THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Well, so much for having fun storyboarding. I finished working on storyboard revisions on one show and I got put on storyboard revisions on another show. Problem is that all the fun stuff has been done already and all I get to do is the grunt work. The shots have been figured out already by the director and he just gives me a bunch of roughs to clean up. This means I, first have to interpret the roughs and second, I have to draw them pretty clean. Problem is that the show is so behind that everything is do yesterday. This means that what ever I get, I have to do as fast as possible and under a ton of pressure. Not only that, but some of the shots I have to “board” are already in layout. This means that the work I’m doing doesn’t have any practical use. The layout artists are working off the rough version of the shots that I’m trying to clean up for the “board”. This does nothing but frustrate me because the director is just as picky over the storyboard shots that are not going to be used by anyone as he is with the ones that are. Why? Because apparently there is one producer left on the show that is not on strike and we have to make the “boards” on the show perfect so he doesn’t make too many changes to it. It’s so impractical. It just feels like a waste of my time to me.

I was put on the show last Thursday and it seems that ever since then, the moment I come to work I get an instant headache. This stinks. I was suppose to start on Lance’s show on Monday and I haven’t which means that I’m going to be behind on all the things he gives me from the very beginning.

MY WEEK

My laptop is just not connecting to the internet anymore and don’t know why. It’s really frustrating. First the wireless router started acting up so we just unplugged it and after I did that and I connected the computer to the land line, it just wouldn’t load the internet pages. It gets the signal but it just won’t load. Has this ever happened to you? If it has, how did you fix it? I tried uninstalling the router program but it’s not even in the computer. I don’t know what to do.

BOARD GAMES

So instead of telling you that I played three games this weekend (Bohnanza, San Juan, and Vegas Showdown), I thought I’d write about how I made my own. No, I didn’t design a game, I just put it together from a pdf I downloaded. The game is Dune, the board game.

If your a fan of Frank Herbert’s Dune books, this is a must have. I’ve been wanting to play this game for a long time. This game plays up to six player and each person plays one faction from the Dune books, The Fremen, the Harkonnen, the Atreides, the Guild, the Bene Gesserit, or the Emperor . The best part is each faction has a bunch of special “powers” that thematically go with the faction and the essence of the books. It’s so cool! There is just too many interesting things about this game to write here. If you want to read more about it, click here.

This game has been out of print for years and it has the reputation of being one of the best games ever. It’s ranked #45 on board game geek. If you were to try to buy in on e-bay it would cost you over a hundred dollars. Fantasy Flight has bought the rights to use the game system but were unable to get the rights to use the Dune License so they’re going to use a different Sci Fi theme. It just won’t be the same.

After having printed out and played the Pocket Civ game, I thought to myself that it would be pretty easy to print out and make another game. Since I felt like doing it again, I needed a game worth making. I’d downloaded the Dune game about a year or two ago and I thought that maybe it was the right time to put it together. So I began trying to figure out how I was going to go about doing it. I had card stock so that wasn’t going to be a big deal. So first I started printing out the cards, the problem was that the cards also had backs to them. When I turned the paper around and printed on the back of the already printed image in order to give the cards a back, I found to my dismay that they didn’t line up. So I thought the only way to do it would be to print the front and back on two different pieces of card stock and glue them together later. I also had lamination paper and after I printed out all the components I started to laminate everything. Once I did that I went to the craft store and bought some glue spray. I then went to the local copy store to use the paper cutter they had there. I was there for about two hours cutting out the cards for the game as well as the actual game board. I put the cards together using the spray on glue and they looked really great. They actually don’t even looked hand made. Next I went home and cut out the rest of the components with some scissors. In all, it took me about five to six hours and I still wasn’t able to finish that day. The next day at work, I used my exacto knife to cut some slits in the “shield wall” pieces and I also finished putting together the “Combat Wheels” of the game with some help from my light table at work. Now all I have to do is go back to the craft store to look for some components that I might be able to use for the armies and the “spice tokens” and the game is ready to play. It was fun to do but it was an quite a lot of work. Can’t wait to play it.

BOOKS/MOVIES

I’ve noticed something. Some of the most influential Science fiction/fantasy books and movies all seem to have a world religion “foundation” to them. For example:

Star Wars, is kinda Buddhist.
Dune, is kinda Muslim.
The Matrix, is sorta Gnostic.
The Lord of the Rings, is very, very, Catholic (it’s Christian but it’s specifically Catholic).

I understand that all religions may seem the same on the surface and therefore people (like Joseph Campbell) have put forth the proposition that they are. Though I disagree with Campbell’s proposition I think he’s right in that these stories do to hit a “mythic” core in us. I heard somewhere that Tolkien thought myths were very similar because it was a way for humanity to recognize Jesus as the Savior even if you’re culture didn’t have a bible because it was written in everyones psyche. (Can you tell I’m Christian?) I find this interesting non the less. I wonder if the next big sci fi/fantasy book/movie will be Hindu or Jewish. Unless there’s already one and I don’t know it.

I proposed this idea to some friends at lunch and they pointed out that Star Trek and Blade Runner don’t fall under this world religion foundation view, though they do have a philosophical ideological foundation. For example:

Star Trek is a bit secular humanistic.
Blade Runner is…well…huh…I guess it’s just asking a bit fat question, so I guess it would be Socratic?

What do you think?

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