Taking it all in… and then taking it all back out (again)

And so the week of hell is done.

I use that term lightly, as it really wasn’t that bad a week, although I had the joyous fun of four deadlines coincidentally hitting the same day – a rarity for my freelancing given the sporadic nature of it, but something that will start happening more frequently as I get more work. A couple deadlines are monthly and weekly, so that was just bad luck they hit on the same Thursday, but two reviews to do into the bargain turned me into a zombie for all of the day as I scripted, edited, wrote, edited some more and then edited until my eyes were bleeding red pulps. When Friday 12am hit and it was all done, I ended up playing my Wii for another 2 hours like a fool, which did my eyesight wonders. I also managed to squeeze out another chapter of my most recent project too, which is good given the work load. Although my reward for all this work at the end of the week is a stomach bug and cold that has me sneezing 20 times in the space of one minute. It’s impressive when you see it live. A bit like the Aurora Borealis.

One assignment this week had me review Superman Returns on PlayStation2, which turned out to be one of the worst games I’ve played in about… oooh, a year. Times like that, where I rip into a game and then give it a terrible review score I tend to think back to when I was working at Games Domain and went into full demolition mode against a British made racing game. One day later I got an email from one of the members of the development team, which pretty much said the following:

“:(“

I felt so bad. Not for the score or destruction of the game, mind, but it’s time like that you realise just how much time and effort people put into making these games, sometimes years of their lives, just so you can tear it a new body cavity in the space of a day. Not to say it still wasn’t a bad game, but it’s something to consider when pouring scorn upon something. It must be far worse in the film industry, where people literally end up moving away from their homes for years just to finish something that can be consumed within hours and then rejected. And typically there’s about 100 more people working on a movie than a game.

Which is why I’m a little more careful with my fiction than I was when I first started all those years back. Because if anything goes wrong with what you read, there’s no one to blame but myself. In my comics, yes, the artist can share some blame if something doesn’t work properly, but I see it falling on my shoulders because the vision is largely mine. And my prose, it’s 100% me. Nowhere to run or hide. It’s easy to get paralysed by the whole process. Thankfully I’ve had the last 6 years to get used to people attacking me/my work, so some of the sting has been taken off a tad, along with the obvious fact you simply can’t please everyone. After all, there are many people out there who think The Godfather, Watchmen, Illmatic, Zelda and Hamlet are overrated/terrible. They’re deluded, but entitled to their opinion 😉

This week’s spotlight is on the lovely Yui Marr, an artist who’s proven to be an increasing rarity in the independant comic book industry (especially for an indie writer like me); she’s good, fast, a great person, willing to learn and has no unrealistic expectations of her craft (ie, didn’t ask me for money). Yui has completed her work on one of my scripts for this year, Bad Luck Inc., and will hopefully go far – she more than deserves it.

Here’s an example of her work:

And a page from my story, Bad Luck Inc. (unlettered – proper, fully scripted previews are on the way later this year).


Her website is over here: http://www.geocities.com/rinaportf/index.htm

Oh, and before I go, there’s likely still many of you looking for a Wii in the UK (stock is still very sporadic). This site helps keep track of units online, so may be worth a look: http://www.wii-consoles.co.uk/wii_console_realtime.asp

And usual, recent work includes:

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