Croaker's Gorge #32

Croaker's Gorge #32 is online...

Croaker's Gorge #31

Strip #31 is up...

Two more Croaker's strips...

Oops... I haven't been keeping you up on Croaker's Gorge the way I should. There are two more strips up there.

Taking advice on Croaker's

A couple of days ago, I talked about the advice I'd gotten from some highfalutin' professional cartoonists. I have taken their advice and dropped the first 7 strips from Croaker's Gorge. So that might be confusing for anyone who read the previous post and went to see, unaware that I've already fixed it. The strip is now currently in its amended form. Anyway, I'll be adding 5 or 10 more over the next 5 or 10 workdays. There's a new one up there currently.

I should also point out, my buddy Peter "Tokzic" Hargreaves is the SuperBrain that programmed the comic viewer in which I run Croaker's. Peter very kindly added the ability for me to put up some comments on the strips, so I've done somewhat of a Director's Commentary under each of them. If you're just really starved for more info about Croaker's Gorge, I daresay there is now more information there than you would probably ever want.

For those of you who missed out the first 7 strips... yeah. They're interesting, but the flow of the strip is much better without them. But as soon as I figure out how to do it, I'll add a new section to Peter's handy-dandy viewer and put up the Croaker's Gorge Deleted Scenes, for what it's worth.

Ahhh, reality

For anyone who still doesn't get the difference I tried to draw between overly realistic ("photographic") textures vs. something a little more stylized, I present the following experiments in detailporn:

RealHomer by Pixeloo
RealSimpsons at Destination Creation (but watch out for this site's mystery-meat navigation...)

If, after looking at these, you still don't get what I'm talking about, I can safely conclude it's just me. But I'll just say this: pores may not necessarily make portraits look attractive.

The key to comedy is...

...wait for it...

...wait for it...

...timing.

I've just had the pleasure of rubbing shoulders with some professional comic artists. I mean, these are the REAL deal. Comics in the newspaper and everything. They took at look at Croaker's Gorge for me.

They've pointed out two things about the strip. I thought I'd put them up for your consideration. Whaddya think? (I'm assuming here as a frequent visitor to this site that you are well-acquainted with my strip, but in case you aren't, have a look at it HERE.)

- First, they suggest the writing got a lot better around the 10th comic. I think this is a nice way of saying the first few aren't very funny, and that could explain why the strip hasn't gotten a lot of readers even though I think it's very funny and pretty well done. I think those first few hadn't really hit their stride yet, and if the strip doesn't grab you after the first 4 or 5, it's dead... So, the question is - is Croaker's Gorge a better strip without those first few early strips? What if it just began with Strip #8?

- Second, they say it has a nice, classic look. Is this just a nice way to say the strip looks dated? Old-fashioned? Passe? No longer in vogue?

Speed Racer

My family and I saw Speed Racer the other day. I have been hearing a lot of bad things about the movie in the Critical Press, but I have to wonder what people were expecting. It was very much like a children's racing movie, and from the advertisements, that's what I pretty much thought it would be. I mean, sure, it's basically a 90 minute commercial for the newly re-booted TV show of the same name, which is in turn basically a commercial for Speed Racer toys, available at the usual outlets. And I'm sure there will be fast food tie ins. There almost always are these days. And I couldn't help thinking that I was seeing layouts for a future Speed Racer video game in scene after scene. Hey, I'd play it, if only once. Some pretty exciting layouts.

But why such hatred on this film? I wonder what has the critics all hot and bothered over a kid's film? The plot wasn't hard to follow. I never had a doubt Speed would Race in the Big Race and Get the Girl (although... is he dating his sister? uh... nevermind. Roll with it.) I never had a doubt the little kid and the monkey would pop up in the trunk of whatever car was convenient for their comic relief goals. And as for that - this is one case where the comic relief actually was comic, and somewhat of a relief. The bits of the little kid and the monkey were the one place in the film where the pace calmed down for a bit, and it was nice. And, yeah, funny. Maybe it's just me, but most of the time I feel that monkey=funny. *shrug* Your mileage may vary.

Now, this is the Warchowski Brothers behind this film, the same folks that brought you the Matrix Trilogy. I loved the first Matrix film but felt the other two were just too hectic and overconcerned with their own mythology to be very interesting to me. And you see telltale signs of their hand here - many scenes are just Stuff Coming At the Camera to the point that you can hardly tell what is happening. But I suppose the Warchowski Brothers were smart enough to know that you were smart enough to understand the basics - Boy Races. Boy Loses. Then Boy Races Again, Against Hopeless Odds. Is there really any chance that we can't follow that?

I do wish Andy and Larry would calm down the visual wall of noise a bit. But on the other hand, the film is very exciting, and full of manga and anime visual touchstones complete with motion lines. I don't think the film ever made the mistake of taking itself for more than it actually was. In fact, I believe as a story, it worked better than Cars. There were real live humans driving these cars, not just talking faces on wheels. I always thought the introduction of drivers in Cars would have improved it drastically, and you can get a real feel for what that might have been like, watching this film. It actually hit some of the same themes as Cars - throwing the race, figuring out what's important in life, etc. And it did it pretty well, if you really want to know what I think.

Cars (blergh!) 2

Hey, look everyone - Pixar's going Number Two!

Mmm. Smells like profit.

The Power of Story

Like pretty much everyone else who sees it, I'm taken with the positive message in Professor Randy Pausch's "Last Lecture". Pausch is dying of prostate cancer, and his time is down to months. His lecture is a touching tribute to life, with a nod toward the fact that we are all dying, and what matters then is how we choose to live, no matter how much or how little time we have left.

On the offchance you don't know what I'm talking about, the lecture is available for viewing HERE, and there's also a book available HERE based on the professor's life as well as his lecture.

There are a lot of great observations on the lecture, great advice, and of course there are lots of poignant moments. It will make you want to be a better child, a better parent, a better spouse, a better person. It will make you want to be more thankful for your own situation.

One quote from the doctor stuck with me because it comes to bear on the power of story:

"Don’t tell people how to live their lives, just tell stories, because they can figure out how to apply the stories to their lives."

3:10 to Yuma and James Mangold

Continuing with my habit of listening while I work to director's commentaries on DVDs of movies I admire, I was treated to a doozie last week. James Mangold's 3:10 to Yuma turned out to be a great film, and he's got a great director's commentary on there to boot. In fact, he has so many great things to say about movies and the filmmaking process, I have delved into Mr. Mangold's back catalog as they say, and it's like going to film school. (In a good way.)

I'd highly recommend to any aspiring screenwriter or director that they go and listen to Mangold's director's commentary on 3:10 to Yuma, Copland, and Identity. I also have Kate & Leopold and Girl, Interrupted in my Netflix Queue, but they haven't come in yet, but I'm sure the commentary will be as entertaining as the films themselves.

Until you can get a chance to listen to some of Mr. Mangold's Golden Verbal Nuggets (I should trademark that name...) I will put a few of the more choice ones here.

"Some directors put a lot of emphasis on special effects, and that's the thing they want you to remember when the film is done. The specatacle. But the one special effect I want in any of my films is a quiet interaction between two characters."

"I want there to be moments between characters that are just so quiet and so intimate. I keep telling them to make the moment smaller, get quieter. I don't want a lot of extra lighting in my scenes. If my director of photography can get a shot in available light, it frees me up to get the shots I want without a lot of prepwork. It drives the sound guys crazy, it drives the lighting guys nuts. They complain. But I figure, we have the best sound guys, the best lighting guys, these hugely expensive cameras. I know we can get what we came to get. And when you get it on film, the moment is there."

Referring to the moment between Russel Crowe's character and Christian Bale's character meet in a bar near the start of 3:10 to Yuma, and reprise that scene in another bar later in the film, he says, "The tenor of that conversation is completely different, and it shows how much these characters have grown. If those two scenes had been identical with no change to the characters, I would have viewed it as a failure."

And lest we forget...

I took an evening out from my Moon Town madness to work on my novel. I really haven't been multitasking as well as I had planned. I had planned to work on Moon Town a couple of nights a week and the novel the rest of my evenings. But you know, I loves the movie biz, and just can't seem to make myself stop working on that animated Lunar goodness.

Meanwhile, we're rounding 3 and a half years and heading for 4 on this novel, and I just can't bear to think of this thing dragging on for another year.

So I sat down with it. Ripped out the Problem Chapter for the umpteenth time. Rewrote it for the umpteen-fiftieth time (I think that's a number). Finally - finally, I say - I think I have the problem licked. I just couldn't get the characters to the place where they can do and say the things they need to as the novel turns and heads for home.

Now, they are well placed, and tomorrow night, I can begin that home stretch. (Details when we do the NUMBERS).

Ahhhhh.