When writing a story and it’s coming together I can write 2000 words of the story in one day. The problem is half the words are in sentences that don’t make sense. The other half of the words are misspelled.
Write on, draw on. Professor Voltage
Last night I handed out candy to the trick-or-treaters. Not many people do that on my block. I must live on a block of cheapskates. The lights were out at most of the houses near me.
I had my lights on, Halloween music playing, and a big bowl of candy waiting.
I liked Halloween as a kid, dressing up and getting candy. When I was very small we lived out in the country side and there was no trick-or-treating, but they did hold a carnival at the grade school.
Handing out candy is payback for the good times I had as a kid.
There is more than one way to do a payback, so why hide and be angry?
There were not as many children out this year as there were last year. I estimate 75 to 100 for this year, where last year it was 150 to 200.
Write on, draw on. Professor Voltage.
A few quick note on the panel. Panelist; William Stoddard, Vernor Vinge, Jean Graham, James Hay
William Stoddard mentioned a book called Animal Eyes, and yes it’s about animal eyes and vision. Some scrimp can see colors humans can’t.
Comment, it’s not x-ray vision if superman can see through a wall and see the color of the object on the other side of the wall.
Vernor Vinge called his story about a shape shifting demon hard fantasy. He attempted to keep the biology as real as he could. Used the term “explicit biology of fantasy”.
James Hay pointed out that animals devote a large part of their brain to the dominate sense. (Can smell well but can’t see worth a darn.)
James mentioned that when staking an animal if animal looks at you freeze. Many animals are sensitive to motion. He failed stalking class twice.
Vernor had a friend that put an Infer Red sensing camera on his glasses and changed the output of the camera to audio and piped the audio into his ear. He could tell if the lawn needed watering even if it looked very green to everyone else. Can Google Glass do that, if it could you could sell it to gardeners all over the world.
William Stoddard said the book on animal eyes reported that birds are now following roads. It’s lazy and messing up the scientist that study migration.
Jean has seven cats. Great for writing about senses. (she must have tons of followers on Youtube and draw lots of people to her Facebook page with all the cat pictures and stories. Which would help sell a lot of books).
They got to talking about races or creatures that had dominate senses other than sight. You would end up with saying in the creatures language like “I know it like the smell of my rear end.”
Write on, Draw on. Professor Voltage.
Last weekend (Oct 17, 18, & 19 2014) I attended the San Diego Comic Fest at the Town and Country hotel on hotel circle. It was a great convention.
Under I was wrong. When I got the preliminary schedule I researched the different presentations on the web (who are they talking about, should I know this guy). I was disappointed that there were not many presentations on making comics. I was wrong. There were plenty of presentations by writers and artist on making comics. This year there were also several presentations on Kickstarter and doing Kickstarter campaigns. The Kickstarter talks drew good crowds.
There were unscheduled talks including one that went till after 10:00 PM Saturday.
I heard other attendees say that the presentations were good this year so it’s not just me that thinks it was a good con. I go to find out how to make better comics and it is always a relief to find others are having the same problems I am having. Now if I could find someone that would warn me of the problems before hand.
There were many presentations on other subjects but hey I’m focused.
Besides where else can you go and have Spiderman as your IT guy, complete with Google Glass. Your costume rocks AV tech.
You could get a ride in a Ghost Buster’s car.
Artist alley was packed. A friendly busy bunch. There were the occasional shouts of where is my brush pen and buy my book.
Plenty of Steampunk costumes.
Lots of music, with live band.
I had family commitments and had to skip Sunday but if Sunday was anything like Friday and Saturday it was a great conference.
At the last meeting of the screenwriters group I belong to one of the members who runs a mirco-traditional-publishing business had some bad news for another writer in the group. The other writer has written and published several novels both in trade paper back and e-book. The bad news is someone is selling print on demand copies of his books and he wasn’t aware of it or getting any money for the books sold. Seems it common for people to scrape e-books off the net and offer them for sell. They sell the books through large used book web sites but not Amazon. Self published authors and other small authors would not expect to find their books on used book web sites so they never check. One site we were shown claims the books (taken from other authors) were printed in the USA. The books from the dealer using print on demand were selling for less than the author sold them for or the price on the book jacket.
Are you a small book author that has e-books or know someone who is, then check the used book web sites and see if this is happening to you or people you know.
Write on. Professor Voltage.
Chris Hart said in an interview with Jazza that it is better to spend one hour a day drawing than to draw for eight hours one day a week. One hour a day isn’t much, but last night I sat down to put in an hour but before that all I had to do was write one check to pay a bill. There was money in the bank to cover the check, I just had to fill out the check and sign it. I opened the check book and was too tired to fill out the check. After a day full of taking care of family, working around the house to keep it from falling into more disrepair, keeping the plants in the garden from dying, and keeping the fish in the fish tank clean and healthy I was tired.
I went to bed. The next morning I filled out the check over a half a cup of instant oatmeal (Trader Joe’s with extra cinnamon and some raisins). Later I hand delivered the check.
They say there are no excuses, well some days there is more day than there is me. Missing a day of drawing is like going off your diet for a day or two or three. It’s not the end of the world, it isn’t even a big set back but you have to get back to it.
Tonight it’s write and draw but only for an hour, I’m tired.
Write on. Draw on. Professor Voltage.
Professor Hyram “Hy” Voltage here.
This comic is based on a movie script I wrote. Of all the scripts I’ve written I like this story the best.
The one comment I kept getting back from the writing group, rewrite after rewrite, was “Where do the monster come from?”.
Where the monsters come from doesn’t have anything to do with the story. The monsters were created years before the story starts and I’m not big fan of flash backs.
After a long pain racked analysis period I came to realize that what everyone was saying is that my monsters were more interesting than my villains, protagonist, and anyone else in the script. My monsters were the good guys/gals (yes, this is an equal employment comic).
So I wrote, an origin for the monsters. Then rewrote, rewrote, rewrote, rinse and repeat. The result is a adventure/rom-com with a very bloody opening. You can’t make a good monster without spilling a little blood.
But it gave me a chance to show the personalities of the monsters before they were monsters. And showing is the best way to do it.
Mad scientists, Monsters, and Mayhem. This comic got it all.
Write on, draw on. Professor Hyram Voltage