Bots, Books, and Beginnings

For a while there were rumblings and rumors that DRE had notions of turning Robots of the Company into a book – a real book, a proper novel, even, with dialogue and descriptions and subplots and other such booky features. I’m not entirely sure where this idea originated but somehow the project wound up in the hands of my friend and frequent collaborator, Victor Alpha.

Victor is an incredibly talented writer who amazingly manages to juggle writing duties on a number of projects and audio series, including the wonderfully odd and silly Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes. Plus, I am led to believe he is actually James Bond when he is not writing a half-dozen scripts at the demand of his Whiteboard Taskmaster or catering to the imperious whims of his cat.

I could not and cannot think of anyone better suited to writing the ROTC novel.

Much of the book would be written in the madness that was NaNoWriMo of 2007 and I would not get to see it until it was completed. However, I jumped at the chance for a sneak preview when I learned that Victor had already completed a prologue for the novel, a short standalone story written to set the tone.

Reading this prologue, I was utterly charmed by the tale of the lonely little robot and was quickly inspired to do some scribbly sketches to accompany the text.

Before I knew it, I was illustrating the whole prologue. It was just too much fun adding extra layers of absurdity!

I’m not ashamed to admit that I particularly enjoyed drawing the scene below. I mean, how often does one get to draw a robot talking to a plus-sized space-suited social worker, surrounded by a sky of flames?

Not nearly often enough, I say.

I especially like the pearls.

One day, I hope that this prologue and/or the full novel actually gets published.

Until then, I am perfectly happy to keep doing goofy drawings to go along with the work of a writer who always manages to make me laugh.

Thanks for the inspiration, Victor!

On Radio and Robots

It would appear that my goal of updating this blog on a weekly basis was perhaps a bit overambitious.

Life-related craziness and technological fickleness seem to conspire against timely blogging. These last few weeks have been particularly marked by the demise of my main home computer – the machine on which I created and stored most of my projects from the last five years. Thankfully most if not all of my work has been backed up. However, thanks to the inexplicable way my computer area was set up, this now means that my scanner is inextricably hooked up to a large metal doorstop and will be inaccessible for the indeterminate future.

So, until things are back up and running, it looks like posts will have to be based on whatever I have saved to my laptop.

I suppose for now that means robots. People like robots, right?

Sometime around 2004-2005, I joined an online audio drama group called Dream Realm Enterprises. The flagship series for the group was a strange and silly science-fiction comedy program called Robotz of the Company, which was broadcast online and on a few independently-run radio stations in the U.S. and Canada. In the early days of the series (i.e. when I had more time), I wore many hats in the production process, acting as script editor and casting consultant, as well as occasionally penning an episode or voicing a character.

As the series wrapped up its second season, it seemed like it might be helpful for the writers and producers to have a shared mental image of what the different characters were like. Based on what I imagined from the performances, scripts, production notes, and chats with the production staff, I worked up some concept sketches for characters in the show (all robots) and ideas for other bots which might one day exist in the series’ universe.

These sketches include several miscellaneous designs, as well as ideas for featured characters and series regulars such as Boffin the cockney engineer, Maxi the walking, talking button of unknown purpose, Captain Jammer, and Shinwipe, the administrative bot.

In truth, no one ever asked for these drawings. I just wanted an excuse to doodle the characters.

Does it count as fan art if it’s based on a project you’re involved with?

More on these bots in future entries…

Fan Art Friday: Rent

'To days of inspiration,
making something out of nothing,
the need to express,
to communicate…’
~La Vie Boheme, Rent

About a year ago, I went to an animation workshop lead by a storyboardist from Disney. I had a great time and learned a lot, both with regard to character design and the talent (good and bad) of students accepted into animation programs.

One of the things I learned was that professional storyboard artists often draw their storyboards in Sharpie. He explained that this was because Sharpies have a reasonably consistent flow and produce a very deep black which is hard to achieve with any other kind of marker. A simple little factoid, really, but to me it was a revelation!

It made so much sense!

You see, up to then I could never quite figure out what the artists used to achieve the expressive bold lines in the storyboards I had seen in books. I had guessed (and tried) a number of materials that I thought would achieve that effect, ranging from black colored pencils to charcoals, none of which I was particularly happy with.

But the idea of drawing in permanent marker seriously freaked me out. What if I made a mistake? I didn’t like the idea of having to redraw everything every time I made a careless stroke or smudge. It took me a little while to realize that the point was not to create a perfect drawing, just one that captures the moment and moves the story along. Story boards are far from the final product and will be redrawn and refined any number of times.

Energized by this session, I wanted to draw something…anything. The problem was, I was lazy and didn’t feel like coming up with anything new or original.

Fan art to the rescue!

Listening to my Broadway playlist on shuffle I found Tune Up #1, the opening narration to Rent playing: “December 24^th, 9PM, Eastern Standard Time….”

That would work – preexisting dialogue and narration that could easily be converted into some sort of storyboard or comic. A quick Google search brought up the full libretto, and the result of this experiment is below. I didn’t get any farther than this opening monologue but I was happy with how it came out and I ended up a lot more confident about playing with permanent markers.

The Writing on the Walls

Up until it met its sad and somewhat soggy demise, my camera nearly never left my side. Yes, I was that girl, taking pictures of everything and nothing, just because I could or because something somehow caught my interest.

Among my favorite things to photograph were (and still are) graffiti and street art.

I’m not entirely sure why I find these things so fascinating – I think there’s just something fun about finding unexpected bits of color as I go about my daily routine. I don’t think too much on whether they count as art or defacement; I simply see them as part of the landscape.

Sometimes I like to puzzle over messages carefully scribbled or sprayed on walls and doorways.

Sometimes I’m stopped in my tracks by bold or striking imagery.

And sometimes, it’s just fun to share a laugh or a moment of silliness with the universe.

It makes my walks so much more interesting.

Photographing graffiti becomes a game, like looking for Easter eggs or playing “Pokémon Snap” - hunting City strangeness instead of anime critters.

Clearly, I am not alone in this interest: www.picturesofwalls.com.

What written weirdness have you encountered?

We Begin

Let's start with something from the archives, shall we?

When I was fifteen or so, I decided that comedic science fiction was the best. thing. ever.

I was absolutely crazy about “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and “Red Dwarf” and really wanted to create something that would follow on in that legacy. Heck, I would have been happy to have created something as campy and ridiculous as “Galaxy High”.

After a few false starts, I started work on a project I called “Bottom of the Barrel” which was, quite honestly, a not-very-good variation on the bottled sitcom-in-a-spaceship dynamic of “Red Dwarf”. I had a bunch of characters that couldn’t stand each other, a planet that was destroyed due to highly improbable means, and a spaceship that was fueled by stupidity (inspired by Harlan Ellison’s assertion that hydrogen and stupidity are the two most common elements in the universe). Beyond that, I didn’t have a clue.

Much like HHGTG, I found it hard to contain this project to one format. At various points, it has taken the form of a novella, a radio script, and (of course) a comic book...none of which quite made it to completion.

The comic book version especially caught my imagination and for some time I could usually be found working on panels between classes. At one point I even convinced the computer graphics teacher to let me use the then-newfangled scanning technology to upload the pages so I could try to ink and color them on Photoshop (5!) Sadly, most of the original scans were lost in the Great Computer Crash of 1999, but a few low-res panels remain:

Every now and again I still like to pull this project from the files and give it another try.

I can’t say I have a better idea now as to what it’s meant to be – as always, there are just the characters and the setting, and the characters simply do whatever they want.

It never gets finished, but it’s always fun and it’s always slightly different.