The awesome design and modeling as done by my friend Leon Gor (known for his design work for EA’s Command & Conquer games). I was amazed by Leon’s focus to functional detail and his study of airplane design throughout history. Because of his knowledge we were able to sit done and go through his collection of books to determine what look we wanted.

Below you can see the process from start to finish:

Leon started with the shape of the drone. But you’ll also notice in the image below that Leon went through the extra work of designing a “functional” engine… something that will not EVER be seen in the finished product. That’s part of what makes Leon an amazing designer and modeler.

From there I gave Leon additional feedback and he quickly finished and locked in the shape of the drone.

Leon then pushed forward on the finishing touches for the main guns and the propeller engine.

As you may have noticed from the image above and below, Leon gave the drone a name: THE SWALLOWTAIL – CAMEL.

Leon’s new concern became wether or not the bullet shells discharged from the main guns would simply drop out of the sky or if there would be a drum to catch the shells. We both agreed on adding a drum to lessen the amount of animation that would need to be added in post. Drum visible below:

And finally it was time to light the drone and call her complete.

Hopefully I’ll have some animated footage of the drone to show you soon.

The premise behind the one minute story: we start on a nameless man camped out in the middle of some windblown rocks, high up in the mountains. He’s armed and waiting for something. WHOOM! A drone flies overhead, sending the man into action. The next 50 seconds consists of a brief cat and mouse between the man and the drone.

The weapons were custom-made with a Steampunk design, and the CG drone will be designed with a similar aesthetic.

We kept the crew to a very bare minimum, but did up our visibility by bringing a jib arm and lugging it through the rough and hilly terrain, which while painful, was that much more difficult when trying to leave during what appeared to be prime rattler snake snacking time.

1. Must only have one actor.
2. Can only use one location.
3. Only allowed one day for filming.
4. Must have visual fx.

So I came up with an idea I call “For Hire”. What’s the plot? I’ll tell as the final product develops. In the meantime, here are some stills from our location scout.

MAI THE PSYCHIC GIRL is about a teenage girl raised by her widowed father. Her mother passed away when she was young and left her daughter, Mai, not only memories but she also passed down her psychic abilities. Her father, knowing this, has tried to protect Mai from unknown and unseen enemies by preventing her from using her powers. But Mai, often succumbing to boredom, finds herself using her powers to entertain herself while in class or when she is supposed to be studying. unfortunately, one day her slip in judgement causes her to use her powers at a time that gains the attention of these unseen forces her father has been shielding her from; an organization that for some unknown reason collects psychics like Ash Ketchum (sp?) collects Pokemon.

For fear of spoiling things, I will say no more about the story. But I will say that this is a character and story that have been rumored t be courted by Tim Burton to be made into a live-action film.

So, here we are fifteen years later and I finally got online and purchased a used copy of the first two volumes, just to find after reading volume 1 that I was right; so far it is about a girl constantly running. But it has also been more. It is slowly carving out the hero’s journey for our heroine, Mai. And it’s doing it pretty well. I actually found myself flying through the pages waiting for some sort of betrayal from a character close to Mai, or for one of them to die. I don’t know if it was intended to be plotted out that way, but that’s how I’ve been reading it. It also has the innocence I always enjoyed about manga.

POSITIVES: Interesting, strong and engaging female main character; quick and fun read; level of action and violence is innocent enough for young readers; and nice hero’s journey.

NEGATIVES: At times it seems like the character poses are repeated, especially the “guy running in suit” pose; Couldn’t hurt to slow down some of the character developing scenes.

OVERALL: great way to get into manga if you are young or old. Also a great way to see what was being imported into the States back in the 1990′s (just as the internet was coming about). Definitely worth getting.

So, seeing as though I couldn’t read ROSE HIP ZERO, I relied on the artwork to tell me the story… and it did. There was something arrogant about the comic book. The gun fights are detailed like a John Woo film… the good John Woo films… you know, the one’s he made back in Hong Kong, like HARDBOILED.

Every character’s wardrobe is trendy, hip, and sexy. And that sex appeal carries over to the guns and cars; always very detailed, realistic, an expensive looking. Hell, they even book-end each chapter with a shot of the main character, Kasumi, barely dressed and wielding weapons… good stuff.

About a year after picking up this comic book in Japan, I ran across it here in the States… in english. So I started picking them up. And while the look, action and humor translated well, the story got sloppy by issue 4. In fact, it got bad enough that I never picked up the final issue 5, which I’ll probably remedy some day.

ROSE HIP ZERO is about a young girl named Kasumi; a mysterious girl with an insane ability to skillfully wield any weapon in combat. An ability that is explored throughout the series as she comes to terms with her past and those in it.

You should also keep in mind that ROSE HIP ZERO is a preequel to ROSE HIP ROSE, which (as far as I can tell) has never been translated… legally. You can download fan made translated versions, but I’m not a fan of reading comic books on a computer screen. I once read that it would be translated and sold by TOKYOPOP in 2008, but I haven’t ran across it.

Bottom line, if you love beautifully drawn action and beautifully drawn girls with guns, then you ABSOLUTELY have to pick up ROSE HIP ZERO. Just don’t fall too in love with the story, or you might be disappointed.

And now we have Norman Osborn trying to take over Asgard. Talk about “high concept ideas”. I would have never thought of this storyline and am greatly impressed with the amazing scope Marvel has developed in their storytelling during my absence from the medium. These events are truly affecting the characters AND the Marvel Universe as a whole.

Now some would argue that the entire re-vamp of Spider-man was a clear sign that Marvel still tends to write themselves into a corner and comes up with bullshit ways to resolve said conundrums, but I think I’ve discussed the Spider-man situation previously, to some level.

I remember the first Marvel Universe big cross-over I read was THE SECRET WARS. I had no idea what I was getting into, and even though it really wasn’t a great idea, it was still a lot of fun for a kid relatively new to comic books. And it introduced Spidey’s black costume (Venom) and allowed us to see how the Marvel Universe was holding up without their standard stable of heroes. It was fun reading Spider-man comics without Spider-man present. And reading the X-men with the second string team having to hold the shit together.

And from there it seemed that most of Marvel’s big summer cross-over events revolved mostly around the X-men. And as an avid reading of all things “X”, I loved it. It fit right into my comic book reading world. But this meant I didn’t pick up too many AVENGERS or HULK or any comic that was not affected by the X-men’s latest epic, world-ending nemesis.

But CIVIL WAR, SECRET INVASION and SIEGE seem to remedy that. Currently I have only read a few issues and issue tie-ins, but Marvel has done a great job of making the specific hero comics (Dark Wolverine, for example) to a very personal level while keeping the SIEGE comic itself very large scale. Does that make sense? yeah, I don’t know. Maybe the best example might be that at the end of SIEGE #2 Asgard comes crumbling down… and that’s the end of the issue. We see it from a very wide spectator point of view. But in THE AVENGERS, Asgard comes crumbling down and we see some of our heroes crushed under the rubble or buried alive, others believing them dead.

When I explained the plot of SIEGE to my 19 year-old daughter she said “That sounds stupid” (clause: she is not a comic book fan unless it involves cute animals). And it does sound stupid, but it also sounds ballsy and epic and I look forward to reading more.

Then, I ran across a few pics online of the “Mary Jane Loves Spider-man”, done by this artist named MIYAZAWA. I was hooked. He was, and is, one of my favorite new comic book artist. I love the innocent of his style and (this is going to sound weird) how you can almost read the characters by the body language of their fingers and inward-turned feet. He captured the innocence of high school and young love very well.

Therefore, now committed to reading comics again, I ran out and purchased “Ultimate Spider-man” No# 8. Again, it reminded me of my childhood, even to the point of having Spider-man living with Ice-man and The Human Torch… obviously a throwback to the animated series “Spider-man and His Amazing Friends”, which everyone my age watched EVERY Saturday morning. If you haven;t seen it, I think they still air on Disney or Cartoon Network or one of those animated heavy channels… worth the viewing. This was Spider-man pre Venom, pre marriage, pre college drop-out, pre Kraven suicide. Very light and charming, much like Ultimate Spider-man.

Definitely worth checking out.

That said, I made a stop to a comic shop in Burbank, CA a couple of weeks ago. It was in the middle of the day in the middle of the week. It was quiet except for the comic shop owner. I went straight to the racks, looking for the comfortable and familiar; The X-Men. It didn’t take me long… because an entire rack was full of X-Men comics. At least ten of them. It was insane, there was Ultimate X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, Astonishing X-Men, X-21, Wolverine, X-Factor, etc, etc. I couldn’t handle it. So I moved on to Batman… again, at least 10 spin-off comics based on Batman… there was Robin, Batman & Robin, Detective Comics,  Bat-girl, Batwoman, Nightwing, etc, etc. Again, I was overwhelmed.

So I took a deep breath and stepped back and grabbed whatever comic caught my eye. The way I used to when I was a kid. The criteria was based on the style of the cover art (knowing very well the inside artist may not be the same as the outside cover artist) and if the story the cover art represented piqued my interest. So I grabbed some Justice Society of America, some Green Lantern Corp, some X-men, some Ultimate Spider-man, and a few random comics from smaller publishers… gotta give the little guys a chance. And as I have been reading I have become hooked again… almost 15 years after I had beaten my addiction and gotten back on the wagon.

And now, as I feed my addiction, I am going to talk about it here. I’m going to talk about all the things I have enjoyed in the past and refrain from indulging in during my adult life, thus far. That includes comic books, movies, and videogames. But I am only going to discuss the ones I enjoy. If I didn’t like it, you won’t be reading about it here.

Talk to you soon.

Evidently, last year, THE LIVING SWORD won “Best Asian Action Cinema” at the Big Bang Film Festival in Philadelphia. I just happened to be checking out their selections for this year and ran across a list of last years winners. And, look at that, THE LIVING SWORD was listed.