dismisses the idea so the Lead Sorcerer then puts forth that he should let himself be imprisions by the Sorcerers, so that he could be watched and not become what the prophesy says he will.
ACT 2
Signpost #2
Type 2. Developing a Plan
(Developing a Plan Definition: Developing a Plan means coming up with a practical implementation of an idea. It is not enough to simply have the idea. To conceptualize, one must develop an actual mental model of how such an idea might be made manifest. In other words, one might have an idea to build a spacious house. But to conceptualize the house, one must imagine everything that makes up the house — the design, the layout, the colors & textures, everything that is essential to understanding what that specific house is. Developing a Plan requires being able to visualize something as a whole.)
When Rob refuses this plan, the Lead Sorcerer say’s that refusing requires them to kill him, because it’s the only way to be truly safe.
Journey #2
Type 2. Developing a Plan ======> Type 3. Playing a Role
The Lead Sorcerer then shows that, by not complying with the reasonableness of the plans he proposed that he’s only showing that he’s guilty of treacherous intentions. He is showing his true colors as the world enslaving overlord he will become.
ACT 3
Signpost #3
Type 3. Playing a Role
(Playing a RoleDefinition: “Playing a Role” is an elusive concept, subject to inconsistent common usage. For purposes of story, Playing a Role is meant to describe the condition of existing in a certain manner. Whomever or whatever is “Playing a Role” a particular way is not truly of that nature; to do so would require Changing One’s Nature. In fact, playing a role may be put on as a deception or because it is necessary to adopt a role in order to achieve one’s purpose. However, as long as there is nothing more or less to the functioning of a person or thing, it can be said to “be” what it appears to be. Stories often focus on someone who wants to “be” something, without actually “Changing One’s Nature”. The important difference is that “Playing a Role” requires that all the elements of what one wants to be are present in oneself. “Changing One’s Nature” requires that there are no elements in oneself that are not in what one wants to become. )
Rob begins striking down the Lead Sorcerer’s monsters and friends, making it easy to prove his point. He drives it home by showing Rob how easily he would strike down a helpless person, by NOT fighting him. Playing the role of victim to Rob’s predator.
Journey #3
Type 3.Playing a Role ======> Type 4. Changing One’s Nature
Rob shows the Lead Sorcerer that he HADN’T been as consumed and rage as he let on. Rob surprises the Lead Sorcerer by not attacking him when he has a chance.
CONCLUSION
Signpost #4
Type 4. Changing One’s Nature
(Changing One’s NatureDefinition:Changing One’s Nature means achieving an identity with something. This is different from “Playing a Role” which merely requires posing as something. To Changing One’s Nature, one must do more than just pretend to be by mimicking all the traits of what one wants to become. Rather, one must also lose all those parts of oneself that are inconsistent with what one wants to become. “Giving up” a part of oneself is always the hardest part of becoming and the reason so many characters spend a lot of time “Playing a Role” without ever Changing One’s Nature.)
The Sorcerer is deeply moved by this example and becomes very impressed. The Lead Sorcerer, makes a gift of two Hot Dogs for Rob out of respect, leaving Rob with a new perspective about the Sorcerers as a whole.
ART
This week I sketched out more of the warhammer design. This time, I focused more on the hilt.
I was looking through a book of weapons and there was a page in it that had combination weapons. I wondered if perhaps I should make the warhammer a combination weapon also. Below is an idea I had to have a blade come out of the hammer by pulling it out by the hilt. Still not sure if I’m gonna go with this idea yet.
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Stayed late this week working on getting LAST week’s assignment done. Stressful week so far. I’m hoping that by Friday, things will be under control and everything gets done on time. That’s my goal.
In other news, Director, Lance Kramer came by and gave a me a Christmas card for this year. He draws one every year. I got quite a few of them now and they’re always nice to get. Here’s his card for this year:
MY WEEK
Besides staying late in order to get my work done, I’ve also been working hard at structuring my story out for my personal project. I’ve been using any extra time I have to try to work the story out using the DRAMATICA system. It’s such a pain in the neck attempting wrap my head around all the definitions and theories, but I think that my story will be better off for it.
Last week, I attempted to semi explain what I’m doing but I’m so limited in the amount of time I have to explain it all. I must have really bored people. Either that or the very idea or presentation of the information must have been something almost no one was interested in. Why do I say that? My hit count really went down last week. Usually I stay at an average to above average consistent hit count, but last week, WOW, nobody seemed to really care. It also didn’t help that I made a mistake, explaining part of the theory (more on the in below under WRITING).
The worst part is that it’s such a necessary part of my process I kinda need to show it. I need to show the good and bad parts. To me, this isn’t really a bad part. I like doing it. I like thinking about structure.
Unfortunately, since it’s all about structure, there isn’t any colorful writing involved. It also takes up all the time I usually use to draw. This means I haven’t got anything visual to show. Just story structure.
Well, in spite of the fact that I failed to write my process in a more entertaining way, I’ve got to continue writing it, for the sake of completion. Below is some of what I did this week. I’m sorry if this isn’t very entertaining. I’ll try to find more entertaining things to do on the blog as I get the writing process finished. I’m trying hard to be clear about my process at this point, but there’s only so much I can do without writing a book on the theory I’m using, which I don’t need to do, since there’s a free book online already.
WRITING
(For those of you coming in late to these posts, if you want to read what my project is about, CLICK HERE to learn about the general world the story takes place in, and CLICK HERE if you want to know the story itself.)
Below is an excerpt of what I wrote last week, as set up for what I’m writing about THIS week, in case you’re interested in following along with more depth:
Right now, the theory of story that I like to use to flesh out my plot is the DRAMATICA theory. Unfortunately the DRAMATICA theory is so complicated and convoluted, that I can’t really sum it up in a nut shell. If you want to get an idea of what DRAMATICA is all about, click the link below:
As I did last week, I’ll put up the DRAMATICA Table of Story Elements in order for you to understand what I’m talking about and so you can follow along. For a clearer pdf version of the chart (download chart now):
Last week I made a bit of a mistake about the way I added the “Areas of Conflict” to the four “Viewpoints”. (If you’re having trouble following the terminology, you can download the DRAMATICA dictionary on this page HERE. Sorry for all the extra work). According to DRAMATICA the MAIN Character and the IMPACT Character are treated like a “couple”, while the OVERALL Story and the MAIN vs. IMPACTStory, are also treated like a “couple”. What this means, is that if I choose an “Area of Conflict” for one, it’s couple automatically gets assigned it’s “Dynamic Pair”. A Dynamic Pair is the quad found diagonally to the conflict I picked (as is explain in the lower right hand side of the table above). So in my case when I chose, FIXED ATTITUDE as my “OVERALL Story throughline”, it’s pair, “MAIN vs. IMPACTStory” should have automatically been assigned SITUATION as it’s conflict.
Below is the updated version of the way my story is broken down into it’s four “Viewpoints”:
MAIN Character (Rob) – ACTIVITY: This basically means Rob’s personal point of view will be about dealing with all the crazy things that are going on around him.
IMPACT Character (Lead Sorcerer) – MANIPULATION: This basically means that the lead Sorcerer’s point of the view will be his attempt to manipulate the MAIN Character (Rob) in some way.
OVERALL Story (Sorcerer’s attempt to kill Rob) – FIXED ATTITUDE: This basically means that the plot of the story, the structure of the story itself, is dealing with the effects of bias and prejudice and whether things can change in regards to it.
MAIN vs. IMPACTStory (Rob’s attempt to convince the Sorcerers they’ve got the wrong idea about him) – SITUATION: This basically means that the relationship in this story between The MAIN Character (Rob) and The IMPACT Character (lead Sorcerer) will be explored from the history of the situation they find themselves in.
Last week, I broke up the Acts a certain way when I finished the step above. Because I didn’t change the OVERALL Story throughline from last week, I broke up the Acts like this:
Act 1 – Memories
Act 2 – Impulsive Responses
Act 3 – Contemplation
Act 4 – Innermost Desires
The thing is, recently I rediscovered that, my wife Alesha, had bought the DRAMATICA software years ago. I thought it would make things easier, so I installed it and plugged my decisions into it, only to discover it didn’t let me. Instead it forced me to pick this configuration.
Act 1 – Memories
Act 2 – Impulsive Responses
Act 3 – Innermost Desires
Act 4 – Contemplation
Switching the Act 3 and 4 “Types”. At first I was angry, until I realized that it worked better with what I had in mind, so I let it go.
The next step, is to break up ALL the other throughlines into four Act. This means that, not only the OVERALL Story needs to be broken down, but also the MAIN Character story, the IMPACT Character story, and the MAIN vs. IMPACT character story. We do this by doing the same thing we did with the OVERALL Story throughline. We look at the “Types” (the dark gray quads) under each “throughline” and assign it an Act.
Okay so this is what I did:
MAIN Character story throughline:
Act 1 – Doing
Act 2 –Gathering information
Act 3 – Understanding
Act 4 – Obtaining
Once again I plugged this into the DRAMATICA software and it changed it to this:
Act 1 – Obtaining
Act 2 –Gathering information
Act 3 – Doing
Act 4 – Understanding
Which turns out, that it works better than I thought it would. Since the program kept changing my decision because of whatever algorithm it had in it’s programing, I just gave in and let the program tell me what to put where. So this is how the rest of the “throughlines” ended up, according to the what the software decided:
IMPACT Character story throughline:
Act 1 – Conceiving an Idea
Act 2 – Developing a Plan
Act 3 –Playing a Role
Act 4 – Changing one’s Nature
MAIN vs. IMPACTStory throughline:
Act 1 – Past
Act 2 – How things are Changing
Act 3 – Future
Act 4 – Present
I had other ideas but the more I thought about it, the more I thought this might work better.
Now that I got done with that part, I moved onto writing out the Act throughlines, using the “Types” as a “signpost” to what happens in each Act and the bridge between each “signpost”, called the “Journey”, will flesh out the content of each Act. Here’s what I mean, using the OVERALL Story throughline. I decided to add the definition of each “Type” I was working with, so that you could understand where I was coming from, when thinking about each Act:
ACT 1
Signpost #1
Type 1.Memories
(Memories Definition: The Past is an objective look at what has happened. In contrast, Memories is a subjective look at what has happened. Therefore, Memories of the same events varies among individuals creating many different and possibly conflicting recollections. Often one’s current feelings come from memories, both pleasant and unpleasant. Many a taut story revolves around a character’s effort to resolve open issues from her memories by recalling or forgetting them.)
The main character, remembering how good the hot dogs at a certain hot dog vendor are, uses the money he struggled to get, to buy one. While always being cautious of the memories of all the times he’s been attacked by the Sorcerers that are after him.
Journey #1
Type 1. Memories ======> Type 2. Impulsive Responses
Not realizing that those very Sorcerers have spotted him and remember what he has done to their fellow Sorcerers. The Sorcerers confront the main character who knows what’s coming from the memory of his past experience. They’re hatred of him cause such anger inside them that they impulsively attack him.
ACT 2
Signpost #2
Type 2. Impulsive Responses
(Impulsive Responses Definition: Built into the mind is an instinctual base of reactions and attitudes that cannot be altered but merely compensated for. When a story’s problem revolves around the unsuitability of someone’s essential nature to a given situation or environment, the central issue is Impulsive Responses. The solution lies in the character conditioning herself to either hold her tendencies in check or develop methods of enhancing areas in which she is naturally weak in reason, ability, emotion, or intellect.)
The Sorcerers continue their attack. The main characters defends himself and his lunch with all the instincts and training at his disposal.
Journey #2
Type 2. Impulsive Responses ======> Type 3. Innermost Desires
All the fighting leads to the main character being trapped and vulnerable. The very thing that the Sorcerers desire. Meanwhile the main character’s hot dog (which is a symbol of the peace he so desires) manages to end up a few feet away from him, still safely on it’s plate.
ACT 3
Signpost #3
Type 3. Innermost Desires
(Innermost Desires Definition: Innermost Desires describes the essential feelings that form the foundation of character. These feelings are so basic that a character is often not aware of what they truly are. When Innermost Desires is involved, a character is moved right to the fiber of her personality. Contrast with Impulsive Responses, Innermost Desires deals with the sum total of a character’s experiences that determine what attracts and repels her, where Impulsive Responses describes the innate responses which are not dependent on experience. )
The Lead Sorcerer stomps on the Hot Dog the main character so desired thereby demoralizing him. The Main Character sees his hot dog as a representation of the peace he longs for. Seeing this, the Sorcerers rejoice in the fact that they have can potentially attained the one thing no other Sorcerer so far have been able to do. Namely, kill the Main Character. They relish in the anticipation of the glory they so desire.
Journey #3
Type 3. Innermost Desires ======> Type 4. Contemplation
Having lost his Hot Dog and having nothing left to lose, the Main Character truly fights back. Giving into his desire to get revenge for the peace that was taken from him. He beats the Sorcerers senseless. This causes the Sorcerers to realize their mistaken impression of themselves.
CONCLUSION
Signpost #4
Type 4. Contemplation
(Contemplation Definition: When one has all the facts, knows all the impact – both positive and negative; when one is fully aware of detrimental consequences and still decides on the poor course of action, there is something wrong with the way one arrives at conclusions. This is the subject of stories focusing on Contemplation. The key here is not to redefine who a character is, but to lead her to relearn how to weigh an issue so that her conclusions are less destructive to herself and/or others.)
A moment at the end there where the Main Character could have taken the Lead Sorcerer’s life but didn’t, makes the Sorcerer rethink who he is, what he does, and what all the other Sorcerer’s say about the Main Character. This leads to a generous act on the part of the Lead Sorcerer, who buys the Main Character two Hot Dogs to replace the one he destroyed. This makes the Main Character thinks that there still might be some hope for peace left.
Does that make any sense at all so far? I hope so.
My next step is to do the same with all three throughlines I have left. I’ll save that for next week. I hope this clarifies things. If it’s confusing, please let me know (which you won’t, since I don’t believe you’ve read this at all).
Started on a new crew this week. I was put on Act 2 of this show. I found it to be VERY funny and I like it a lot, but the writers didn’t seem to share my opinion. They’ve rewritten a lot of the jokes I liked. Some of them have been replaced with jokes that aren’t even funny. It makes me sad when that happens.
The good news is that I get to add more action to an action sequence in the show. It’s sooo much fun. I get to riff on just about every martial arts movie I can think of. The hardest part is coming up with new shots that sets up the action, that I haven’t used yet. Still, it’s a blast so I’m not complaining.
WRITING
(For those of you coming in late to these posts, if you want to read what my project is about, CLICK HERE to learn about the general world the story takes place in, and CLICK HERE if you want to know the story itself.)
Alright, so I started to plot out my project’s story. Yes, I’ve written a rough outline of what I wanted the story to be, but now I really need to solidify everything and really add the structure to the plot. In other words, my rough outline is like a thumbnail sketch that needs structure, construction and solidity added to it.
Right now, the theory of story that I like to use to flesh out my plot is the DRAMATICA theory. Unfortunately the DRAMATICA theory is so complicated and convoluted, that I can’t really sum it up in a nut shell. If you want to get an idea of what DRAMATICA is all about, click the link below:
Needless to say, in spite of the fact that it’s really complicated, I like it because it break things down so much, that it gives me a lot to think about. I find it helps me hone down things I didn’t think of and it really gives me somewhere to go. Unfortunately, what I will write below is going to sound very confusing because of the oddity of the theory I’m using. I’ll attempt to explain myself a bit but really, you need to familiarize yourself with the theory to get the most out of what I’m writing below. It’s also going to look really mechanical and unintuitive. This is a method that works for me. It might not be your cup of tea. That’s okay, at least you’ll see how someone else approaches writing a story.
Okay, so first, I chose to use DRAMATICA to break down my story into four points of view or “Viewpoints”. The four “Viewpoints” DRAMATICA puts forth are: MAIN Character, IMPACT Character, OVERALL Story, MAIN vs. IMPACT Story. (These are explained in the What is DRAMATICA? link). You are to assign a characters to the first two view points (if you can). If you have an idea for an OVERALL Story, you assign it at this stage if you want. You may or may not know what the IMPACT Story will be so you might leave that blank. This is what I did:
MAIN Character – Rob
IMPACT Character – Lead Sorcerer
OVERALL Story – Sorcerer’s attempt to kill Rob
MAIN vs. IMPACTStory – ?
Next I needed to match the “Viewpoints” with an “area of conflict” thereby giving each one a “throughline”. (If you’re having trouble following the terminology, you can download the DRAMATICA dictionary on this page HERE. Sorry for all the extra work).
I’m going to be using the chart below so you could get a sense of what I’m doing. For a clearer pdf version of the chart (download chart now):
The four “areas of conflict” DRAMATICA puts forth (as seen in the chart above) are: AN ACTIVITY, A SITUATION, A FIXED ATTITUDE, MANIPULATION OF OTHERS OR YOURSELF. This is how I assigned the “view points” and the “areas of conflict” to my story:
MAIN Character (Rob) – SITUATION: This basically means Rob’s personal point of view will be about dealing with his fixed state of affairs. The situation he sees himself in.
IMPACT Character (Lead Sorcerer) – ACTIVITY: This basically means that the lead Sorcerer’s point of the view will be his dealing with how his on going endeavor is constantly changing.
OVERALL Story (Sorcerer’s attempt to kill Rob) – FIXED ATTITUDE: This basically means that the plot of the story, the structure of the story itself, is dealing with the effects of bias and prejudice and whether things can change in regards to it.
MAIN vs. IMPACTStory (Rob’s attempt to convince the Sorcerers they’ve got the wrong idea about him) – MANIPULATION: This basically means that the relationship in this story between The MAIN Character (Rob) and The IMPACT Character (lead Sorcerer) is about changing the other or manipulating each other.
Everything above is ALL supposed to happen all at once as the story progresses. Notice that, because I applied an area of conflict to the MAIN vs. IMPACT Story, I was able to come up with what it was suppose to be about.
The next step in the DRAMATICA process is to breakdown the story into “Types” which essentially breaks down the story into four Acts or four “sign posts” that must be reach. In the chart above, this will be the dark gray areas. What is labeled “Concern” in the legend at the bottom of the page. Since I chose the FIXED ATTITUDE conflict for the OVERALL Story “Throughline”, the story breaks down into the four quad “Types” within FIXED ATTITUDE. They are: Memories, Impulsive Responses, Innermost Desires, and Contemplation. Since I get to choose the order of the four “Types”, I put them in this order:
Act 1 – Memories: This means that subjective concepts or ideas from the past will be influencing the forward momentum of the story in this Act. This will cause…
Act 2 – Impulsive Responses: which will influence the forward momentum of this Act. This will lead to…
Act 3 – Contemplation: on behalf of some or all the characters in the story. Something in this act makes them consider something which will leads to someone reaching their…
Act 4 – Innermost Desires: thereby ending the story.
Next, I needed to choose a “Thematic issue”. In the chart above, it’s the light gray area labeled “Issue” in the legend. I’m only suppose to pick it from the FIXED ATTITUDE quad and I only need to chose ONE of the 16 issues that are light gray. I chose “Truth”. The reason is because the problems in the quads (the white squares) under “Truth” are the problems I want to explore.
The “problem” under the “Truth” quad are: Knowledge, Actuality, Perception, and Thought.
According to the way DRAMATICA works, by choosing Truth, the underlying “elements” of the story would deal with the exploration between “Perception” and “Actuality”. Bad perception is the “problem” and actuality is the “solution”. The symptom of this problem, according to DRAMATICA, is the false “Thoughts”, and the treatment is relevant “Knowledge” (as seen on the chart under “Truth”).
Now that I have all those things from the chart picked out, it’s time to use them to put together the story. Beginning with Act 1, BUT I’ve written enough for this week. I will show you how I start roughing out Act 1 next week.
Please let me know if this is too confusing to follow. I know I didn’t explain the terminology and it can be as if I’m speaking gibberish. If you’re confused this week, perhaps next week when it starts coming together, it will all start making sense.
The drawings below are just a few quick exploration sketches for Rob’s War Hammer and a few sketches of Rob. They where specifically drawn to be put up on the blog so that I had a drawing to put up for the week. That said, I DO need to finalize the design of Rob’s hammer:
VIDEOS
More GAME OF THRONES videos. This time, it’s an inside look at the show. Looks sooo cool!
This year’s SIMPSONS Christmas episode will have an act where there will be Simpsons “Muppets”. The show is directed by Bob Anderson and Matt Schofield. I’ve recently seen a rough cut of that act and it’s a lot of fun. Very MUPPET SHOW-ish. Guest star and all.
Also, it’s the second to last SIMPSONS episode that I did story reel work for. I’m very excited to see the finished product.
ART
(For those of you coming in late to these posts, if you want to read what my project is about, CLICK HERE to learn about the general world the story takes place in, and CLICK HERE if you want to know the story itself.)
Alright FINALLY got the animation test done. I thought I’d make it a trailer of sorts for the illustrated film. Here it is, (I’ll write my thought about it all below):
Before I give my personal thoughts on how it all turned out, let me explain what I did to finish the thing. First, I added a few lighter tones to some of the drawings, just to balance it out a bit. I don’t love the way all the drawings turned out but they were good enough for my purposes. Once I got the artwork done, it was just a matter of timing out the panels so the that they were presented in the way I wanted. Then I used the Storyboard Pro tools to move the Sorcerers into position so that they would slide in. I did the same with the Viper and the Winged Apes. I typed in the speed I wanted them to come in and the amount of easing out I wanted both of them to have. I made sure when timing out the Winged Apes to have them stop moving a little bit after the Viper, just for visual interest. The entire time I did all this, I kept making movies to test out my timing. I must have made about 10 versions.
Once I got the timing the way I wanted, I looked at the final version and realized that it desperately needed sound. I have a very close family friend (almost a cousin but not really) whom I grew up with. He has a band called KATERPILLAR. I just recently became aware of it (last time I saw Rod he didn’t mention it) and I thought their music was, not only awesome, but perfect for my cartoon. I didn’t think he’d mind me using it so I put one of their songs in. It worked perfectly. I didn’t even need to time the drawings to the music, it synced up all by itself. I’ll have to e-mail Rod and tell him, I’m using his music.
Okay, so what do I think about it all? Well, let me begin with the way it turned out and the process of making it itself. As far as the way it turned out goes, I think it’s “meh” at the beginning and good in the end. Next time, I’ll put some antics and overshoots in. I think it needs them in the first part in order to more clearly show the changes of expression. Not so much in the end though. The camera move hides the need for any antic and overshoots. That, and I think the timing worked out well with the sliding characters.
The process on the other hand, needs work. It takes FAR too long to do. I don’t think I’m a good enough painter to be trying to semi-paint all of it. It takes an awful lot of time and in the end, it doesn’t really look as good as I’d like. I want to be done with this project sooner than later. Finding a faster way to make the process work will need to be a priority. I’ll have to rethink what I want the end product to look like. I mean, it took me almost a month and a half just to do 13 seconds and most of the time was taken with words on the screen. Not good. I’m pretty sure this Illustrated Film I’m doing is going to be a few minutes long. I don’t want to spend all year on it. I have WAY to many other ideas I want to get to and I’m dying to work on them too.
Having said that, what’s next on my project? Well, next is me trying to get my energy for the project going again. This test really took the fun out of it and I need to get my energy back for it. My favorite part of doing a personal project is breaking down the story and coming up with story beats. It’s possible that, that will give me back the enthusiasm for the project again. So next time, I’ll be writing about story. It’s possible that story is what I like more than the drawing. It really pumps me up.
So now, that you’ve heard my take on everything, what do you think? I’d like to hear your opinions and suggestions.
MUSIC/VIDEOS
Speaking of KATERPILLAR. If you’re interested in their music, CLICK HERE to go to their site. Here’s one of their music videos as well as one of my favorite song of theirs. Enjoy:
AWESOME! Another trailer for the HBO version of George R. R. Martin’s THE GAME OF THRONES.
If you like fantasy and haven’t read these books, you owe it to yourself to do so. They are a LOT of fun. BUT be forewarned, these books are being made into HBO shows for a reason. They are definitely rated R books. One the things I really enjoy about the books though, is the way that the story doesn’t follow the tired Noble Heroes versus The Dark Lord fantasy cliche.
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Wow, it was a really heavy work week last week. I was under the gun all week and just barely managed to squeak out my assigned Acts both Act 1 AND Act 3. I was even given a last minute fix on Act 1 that I had to finish before my wife (whom I carpool with) and I had to leave to pick up the kids. I was sweating it to the end.
Compare that to this week where I started revising a different episode. I’ve been assigned Act 2 and the rewrite is VERY lite. So lite in fact, that I’m almost finish revising it, and we only have a three day work week.
Can’t say this job doesn’t keep me on my toes.
ART
(For those of you coming in late to these posts, if you want to read what my project is about, CLICK HERE to learn about the general world the story takes place in, and CLICK HERE if you want to know the story itself.)
This is taking a long time and I apologize if you’re getting tired of basically seeing the same drawing over and over. That said, this IS the process. Granted, only doing this in 30 minute chunks everyday, does make the process go at crawl. Believe me, I’m feeling it. I want it to be over so I can get to the next step. Which leads me to think that I’m being too precious about all this and I might be going about it all wrong. Perhaps I should just be rougher with the final product. That way I can finish it sooner than later. I’ll really have to think about it this.
Okay, so here’s what I’ve done this week:
I’ve added shadows to all the drawings and began changing up the edges on them a bit. I’ve also added some core shadows to parts of the drawings. My plan is to continue adding core shadows where needed and then I’m going to add a few slight highlights or lighter areas to places that might need it. I hope to have that all done by next week. Once I do, it will basically be done. The tricky part once I’m done doing it though, is figuring out a way to show you what the finished product looks like. I’ll figure that out, once I get there.
FAMILY
Okay, so, we had quite an interesting start to our week. Sunday night, my 4 year old daughter and my two and a half year old son, were playing together (as they normally do). At some point (as it sometimes happens) they began bickering over who can play with what toy. Well, we didn’t really see what happened exactly but somehow the attempt to either hold on to the toy or take the toy away, led to Dante getting poked, scratch, or swiped on his unprotected eye ball. So began a really tough rest of the night.
Dante came crying into the living room, screaming in pain. It was obvious that there was some serious hurt in his eye. I became very upset with Elizabeth and reprimanded her. She went to her room and cried. I took Dante in my arms and held him, hoping that he’d quiet down soon. When he didn’t I really started getting worried. He wouldn’t let us see his eye and refused to open it. He just cried and cried. I started freaking out. Alesha just got mad at me for it. She decided to tell Dante that if he calmed down, he’d give him a treat. I thought it was a ridiculous notion since the boy was in some obvious excruciating pain. He wouldn’t even be THINKING about having a treat.
She took him and gave him a treat and he was fine as if nothing ever happened. I felt like a complete moron for having freaked out. Was he play acting? Was he just letting off steam? Did he just like being held and pampered so he decided to play it all up? I was upset with everyone after that.
I took the kids to bed, and after praying with them, I went downstairs having to deal with a headache that had been building up all day only to become a migraine after the whole eye poke thing.
I decided to go sleep early to try to get rid of it. Easier said than done since baby Ambrose, who sleeps in our room, was bothered by all the fuss and decided to be fussy too. I fed him a bottle and he fell back asleep after a while. I fell asleep for about an hour myself, when I got woken up from Dante screaming and crying. It was coming from downstairs. It seems Dante was not faking the pain in his eye. He must have been rubbing it in bed and just irritated it more. I had seen him rubbing it when I put him to bed. He was crying as if he’d been hit in the eye again. No matter what we tried, we couldn’t make him stop crying.
Every idea of possible horrible things that might be wrong with his eye began passing through my head. It was heartbreaking. I began to freak out again. Do we need to take him to the hospital?! Alesha tried to be much more cool headed and went more for a, “wait and see” attitude. After all, he was fine and had both eyes open when he went to bed.
After being with him for a while as he cried, asking him questions and holding him, he finally began to calm down. He did NOT want to go back to bed though, nor did he want to open his eyes. I held him for a while and then I asked him if he wanted to lay down with me in my bed. I thought perhaps he would feel more comfortable knowing one of us was there. My headache was still there and hadn’t gone away. I was also really tired.
I took him to our bedroom and lay him down, but he started crying again as if he’s eye hurt. I thought perhaps being prone actually hurt his eye more so I sat him up and he calmed down. I picked him up and took him back downstairs. Baby Ambrose was woken up by the whole thing and was crying as well at this point. Alesha went upstairs to take care of him.
I took Dante and sat with him on the couch. I took the blankets that we have by the couch and covered us both with them. I told Dante that I’d sit and sleep with him there on the couch, sitting up. He seemed fine with that idea and we began to try to go to sleep. Except he kept trying to rub his eye, and I would tell him not too. He’d keep trying or pretending not too and then go for it. I tried holding his hands down but then he’d whined. I wanted him to go to sleep, only he kept being really fidgety with this hands and try to rub his eyes with the blanket. This must have gone on for a good half hour (or at least if felt like that) when I finally just got mad at him and said,
“Stop it. JUST stop it!” He did. Suddenly it was as if he was just tired and he didn’t move his hands again. Ten minutes later, he was asleep.
I fell asleep for a bit too but woke up because I was really uncomfortable. Dante was half on my lap and half on a cushion. I slowly extricated myself from under him, making sure he was sitting up and comfortable and made my way to the other side of the couch where I made myself as small as possible. There, I attempted to be fall asleep. Which I did, because I was sooo darn tired.
The rest of the night I spent, what seemed to me like, every ten or fifteen minutes, waking up, making sure Dante didn’t fall of the couch, making sure he was sitting up, keeping him from rubbing his eye, making sure he didn’t sleep on his eye and generally not getting any good rest at all. The next morning Alesha woke me up and I just felt awful. Alesha hadn’t had a very good night either because, baby Ambrose, sensing the tension in the house, had been fussy all night.
We soon discovered that Dante refused to open his eyes still. The problem now was, what to do. It was Monday and if Dante was seriously injured, we needed to do something about it. We didn’t know if he was just sleepy, so we couldn’t just take him to daycare. Alesha decided she would stay home with him and observe him. If he didn’t recover as the day went by, she would take him to the doctor’s office.
I took the other kids to daycare and went to work, worrying my head off about the boy. By mid morning I was calling Alesha to check up on him. Turns out that Dante was fine. He seemed back to normal and was watching cartoons with BOTH eyes open, asking about when his sister would come home. I was very relieved to hear it. I spent the rest of the day worrying whether or not I would be able to stay awake, on the way home.
We did make it home safe, but even though I was drinking coffee, it was actually starting NOT to work.
COMIC BOOKS
So I saw this video earlier this week and it got me thinking about digital comics on the iPad (or similar touch tablet device).
What if you did something like this with digital comics? What if, when you open a comic page on a touch tablet device, the page would look normal and you can read it like any other comic book page. Only, if you were to touch one of the panels, you could interact with it in some way. It wouldn’t change the panel layout but you can cause some motion to happen in the panel. For example, if there is a person walking in the panel, you can see the person’s walk cycle or in case of a close up, he would bob up and down and the background would pan by. Maybe in a panel there’s a spaceship flying through space, and you can pass your finger through the panel to have the background pan at a speed you want and have the ship’s thrusters animated appropriately. If a person is sad and you touch the screen, he could hunch over a bit more. Nothing extreme, just subtle little changes just to make it more interactive if you choose. What do you think?
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Comments Off on Heavy week last week, lite week this week. Second color pass. Dante almost loses an eye. Applying some slight interactive motion to a comic book panel?
Well, I managed to finish my Act 1 board revisions this Tuesday. Usually I’m done by the Friday of the week before. It all those little things really add up. I was then assigned Act 3, which thankfully isn’t as bad. It’s also shorter. This one I HAVE to get done by Friday.
ART
(For those of you coming in late to these posts, if you want to read what my project is about, CLICK HERE to learn about the general world the story takes place in, and CLICK HERE if you want to know the story itself.)
Okay, so here’s the deal with these drawings. I’m not convinced that these are the best drawings I could do. I kind of want to keep noodling around with them. On the other hand, I want to get this done, since it’s just a test, so I have to say, “good enough” and keep going.
I started coloring the drawings as you can see:
I started drawing shadows on the drawings above but I didn’t get to the other ones yet. As you can see, I just colored in the “flat” colors on everything. I’m planning to find a fast way to make these drawings look more “rendered” without it taking forever to do. My plan is to add the shadow and lighter tones using a hard edge like I’ve done above. I’ve found, trying to find the right “planes” of the figure to darken, very tricky. Once I’m done, I’ll use the texture brushes to put in the firm, soft and lost edges. I hope that speeds things up. This is really going to show me how long it’s going to take to do this.
I put in the correct colored sky in the drawing below, just to see how it will look.
I decided to put the drawing below here so you can see the final pull out camera move.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how long it’s taking me to do this. I’m trying to figure out a faster way to do this so that I can work on it when I’m not on the computer. It would speed things up, so much more. I may have to come up with a system where I draw some of my roughs on paper, scan them in and clean them up on the computer. That way, I can also work on this when I have some free time at home instead of just working on this during lunch time at work. Even so, I think in the end, the coloring process might be the longest and most laborious part of this project. I hope it doesn’t bore me. This is suppose to be fun.
BOARD GAMES
As anyone reading my blog knows, I like board games. Well, I was surprised one day to be contacted by a priest who happens to also be game designer with at least one published board game under his belt. Fr. Ben Dallas has just recently contacted me to let me know that his second publish game has just recently been released. It’s a party game that goes by the name WHIRLED PEAS.
Since I haven’t played it myself I’m not sure exactly how it plays just yet. I do get the impression that it’s plays like a combination of CRANIUM and TIME’S UP!. It comes with a spinner called THE PEA-KING spinner. It looks like this:
The official description, on Amazon, for the game goes something like this:
Fr. Ben told me that half the profits of the game goes to charity while the other half goes to paying off their publishing debt. If you wish to purchase a copy, you can buy it at Amazon. Not only will you have fun playing this game, but it’s for a good cause.
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, where he states:
