Love Me Nice is a long-form comic taking place in a world where toons and humans co-exist. The focus is on Mac T. Monkey Jr., a cartoon actor begrudgingly filling his famous father’s shoes, and Claire Domani, his overclocked manager. Having somehow found themselves in a relationship together, life is rarely serene with the constant clashing of business and pleasure.

The second is Effort Comics! Effort Comics! doesn’t actually have a synopsis, so I’ve been forced to exercise my writing muscles and actually write one:

Effort Comics!, like Love Me Nice, is set in a world where toons and humans co-exist. The story follows two roommates, Samson (human), who works as a screenprinter, and Kurt (toon), who draws webcomics. The story pretty much revolves around their work and their relationships, and isn’t afraid to show a bit of penis when people have sex, so again, NSFW!

A trend I’ve noticed with most of these adult themed webcomics is that a lot of the better ones are written by women. They actually manage to motivate the sexual scenes in their comics, which makes it feel less like porn, and more like a story about people and their relationships (which usually involve some degree of sexual activity).

Chester5000

In case you didn’t get the hint from the title, Chester5000 is a webcomic that has a lot of sexual content and imagery. If this offends you DO NOT CLICK THE LINK. The links on Chester5000 are also of a similar SEXUAL nature, so do not be surprised when you click any of the links there either. The link to I09 on the other hand, is completely safe.

Thanks to I09 I stumbled upon a webcomic called Chester5000. Taking place in a steampunk setting, a young scientist, unable to satisfy his wifes ferocious sexual appetite, builds her a robot to satisfy her sexual needs. Somewhat unexpectedly, his wife and the robot fall in love. It’s pretty funny, and gives us a slightly eccentric look at love and sex. The art is also very appealing (and not just because it’s got a lot of sex, although that doesn’t make it any less appealing).

There’s also an interview with the comic’s creator, who is very interestingly, a girl. Just goes to show you, girls are just as dirty as guys, despite what society expects of them!

As I have said very clearly in the title and numerous times in the post, Chester5000 has SEX, and sex means NSFW (I cannot emphasize this enough), so don’t go browsing any of this while your boss is looking, or if your mum is sitting next to you. I can guarentee you, it won’t end well.

Rango!

Our story begins with Rango, who is actually just a nameless chameleon at the start of the film, and his group of inanimate friends. Having lived his entire life in a glass tank, he has preserved his sanity (somewhat) by giving imaginary life to a plastic fish, a fake palm tree, a dead cockroach and the torso of a Barbie doll. He spends his time acting out stories with his imaginary friends, but as with anyone in his situation, he longs for some real companionship. His chance for a real life comes when the glass tank he is in, is flung out the back of the car. It obviously smashes into a million little pieces, from which Rango escapes. Unfortunately for Rango, he’s been flung from his life of relative comfort onto a highway in the middle of the desert. Here he meets an old armadillo, who tells him he must journey into the desert, to the town of Dirt. Rather than sitting around waiting for the sun to bake him into a crispy critter, Rango goes in search of the town.

Now I’m not going to spoil the story, even though it’s relatively predictable. What makes Rango truly special is the way the plot unfolds, as it throws some unexpected angles and twists on what could have been an otherwise very generic western tale.

Rango also stands out as a great homage to classic Westerns, albeit with a dark and twisted sense of humour, so if you like cowboy movies, be sure to check this one out.

Towards the end of the workshop, we discussed the reality of working as a professional playwright. After hearing about some of the numbers being thrown around, playwriting could be a possible means of income for my future. I also met some awesome people who I’d love to work with in the future. So who knows, perhaps my novel turned blockbuster movie, might be a play instead?

Check out the videos below:

A Whole New World!

I’m also practicing different chords and strumming patterns, of which the latter is causing a bit of damage to my thumb. I don’t have a pick and I haven’t grown my nails out so when I have to perform a quick down, up strumming movement, I end up using the back of my thumb on the way back up. It hurts a bit, but allows me to pull off the motion relatively successfully. It would probably be a good idea for me to get a pick instead of doing damage to myself!

I used to be an otaku, and was quite happy to identify myself with the term. But those days are long gone, lost to a time when the stories were good and the animation took me to places I had never been…

It all began when I was a child, as it did for many of other people, with Robotech. I was probably about four years old the first time I watched it, but even then, I knew something was different about it. Later on I would devour shows such as Samurai Pizza Cats, Transformers, Saber Rider and Thundercats, which I knew was somehow similar to Robotech. I still didn’t know what made these cartoons different from the others, but I knew something that separated them a from shows like Bravestar, Bionic Six and He-Man.

Rick Hunter preps for battle.

Ok, I lie, I still loved these shows even though any self respecting teenager at the time would not have admitted to doing so. Being very much a social outcast at the time, I really didn’t care. They could add it to the list of dorky stuff that I used to love. Man, just thinking about it, everything I was rejected for is now popular and accepted. When I was a kid, I was mocked and made fun of because I played videogames! Ah, but I suppose it was a very different time back then… But anyway.

It wasn’t really until I got the internet and found other friends who were into anime at university that I discovered what I was really missing.

A friend gave me a cd he’d burnt with a few episodes of different shows on it. I watched the first episode of Evangelion, and I was hooked. I would connect my dialup at ten at night, fire up Kazaa and scour it for anime. I would start the download and pray that my rusty old dialup connection didn’t die during the night. I would get up just before my parents did, check my downloads and log off the internet. I’d started with Evangelion and was slowly pulling down episodes every night. If I was lucky I could get 2 episodes a night. It was most commonly available in a dual episode file that was about 100 megs big. So basically, 50 meg per episode. The video quality was so bad that some episodes were almost unwatchable. It was even worse than watching an old VHS tape! But like I said, I was hooked. These stories were told in ways unlike anything I had been exposed to before, and I wanted more. I downloaded, traded, and copied everything I could my hands on. I still feel I was privileged to watch shows like Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, and Serial Experiments Lain long before channels like Animax were thought possible.

Shinji Ikari must bear the world on his shoulders in Evangelion

As I’d settled into a certain rhythm, news would come of an anime movie that was breaking Japanese blockbuster records. The hype coming from fans all around the world about this movie was unheard of. People hadn’t been blown away since anime’s golden years in the 80′s. I searched Kazaa, hoping that someone would have it. Days went by and nothing. Eventually, I stopped searching. I guessed this movie was both literally and figuratively too big for anyone to upload onto the internet. It was a while afterwards, while searching for something else, that I saw it. It was far bigger than anything I had downloaded at this point. It would take me almost a week to get it, assuming my internet didn’t disconnect in the middle of the night. It was a Monday night, if everything went well, I would have it early Saturday morning.

I double clicked the file.

Eventually Friday night rolled around. I fired up the download. Less than 8 hours to go. I was so excited I literally couldn’t sleep. I sat the whole night reading in front of the computer until eventually at about 5.00 in the morning. It was done.

I had Princess Mononoke, and I had without a doubt, joined the Otaku tribe.

Mononoke rides one of the giant wolves that protect the forest

There were many other great stories that came after Princess Mononoke. Jin-Roh, Wings of Honneamise, Tokyo Godfathers… I was so dazzled by the light of these master Japanese storytellers, that I couldn’t see what lay in wait for me, once the light had faded away.

Monday night: Had nightmares and broken sleep.
Yesterday midday: Came home, ate a sandwich and went to sleep. It’s normally EXTREMELY difficult for me to sleep during the day, even when I’m really tired.
Last night: Went out without supper coz we were going to Canal Walk to watch a movie, and didn’t have time to get proper food. Normally we go to Cavendish and always eat before a movie instead of wasting money on overpriced popcorn and coke. End result? Almost passed out when I became stressed. I’ve noticed this is becoming somewhat of a trend.

The last time this happened some dude had fallen under the train and of course everyone was freaked out. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, it was three in the afternoon and I was (thankfully) sitting down. Next thing I know someone is tapping me on the shoulder and passing me back the book that I had been holding. I’m still grateful to the old coloured aunty for getting me a toffee to get my sugar levels up. Before then I had a bad case of flu and had to go downstairs to get something to eat. As I reach the bottom of the stairs I started feeling woozy so I sat down at the kitchen table…or at least, I thought I did. I woke up, my glasses five feet away from me and a bit of a bloody forehead from where my head hit the floor. Before then, I was working at the Waterfront at the little internet cafe above Nouveau. I had to rush to get to work on time because the train was late and I hadn’t eaten any breakfast. I had just finished opening the store when I sat down, sweating like I’d just run a marathon, and feeling light headed. Again, I wake up a little while later with my face being mangled by the keyboard.

The thing is that I’m skinny, so my body really doesn’t have any reserves (curse you fast metabolism and Indian genes). Anyone who knows me knows this also affects my mood because I get really grouchy when I don’t eat. On top of that, when I haven’t eaten properly, am tired and get stressed out, my body seems to shut down. No questions asked, I will just pass the fuck out. This probably also has something to do with my Dad’s suspicions that I have mild hypoglycemia, which is low blood sugar levels, which combined with stressful situations probably causes my body to rapidly burn through my limited energy reserves. My Dad is a GP but I’ve never been formally tested, and it takes a lot for me to actually start stressing so I rarely worry about it.

After this latest incident though, it does seem that I’m actually going to have to really make sure I eat three proper meals a day (or risk I embarrassing myself in front of strangers again).

My sister bought me an acoustic guitar last year for my birthday, which I spent about a month trying to learn. Unfortunately, with my timetable being what it was, I was losing even more sleep playing guitar. I stopped playing because going to work with only four to six hours of sleep because I was trying to write, draw and teach myself the guitar wasn’t really working out. Thankfully I have the time to play again but whatever toughness my fingers had developed is now gone, and so I’m having to grow myself some more calluses!