In 2014 as part of the Grand Prairie Live Theatre annual Reel Shorts film Festival that year they did something different and special. They decide to do a screenplay writing competition for those who are 25 and under and be mentor online by a filmmaker who was originally from Grand Prairie and the winner of the competition and apparently a thousand dollars budget or something to make their Shorts film. But the biggest now at this point I only criterion for the competition is that the screenplay needs to be 10 to 11 minutes long.
At this point, I really have an outline for the timeline of my protagonist and the boy in the tundra story. My ability to ultimately describe what’s in my head in words was still new and to this day is a skill that I’m still practicing. So basically for those of you who read the previous post you got a far better outline and description now than what I was capable of doing when I first conceived full story.
Now thankfully at this time, I wasn’t too unfamiliar with the screenplay format. I used a free screenplay writing software called Celtx. So for the short I started to enter and was Cho origins story which I called “A soldier worst enemy” with not just tell Cho origins story but so introduce many characters who end up appearing land the series that says Sonic and Alex. The screenplay ultimately followed two different timelines for the focus will be primarily on Sato/Cho and his rival super soldier by the name John Rogers group will later be renamed to John Jaeger.
The other screenplay I sent and was a condensed version of the boy and the tundra story. Now for the time the story does what better with in the 10 to 11 page limit. But the so things I did initially cut out for my original vision of the story. The something I will admit. Is that the original idea for the somewhat essentially be a low-budget feature length down that can be shot around here. We want to see Sato becoming Cho but the main antagonists of this story would’ve been Lieut. Hydro. Now Lieut. Hydro was cut out for the competition to see that I knew his abilities would be far too ambitious to do. But Hydro would end up being used as the main antagonists in issue one. Actually several elements of the board the tundra story was used in issue one.
So I sent them my work got the mentor ship and had a Skype chat with Scott Belyea. I sent him a bunch of materials I already have for the series at this point Annie was amazed on how much stuff I had. I thought this point I been working series for like five years.
Scott's, So these are semi his critiques and what I will say is that I did not win the competition.
1. The world was too big. If not more like I was telling a story about a world and not about the characters. This was a problem that still process to this very day. Doing the first issue of the series I couldn’t fully resolved this problem but I knew over time at things get more and more like samplers things will begin to click. But nonetheless this was a problem I am very much am aware of.
2. Too Japanese. Okay I don’t want to go there but…This one I have to admit to being and degrees they are more or less right. If I was pitching the series in Vancouver or Toronto. I was holding me that this critique was a bit racist but he is kind of thing given our location it totally makes sense why he said. The location in northern Alberta where we were it would’ve been far more reasonable to make a story about the old West or set closer tomorrow times. That it just playing with our geography and population.
3. It jump around too much. Okay others what is completely totally fair. I actually have this complaint done to me in a couple times in my comic. The first screenplay I sent and was more last red and as a trailer or montage. In the second story didn’t really have anything emotionally resonant about it.
4. He’s Superman. Doing Scott analysis of the Boy in the tundra story. He pointed out on how similar the idea of the strange kid with superpowers is to the man of steel. Not by copying but there were a number a similar parallel.
Now if I remember correctly. We went real the man who when I tell that June I think. The film festival was in May but they spent a little bit of time going over the results. I could be completely wrong about this.
But what ended up happening was I decided I was going to make my own pitch trailer for the series. And if I have to make it into a comic book that I will start learning how to draw…
Now there are several critiques I could point out but those three was the biggest and what I think about most when developing this series.
Doing the fact that my world was too big is something that I am constantly am thinking about. I didn’t really know is that this was a problem until sometime later. I’ll get to that story in a bit. But this critique is very common among the new craters like me and it takes a great deal of thought to overcome. The thing is that there is really no clear-cut answer on how to do with this problem. But what I came to realize as time went on the answer was to focus more on my story or characters. Which, for me became a bit of a problem since I like to keep my stories pretty simple and focused way more on my characters. But Cho my protagonist was never created for the audience to relate to your connect what. Yes he was the guy who we fold but we do need to know much about him. I really gillnet conflict backstory just for the fun of it
Nonetheless, writing is by far the biggest struggle I have in the creative process. Because of my learning disabilities reading and writing is something that I have always struggled with to this very day.
Now, it’s too Japanese critique. This is something I could never completely shake. Since the series is very clearly and may influence that probably work done better in Japan. When I originally started drawing the series I try to make my art style look more like something from Western superhero comics. Like Steve Ditko or Jack Kirby. But as I been doing these past 10 issues I can find myself more and more leading towards the anime style. Not because that is what I like but that is what the story called for.
So to get back on topic. This it’s too-Japanese critique is the main reason why I redesign Cho to have a more spandex-looking costume in order to try to make him look more like a Western superhero.
How to get around too much I honestly don’t know on how much I overcame this issue. I noticed when I was working on the layer issues I stop paying too much attention on what I ran down in the scrap and standing certain scenes. But to be fair when you been working by yourself it’s really unclear on how to address this issue. So yeah I don’t know if I fix this problem or not. Especially since on how the page turn into comics you can completely ship a scene and location. And not to mention the fact that you can have multiple times. On the same page. Comics are weird and confusing.
The similarities to Cho has was Superman. I so just ran with it. But I approach Cho not as if I was copying the man of tomorrow but re-creating him from the ground up. As if I would frequently create the closest individual from the last son of krypton yet making them so completely unique and distinctive that you have the point out the similarities to realize that these two are pretty much the same. Heck want any case in point on how different in these two are. Cho essentially have a stereotypical Superman power set. Yes people for is fundamentally about one of those classic Superman knockoff yet being so completely original you might not even notice it at first.
Now by far one of the biggest impacts that this contest had on the series was by the end of the competition I decided to make my protagonist Cho’s autistic.
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