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!

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

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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