… buying a second PS3 Controller so the girlfriend and I can play LittleBigPlanet together

Had Dock and Faye round last weekend just after the game arrived in the post and I’d asked Dock to bring along any spare pads so we could try the multiplayer option. It was so much fun, that Faye was a little disappointed after Dock had to leave, as he’d taken the controller’s with him. Oh, we were also a little sad to see him leave, not just ‘cos he took the pads haha

I’d been meaning to pick up a spare, just never had good reason to before as I’d never had any multiplayer games really. I think we’ll try designing a level next time she’s round

Nothing news worthy to report. Carry on.

London Expo was a blast. I got a few random photos, mainly taken while sitting behind the Sweatdrop table though. Still tidying them up, will upload to flickr soon.

I don’t really do convention reports. The moment kind of passes once it’s over and I tend to move onto the next thing, so the best you can get out of me is a few photos and a single sentence review. Highlight of the event was spending time with Faye as it was her first time being behind the table as an official member of Sweatdrop Studios since she joined last summer. Her book Murphy’s Law came out, but it’s not available to pick up online just yet.

I just finished watching “I’m Not There“, an intriguing film, which in a way doesn’t really make much sense, yet something about it was quite inspiring. I think the words hit deep every now and then. Some profound things were said by characters, characters you never completely understand nor grasp, but always make you stop and think.

I got two new books in me, which I need to write and produce before 2010. Whether they’re good or mediocre is not the point, but rather that I have them in me and I want them out. I got the time, I just need to make the effort. I often ponder why I do this to myself. I spend so much time, effort and money doing this, and the return is so much less than what I put in. Simple answer, that I have to keep reminding myself with, is that I just can’t not do it.

A thought for the evening. The dangers of creating things is increased by the existance of the internet. Everyone has a voice in this outlet, everyone. Own a blog and write on it enough and sooner or later someone will read it. We are all parading as Rockstars, without the need for the music and lyrics.

Are we all a sham? Maybe just bored enough to not care any more. Hey, it’s all escapism right? Your bedroom is not your bedroom, it’s a place to dream. Whether you’re awake or asleep is optional.

Seven simple rules of going into hiding: one, never trust a cop in a raincoat. Two, beware of enthusiasm and of love, both are temporary and quick to sway. Three, if asked if you care about the world’s problems, look deep into the eyes of he who asks, he will never ask you again. Four, never give your real name. Five, if ever asked to look at yourself, dont. Six, never do anything the person standing in front of you cannot understand. And finlly seven, never create anything, it will be misinterpreted, it will chain you and follow you for the rest of your life.

# Arthur - I’m Not There

I feel like singing.

Dear Blog, sorry for neglecting you, but I have been busy/lazy when it came to the net lately. No promises on getting back on track with updating you, but I think there’ll be things worth saying soon enough.

I showed my sister some Maximum the Hormone videos last night, and we shared a common moment for an urge… no, a need to mosh to the music. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to tour anywhere outside of Japan at the moment. So I guess I’m just going to have to go to Japan then to see them live

Quick Summary of To Do’s -

• Follow up on ‘Talking to Strangers’ anth (read ‘poke people lots’)
• Finish Editing ‘Clarence’ short film by Aug ‘08
• Complete ‘184′ pitch by Dec ‘08
• Write up ‘A Second Sky’ pitch by Jan ‘09

Had a hectic film shoot weekend (some behind the scenes pic’s posted here). It was very educational to say the least. I was cursing myself for taking on such a huge project when things didn’t go smoothly during those 2 (and a half) days, but now that the hard part is over, I find myself thinking “What should I shoot next summer?”.

I figured I’m going to write something about the film once it’s done, so I may as well do an in depth post once that’s ready to go live, save me blabbering twice about it.

In Other News -

Hmm, let’s see… Oh, FreakAngels just got a little more interesting. It’s free to read, so you really have no excuse not to be following it. I ran into Paul at the DFC launch and we had a nice catch-up. Apparently this comic is taking up a lot of his time, and it really shows why. He’s gone all out on it. Cool stuff. It’s still weird seeing London submerged in water

Sweatdrop Podcast was down for a month due to ODEO’s transition to their new website. It’s up and running again and Episode #13 is now live. Should hopefully have #14 with you by Monday! I just need to finish editing it this weekend.

More up and coming Shakespeare Manga from SelfMadeHero, and Emma announced her involvement with the title “Much Ado About Nothing” and showcased some concept colour art on her site. I must say, that when she showed me the characters in sketch form, I was already sold. It looks like it’s going to be a hoot! There’ll be a plethora of titles coming soon but I can’t really announce any until the artists themselves make them public. You are SO shunned!!

And finally, was invited out to see Hancock tonight. I know that’s not technically news worthy, but I’ve been looking forward to seeing this film for a while, so I’m a little excited XD At least I didn’t do a write up about my 6th viewing of ‘Brick’ and how I really enjoyed listening to Clute and Edwards discussion on their “Out of the Past” podcast, where they broke down every element of the story and the filming of it to show me things I hadn’t even considered before. Like how the introduction scene is so intricately delicious with it’s subtle muted colours and the similar details between the first scene of when Brendan is kneeling down near… woah woah, almost fell into that one!

Okay, end transmission!

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.

I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.

# George Orwell - Why I Write

I was helping my sister today with her Uni essay and read this passage from Orwell’s book ‘Why I Write’. It stuck with me all day and I felt like sharing it.

I watched “Paprika” last night, directed by Satoshi Kon. I was surprised to learn that it’s actually based on a novel that was adapted to a screenplay. I can’t quite picture it as a novel after watching that. I can, however, see why Satoshi directed this film, as it reminded me a lot of his “Paranoia Agent” series which he wrote and directed himself.

It’s a visually stunning piece, but I still think “Perfect Blue” and “Tokyo Godfathers” are his best work, but Paprika certainly is a joy to the senses both in visuals and sound. After the movie ended, I had to find the soundtrack on iTunes. It’s funky

Paprika: Don’t you think dreams and the Internet are similar? They are both areas where the repressed conscious mind vents.

I’m also currently reading “Welcome to the NHK“. It’s rather good. I ordered volumes 1 and 2 nearly 3 weeks ago and volume one arrived the day before yesterday. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the book, but I found it a weird coincidence that I finished writing my ‘Static’ short story, which is about a man suffering from agoraphobia, and the lead character in NHK is a recluse with similar tendencies. I should have ordered this earlier XD Would’ve been a good reference source.

Think I’ll go finish reading it in bed.

I was going through a bunch of print outs of character designs, thumbs and plans earlier at work today, and I quite liked how they looked together. When I got home this evening, I fanned them out a bit to take a picture

This is the first public peek anyone’s had at the anthology so far. I’m still working on the last two scripts, but I figured thing’s are moving along nicely so it’s fine to divulge some artist info finally.

Here’s the list of the artists and stories in the book:

• Michael Kachar - The Seconds
• Selina Dean - Malignant
• Nana Li - Girl in a Box
• Gillian Sein Ying Ha - What is it?
• Wing Yun Man - Static
• Sonia Leong - Hero

Having some real fun with this so far, especially with the piece I’m working on with Wing. Which also happens to be one of the unfinished scripts *cough* So uh.. yeah, back to work.

Slow day at work. You know, one of those days that numbs your brain till you find yourself drooling in front of a monitor, just waiting to go home? Yeah, that.

Been looking forward to today all week though, ‘cos I got to go out and finally watch “Cloverfield“. It. Was. Awesome! I loved every minute of it and thought the way it was filmed was utterly perfect. Even Nana said she was constantly on the edge of her seat. I was completely engrossed by it. I’m extremely glad we both got to watch it on the big screen before it stopped showing, as it is really a big screen kind of movie. Not sure how well it’d work on a TV.

We had some time to kill before the movie, so after a nice dinner we popped in to pick up some Mochi. I spied the delicious desert you see in the photo above and grabbed a pack for myself. I forgot what it was called, but it’s delicious and spongey Glad the pack has 3 of them!

Also got lucky enough to find a great sale on at HMV where I finally picked up my own copy of “Brick” and “Serenity“, each for £3. Bargain! In fact, it was such a bargain, I managed to convince Nana to pick up a copy of “Brick” too XD She hasn’t seen it before, so it’ll be an interesting watch for her to say the least.

Right, can’t go to bed just yet, I need to finish a synopsis I started. See you on the flip side!

About a week ago now, I was invited to attend a LAN Party in Swindon at Gillian’s. I’ve been wanting to do a short write up about it for a while now, but have just been so busy lately. Even today, I’m writing this after coming back from a weekend at Rik and Wing’s, which I’ll write about later this week

I haven’t been to a LAN Party since I was 18 years old! I was looking forward to this for nearly 2 months and had anticipated the fact that no one will be sleeping much that weekend and decided to pick up a few tins of Caffeine Mints to help with that XD The first evening began with Kit picking me up at my apartment around midnight, arriving at Swindon at about 1:30am, and then immediately diving into an ‘Unreal Tournament 3′ match. By 8am I’d decided I needed to crash and excused myself to retire to my lovely fold-away futon that I’d brought along with me.

I’d only managed to get 3 hours of sleep though before I was up again at 11am, only to find that some people were still up playing ‘World of Warcraft’. I was tempted to join them, but I haven’t touched my WoW account in quite a while and my character was far too weak to go on Raids. In another corner of the room, we also had an Xbox 360 and a PS3. A couple of the guys were taking turns playing ‘Devil May Cry 4′, which is a stunning game. I’d been planning to pick this up in another month or so and this weekend kind of spoilered the game for me haha but it’s fine, I’m in it for the gameplay, not the story.

After some breakfast, Gillian decided to treat myself, Denji and Bex to a game of Scrabble! Yes. At a LAN Party, with all this awesome hardware around us, we play a board game. It was awesome XD You should’ve seen my face light up when I spelled the word ‘SPLEEN’. Also, I think we all giggled when Gillian spelled out ‘ORC’.

The rest of the weekend was pretty much more gaming, a trip to the supermarket to buy more energy drinks, some food and aspirin. I swear, I was buzzing so much, when the weekend was over, my body was shaking from Caffeine withdrawal! There was a lot more to the weekend, but unless you were there, words just don’t do it justice. It was great. The guys I’d met were all a fun bunch and we had a fantastic time shooting each other. There was a lot of love in that house that weekend.

Looking forward to the next event

Last night, I got to finally watch Sweeney Todd at the Cinema, accompanied by Rik, Wing and Marbles. The funny thing about Sweeney Todd, is that I’ve wanted to see it at the theatre for going on 6 years now. It was kind of a treat, being the huge Depp fan that I am, to get to see it with him playing the lead.

It was a great watch, the singing was interesting, but it was the story and the acting that grabbed us all the most. It was a very dark story with a bountiful helping of stylised gushing blood that warranted the movie an 18 age rating here in the UK. We felt it would’ve been fine as a 15 age rating.

Wing expressed an interest in the opening credits animation, which was very cool indeed. Lucky for you, there’s a YouTube clip of the whole intro sequence for your viewing pleasure

I’ve been sending out books at the start of the year for reviews and a rather lovely one came out today at Sequential Tart, by Sheena McNeil.

Each new twist and turn had me fully captivated - I literally could not put it down till I’d read every last page! The art is vibrant and energetic […] Every detail adds realism to this spectacular world, and each character stands out as important and unique - each with a story to tell. […] The story is compelling and entertaining with an excellent flow that makes it fun and easy for such heavy topics of death and sadness.
# read the full review

She awarded it a Grade 9 out of 10. Stunning! My report card has never been so good

In other news, today I went out to meet and interview two ‘Set Production’ Designers concerning my little film project. Everything is being shot on a budget, so the first thing we needed to do was to find a Set Designer so we can discuss costs for building the set and try to keep things affordable.

It was very educational. The two ladies I met today had a lot of experience in the industry, shooting for both Film and Television, and as I explained to them what it was I wanted to capture, in terms of Set Design, they offered a lot of advice and concepts. I was really thrilled by it all. What I thought was very humble about them, was how even though they have all this experience, they’re still very much into working on Indie projects for free, purely for the love of the challenge and to get more items on their Show-reel’s.
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This week sees Sweatdrop Studios reach its sixth year as a manga collective! To celebrate this special occasion, they are giving a whopping 50% discount on their comics until 1st February 2008. Sweatdrop also offer free international shipping for orders over £15 (about US$30), so if you ever wanted to check out some UK-made manga, there couldn’t be a better time.

Click here to visit the Online Shop

Furthermore, there is a free prize draw on the forum, with prizes including Sweatdrop anthologies, books and an original watercolour image by Selina Dean. Just reply to the competition thread on the forum to take part.

Click Here for the Prize Draw Forum thread

Sweatrop Studios is a group of 19 UK-based manga artists which has been operating since January 2002. They have published a number of anthologies such as “Cold Sweat and Tears”, “Blue is for Boys” and “Pink is for Girls”, as well as original titles such as “Looking for the Sun” by Morag Lewis and “Fantastic Cat” by Selina Dean.

Sweatdrop members Emma Vieceli and Sonia Leong recently released “Hamlet” and “Romeo and Juliet” respectively with SelfMadeHero; and Fehed Said released “The Clarence Principle” with Slave Labor Graphics. Several members are also featured in Tokyopop’s UK & Ireland Rising Stars of Manga anthologies.