Been a while...again

It's summer..y'know? Anyway...during the heat I decided to try some light saber effects...this vid took about 5 ours to do...the quality is crap because I was using an old video I had of us playing with lightsabers at Halloween in 08...
Enjoy.

holee crap

So I posted the AtAt afternoon below, but here is the making of video...I am simply in awe

second try

here is a spruced up version of the logo design

For Boba and Kai

TITLE SEQUENCE

Thought I would kill time by making a title sequence for our movies

holee crap

Kinect is the microsoft type of Wii device....not sure how it works or how it can mirror you movements (hands, arms, force), etc, etc, etc...just that this looks AWESOME

John WILLIAMS!!! (in Lego)

ALl my friends know how much I am a complete geek with the score to the Star Wars films...this little vid made me smile

Just messed my pants....

OMG

Cool Star Wars stuff

This stuff should be on Frost's Christmas Wish List:

STAR WARS DEATH TROOPER MINI BUST



AND...

WICKED LASERS has produced the moist powerful laser and cased it as a lightsaber...this thing will burn holes in garbage bags and burn your skin...as well as take out your eyes....SWEEEET! Amazing what they sell on the web these days!

awesomeness!

Jay Baruchel shoots first...LOL

The Darth Vader Project

From Fubiz

Pop surrealist, graffiti, tattoo, lowbrow, comic and underground artists Shag, Marc Ecko, Amanda Visell, Tim Biskup, J. Otto Seibold, Gary Baseman, Joe Ledbetter, Urban Medium and Jeff Soto, among others, show their allegiance to the dark side by customizing Darth Vader helmets in landmark gallery exhibition called The Vader Project that debuted at Star Wars Celebration IV on May 24 to 28 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. For a video tour click here.





















More here.

Oh man...nerd core!

Awesomeness...just awesomeness...I wish I could do this!

Hacked IRL

I love this site Hacked IRL... I like to think I am a funny person, but some of these are genius

sense of humor

People want to know where I got my sense of humor...well here you go...an outtake from the old Carol Burnett Show....this show made me what I am today.

Purgatory

My friends are constantly battling me on the fact I like both Star Wars and Star Trek: "you can't like BOTH!" they tell me. Well screw you guys, I do.

So here is a little vid to please all parties.

honestly...

don't you know people who would use their powers like this?



(Click to make it big!)

Been forever...just wait

Just wait until summer when new stories and pics from the crazy BlueFrost Team will dominate this single reader blog (that single reader being me...sad, really).

So here is a fun Facebook dialogue for the geeks in all of us:

see more

Amateur goodness

Been forever since I posted (end of term and all that....) To make up for it, I found this bit of amateur film-making...god I wish I was this good!

Hmmm...mebbe...mebbe no...

I love Edgar Wright films (Spaced, Shaun of the Dead) and this one looks...well...kinda cool...but kinda one note.... so yeah, I might see it but definitely get it on DVD

Envy

I wish I could come up with this kind of wonderful goodness

Bobby Mackey's

So Frost and I went "ghost hunting" at Bobby Mackey's on Friday night...here is the unedited vid in two parts...I want to edit one to make it S C A R Y...tee hee

This is a freaking KEG ^_^

So the picture below is from a group of contestants who participated in the Chiditarod...a pubcrawl/iditarod thing in Chicago. Check out the rest of the pics at this site...because...they HAVE A KEG IN IT'S BELLY!!!


Ther is a god.....

for FROST

Just saw this trailer...you'll love it


Click for full screen

argh....

Hell week....losing my mind....

but for fun...here is a picture!

Also...one of my students wants to start a "Zombie Defense League" at school...all the principal said was, "Find a sponsor." I declined.

Mainly because I AM a zombie..

Awesomeness squared

No words for this picture except an open mouth moment of pure awe.

Lego Awesomeness

Okay...I'm at work (school really), but I had to post this vid.... because it is:
A. Legos
B. Star Wars
C. (most importantly) Force Unleashed based

Enjoy, children

Interesting

I know, I know...I promised to update regularly. Sue me. Been busy. LOL Not much to blog about on the writing front, except for the Art House Co-op "Fiction Project" I became part of. For all of you artist writers out there, you ought to check out their site and become involved.

And finally, here is a dead interesting video for all you television fans. Did you realize how many of your TV shows involve green screen work? I didn't either.

Laters

Why I don't draw...

Well, it's not as if I do stick figures...but I have all these great ideas on what I want things to look like and I have all the tools to draw them (illustrator, photoshop, etc) I simply don't have the skill.

But anyway...here is a draw I did for Frost on account we hate VD day :)



Also hate the shade I did on the heart....

Valentine fail (rant)

Never been a big fan of Valentine's Day (or any other Hallmark Holiday for that matter) which is created to make single people feel as though they have done something really terrible in their life or are truly frakked up people just because they don't HAVE someone. The peeps in my life are probably as special as the ones who receive cards and boxes of chocolate, but I know my friends will be around a lot longer than the ones who are rewarded on February 14th.

Sure dating and relationships are cool but what's with the societal pressure? I remember a passage in one of my fave books, where the main character is lamenting being alone and having to deal with all the couples around him. He says something like, "All these 'we' people who are always saying things like, 'We did this,' or 'we are going to do that', have to reinforce the relationship because they remember how frightened they were being an 'I'."

My protege at school is like this: he feels his life will never be complete or happy unless he has a girl by his side. WTF?

Watch the first part of the video below to see what happens to people with this sort of thinking.



So hey, if you are in a relationship or marriage, that is great and I am very happy for you, but if you are one of those insecure people in a relationship or a tortuous marriage just for the sake of not being alone, then I pity you. We definitely need more self reliance (not ego!) on this planet and less Hallmark Holidays.

Snow day

So Frost is snowbound (IIIIRONY!) and his xbox bwoke....truly a sad day. Now all I have to do, sitting around for the second day in a row on a snow day home from school is surf the net (UPS can't deliver my new BIOSHOCK 2 because of the frakking snow!). A kid at school let me borrow BORDERLANDS...I found it oddly compelling and couldn't stop playing it. It is a basic mission-shoot-shoot-shoot-new mission kind of game (very simple), but the humor is what made it great (I love the dancing bots). Here is the intro to the DLC to give you an idea of the humor.



Fun stuff..."You're adopted!"

too much time

I love seeing short vids like the one below...because I wonder at times if I have too much time on my hands or if the things I do are a complete waste of time. Apparently others never have that thought....

oh yeah!

I think Frost found his Halloween costume this year,,,grey thermal shirt, some shoulder pads thingies and ghost activated lightsabers (apparently Frost's lightsabres having been turning themselves on and off in his closet...spoooky!)

This game is going to be AHSUM!!!!!

ARGH! Snow (and pain)

So it's Sunday and I am back at the Pub; the place is dead. Literally (bodies and everything, nah I jest, just a grammar nazi joke). Snow hit early Saturday morning everywhere except Newport. Frost said he had 8-10 inches (snow, you pervs!). On top of his snow, his Xbox died so he is fit to be tied.

I used yesterday to go to the gym and ended up pulling the muscle just below the calf (above the Achilles tendon) essentially making walking a pain. Sucky weekend all around. So here's a smiling dog to make you happy:


So here I am at the pub and whatever motivation thrust me out of the front door into the cold (and minimal snow in Newport, dammit) has fled. So Nothing is happening in the noggin. Liesel's husband produced a drawing of September for me. She is a teacher aide/English teacher at school and he is an out of work illustrator whom I really want to work on the book. Last night Justin finally mentioned an actress as a photo-model for September: actress Amanda Crew (pic right). Frost said he facial expressions in the film "Sex Drive" is what sold him (I loved the film and her: she can do a whole range, especially the goofy and sarcastic which the character needs). Frost said his only change on her would be a more Native American Nose, and I suppose he meant bit wider and straight not slope-y or at least a wider bridge. Here is the picture frost drew 2 years ago of the character, so compare and see....

So this is about it for this Sunday. I leave you with a trailer for the show "Skins" which is the BBC show Frost and I fell in love with.

Laters.

short and sweet: ZOMBIES RULE

Here is a short animated thingie I found (courtesy of Topless Robot). Apparently they didn't read the Zombie Survival Guide (you don't stand in the middle of a road just waiting to be seen...)



...cute...fun...

Star trek pwns Star Wars

Great premise on this short film...whatever happened to the STAR WARS space scrawl?

Nightmare baby

Okay...I am stealing this post from Topless Robot verbatim, because it is funnier than anything I could write!

What? Did you say you wanted another terrifying fake baby? You got it!

Yotaro here isn't a traditional horrifying robot baby because 1) it's stuck in a crib (although it has motorized nubs to simulate movement under it's blanket [and goddamn if that's not the weirdest fucking sentence I've ever written]) plus it's more than 50% head. But that's not even close to the only reason why Yotaro will haunt your nightmares tonight, as it also:

• Can be cheered with a rattle
• He can be petted, which seems very wrong
• Can cry, actually producing tears and leaking fluid from his nose
• Gets paler in areas where pressed, which cannot possibly have any useful purpose, and if anything will teach people to press babies in the face

JAPAN, STOP MAKING FAKE BABIES. GODDAMMIT, I SWEAR YOU'RE TRYING TO DESTROY THE HUMAN RACE ON PURPOSE.

Steampunk?

You know this word? Steampunk? I have been familiar with it for years and one of my students, in preparing for her senior project, asked me about one thing or another and I brought up this as a possible topic. I in turn did some checking and forgot about the marvelous community out there living this Victorian/Industrial Age fantasy. The photo on the left is an example of the items these people come up with: freaking gorgeous (click on the pic, I'll wait...). There is also the Brass Goggles one of the original blogs on the subject. If you have ever seen the film "Steamboy" you'll get an idea of the alternate reality created by the steampunk movement.

I just thought it was frigging cool. I want that desktop computer, just because...

what a week! (thus far)

Received a "summons" in the mail (panic ensued) only to realize it was a jury duty letter. Oh crap. Fun. March 5th.

Speaking of fun, let's up the geek factor for ya with this video:


In the "What do Creative Minds Watch" category, the latest series Frost and I watched over Netflix on the Xbox 360 is the Brit series "Skins" ...very cool show, very sweet with tons of language, drug use and nudity. SO if you can make it through the stuff NOT allowed on American television you find the stories of some 6th form students trying to make it though the day to day troubles we all deal with. Check it out.

Where is summer?

I know, people hate me because I am a teacher and I get summers off (okay, there are other reasons, but it is a curse to be beautiful, you know!). Well Frost sent me a little design he did, and I love it.
We've been canoeing before, but last summer we decided to start kayaking and it freaking rocked....we saw a river rat ("Look there's an otter!") and I almost got smacked in the face by a snake. We helped numerous stranded canoers and were, well frankly, the shits! My brother offered to sell me his kayak, but I have no idea how to transport the damn thing, or more importantly, where to keep it in the winter!

Ahhh.. the pub

Another lovely (read: dreary, rainy and cold) Sunday, sitting at the Pub typing the handwritten copy of AXIS into Word. Once I get it all typed in, I will be able to create the frames in COMIC LIFE and start adding the words to the page. Once that is done, i will probably sketch out each book for the yet-to-be-found illustrator.

As the writer I have some images I really am specific about. For example, the character of ASH (in my mind) looks like Sendhil Ramamurthy from HEROES. Only because I needed someone Indian, and someone with a compassionate face. For the character of September, Frost always said she was Native American and beautiful. Wow. Sure. That's easy! (I would ask for people to send me ideas as photos, but I know no one is reading this...LOL).

One of the biggest problems I have run into is the authenticity of the story. I have tried everything to acknowledge the histories and cultures of the characters in the book. It is here I ran into problems. I had found a character, a psychopomp from mesoamerica for the 2nd book. Then I developed a great character/image for him....THEN I realized I had the background on him wrong. The Axis Mundi of the Mayans have at the center a crocodile/caiman. I found the deity Xotol and based the story at that point around him. Whoops... the deity I really wanted was actually a woman (name unremembered at this point!). I developed Xotol into a character with a large crocodile headpiece (actually the top of the crocodile's head, like a baseball cap) and had nicknamed him Caiman. I took the literary license to keep my character, and will probably publish a footnote in the second book to this affect.

Sometimes you have to create a story for a character. Our main antagonist is Iktomi, from Lakota legends. Now Iktomi, from my research, is a trickster god, yet was at one point Ksa, a god of wisdom. I couldn't find anything about this change, so I wrote a backstory using the legends and bent it to my story needs. I hope they don't mind, but it turned out ot be a cool story (issue 5). Also, my Iktomi, will look a bit different from the image at the side. I alos need to find a phot model for him, but I can't say more than that...

Laters

Getting this weekly thing down...

Like I said, I am going to try and post weekly...so whatever nonsense (creative or not) I find I am going to post.

My "Film Appreciation Society" kids and I are going to see THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS tomorrow. Should be decent, it is a Terry Gilliam film.

SO in the meantime, there's this

Zombie Night: Halloween 2009
Yeah, this is how we roll at Bluefrost...

For Reals....

So I have added this blog rather than the wordpress one....they suck. SO now I don't have an excuse NOT to post my usual rubbish.

Yes i am here at the Claddagh working on the book. You see, dear reader, I have indeed finished all six "chapters" of the first volume of AXIS, which is the Septemebr storyline. In fact during this past fall I went back and re-read a couple of the chapters and I found myself amazed. Wow...not too humble. No seriously, I was.

So there I am writing away back in the fall of 2008, when Frost tells me he has finally drawn a blood cell. Sweet! except for the fact that is the first panel of the first issue! See as much as I love Frost's work and as dedicated he is to this thing, he tells me he isn't a penciller, but rather an inker (someone who traces another person's artwork- for the noobs). Anyway, I just kept writing in hopes I find an illustrator. Hell I will draw this thing myself (course it will look like poo!).

Oh Yeah. My computer died last July and I lost everything. Concept art. ComicLife panel outlines. Sketches and logo designs. Crap.

It's all good, though. I am nothing if not resourceful!

june 2008

SO It has been quite a while since I have updated this blog.... I promise to do more in the future....

Well, the good news: I have finished volume One of AXIS. This is made up o six issues or chapters. Frost and I hadn't decided if we wanted to publish one issue at a time or the complete volume... well in the time it took to decide I wrote out six issues.... I had thought about only doing five...so it was touch and go for a minute...but then in a Boddington's induced creative haze....I came up with the fifth issue... woo hoo!

I now am in the process of having someone READ me the 5 notebooks so I can type them into the computer (yes, I need and assistant!). Once typed in the computer I can then transfer the words to ComicLife.

After the words are transfered into Comic Life, I can sketch what I see..then give it to Frost to draw fo' real!

I have given him issue one, but due to changes through out, he held off...now he can begin.

Laters

2008

Okay everyone (those of you reading this shite, or those you of who have decided to go back and read previous posts). I am on Frost's butt to produce more quickly! I have written the first two "chapters" (or issues) and am 3/4s of the way through number three. Issues four and five are laid out.

Originally we were going to have six chapters or issues but I am running out of metaphysical bullshit for this storyline. I have a couple of ideas for continuing the title, more or less as an anthology of stories. The book below is most influential on me. For "The Coyote Gospel" in Animal Man #5 writer Grant Morrison presents the idea that discourse on religion can take place in a comic book. So as I was writing AXIS I decided to take a look at most world religious past and present and examine theri death rituals or ideas of an afterlife. To note: I purposefully left out Christianity and Islam....I didn't want that headache!

In case you are wondering "What the hell is this book about?!" don't worry...I will reveal more in time...I just don't want to give away the big stuff.

In the meantime...go eat a peach and enjoy.

(Originally posted jan of 2008)

Promo Poster

Frost designed a new promo flyer for the book, so be sure to check it out on the main page. I received it at 7am this morning and had it colored by 8...god I wake up too early!

Also, I finished writing the first have of the second book. First I write the draft of the book, then type it up for Frost, then I also put it into comic life. Well the draft writing goes faster than the other two, mainly because I can take my notebook anywhere. SUre I have a laptop, but I am not about to risk spilling my Boddington's on it! Duh.

I have also created a file of pics of the actor Sendhil Ramamurthy for Frost. He is how I imiagine our character of Ash. Frost says this guy looks like the Prince of Persia, not being a gamer, I have no idea.

It was 37 degrees last night, so it was a good night to stay in and write.

(Originally published oct 2007: Since this post I have become a gamer!!!!)

Intro and FAQ

Hi Everyone, it's Daryn (Blue), the writer et cetera of the newest production from BlueFrost. In this blog Frost and I hope to let you in on the random thought processes which help create our works. From time to time we will also ramble on about things we've seen or stuff which tickles our fancies.

But first: Who are we? Well I teach high school in Cincinnati, Ohio at Diamond Oaks and a few years ago Frost was one of my students. At the time we often conversed about our love for comics and just this past Labor Day, I received a call saying, "Let's do it!". So we have.

How did we get started? Well, Frost told me he had an idea for a book and a main character in mind: September (he always had the most original names!). His idea was "A femaletattoist discovers she has cancer and must find the Tree of Life to survive." That was fairly much it. Thank God for Wikipedia! Without going into too much detail here, I came up with this mission for our heroine which should cover 6 books or issues, culminating in one graphic novel, title AXIS, based on the term axis mundi. Will there be another afterwards? Who knows.

How is the work broken up? Frost is a fantastic artist and I like to think I am a great idea man. Amazingly enough we are on the same wavelength. I'll mention an idea and he will describe what he sees and it will be exactly what I see. This is the trademark of a good team. I will write some stuff, put it into a program called Comic Life, then, after printing, sketch the layout. Most times the layouts are exactly what Frost has in mind as well. I am a very visual person and it is easier for me to sketch than write the particular angles or scenes. Frost will do the actual art and inking, then scan his work, send it to me, where I will color it. Fun.

How long until we publish? Right now we are looking at 6-9 months. The first issue (of 6, as we call them) is requiring a huge learning curve as far what we are to be doing. I hope it will become easier.

What isn't the site called AXIS? Well, both of us are very creative people and have many more works than just AXIS, so we hope to feature different examples of our stuff on the site.

That's all for now. I will add more to the FAQ later.

(Originally published on our first blog on oct 14 2007! So much for the 6-9 months, huh?)