When it rains...

We all know the saying, when it rains, it pours.

Well, this could not be more truthful for me and my motorcycle over the last month or so.

My bike was due for a service, overdue if I'm being truthful.  I'd been putting it off but it got to the stage where I knew it had to be done.  So, I booked it in.  I mentioned when I dropped it off that there were a couple of issues that I was having in regard to starting it at times as well as an odd glitch that had just started happening with the headlights.  This was what had prompted me to finally book it in.

The issue was that when I'd turn the ignition on, all looked fine, but sometimes when I thumbed the kill switch, the high beam light would come on on the dash and the headlights would go off.  Nothing I did would turn them back on either.  Something was seriously amiss.  I let the guys know about all this and they said they'd look into it.

I get a call later that day to tell me that there were a whole lot more things that needed doing, but the biggest one was the starter motor clutch.  This was worn and was the cause of the bike not wanting to start.  They also thought they'd worked out the headlight issue as well.

So, $1700 later, I pick up my bike and away I go.  It was the week before mid semester break so the bike pretty much went into the garage and didn't come out till I started back at Uni.  And of course, it was it this point I see that the headlight issue hasn't been fixed.  I call them back up and let them know that it's still an issue and organise to take it in the next day.  Because I have uni, they can only have the bike for about 3 hours and of course that morning everything is working perfectly.  They change part of the wiring loom between the headlights and the switchgear and they believe that this will fix the problem.

Fast forward to Monday night.  I've had a good day at Uni, been out to dinner with some old workmates and played a couple of hours of D&D.  We finish up about 8:30 and I'm on the bike starting to head home.  I'm in one of the back streets of Fortitude Valley when I flick on the high beams...  And bang!  Well, actually, there wasn't a bang, in fact, there was nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  No power to anything.  So, obscenities restricted to within my helmet, I manage to pull the bike up to a stop at the bottom of the hill.  Of course, there are no street lights and I can't get it started.

In the end, I push the bike to the nearest hotel and send the night in the city before I can contact the mechanics and get them to come and pick it up the following morning.  I got a loaner and headed home to try to get some work done on assessments and what not, all the time wondering just how bad things were, what it had fried, how much was it going to cost and would it be worth it.

When I spoke to them later that afternoon, my worries were put to rest.  Seems that the no-power issue was due to a short that had blown the main fuse, exactly what should have happened.  The cause of the short?  A worn wire that ran from the high beam bulb.  Seems that when I'd flicked on the high beam, this had shorted, blowing the fuse and killing all power to the bike.

So this morning I picked it back up, and checked that the high beams didn't fail and kill everything again.  So far so good.  i just hope that this is the last time I have to go in for some time to come.

Captain Kremmen - Re-voiced

Last year, one of the subjects I studied was an introduction to the principle of sound and sound design.  The final assessment required us to take a video clip, remove the existing soundtrack and replace it with a new one.

I chose to do an episode of the old Captain Kremmen cartoon.  Kremmen (along with many others) was the brainchild of Kenny Everett, a British comedian who had a tv show in the late 70's and early 80's.  You could never call it a kids show, but the 70's being a much simpler time, it was on at a kid friendly time.  The cartoon was shown during the tv show, and all the characters were voiced by Everett himself.  The animation was done simply, and it turns out it was done by Cosgrove-Hall, who went on to make Dangermouse among other things.

So, after choosing an episode, listening to it over and over in order to scribe out the script, I spent a day in the recording booth at Uni laying down the tracks for each character, and like the original, I did all the character voices.  Then it was off to edit it all together and put in the appropriate sound effects.  I had some previous experience with voice overs and and vocal work previously, so I have no doubt that helped, but this was one of the hardest things I've done, as trying to match up the vocal to the animation was really hard.

The clip is only a couple of minutes long, so enjoy.  And if anyone is looking for a VO guy, I am available.

Where do all the socks go?

Where do all the socks go?

I mean seriously, where do they all go?  

I purchased 5 new pairs a little over 2 weeks ago and I can’t find a single pair.  I know they've been washed, I did the washing.  But searching through the clean washing that’s waiting to be sorted, I can’t find a single pair.

If it was just one missing sock from a pair then I’d assume the washing machine ate it, or that the washing machine is in fact a portal to another dimension, or possibly some crazy organic/mechanical hybrid that subsists on a diet of single socks, because eating a pair would just be greedy?  But no, there is not a single sock to be seen, let alone a pair!  

Very strange, very strange indeed.

Another one of life’s mysteries that will just have to wait to be solved, until I can find a pair of socks at least.

A funny thing happened on the way to the document...

Writing is a funny thing.  Some days you have pages and pages of stuff, all trying to get out at once.  Other days, trying to coax a sentence or two out into the light can seem like an exercise in futility.  Both of these extremes can be maddeningly frustrating.  Not being able to get things down quickly enough or struggling to get anything down at all can make you feel like pulling your hair out at times.  

But the one that I find most frustrating isn't either of these.  Instead, it’s the issue I have at the moment.  And that issue is the whole reason I’m writing this down instead of working on my script.  In essence it’s quite simple.  I have a scene in my script that is filler.  It’s meant to show the mundane, to let the audience relate to the protagonist with something that a lot of people do.  The lecturer who read the script yesterday (the script is part of a Uni assessment) pointed this out to me.  He could see what I was trying to achieve with it, but it needs to be better.  The scene really just doesn't cut it.  

My first reaction was to do just that.  Cut it, drop the scene entirely.  It doesn't work in the way I intended.  And while I may still do that, the lecturer suggested that instead I rewrite it, find another way to show the audience what it is I want to show them rather than lose it altogether.  This is where I run into my problem of course.  I've spent most of last night and this morning trying to come up with a new scene, or rework the existing one and I just can’t come up with anything.  

And it is slowly driving me nuts!

So instead of thinking about it further, I decided to write about it.  It may have no impact at all, in fact, I may just be putting off the inevitable and have to cut the scene anyway, I don’t know, but in the act of writing, I'm just hoping that something, anything, pops in this head of mine and I can find a way around this little hurdle.  Until then I’ll keep banging away at the keys and see what happens.

DS Creative Magazine - Issue 9 out now.

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Character Growth

Recently I finished playing through the last Tomb Raider game, aptly titled Tomb Raider.  This was the 2013 release and shows us a younger Lara Croft, one who is quite innocent and naive,  She is also a lot more realistically proportioned compared to previous iterations of the character as well.  While Lara has the archaeological skills, she doesn't have the life experiences yet, of course, all this changes over the course of about 30 hours.  Now, I'm not going to pull apart the game, that's not the point of this post.  What I want so discuss is the progression of the character through the game.

In most RPG's, the character is an extension of the player, their agent in that world if you like.  You guide them, you interact with them, you make decisions for them and then they act those decisions out.  But they don't grow, they don't change over the course of the game.  This is understandable of course given that the character is an extension of the player, and it's up to the player to "grow" over the course of the narrative, be that growth into the light or into the dark a-la Paragon or Renegade paths in Bioware's Mass Effect series, or their Knights of the Old Republic games.  This growth is then reflected in the dialogue options open to the character, but the character doesn't really change.

There may be some superficial indicators, like a glowing halo or red/black veins to show that the player has chosen to walk to path in the light or the dark,  Tomb Raider did something else, something that may have been seen as a potential risk, but one that I think paid off in spades.  They took the growth away from the player, and gave it back to the character.  Now, while this seems to go against the current trend, it actually makes a lot of sense, not only in this case, but as something that I think should be done a lot more often.

We know Lara, not only from the previous games, but also from the movies, cosplayers and pop culture in general.  While some of her assets have certainly commented on and overplayed, there is no doubt that as a character she is a strong lead.  And gender doesn't come into it.  And perhaps that's why Square Enix and Crystal Dynamix decided to go this direction.  With players already knowing that the character has a history, a back story and a personality, they could impose that onto and within the narrative.  By making it part of the process of the story, showing Lara starting off and her development through the game into the survivor we know from the past, you develop a different but just as strong attachment to the character.

In some ways, it plays much more like a movie or novel.  You are introduced to the characters, both main and supporting, as you progress through the narrative you learn more about all of them, but you start to see the effects of the trials being faced by the protagonist impacting them more.  These changes manifest in small ways, changes in speech patterns, changes in viewpoint, changes in methods.  Where early on Lara wants to talk to the other people on the island, to reason with them, it becomes apparent that's not going to happen and she changes accordingly.  Through each trial we see Lara become a little harder, a little more ruthless, but she doesn't lose her humanity.  She's dealing with betrayal, her friends being killed or kidnapped, her own survival.  Yet her humanity remains in tact, even strengthened perhaps.

By the end of the game we have seen Lara evolve from a naive girl into the hardened adventurer we all know and love.  And I wish more games would take this approach.  Give us a character who grows.  They will still be an extension of the player in the world, but make the world impact them, and through them, us.  Give us a reason to love, or hate, the character, to invest in them for their own sake and not just so we have a shiny achievement to add to our collection.

DS Creative Magazine - Issue 7 out now, with a fresh new look for the new year.

A New Year and a new look for the only magazine for DAZ Studio users

DS Creative Magazine - issue 7