Mark's Manic Mumblings …

Man, did that year go by fast or what?

Here we go again, with Yet Another Long Blackout period.  I’ve had my computer study torn up for the last 3 months, trying to get a contractor to finish the bloody job in leveling and installing the new floor surface.  In the meantime, I’ve essentially been off-line as far as creative works goes.

Blech.

Color me depressed.

After reading a number of blogs from other animators, and getting walloped along the head with a clue-by-four from the Spousal Unit, I have come to the sad conclusion that my ideas will always outstrip my available “free time” by at least an order of magnitude.

In other words, don’t waste time on any project besides the one you really want to do.

Bleh.

Well, I’m glad I’ve had to review all of my notes in the process of trying to set up my project wiki – it shows just how much I’ve learned about anime and general Japanese culture from when I first tried to start up animation.

In other words, my original Ryusenshi outlines and research are a mess.  Not much of a surprise, but it’s painfully apparent just how much I didn’t think things through on the first pass years ago.  Outside of the broadest overall outline, I’m going to end up trashing nearly everything to do it right.

Maaaaaaaaaa………

Gah – setting up a data repository is tedious in the extreme. Hunting down all of my old notes on plot lines, character designs, and other crap is bad enough, but trying to come up with a coherent scheme for organizing all of this is quickly driving me batty.

Oh well …

Well, it’s time for me to once more attempt to be a serious animator – amongst all of the chaos of my usual lifestyle. I’ve tried – and previously failed – to balance my work and home life with my desires to create anime-style animation and my needs to write fiction, so the only way to become successful is to take things in stages.

First, Project Miko-chan. Originally a L5R/Clan War spinoff, I’ve previously bounced back & forth between making this an animation or just writing an original fantasy novel. This will eventually be my “main creative project” and will start out as a novel set in a look-alike fantasy world. 3D modeling and animation will eventually be integrated into the overall effort to make this an online multimedia story.

Second is the Ryusenshi project.  I had originally envisioned this as an anime, but I will be using this as a training project in modeling and animation for Miko-chan. The style I’ll be using is what I jokingly refer to as “Console 3D”, in that I’ll be emulating the semi-realistic animation style used in console fighting games like Dead Or Alive.  The advantage of doing it in this manner is that any character designs I create can be ported over to Miko-chan with little modification.

The last project I’m considering is BMSR, or Bishoujo Mahou Senshi Ranko.  This will be my last fanfic/fanime, as I have permanently retired all other fanfic stories from Gaijin’s Realm including Relatively Absent. My problem with fanfiction is that it becomes an endless black hole for creative energies, and easily consumes all of my creative efforts even when I don’t want it to.  By limiting my fanfiction writing to a single, well defined and limited storyline, I’m expecting to be able to pour the vast majority of my creative energy into Miko-chan.

Unfortunately, all of this still has to take back seat to my working life, home improvement, and my dance performances with my wife, so my ability to create will be impacted as usual.  The main difference is that I’m attempting to organize and schedule my time in a more efficient manner to allow the establishment of a small but steady workflow.

We’ll see…

I might as well formally acknowledge what is common knowledge by now – my involvement in the fan fiction community is pretty much over as far as being an active author is concerned. The Realm is closed and will not be reopened.  In addition, I’ve removed my fanfic writings from the net for several reasons:

• Any further creative works of mine will be in the fields of original fiction and animation, and I want any attention given to my efforts to be concentrated in these new endeavors.
• Two years is more than enough time for anyone who wanted to keep a local copy of any of my work to have done so.
• Leaving the stories up simply invites new readers – who then contact me with further pleas to continue the stories.
• It removes the temptation for some of the less ethical readers to repost my work elsewhere under their own byline.
• If the fics aren’t visible, they won’t create the “overhead of guilt” any author feels when they abandon their creations.

For those of you who provide a service to other readers by archiving stories, please don’t. I specifically do not want my incomplete stories to be made available elsewhere. If you have archived any of my stories, please delete them from your site. In addition, I specifically do not want any of my stories to be continued or expanded by another author. Come up with your own ideas and write your own stories, folks.

Many thanks to all the readers who supported my efforts – it was a wonderful learning experience.

Regards, Mark Shurtleff aka Togashi Gaijin