Posts Tagged ‘childhood’

2 items.

GUEST STRIP – INDIGO

by Tom on December 28, 2009 at 7:10 am
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(12 votes, average: 4.83 out of 10)
Alvin and The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, autotuning, LOL Cats, meme, internet, childhood, popularity, Guest Strip, Indigo, Kismetropolis

Hey, guys.

First of all, my apologies for not posting a comic on Friday like I said I would. The holidays pretty much knocked me out for the count and we were left digging ourselves out in more ways than one. First, having to shovel the driveway three times over the course of the weekend thanks to the foot of snow we received. Second, having to sort and organize a million toys given to Henry and Pearl by two sets of grandparents bound and determined to spoil them rotten!

So I didn't post a new comic on Friday and I'm sorry. But I'm justifying it to myself by saying that the person whose guest comic would have run that day would have been given the bum's rush because traffic always takes a dip over a holiday and over the weekend. So, yeah.

Speaking of said comic, thanks to Indigo for her lovely guest strip! I don't get a lot of guest strips from women, but I wish that I did because there is something about the way Indigo drew Cami in the third panel that makes me think I've been drawing her wrong all along.

Indigo's comic is called Kismetropolis. Please check it out, won't you? Thanks, Indigo!

Another reason I didn't update on Friday is because I received some very big and exciting news on Christmas Eve I didn't want it to get buried.

True to form (from a Christmas miracle standpoint) WE MET GOAL ON THE KICKSTARTER FUND RAISING CAMPAIGN FOR THEATER HOPPER: YEAR THREE!!!

As you know, I was a really, really worried about making goal with the holidays as a distraction. Well, you guys proved me wrong and THEN SOME!

I was honestly shocked and amazed by some of the big pledges that came in just before the weekend. The generosity you guys have shown to me and this project have been a big boost of confidence in what I began to view as a do-or-die situation.

I had become concerned that if I couldn't raise the money for Year Three through Kickstarter then it would be a clear message there was no demand in the market for the book. And if there was no demand for the book, then I couldn't envision a time where I would attempt to EVER produce it.

It became such an obstacle in my head I started to think that if I failed to raise the money, maybe it could be construed as a message to stop the comic entirely! It sounds silly now, but at the time, I was having... I guess some kind of crisis of faith!

Clearly I need to stop listening to the voices in my head because they are jerks. Your support for this project proves to me that Theater Hopper has a future and I appreciate it.

And don't assume for a minute that I'm only considering the people who pledged money to the fund raising campaign. I know there are thousands more of you out there who continue to show their support every Monday, Wednesday and Friday simply by visiting this site. I want you to know that I appreciate you, too!

So, what are the next steps?

Well, the campaign formally ends on December 31. Kickstarter won't let me shut it down early. So, basically, we wait out the clock. After that, Kickstarter will charge the credit cards of everyone who pledged. Kickstarter will administer these funds to me in 14 days. After that, we should be good to go!

The book itself is finished (except for the Thank You page, where I will list all of the people who backed the project) so I can send the artwork to the printer as soon as that is finished. Assuming it will take a week or two for proofs, four to six weeks for production and a week or two to mail everything out - people can probably expect their books by late February or early March.

As far as the rewards go, I'm going to try and knock down as many of those as I can right away, but there's going to need to be some one-on-one communication with the people who pledged to make sure everything is delivered to the right place. Kickstarter collects your contact information, so I'll be in touch with those folks in the near future.

That's pretty much all I can think of for the time being. In the meantime, I hope everyone had a happy holiday. I don't know about you, but I'm ready to settle back into a groove and get some work done!

Talk to you soon!

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BROWN OUT

by Tom on October 19, 2009 at 12:00 am
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(25 votes, average: 5.16 out of 10)
Where The Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze, childhood, brown

I realize there might not be a lot of punch in the punchline of this comic. But I felt like authoring it because it was based off an actual conversation Cami and I had after leaving Where The Wild Things Are on Saturday and it got a laugh out of me.

For those of you looking for something a little snappier, I already have a joke in mind for Wednesday's comic related to Where The Wild Things Are in general.

While I was swept up in the emotion of the film, Cami was apparently distracted enough by her boredom to make note of the film's color scheme. Ultimately she came to the conclusion that - while she enjoyed the movie - it wasn't anything she felt like she needed to see again anytime soon.

She's right, though. There WAS an awful lot of brown in this movie.

Maybe Jonze was going for something deliberately organic to reflect the raw, untapped "otherness" of the Wild Things, but it's not expressly overt. To that end, if you're making mental notes about the color scheme of the film, maybe the emotional content is not reaching you in a way that it should...

For me, Where The Wild Things Are does a great job capturing the feeling of childhood. The feeling of being invincible, of having so much energy you don't know what to do with it. Of running in a thousand different directions, making up (terrible) ad libbed stories about your adventures, talking to yourself and having all of it feel absolutely real.

That Max runs away from home one evening and traverses rough seas before landing on the island home of the Wild Things is purely incidental and deliberately unexplained by anything conventional or imaginary. Jonze is communicating clearly that we are entering into Max's imaginary world. But he doesn't draw a line in the sand, either.

I think what I liked most about Max, the Wild Things and the land they inhabit is even Max himself is caught off-guard by how thoroughly he's rendered these imaginary characters. For the audience, the subtext that each one of the Wild Things reflects a component of Max's personality adds another level of enjoyment.

From a technical standpoint, the Wild Things themselves are amazing creations. The mix of puppetry and CGI was completely seamless to me in the way that all good CGI should.

Watching the film, I knew that the Wild Things were actors running around in giant furry suits. But the way their CGI faces communicated their emotions made me believe they were real.

A by-product of the scant narrative in the original childrens book, there are a lot of open spaces in the dialogue of this movie. That leaves a lot of room for furrowed brows and concerned glances across camera. I believed in every single one of them. The Wild Things are the result of movie magic at its best.

Beyond that, I'm not sure I can do the film justice by trying to explain it any further. Not to go all New Age on you, but either it's going to speak to your inner child, or it's not. Anyone that ever fancied themselves an explorer or an adventurer - a creator (or destroyer) of imaginary worlds - this movie is for you.

If not, maybe all you see is two hours of brown? I don't know. All I know is that it spoke to me and I thought it was great.

Gordontalked a little bit about and advanced screening he saw of Where The Wild Things Are on last week's The Triple Feature. But expect Joe and I to be up to speed this week with a more thorough examination to follow during tonight's podcast at 9:00 PM CST at TalkShoe.com

If you saw Where The Wild Things Are this weekend, I strongly encourage you to listen to the show live and contribute your .02 cents. Leave comments in the chat filed or call in to the show LIVE as we're recording it! We'd love to hear your opinions.

Until then, I hope you enjoyed today's comic and I will see you here again on Wednesday!

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