MCM's Blog, page 68

RollBots Special: Making Vertex

Since today is re-run day for RollBots (and BTW, we’re apparently airing two more times per week now, so you have extra opportunities to catch up on your episodes!)  I thought I would use today’s post to describe the history of Vertex.

As you know, Vertex is the villain in RollBots.  He’s a big nasty guy.  But up until about two years ago, we didn’t really know what he’d look like.  All I’d noted in my write-ups was “spiderbot”, and I was desperately anxious to see what Andrew King drew, once des

The Green Chain in Vancouver!

Hey Vancouverites!  Starting March 6 (which is today, FYI), “The Green Chain” is playing at the 5th Avenue Cinemas.  It was written and directed by Mark Leiren-Young, the fantastic writer of many RollBots episodes.  You will not be disappointed.  Attend (twice?  thrice, perhaps?) and tell all your friends to do the same.  Really, if you don’t live in Vancouver but know somebody who does, telling them to attend is just as effective.  Twitter, Facebook, all that jazz.  Do it, England!

Poster is bel

Q&A With MeiLin Miranda

Yesterday, Wil Wheaton wrote a post about self-publishing resources, and mentioned my “Fixing the Pig Book Model” article, but also attracted a very interesting group of commenters who added a lot to the conversation.  One of those was MeiLin Miranda, whose site immediately grabbed me for its brilliant ideas and methodology for making a book.  Or really anything.

So I wrote her an email and we did a little interview where I got the scoop on this very cool experiment…

[note: As I've said before, I

Fixing the Pig Book Model

This post somewhat depends on my breakdown of the Pig book, but you can read it independently too.  I’ll be covering some ideas that should make sense either way.

I realize that many blogs have posts about how to improve your business online with five easy steps or whatnot, but I’m not going to pretend to have the answers here.  This is a work-in-progress where I’m trying to find the right balance to make my book-selling business work.  I’ve given myself a tough schedule and a lot of flexibility

1st Month Postmortem: Pig and the Box

[image error]Part of the fun of trying something new is finding out what fails.  This year, I’m getting 12 cracks at “something new”, so I want to make sure I can help other people out there learn from my mistakes.  I’m going to be doing postmortems on all my books, giving you some insights into their business plans and how they worked out.  I’ll probably do 1, 6 and 12 month posts for each title, just to track progress (but avoid writing these things as my full-time job).  First up is The Pig and the Box, p

Making a Show: Assets

Okay, last one, I swear.  This one will help explain why so many of the characters in RollBots look the same with different paint jobs.  Actually, if you look at it there’s a lot of careful re-use in the show.   For example: in 105, Koto has Pounder’s legs, repainted.  Asset management is a big and terrible job, but it makes things go smoothly in the end…

We’ve touched on the issue of assets before, but it bears some extra scrutiny, because your asset count largely defines what kind of an episode

Making a Show: Outlines

Aw hell.  I saw another post that I wrote back in September 2007 that shows my state of mind while making RollBots, and I feel the need to re-post.  This one has to do with the script outlines you write before you get to make an actual script.  Please keep in mind that I was in the middle of giving up caffeine at the time.  The bit about Line Producers still stands, though…

So: Outlines.

An outline is a short version of your script. Whereas your script is about 30 pages, your outline is only 9. In

Clearances: Sucking the Fun out of Life

I wrote this post back in September 2007 for my old blog, and realized I hadn’t moved it over.  It’ll probably be referenced a lot while discussing RollBots this season, and if nothing else, it will give you a bit of insight into how frustrating life was, back during the scripting phase of the show.  You can FEEL my sanity coming apart as you read it…

As a show creator, you are given great freedoms to invent elaborate plot lines, character arcs and other devious things to make the audience wet th

RollBots Recap: 104 “Scorched”

Every week, I’m going to try and give you some inside information about episodes of RollBots, so you can see the things that went into producing each story.  You should probably watch the episode first (probably won’t have a choice, since these posts won’t go live until after the episode airs).

In the beginning, we were aiming to write just 13 episodes per season of RollBots, and they were going to be funny-first stories with lots of “explore the world”.  So you have to imagine the topics we want

Shortcovers: First impression

I’m not one of those people that says things like: “This changes everything” or the more-amusing: “PARADIGM SHIFT!”. But good god… if Shortcovers.com works the way it’s meant to, I think we’ve got our first taste of 21st century literature consumption. And it’s a GOOD taste.

The site appears to be built by tech-minded people rather than lawyers or the marketing department, which is pretty amazing for a large company like Indigo.  They sell lots of major titles (Neil Gaiman’s “Graveyard Book” is