Troy Dennison's Blog, page 15

Tales From The Lounge #5

Dolphin Dialogues

Tales From The Lounge #4

Tiger, Tiger

Tales From The Lounge #3

Feed The Fish

Tales From The Lounge #2

The Restroom Incident

Tales From The Lounge #1

The Quiet Life

Tales From The Lounge – Opening Soon…In 3D!!!

Tales From The Lounge was a weekly webcomic originally published in 2004/05 on the Zookeeper’s Lounge website. Loosly inspired by the PC game Zoo Tycoon and written and drawn by me it was a popular addition to the site. I was just learning digital colouring and then digital art when I was writing Tales so be prepared for some occasionally rough looking work.

While some of the stories are very game related or dated by the passage of time I have decided to present them again in all their glory. None of the artwork has been changed so be prepared for some occasionally dodgy digital colouring.

I plan to re-release the webcomic twice a week and I hope you enjoyed reading Tales as much as I did producing the comics.

ps – I fibbed just a little about the 3D bit in the title, but as everything gets a 3D makeover these days… ^_^;

After All These Years

I read comics.

For me it’s probably the perfect medium because I love reading and I love art and a comic (when it’s done right) is the perfect meeting of the two. I’ve gone through phases with them over the years and there have been occasions when I haven’t read one in months. My tastes have changed a lot over the decades, there have even been periods when I’ve been completely obsessed and spent a minor fortune on them. It all began Once Upon a Time…

When I was very, very young my dad got me into Hergé’s Tintin and Goscinnny and Uderzo’s Asterix. For all intents and purposes they were awesome graphic novels – a term that wouldn’t be coined for a long time yet. These stories were very influential and to this day Albert Uderzo is one of my favourite artists. Heck, I learned to draw trees from studying his artwork! As a kid I read Dandy and Beano and I  had a weekly British comic called Monster Fun – which is where this story really begins.

One week when I was just getting ready for my birthday there was a small pull-out sample of a brand new comic called 2000AD. There were dinosaurs and time travel, there were men with jetpacks. There were guns and motorbikes and a guy that could have been the Six Million Dollar Man. I was hooked – I had to buy this comic! When it came out I raced to the newsagent’s at the bottom of our street one Saturday morning and parted with my 8p. There was a cool red space spinner on the cover – which I promptly lost – but the stories inside were amazing. Of course the following week prog 2 (with it’s cyborg stickers) introduced Judge Dredd and I was hooked for a very long time indeed.

2000AD gave me mostly science fiction, but there was also horror and fantasy, humour and superheroes. Some of the great names in comics have worked on 2000AD over the years – Alan Moore, Alan Davis, Dave Gibbons, Alan Grant, Mark Millar, Brian Bolland, John Wagner, Ian Gibson, Simon Bisley, Carlos Ezquerra – the list goes on and on. I had a long association with the galaxy’s greatest comic over teh years and even today I don’t mind having a read. I’m rather looking forward to the new Judge Dredd movie coming soon – just because it’s Dredd.

Move the clock forwards a few years and you’d find me in Preedy’s newsagents in Bilston on a Saturday morning on my knees checking out Marvel comics. The first ones I picked up weren’t the obvious ones mind you – it was Conan the Barbarian and The Micronauts.

At 25pence each they were a little pricey for me but they were in full colour – something that my beloved 2000AD didn’t do. The American comics had a totally different flavour to British fare like Warlord. The odd thing about the comics I chose was that Conan was an adaptation based on the stories of Robert E Howards and the Micronauts were based on a line of kids toys! I guess that reading the Conan comic influenced me somewhat because some years later I became obsessive about collecting the novels and short stories and that was how I came into contact with the amazing Frank Frazetta’s artwork.

In the UK there was a habit of re-printing American comics in black and white or dual colour format. That was how I came to read the origins of Spider-man and Thor when I was very young indeedin Spider-man Comics Weekly. I knew Batman from the TV series and I’d seen Superman and Hulk and several others. I read British re-prints of a lot of Marvel stories over the years.

My love of comics continued and eventually expanded to take in Marvel’s superhero line. For some reason DC’s characters never really appealed to me in the same way that Marvel’s did. I was aware of Spider-man and the Fantastic Four and all the rest from TV and the occasional comic but the first superhero comic I really got into was The Uncanny X-Men. There was something about these characters that gripped me. I’m not sure if it was Claremont’s writing or the art by Dave Cockrum and John Byrne but something drew me in and kept me hooked.

The Dark Phoenix storyline is still one of my favourites ever and the time travel twists of Days of Future Past are amazing. They killed characters! Okay, admitedly the  characters didn’t stay dead and the twisty shenanigans that have gone on since with Jean Grey are brain melting. But back then it was awesomely bold.

I became hooked on superhero comics. I hit a point where I was spending a minor fortune each month on just about every Marvel title I could get my hands on. I was mail ordering to get them early and diving on the package as soon as it came through the post. From back in those days I love the bold Demon in a Bottle storyline in Iron Man. Walt Simonson’s run on Thor was stunning, magestic and wonderfully crafted. It still stands up as one of my favourite runs on a comic series with the bold way he incorporated the superhero, science fiction and Norse mythology elements to create something special.

John Byrne’s Fantastic Four was another personal favourite as was his run on Alpha Flight – the shock ending to issue 12 of AF is purely brilliant. Likewise Frank Miller’s run on Daredevil was inspired and resulted in another one of those huge comic book moments from back in the day. I read the event comics, I read the limited series and I even managed to still pick up British re-prints and original works. That was how I discovered the fantastic V For Vendetta in the pages of issue #1 of Warrior.

I wasn’t just a mainstream Marvel head – I segued off into the realms of the more indie works too.I read Metal Hurlant and Heavy Metal and Marvel’s Epic line which led me to Alien Legion and Elaine Lee and Mike Kaluta’s Starstruck. The Pini’s Elfquest was delightfully epic, Dave Sim’s Cerebus the Aardvark was quirky and politically intriguing and Laird and Eastman’s epic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was…well…epic! I didn’t completely neglect DC but strangely enough the stories that attracted me were mainly by Allan Moore. Batman: The Killing Joke blew me away and his run on Swamp Thing was both astounding and sometimes weird as hell. Watchmenwas another one of those incredibly well written pieces that drew you into a complex and intriguing world. The only big story I liked from that era that Moore didn’t have a hand in was Frank Miller’s legendary Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.

Eventually though the word of superhero comics lost some of its appeal to me and I began searing for something new, something fresh and exciting. I found it in the world of Japanese anime and manga. It pretty much started when I fell in love with Ottomo Katsuhiro’s Akira. I adored the film and when I got the chance I ate up the story of revolution, psychic children and friendship. The word “epic” doesn’t do this work justice. It punched all the right buttons for me and led me into the world of Japanese storytelling. There was something fresh and vibrant about these stories and they engaged me in a way that Western comics no longer managed.

I adored Manabe Joji’s Outlanders and Caravan Kidd, fell in love with Takahashi Rumiko’s Urusei Yatsura and Ranma 1/2, Toriyama Akira’s Dragonball and Dr Slump and when I came across Appleseed and Ghost in the Shell by Shiro Masamune I almost lost my mind; Shiro rapidly became another of my favourite artists. At that time in the US there weren’t that many writer/artists. You had Simonson, Byrne, Miller and a few more so one of the biggest standouts for me was that my favourite mangaka did both.

I slowed down on my comic consumption somewhat over the last bunch of years but I still return to it to wade through a story or three once in a while. I like the occasional Batman, I love Brubaker’s work on Captain America, Garth Ennis’s Preacher was fantastic and I still buzz over the original story from Niles 30 Days of Night.

The big standouts recently have been Kick-Ass and The Walking Dead. With Kick-Ass Millar and Romita Jr produced one of the most insanely fun comics I’ve picked up in years. The concept is so simply and brilliantly executed (pun intended) that it’s a wonder nobody thought of it before. And let’s face it, anything with a psychotic ten year old assasin is pure class all the way. The sequel carries the story to an innevitable and bloody conclusion in a very satisfying manner.

The last current read on my little list is Kirkman and Adlard’s The Walking Dead. I can’t say enough good things about this comic and if you’ve seen the TV series you’ll have an idea of why I love it. The comic is way better than TV show by a mile and does things that leave me screaming at the page. The characters are fantastically crafted and Kirkman never pulls back from the harsh brutality of his zombie infested world.

It’s rather scary to realise that I’ve been reading comics for roughly four decades now. I don’t honestly think I’ll stop, and why should I? As long as I continue to find things that are entertaining, fresh and innovative I’ll keep on reading them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quick, Quick, Slow…

I’m not a fast writer.

There, I said it. Now my secret’s out and everyone can go right ahead and judge me. When I say that I’m slow I really do mean it. A thousand words in a day is a good day for me; two thousand is a minor miracle. I constantly get astounded by writers who can knock out fifteen thousand words in a day – I’d love to be able to do that. My only consolation with the glacial pace of my writing is that I know the words I write aren’t going to need much work afterwards. That’s down to me labouring a sentence and occasionally savaging it like a dog with a bone.

I’ve tried different things to speed myself up – changing location when I write, having music or a movie in the background, sometimes writing in silence. All of these work for me of course but none of them seem to increase the wordcount significantly. I’ve spent entire days standing up in the kitchen writing just to see if that made a difference – the only obvious one being that I didn’t have far to go to make more coffee!

For the last week I’ve been trying a new approach – writing first thing in the morning. Get up, put the coffee on, walk the dog and then sit down at my trusty laptop. It seems to have worked a treat too – I’ve been hammering away at a short story “Bad Dice” that I’m thoroughly enjoying working on. Of course I’m going very slowly on it.

I suppose some of that lack of speed this week has been provided my newfound love of Game of Thrones – I really enjoyed the TV series so I thought I’d give the books a whirl. I’ve liked George RR Martin for years but I never seemed to get round to picking up Song of Ice and Fire until now. Wow! Just wow. It’s page turning, addictive stuff. I keep having the whole – just one more chapter and I’ll go to bed dilemma!

I think in the end that I’m resigned to being slow when it comes to writing. I should take consolation in the fact that the tortoise won the race because at least I know I’ll cross the finish line with each story. It may just take me a LOT longer than most people to get there!

A Friday Fun Five – with a Gaming twist

Much as I love my desert island location for these little snippets of what I love this particular one is a bit tricky because of the requirements. I need a TV; preferably a big one,  I need electricity and a comfy chair and I need something to play these five video games on.

Today I’m going to drop my favourite video games and the systems that they appeared on. Some of what’s in this list may surprise you, it’s in no way definitive and it only reflects what I love to play. This was partly inspired my completion of MW3 on Veteran yesterday and how dissapointed I was by the game. It’s not a bad game as far as an FPS goes, but it just wasn’t as good as I expected or as good as it promised to be. After the irritation I felt over Black-Ops I was hopeful that MW3 would redeem the franchise in my eyes – sadly this wasn’t the case.

It got me thinking about what I love about games and the sort of games I love to play – hence this list. So, without further ado I present my Gaming five…

Resident Evil – Playstation

I first played Resi on the SEGA Saturn and it was a rather creepy and enjoyable experience but it wasn’t until I picked up the Playstation version that I really began to appreciate the game. It almost single-handedly spawned one of my favourite gaming genres – survival horror and gave me a few scares along the way. The set up is a simple one; a viral outbreak that turns people into zombies, an elite police unit sent to investigate and a spooky mansion house.

From the opening scene featuring real actors (and some terrible dialogue) I was hooked. The chance to play the game through as two different characters who each uncovered unique elements of the plot was very cool indeed. It wasn’t a fast game, you moved slowly even when you ran, turning was excruciating to watch and the load sequences of doors opening took forever. But it had something that drew me in and kept me playing into the wee hours of the morning time and again.

The environment is amazing, the creatures are astounding and the final big bad boss fight with the uber-monsterous Tyrant left you with a sense of accomplishment. The game has flaws, but even now I prefer the original to the prettier re-vamp that appeared on the Gamecube. The re-play value alone will keep you coming back for more and the ultimate gaming test of completing it with just a combat knife…hardcore.

Final Fantasy VII – Playstation

Let’s face it; if you don’t know what makes this game so special then you’ve missed out. The first of the series to appear of the Playstation FFVII took advantage of the disc format to delive a HUGE game of epic proportions. Magic and guns, love and loss, revolution and redemption; it covered some pretty big themes and did it well. From the opening FMV sequence you’re drawn into a futuristic world on the brink of revolution, populated by incredible characters and creatures.

The combat system is sweet, the materia that you use to summon GFs (who are amazing in themselves) is a nice touch to the standard magic in an RPG. Everything about FFVII screams class at the top of its lungs – even the mini games and little touches like making your hero dress up as a woman to infiltrate a building add to the quirkiness and longevity of the game. It does bear repeated playing, especially if you want to track down all of the materia and turn over every rock, explore every nook and cranny. You have the awesome Chocobo breeding program and racing to keep you amused and it also has one of the single most tragic and moving deaths of a major character in any game ever!

HALO 2 – X-Box

I loved HALO Combat Evolved for what it was – a nice, futuristic FPS that had a huge mythic feel to its backstory and locations. It ticked all the right boxes for me; a diverse alien menace to battle, a unique location to fight them and an array of devastating weapons at your disposal. Master Chief and Cortana make a great team and the prospect of the first sequel had me very keen to get playing. HALO 2 delivers on the promise of the first game and expands upon the universe in surprising ways.

Allowing you to play as the Arbiter (essentially the bad guy) for parts of the campaign story was a bold move that payed off well. It was a shame it wasn’t continued into the third title, but oh well. I love everything about it – the look of the game, the feel of the gameplay, the suptuous environments and sometimes frantic combat. Above all I absolutely adore the music – the HALO 2 soundtrack is one of the single best for a video game ever in my less than humble opinion.

The multiplayer was as fun as the campaign and Bungie delivered a game that really did improve on the original in every way.

Zoo Tycoon – PC

A long time ago I had a new PC. I swore I would never play games on it. Unfortunately for me I slipped the free disc that came with the PC into the disc tray one day, installed Zoo Tycoon and lost a chunk of my life for a while. It’s a simple Tycoon style game where you build and maintain a zoo. You can play challenge games or free play. The graphics were adequate for a PC game of that era and the sound did the job it was meant to; providing ambience to your game.

ZT had two winning factors in its favour though – the addictive nature of its gameplay and the ability to creat your own objects and animals and import them into the game. Once I found out about user created objects I ended up on a forum called Zookeeper’s Lounge where I found myself doing rotation fixes for objects people created. Somewhere around the world people have stuff in their ZT games that I worked on! The expansions brough marine animals and dinosaurs to the zoo and endless world building possibilities.

I was actually playing this again last weekend and I still love it.

Super Mario 64 – N64

If someone asks what my favourite video game of all time is then Mario 64 wins hands down. It wins on three major points; it’s fun, it’s fun and it’s FUN!. I picked up my 64 the day they went on sale in the UK, hurried home, opened up the box and was greeted by the imortal line “It’s-a me, Mario!”

Everything about this game is pure joy from the graphics to the music. The levels are superbly designed with some of the later ones having a tremendous challenge factor built in. The ability to fly, turn into metal or phase like a ghost add twists to the gameplay and the endless exploration you can do on each level is always rewarding. Seeing Mario, Toad, Bowser and the Princess in 3d for the first time was a real mind melting experience. Running from Boos, creeping past Pirahna Plants, surfing on a Koopa shell – this game has it all.

The big challenge is to collect every single star in the game – 120 in total although you can complete the game with only 70. The biggest challenge is to get EVERY coin – which I did once (and never again!). My favourite think in the game is an easter egg where you can find Yoshi sitting on the roof of the Princesses castle.

Honourable mentions -

Legend of Zelda – The Ocarina of Time (N64) an absolute classic that I still love as much today as when I first played it.

Yoshi’s Island (SNES) one of the best platform games ever and one of the greatest to appear on the SNES.

Fable 2 (X-Box 360) for bringing the world of Albion to life and offering so much to do in a wonderfully realised game.

Assassins Creed 2 (X-Box 360) for taking a great concept and a pretty, but repetetive game and turning it into something just a little bit special.

Silent Hill Playstation) for making me jump,  creeping me out  and making me work so hard to get all five endings.

and there you have it. It’s not a definitive list and it certainly doesn’t include every game I love to play (we’d be here AGES if I did that) but these are my favourites to play. What are yours?

 

Can We Say “Oops”?

I realised yesterday that I somehow managed to get through the whole of April without making a post.

It wasn’t that I didn’t have anything to say – far from it in fact. It was more a case of me slacking off instead.

So here’s a mini-update of what the last month held…

Checking In

I started the month with a wee bit of acting – playing the part of a sleazy businessman in one of the segments of an anthology film. Checking In is set in a hotel during a 24 hour period and follows five seperate, but linked stories.

The cast and crew were fantastic – a genuine pleasure to work with and some of the nicest people I’ve been on set with. The location was a real hotel, we shot in full HD, and the day was a twelve hour stretch that seemed to fly by.

The other cool thing about this film is that I wrote the opening segment and it will mark my debut as a director when we shoot it in July (no pressure!). Once all five segments are completed then it’s time for chopping, scoring and at some point it goes off to sunny Cannes.

Out Of The Woods

There’s a short story I wrote some years ago that I’m finally getting around to illustrating. I spent a lot of time doing “research” which involved watching a bunch of werewolf movies. Some were good, some were bad, but they all helped me somewhat in my quest to figure out how to draw a big furry beastie!

Haunted

This is a wee distraction that I’ve spent the last week going over and polishing. Haunted is a feature screenplay I’ve written, set in a potentially haunted house. It follows a group of ghost hunters/ parasychologists as they try to capture evidence of genuine paranormal phenomenon. My objective here is for an old fashioned scare rather than a blood bath. I want people jumping out of their seats in fright rather than getting grossed out.

There’s still other stuff that’s provided distractions too – such as reading, watching movies, playing video games and taking up archery! But all in all that’s a broad outline of what I got up to last month. I shall try to be more on the ball through May – I have a couple of dates worth of filming coming up for different projects so watch out for information on those. And of course, I shall be working on Out of the Woods, After Dark and a few other things too.

Watch this space…