Another fun time rushed project - tested a new method to do the shading on this one - worked out pretty good for the first try I think. Anyways it’s supposed to be a dramatic lighting on a character. Themed this one to the tune of sci fi-industrial-WW1. Next upload will be my animation run cycle for Molmar, sometimes Friday maybe.

Current Count: 7,561

I would really like to make the 10,000 mark by bedtime tonight. I think this is a reasonable goal. With any luck, I’ll be able to nail another 1,000 before lunch, and then I’ve got until sleep overtakes me to do another 1,500.

I’m happier with the story now. I like it more. I may even love it, actually.

It’s still terrible. But I’m beginning to feel like the mother of an ugly, ill-behaved hoodlum. Sometimes, the best part about something is that it came from somewhere inside of you. And sometimes, that’s enough.

I’m a bit stuck. Stuck has a different meaning here. When I’m stuck on a story written any other month, I can be stuck for weeks, stuck forever. I have written 1,500 words this morning. I stopped writing at 12:08pm. I have been stuck for approximately 16 minutes. The pace is so frantic, and the bar is so low, that stuck and taking a break are interchangeable. I will likely be unstuck sometime after lunch. If nothing appropriate to what has come before comes to mind by then, I will sic some terrible happening unto our heroes, not previously set up, no need for explanation.

Diablo Ex Machina.

Current Word Count: 5,565

Which means that I’ve crossed the 10% threshold. 10% of the 50,000 goal mark, at any rate. It doesn’t look like I’ve gotten 10% of my story down yet. My magnificently bad story. As though Uwe Boll were directing literature.

Count: 3029

Ideally, I’d like to be at about 5,000 words by bed time tonight.

This is among the worst prose I have ever written in my adult life. I’m pretty sure the story has been done a dozen times, and in one month time, I’m going to end up with a 50,000 word shit.

Usually, I go back, edit and re-edit as I write. This may be a bad habit. I have a very very difficult time writing stories above a length of, say, 2,000 words. They collapse under the weight of me editing and re-editing. I hate making major changes to the story, ever, because I’ve already spent so much time getting it juuuuuust right. Sometimes, it turns out, when you get to a certain point, major changes to the beginning are necessary in order to make the right ending work. This is the way things work.

Layman’s description of the difference between extroverts and introverts is this: introverts think to speak; extroverts speak to think.

I think maybe the same general duality exists with writing. Some writers outline vigorously, prepare, plan, research: they think the write. Other writers simply start writing, it seems like the ideas they’re using come from the beating heart of the universe itself, and only stop to think when they *really* have to. They write to think

I think my problem is that in editor mode, I’m follow the introvert paradigm. In writer mode, I just try to let space time channel its magic through my autonomous fingers. Editor mode tends to be more powerful than writer mode, but can’t itself produce much text — all of my large stories are savagely victimized in the conflict.

If anything, what NaNoWriMo is doing, is allowing me to let my editor brain sit this one out, and wait as my writer brain churns out a mountain of clunky mess.

I can only hope that at the end of this, when editor brain gets full reign, writer brain has left it something to work with.

Lots of stuff to show from school, first off is gonna be the part of the grand-seven week storyboarding project. I chose to do Andrew and mine`s slowly cooking story Falling Man. For some reason we were supposed to color and detail the frames - god knows why. Anyways, here`s the climactic end battle of the movie in which are hero battles the multi-armed villain without either of their powers, and it ends being really nasty. Hope you guys don`t mind blood… and yes. he`s stabbing her in the throat with his broken bone.

And here`s the mockup for the movie poster. Nice and dark. One man against all the odds.



Next up are the character sheets for Molmar, the suicide bomber mole rat who I`ve yet to have made an interesting back story for yet. Though he seems pretty straight forward to me.



Last but not least we have an illustration project that i hammered out in a single day. I really liked the potential with this one so I`ll be going in and redoing elements very soon to make it a portfolio piece maybe.




And now, I get to start on the Wendigo/Forest Spirit comic that I was originally planning to work on in my total lack of free time as a project - so i`ll see if i can keep updating with progress shots of that as i plug away at it.

Written by Sean Bigham 4 comments

I never realized that baking soda was such an excellent exfoliant. My face feels so smooth and soft.

Yesterday, I was el diablo, complete with rubber horns glued to my head with spirit gum, the edges blended with liquid latex and toilet paper. My face, neck and ears, liberally subjected to bright red face paint.

After the first shower left my face still pinkened enough to make me appear in a constant state of rage, baking soda was suggested as the final face paint removal solution. I arrived home from Halloween festivities at 6:30am this morning, and spent half an hour in the shower, scrubbing my face with baking soda. To my great pleasure, the ridiculous discolouration appears to have been completely destroyed, and my face feels delightfully soft.

Also, it stings when I touch it, from the half-hour of aggressive abrasion. The prices we pay.

Before going to sleep, I figured I’d better type at least a little bit, for the sake of National Novel Writing Month of Novel Writing. Get things started.

Current NaNoWriMo word count: 457.

I don’t know what the hell I’m writing, really. But that’s not important. This is an exercise in endurance, and I intend to prove my manly stalwartyness.

As soon as I’ve gotten some proper post-Halloween sleep.