The Comic Book Creator’s Struggle

The Comic Book Creator’s Struggle

(The Road Less Taken)
[Written for the magazine Mir Fantastiki, copied here with permission]

Comic Page for Liberty: Deception.
Art by Raymund Bermudez & Joana Lafuente

Anyone thinking about creating a comic book should know that it is a difficult road. Many abandon the path after the first few paces, petrified after catching only a glimpse of what lies ahead. You will almost certainly not make money. You will almost certainly spend far too much of your own time and money. At every possible turn of the creation process you will battle against a hoard of invisible pitfalls, trials, and psychological struggles that will make Frodo’s adventures in the Lord of the Rings look like a holiday picnic. You will encounter problems you did not think could even exist! You will lose days, months, and probably years off your life (if you take yourself too seriously), like in the machine from the Princess Bride, learning about distribution chains, ISBN numbers,  grammar, file formats, fonts, and the differences between RGB vs CMYK. You will gain experience, learn to multi-class, become a jack of all trades, or you will undoubtedly give up.

Even Vulcans have bad days...

In the miraculous event that you are able to complete your first book, you will experience firsthand what H.P. Lovecraft meant when he spoke of depression, as you try to find individuals who might simply read your book. You will embrace rejection time and time again with a smile. You will likely spy on your critics, become close with the harsh criticisms that you’ll receive, and possibly grow from them. You must suppress your emotions using the ancient Vulcan rituals as the potential readers insist that five dollars US is too much to pay for your book, the sum of years of your life. However, above all else you must remember that you are only in this situation because you truly care about what you are creating.

Frodo knows a thing or two about struggles

The life of a comic book creator is one of passion and struggles. You are passionate about your story, but it takes time to create. The little victories each week will one day lead to a moment of personal triumph where you’ve fought the world, fought nature, and fought against your very psyche and won! No one is obligated to like your work, or even give it glance, and as a project of passion you have to be accepting of this and not take personal offense. There are many many mistakes to make as a comic book creator. I know because I’ve made most of them over the last decade. The creation of a comic book is a very slow and time consuming process and it is always important to remember that you should not expect fame, success, or money. Create something because you find it enjoyable.

Stabbity Bunny: A delightful
independent comic book series!

I am an American comic book writer/creator who has attended over 50 fan conventions, expos, and festivals. I was always intimidated by the amount of information needed to really understand the plots of the X-Men, The Green Lantern, or many other mainstream comic books, and as a result I’ve always been drawn to independent comics. I’ve supported and read dozens of books ranging from extremely low quality (in both art and story), to the most captivating of adventures and I found that I’m personally drawn to dynamic interior artwork, pretty cover art, and stories that seem genuinely interesting. I have a habit of taking notes on what I like about the things I read, and when you switch hats and suddenly become a “comic book creator” the first thing many people forget is to focus on creating something that they themselves would appreciate.

A panel from my first comic book

My first venture into comics sought to explain a comic book world I’d created in 18 pages or less. However, it didn’t really have that much of a story, and I honestly didn’t put too much effort into truly developing the world. The art was created by the first artist I bumped into, and the cover was as dull as an 18th century legal document. It took me almost a year to realize that I wouldn’t be selling the other 5000 copies I’d printed, and it took a few more years to realize that perhaps I’d created the very type of exposition-heavy comic that I myself didn’t enjoy.

The same character, now in my newest book.
Illustrated by Casey Bailey!

The lesson to be learned in this is the most important reminder a comic book creator, or a creative mind in any other field, can have: To create what you enjoy and to enjoy what you create. Otherwise you might as well be getting paid for your time.

Creative Update: February 2014

The last few months have been busy at best and I've accomplished much. While I have a few Video Game reviews I could post this week, with the start of the new year a quasi self-reflective post on things I'm working on seems healthy.

Photo by Tiffany Mueller

Random Encounter has evolved so much in the last two months that it's barely recognizable to me as being the same individuals or even an offshoot of the band I started so many years ago. I'm extremely proud of my bandmates as Rook has taken to professional bass lessons (far surpassing any skill I once may have had on the instrument), Kit got a huge promotion at work (I'm really proud of him) and has significantly increased in his recording abilities, Konami has really picked up a lot of the "band leadership/motivator" role & writes/arranges with me, and Moose is rapidly improving as a drummer, far surpassing the physical limitations of what he once thought was possible. We've become extremely organized... for us... We have some extreme goals for 2014 we intend to accomplish which I can't really share for awhile but we have some really exciting upcoming shows across the state, and at the shows we've played so far we've been very in-sync with one another to the point where I feel extremely comfortable in our performances... Something I never feel as a solo performer, and don't feel performing with other musicians. Sure everyone in the band (but me) is catching a variation of the MAG-flu, but all in all this will be a great year for Random Encounter, though I don't expect we'll have anything to show the public for our efforts for quite some time beyond live shows.

Careless Juja is also chugging along nicely. We're well into production of the Layton album and while many would find 4 hour recording sessions stressful, I really enjoy them in this creative outlet. Where Random Encounter is something that HAS to sound professional, I am not under the same self-imposed stress with CJ and can experiment as much or as little as I want to. To explain, I'm not particularly concerned if I don't become popular here so the only person I have to really please is myself (and Juja). My goal with CJ is to record music I want to hear, the way I want to hear it and I get that other people might not be interested, which allows me to try new things which I ultimately allow me to really grow as a recording musician. Most of the tricks I used for LMTYAS were things I discovered on accident while recording stuff for CJ. As CJ, when it stops being fun I stop recording, and when I run out of ideas I do something else. Juja's much the same way, we like the same things for the most part, and though we have a specific goal in mind that would seem taxing, recording what's left of 34 tracks in three weeks, I'm glad that we'll soon have a quality product of our musical friendship that we can share with the world.

Early Character Concept

The Liberty comic book series has seen its greatest developmental growth over the last two months than it's seen in the six months prior. There have been a lot of changes, so I'll start from the beginning... The comic book story takes place hundreds of years after the planet "Atrius" was colonized. Adam (the co-creator) and I sort of set an arbitrary marker for the "present" as being "roughly 600 or 800 years", what we thought was enough time passing to justify the social changes that would be required to make our story believable, but we didn't really have any idea or framework for the events that took place between the "present" (year 713) and the initial colonization of the planet. To fix this, and also to clearly compile a list of all government organizations that would be required to make the totalitarian Inner City function (with their respective job functions, key personnel, and jurisdictions) I put together a book called A Citizen's Guide to Atrius. The intent of the book was to paint an outline to the city's events and a (now very colorful) history over the course of 50 pages while giving bios for key figured, places of interest and the like, without giving so much detail as to make writing future books or comics about those events seem excessive. It's sort of like how I read the Wikipedia entry for the Crucible and was still captivated when watching it performed at a local theater, being genuinely surprised with the outcome of the trial despite knowing how it was supposed to end. The Citizen's Guide is effectively written (taking up most of my December), being edited by someone with a working knowledge of the Chicago NB format. The illustrations for the book should be done sometime in March and if there's enough interest we might do a limited self-publishing run, but I'm skeptical anyone will want a background book to a story that hasn't been published.

Recent Character Concept by Adam

With the sudden existence of a detailed history we had a make a large number of revisions to the comic book script to ensure that continuity existed between the history book and the script itself. As we've not published anything we're thankfully free to make revisions unlike authors like Tolkien (who i'm told desperately wanted to go back and rewrite the Hobbit), or Lucas (who everyone was angry at for revising the cannon of the expanded universe) which took the bulk of my January to accomplish. While I was working on this Adam developed a line of "standard issue" firearms for the Inner City, departmental color schemes, and a general color scheme for the comic, settling on an uncommon color scheme we think will be most visible on a comic book store shelf. We also added a dedicated cover artist for the entire series to our creative team, which we're really happy about. In the short-term we are also working with concept artists to create a unique sense of fashion in the world, a designer to create logos for each governmental division/department, and an archaeological illustrator (my girlfriend) to create a legit archaeological illustration of one of the city's key buildings, as well as an awesome 3d rendering. We're also working with someone who designs advertisements and logos as their full-time job to create a title for the series. I'm finding each of these individual processes to be fascinating, and working with professionals in each of their respective fields has been quite an experience. I hope to share some aspects of the creative process in the coming months but for now it's a bit too early to really get into.

On a final comical note, we had a rough revelation last week whereby we concluded that the amazing back-story we'd written for one of the main characters (which is periodically referenced throughout the script) could have never taken place within the confines of our world's history. Instead of rewriting what he have, we sadly concluded that it's all true... in that character's head and that s/he's simply delusional.

Creative: Personal Update

A lot has happened over the past few weeks that's kept me from writing as much as I'd have liked and I found myself without a topic this week that I can post about, so it's time for a personal update...

Just an FYI: I'm out of the country for a week, starting today, so I'll probably miss a post due to lack of internet.

I've been confirmed for Nerdapalooza as the band Random Encounter. We also hit our Kickstarter goal, we finished editing the songs for the new album, reviewed changes to the mix, sent the songs off to mastering, did a photo shoot for the album "art", formatted all the text/credits, set up album reviews/interviews, and arranged the set list for the album release show of Let Me Tell You a Story. We should be advertising the show a lot more (Free Show: Sept 21st, The Social in Orlando FL) next week, and I've already spent hours practicing in preparation for it. My performance accordion (Titan) is even in the shop for a tune up while I head out of town for the week. I'll be with the band every weekend through the end of October for a show or practice and I'll probably touch up the paint because we have a lot of big shows ahead of us.

Art by the amazing Jaime Kittens

I've been confirmed for Nerdapalooza as the band Careless Juja and put together a 9 piece live band for Careless Juja from, well... scratch. Juja and I are also finalizing the arrangement of our set list for that, and arranging music for 9 instruments is really much more tough than I'd envisioned. I spent 6 hours arranging less than 2 minutes of music and it was a lot of fun, despite the difficulty spike of arranging for 9 instruments possibly exceeding my abilities. All thoughts of the next Careless Juja album are at a dead stop until after I'm comfortable performing all the songs for our first and only show. Oh, we also had a really cool new logo/image designed by Jaime Torraco in honor of this get together!

My other half-dozen recording projects are also on a complete hold due to a lack of availability on my end, and on the ends of the people I'd like to collaborate with. It's just a busy season it seems, which is sort of sad because I have more artistic resources than I have completed music at present, though I know exactly what work I need to accomplish... I just need more time.

The comic has reached Issue 12 (of 17), page 20 (of 26) of the storyboard stage this week, and thanks to a random idea I had, we've undergone a few changes that should speed up our production process drastically once we get to sketching/inking. We also solidified a sketch style to use once we're past story boarding, and received a number of professional reviews. The feedback here has been informative and extremely helpful.

Picture from the local Pirate Festival

In the weekly Dungeons and Dragons (Pathfinder) game I'm running, the party is nearing the part of the game I'd equate to the 3rd disc of Final Fantasy VII (the side quest disc). Having escaped the lands of eternal darkness with a three legged war dog (i'm not sure where the dog came from), they're about to complete a story arc and encounter some epic things. Last week they narrowly escaped a Caspian water trap, a room full of mimics, a dozen-strong phalanx of hobgoblins, and a single city guardsman with a skewed sense of justice who rolled nothing but critically successful dice rolls. I'm thinking of writing a post about their misadventures because I've found them vastly amusing, but am not sure if it's something that would interest you guys.

I can officially use my right hand at 100% efficiency again (after a few years of limited use). I only just recognized this fact a few weeks ago while playing with my little nephew, and while it caught me completely off guard it's something I will never take for granted again. On the topic of the injury (the product of a foolish bout), I've been reading a lot of HEMA articles, longingly, and after following the life/tumblr of one particularly inspirational sword fighter I finally feel driven to return to fighting. Still in fear that my right hand is prone to being injured easily, I'm going to start fighting as a left-handed swordsman. This is contrary to everything I've learned and will set me back because I need to unlearn a lot of muscle memory I "know." However, the first step is to get into fair physical shape, so I've worked my way up to 300 sit ups a night. After I start introducing push ups and pull ups into the mix for a month I'll take a few weeks to re-master footwork, then I'm going to start training with a sword again.

I got to Floor 30 in Torchlight, Mission 7 in Fire Emblem: Awakening, and the 5th stage of Banjo Kazooie (Freezeeasy Peak). I want to start Thief 2 or continue through Dishonored, or Mass Effect, but there's not enough time to concurrently play more than 3 games and my friends keep telling me to finish Torchlight so we can co-op Torchlight 2.

As for work, I'll be out of the county for a week... So that will probably be the subject of next week's post. I won't have any internet access I'm told, because I'll be deep in the forests of Central America.

Comic/Creative: A Completed Script

Note: I write these a few weeks in advance. Know that I've been doing almost nothing but work on the Random Encounter album since this post was written...

Exhaustion

This week I've found myself spending more time working on the comic book than I normally do so it seemed like the right topic. My functions as the developer, writer, editor, producer, art director, marketing, and general continuity guy give me anywhere between five to twenty-five hours of things to do on any given week but the last few days have been exceptionally taxing because I just sat down and pushed through the rest of a complete adaptation of the script from light 90 page film script to detailed 150 page comic book script! It's been a two year journey and I'm extremely proud to finally be done.

Character Evolution of "Cade" from 2006 to 2013

As the writer I've generally looked at the same script I've been working on since 2007 (drawing takes time), made revisions, and revised those revisions a few more times. The main cause for rewrites have been upgrades in technology, back story, location, and plot revisions given to me by the artist & co-developer, who's really helped expand the world over the last two years. How will the characters in the story interact now that they're armed differently? Now that they've been hurt in the prior scene? Now that we've changed direction and killed off (or alternatively, let live) a character from a previous scene? How about now that every building is hex-shaped? A lot of things got changed over the grand transition from inception to script but it's been fun work. Over the last year we also picked up two interactive supporters, basically a kind of "pick your own ending" book (via a series of emails) where our donors control a character in the comic book series. They actually designed the characters with us and dictated what actions they'd take at significant crossroads. It's been pretty fun.

Interactive Supporter

Given the sheer volume of changes, writing and editing have taken up far more time than it should...

Fortunately we've had the benefit (or curse) of being able to revise the entire story because nothing's been released yet, so when a problematic plot point needs to change, like us not wanting to address a side character's medical condition early on in the series because "it takes too much attention away from the main story" I suddenly have a large task ahead. First I need to cut the dialogue from the big reveal scene while simultaneously marking the existing frames that have already been drawn for it. I need to find new content to fill the gap in the story so the comic remains at an even number of pages divisible by 4. The magic number is "4" because comics are basically large pieces of paper that are folded in half, with printed material on both sides. Then I have to sift through the entire script (for the whole series) and remove any references to the conversation. After that I also need to look both in the script and in the pages of the comic (that were already drawn) for required shifts in body language, interaction, and dialogue. Boring stuff to be sure but after the entire script has been read from start to (almost) finish again to make sure that it's still coherent I've been going back to finish the ever-changing final 40 pages.

"M-Guard"... Finally given the name Jax

The story loosely resembles a revolution led by a colorful and dangerous Dirty Dozen style cast. It became readily apparent by the time I'd reached the last quarter of the story from the 2007 script the original ending would be impossible to recreate because we killed off the key character it relied on. Oops... Far from an arbitrary choice (I strongly believe combat deserves a certain gravity) half of the characters I'd envisioned as being alive just didn't make it to the final leg of the journey. It was surprisingly emotional writing the final moments of characters that have been with me for longer than most real-life friends and I found myself questioning if I'd done a decent job of showing who they were within the confines of the script. I know how they'd act in a given scenario, I just questioned if I'd created the optimal scenarios to portray them in. We've also introduced a number of characters to the series that didn't exist at the start of 2012. Some of these characters also died but others wound up surviving, changing the delicate social dynamics of the group, and unexpectedly becoming fairly pivotal. We even had to name them after writing them into over 20 pages. I felt less and less like I was making up lines for characters and more like I was shifting the circumstances through which real people would interact. I felt like a D20 storyteller.

Storyboard "Thumb"

So having put in close to 40 hours over the week I finally made the much needed push to finish the script. Towards delirium on the final night I came across what amounted to a typo in a set of notes outlining the ending that seemed to make sense in my exhausted state. The typo was basically a placeholder idea I'd written in to fill the gaps of the story left by dead characters. It wasn't intended to be real. It wasn't intended to make sense. It was just what I thought would be running through the mind of one of the characters and how he'd justify his actions. However, instead of seeing it as an inner thought I mistook it for a key plot point (because of a formatting error) and ran with it. Somehow, as if by magic, an ending I hadn't envisioned came from it and all the problems and loose ends I wasn't sure about were magically fixed by my sleep-deprived mistake. I had Adam double-check my work the next morning and he verified that it wasn't just the sleep-deprivation, but that the story now had a solid ending better than the ones we were planning. Two complete revisions of the script later I'm sending it off to a few people for their professional feedback. With any luck we're down to minor revisions from here on out so I can put down the metaphorical writing pen for awhile.

Music/Creative: Challenges with making Pixel Glass

Original Album Cover Concept

This is the part three of my personal growth of as a recording musician, aka a cautionary tale of things to think about before going to a studio...

Where we last left the story, Random Encounter had just released Unavenged and was planning a US East Coast tour for the summer of 2011. Somewhere in the planning process it became really apparent that our guitarist Konami wouldn't be able to join us for most of the tour, so on a whim I'd invited my friend Juja (a guy I'd met on youtube, had never seen a picture of, and had never spoken to outside of emails) to join us. Let's back-track a bit... Juja and I had spent roughly 11 months working on the Sonic Suite by emailing each other back and fourth through yahoo mail. It was only a month after Unavenged was released that we thought to collaborate on a second song, just for fun. We talked it over and decided that we wanted to do a cover of Phantom Temple from FF VII. After chatting with my bandmates (Random Encounter) it was concluded that they were all too busy to take part... That or I just had a lot of time on my hands... Either way Juja and I put together an arrangement in midi and completed a version of the song, blended it with two other songs, made a silly video, and posted it here on youtube in under a month. Fast forward to the aforementioned invitation to go on tour.

This Became Disc Art

Juja was happy to accept our invitation to go on tour (5 weeks before the tour). I randomly suggested that we make a short album together that we could sell to help cover his airfare from Utah to Florida (and back), having absolutely no idea what that would entail. I suppose I was just looking for an excuse to use my newly acquired editing/mixing/recording talents so it seemed like a really great idea at the time. He thought it was a good enough idea and because Juja didn't care much about the visual aesthetic of the album, I put together the visual theme and contacted an artist I'd known since childhood to work on the art while stuck on an airplane somewhere. The artist had 4 weeks to design "stained glass style art" of various scenes I had in mind, which seemed like more than enough time for someone who was working part time and not involved in any other serious activities. Juja and I worked on a list of songs we thought it would be cool to include, largely working off pieces he'd already done for his Youtube account. With minimal additions and some light remixing, nine tracks of the album were completed in a weekend but we had some bigger goals in mind... Juja had done an Acoustic Version of Zelda 2 which was how I'd found him in the first place that we'd wanted to re-record with a full band feel. In addition, Juja wanted real drums on a couple of other tracks so I asked my friend Adam "One" if he could help us out. For reference, Moose and the rest of Random Encounter were fairly busy and lived 3 hours away (43 hours away from Juja) so collaboration with them was not really feasible. Adam, recently employed by the same publishing company I worked at, had fairly available hours and drove down to my apartment to record his parts. It was quite an experience.

Recording Drums Low Tech

When recording drums on your own it's important to have multiple microphones, multiple inputs on interface, and software capable of recording multiple inputs at a time. I lacked two of these things... So it with 3 microphones EQ'd through a portable mixing board, outputted to a single channel, Adam and I recorded drums for the entire album (except for Dancing Mad, which had been recorded during the Self Titled album drum sessions). While recording Castlevania we encountered some other difficulties because the neighbors (who regularly blast expletive-filled rap music at all hours of the day and night) were upset that we saw fit to record drums on a Saturday afternoon (a time they regularly blast their music) and complained that their baby was asleep. So the last track in the rock drum recording session was quickly switched to a light jazz-style recording session in an effort to not wake their baby. Three takes through Castlevania later it was complete and the neighbors stopped banging on my door. Before the drums were EQ'd you could actually hear them banging on the door and yelling at certain parts... Which I'd have cared about if they didn't blast their music at 2am the previous night despite my very friendly requests for them not to.

Temple of the Ancients Sunrise Surprise!
Can You Find The Hidden Snail?

The rest of Zelda 2 was recorded in one very full day and mixed the same night by my longtime friend Roman in NYC. It's worth noting that we submitted the "pre-dinner mix" of the song (4:30pm) to the Dwelling of Duels contest and somehow robbed better musicians of 4th place before we passed out. I woke up around 2am and had a yahoo messenger chat/feedback/edit/mix session with Juja and Roman until the song was finally concluded at about 4am. Even after Zelda 2 was compete there was still no time to rest. I'd wanted to record a rendition of Dancing Mad and that would take the rest of the work-week. Not much weirdness there because it happens to be my favorite song and one I've been practicing since I first picked up an accordion. The only thing worth mentioning is that I wrote some lyrics for the song and had them translated to Latin by a friend.

Long Nights of Recording...

Initially we included 'The Entire Soundtrack to Castlevania' in our list of songs to record as a joke but at this point, a mere 5 days before the album had to be complete, it suddenly becoming a very real possibility. It took me the week before to arrange the medley and it took Adam 3 full takes to finish the drum parts (that's really bad for Adam). It took Juja and myself roughly 3 nonstop days of recording (stopping for mere hours of sleep) to record, and it took Roman 2 solid days to mix/master. During this time I had also come to realize that my artist friend was in fact not going to finish the art...

This Was Submitted the Night Before the Deadline

About 1 day before the drop-dead due date for the art, my friend informed me that he wasn't able to complete it, but 'it was okay' because I didn't have to pay him. After a genuine apology from him I was admittedly still upset at a situation I should have seen coming, given his reservation to share his work in progress stuff with me. I asked my friend to give me his sketches, and at 7pm on the eve of the project's due date I called Adam to see if he'd be willing to undertake an insane art project due the next morning. Remarkably he accepted and saved the project. His only question was "What's the name of the album?" because Juja and I hadn't actually come up with a name, and it wasn't until about 5 minutes before that Juja came up with "Pixel Glass by Careless Juja", which we went with. I don't think Juja was actually aware that we went with that title until the finished CD's arrived but it was the best title we had (barring "Vladimir Vengrov versus the Giant Killer Snails from Outer Space by Adam The Careless Horse"). Due to time limitations involved with the artistic deadline, Adam swapped out our original cover sketch (A slightly skewed rendition of the Master Sword) with the picture of Simon Belmont fighting Dracula, put the original sketches through various color filters, and created the CD backing art, the album back art, the credits, and the interior panel art from scratch, and formatted it before the sun rose the next morning.

This Was Originally the Disc Art

With all of our work done and an album recorded in under a month, I uploaded the disc image (made for me by my buddy boR) to the CD production company's website, and a mere week later, just in time for Nerdapalooza, the box of new albums arrived... with a gaping flaw. The data on the discs was not burned correctly so instead of being a music CD, each disc was entirely useless in a CD player because it only burnt copies of the album... Awesome. So a few phone calls and 72 hours later, we had replacement discs overnighted to us (which we were billed-in-full for, despite the company admitting to their mistake) and the album was successfully released, seemly defiant against all odds! I only wish I were embellishing this story but sometimes the truth is story enough.

Death: Who I'd Soon See if I Didn't Sleep

Quick aside: I'd mentioned that I'd never actually met Juja until the day before the tour and while I'm telling my readership this in confidence, my band was entirely unaware that I'd never met him! During the last practice before tour they casually joked that he was probably an ugly, balding, smelly man of 45+ years of age, and as they made these jokes I suddenly began to fear the worst. I was pretty sure Juja once mentioned he was somewhere in his 20's but I couldn't remember... He also didn't have any visual representations of himself online except a badly MS-Paint drawn Kirby profile picture, or various images of horses so when I stood at the airport holding a sign that read "Mr. Gary Horses" I suddenly began to panic. Juja had mentioned that he was going to wear a purple dress shirt like some character from some show I'd never seen before and the man approaching me, holding a guitar case and wearing a purple shirt, was a very flamboyant man in his late 50's. Luckily he walked by me and wasn't Juja. Next a large (for political correctness let's call him fat) man in a purple shirt brushed by, followed almost immediately by a jacked body-builder type with the purple shirt, a guitar-case over one shoulder, and a woman on his other arm. They walked by as I panicked, thinking of reasons why Juja might have brought his girlfriend and where she would fit in the RV. Lastly, a balding man in his late 30's with a purple shirt approached with an awkward smile and stopped directly in front of me. He looked at my sign, looked right at me, laughed in my face, continued to stand there, and walked away. I was a bit confused but incredibly relieved it wasn't him. True to his word, the very last person off the airplane was Juja, a regular looking guy about the same age and build as myself with a sense of humor and prominent glasses. It was one of those moments of triumphant victory that you never tell your friends about or share with anyone.

Photo of Juja from Tour

In short, we became better friends in the confines of an RV with no air conditioning and went on an East Coast tour of the US as Random Encounter. About two years after the initial release, we're proudly re-releasing Pixel Glass with a set of completely re-recorded drums for the Castlevania track! Because we dislike the idea of forcing our fanbase to pay for things twice, if you already happen to own the album send me an email/message and I'll send you the new tracks for free. It's totally worth it. Oh, and if you like the music you should also like Careless Juja on facebook...

Tabletop: My Introduction to Infinity

Infinity Miniatures Painted by Chris Thompson

We interrupt the regularly scheduled blog entry to talk about a miniatures game I tried out this week: Infinity.

Let's start with the basics... From all the discussions I had beforehand (admittedly I was only half-listening because I was busy jumping Bears in Tokyo Jungle) I knew that it was a skirmish (under 20 miniatures for a full game) sci-fi themed miniatures game that used a lot of terrain, where the miniatures have excessive fan service at times, and that used some kind of D20 system. So, with this limited knowledge I was thrust into the role of the leader of a 6 man squad of robot-people called Aleph, to fight against the Space Templars (played by Stomphoof, also new to the game) in a practice game being moderated by a few guys who knew the rules. Our moderators set up the terrain, made practice lists for us, and slowly walked us through the rules as we encountered them...

The first thing I did was look at my forces chart:

I had over 3 special rules per character (Frenzy, 360 degree visors, Cube 2.0, etc), over 3 weapons per character, and more actions at my disposal than I understood. This is the miniatures game system I've been waiting for it seems. For simplicity I nicknamed each character by their distinctive weapon or ability:

Leader guy with a Mark 3 rifle (shoots 3 round burst).

Hacker chick.

Sniper chick.

Rocket dude (who can shoot 2 rockets per turn)

Flashlight chick (who has a gun that blinds people in addition to a submachine gun and a pistol).

Small arms dude.

All of my characters had fairly similar statistics in the double digits and it quickly became apparent that you want to roll under your statistic on a D20 in order to succeed at what you're doing. There are also D&D style modifiers making the game feel more like an engagement of well established D&D characters than a fight between useless minions.

Stomphoof  (on the left) and The Game Board

Before the game started it was explained that our objective was to hold a strategic objective (an outhouse) in the middle of the table and that we had 3 turns to do that in. Shomphoof and I shrugged and got started by rolling to see who got the first turn and who deployed first. I won the roll and got the first turn. Stomphoof got to pick the table side and forced me to deploy first (an advantage because he can see where my forces are before deploying his guys). With a 12'' deployment zone on my boarder of the square table, I set up my guys in cover, and my sniper on top of a tall gun emplacement/missile silo that had a clear view to the objective. I was told that this game uses a model's line of sight (meaning that if the model can physically see another model, the two can both shoot at each other) and that immediately made me happy to hear. Stomphoof had a "linked" unit, which moved as one and shot as one but all of my models were entirely independent. I watched as he deployed his guys behind cover (you have to be "touching" cover to get the benefit of cover) in his deployment zone.

Turn 1. I got a number of Orders equal to the number of models I had alive +1... So 7 orders. Each order can be used to either "Move/Move", "Move/shoot", "Shoot", or on some other actions (like climbing buildings) that we didn't get into too much. The first thing I did was move my Leader guy into line of sight with the enemy on the complete other side of the map. He got an immediate "reaction" to this and decided to shoot at me... Reactions are pretty cool and make it so if you run past an enemy's line of sight, they can either "dodge, shoot, or ignore" you, before you declare your second action. If you move out of cover at any point during the first move you don't get the benefit of cover as they shoot at you. Solid enough rules that I agree with. Now I had to start thinking tactically. So, after moving from cover to cover I shot at the guy who decided to take a "reaction shot" at me. His shots missed, and 1 of mine hit (pictured below). You roll based on your statistics, reduced by range, and special abilities (my guy has an optical disruptor, giving people a -6 to shoot at him and cover, which is an additional -3 to hit). I rolled a 4, which was well under what I needed, so I hit him while he missed me. Then he got an armor save (you roll OVER your armor value, which is modified by the gun's Armor Piercing value) and by fluke his armor deflected the shot. After being hit and not being wounded, he took a Willpower test (for being shot and surviving) and failed, forcing him to hide behind cover. I was feeling pretty good about this, so I moved rocket dude into the line of sight of another bad guy and shot at him with my rocket launcher (which shoots 2 rockets at a time!!). I rolled and got one hit, but Stomphoof's reaction was to shoot at my Rocket dude. Because his guy succeeded in hitting me, and rolled higher than my guy (who also hit his target) Stomphoof's rocket guy hit and cancelled out my shots. My Rocket dude failed his armor roll and was knocked out (0 wounds = unconscious, -1 = dead), but because we lacked medics this effectively meant he was dead. Upset at this I declared that my sniper would shoot at Stomp's rocket guy in revenge. His reaction was to shoot back at my sniper with his last rocket. The exact same situation played out and his rocket guy killed my sniper chick.

By this point I was seeking revenge because this guy effectively no-scope blind-fire murdered 1/3rd of my kill team BEFORE IT WAS EVEN HIS TURN. It reminded me of X-com: Enemy Unknown in a good way. The rest of my turn was spent moving my Leader guy forward and (successfully) shooting Stomp's rocked guy to death while evading incoming fire. In this game you can spend multiple Orders on the same unit each turn (no cap), which is justified thanks to the whole reaction phase of the game. (Every time you shoot at someone, they can shoot back).

My First Roll of the Game

Despite a few people in the shop muttering about how difficult the rules to Infinity were, Stomphoof and I picked up in the gist of the game in under 20 minutes and found them infinitely (no pun intended) more simple than Warhammer, 40k, or any variations therein. True line of sight (with both models being able to shoot each other if one model can see the other), their approximate range modifiers, and the low model count make the game (once you understand the basics) go by fairly quickly without much room for rules disputes and it's already my favorite miniatures game this side of "Warhammer: Path to Glory." 

Stomphoof's turn was one of tactical movement. We learned how to interact with terrain (physical checks where you roll under your relevant statistic after modifiers are calculated based on the terrain) as he jumped through windows, into a half-pipe sewer system that led to the objective, and safely hid underneath a bridge without getting a single successful reaction shot from my side. His models were mostly close combat orientated so it made sense that his goal was to run towards the objective without being seen.

True Line of Sight

On my second turn, with significantly less actions this time around, I climbed a building (at the wrong part of the building admittedly, exposing myself to lots of unwanted but unsuccessful reactive gunfire in my direction) and shot at the guy under the bridge from a vantage point. In short, he returned fire, killed Flashlight chick, and was killed by Leader guy. I was told that his Leader had died (which normally causes all sorts of panic) but this his forces were religious fanatics and didn't care. My Leader guy took a bullet to the face and also didn't care because he's a robot and never falls unconscious, despite dropping to 0hp. I moved the rest of my forces into position to take the objective and ended my turn with everyone in cover. Stomphoof's second turn allowed his linked squad to see my Leader guy and shoot at him while they were jumping through a broken window. Despite my best efforts, Leader Dude was shot to death and I pondered why I hadn't used the visibility blocking smoke grenades earlier. It was at this moment that we learned about the rule that if a player drops to 2 models or less, they immediately run away/forfeit.

Game over and I still felt really good about things. It's a smooth game where your turn never really seems to end (because of the reaction phase) and I felt like I fought an evenly matched battle. I was already itching for a more tactically played rematch the moment we shook hands but time constraints prevented this from happening.

Now, a few days later, I'm in the process of figuring out which army I want to play... I'm including my thoughts here and should/when I get to building/assembling models I'll also share that in future posts.

The Factions:

Pan Oceania: They're the ultra-prosperous super-nation. Tech-heavy but still very human, the models seem like a crusader army mix of man and machine in an art style that doesn't appeal to me. They seem like a tough opponent though. I think this is what Stomphoof played last game.

Yu Jing: They are regularly described as a mix of ninjas, samurai, and transformers, which doesn't interest me much. The models look neat, very Cyborg Ninja, which isn't my thing despite being awesome.

Ariadna: They are modern tech highlanders, were-wolves, French, Russians, and Americans in a sci-fi world. While that makes them sort of redneck (using early 2000's technology in the year 2150) it's in the running for the faction of choice. I never really understood the kilt thing, and am not really all that into werewolves (being in a band that specializes in hunting them), but a Russian-American-French army seem kind of neat.

Haqqislam: Harmony seeking Islamists aren't normally my style but it looks like a very hit n' run army, which greatly interests me. This would be a sniper-town army.

Nomads: Bandits, traders, and ex-cons who've banded together. This initially was my choice until I saw the models and realized that they're basically an anime faction. While some of the models look absolutely awesome the fact that their forces include a cat girl automatically excluded them from being a viable faction in my eyes.

Combined Army: A super faction of alien races. Stomphoof called it the "Monkey Man and Bug Army" and I can't really disagree with his assessment. While Stomphoof said he'd pick this faction and I agree that the models look awesome, bugs and monkey men are not my thing.

Aleph: An AI faction filled with cyborgs, Tron-bikes, and references to Greek mythology. It reminds me a lot of System Shock for some reason and I'm interested in them for that alone. I'd probably make a robot army led by a SHODAN look alike.

Tohaa: Bio-tech aliens that strongly remind me of the Council Races from Mass Effect. This faction strongly interests me for aesthetic purposes, and the fact that bio-warfare means extra damage with each hit. The downside is that they only seem to have 9 different models available at present. I'm told that they're the newest faction in the game, which would help explain this, and i'm not above converting models if the rules for the army aren't horrible.
Mercenaries: Corporate warriors and a large slew of awesome models. Sadly they seem banned in most games that my friends take part in or I'd likely pick them.

I'm really leaning towards Tohaa, Aleph, Ariadna, or Haqqislam but am at a bit of a split decision.

While i'm in the process of picking which faction I'm going to play I welcome any comments suggestions and thoughts you might have on the topic.

Music/Creative: A Recording Guide: The Making of Unavenged

"Live For Revenge!" (photo by Tiffany Mueller)

This is kind of a continuation from the 'Making of Self Titled'... Aka: My personal growth as a recording musician, or a cautionary tale of things to think about before going to a studio... Aka: The ghost of Credit Cards Past...Due. 

So where I ended the last post it was 2010, I was close to $7000 in debt from recording an album, my entire band had quit, and I was just about to quit my semi-public career as a musician. Somehow, less than a month after the band played its last show I was optimistically performing shows with a final and present incarnation of the new band of the same name. I'll skip most of the details here, so just accept that Rook, Moose, Kit and I were enthusiastically performing as the band Random Encounter (occasionally with our friend Konami) for about a month when we decided to start recording a new album that represented us, as opposed to the previous 'Random Encounters.' Our goals were well defined and fairly simple: to record all of the tracks we performed on an album called 'Unavenged!' So I called up the local recording studio again and explained that I had a new band that would actually show up to record their parts; No bs, no experimenting with arrangement for 4 months. We booked weekends at the studio for a solid month and a half.

A New Band is Born!

The recording process for Unavenged was fairly straight forward. The band (driving together from Orlando) showed up, recorded parts, and went home. We were all there for moral support, discussed what we wanted on the album, and even made lists for each bandmate of "things to record" and "things to re-record" until we were happy with how it sounded. It was insanely fun and I personally remember that we (the band) started to really feel like a family of sorts. Notably I also wan't the only person putting in money either (the unemployed in our number sold blood plasma to help contribute). It was a really pleasant experience and the only strange thing about recording the album was the fact that we didn't actually know how to play all the songs before we started recording, nor had we finished really experimenting with them. There's a grey area between waiting too long to record something (stunting the growth of a new band) vs recording too soon and while we definitely could have recorded a better album had we waited a few months I don't think we would have had as many good opportunities if we'd waited, so I'm still happy with our decision. It's also worth mentioning that you should trust a professional engineer to make what you have sound good (setting up mics, mixing, etc) but you ultimately should know your equipment (and what you want to sound like) better than anyone else. Don't let someone else dictate the FX/EQ settings on your guitar, bass, or amp if you have a specific sound you're going for or else your preferences will just become what the engineer thinks sounds good... Which can be really generic.

In The Studio, Late at Night

When it came down to my parts it was similar to the experience with the last album in that I went to the studio alone with the engineer, recorded, and edited for (a few) days on end. There were some things that we were ultimately unable to change due to time constraints (I wanted the album done in a very short period of time) such as: Re-recording the first pass of -72 hours-, which i'd originally thought would be hilarious at 72bpm only to discover that it felt too slow (for me... that and no one seemed to get the 72bpm, 72 measures joke), or that we forgot to record an introduction to Gerudo Valley (which I had to personally make happen), or the way I'd sort of envisioned Still More Fighting's intro. I also reached the same point as I'd reached in the last album, where I noticed that we were pretty much done recording but felt like something was missing... However, this time we were prepared.

Rook's Lucky Doll Head, Masha

A month or so before recording we preemptively requested assistance from a few friends to record parts with the anticipation that we'd need help to reach our deadline. The biggest contributor was Konami (the same awesome guy who later joined as a regular band member). He was insanely busy at the time helping NASA or something but graciously recorded parts for more than half the album on his guitars to help fill in some of the gaps. It wasn't that Kit couldn't learn and record the parts, it was that Konami already knew them (because he performed with us) and could record while we worked on other parts of the album, further helping our very restrictive schedule. Other guest musicians on the album included Elaine Li from Select Start, who drove 4 hours to the studio through a bad storm, was involved in a car accident on the way to the studio, and still showed up 10 minutes early to deliver some of some of the best performances on the album! It's also very much worth mentioning that Moose enlisted Sir. Dr. Robert Bakker from The Protomen as I enlisted Johnny "On The Spot" Frank to record parts on some really intense acoustic guitar tracks (Gerudo Valley and Unavenged respectively) from their respective states while the band was in the studio in Florida. The sound engineer and I also recorded a fun "Clank" sound for Boletarian Syndrome by smashing a piece of iron with a 2 handed mallet, which is technically a sort of guest instrument. The only other guest-oddities of note are that I'd started working with "The Great Juja" and "Auriplane" shortly before the band disbursed and re-formed (in 2010) on a Sonic medley called "The Sonic Suite" (The drums were recorded by Adam "One" during one of the self-titled recording sessions and accordion was recorded at my home using a slightly nicer vocal microphone than the $50 one I started with), which found it's way onto the album. In an effort to tie our album into the previous Random Encounter incarnations we also re-recorded the Introduction Theme from Final Fantasy 6, using it as a 'starting point' of sorts to (somewhat personally) acknowledge that previous incarnations of the band existed but to signify that the name had evolved into something different. We used the original piano track from Neo Symbiance (recorded years earlier by Helios!) to complete it. Lastly, we included a pleasant piano track Helios had recorded and forgotten about (but that I got permission to include) called "Miss You," which I found burred in an old computer he'd asked me to scour for specific data before formatting.

Sound Check

Back to editing: Around that time I'd started taking private lessons for rhythm (specifically snare drum) to improve my sense of timing and also saw a dramatic improvement in detecting if something was 'off rhythm' in the editing phase. The ever-developing "ear for editing" was also kind of a curse because there's no way to turn off the ability and I annoyingly found things I wanted to "edit" when listening to music recorded by other artists I'd previously found soothing. It was a feeling akin to discovering that movies are shot in multiple "takes", as opposed to all at once, and now being conscious of continuity or dubbing errors. The sound engineer also expressed that he experienced the same thing and made a game out of finding mistakes in songs on the radio. In short, I became a significantly better editor during the project (practice makes perfect) and started coming up with creative solutions and "fixes" that the engineer didn't even think was possible. I started to think I was pretty awesome until it came to the part where I had to record vocals...

Kit Enjoying my Vocals

 From day one I immediately loathed working on vocals, especially my own, and there were some big moments during the project where I'd strongly considered stepping down as the band's vocalist altogether. Atonal vocals? Fine. Happy Joy? Fine. Songs with vocal variety were another matter altogether. In working with Melodyne (a program that shows you exactly what you're singing on a grid, kind of like Rock Band), I saw that I knew nothing of how to sing on pitch. To make matters worse, early exports of the vocal tracks I'd shared with a friend got me the single brutally honest criticism of "you sing with no emotion whatsoever." He was correct though, and accepting that fact was invaluable to my growth as a musician. I started taking vocal lessons to improve my pitch and during the recording process I did everything to try and sing "with heart" in the studio. I thought good thoughts, brought pictures of pets and loved ones to the sessions, and ultimately sacrificed some pitch for emotion (Worth noting: I was also still revising the lyrics to -72 hours- and Unavenged during the recording sessions) because I wasn't able to start vocal lessons until after the recording sessions had begun. People have since seemed generally happy with the vocal tracks (or at least didn't comment negatively on them) so I feel a lot better about my vocal abilities (and limits) but I was very upset during this process. I also found it frustrating trying to sing notes you've never heard sung before, pitch-perfect, like when you're writing a new vocal melody. A final note on vocal recording is that I recorded the vocal 'harmonies' during some of the chorus sections on the spot, completely improvised, just for laughs and (surprisingly enough) kept most of them. Looking back I should have thought the vocals through more, practiced them, and recorded them at a later date but we were able to make many of the backing vocals sound passable through the magic of editing.

Fall 2010

After what felt like a month or so of recording and another month of editing (I kid you not, we were billed for exactly "72 Studio Hours" of recording) we sent the tracks off to Rob Kleiner. I can equate the experience of sending our tracks to a true industry professional to the story of the princess from Rumpelstiltskin spinning hay into gold. I only had a small understanding of how professional mixing and mastering worked but even then the differences were easy to hear. While this was being done the band sat down and had deep discussions about our branding, back story, and "age rating." I feel it's worth mentioning that once again we cut the new set of extremely explicit introduction tracks I'd recorded and again cut 'What's Up People', which has allowed us to share our music with a lot of (very young/old) people I wouldn't have thought possible over the years. We also agreed to produce a high quality album on a jewel case (as opposed to "sleeves" or a digital-only release), because we felt strongly about wanting to present ourselves as professionals. While I worked on finding a printing company, Kit worked on our Kickstarter, Moose scheduled an album release show, and Rook worked with Dennis Hansbury on the album art.

Original Album Concept by Rook

Somewhere in the all the above chaos the band had commissioned our friend Dennis Hansbury to make the album art without much of an idea as to what we wanted. Did we want video game iconography, to focus on the Russian monster-hunter mythos, or something else entirely? During a brainstorming session at Yogurt Land while Rook and I were gushing about the Russian artist Ivan Bilibin, (my memory is hazy as to how, but) we finally concluded that we wanted to recreate a sketch Rook had drawn of the band, in a style similar to Bilibin's, focusing on the band's conflict with Koschei the Deathless. Moose mentioned he wanted dilapidated buildings and someone (Kit?) said that profiles might be cool. Dennis gave us some alternate concepts of Koshei, took reference photos of the band members, and eventually the drafts we received quickly evolved into our album art, despite Dennis fighting a rather horrible cold at the time. My favorite piece is definitely the disc art/backing with the needle-egg-duck-rabbit-chest-tree. It just fit really well together.

Rock Party, Fall 2010

Where Self Titled was released quietly and kind of fizzled, Unavenged had an album release party complete with guest musicians, Protomen, and home baked goods! We also got a mention on BadassOfTheWeek.com and the opportunity to introduce people to our album on an east-coast tour of the U.S.! On a financial note, even if you technically 'break even' on the cost making an album, the sheer amount of effort involved with getting your music in front of people (shows, driving to shows, gas, interviews, promotional stuff, giveaways, the great migration from Myspace to Facebook, and your tour van breaking down every other show) comes at a large cost. At the risk of sounding like a corporate tool I'd still like to say that the tools we found most helpful on the post-production side were Kickstarter (crowd-sourcing which helped cover some of the costs associated with making the album), Bandcamp (which helps us conveniently share our music with people who can't afford our album), and CDBaby.com (which puts your music almost everywhere music is sold and has really solid reporting/remittance).

Random Encounter Photo Shoot (Fall 2010, (photo by Tiffany Mueller))

This certainly isn't a Disney success story by any means but it's the journey I've undertaken to learn more about how recorded music is made. I hope that my misadventures are amusing and perhaps insightful. I also can't wait to write one of these about the upcoming Random Encounter album I'm currently working on! ...speaking of which.

Full Band (Photo by Ben Trivett)