It’s Sunday afternoon and I have a cat hanging off my chair demanding petting. I’m about to take a break from writing to get a quick shower in and then it’s back to writing before the evening shifts begin.
Right now I’m lettering one issue and writing two others at simultaneously. I have the plots for four other issues in the back of my head and I’m trying to make each story as different as possible so you don’t really catch on to the fact that five or six of them were all written at the same time.
I’m scared. I’ve been in the mood to write but then again I’ve been stressed out of my mind with work lately. I’m also trying to make major changes to my life and hopefully I’m not jinxing things by even mentioning them here. You know I’m a freak about these things, and I’d hate to screw things up before they got started.
But you’re not here to listen to me whine about my life, are you? Sigh. I know. You want to know what the heck I’m doing with these issues. So here goes.
You can see that I’ve abandoned the shot for shot recreations of the old issues of The Media Elite. I think I’ve mentioned that before, not sure, but if I haven’t — hey, we’re not doing that any more. I tried, I really did, but frankly, a shot for shot recreation wasn’t always possible with the software I have now. Plus the first couple of issues I tried it on took ten hours JUST to do the captures. I know a lot of that was setting up the sets and redoing the character models, but still, it was waaaaaay too much time to spend when I have about 50 issues to get done.
I’ve also reduced the page counts. Back in the day, the early issues were released in three parts over the course of the week. Other than annoying people on Facebook, they allowed me to tell the story in serial format and allowed for more pages than I normally do with an issue these days. It worked at the time, it was fun and you never knew what you were going to see back then because, frankly, neither did I. I was writing so fast back then that the stories were whatever I felt like writing at the particular moment. The plots eventually matured when we went to weekly-all-in-one release dates, but still, I was cranking out a god-awful amount of pages at once and not everything made sense.
So now I have a chance to look back and change things a bit. Issue one was pretty much shot by shot (same with issue 16/18) because it had to be. Since then, you can see that I’ve changed things a bit. I am writing in a style that tells more of the story with less pages. A lot of the little sight gags that no one noticed were cut and sometimes the story was changed a bit to make things fit with the ultimate storyline for the series (yes, there was one!). At the same time, I haven’t taken any of the remaining old issues down (except for the two mini-specials), so I’m writing in a style that would make the stories fit with what’s out there. It’s a challenge, but I hope you see that I’m putting a real effort into it without going insane.
How am I keeping track of everything? I really don’t know. The characters have changed quite a bit since these early issues of The Media Elite to their current incarnations in @insanity. Add the fact that they’ve had at least 4 lifetimes and universes and I have to keep track of what their current personalities are when I’m writing an issue. Thankfully, the triad of Johnnie-Celine-Patricia are set to take a more limited role in the next handful of issues of The Media Elite so I don’t have to worry about them as much and most of our current regulars for @insanity (Ralph, Doc Newbie, Cirque, etc.), weren’t really around for the first series so things are getting easier.
But time is always the problem. Writing and animating and lettering and publishing all take time. I’m stressed as is and hoping I don’t hit the wall before the next issue comes out.
With that, crap, I have 27 minutes until my next shift and a shower to take. Time to get wet and wild.
Take care,
Jim