Jaunary Progress

So far I've accomplished writing about 4 minutes of the second episode. Of those 4 minutes written, I want to go back and change 3 of them. Writing is going a little slow, but that's ok. I've given myself a fair budge to get this done in the first half of this year.

My dad gave me a piece of advice while I was writing my Master's Thesis which was: Just Write. Write, get it out, get it down on paper, then deal with it later. The old man has some good advice sometimes.

As an aside, I've been listening to this radio show Dave The Spazz on WFMU pretty much all the time lately. You can find his archives HERE. Good tunes to put on while writing, except sometimes writing turns into a Personal Dance Party.

Jungle Set Designs

I'm starting to think about how I would like the set to look for the show.  The first episode takes a trip to the jungle. Here are some images I found and liked:

I thought the image above was really clever in their use of lights to make trees and jungle.

 Fern suit for one of the characters in the first episode. Doesn't that look comfortable?

The last one is a drawing of how I picture the set in my mind. Or something like that. I will revisit this topic and add more images as I find them.

Just like Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell

Another friend of mine gave me a great idea for making simple sock puppets: use a long, thigh-high sock to make a full body puppet instead of a short sock for just the head. I started thinking about this idea and made a few drawings for the lead singer of the marine animal house band aboard the ship.

This would work great with a long sock. The body of the octopus could be sewn onto the sock. The body itself would be static, but that's ok. We'll sew a little microphone in his hand and he can bop and sway to give it some animation. I was also thinking to add some foam at the top of the sock in the head part to give the puppet more shape. And a tiny tophat because he's fancy.

Here is another drawing of a character for the band - a lady squid. This could be built really simply, perhaps just on a stick that bounces around during the musical numbers. She's supposed to be singing in the drawing below, but instead it looks like she's farting the notes. I guess that a singing, farting, squid would work too.

Courtesy of my very encouraging friend Jodi, is a photo of a lobster finger puppet that I like very much. The puppet is so simple and adorable. She got it at Lobster Fest this past year down in San Pedro. I opted for some lobster gloves which turned into part of my Halloween costume. But little guy provided a lot of laughs throughout the night.

I feel that the puppet band designs are coming together nicely.

Now I have this song in my head:

How I Write

Since this blog serves as my repository for ideas, I'd like take this time to explain (or perhaps remind?) my future self how I go about writing an episode in case I forget. Dear Future Tabitha, this is how you write:

Start with a list of 25 ideas
Each idea is an event or dialogue
Examples of such events could be:
- a science discussion
- a song
- traveling somewhere
- making plans to travel somewhere
- meeting a new friend
- steps toward resolving a problem
Each idea takes about 1 minute worth of time
25 ideas = 25 minutes!

I got this idea from watching an episode of The Mighty Boosh. Of all the shows I like, I find The Mighty Boosh moves a long at a really good pace. Not too fast, not too bogged down. And when timing it out I discovered that each event takes about 1 minute. I think that's as good of a place to start as any.

So there you go, Future Self. That's how you start writing an episode.

Yours Truly (really and truly because I am you),
Your Past Self (Tabitha)

Clam Chorus Line

A friend of mine gave me a super cute and very simple clam-hand puppet as a Christmas present. It inspired me to think of puppet designs for the house band aboard the HMS Unknown. I thought: this puppet could be simple enough to fabricate, why not make a bunch of them? Here are some drawings for a Clam Chorus Line.

As you can see from my note on the top scan, I did not like my first drawings. But that's ok. I do like the idea of stringing them all together somehow so that they will "sing" in unison. I think it'd be funny to give them all different hair-doos/moustaches/personalities. You can see my attempts in the second scan.

Sometimes, a doodle I start on turns into something completely unexpected. Case in point is the picture below. I don't know what I was going for here, but I rather like this little guy.