Year 2 Week #11 Whale Fall (The Whale Carcass) - Comic

This is one I've actually worked on a little.

Here's the original post: http://gotprojects.blogspot.com/2009/04/week-13-i-gotta-little-off-because-i.html

Since then I've decided I'll call the comic "Whale Fall" which is the name that oceanologists call a dead whale that's fallen to the deep sea and become it's own ecosystem

Below is the layout I started for the first issue. Most of the dialogue is really just there as a placeholder none of it's really done.

Page 1
A five panel page. Each panel a is of equal size stretching horizontally across the with of the page.

This page is our only glimpse of the whale’s life before it dies and becomes a setting for our story. I’d like to give the whale some distinct personality. I’m somewhat apposed to thought bubbles so I think what we’ll use is captions as if the whale is narrating the story from beyond the grave. Maybe even we’ll continue this into the rest of the story with the whale having some commentary on it’s own decomposition. Or maybe this is too far out. Also there will be some dialogue between the whale and the others of his/her pod.

Panel 1
An Idyllic scene of the ocean. Far from land with nothing but blue water and a burning yellow sun. In the center of the panel we see a whale tale breaching the water.

Other Whale 1: I was in the south sea yesterday.

Other Whale 2: Oh yeah.

Other Whale 1: Yeah it was nice.

Caption: Something doesn’t feel right.

Panel 2
Below the water we see a small pod of three or four whales swimming together. The two other whales exchange light conversation. Our whale is silent.

Caption: Is the water suddenly getting colder?

Panel 3
Closer now to the whale as it’s fallen a little behind. Most of the frame is filled up with our main whale. Possible the tail of another whale can be seen all the way to the left.

Caption: Perhaps I just need to sleep a little.

Panel 4
Our whale is alone in the frame. It fills most of it, but there’s enough space on either side of it to suggest it is now entirely alone.

Panel 5
A close up on the whale so it fills the entire frame. Far to the right we see it’s gigantic eye is closing.

Page 2
Pretty much the same layout as page one except this one has only four horizontal panels of equal size.

Panel 1
The whale now dead slowly dropping through the water. Possibly he’s twisting around. Behind him we see the flora and fauna of the area just below the sea. I’m going to do some research on what grows at what depths.

Caption:
100 feet below the ocean’s surface.


Panel 2
Somewhere else in the ocean the sleeper sharks are hanging out. Talking about investments and good places to eat lesser species. Maybe some motivational speaker they saw recently. I really like the idea of them being sort of corporate predators.

Sleeper Shark 1: On my own I projected 150, 200 a week but together we ate the whole school. True synergy.

Sleeper Shark 2: Yeah but now your tied into this relationship. It’s going to drastically lower your market share

Panel 3
The Whale floating dead through the water. Again the surrounding suggests the depth.

Caption
800 feet below the ocean’s surface.

Panel 4
The crabs or crustaceans hanging out. I still haven’t picked which crustacean I want to go with or there personality. Still working on it.

Although check this guy out: http://www.seasky.org/deep-sea/giant-isopod.html

Page 3
Same exact layout as two.

Panel 1
Once again the whale is seen floating down through the water.

Caption
1300 feet below the oceans surface.

Panel 2
The Osedax worms. I think these are going to be out mystical type creatures.

Some things about Osedax worms:

They exist only on whale falls. This begs the question how do they get from one whale fall to another?

The answer to this question came when scientists realized that all the full grown worms where female. They then discovered that each female has 50 to 100 microscopic larval males living inside it.

So now they think that when all the resources run out on one dead whale the females just die and release all there eggs and all there little males into the current where they drift until they find another dead whale.

In an effort to humanize these creatures I’d like to give there eventual demise a sort of religious mass suicide thing.

Like they somehow know when it’s time to go and how to find the next whale.

Not sure what they’ll be doing in this panel exactly but probably something to suggest there running out of resources on there current whale fall. There preparing to let go.

Panel 3
The whale is almost a the bottom of the sea. The ocean is cloudy with micro-organisms and sea cucumbers.

Caption
2014 feet below sea level

Panel 4
A close up of two sea cucumbers talking. These creatures make up 90% of the macro-fauna in the deep sea. I’m thinking this means that there our sort of proletariat. The working stiffs of deep sea life. I figure in this panel there just sorta bullshitting, talking about hot female sea cucumbers or how much they hate some other species.

Page 4
This is a big splash style page with four small panels in each of the corners.

Splash Page
The Whale seen from above. Where looking straight down at it as it’s corpse hits the ocean floor. There is a sort of blast radius of debris and water currents flying out from where it’s landed. It looks similar to when a meteor hits the earth.

In large lettering we see the title: Whale Fall!

Panel 1 (Up Left)
The sharks are seen reacting to the vibrations. One of them makes a snide comment about it.

Panel 2 (Up Right)
The Crabs have there reaction. Not sure what it will be since I don’t know much about the crabs yet.

Panel 3 (Down Left)
The Sea Cucumbers react. “Hmm... Time to go to work” or something like that.

Panel 4 (Down Right)
The Osedax worms react by celebrating and dying.

Year 2 Week #10 or whatever. Arthur Bell - Play, Movie, Comic

First off. If anyones reading this thing. I've decided to only post to one of my blogs a week. Either this one or the food one:

http://theeatingproject.blogspot.com/

I just don't have time with sleepwalkers, School and Cultures of Wonder to do both so I'll only post to this one once every two weeks.

But I'm going to still try and keep up with the idea of working on the projects I posted during the first year in the same order.

So without further ado... the progress I've made on The Arthur Bell project.

First off I came up with the rather bazaar idea a while back that I would incorperate all the real people throughout time who are named Arthur Bell these are the ones I found

The Dancer

The Whiskey Maker

The Botanist

The Radio Personality

The Saint

The Gay Rights Activist

Along these lines I also wrote the following scene about a guy names Arthur Bell (who may be a reincarnation of his namesake) meeting with a sort of immortal mystical hollywood character named "Johnny"

A cafe somewhere on the sunset strip

Arthur sits with a Johnny, a mysterious sort of Showbiz character.

Johnny: Oh this fucking life. How do you live this life? (to the waiter) Scotch please and water. Nothing to eat. Not now maybe later. (back to Arthur) god it’s like all anyone wants to talk about these days is marriage. Brad and Angela “TomKat” and the fucking alien baby of there’s what’s it’s name Sufi or something? No I don’t think Brad and Angela are going to get married I mean their going to marry but their not going to be married you know what I mean. There will be a wedding that’s for sure. I know these people. Brand and Angela and Vince and Jen and whoever else. There all fucking each other. Hell I’ve fucked each one of them and I’m not even good looking. That’s like all these people do. They fuck more than they act. They are fuckers. Anyways… marriage who has time for it? All those shots in the magazine are staged. I know I’ve been there when they shoot them. Those ones with Brad and the little mohawk kid I was there when they shot those. They got that kid from a casting agency that specializes in orphans. Actually the agency adopts orphans but…

Anyways… Arthur Bell that’s what you where asking about yeah haven’t heard that name in a while. Fucking marriage again. His marriage made him. He married well as they say. That’s where he got his initial round of funding if you know what I mean.

(The Waitress arrives with his drinks)

Johnny: Thanks honey. (to arthur) you want any food? Booze?

Arthur: I’m fine. Maybe coffee.

Waitress: Coffee. Sure. (to Johnny) How about you? You want any food now?

Johnny: Sure I’ll have a salad with bacon.

Waitress: We have a few salads that have bacon.

Johnny: You choose. Whatever just a salad with bacon on it. A bacon salad.

Waitress: How about a warm spinach salad?

Johnny: Whatever.

(Waitress leaves)

Johnny: (without missing a beat) Arthur Bell had a huge following here in LA and up north. He claimed it was like 500,000 people but it was more like two, but still 200,000 people is a shit load of people.

Arthur: How do you know how many people he had…

Johnny: I don’t really it’s just an estimate. A guesstimate as they say. I looked more like 200,000 than five. I knew Arthur Bell. I knew a lot of those guys.

Arthur: Wait that’s… how old…?

Johnny: I knew Jim Jones too. He was a fucking asshole. Total speed freak and sexual deviant. When the whole Kool Aid thing happened I didn’t even bat an eye. I was like “that’s what you get for taking your orders from a guy like that. You go to South America with to build a workers paradise based on Benzedrine and Sodomy and what do you expect to happen?”

But I digress… Arthur Bell was not an asshole or a sodomite or a drug addict he was a believer. People say he did it for the money that he was stealing from these people but I say he did it out of fear. He truly believed there where 10,000 families that have, throughout history conspired to rule the world and that he was part of a sacred secret order that has been working in secret to keep them in check. He also believed that there where little metal men beneath the earth but you know…

Why did you want to hear about Arthur again. I don’t remember if Eric said.

Arthur: Well see, my name is Arthur Bell, I mean...

Johnny: Oh okay. I guess that’s as good a reason as any. You where curious about your name sake.

(The waitress arrives with salad and coffee)

Johnny: Thanks sweetie. Bacon looks delicious. (to Arthur) You sure you don’t want anything else? It’s on the studio.

Arthur: No thanks. Hey can I ask you something?

Johnny: Sure that’s what I’m here for I guess.

Arthur: How do you know all this stuff. I mean, I’m sorry but who are you?

Johnny: What did Eric tell you?

Arthur: Uh… he just said he knew someone, Johnny, he said he knew a guy named Johnny who could help. He didn’t really tell me much.

Johnny: Isn’t that just like Eric! So mysterious. So aloof. Only as much information as you need to know right? I bailed him out of jail once. Did you know that? He used to think he was some sort of Gangster. Fuck one night in city jail cured him of that right?

There’s really not all that much mystery to what I do. I’ve just lived in L.A. all my life so I know it really well. You know I was born here and I never left. I’ve never been anywhere else. I mean I’ve been to Pacedena a couple of times but besides that I’ve never even left the county. So now I know things about the city and people come to me and ask me questions and I answer them and they give me things or do things for me. Pretty simple stuff. No big mystery.

Arthur: I don’t know about that.

Johnny: Yeah well, enough about me. We’re here to talk about Arthur Bell and I guess we’ve discovered that you, in fact, are Arthur Bell.

Arthur: Well I’m a Arthur Bell.

Johnny: Right. Good point! There must be hundreds of you out there. I knew one I think that made Scotch.

Arthur: Scotch?

Johnny: Well yeah I didn’t know him but I knew of him. Bell & Sons whiskey. First blended scotch to really get any attention. It’s okay I guess. I don’t know I’m fine with Dewer’s. It has a comforting watery taste.

Arthur: I’m not much of a drinker.

Johnny: Yeah well who is? (he toasts to Arthur then finishes his drink) Arthur Lowler Osborn Fosntain Bell. Let’s see. He was born somewhere in the midwest, sometime in the 1910’s I imagine, I don’t know much about that stuff. If it doesn’t happen in LA well… you know. Anyways he came here in 1934 and founded Mankind United and The Church of Jesus Christ and the Golden Rule. I can’t remember which came first or whatever but they where really the same thing. A cult dedicated to the overthrow of the worlds “hidden rulers”. It seems that since time immemorial there’s been 10,000 families who’ve controlled everything, big surprise there huh? Well Arthur Bell, the other Arthur Bell, was working for the other side, the good guys, he was working for these people called the “Patrons” and these guys have been around as long as the Hidden Rulers have, they’ve been keeping them in check. Standard good and evil shit, real epic stuff. According the Arthur they’ve been fighting this spiritual war in secret for the past few centuries and maybe even longer. He even claimed every so often that America’s Founding Fathers and even the Apostles where actually “Patrons”. However Arthur himself was not a Patron. He was something else. He was “The Voice”.

Arthur: The Voice?

Johnny: (very serious) The Voice. (laughs) No but seriously why do you want to know all this shit? Are you working on a script. I could get you a meeting. You know who would be great? The Coen Brothers. I’m going hunting with them this Friday. Want to come?

Arthur: I don’t really hunt.

Johnny: Neither do they. That’s why it would be fun. It’s fun to do things you don’t really do. Do you want some of my bacon? (Not allowing Arthur to respond) No seriously what are you talking to me for? I mean let’s take this to the studio. Get a real expert on it. Some asshole who’s entire job is to know shit like this.

Arthur: Isn’t that what you do?

Johnny: Fuck no!

Year 2 Week #9 Sleepwalkers Theatre/Piano Fight Fourth of July Cinco de Mayo Benefit

So last year’s corresponding post was the Sleepwalkers theatre depression party. For this year’s one I’m gonna post something about our upcoming, differently themed, party.

Through all my life as a party planner/promoter I’ve wanted to have a Fourth of July party on Cinco de Mayo or even better a Cinco de Mayo party on Fourth of July. I just always thought the absurdity of mixing the dates of these two up, since the name of both these holidays has the date in the title, was hilarious.

This year it looks like I’m going to get my wish. On July 3rd sleepwalkers theatre is teaming up with our fellow local theatre company PianoFight to throw a “Cinco de Mayo 4th of July Party”. Not sure what this is going to mean right now but I’m thinking Pinata’s filled with crappy americana artifacts of some sort, mariachi bands playing classic rock and “sombrero fighting”… or whatever.

Not much more info about it now.

More updates closer to the date.