Mike King

quick update

Here’s another quick sketch for my kid’s book. I think the design is working well and is simple enough for me to draw without getting hopelessly stuck. The tough part is keeping the face looking cute. (That’s a book she’s supposed to be holding. I still need a lot of drawing practice.)

Blogger updated its services today, adding comments, new templates, and other stuff. So it looks like I’m going to be busy today playing with the new features.

book concept art

Finished a quick little sketch for my daughter’s book. I like how it turned out, though there’s plenty wrong I can still see with it. But the feeling is good and I liked the colors. I’d been reading The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip recently for inspiration and love the art by Lane Smith. So my drawing’s color scheme turned out leaning in that direction. The drawing style is kind of my usual comic book/anime influenced stuff. But I’m trying to get a little looser. I am totally out of practice.

This isn’t an actual illustration from the book. Mostly I’ve been trying to get a character sketch of my daughter that looks cute and is easy to draw quickly.

The bear is based on a teddy bear that my wife and I bought on our honeymoon. He’s going to be a troublemaker and probably a catalyst for a lot of the adventures in my book. Not that he’s malicious or anything! He’s just really curious, naive, and has a one-track mind when something catches his attention.

screening 2 unaired Wonderfalls episodes in L.A.

From savewonderfalls.com:
We just got word that Todd Holland will be screening two unaired episodes and doing a Q&A at The Knitting Factory in LA on Friday, June 18. It’s part of The Other Network Festival. The show starts at 7:30 p.m., and admission is $10. Call 323-993-3305 to reserve tickets, or visit uncabaret.com.

end of a long day

Managed to watch The Incredibles footage on Access Hollywood. The footage looks great! I’m proud of my crew, even though I guess they really aren’t “my” crew anymore and haven’t been for a year. Can’t wait to see this film on the big screen.

My big beef with Access Hollywood (or maybe it was just KNTV) was that about halfway through the footage, they squished the picture to 1/3 the size in order to fit show credits and bumpers for upcoming shows! Grrr. Couldn’t see the Incredibles stuff full screen because of that.

Fiddled a bit with shot #2 for SW:Revelations. Didn’t get it to a point where I could send the director any footage. Wrestled a bit with setting up a camera rig and constraints to give me the control I wanted. I think it’s just about there and I’ll be able to really start animating on Monday.

Didn’t work on my daughter’s book today. I feel a little guilty about that.

I wrote about a page and half of stuff for my action novel. It’s pretty clunky. But I feel pretty good for getting something down at all. It’s still pretty cliched and I’m still trying to decide if the story needs to be first person or third person. Even though the writing is all over the place, at least I’m getting a feel for the main character and I’m starting to get an idea for the overall plot beyond just my initial premise.

I feel like I know just enough about writing to know that my stuff isn’t very good yet. It’s like learning to draw or play guitar. For a while I was bad. Then I got past the basics and thought I was pretty good. Then I learned enough to know that I was still bad. And finally after lots of practice and bad drawings or awful guitar solos I finally got to the point where I was decent. Not great, but not dismal.

I think my attitude toward writing is somewhere between being thinking it’s awful and feeling like it’s gotten past the basics. I’m just happy that my internal critic isn’t preventing me from writing and is allowing me to be a bad writer so that I can improve. Up until very recently, my internal critic wouldn’t allow me to write at all.

Spent about an hour with my brother hashing out a revised take for the feature version of Favors. I think we’ve got a good direction for it now. It’s kind of tough to cut some of the things we liked about the previous draft. But I think it’ll be a much stronger movie because we were able to focus more on Piaroni and the noir aspects of the story.

I’m trying to apply some basic story princples I read about the other night and tried breaking down Piaroni’s story into Want, Obstacle, and Action. Also thinking about the supporting concepts of Resolution and Emotion. I feel kind of silly subscribing to a “formula,” but am finding it is a useful tool to help me think about story problems.

It was a weird disjointed day. My frame of mind very likely contributed to that feeling. I spent the morning running some unplanned errands and made an impulse stop at the bookstore. I didn’t get anything though — I’ve got enough to read and felt guilty about wanting to spend money. Grabbed some lunch then sat down to do email. Then my brother called and I worked on Favors with him. Then I tried to write, but was still thinking about Favors. So I worked on the Star Wars shot for a while. Then back to writing, where I didn’t get to far before I got interrupted by a phone call. After that I took a quick stretch break and managed to write my page and half for my novel and came up with a good name for my heroine. I think it’s cool for now. We’ll see if I still feel that way tomorrow. Then had to set up the VCR to record the Incredibles stuff. Tried to get back to writing, but was to mentally drained. Tried to read, but couldn’t concentrate. Tried to watch TV, but it was too inane to stand. Very frustrating. Had a late dinner with the family and then a restless evening.

Now I’m too wired to sleep, even though I’m tired. I had a Pepsi during dinner, which was probably a mistake. I read a bunch of Van Helsing reviews and they were all negative. They all thought the story was shoddy and poorly constructed. Just a bunch of meaningless plot points in order to have self-indulgent fx action sequences. They’re probably right.

If I do manage to go see a film, it’ll probably be one of: Hellboy, Mean Girls, or Kill Bill Vol. 2.

Incredibles preview tonight

On Access Hollywood tonight. In the Bay Area it’s on at 7:30pm on KNTV (channel 3 on my cable provider). Looks cool!

writing update

I didn’t stick exactly to my schedule. But I did manage to get a couple of hours of writing done today. A lot of it was actually spent trying not to fall asleep! I’m pretty worn out — I think allergies are preventing me from sleeping very well lately.

Anyway, I worked out the general tone I wanted for the first chapter of the book for my daughter. She’s only three, so the story isn’t going to be very heavy on plot yet. Judging from the books she likes, that seems to be the way to go. So for now I’m just going to introduce the characters and see how she responds to the general setup.

I think I figured out a subject for my book. Actually, I think I’m going to start on two books. One is a YA novel that I’ve got a bunch of notes for already. The other is a kind of near-future action story. Very different subjects. I thought about dedicating time to only one. But I think I’m going to fiddle with both of them and bounce between them until one ends up taking over my brain.

Both could be screenplays, and maybe I’ll adapt them when I’m done; since I do believe that these two stories would make some darn good movies too. But for now I’m much more interested into getting into the characters’ thoughts and feelings in a way that can’t happen very easily in a screenplay.

Most of today was figuring out what sort of action story I was going to tackle. I still haven’t come up with the main problem or mission yet. But I have come up with a premise for the characters that I really like. The premise is what took most of today. Some of it was inspired by the thinking I’d been doing with my brother’s feature. The core idea for the heroine in my action novel is going to be about second chances and exploring how difficult it is to really change anything about yourself. Right now it’s a patchwork of clichés and borrowed ideas. But that’s how another one of my projects started before it became more original. I had to work through a lot of the first thoughts to find my own ideas lurking deep below.

fx update

I made a few revisions to shot #1 with the ship exiting hyperspace. Re-rendering tonight. Set up a new file for shot #2 and started experimenting with camera compositions. That’s probably it for today. I’ll get another couple hours in tomorrow I hope.

Saw the new “The Day After Tomorrow” trailer online. There’s like two frames of the helicopter crash that I was developing particle fx for. Oh, well. It was still pretty cool to see. The Orphanage was kind enough to invite me to a wrap party they’re having, even though my schedule didn’t permit me to finish off shots for them. But I guess I must have done good with all the technical setup and plumbing before I had to go.

General update

Stuck to my schedule mostly. Got started setting up shot #2. Sidetracked for a while on getting the first shot rendered out and adding the engine glow effect. Tomorrow’s schedule doesn’t have any FX work on it. The morning is going to be busy running errands and the afternoon I’ve devoted to writing. Part of that time will be spent just deciding which project to tackle.

Right now I’m leaning towards writing a novel. I’ve got lots of little seeds of ideas for a book. It’s tough to pick just one. I think I’m coming to truly understand what Neil Gaiman was talking about when he said he has far too many ideas and far too little time.

Being a blogger.com member has allowed me to beta test google’s Gmail service. So I’ll give it a shot and see what it’s like. I’ve got too many email addresses as it is. But 1GB storage is hard to pass up.

writing update

During art time with my daughter, I did a few sketches to prep for the fairy tale book I’m writing for her. Boy, am I rusty.

Didn’t have time to write yesterday. Spent my free time on the Star Wars fan film shots and doing chores.

I am very inspired by my brother’s example — he wrote the first draft of his screenplay in about a month. I’ve been playing with various ideas for a while now, kind of puttering along as the mood strikes. But I do realize now that I could putter forever. So I really need to pick something and just stick with it.

My problem is that I’ve got a bunch of ideas that could either be books, comic books, or screenplays. I have to realize I can only work on one thing at a time and just pick one. At the very least I’ll be working on this major project plus the kid’s book. Part of me wants to do a screenplay, since I want to make headway as a writer in the movie industry. Another part of me wants to focus on a novel — which I think will be more personally satisfying, but is a digression from my “career” path. Or at least it feels like one. I suppose in hindsight, my career path has happened mostly by accident.

The comic book idea is just too much darn work to handle right now. So I should just get over it and put it on the shelf. Or find an artist willing to work for free.

SW: revelations update

Talked to the director by phone yesterday. Got some feedback on the first shot and discussed the other shots. Looks like it’s just two more shots, not three like I thought. Sounds like the last shot got cut because he felt like like he had enough establishing shots and didn’t need the last one.

Yesterday I didn’t get a chance to do any work. Spent the day running errands and being stay-at-home dad. Revised a little of the animation during nap time. After bedtime, spent some time figuring out good starfield settings to get rid of flicker and jitter.