Inspiration...

...comes in some unusual places for me. Maybe I think it's unusual because it doesn't really come to me often. Or there's the third option, that I'm mistaking inspiration for enthusiasm. Regardless, occasionally, I find something that makes me want to get up and go and get something done. One of these things lately has been Gunnerkrigg Court. It's a fantastic webcomic done by Tom Siddell. It's a fantasy story about a girl named Antimony Carver who attends an unusual school, Gunnerkrigg Court.

I love webcomics. The list of other webcomics I check daily:

Ctrl+Alt+Del
Goblins
Penny Arcade
Questionable Content
Least I Could Do
Darths & Droids
Anders Loves Maria
KinokoFry
Octopus Pie
Basic Instructions
DAR
Sarah Zero
DigitalPimpOnline (has a number of different comics by the same artist)
Dueling Analogs
Three Panel Soul
Minus
Striptease

The latter few of this list I've only found recently. You may think it's a lot but it doesn't take fifteen minutes to check out the latest strip of these, though not all of them update daily. Regardless, I read a lot of webcomics, and have read a lot more over the years. Some of them ended (Shaw Island and Mac Hall, now Three Panel Soul) and some I just fell out of touch with (VG Cats and Real Life Comics - still great webcomics however). Some I enjoy more than others, some I like to keep up with to find out the fate of particular storylines or characters, some are one shot comics that are a good laugh. However, there are none that I had read that have made me want to really better myself. Usually, I'd look at comics such as Penny Arcade and wish I could be as eloquent as Tycho Brahe in his articles and humour, as taboo smashing as Ryan Sohmer of Least I Could Do, as original and imaginative as Rebecca Clements of KinokoFry, or create characters mould breaking like Meredith Gran, least of all being able to draw anywhere near as well as Gabe of PA, Lar DeSouza of LICD, and Rebecca and Meredith of Kinoko and OP respectively. (Special mention also to Jeph Jaqcues for Questionable Content, Erika Moen for DAR, Rene Engström for Anders Loves Maria and Tarol Hunt for Goblins, all great and original comics.) I've always looked upon these with a level of awe and somewhat jealousy, wishing I could create works as good as these.

Now where does Gunnerkrigg Court come in against these aces of the webcomic world? I hadn't heard of Gunnerkrigg Court until I found a link within someone else's webcomic. Within the first Chapter, even the first few pages, I was hooked. This was something different. I read through the entire archive in one sitting. The artwork is nice and simple - nothing ground breaking - but retains it's own style, and improves as the comic goes on. What struck me about this webcomic though, was that it contained everything that I used to love about comics and cartoons. The unique characters, the continuing plot with interjecting storylines, the mythology... all seems to fit together seamlessly. Even when things don't quite make sense, they're still believable. Tom Siddell has written this in such a way that robots, mythological spirits of nature and virtual reality seem to live comfortably together.

Although the above mentioned writers and artist do great work and still inspire me, Gunnerkrigg Court makes me want to do something about it. Why? Writing this has made me understand why. It's because it gives me hope that there's still room for the old generation of the great storylines and adventure series that I grew up with. And that's something worth fighting for, right?

Busy, busy, busy

I'm loving having no time anymore. No, really. Well it's not so much no time, as complete panic that I have something that needs to be done or could be done each day. Generally, when I need to get something done it just doesn't happen, and when something doesn't need to be done, it get's done double quick. (see PROCRASTINATION)

So it seems I'm writing, filming, and writing for film at the moment, with something to do nearly every day. But I do love being busy. I seem to work better when I'm rushed off my feet than when I can toddle along at my own pace. This doesn't couple with deadlines, mind you. By rushed off my feet I mean in a physical sense - that there's things that NEED to be done there and then. It's probably the only thing I miss about working in retail (aside from learning that yes, customers are still as stupid as they were ten years ago) is having a busy day with a lot to do.

This is only a short entry, as I'm now off to do some "pre-production" on a project. Ooo, alliteration.

Procrastination...

...is quite a bastard. It's been a double edged sword for me. One hand, I try to get something done and it just doesn't seem to want to happen, so I get distracted with other things. On the other hand, I tend to get a lot of those other things done. So where the original work hasn't been done, I've got a few other things sorted. My idea now is if I do something pointless and unimportant but that I really don't want to do, all my important things will get done. Works in theory?

I'm rarely ever later for meetings or appointments. I sometimes forget I've got them outright, but when I do remember, I'm there on time or early. So why do I have so much trouble with deadlines? Maybe it's because there isn't someone there in front of you saying "You're late, you bastard!"

My most time consuming distractions lately have been:

Twitter - you'd think that only have 140 characters to write in would mean you don't spend that much time on there. Well, I have TwitterFox, a little icon in the bottom right that pops up every now and then when someone sends a "tweet". I have an annoying compulsion everytime I see the Twitter icon with a numeral next to it to see who's posted what. Most of the time it's pointless crap or references to something I have no bloody clue about, yet somehow it's all still quite fascinating.

Facebook - somewhat similar to Twitter, anytime I get a notification, I have to check it out, even though 90% of the time it's someone making an inane comment on someone's status I commented on, or some bollocks quiz such as "which finger am I?". Who is that bored that they'll sit there and do a quiz to find out what finger on their hand they are? How is this going to enrich their life? Personally I hope I'm in the middle finger. I shouldn't need to explain that one.

Disgaea DS - anyone who knows me knows I love my games. Anyone who knows me better knows I can kill hours on these things. There are certain timesink games, ones with extra content that can steal your soul. Disgaea is one of the worst for this, as apart from having the main game, you have ridiculous amounts of customisation, and plenty of goals to aim for. As a general hint to anyone who plays and understands RPGs, the level cap is usuall 100, right? In Disgaea, the level cap is 9999, and that's not counting the fact that you can reset your character to level 1 and gain some extra benefits.

24 Hours, 24 Lives - my new book has been somewhat time consuming. Organising has been the biggest time devourer so far. Everyone now and then I've taken the time out to sit and do little tables on Excel and scribble all sorts of notes down. Now, this is a beneficial form of procrastination, but rather ironic considering that without the course I'm doing now for which I'm meant to be finishing an assignment, I wouldn't even be writing that book.

Other odd procrastination distractions were eating, drinking, breathing etc, all of which were somewhere in there. So, tell me, what keeps you from doing the things you need to get done?

Introductions...

...have always been a pain for me to manage. I never know how much information is too much or too little. So I'll start with too little, you can figure out the rest as you go along.

I'm 20-something, and I'll stay 20-something until I reach 30-something. I'm starting my 2nd year of a Foundation Degree in Creative Industries Professional Writing, (try explaining that one to someone after your 6th straight double whiskey of the night) where I study literature classics, career prospects, and movie and psychology. It all ties in together and makes sense, believe me. Well I say it makes sense, if you can get your head around feminism and dystopian futures, the notion that your career could hinge on having a shit life or being dead, and the idea that the movie Alien(s) is really about male fear of childbirth. It is a fantastic course, and I have learnt and done a lot just in the first year.

I'm just getting my head around the settings and layout of this blog thing. It seems simple enough to figure out at a glance, but then so do women. Go figure. I seem to have settled nicely for what you see now, though it's bound to have the occasional change, as I like to keep busy with pointless endeavours.

As a writer, I know a few nice long words, and I like to try and find more of these nice long words. But sometimes we even forget the simplest of words or ideas. As is usual with me, I end up on one thing and go off onto something completely different, so while writing my "about me" section, and checking that "rambling" really did mean the pursuit of walking for fun (yes, I know, inconceivable isn't it) I found this on Wikipedia which amused me:

"In the United Kingdom, "walking" is the usual term for what in other countries is called hiking, which in the UK is a slightly old-fashioned word, with a flavour of heartiness and exercise."

Why this amused me is the wording. "is a slightly old fashioned word, with a flavour of heartiness and exercise." as if it's implying we consider it old-fashioned because it's full of "heartiness and exercise", and we all know that us British are a bunch of lazy and unenthusiastic sods.

I'll leave it at that for now, hope it's been an interesting first post. I shall return soon with more.