07.14.08
Posted in planning at 11:19 pm by admin
Basically I had an opportunity present itself that took over my June (the next scheduled month-o-scripting) and totally wiped me out, but in a good way. That concentrated effort means some of my work will see honest-to-goodness actual print, and not by self-publishing. Whoa! Right? Still waiting on a release date for the anthology, but it should be before too long.
So, because of the craziness that was June I decided I needed July mostly off from the extra stuff, Wedding Tarot included. Which means that I will wrap-up the script for Act 1 at the beginning of August and continue on with Act 2. Not that I’ve completely banned the project from my mind (not a chance, there) and I actually had a major brainstorm a week or so ago about 2 of the 3 major plot points in Act 2 and the ending! Yes, I actually know how this will end. (I had theories in the past, I knew where we were headed, but there was no conhesive idea that rang true for me that would tidy up the book–Now there is!)
I’ve also settled on an art direction for the project: a mix of Erte’s Art Deco with its clean lines and saturated colors mixed with the layered, handcut look of the Lemony Snickett titles by Jamie Caliri but not quite as dark, of course. Though that will serve some aspects, nicely. And since it’s set in New Orleans, the wrought iron details and fleur de lys and so forth will all get incorporated. Good think I still have quite a while to hone this all into the look I have in my head.
Finally, I’ve been rethinking this project as one for next years SPI. I’m just not sure that it would be a good fit for them and might, instead, go with another project for Idol, one better suited to the venue, and continue to develop Wedding Tarot for individual publication. Now, whether I web-publish it, self-publish it as I will do with the Random Acts… items (and isn’t that a fun concept I’m entering into right now), or seek an agent for mainstream publication remains to be seen. The latter is very tempting, especially considering Vertigo’s hunt for original graphic novels, and I’ve researched a couple of agencies to query once the script is complete and I have some sample art to show (January-February 09, est.) that seem, on paper, to be a good fit, but I don’t mind self-publishing or web-publishing if that’s what it takes. This is a story I need to tell, to get out of my head and to share, so however that happens, it happens.
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04.28.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 12:51 am by admin
And Act I is not quite complete, but I was able to validate the progress so far. I’m about 10-15 pages of script away from having the first Act complete, but having completed the page count goal leaves me free to give the next couple of nights over to the webcomic which needs it’s strips for this week finished as well as updated banners and a theme upgrade in time for the first anniversary.
Juggling so many projects does put pressure on me and were it not for them I suppose I could have been well through Act II by now, if not further, but the thing to understand is that each project bleeds over into another. Were it not for the proving ground that Random Acts… serves as, I would not have had the courage, necessarily, to pursue Wedding Tarot in the direction it’s taken. They may not seem to have much in common, but they are inextricably linked, and both are my creative children.
Oh, dear, I suppose I’ve gotten a bit melodramatic at this late (early) hour. It really is past time that I was in bed. But I go to sleep having accomplished part one of something extraordinary.
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04.26.08
Posted in planning, writing at 5:53 pm by admin
Whew! I was able to make a sizable dent in catching up my page-count today, putting me within 23 pages of goal. Considering I did 16 pages today, I should be within an arm’s length after another writing session tomorrow. My hope is that I’ll sail across that finish line Monday or Tuesday night and be able to truly have my birthday (the 30th) off. I already have it off from work but the less catch-up I have to do on my own projects (which I would not begrudge the time) the more I get to truly play hooky.
This month has shown me the having the manuscript done by the end of the year is totally doable. What I figure I’ll do is take May off from the hard-core scripting, use June to work on Act II, July off, and then August to either finish Act II or begin Act III. Even if Acts II and III take 2 months each, I’ll still have a working manuscript ready for thumbnails by January ‘09. Cool, huh? I also want to have model sheets for each of the characters done around January. Knowing who all is going to be in the project will give me an edge to do a lot of group line-ups and studies to make sure each person is a little different from the others but in a reliable fashion. I’m really looking forward to that part of the project!
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04.20.08
Posted in planning at 8:47 pm by admin
Which spans approximately 52 pages of graphic novel. Over the weekend, while riding in the car between home and Orlando and back I blocked the next 58 pages worth of graphic novel which I’m hoping will get me within reach of the SF! goal.
While blocking I came to the first hurdle that was fitting in more of the card [sub]plot into what I’d already drafted which had gone a little astray. So I added about four pages in the beginning of Chapter 3 that tidies up the first loose end and have a plan on how to integrate another few before the beginning of the first Act. Essentially it looks like it will be 3 acts, 3 chapters per act, with each chapter around 36 pages each, give or take a few. I’m not so much worried about keeping them identical lengths, but that seems to be how they are working out and all for the better in my mind. The chapters in Act II may actually be longer, but that almost seems fitting as well.
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04.06.08
Posted in writing at 7:30 pm by admin
Sunday the 6th marked the 20% mark of the month therefore I needed to have 20 pages done. Lookie there, I have just that. Of course, now I need to either keep it up or plan a marathon session sometime this week to catch up but all in all, scripting is going well.
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04.02.08
Posted in writing at 10:17 pm by admin
Script Frenzy counts pages, not words, and the goal is 100 in the month. Those 11 pages cover the first 16 pages of the graphic novel as currently envisioned. At this rate I’ll probably run out of the previously blocked pages around script page 27 or so, but there was plenty left in the partial first draft of the prose novel to keep me going long after that. I kinda hope I get far enough into the scripting this month where I actually have to figure out the rest of the interactions.
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04.01.08
Posted in writing at 9:33 pm by admin
And so far I’m looking at 4 pages of the official script for the graphic novel complete. I might get a bit more done before bed tonight, but we are on our way!
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03.11.08
Posted in planning at 10:54 am by admin
Namely, it makes it very difficult to update when you can’t remember your own password to your own site! Sigh… Usually I create my passwords based on a very simple, easy to remember formula but apparently this time I did something weird. And since I’ve changed browsers the remember function wasn’t and I had to reset the password. Of course, then I had to log into the webmail to retrieve the new password. Can you guess what happened? Yeah, apparently I forgot that password, too. But! Obviously I fixed it all because here I am (helps to not have forgotten the webpanel password that lets one reset webmail passwords!) and now I can get on with the actual update.
* * *
Doing break-outs on the plane was an absolutely inspired idea! I haven’t had much time to stop and look at them since I got back (a month ago! where did the time go?!?) but I believe I got through page 50-something, planning wise. Very cool, very cool indeed. Of course, this is just scribbles on a single-spaced rough draft of a manuscript. But soon… soon….
New plan! ScriptFrenzy! is officially allowing both adaptations and comic book/graphic novel scripts as part of year 2. Of course, they moved it to April from June, but that’s okay, I’ll manage. Anyway! Because of the revamps guidelines and the fact that no actual script for Wedding Tarot has been written yet, I think it safely falls into the ‘okay’ area and so I’ll spend next month converting what I can of the story into the script.
But that’s not all! (Wow, I’m really going overboard with the exclamation points, aren’t I?) This year I learned about a little something called Small Press Idol. While I briefly considered killing myself slowly by trying to enter the companion project to Random Acts… this year, it occured to me that that would be, in fact, unwise. Instead, I’m sort of playing along (the ‘home game’ so to speak) and working through the required steps based on the rules and the feedback from the judges on the people actually brave enough to enter so that by this time NEXT YEAR I can debut art for Wedding Tarot as part of Small Press Idol ‘09 and, perhaps, use that as a publishing venue. Of course, that does limit what I can show here, art-wise, before the competition but I don’t think it’ll be a problem. This year’s goal, after all, was to get the script written. If I want to start on the art, I’ve got 72 cards that need designing!
Of course, if I get that far ahead (it’s March, folks, and while I know its still early in the year, I know my schedule, too). I may choose not to wait for SPIdol and just go ahead and start designing for web-release or self-publishing. It’s up in the air. But it still exists as a possibility until I decide otherwise. Got it?
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01.27.08
Posted in planning at 10:25 pm by admin
First I was sick for a weekend, then I had company, my Friday evenings have not been very productive. I did make it to the bookstore, though, and found some resources for both the deck and the book. Of course, the one book I thought I’d found for wedding customs turned out to be one I bought back when I first started the manuscript, they’d just changed the cover! Whoops! Brought it back and exchanged it for some other books on graphic novels in general. Now things are all about getting ahead on other projects before I travel in 2 weeks so I’m not sure how much blocking is going to get done before then. Might be a good project to take on the plane, though! Oh, yeah, ding! We have a winner. I can totally mark-up copy on the plane. Awesome idea.
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01.04.08
Posted in planning at 7:27 am by admin
Or, well, actually that would be Act 1 Scene 2, still gotta get used to the new structure.
I had planned to work on the book tonight but last nights writing plans kept getting skewed so it was time to fall back a step and grab something else just to be able to count a smidgen of productivity for the evening. Based on the early brainstorm, I ditched the two chapter title/filler pages between original chapters 1 & 2 and now am up to page 21 and not quite through the engagement Act. Apparently I really was writing scenes and not chapters when I started out and the flow of the pages is really working for me. When it’s printed, many of the odd-numbered or right-hand pages will end with something that will make you want to turn the page and see what’s revealed next. This is all part of the blocking process, the planning the visual cues and is kinda cool that–so far–I don’t really have to force these page-turns, they are just happening naturally.
Another brainstorm I had while working last night was that there will probably be 9 Chapters or Acts. The reason behind this plan (which could change the farther I get, of course) is that each will then correspond (though how closely is still yet to be determined) to a card in the 3-tier past-present-future spread that will come into play as the ‘wedding spread’ towards the end of the book. Whether only 9 cards will come to Tessa (the main character) or if there will be fewer or more still remains to be seen. I think the original draft which is about the first third of the book only had a single mystery card but that was one of the details that I knew would change when the prologue got a severe decapitation and the focus of the story shifted a tiny but important notch. An additional benefit to the 9 Acts is that I could, theoretically, put out each part as a printed serial, depending on interest, etc. 9 also works as a good number of months to plan the wedding that the story revolves around, etc. It’s a good number in general.
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