Good Gals? Part 1

So interestingly enough... the past year, literarally... I've been especially interested in creating female characters and protagonists, specifically.

And even more interesting is the fact that I have strongly considered revamping not 1, not 2, but 3 original superheroes into woman!

And i love it! These fresh new takes on these (to me) classic characters and remoderanizing them really makes an artist feel like he can fly. Truth be told I'm only like 80% sure I wanna rewrite these characters women in my canon... but the ideas are great and the new angle is just intriguing.

The first is the Golden Gryphon, or simply Gryphon. This hero started out as an African American from the UK whose father was a superhero. Basically son inherits dad's mantle after he dies. I personally got the idea after thinking about the story of Harry and Norman Osborn of Spider-Man lore. Green Goblin is such a terrible villain yet powerful and feared. I wondered what itd be like to flip that on a superhero. Plus the gryphon is one of my favorite mythical monsters and I wanted to use it as a heroic symbol, the wings and and all that.

But recently this crazy idea to write him as a her dawned on me. But it wasn't all that crazy in certain respects. First off I just needed an image. When the hero was a guy he reminded me of Don Cheadle in the Ocean movies (granted he was Australian), brash, super confident... in fact now he would prob look like Idris Elba. But now as a woman I struck gold when I considered the image of Divya from USA's Royal Pains. Her family is Indian but their citizenship is rooted in London and since Gryphon was (if i failed to mention) from the UK i still have an English character, albeit with more ethnicity and flavor to the character. I think so anyway!

Idk if there is any already famous superhero comic or anything who's dad was a hero, died and they became a hero too. Cuz that's where I'm going, there prob is and I'm just overlooking it absentmindedly cuz of my own work. But its cool and I'm gonna keep working on the character and see what happends...


As far as powers go, Gryphon wears a high powered next-gen exoskeleton which Gryphon inhereited from their late father. Its outfitted with flight capabilities which were the most important seeing as the design is based off the gryphon monster which could fly like an eagle. Super strength is a factor to allude to the lion.


Maybe some English/British culture of history can also help me shape the super hero more. Oooh and I wanna look into som Japanese bionics to help me with the suit too. Now that should be fun!


Heroes 2 and 3 are coming in a future post!


FIN

hitRECord.org collabortations #1 and #2

First off I wanna give a shoutout to my dad for turning 50 this weekend!!!

So this week is my final week of Summer freedom, for school begins the 30th. Hopefully my scheduel for work will go as planned because i need a break from my job, substantially. Balancing betwixt it and academia will be -- well socializing via academia-- lol welcomed with open arms.

Ideally: 3 days of work. 3 days of school ^_^

And then the final sendoff will be the 29th right before school starts, going with my bros to chill and catchup with sum good friends, the King Sisters, really looking forward to that ^_^

But Labor Day weekend can't be left out either. The 5th I'll be working hard snapping shots for my first ever hitRECord.org collaboration (already up and running).

The idea behind it is to create a slideshow or maybe even short movie about iconic gunman or assassins in film. But there's one thing they all have in common: style.

Specifically in the form of aviator sun glasses. To me anyway haha.

So i've got a Russian Hitman, a Latin Slayer, a Thug, and a Cooporate Spy. Tho the Russian isn't Russian, but he looks that way to me.

So we're gonna go up to the park and take sum dramatic posses and things and hopefully take an ensemble shot or two also. I think its gonna be a lot of fun, real amateurish but I think that's the flair and appeal of it, I think, we'll see soon enough.

At the same time though I've invited other Recorders on the site to contribute any shots of themselves or that they think of. Idk people could really respond to this collab and we get a story or movie made out of it. Wouldn't that be sweet?!

So that's workwork. My other collab I'm happy to say is way more amateurish than Aviators because I'm def in need of others to contribute to fill up the album. It's called A.M. Legend. In it people are supposed to take pix of anything or anyone late at night or in dark settings, but done artistically so you can discern the subject matter. Basically we'll be taking spooky pix. I expect a bunch of black and white ones too. But like shots of the moon, or your dog or of a bunch of people in the dark with flashlights, or spooky trees or buildings late at night or shadows in your backyard ... or whatever. So long as it loooks really nocturnal and epic at the same time.

So it's really satisfying to have started two collaborations on my new favorite site. There's so much stuff up there its crazy, like you could just browse the site for days and days and see a bunch of really cool stuff and never get bored. Totally inspires me to stay busy and take more pix and write more scripts and shoot video.

I look forward to seeing what else God puts in my path...

FIN

SCOTT PILGRIM V.S. THE WORLD

So I've seen this here movie twice already! It's that cool haha. I didn't get to read it before the movie came out... I almost did. My friend let me borrow it for a few weeks, but it was right when school started. In fact now that I think about it I probably had it the whole semester, not a few weeks, and then after school ended my enthusiasm diminished instead of elevating to read it.

I wish now with all that free time I'd had that I'd read it.

But I'll read it one of these days.

so having said that, the movie was great fun. the game refferences and humor and action were sweet ^_^. I really couldn't figure out what would happen next since the world of S. Pilgrim was so foreign to me. All of the characters and things were so new. it felt nice to not have any previous strong ideas about what would happen in the movie version.

So Scott has to DEFEAT Romona's (purple haired girl) 7 evil ex's if he's gonna survive to to date her for a long time or marry her or whatever. The X's will always be in the way if they are not dealt with.

Each Ex was unique, i really liked Matthew Patel, the 1st Ex, cool thing is he stands out to me. Each fight one-ups the next, which is good, but I found I could remember all of them and enjoy them equally. The fights anyway. The X's themselves? I loved Matthew Patel, Todd Ingram (3rd X), and Roxie (Richter 5th X). Chris Evans, the 2nd X was great, really but for sum reasonI just gravitated to these three more as characters + their battles; they stood out more to me.

Tge music in this movie is great. Like its totally legit! Real creativity went into the songs. It wasn't full of other artists singing to anything. Even if they contributed it was all instrumental. I totally want this sountrack cuz the songs keep going thru my head =) The Inception soundtrack I need and Scott Pilgrim V.S. The World I need too.

The characters, all of them are silly and fun. Wallace, Scott's gay roomate gives us a lot of laughs. at the same time he rags on Scott, besides Ramona and Knives (who I'll get to in a minute), Wallace seem to care about Scott the most... as a true friend. It's like he looks out for him like a little brother, or he'll look out for others if he thinks Scott is being a jerk and can't see that for himself. He'll actually try to save ppl from Scott haha. Btw he's played by Kieran Culkin the younger brother of Macaulay Culkin. I hadn't seen him since the 1998 film The Mighty with Sharon Stone.

Now for Knives Chau. The cutest movie character ever, and there's lots of competition from Disney and the likes right, but this girl is adorable. She's so innocent and funloving and everything, I had to wonder how Scott snagged her in the first place! She's such a crazy loyal character and I thought the writers fleshed out her interaction with Scott very well. At some points I thought they were just done with her, but then she'd show up again later but it would make sense. She's just so nutty and cute and funny and also full of surprises.

Patel is comparred to a pirate but his epicically over animated voice is funny. His fighting skills are crazy too. Todd Ingram (Brandon Routh) is cool and I love his white color scheme, with the #3 on his chest ;) and his chucks and white Saiyan hair and Vegan psycho powers. Plus his guitar skills are awesome, I like how they went from fighting to getting "funky". Evan as a dirtbag, Brandon couldn't help but look heroic lol. And Roxy, Ramona's "sexyphase" was cool too, her ninja powers and fight with both Scott and Ramona was funny and cool and I like how she showed up for a sec, threatened him and then came back to finish him (or try) later lol. Nice story pacing.

Ok its getting late and there is more I could say. Well I did hear its only made $11,000,000 right now but I feel it'll be a cult classic, as sad as the gross revenue is =/ I still enjoyed it and look forward to reading it, as well as more webcomics. The movie even managed to mature the characters so they got serious sometimes, not uber serious tho but enuff so. I thought that was neat, somber when it needed to be and then back to rolling on the floor laughing =D

Thanks Bryan Lee O'Malley <3 haha and best of luck to you and your wife (Hope Larson) in your endeavors.

FIN

Superman #701

So that's the uncreditted version of Superman #701 cover and I just finished reading it. I got issue #700 weeks ago and it was cool, setting up for Supe's trek across America after War of the Supermen (which I still need to read).

He's walking because he feels out of touch with his fellow Americans and so he's visiting different cities, hanging with people and helping them along the way.

Lois Lane asks him how long he will walk for and Superman answers, "I don't know yet. Maybe until I run out of road."

It's kinda funny cuz a lot of people, including Lois, are weary that something has happend to Superman like Red Kryptonite or magick lol. But he assures them this is about people and he's not crazy. I think he's just tried of feeling lost, feeling that the fear of others that he doesn't understand them or can reach them beyond his powers and reputation, may be true.

This i think is a great jumping on point for me as an avid Superman fan because I haven't followed him in comics for a while and even then I only collected sporadically, whatever looked good you know? But this time I'm more experienced at reading these stories and now I understand storylines and things and Events more. And you know it's great because it's Superman trying to reach us... real people and prove that he's accessible.

At the same time it slightly reminds me of Death of Superman from a production standpoint. It's an EPIC story, Superman fighting Doomsday, but it was alsoa gamble from the writers years ago to see if fans would miss Big Blue if he really died. So, it kinda feels like a "stunt" to get us to realize, or believe first, that Superman is down to earth, like Captain America or Iron Man or Batman.

Like you know, many feel that Superman is too big of an icon to really be amongst us. Like its ridiculous for him to drink coffee in the Starbucks with us or talk to us... care for us for real and show it by more than just dazzling us with powers and mighty feats and Truth, Justice and the American Way.

The most actionpacked and dramatic part of this issue is when a woman is expericning a suicidal episode and the police and everyone is at the scene. She's thinking of jumping from her office building because she's so stressed and frusterated from family problems and uncertainy about her future. She basically yells at Supes about freewill because right now she's in a BAAAD place but she resents others forcing her to get help and see there's a better tomorrow.

So she puts him in a tight place because he's so used to immediatly saving people, no questions asked.

I won't spoil it for you with whether she lives or dies, you'll just have to read it, but I thought that was well done, cuz he stays with her and talks, going with her moment by moment in the course of her feelings and stuff and the problems she had. i'd never read Superman doing that... and I think its just that the fans don't know that Supes has the capacity to do that for people. Honestly we've sorta seen it with him and Lois a million times, but maybe we weren't convinced he cared about all of us equally.

So i'm kinda liking this storyline and it feels good to be following Superman in comics. Honestly I'm glad i jumped on now cuz this is a really chill story, it's dramatic and character driven, not about a Crisis or villains or Luthor or the JLA or anything/anybody. Its just the Man of Steel walking among us, learning, teaching and helping like only he can and he's flexing muscles we don't see him use much... his heart.

So yeah I guess my review of 701st issue of Superman. I thought about doing a video for youtube but idk... its been weeks and i just haven't been able to get with my brother to re-edit that Inception review for the 100th time >_<

And I admit... the bug had bitten me... you kno, that one that says every1 is on the internet and on tv and you need to get in on the action. Yeah, i mean I'm creative on my own, it's just hard to find outlets sometimes. Youtube is fun and i love the shows I follow. I enjoy writing here, written more here this year which is cool, even found more likeminded writers.

but idk... I think that i need to do what is needed and constructive. I can't just want to be seen and have good thigns to talk about or share.

I mean I think a lot happend towards the end of this year, and even b4 back in April with the 48hr film contest, then my best friend gets in a movie, i met a new film maker with an oppurtunity to write a movie, i'm collabortating more with ppl to do things... it's like a lot is happening I think, or stating to happen that will get things done.

Things like "You can't do it all alone" and the like are stirring in me more and more and I'm starting to believe it and have faith that the right ppl to work with are really out there. Like I don't have to hoard it all.

Grace... grace allows me to grow and makes room for my talents to grow too, helps me see and now I'm seeing a little more clearly now. I'm definitley encouraged to work harder and work with more people on things to make great artwork, videos photos books, whathaveyou.

I will continue to trust God and see what he sets up for me to walk in on this path, and at the same time let's see what mediums that applies to, its his inspiration that gives my mind life anyway so I can't forget whom I inherited my artistry from ^_^

FIN

Clouds Between My Knees

I was supposed to meet up with this dude I met at Borders who's really into filmmaking. But a family thing came for him so we gotta rescheduel.

Dag i just had this tune in my head and i wanted to try it out on the piano, but i lost it >_<

I've told others that flying means I can escape my problems, literally rise above them. Even though this doens't erase the problem(s)... I think what I want is a reminder that things aren't always what they seem. A reminder that with a new perspective on things I can beat the problem.

I figure a bird's eyeview is certainly better than a "nose-deep in trouble" perspective. Don't you?
And you know, displaying flight would be the least destructive way to stick it to your enemies, to those who look down on you, who think you're a loser or incompetent. Flying itsn't like superstrength or heatvision or lazers or turning into a monster. You try to intimidate your enemies with those powers and you're definitely going to be perceived as a villain. Think about it.

But if I were to just shoot up into the SKY, far over your head in the blink of an eye...

...you'd just be left there looking UP to me, head in clouds but with your feet on the ground. Heh.

Flying is my favorite superpower. It's infinity. It's inspirtaion. It's fear. It's love.

It's whatever, for some whomever, makes one feel weightless and insurmountable.

And it's the one dream that unifies us all, good and bad, poor and rich, bound and free...

...whether wide awake, or sound asleep.

"When you can FLY you can do ANYTHING."
-ICON: A Hero's Welcome.

... So that little piece I called Clouds Between My Knees, a wink to a line in Five For Fighting's song Superman (It's Not Easy). I uploaded those words to my hitRECord account as my 2nd contribution to the "Superheroes!Superpowers!" collab going on there, one of the MANY going on there lol. Nowadays I'm like saving the pages in my account so I can go back to them to join em at a later date. It's fantastic!

So on youtube all you can do is film stuff, which makes sense and I'm an aspiring filmmaker anyway. But on Joe Gordon-Levitt's site you have options. You can take pix. Film. Write. But best of all fuse these aspects together. And mostly I've uploaded pictures, mostly the lightthemed ones I uploaded to my facebook, but its a good start i think.

So i have an idea for a video, or rather a series of vids. I'm looking to how creative I can make it or need to while also looking into the style and how it'll fit on the site.

Superman movies my way ^_^

Yeah this week has been defined by flying and superman for me and some who know me. I'm not really sure why, just how the week has gone I guess. I wrote a Note on FB months back saying I was trying to get back in touch with Superman since after the Green Lantern Blackest Night event it hit me that for all the comicbooks I read, Superman isn't one of them

...and he's MY FAVORITE SUPERHERO O_O!

I mean he's the most iconic hero of them all, his shield is everywhere so he's great merchandise. But ya know if I didn't know about Supes' powers and his origiin and the fights he's been in and what he stands for... he'd just be a symbol that makes $$$. But since I do kno all that stuff about him, it makes the stuff I own from him that much more valuable =)

...hmmm listening to Art In Me by Jars Of Clay ;]

I hope I do actually find script writing fun and doable. Technically I've already written one, tho it was formatted maybe like a rough play, and it was intended to be a TV script for an anime. But you kno? I said to a friend of mine recently, and maybe I should think about this more, screenwriting was what I finally settled on since it merges both reading/writing/visualization all at the same time; well hopefully if the script is sold and used, and if the movie gets made, and if it gets seen lol.

But I'm honestly wondering if that's still what I think God was saying to me to do. The only thing that feels set in stone is media art specifically in filmmaking but idk if it's in solely screenwriting =/ If you want to read the script read this post:


http://diamondintherough101.blogspot.com/2009/01/serlyng-and-courtier.html

And for the inspirations and stuff behind the script read the following post:

http://diamondintherough101.blogspot.com/2009/02/making-of-serlyng-and-courtier.html

I wanna reproduce stories like this cuz writting like this is what really makes me feel weightless in life, like nothing can touch me, like I can do anything.

And I think that's God's best for me, definitely!

FIN

Josiah Hearts Superman

That would be my contribution to the "My Heart Is..." collaboration going on at hitRECord.org... well one of the MANY collabs going on.

See after Inception came out I just couldn't get enough of Nolan's work and so I've been reading articles about the movie and about the actors nonstop... and then I learned of Joseph Gordon-Levitt's production company hitRECord.org. It's where regular ppl like you and me can go and be a part of a collborative pot of creativity... i've been calling it better than youtube, personally.

So that image above I made last night, just last night, a heart made up of SUPERMAN stuff, all the stuff i own, comics, shirts and hats ^_^.

You won't believe me but I really didin't realize how much Superman stuff I own!

So you can find me there nowadays but I'm still here, and i hope to add more stuff to my youtube page when i can.

http://www.hitrecord.org/users/YoungKing101

I'm really enjoying trying to work with other ppl and just throw stuff together to make art happen, little successes here and there. God seems to be arranging a lot, and has definitley givien me the space to participate in more. He's sustaining this i think too, so i don't have to do too much ;]

Peace out, more writing coming soon.

FIN