Gordon McAlpin's Blog: Updates from Multiplex: Deleted Scenes, page 11

Multiplex: There and Back Again and Card Game update

I’ve been quiet about Multiplex: There and Back Again over at Kickstarter for too long, but I just wanted to say that over the winter break, I did make a fair amount of headway on the second Multiplex print book.

A kinda-sorta “recap” of Book 1 has been finished, and all that remains is waiting for an intro from one fellow webcartoonist (who shall remain secret for now) and a cover from, well, me. Truth be told, I have struggled with this cover for too long, and I have enlisted a little help in getting me past my own artistic block with it. Hopefully I’ll get that done in the next couple of weeks, and then the book can go to press. It is safe to say that the original April-ish release is not happening, but it should be in your hands this summer.

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The Multiplex Card Game is another story. I am still very excited about it, but development on it has had to stop for the time being, because of my workload at school. I need to do a ground-up rework of the box office (revenue generation) system in the game, because under the current rules, while there are a lot of die rolls for two players, it is still fun and manageable — once I play-tested it with three players, though, it becomes a massive clusterfuck.

When I am able to do anything more than just barely keep up with the two weekly strip updates, I’ll try to revisit it. I am still hoping to get a Kickstarter project for that off the ground for the summer — but obviously, finishing Book 2 and fulfilling all of the Kickstarter rewards for that will come first.

Multiplex iPhone app update

As users of the Multiplex iOS app have noticed, the app has been crashing on launch for a week or two now. I’ve had a couple of people ask, but I should have made a more public statement about this — sorry for any confusion or inconvenience this has caused!

What’s wrong with it is this: the app was developed in C# by my brother using Monotouch, an iOS development suite (or something like that — I’m not a coder, man, gimme a break if this isn’t 100% right technically). It’s a great program, but what happens is that Apple occasionally does shit that breaks its apps. So nothing changed on our end, but iOS and Monotouch stopped liking each other. Unfortunately, my previous developer — my brother Lawrence, who built this site — is a little busy with my two nieces to keep maintaining the app  (for free, as he has always done), and so this time around, the app has stayed broken.

I do have a new developer lined up — another volunteer, because I am broke and the app loses me a small amount money every year. I’ll announce who it is when we have a new version. His first order of business is to rebuild the entire app in Objective C, so future iOS updates won’t break compatibility. (As much?) And then, if all goes well, we will start working on new features — including making it a universal app, in-app purchases of the eBooks, and some other things that have been on my to-do list, but dormant for lack of time in my brother’s schedule.

Any feature requests would be welcome!

“Paperman” by John Kahrs

Paperman played in front of Wreck-It Ralph‘s theatrical run, and it was absolutely wonderful. (Your mileage may vary, but if you appreciate a little magical realism, you’ll probably dig it.) The music by Christophe Beck is lovely, the sort of hybrid 2D/CGI animation technique is lovely… It’s just a lovely short film. If you haven’t seen it, enjoy. If you have, I’m sure you’ll enjoy seeing it again.

“Marcel, King of Tervuren” by Tom Schroeder

This is a really cool animated short by Tom Schroeder (who is apparently from Minnesota). It’s playing in the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. Fair warning: There’s a little bit of not-too-graphic rooster-on-rooster violence in there for you sensitive ones.

“Plays of Light” by Gordon McAlpin

This video is the third and final project for my GDES8114 Graphic Design Studio class at University of Minnesota —Twin Cities. It’s more than a little depressing, and a bit slow-paced (like how I like my movies). And (mild spoilers) it’s probably a little bit like how Jason’s next film will be. My camera doesn’t handle low light video as well as I’d hoped, unfortunately, and I wished I’d had more footage to incorporate into the second half of the film, but I’m generally happy with the results.

Thanks to Miles Mercer for access to the Hollywood Theater and Earl Luckes for access to the Parkway Theater (and turning on the projector). Historic photographs of the Hollywood Theater courtesy the Northwest Architectural Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries.

Music: “Virtutes Instrumenti” by Kevin MacLoed (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...

Multiplex: the Card Game art by Angela Melick

Here’s one more piece of art from the Multiplex-inspired card game I’m working on for my Game Design class.

This card illustration is by Angela Melick, who does the aweseome strip Wasted Talent. She also did this guest strip for Multiplex not very long ago, so you should have already started reading her comic. If you haven’t, you and I cannot be friends.

Angela was tasked with the film still for Katy Perry’s Grandmama, in which Katy Perry (“in her directorial debut”) goes undercover as her own grandmother (Obviously, it’s a lazy reference to Tyler Perry’s Madea flicks, mixed with more than a little bit of Big Momma’s House. Blame me for that.)

There’s stil time to contribute a film still to the Multiplex card game, please e-mail me some LINKS to your samples (no attachments!) — gordon at multiplexcomic.com, of course — and also let me know some genres of film you might be interested in doing. I need the art by the end of the month (and I might be able to push it a little bit longer than that), so get a hold of me soon!

Multiplex: the Card Game art by Jason Swearingen

Here’s another piece of art from the Multiplex-inspired card game I’m working on for my Game Design class.

This card illustration is by Jason Swearingen, who was one of my writers at the late, lamented Movie Make-out. He currently draws and designs comics for the Dread Arts Company, a Chicago-based comics publisher, so check that out.

Jason’s “assignment” was to create a still for the (fake) Gangers Action flick, Mexican Standoff. The synopsis read: “When three criminals on the lam from three different cartels take refuge in the same safehouse, all hell breaks loose.” Jason took an “A Gang Apart” (Tarantino) approach to the project, and I think the results are pretty freakin’ fantastic.

Once again… if you would like to contribute a film still to the Multiplex card game, please e-mail me some LINKS to your samples (no attachments!) — gordon at multiplexcomic.com, of course — and also let me know some genres of film you might be interested in doing. I need the art by the end of the month — so it’s a quick turn-around! Please do not volunteer if you cannot meet OR BEAT this deadline or follow directions, because I won’t be able to use your art and you will have wasted your time, and I will feel badly about it, but that’s just how it is. (If you’re interested in doing more than one, that would be awesome, too, but we’ll take it one at a time.)

The shitty part is, because this is a student project, there is a zero dollar budget. However, there’s a chance that if playtesting goes well, I’ll be publishing this as a proper game next year (or so), in which case all of the artists whose work I use in that will be paid to license their work. And, of course, you/they would keep their copyright.

Multiplex: the Card Game art by Wes Molebash

Here’s another piece of art from the Multiplex-inspired card game I’m working on for my Game Design class.

This card illustration is by Wes Molebash, whom many of you will know as being a former collective mate of mine from Boxcar Comics with his strip You’ll Have That. He’s now doing an equally beautiful comic called Insert Image. Please check it out and support the artists who have very generously helped me out with this massive undertaking! Two Movie cards down, 48 to go.

Wes’s “assignment” was to create a still for the (fake) Romantic Comedy, Everything Is Copy. The temporary synopsis simply read: “Humor columnist Nora never had time for love, until she met Nick.” The characters are not, in fact, named after Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist,but Nora Ephron and Nick Pileggi. The idea was that it would be a Nora Ephron-style movie actually about Nora Ephron. Wes seems to have cast Amy Adams as Nora, and he describes the scene thus: “Nick and Nora are walking through Central Park. Nick is reading Nora’s humor column and critiquing it as he reads it out loud. Nora — who is not charmed by his silly critiques — defends her writing and her sense of humor.”

Once again, if you’d like to contribute a film still to the Multiplex card game, please e-mail me some LINKS to your samples (no attachments!) — gordon at multiplexcomic.com, of course — and also let me know some genres of film you might be interested in doing. I need the art by the end of the month — so it’s a quick turn-around! Please do not volunteer if you cannot meet OR BEAT this deadline or follow directions, because I won’t be able to use your art and you will have wasted your time, and I will feel badly about it, but that’s just how it is. (If you’re interested in doing more than one, that would be awesome, too, but we’ll take it one at a time.)

Now, the shitty part is, because this is a student project, there is a zero dollar budget. However, there’s a chance that if playtesting goes well, I’ll be publishing this as a proper game next year (or so), in which case all of the artists will be paid to license their work. And, of course, you/they would keep their copyright. As a graduate student, though, there is a minimum level of drawing ability that I need to require for this — it has to be professional looking. And there are only so many of each genre of movie to go around, so I can’t use everyone — you might be a terrific, but just not suitable. If I don’t contact you with a movie (or some options), please don’t take it personally. I really appreciate your interest and support whether I can use your art or not!

Multiplex: the Card Game art by Mathew Van Dinter

Above is the first piece of art from the Multiplex-inspired card game that I’m working on for my Game Design class (as part of my Graphic Design MFA). This card illustration is by Mathew Van Dinter, who just recently launched a “retro sci fi” graphic novel called Unearth. Check that out! It’s very young (only two pages so far), but his art is clearly fantastic, so it should be a hell of a lot of fun.

Although most of the fake movies have titles and descriptions, since I saw from his samples that he liked dinosaurs, I just asked him to do an “Adventure” movie with a dinosaur in some capacity, and he ran with it.

If you’d like to contribute a film still like this to the Multiplex card game, please e-mail me some LINKS to your samples (no attachments!) — gordon at multiplexcomic.com, of course — and also let me know some genres of film you might be interested in doing. I need the art by the end of the month — so it’s a quick turn-around! Please do not volunteer if you cannot meet OR BEAT this deadline or follow directions, because I won’t be able to use your art and you will have wasted your time, and I will feel badly about it, but that’s just how it is. (If you’re interested in doing more than one, that would be awesome, too, but we’ll take it one at a time.)

Now, the shitty part is, because this is a student project, there is a zero dollar budget. However, there’s a chance that if playtesting goes well, I’ll be publishing this as a proper game next year (or so), in which case all of the artists will be paid to license their work. And, of course, you would keep the copyright.

I cannot use everybody, of course. As a graduate student, there is a minimum level of drawing ability that I need to require for this artwork — it has to be professional looking. And there are only so many of each genre of movie to go around, so you might be good enough, but just not suitable. If I don’t contact you with a movie (or some options), please don’t take it personally.

Brief Jamie Hewlett interview

I loved this. Thanks to @yusaku777 for sharing this with me on the Twitters.

I wonder how many people of my generation started drawing because of Star Wars? Myself, I started drawing by tracing E. H. Shepard’s Winnie the Pooh from the classic books. But I first drew a comic — of sorts — when I saw clips of Star Wars on a TV in a store as a little kid. I was probably 5 or 6? It must have been around the re-release before Empire Strikes Back came out.

Since I couldn’t just fire up the internet and stream the actual movie or rent a DVD like you little fuckers these days, I started drawing my own space opera along the lines of what I imagined Star Wars would be like. It had a hero wielding a laser swords against armies of stick figure baddies with eyeballs for heads, and weird two-dimensional creatures named We and Wo (pronounced Wah) that looked sort of like trilobytes, I guess?

Anyway. Back to work.