Shut the hell up!

Respectfully,

Roxy

Q: How do you know if you're a crazed TSCC fan?

Work has picked up considerably in recent weeks, so between that and dedicating most of my free time to Sarah Connor, LJ has sadly taken a back seat. I'm going to remedy that. I know I'm way behind on what you guys are all up to, but I'm going to catch up this weekend. In the meantime, here's what I've been up to:

I recently reorganized The Sarah Connor Society forums (also made a new skin/theme for it) and set-up a TSCC series rewatch. For that, you watch the pilot on your own then hit the new rewatch board for discussion next Wednesday (it continues with an ep a week).

A lot of my nights have been spent in the savethescc.com chatroom, brainstorming TSCC campaign ideas and socializing. We've had a petition going that's already had over 2500 signers, we've been doing emails, letters and postcards to WB, Halcyon and various networks. We've got sort of a press pack in the works to send out to those same places. Our biggest venture is a mobile billboard in Los Angeles and fundraising for that is going to kick off next week. We're going to need about $4,000, so don't be surprised when I start guilting you all into pitching in a couple dollars ;)

Comic Con is coming up, so I made some stickers for people to wear on themselves and hand out. But then we all decided there was no need to limit sticker fun to just a con. There's been a lot of excitement and chatter about the stickers for weeks now but they finally arrived from the printer today so ordering has begun. They look awesome, by the way, they really do. I fronted the money for this so I'm handling the distribution. I bought 10,000 stickers, so they're incredibly cheap (I'm selling them at cost). You can buy as few as 10 or as many as 800 in one shot. So go get some! You can read more about it and/or place an order at savethescc.com.

Here's a shot of some of my recent handiwork — a couple postcards and the two stickers:

I've had a number of people ask me what's involved and how much time it takes to produce the Sarah Connor Comicals, so I thought I'd put a post together.

There are really two parts to the process: the thinking and the doing. I never know which half is going to torture me more from episode to episode, but one of them surely will, every time. Creative processes are just like that (for me anyway, but I'm guessing most of you know what I'm talking about). Sometimes I have a good deal of it planned out before I begin and sometimes I dive in with one or two ideas and hope it leads me.

So the time it takes varies — widely. I've whipped up a comical in a few hours before and others I've struggled with off and on for days. But whether it's totally fun and goes quickly or drags out and starts to feel like a chore never seems to be a factor in how good it ends up. That, I think, just depends on the way an episode hits me, how much I've got going on and probably what kind of mood I'm in when I work on it.

After I've beat my head against the wall for a while and made some notes, I set up the "studio" (2 clip-on lights on a work table, some poster board and a Canon PowerShot on a tripod). It actually takes quite a while to photograph scenes (way longer than you'd think). The action figures are often uncooperative and I have to Fun Tack them into submission. If the setup doesn't look right, I have to un-Fun Tack them, rearrange and re-Fun Tack them. It can be tedious. There's also this to contend with:



Depending on how many ideas I have when I start, I may go scene-by-scene or I may shoot a bunch of different scenes in succession. Then I take them into PhotoShop for the finishing work. That's where the raw photos become comic panels and also where I end up changing my mind about stuff a lot. That sometimes leads to reshoots, but I also change things around on the fly. I've erased an action figure from a scene before because I couldn't bear to set up the shot a second time and I've pieced-in figures that weren't originally there. I add in backgrounds, objects, I make graphics to use (like the Jesse calendar). And some stuff I create in Illustrator because PhotoShop's vector tools leave much to be desired.

The comical for episode 11 wasn't one of the more amusing ones, but I think I ended up putting more work into it graphically than any previous edition. Partly that may have been me making up for what I felt was kind of a dud, but it's also just that the longer I do these, the more desire I have to make them actually look good. What started as a quick and dirty hack job has turned into a full fledged hobby. And despite whatever frustrations it brings me during the process, I simply love doing it.

For those that have been curious about all this, I've assembled a step-by-step peek at the making of two of the more complex panels from the Self Made Man comical.

And because I couldn't stand looking at this, I made this:

I love carving pumpkins for Halloween. Usually I just download a template or get one from a book, but I really wanted to do an endoskeleton head this year. Since I couldn't find a template for one, I made one. I haven't even carved this myself yet (I'll probably do my carving Thursday night), but Halloween is closing in so I wanted to put this up in case anyone else wants to give it a try as well. I'll post a photo of mine after I've done it. I really hope it looks good. I'd hate to not awe the trick or treaters. We kind of have a reputation to maintain ;)

Download the PDF template here.

If all goes well, it should basically look like this when you're done:



ETA: Here's my finished pumpkin.

I love doing package design. Maybe because I'm a total sucker for good packaging myself. Since I had these cool Sarah Connor Chronicles action figures sitting here looking all bored, I decided to design them one. Unfortunately I was rather limited in my graphics choices because I wanted to do this project in full print quality (in case I want to construct it later). The only images I had that were high enough resolution were the publicity stills released by FOX way back before season 1 started. Using those I was able to make the card 6"x9" like I wanted, though. I could probably make packages for John and Cameron too, but that would be it until I can get my hands on more high-res pics. For now, though, there's just a Sarah package. And through the magic of PhotoShop, I was able to sort of "glue" her onto the card to simulate a finished product:

Why must you fuck with me tonight, PhotoShop? Why? Can't you be satisfied with 4gigs of memory? Hmm? All the other apps seem to think that's enough, but no. Not you. No, you have to be difficult. Hey, put that beach ball down while I'm talking to you! Pay attention! Oh you better not sass me, PhotoShop. That's it... you're grounded mister.