OG’s BLOG

Today’s Croaker’s Gorge is in color!

Recently giving a talk to a group of middle schoolers, combined with going to see Kung Fu Panda gifted me with sort of a come-to-Jesus moment on the nature of entertainment, script-writing, and generally trying not to bore people. Basically, what I learned is that pretty graphics are fun to look at, and action can be entertaining. Duh!

None of this, of course, should come at the cost of character development, but the way my script was going, all the action and excitement came at the end of my 3 minute pilot, meaning you got to sit through an awful lot of not much happening for the first 2 and a half minutes.

Two and a half minutes of character development is great, but it’s no way to hook people. I think it might work better to front load the action and put the character development in along the way while telling an entertaining story. That’s what the audience is there for, right? Isn’t this the basic hook of the In Medias Res construction? (See the beginning of Star Wars, or any James Bond movie, for the simplest, most obvious examples.)

So, I took another run at this script to move the action set piece from the end of the episode to the front, and it really starts off with a BANG now. Very anxious to get on with it…

Croaker’s Gorge has been added to The Comics Page, a nice collection of 25 webcomics all in one convenient place. Lots of good strips up there including several I’ve admired for a while (Pinkerton and Muddle Creek chief among them…) The page is still in beta, but hop by and have a look!

My world is upside down. Time was, I knew where I stood with regard to the rivalry between Pixar and Dreamworks. Pixar made the films I loved (Toy Story, Monsters Inc., The Incredibles) and Dreamworks made the films I hated (Shark Tale, the Shrek series).

Suddenly, everything is topsy turvy. While Pixar has made some films that either haven’t connected with me, or I out-and-out hated (Finding Nemo and Cars, respectively) Dreamworks has begun making films I love (Madagascar, Bee Movie).

In that vein, they have brought us Kung Fu Panda this summer. Now, when I first saw the trailers and the little character posters they were circulating a few months back, I thought it looked like what I thought of at the time as a typical Dreamworks offering. You know, lots of flash and star power, but terrible design and color sense, way too many pop cultural references, and an ultimately worthless story. Well, I was wrong in every way. Kung Fu Panda turns out to be a really enjoyable film!

And lo and behold, the star power in this film takes a back seat! I didn’t recognize Angelina Jolie’s voice as the Tigress, and it was 3/4 of the way through the film before I realized the Master was Dustin Hoffman. And there wasn’t one pop cultural reference I could see.

Beyond that, the film is gorgeous. There are scenes that are just jaw-dropping. Some of it is due to expertise on the tech side of the film – that volumetric fog in the layered cliff sides makes me wish I had my own tech department – but most of it is good old-fashioned work on the visual design, pencil and paper and sweat.

As for the film – I don’t believe it will be a Great Classic. But it works really well, and much better than I expected. Sure, the heavy-handed and trite Believe In Yourself moral it jams down your throat is, well, heavy-handed and trite, and of course has been done to death. But the way it’s jammed down your throat with a serving of Kung Fu awesomeness and a fresh visual design, it is a lot more palatable. But when it stops moralizing, it is thoroughly watchable, a whole lot of fun and extremely enjoyable. Jack Black has a great voice and delivery for animation, and who knew?

This film has given me an unexpected lesson, a reminder, on how entertaining an animated film could be. And should be. Now go, and do thou likewise.

I gave a talk at my son’s middle school yesterday. I had been invited by his math teacher, to discuss how I use geometry in my job, a job that all children reportedly think they want to do. Wow – making video games for a LIVING!!!!

I suppose the tale was supposed to go something like this – “I never thought I needed math, boys and girls, but whaddya know – I use it EVERY SINGLE DAY in my COOL, COOL JOB! And if you want a cool job like me, boys and girls, you’d better study up on your geometry!”

Well. The talk went well enough, at least I thought so. I showed them some movies and my 3D software and talked a little bit about how I was no good at math, but I sort of understood geometry and now I use it in my job. I showed them a few quick things in the software. They nodded where appropriate, they laughed at my stupid jokes (or maybe just at me, in retrospect.) I answered what few polite questions they had, and sent them on their way, full of the warm glow of pride that I had done my part to show the next generation the value of real world, applied geometrical theory.

And then word got back to me – the moment the students from my first session had gotten out of earshot, they basically said that if that’s what it was like making games for a living, they’d rather do something else.

So there you have it. I took arguably one of the most interesting jobs you could have and made it boring. Ah. My contribution to the next generation.

Excuse me now, I’m going to go boil my head.

Artist Stephen Silver has linked a really cool set of rules for creative people at his blog that I thought you might enjoy.

To this list, I might add:

- Don’t Be Afraid to Work Alone
- Be Brave
- You are What You Do (not what you’re GOING to do)

And, even though I have 3 or 4 blogs out there with my name on them, I don’t necessarily agree with the final directive to Start Blogging.

What are some rules from this list you particularly enjoy or disagree with? Do you have any you would add?

(Thanks to my friend Marc Hudgins, who pointed this great list out to me, and actually was the inspiration for my two new rules…)

A friend of mine used to work for a game company in Utah. Not far down the street from that company was a rival CG company. On lunches, or I guess pretty much any time they drove past the rival company, someone would lean out the car window and shout “YOU’RE DUMB!”

It was doubtful anyone at the rival company ever heard the guys hollering, but even if anyone somehow had managed to hear the disembodied insult, they probably wouldn’t have understood the words much less their meaning. The only relevant thing here is that my friends were representin’ as they said in those days, and in so doing, had issued a Drive-by Dumbing.

And so it was I came to be surprised this weekend, while standing in a crowd of parents and other onlookers at Lax Splash in Towson (Lax Splash is a multi-state Lacrosse tournament held here in Maryland) that a car drove by and some twentysomething leaned out the open window and shouted, “READ A BOOK!” I’m not entirely certain what his message was, but I believe it translates roughly to “YOU’RE DUMB!”

Ah. The literati, representin’.