Update for April 8th

I am done with my comic, it will be printed monday and set up within the next few days.
Hoo boy hoo doggie.
I am so excited to be done with this and to focus on the thesis in the next coming week.
I have already begun plans to find work in ann arbor after I gradute, I was offered jobs in the video game archive and at the vault of midnight both of which will be
A.) Fun to work at
B.) A good revenue to use for furthering my own personal projects in the coming years.

This weeks research was

THE SHINING 

I feel bad that I didn't like it more. I felt that it was more visually stimulating than it was from a narrative standpoint.
I really did lure me into a dream like state and I enjoyed it purely on that level but other than that I found it a little too built up to satisfy.

Other than that

MY COMIC IS DONE AND READY TO PRINT
oh boy.

Update for Friday March 31st.

I am working non stop on my comic and my thesis. It is taking a lot of effort and I am barely holding it together.


In terms of research I have moved on from visual research to more thematic research as I finish my thesis.

My visual research this week was:

TRAIN TO BUSAN

A Korean horror film about a train where zombie begin to board and take over cars one by one. A father has to keep his daughter safe in an increasingly dangerous situation and it's uses of characters, environment and visual storytelling exploring themes of self sacrifice and unsolicited compassion.

My thematic research this week was:

CULTS AND STUFF

I have been pairing with the podcast Sect Ed to research the effects of suspicion, brainwashing and fear mongering in the real world. It will provide useful information when I write about the real world effects of corruptive elements. (The Heaven's Gate cult used the internet to draw in new members and used sci-fi to indoctrinate impressionable youths.)

Hopefully that can give me more information to work with.

Update for Mar 25th

Not a lot to report this week.
I am locked down in work mode, drawing 24/7
luckily that gives me a lot of time to watch horror movies.

I watched a pretty dang good indie horror movie

THE DEVIL'S CANDY

A horror movie about a family who moves into a new home, and the madman who seems to want to get back in.
An artist inspired by demonic voices, a troubled kid, rock and roll.
This movie was a great inspiration for the horror that I am working on now.

Since I have finished the into and set up of my story, I need to have good scary pay off and this movie is all about the pay off.
It was ok for the most part but the ending elevated it to incredible levels and made it all fit together.
I'd recommend it.

Update for Feb 18th

Only a little bit of research this time:

LATE PHASES:

Been awhile since I saw such a good "B-Horror Movie" like this.
It really reminded me of Gingersnaps, another great werewolf B-Movie.

Late Phases is about a blind Vietnam veteran who overhears his neighbor being eaten by a werewolf, the cops write the murder off as a wild animal attack but the Vet decides to take matters in his own hands. Epic montages of gathering silver bullets and making traps ensue.
It also has a great sense of sadness as the man knows he will probably die during the hunt juxtaposed with him settling into the creepy retirement community that he knows he won't be moving out again regardless of the werewolves.

I have been making comic pages with pretty consistently this last month. So I appreciated watching a movie that knew how to use it's visuals to tell the story. There was basically no soundtrack so the audio mixing was telling the story as much as the actors were.

Overall I am still stressed, suffering, drawing and watching too many horror movies.

Update for March 10

(Sorry for the delay I realized that this post didn't get uploaded)

So, while I have been working pretty consistently on my comic pages, I found some interesting research material and a concept I need to keep in mind while I work.

The concept of "Unending Anticipation" as a visual horror trope.

I found this while watching the 2016 horror movie, The Invitation.

It's a horror movie about a man meeting up with his ex-wife after 2 years. They are both still coping with the death of their son and have both remarried.
The dinner party that follows is unsettling and strange, leading to an evening of paranoia and intrique that leads to a sudden bloodbath.

But what made this movie interesting was the fact that 95% of the movie was just talking around a table, and only 5% of it was the gore and horror.
And yet, it was terrifying throughout.
Maybe it was the fact that it was advertized as a horror that I was in anticipation the whole time,
Maybe it was the unsettling music, or the Kubrickesque framing, or the reserved character acting, but with every passing moment it got scarier and scarier despite just being about some white people having wine around a coffee table. It was effective and impactful.

The reason this resonated with me was the fact that I am working with horror in a 2D still medium at the moment and visual horror can't be created through quick cuts or 2 frame flashes of the monster so the techniques included are vital to building my own suspense.

Update for Feb 24th

Spring break is here and I intend to come into the studio at least every other day this week to work on pages all day. Hopefully that will give me the boost of extra time I need to work on my thesis.

In the meantime the most relevant research I did was on the ARG 'Sara is Missing" in which you play a stranger investigating a lost phone that might belong to a kidnap victim, and you have to dig into her virus riddle system, read through all her text messages and look at all her photos for clues.

It really draws the audience into it's creepy and layered story. The gameplay accents the story beats by crafting the scares to what the player would be logically thinking once they are suspend their disbelief. A useful thing to keep in mind

Nightmind did a really good cross examination of the game and it's flaws.

And for a fuller experience, good old markiplier did a solid playthrough.

Other than that I am still trying as hard as I can and trying to schedule my other classes with my thesis meetings. I will keep trying.

Post for February 18th

Things are collapsing in on me but I am going to try my best.
I need to work more on my thesis and last time I wasn't able to find a time to meet with the Thesis consultant and I don't want to miss her this time around.

In other news I have been researching Night Mind (NM)
A youtube channel that focuses on what makes good horror, good suspense and just an all around good story.

(I think I even linked to his twin peaks video in a much earlier post during my initial research.)

His recent video on Resident Evil VI is a great resource for how to lead an audience's anticipation to a scare and how to 'train' the audience to expect things in certain situations.

As I am working on inking the first several pages of my comic, I really need to keep in mind how my 'setup' for the story 'teaches' the audience. You need to warm the viewer up to the world and how the tools of your fiction and really focus on what effect my decisions will lead to further down the line.
It's all about foundation. Strong foundation, maybe it won't topple later.
I hope.

Post for FEB 11th

Well, it is only 8 more weeks until my IP is due and I am going to be doing less and less research and more and more just, working until I physically can't anymore.

The last bit of inspiration comes from a genuine relic from the internet.

MARBLE HORNETS

We all know Slenderman, the internet meme gone awry. Slenderman started as a photoshop contest to make convincing  'haunted; photo, and this one (below) ended up winning, it eventually spiraled into
fan theories, fan art, spin offs, video games and even more spin offs until the creepy "Slenderman" became a meme of the bare bones basic "Spooky urban legends creature," a short hand cliche trope that is no longer considered original

But there was a golden period, right after the photoshop contest but RIGHT before the Slenderman mythos became a pop culture phenomenon.

MARBLE HORNETS

Marble Hornets was a short form web series depicting an old student film found on tapes after the original owner went missing. When his childhood friend re-watched the old tapes, he starts to notice a creature following them in the background, from a distance. A monster known as "The Operator" long before "Slenderman" existed, terrorized the cast and crew of marble hornets. His very presence drove people slowly insane to the point of obsession. The fact that the video series is grainy old footage with the monster hidden in single frames at a time, the audience has to become obsessed themselves, looking at every single image frame by frame to see the horror, just as the characters do. The hidden nature of the operator causes the characters to look for him behind every corner and constantly doubt their eyes, and the abstract low budget quality of the show itself makes the viewer take on the same roll as the characters. This is the exact blend of form and function that I hope to embody in my own work.
I hope.

Post for Feb 5th

Progress has been made with the storyboards

More than that I have the plot outline ready.

Outline: A nameless hacker and a cyber bully spends his days working as a nurse, and his nights harassing people online. He vents his hateful urges onto other people he doesn’t know as a way to live his normal life without guilt. He doesn’t think of himself as a bad person because he is kind and helpful to the people he meets in real life. He justifies it himself as a hobby, a way to test his skills as a hacker and a just a way to keep himself occupied. He is often paid to hack people's webcams and send the footage to his clients. He often hacks into strangers computers and mess with their files purely as a joke, he often sees it as nothing more than pranks. He frequents sites on the dark web but rarely ever buys anything.

Things change when another hacker tries to shut down his system, he is angered and retaliates by finding out where they live and buying dark-web drugs as them, then tipping the cops to their location. He reads a local news report days later about the other hacker getting arrested.

After this, he begins to feel guilt for the first time, and suppresses it as best he can. Things start to go wrong as his computer suffers some minor viruses and his house starts have electrical issues. He finds evidence of tampering with his wires outside his apartment and calls an electrician who never shows up. His computer refuses to start up, but then acts normal when he tries to leave for work. He calls in sick to spend the day tearing his computer apart to look for the problem. Small inconveniences keep him from finishing, he begins to suspect that someone from the dark-web has found him and has found some way to infect his computer and maybe even damage his electrical systems. He stops going online for a while and work begins to consume his time. Tired and lacking sleep, he decides to check his semi-functional computer only to find that he has apparently been logged on several times in the last week. Not only that but threatening messages appear hidden in the depths of his computer.

In anger he buys a brand new laptop to tries to get to the source of this problem, only finding that the same threatening messages are already on his brand new computer. He tries to call the tech support only to hear a strange voice on the other side of the line.

He smashes the new laptop and goes to the old computer, his face is talking to him, mocking him for all the horrible things he has done to other people and the hacker he sent to jail. In anger he takes a butcher knife and slashes at the computer, smashing it with his bear fists once the knife breaks. He hears someone outside his window and he goes to confront them, he finds someone with their back turned messing with his wires, he grabs the broken blade and tries to kill the stranger, only to find it is the electrician he called so long ago. The police arrive on the scene and drag him away, while he is screaming about how this was some conspiracy to drive him insane.

The last scene is of the salesman at the computer shop sending a letter that is later revived by a man in jail.

The story is suppose to be like a dark web creepy pasta mixed with a twilight zone-esque cautionary tale of self destruction.

I decided to remove any supernatural element to add to the paranoia and the realism.

It is a classic story about a misunderstanding and make the paranoia a real factor in the character's downward spiral.

Not much else to state. I am working hard and trying not to collapse or get sick when my progress is dependant on me working at full capacity each day. oh well

Post for Jan 29.

I unfortunately skipped last weeks blog update so I will make sure that this one covers all my bases.

I have run into an artistic roadblock and have been working hard to muscle through my artist block to produce work. My thumbnails are going to be turned into at least 4 inked pages by the end of the week and at least 1 digitally scanned page that I can consider "Done"

I also plan to post my finished script to this blog by next Friday for suggestions.

I have been struggling to get back to drawing regularly and hopefully this week is the start of an upswing rather than another downfall emotionally.

In terms of tangible progress, I now have a working title for my comic.
"One way Mirror" Which I hope is different enough from Black Mirror, one of my major inspirations. I honestly was not thinking about the show when I came up with the name but it is one of those names too similar to ignore the differences.
I like how it works thematically as the computer screen acts like a 2 way mirror nowadays. The dark screen acts a mirror to reflect the person looking at themselves, while the webcam acts like a one sided glass to hackers and people who could be watching you from halfway across the world.

RESEARCH:

By Jove I found a goldmine.

I watched 2 horror movies that really got my motor running in terms of inspiration.
First: Under the Shadow

A foreign horror movie set in Iran during the Iraq-Iran war. A mother has to protect her daughter while the war rages on outside and a dark spirit of revenge haunts those who have been lost inside the apartment. It was thrilling, visually compelling and had great use of motifs and lighting to forward the narrative of oppression and looming danger overhead.


The next one....
HARD CANDY
OOOOOOOOOOH Boy.
This movie was basically made for me and my project, This movie is... in essence what I want my final product to be.
Although it came out in 2005 it is still incredibly relevant to today's issues with anonymity and digital stalking.
The movie follows a young 14 year old girl who meets a 30 year old man she met in an online chatroom. He invites her to his house and offers her a drink... and yet, the movie takes a darker turn that one could possibly imagine.
A twisted tale of cat and mouse, revenge and darkly sexual mind games begins as the young girl actually manipulates and tortures the pedophile over the edge of insanity and into a chaotic tailspin that ends in a bloody climax.
It is EXACTLY what I want from a technology centric thriller about the dangers of the internet and how people can be use the internet to transform something safe or innocent into a place of dark violence.
I loved it, I hated it and I wanted more. I both strongly recommend NOT watching it and also watching it at the same time. It is VERY violent and mature even without a lot of blood or gore.

I feel very inspired and will make a lot of progress by the end of this month.
I feel excited are you excited?

First Update of 2017 (Jan 13th)

It's Friday the 13th so this post is appropriate.

I finally have a clear roadmap to finishing my IP project and I couldn't be more excited.

Taking to heart my mid-process critique and focusing on one story at a time.
The first one about the hacker specifically.
I decided to drop the supernatural elements (almost) and focus on making it a more traditional horror story that you might here whispered on forums of shared via chain email.
To tap into the darker "urban legend" motif.

I have a full script of the story and it is my goal to have 15+ thumbnail storyboards by next week ready to ink.
I am going for a much more grounded "creepypasta" style that might make it dig just that much deeper under the skin of my readers and I love it.
I am drawing more inspirations from the dramatic creepypastas readings like this one: (waring, graphic content)

They give me the chills and I think this is a great path to take when writing my "modern horror story" with more of Twilight Zone or Hitchcock style to the tragedy rather than just a spooky ghost story.

I am super excited and will have actual work to post by next update.
Let's do this thing.