Days and Eden

The two pilot sections are essentially finished, although with some inspiration I may add another page (2 slides)... though I doubt it. I am withholding the release until I hear from Sean as to whether or not he will assist me with dubbing voices... if not, this release will not likely have voices (too many characters), though I may re-release it later with them. There will also be some familiar elements that people who know me should recognize...

Onto an explanation of things: Days ends with the creation of fossil fuels and the growth of the garden. I'm not sure if anyone will get the snake's innuendo, so I'll just explain it (even though I hate doing that). On the last slide of "Days" there will be a mouse that crawls across the screen, then a snake that has what looks like a tail in its mouth coming from the other direction.... the snake ate the mouse.

Take note when the release comes out that there will be no humans in this story...mostly because I hate drawing and animating humans, but also because I appreciate the allegory. Eden is meant to introduce characters such that informed people will know who they are (except for the snail, who people will actually understand in the next section -- Cain and Abel, which will be the two previous elections (hint hint hint)). Keep in mind that the allegorical content of the animals will be through extremist liberal eyes...so it should come as no surprise about the skunk.

We also get to see Rosie O'Donnell, Nancy Pelosi, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and a few unnamed Republicans (but one can guess who they are with some of the context). I am proud of the quality of the birds (who serve as the media), and we will see many more as the project progresses. The plans are coming to fruition at a steady pace, but there are several obligations that I am placing above this project at the moment -- like job searching and studying for the LSAT, so the pace may slow for the next month or more. However, I do hope to release the pilot and get feedback ASAP.

"Days" Part 2 and Release Info

The Pilot is taking longer than expected, largely because I went into long-term planning mode and set the project itself aside for several days. Speaking of "Days," they will be complete when I put the words on the final slide. I have also just completed the title page, which I had previously neglected, but is a very important aspect of a comic. All-in-all, "Days" will be 12 slides long (6 pages of comic). The last pages contain the mysterious "global warming" death of the dinosaurs, what happens to the bones of the dinosaurs on the sixth day, and the small creatures begin to rule the world as the garden grows on the seventh day.

However, the release will not be made until the second section, "Eden" is complete, because I want to have all of the characters properly introduced before moving into the storyline. However, since the first chapter ("Cain and Abel") will deal with the Election of 2000, many of the characters may not be seen again for a while, so I'm still debating how many characters to introduce in Eden. The Obama character will almost certainly not be seen until he appears (far later in the project). That way, I will be motivated to complete the project -- because I like the jokes that surround that character. I will post again with details for Eden, probably when the release comes out.

Characters and Topics

I may be able to make a decent release this week, since I have decided to release the project in episodes, much like the Bible itself is separated into episodic stories. I will probably release "Days" as a pilot, then move into longer episodes. If I feel particularly ambitious, I will put "Eden" into the mix and introduce all the characters that will be seen for the remainder of the project. So far, many of the early stories have initial planning complete, though the creation of specific characters will need to be complete before I can proceed with them, because the way that the characters are created will greatly affect the types of actions that can be animated with them. I will complete "Days" by the end of the week, and the pilot release should be early next week on my website.

As the pilot, "Days" and "Eden" will be quite a bit shorter than I plan the rest of the episodes to be. However, a lot of the initial work is necessary, so the longer sections may have faster release times. So far, roughly five characters have been produced for animation, and I am very happy with the quality thus far.

Characters

This is quickly becoming a point of contention for the project, because I have not fully decided which issues I will be addressing specifically. There are a number of topics that I'm tossing around which would require various people to be involved in controversy, but I am trying to keep the issues as current as possible. The issues seem to define which people will need to be represented in the project, so I will list here the issues that are definitely going to be seen (and a character that is involved):

1.) Global Warming - Al Gore
2.) Election - Barrack Obama
3.) Gun Control - Rosie O'Donnell
4.) The Constitution
5.) Health Care
6.) Big Government
7.) The Media - The Media

Some of the issues that I may use are below, but, as contentious as they are, I may not have the personal interest to address, especially since this is my opinion and not a party line:

1.) Gay Marriage
2.) Abortion
3.) Taxes
4.) War on Terrorism
5.) The Olympics (aka China)
6.) Education (College Devaluation)
7.) Welfare/Communism/Socialism
8.) Animal Rights/P.E.T.A.
9.) Euthenasia

I won't reveal how the characters will be portrayed yet (until I have pictures), but I will say that none of them will be caricatures of themselves. Allegory is very powerful, and what I have in mind may be more manageable than each of them.

As for real characters, there will need to be both extremes for any situation to work. Therefore, I will need to develop several different character types that need to be addressed. This means that it will likely take a lot more time to complete the project than I had originally hoped. I may have to make it episodic, and release "Days," then move onto "Eden and the Fall," where most of the characters are introduced. This is a last resort if character and story design take longer than expected, but there will be significant work done by the end of next week, whether I decide to serialize it or not. "Days" will be roughly four pages, unless I have a huge creative epiphany within the next few days (although this has been happening a lot in recent days...), so I don't really want to make a habit of only releasing four "pages" (8 slides) at a time, especially when the rest of the episodes will probably take longer to complete. We'll see how it develops.

The Days of Creation Part 1

To set up a habit, I will put each section's notes in a separate post. This one will discuss the 70% complete "Days of Creation" section of "The New Genesis."

Like the Bible, it begins with "In the Beginning" and each subsection ends with "And there was evening, and there was morning." Common phrasing is used throughout to let the viewer know that this is the beginning of a new Bible.

However, a viewer will immediately notice that God has been removed from the equation, and the "Beginning" is the big bang. This is very intentional, and would hopefully unsettle the viewer into believing that something is off or wrong with this new telling. On the bottom half of the page (slide 2), I used a photograph of the milky way (billions of stars are hard to make and arrange individually), in order to begin to focus on Earth. The next page has a very disorganized solar system on it. Notice the brown and red on the third planet -- that will be changed in the coming days. I must note that the big bang story may not be accurate to scientific accounts, and I did no research into it for this depiction, because over-simplified science seems to be acceptable when liberals are concerned.

For this section of the production, and probably no other section in it, time is extremely important. We start with the beginning, and go through several "days." However, each of the days is notedly separated by at least a few million years. It becomes consistent with the Big Bang Theory of creation, and probably more with reality, though the timetables are completely made up by me.

The first day displays constant volcanic activity on the Earth. Two separate animations are made, one large scale (planetary view) and the other more close-up. The close up animation is simple but was necessary to me, since I failed to create an animation of Vesuvius for one of my undergraduate projects and it had always bugged me. The latter animation type is reminiscent of two previous animations I had made: the spewing blood from my "Phillip the Great" presentation, and the fire smoke from my "Actium" presentation. These were two of my more clever independent animations and I combined the elements here.

The second day (after a billion years has elapsed) has the lava cooling and gas being excreted. Nothing special, except that in the middle of the top half, there will be the comment, "Carbon Dioxide and water vapor are accumulated, and it was good." This is the first of many cracks at the global warning hysteria and how ridiculous it is. On the bottom of the same page we move to day three (a billion years later as well). Here we have rains filling the oceans, lands reappearing and life beginning. This page contains a wonderful new animation. In the bottom right corner, there is a sunset animation which was surprisingly simple to produce, but looks really nice.

For the Fourth Day, the dinosaurs are introduced. Now, one must remember that I am not drawing with a pen, but rather with a mouse. While this may sound like an apology for the quality, it is actually a challenge against all those who complain about the shape of the stegasaurus and brachiosaurus. The characters, like most of my creations in PowerPoint are cartoony and by no means perfect representations, and this is a conscious choice.

However, this becomes the first overt criticism of Global Warming. The dinosaurs are claimed to have died due to global warming, caused by breathing too heavily and eating all the plants and trees. However, in the background for the viewer, we see a meteor striking the earth and the sky changing color. Lying through the teeth in order to fit a future agenda is seen explicitly for the first time here. And I don't want emails telling me that no one ever claimed that global warming killed the dinosaurs, because that is inaccurate (http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2005/01/21/extinction-050121.html)... and anyways, it's supposed to be symbolic and allegorical, like much of the Bible itself.

This is where we are (and by that I mean "I am") so far on the project - two and a half pages into the comic. I will make a point of expounding details to the production as they appear. In later entries, I will likely be more explicit on what the alternatives to the choices I made were, but right now, I'm tired of writing.

First Post - Introduction and High Concept

This blog is meant to be a production diary of sorts for my first completely independent PowerPoint production - "The New Genesis: Creation Through Extremist Eyes." This project aims to satirize, but not necessarily exaggerate, and put into some perspective the way extreme leftists see the world, because it shows up in everything they seem to do. It will address a number of issues (the most prominent being the Global Warming "Crisis") and, if successful in my own opinion (not that I don't care about criticism and/or support), it may spawn other incarnations of a similar type and format.

Before I begin, I need to expound a few things about myself. I myself am a conservative, but I find myself at odds with many conservatives on various issues. For example, I believe that, had the Supreme Court actually had jurisdiction to hear the case, the Guantanamo Habeas Case was probably correct, and I have my reasons for thinking so. I'll say this, I was never really a fan of George W. Bush, but I voted for him in 2004, primarily because of the people with whom he surrounds himself. However, for the upcoming Presidential race I am still at odds over not so much who to vote for, but rather whether to vote at all. The two Democratic candidates, McCain and Obama, hold very few appealing qualities to me, though I undoubtedly must lean more toward McCain's experience and independence (as opposed to Obama's parroting and 100 or so days of National Senate experience). But I digress. The point here is that I am a conservative creating a vision of the liberal worldview, and, in the interest of full disclosure, I don't much care for it or believe in it.

"The New Genesis" title itself is an outgrowth of the comments by Michael Crichton that environmentalism today is a religion. "Genesis" of course refers to the first book of the Hebrew Bible, and the indication of its novelty in the title should stir up thoughts of revisionism, another of the many topics that will be discussed throughout the piece. The title indicates that the stories are inaccurate and must be "fixed" in order to make them acceptable. Revisionism of this sort is unacceptable in my opinion, but is occurring more and more as those with agendas find the need to change the past in order to initiate a future of their choosing. However, I am not writing this blog to pontificate, so I will now continue with the high concept of the production.

The PowerPoint will be an animated comicbook, using the stories and language of "Genesis" as a model to demonstrate the worldview (as I see it) of extremist liberals and catastrophist environmentalists. Each page will be contained on two slides, which will follow the US-Standard left-to-right, top-to-bottom reading format. I may use some photographs to supplement areas that would be too time-consuming to produce in the program itself, but 99% of the production will be drawn within PowerPoint itself, as all of my projects to date have been.

I plan to personally voice the narrations (i.e. "In the Beginning"), while I may find a small volunteer cast to voice act for the characters themselves. If not, I may or may not voice act the entire production independently. The purpose is not necessarily to create a "talkie" but rather to complete the comic. Therefore, voices, while I would like to have them, will be secondary to the production.

So far, the script has been written for the days of creation, and production of the pictures is under way. I will write a separate post for this and all other sections, outlining production choices and hopefully adding some screenshots or other images as they become available. Planning has begun for the Eden and Tower of Babel sections, but I forsee that there will be a number of creative changes to the order of stories and such that will need to be taken, so I am trying not to lock myself to a script yet. We'll see how things develop.

A quick disclaimer before I end this post and continue with the production. I am neither a theology scholar nor a scientist. I am primarily a student of political science. Therefore, individual facts and/or events will not be up-to-date on the latest scholarship in either field. Do not be offended if Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed before the Great Flood, and likewise do not get upset if global warming "scholarship" is not reflected word-for-word or to it's full accuracy - especially when people like Al Gore who claim to do just that fall significantly short of it. I am coming into this project having looked at a variety of issues and formed an opinion based on information that I have collected. Each issue will be researched to an extent that I believe is adequate for the story at hand. I will give my sources on this blog when I believe they may need explanation. However, much of my research will be from news reports, political speeches, and things that are readily available online - not scholarly journals (though there are several reports that I will try to address).