THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Having fun drawing my scenes so far.  Nothing fancy or crazy to report.  Thing are back to normal at work.

ART

For Part 1, CLICK HERE.

For Part 2, CLICK HERE.

For Part 3, CLICK HERE.

…and that’s IT.  That’s all I wrote.  There isn’t anymore.  It took, off and on, about three years to do this much.  Mostly because I was trying to redesign the comic and recompose the pages.  As well as trying to adjust this first part of the story so that it really grabbed you.  This only caused me to burn out on it and I ended up abandoning the comic in the end.  Should I have?  I really didn’t want to redraw 22 pages again after all that time.

Biggest problem I had with the comic? I took it waaaaay to seriously.

Below I have included the original ending to comic I had written.  It’s actually a really bad ending, now that I look at it again.  I’m VERY glad I changed it.  The comic that followed that ending was actually going to begin with the three main characters sitting around a table, drinking tea as the Golem explained what was going on.  Very dull with a lot of exposition.  The new ending I ended up going with, in contrast, was going to lead the characters, in the next comic, right to the “meat” of the story and was going to push the character to make some difficult choices right off the bat.  That was going to be far more interesting:

See what I mean? Really bad ending. It’s also very unclear if Angie is sick and has something wrong with her, which was NOT my intent.

Well, anyway, what do you think?  Did you like it? Didn’t like it?  Are you disappointed  that there isn’t anymore?  Was it not that good to begin with?  Would you have payed money for it had I finished it?

I’m really curious.  If you really liked it please tell me. If you didn’t like it, please tell me that too.  It won’t hurt my feelings or anything.  I’m MUCH more critical about this story than I think you will ever be.  You may just confirm my suspicions by telling me what you didn’t like.  If you DID like it, please tell me why as well.  Especially since there are things I think are really working in the story.  In any case, depending on the reaction, I may or may not continue the story.  I mean, if no one likes it enough for me to continue, it’s not like I was going to anyway, but if suddenly, I get thousands of people wanting more…

For now, I’ve got tons of other ideas to attempt.

Next week, THE BLACK TERROR KID.

FAMILY

My Abuelita is not doing very well lately.  I would appreciate any prayers you can send her way and our families way.  Thanks.

WRITING

Because I’ve been trying to come up with a fun, SHORT, story or skit for my next project, I’ve been rereading my books on story theory lately.  I’ve decided that I was going to try to structure whatever story I ended up telling “properly”, or at the very least, as well as I can.

Part of the reason for this is that I’m having trouble putting the idea I have together into something, ANYTHING, remotely entertaining.  I have and idea and can’t seem to actually execute it so it’s kinda driving me nuts.

The first book I decided to reread was:

• STORY: SUBSTANCE, STRUCTURE STYLE, AND THE PRINCIPLES OF SCREENWRITING by Robert Mckee.

This book actually helped out a lot.  It’s a very popular book on the Three Act Structure Theory of writing.  It’s good, even if you’re not writing a screenplay.

I’m avoiding the “Heroes Journey” Theory of story right now, mainly because I find it annoying at the moment.  Nothing wrong with it or anything, it just reminds me of Joseph Campbell and I find him annoying right now so I kinda want to avoid the theory for that completely subjective reason.

The other book I re-familiarizing  myself with is:

• DRAMATICA: A NEW THEORY OF STORY by Melanie Anne Phillips & Chris Huntley.

I’ve never tried this theory out myself but it really makes a lot of sense to me.  It’s a very deep and intense theory that puts forth the proposition that all stories are grand arguments about a specific subject, that must include all sides of a given argument in order to feel complete.  Kinda like St. Thomas Aquina‘s Summa Theologica  only in story form. I think it’s a very clever theory but overwhelmingly cumbersome.  That said, it’s VERY helpful if you’re in the place I’m at right now where you’re not sure which way to go. It gives you enough structure from the get go so you can start building a workable story that will hopefully trigger the inspiration to get you what you want.  It’s also a good theory to use to double check the integrity of a story you’ve written by checking if it’s well balanced.

You can Download the 4th edition of the DRAMATICA book online for free at the Dramatica site, you can read it directly at the site for free, or you can go to iTunes and download the 10th edition of the DRAMATICA book as a podcast. In many ways, listening to the book on audio is like listening to a university course in Socratic Logic (I should know, since that is how I learned Socratic Logic).  I don’t know if I can recommend this theory or not since I have just now begun to truly use it but I’ll keep you updated with what I discover.

BLOGS

I became aware, through a “retweet” Topher Davila sent on Twitter, of this article from the FIRST THINGS website:

SCIENCE FRICTION

by Robert R. Chase

It’s an article about Christianity in Science Fiction stories and it’s really great.  It opened my eyes to a LOT of really interesting Science Fiction stories that have very positive Catholic elements that I didn’t really know where out there.  I highly recommend reading the article.

ROLE PLAYING GAMES/VIDEO

In case you ever wondered what a game of DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS looked like as it’s being played,  here’s a fun video of the writers of the animated show ROBOT CHICKEN, playing a game:

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