We have a problem in this country. Let’s call it what it is: a gun epidemic. The NRA, with the right wing nut bar Tea Party that has taken over the GOP, have managed to convince a surprisingly large number of people that their Second Amendment rights trump everything else in the constitution. An acquaintance of mine posted a meme on Facebook to the effect that the San Bernardino shooting happened despite strict gun laws, and that the gun laws did nothing. The truth of the matter is that the two people who committed this heinous act obtained the guns through completely legal channels. The fact that they were able to do this demonstrates that the gun laws are probably not addressing the problem well enough. Well known is the gun show loophole, where if you go to a gun show to buy your weapons you don’t have to pass a background check.
One of the more ludicrous ideas being floated is that if everybody had guns, there would be fewer shootings. The solution to too many guns in the environment is to add even more guns. No, really. People actually believe this. Here is the argument I presented to one such person on Facebook who posted one of these silly memes that suggested that the gun laws did nothing, and were therefore useless – and then backed it up with this preposterous claim that adding more weapons to a social environment makes it safer:
Think. Every person around you, everywhere you go, no matter how stupid, no matter how untrained, no matter how down on their luck they are, no matter how angry at the world they might be, no matter how delusional they might be because some false holy man has convinced them that green is blue and up is down and wrong is right, EVERY person around you now has a loaded gun on their person, ready to use it. Potentially on YOU. And you want to give loaded guns to every one of them.
Now. How safe are you? Is that the world you really want to live in?
Nobody thinks when they get up in the morning, “I’m a bad person, so I’m going to go do bad things.” Everybody knows, deep in their hearts, that they are one of the good guys. The good guy with a gun theory does not work, because they’re all good guys. They do bad things anyway, and people die anyway.
Give everybody a gun. Turn that dial up to eleven and intensify that situation and watch this bring out the worst tendencies in every person around you.
Societies work because there are rules in place that keep innocent people, good people, from being put in positions where they must be judge, jury and executioner all in one and nobody – nobody – has the right to that much power, or deserves the burden of that much responsibility. At that level, life becomes cheap, and anyone could, for any reason, in any value system they choose to arbitrarily apply, without consulting a single other human being, decide you really need killing.
And then kill you.
And then the “good guys with guns,” who can’t be distinguished from the bad guys with the guns for the most part, these good guys gun him down, assuming you haven’t been caught out someplace where nobody is close enough to you to see what’s going on. But you’re still dead anyway.
Because you put your life in the hands of people who have their own problems, who might not have that knife’s edge alertness every waking moment toward danger that might be near them, and might not have the near-psychic prescience to tell that somebody may be about to shoot you, even by accident, from up to 100 yards away – you’ve trusted that this random person, who almost certainly has no battlefield or law enforcement experience, will be able to take out their gun and shoot somebody before that person, who has possibly already taken aim with a telescopic sight, shoots you.
Now how safe do you feel?
Don’t just be a ditto head. Think it through. The solution to gun violence may be difficult to achieve, but it is certainly and very obviously not more guns.
Of course, it’s always a team effort making something like this, but I took a template provided by Iggy Matthews of Let’s Get Reelz, with voice acting by Christian Basel, and produced a 30 second television spot that will air on Bright House Cable in central Florida for the September 19 debut of the new series of Doctor Who. It’ll air twice, and thousands of people will see my work all at once.
What’s more exciting is that once I got the materials I was able to bang this thing out in just three days start to finish, and that’s in the midst of doing my other work for my science fiction radio station as its station manager and head writer.
It was made to promote the award winning The New MarkWho42, the widely popular Doctor Who themed radio talk show that airs each Wednesday and Friday on Krypton Radio. The New MarkWHO42 is produced by Mark Baumgarten, and features weekly panelists Mark Baumgarten, Patricia Helm, Eduardo M. Freyre, Patrick Hawkins and Christian Basel.
The commercial, produced in full 1080i HD, will air twice this September 19 on Bright House Cable, serving central Florida, in conjunction with the airing of The Magician’s Apprentice, the first episode of the 9th series of Doctor Who, starring Peter Capaldi.
The original spot concept did not include Daleks. That was my idea, and I got some Dalek models, fixed them so they’d look good on HD, rigged them, lit them, animated them, then recomposited the entire spot in After Effects, replacing every single element, but using the original animatic as a guide.
The Dalek voices? Yeah, those were me too.
The ramifications of this are:
I got to do one of those time crunch, “failure is not an option” jobs I used to be known for.
I got to reacquaint myself with Maya, and I’d gotten a bit rusty and hadn’t realized just how rusty – but I’m back up to speed now.
I got to do this for a radio show on my own radio station, and for friends of mine who produce one of our best shows. This will help them sell advertising for their show, which will help not only them, but the station, and then by proxy, me.
I do commissions sometimes. This latest one was done for a new pop media site called Second Geekhood, and the three people depicted are its key players, Kristine Cherry, Dennis Cherry, and Liz Carlie. They wanted something that looked like Drew Struzan’s, but of course they weren’t getting Struzan for anything mere mortals could afford.
Of course it doesn’t compare with the real thing. I’m no Drew Struzan. But I got close enough to make the client happy. I’m sure if I’d been able to spend more time on this, I could have gotten it up there – but you know how it is. Artists never finish their work. They merely relinquish it.
What you see here is about four day’s work, switching back and forth between Corel Painter and Photoshop. I’m sure I can get faster as I do more of these. I sure wish I could get Photoshop’s image control tools and Painter’s natural brushes and materials in one program, but the two of them being able to read Photoshop files is an acceptable substitute for that.
I’m starting to branch out and try new things. Last month I did a design for Debbie Viguie. It’s sort of like ghost writing, but for artists. This one was was Pinkie Pie, dressed as Harley Quinn. It was a lot of fun doing this, and I think I’m going to be doing a few more of these to test the waters. If I can paint them fast enough, there’s money to be made here.
The other one, the Cthulhu shirt, I did in about half a day. It’s a lot faster when you don’t have to worry about being on model for whatever you’re drawing. I had fun working out the lighting effects, and I’m trying to get more comfortable working in color over all, so this was a good exercise.
Every day we assess our world, evaluate the risks to ourselves, and gauge what things to be happy about, what things to be afraid of. We find happiness in too few things, and fear in too many – and what we once feared for good reason, we often never reevaluate and the fear of that thing has hold on us the rest of our lives, often well beyond the point where that fear is useful or justified.
Take a step upward. Get to higher ground. Find the happiness you’ve overlooked. And look downward on what you were once fearful of, and see if you’re still afraid.
I’m an animator too, and here are some samples. Most are Maya, one is in Rhythm & Hues’ “Voodoo” (I worked there for nearly ten years teaching animators) and my demo reel, which predates all that, is in Lightwave.
Why am I just splatting out this thing I found on Facebook? Emma Coates was a storyboard artist for Pixar. The rules seem to be sound, and I want to remember them. Posting them here is handy for me if nothing else. If you’re a writer, you might find them useful too.
You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.
You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be very different.
Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.
Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.
Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.
What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?
Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.
Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.
When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.
Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.
Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.
Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.
Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.
Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.
If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.
What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.
No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.
You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.
Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?
You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?
What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.
Here’s the same drawing with a little color. I just used the black and white and selectively tweaked the color layers. Fun.
You would think that being able to do something like this in 90 seconds flat would be worth some serious money to somebody. Especially combined with all my other skills. I’m hoping it is, anyway. I’m testing the waters to see what I can really do now that I’ve been steeped in motion picture studio culture for almost ten years.
Yes, I did paint this. Yes, it took 90 seconds. And I was talking to somebody about something completely unrelated who was standing in the room while I did it.
It’s time to rediscover who you are. It’s the secret to life, the universe, and everything, and I can tell you now the answer is not 42.
Right, and you think you know who you are. You don’t know anything, and I’ll tell you why it’s time for a quiet sit with a nice cup of tea and a rethink. Got your tea? Oh, you don’t drink tea. Time to start. Do yourself a favor and pick out a nice orange pekoe, they call it Constant Comment at the supermarket. Go get some, come back, brew the tea, pour a cup, then come back here.
Have a careful sip, it’s hot.
Now where were we? Oh, yes. Rethinking.
You know that thing you’ve been telling yourself? I’ll do this or that when the time is right, I have to wait for things to get better, I’ll be able to make my stand then, well guess what?? That day is never going to happen. Quite a shock, I know. But trust me on this, it’s never going to happen.
You’re never going to be smarter than you are now. You might be wiser later, or you might not be. But the important thing is that whatever you’re hoping to be able to do, now is the time to start doing it. If you want to go open a restaurant, it’s time to start not only thinking about recipes, but making a business plan and finding out what it takes to do it. Want to paint, but don’t know how to draw? It’s time for the foundations – go take life drawing, color is nothing more than a wet pencil with tint. Trust me on that one. Want to act? Time to start dreaming, not stop – but do it with your eyes open.
Have you ever felt like there is a big secret to life and that everyone knows it but you and that nobody’s talking? I’m talking, and I’m going to tell you what it is: no matter what it is you want to do with your life, no matter what it is you want to become, it’s a solvable problem. You can solve it in tiny bits and pieces, but it’s up to you to figure out what problems you have to solve and what doesn’t help you move forward, and that’s a very very easy test. Think of something you think might help you. Then think about how that’s going to move you closer to your dream, and if it isn’t, don’t do that right now. Move on to the next thing. And if you don’t know what to do, make a list of all the things you don’t know, write them down, and start asking questions of people who know more than you. Amazingly, most people who know more than you do are anxious to pass on their knowledge. It’s a sign to them that they’ve been on the right path, and they’re generally very happy to do it.
But the big secret is that success is a matter of figuring it out. It’s a puzzle, yes. But it’s a puzzle with finite rules, learnable ones. Have you ever assembled a bicycle? Remember how hard it was, but you had those instructions to help you out. Success in real life is just. Like. That. The instructions are out there, and each step, each problem you have to solve, I can promise you somebody has done it before you and written down how they did it. You have to have the persistence and the determination to keep looking things up as you go, but if you do that, and keep doggedly at it, and you don’t let anyone tell you that your dream isn’t worth while, inch by inch you will succeed. And it will be ungodly slow. You’ll feel like it’s like pulling teeth sometimes, that there has to be a faster way, and there just isn’t. This is how it’s done – this is how it really works, and there is no faster way of doing it.
I’ve been trying to raise the quality bar of my illustrations lately. No, this image is not unique, it’s from the cover of a Supergirl comic I saw in a store today. However, I did pencil and ink this myself.
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