Cartoon writing today...when I'm not updating LJ...
Okay, so another reason I've avoided writing on LJ? I can't seem to write less than a novel when I do. See below.
So I'm finally dealing with the roughly 84,852,348,520,851 pages of notes from three different sets of suits (in two different COUNTRIES and languages, I might mention) on an outline for a cartoon I'm writing for foreign distributors.
See, my immediate boss, a very nice French man named Cyril (whom I've actually met in person, for a change, but no, I didn't get to go to France), told me he wanted to base the cartoon on this "classic" (his word) episode of The Outer Limits. I hit up Netflix for a DVD and watched the episode, aaaaand... it hadn't aged well. It was about a scientist that invented a machine to "evolve" a man back and forward in his own development (we knew this because he'd throw a big silly switch that said either "forward" or "back". Oooh.) It also took Edward Mulhare, and ruined all my old "Ghost and Mrs. Muir" memories of him; he showed what a scientist he was by taking off his glasses and furrowing his brow a lot, and throwing big silly switches on machines, which caused him to further furrow. It was set in some undisclosed European country I'll call BackLotania, distinguished by rampantly wandering accents. It had David MacCullum's head expanding as he got "smarter", and included him growing both 1) a non-sensical 6th finger and 2) really fucking ugly. His "intelligence" consisted of him deciding humanity was too gauche to be tolerated, so he'd have to go knock a lot of extras backward with his shiny new telepathy, until he non-sensically decided he was "above" that, for no reason other than an impending commercial break.
In short, by now it was heavy-handed and ridiculous, tailor made for cheap shots like mine in this, our much-more-sophisticated-TV-watching age. But my very nice friend Cyril liked it, and I'm paid for doing what the boss wants - plus sometimes I just figure "hey, it's crap, but it's the crap they asked for." So I stuck fairly close to its constructs and molded the characters at hand around it. Cyril was delighted and told me so, and passed it on to his bosses with very few changes, he said. This made me feel like an okay human.
Turns out his bosses liked most things about it, except everything.
Turns out the "suits", whom I usually like to denigrate, behaved a lot smarter than I did in this circumstance. They immediately piped up with "Hey! This makes no sense and why does he suddenly change his mind and what's with the head growing and who wants to watch some guy furrow?" and everything I should have fixed the first time out. I should have been a Writer, and stuck to the integrity of what I thought worked, instead of being a lazy weenie who just does enough to satisfy her deadline and that's all. So now I have 84,852,348,520,851 pages of notes to face, all reminding me of my weenieness.
I'm not pounding myself TOO hard, believe it or not, but I've also waited a week to even face all these notes, which does bother me. It's going to be at least another week until I'm even near done, and probably more. In my defense, lots has been going on: I've actually been spending my writing time saying "fuck it!" and working on my "Lost" spec -- which is much fun -- and also trying to keep my apartment from dissolving in the rain (another whole post on its own. Apparently my bedroom walls and ceiling were constructed of frosting. The bedroom and living room are now a peeling, water-stained and thriving mold farm that smells like a gym locker in August. My roommate and I are being relocated within the building. So on top of everything I have to pack up to move, albeit not far. Still...bleah.) So I haven't just been sitting around, but since a few days did go by when I just stared at the walls and drooled, my own avoidant tendencies in the face of stress are doing their worrying-me thing. I'm making progress, seriously - I have actual tools to deal with these things, now, and they work, when I employ them. I just sometimes wish the "two steps back" part of development wasn't attached to the "three steps forward" part. I'd like to break up the set, in other words.
Okay. In other, non-whiny words, If anybody else out there uses Firefox as a browser, you 1) should, because it's nowhere near the target for hackers that Internet Explorer is, and 2) you can use different "themes" or skins on it, which is fun. To that end, yesterday I found that someone's come up with the most bitchin' theme ever for it, called Pimpzilla!. Makes your browser window look like Snoop Dogg designed it, and I’m having mucho fun using it.
It's the shizizzle!
ETA: OMG, I just finished a scene in my "Lost" spec that literally made me want to cry. In a a good way, because I set up a heart's desire for Hurley and then gave it to him. Either I'm REALLY fucking good or a complete sap. :P
So I'm finally dealing with the roughly 84,852,348,520,851 pages of notes from three different sets of suits (in two different COUNTRIES and languages, I might mention) on an outline for a cartoon I'm writing for foreign distributors.
See, my immediate boss, a very nice French man named Cyril (whom I've actually met in person, for a change, but no, I didn't get to go to France), told me he wanted to base the cartoon on this "classic" (his word) episode of The Outer Limits. I hit up Netflix for a DVD and watched the episode, aaaaand... it hadn't aged well. It was about a scientist that invented a machine to "evolve" a man back and forward in his own development (we knew this because he'd throw a big silly switch that said either "forward" or "back". Oooh.) It also took Edward Mulhare, and ruined all my old "Ghost and Mrs. Muir" memories of him; he showed what a scientist he was by taking off his glasses and furrowing his brow a lot, and throwing big silly switches on machines, which caused him to further furrow. It was set in some undisclosed European country I'll call BackLotania, distinguished by rampantly wandering accents. It had David MacCullum's head expanding as he got "smarter", and included him growing both 1) a non-sensical 6th finger and 2) really fucking ugly. His "intelligence" consisted of him deciding humanity was too gauche to be tolerated, so he'd have to go knock a lot of extras backward with his shiny new telepathy, until he non-sensically decided he was "above" that, for no reason other than an impending commercial break.
In short, by now it was heavy-handed and ridiculous, tailor made for cheap shots like mine in this, our much-more-sophisticated-TV-watching age. But my very nice friend Cyril liked it, and I'm paid for doing what the boss wants - plus sometimes I just figure "hey, it's crap, but it's the crap they asked for." So I stuck fairly close to its constructs and molded the characters at hand around it. Cyril was delighted and told me so, and passed it on to his bosses with very few changes, he said. This made me feel like an okay human.
Turns out his bosses liked most things about it, except everything.
Turns out the "suits", whom I usually like to denigrate, behaved a lot smarter than I did in this circumstance. They immediately piped up with "Hey! This makes no sense and why does he suddenly change his mind and what's with the head growing and who wants to watch some guy furrow?" and everything I should have fixed the first time out. I should have been a Writer, and stuck to the integrity of what I thought worked, instead of being a lazy weenie who just does enough to satisfy her deadline and that's all. So now I have 84,852,348,520,851 pages of notes to face, all reminding me of my weenieness.
I'm not pounding myself TOO hard, believe it or not, but I've also waited a week to even face all these notes, which does bother me. It's going to be at least another week until I'm even near done, and probably more. In my defense, lots has been going on: I've actually been spending my writing time saying "fuck it!" and working on my "Lost" spec -- which is much fun -- and also trying to keep my apartment from dissolving in the rain (another whole post on its own. Apparently my bedroom walls and ceiling were constructed of frosting. The bedroom and living room are now a peeling, water-stained and thriving mold farm that smells like a gym locker in August. My roommate and I are being relocated within the building. So on top of everything I have to pack up to move, albeit not far. Still...bleah.) So I haven't just been sitting around, but since a few days did go by when I just stared at the walls and drooled, my own avoidant tendencies in the face of stress are doing their worrying-me thing. I'm making progress, seriously - I have actual tools to deal with these things, now, and they work, when I employ them. I just sometimes wish the "two steps back" part of development wasn't attached to the "three steps forward" part. I'd like to break up the set, in other words.
Okay. In other, non-whiny words, If anybody else out there uses Firefox as a browser, you 1) should, because it's nowhere near the target for hackers that Internet Explorer is, and 2) you can use different "themes" or skins on it, which is fun. To that end, yesterday I found that someone's come up with the most bitchin' theme ever for it, called Pimpzilla!. Makes your browser window look like Snoop Dogg designed it, and I’m having mucho fun using it.
It's the shizizzle!
ETA: OMG, I just finished a scene in my "Lost" spec that literally made me want to cry. In a a good way, because I set up a heart's desire for Hurley and then gave it to him. Either I'm REALLY fucking good or a complete sap. :P