THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Wow, talk about work overload.  I’m helping to revise show 3 for the next two weeks.  It got a MAJOR rewrite.  I didn’t get to work on it right away though. I was told to start boarding the Couch Gag for the show first. This turned out out to be a huge job. The gag was practically a short story and it’s long for a Couch Gag. It was asking for some really tough things which meant there were some very complicated problems to solve  Truly challenging.

After finishing my first rough pass, I was told I had to start revising Act 1.   Boy oh boy did it get overhauled.  It wouldn’t have been so bad if it wasn’t for the fact that early into the act there was a huge dream sequence that required a lot of fancy styled shots. This small section of the board would be as challenging as the Couch Gag and it was only one small part of all the fixes I need to do.

So I started the Act, and midway through I was told  I need to finish the Couch Gag boards as soon as possible.  I had to stop my work on Act 1, which I was already behind with, and had to restart the Couch Gag board.

It’s turning out to be one heck of a tough week.

ART

I continued to explore the characters this week, trying to find the right face and shape for the Duran Duran Sorcerer:

I made up my mind fairly quickly (maybe too quickly) with the look I was going to go with for the Sorceress. Which used this picture as reference:

I then decided to focus specifically on the silhouettes of the characters:

The “final” silhouettes I placed at the top of the page below.  I put quotes on the word final because I’m still giving myself a little bit of leeway to adjust them if I need to, or get rid of them all together (I’m not 100% sure about the Sorceress yet, I might be rushing her). I’m the most happy with Rob’s silhouette.

I then decided to really start working out the details of the characters again.  I decided to start with the lead Sorcerer’s face, since I  felt I was close.  I accidentally hit upon a design for his face that I REALLY like. It’s not a solidly constructed drawing but it will do for now:

FINALLY! Two down, two more to go. After that, I have to design the backgrounds and the monsters. Plus test the flat stylized look I’m going to want to use, which means, doing an animation test.

So far all this has been fun and frustrating all at the same time.  After so many bad designs, it feels good when you hit one you like.

PODCAST

So I decided to listen to Catholic Under the Hood this week.  It’s a great podcast if you’re interested in Catholic history. he explorers lots of different things historical but from the Catholic perspective.  The latest episode was right up my alley since it was about a board game.

Rithmomachia.

Here’s what Fr. Seraphim wrote about it the show:

During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Rithmomachia was one of the most popular games played in the universities and theological schools and promoted by Roger Bacon and Thomas More. Today, it has fallen into obscurity.

The show was really informative. So much so that it made me want to write a story from the info it put forth.   The game itself also sounded fascinating. Don’t know how much fun it would be to play, but the idea of the game is really cool. Great fuel for stories.

In order to talk about the game so that the audience could understand the relevance of the game to the mind of a person in the middle ages, Fr. Seraphim  had to explain the way the people saw number back then.  I couldn’t help but think of the numbers from  LOST.

Highly recommend listening to the podcast. CLICK HERE to do so.

For more comic and stories written by me, CLICK HERE.

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