Rambling On.....

TP Pilot program: Holy Crap!

2008-05-29T19:25:20Z

That's right, I said it. Holy crap! (not that it matters much seeing how I haven't posted anything here for the past three years or so , no one reads this anymore) I'm usually very silent in the realm of online battles between savvy posters with much more time on their hands and dare I say more wit than I, but I needed to write my opinion down somewhere. With this whole TP Shining Stars endeavor only out in the public eye for a few months there certainly has been a giant uproar. I didn't think it would take so much of a hit that even I got distracted .

I suppose those who you'd expect to hate, did and those who were proponents were almost non existent, or at least non vocal (notable exceptions being Mr. Brad Fox and Manga Blog). Those on the fence are perhaps still sitting precariously there. I am not a fan of TP contracts, and I've had bad dealings with them in the past (this is in NO means a reflection of the editors there, which I found to be helpful and excellent at their job). This new one was out of left field, and I was very wary of the "hip" language they used, mostly because when it comes to procedure, I'm a stickler for the technical details. But I don't quite understand comments that elude to it being a step back from previous renditions.
I had no interest in working with TP and their original contracts. From almost every source I found them to be demanding and restrictive. However, the Pilot contract works for me, for the time I can devote to it, and for the rights I'll retain or those I'm willing to give away. Despite the importance placed on Moral Rights (I agree these are supremely valuable), in this instance I can live with waiving them in sole regards to the 30 or so pages that I'll be compensated for. I don't mind creating work for exposure and for the specific comic experience. It's not my life long, "would die if I lost it" property, but it is something that I'd enjoy the making of. It works for me, but not for everyone.

Downtime

2005-08-22T16:48:19Z

Seems like forever since I last posted. I got back from my Siggraph LA convention two weeks ago. It was pretty awesome. Since I was working there I had full access to all the events and they even paid for my flight, hotel room and most of my food costs. Pretty sweet. George Lucas was the keynote speaker, but of course the line to get into the hall was tremendous so I just watched the interview on the large displays they had setup. Most of the time I was helping out at the E-tech exhibit which was fun. There were two booths that needed volunteers, "Earth Shaking" and something about a word association program. Both were from research companies in Japan. At "Earth Shaking" you put on these earphones that send electric impulses to your inner ear, which then cause you to loose balance and forces you into the opposite direction. Kinda like human remote control. Scary!!!

The other was an interactive program that lets the user type in two dissimilar words and it represents them as bubbles floating in a white screen. next a bunch of other bubbles pop up with words related to the two original. Path are made to form a simple phrase. Being Japanese, there had to be some kind of robotic device implemented, and there was. A mini robot was programed to sort of act out the phrase. But its servo motor would short every so often and cause it to fall over. I got creative and starting typing in things like "puff Daddy" "sugar mamma" and "Bush idiot". I tried "Sony godzilla" however their word bank was formed from a bunch of college students, so it wasn't very extensive. After a while I ran out of words, but I did get to flirt with a tech guy from Harvard. The rest of the time I was monitoring the doors and almost got shoved by a woman who tried to get in without a ticket. We had a faceoff because her son could go in and not she. She keep pacing the front door calling me names and threatening to call security if anything happened to her son without her. "It would be on my head." The kid was like 16...Anyway, when she saw her son come back out she tried to shove me out of the way with her shoulder, so I backed up and called her a crazy bitch. I usually am a laid back person but I was jet lagged and sick and tired of getting yelled out.

The parties were everywhere too. You just had to check out which company was throwing one on the message boards, go to their booth at the exhibition hall and then pick up the limited amount of tickets. Next, I dropped off some of my reels at the job fair and then checked out the Electronic theatre. It was amazing. Blur studio had the best shorts in my opinion, then I enjoyed the technical reel from Madagascar and Stealth. Pixar gave away those walking teapots at their booth. It was like a sale at Loehmanns or something. It only was available at 2 and 4pm so everyone mobbed the stands. I happened upon it by accident, but when I saw people clawing to get those boxes, I just ran over and like grabbed four of the them. Then I felt terrible and them gave away to my friends. I checked out the latest version of 3D Max, Max 8, due out sometime in the Fall. Alias was there too with their latest verison of Maya, as well as Nividia and ATI. Being a newly converted Nvidia fan, I grabbed their pretty shopping bag first. AMD had some cool lines of laptops for show and of course Hash animation was there giving lectures about Animation Master. Too bad the city of LA wasn't too impressive. San Francisco was my idea of a great city, but I guess I'm just biased toward east coast neighborhoods. Before flying back home I spent some time with my friend in Glendale. We had Korean BBQ, Jambaa Juice and In-and-Out-Burger.

Sadness now. I'm back and have to catch up on work with all of my worldly possessions packed up in boxes. There was a last minute two page illustration job to churn out, wirepop pages, and I'm making one last short for a demo to send off to Disney for Toy Story 3. On a productive note, I just finished all my character sheets for Tokyo Pop. I got the sample script last Wednesday and it's hilarious. All the while I have to find an affordable moving company. Enough of my complaining. I had a great time and I've got a souvenir for Dan. Also, my new scanner and Wacom tablet arrived in the mail a few days ago. Yiiiipeeeee!!!!!

Down to the Wire

2005-07-06T21:48:08Z

Grrrr! Things are getting stressful!!! First off I'd like to say that I had a tetnus shot yesterday and my left arm is so freakin sore. I can't believe I waited two hours for that! I went to America Freedom concert on the 4th and saw Elton john and Patti La Belle. It was pretty sweet, but now I'm paying for it! I've been feverishly trying to get my animations done before the job fair at Siggraph, I still have Wirepop pages to tone and I haven't finished all the character sheets for Tokyopop :( Plus I'm moving across country at the end of the month and I haven't begun to put things in order. Thankfully I'm done with teaching math for a bit and can focus on all this stuff for the rest of the month. Everytime I read news from Tokyopop creators I get a sudden burst of energy. Hopefully this pans out, but I'm glad the editor I'm working with is such a laid back guy. I think I'll need to take a trip soon...

My Submission....

2005-06-14T07:57:35Z

Okay, I haven't gotten a chance to make any follow up comments on my submission status, but I remember Svet saying something about confidentiality. But I don't think that's the case yet since it's still a long ways to go(just let me know if I'm wrong)...Anyway, about a week after I mailed in my submission, I got an email from one of the editors saying they might have use for me on a collaboration project with another writer. At first I was like, hahahahahahaha, what are the odds that this will pan out, so send a reply back and continue working on my demo reel. After a few emails back and forth I finally got a chance to speak with the editor on the phone. (Oh, and Svet, he had really good things to say about your release). In any case, I got a better understanding of the whole submission/approval process. So now I have to make some character designs. When I asked if he wanted several versions he was like "Oh, since this isn't paid work yet we don't expect people to break themselves over it". So I'm guessing it's going to be a long shot. However, the story is witty and very entertaining and the main character could almost pass for me. So, after I send in my rough designs, I'll let you guys know how things go (unless I'm doing a big no no...lol)

Some Contract Killings

2005-05-27T08:23:29Z

Well I'm kinda tiffed right now!! I had this contract with an Artist Agency that specializes in manga style stuff. I knew one of the workers there from another independent publishing company and she emailed me about some comic that they had just lost the artist for and needed someone ASAP. She emailed me to see if I was interested and I mistakenly said yes. Not only yes, but I agreed too quickly to terms that she had laid down. Unfortunately, this is something I have a tendancy to do simply because I hate negotiating fees. In this case I thought it would be a good move to get "in" with the agency. But the pay was near slave labor and when I asked for more I was told the client was already quoted that price and wouldn't budge. So I was doing a comic for less than $20 a page. On top of that the writing was horrible! It was not just a Sailormoon/Rayearth knockoff, but it had corny character names and super powers. Not one shred of originality. In any case, the "client" out to be this guy who couldn't draw his own stuff so hired out artists to do it for him while he made a profit at summer cons. The deadlines were incredibly ill planned. I admit that there was one time where I was a few days late in getting layouts done (they wanted 12 pages at a time and I was at AB) but then the guy would be days late in getting back to me with his approval. Also the initial administrative paperwork took almost a month to complete because the guy didn't return the forms in time.

The worst part was while I was drawing I noticed not only were there inconsistencies in the character designs (which BTW he paid another artist to do) but there were times when the girls' outfits were totally covered by armor or positioned in such a way that you could only see their backside. When I asked for model sheets or turn arounds I got a next to nothing response. More like "just make it up as you go". So that's what I did, and it took a shit load of time because I basically had to come up with ways to either hide the clothes or just design them myself. Another pisser was that none of the character designs were labeled with the girl's "alter ego" names. So when I was drawing this one girl, who he kept referring to her with her secret identity, it made it seem as if he hadn't come up with a character design for her. Luckily I checked the website and found an updated version of the image. The guy must have realized his mistake because the names were added to the new picture. GRRRRR!!!!

Then was told, not asked or requested, TOLD to have 24 finished pages, inked and toned pages, done in less than two weeks. Mind you, I haven't gotten paid for about a month's worth of work yet and wasn't going to get paid until at least 12 pages had been finished. So not only was I working for less than minimum wage, I wasn't even going to see a fraction of that money until I broke my ass off getting him his freakin 24 pages. That meant I needed to take on other projects to pay the rent, food and utility bills. But it's like a Catch 22. How the hell was I gonna get the comic finished so I could get paid when I needed to work on other jobs to get paid so I could work on the comic? When I told the client about this, the guy actually was like "I'm gonna let you know what my deadlines, regardless of how ridiculous the expectations were, and than you'll know how you weren't able to keep up your side of the bargain". Even though we never discussed a printing schedule in the first place!!!

Needless to say I worked without sleep to get what I could do (about 12 pages in 2 weeks) and in the reply when I sent the work off there wasn't even mention of when I was going to receive payment for the 12 pages. They just wanted to know when the next set would be done. So I informed them that I couldn't work on the project anymore. My contact tried in two emails to get me to stay on, but I told her with my financial situation there's no way I could afford to work for peanuts. That's when I get this email about dissolving my contract. How I need to write and sign a letter explaining that I'm terminating my contract and that I waive any right to payment for the work I've already done or any subsequent royalties should the pages be printed. I could've been a bitch and just not said anything until I got paid and cashed the check and then told them I quit. But I decided to be more diplomatic. In actuality, the loss of money wasn't as important to me as the future loss of time and effort, so I have no problem with not getting paid. In fact, I'd rather not put my name to the artwork since it was not even close to my best work given the circumstances and the story!!!! THE STORY!!!!!CRAP!!!! Now I know why the first artist disappeared and cut off all communications.

I just needed to rant, hopefully this may serve as a helpful warning to others who may be timid like me when it comes to laying down fair terms for yourself. Be wary of where you place your good intentions and your generosity! Some companies have no problem with seeing how far they can push you and get away with it. I'm glad though that I ended this whole fiasco now, even without my fee. Sorry Corrine for making you do those freakin frames!!!

My Tokyo Pop Pitch

2005-05-14T22:51:39Z

Well, since I had some extra time this week and since I haven't posted anything real in my journal I figured I'd post my Tokyo Pop pitch, I finally sat down and actually did it. It was a lot of freakin work since I don't usually write these types of stories. I got the idea after I saw my first episode of this ridiculous reality show on MTV called the Inferno (or something like that) They pit "good guys" vs. "bad guys". The girls weren't really "bad" girls like delinquents or prostitutes. They were just bitches. So I thought I'd come up with a story about two best friends who enter a reality TV show together, but the show is really over the top. (kinda making fun of as well as a reflection of the reality craze hitting the waves today). The host is going to be bizarre and his assistants are going to dress in outrageous customs (like cosplayers!!! hahahahaha) Here are the pages that I could muster out in two days and no sleep....

I always get nervous/self-conscious whenever I'm trying to explain my own ideas. I'm like "well there's this guy and he's kinda not your average guy and the story is about him well, it's got other stuff too, and ya know...he does some big stuff that leads to some sort of consequence..." Anyways, we'll see what happens, I assuming they have a crap load of submissions every day so if it's liked at all, I shouldn't hear anything for a few months.

Testing....Testing...

2005-05-04T06:24:19Z

Testing....testing....