About Pace
Okay, gonna start one of these - -mainly to think aloud about projects.
I mentioned in the Kickstarter thread I've been casting about for a smaller, initial project with a survivable minimum goal of $5K while hoping to drive commitments over 10K. This is in flux as the actual project may shift things as it develops.
One of the long-term goals of starting to work with Kickstarter would be to use it as a funding platform for larger works, so this initial project should be audience sympathetic going forward. Since the most likely follow-ups would either be my adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth or Zombieball, I'm aiming at a horror/dark fantasy crowd.
Apart from just adapting a another, shorter Lovecraft piece I've one idea percolating at the moment:
D33P1
We live in the demon-haunted universe Lovecraft wrote about in the 1920s. After aeons in the darkness, the alien nightmares he wrote about have started to emerge, if not into the light, into the shadowy penumbra of human awareness. While governments and respectable researchers try to keep their secrets, the truth is spreading like a plague. Some scoff, others hold tight to their Holy Books, and some try to prepare for a conflict they could never win against a foe they could never understand.
A few, upon learning the truth, look to the darkness itself for comfort; and seek to contact these ancient, pre-human gods; to appease and worship them in hope of surviving the inevitable apocalypse. And, among these traitors to humanity, there are those even more depraved and driven and they seek more than survival. . .
They seek love.
***
The core of the story is a first person narrative of a man seeking the love of the other he knows is lurking somewhere in the world. His life outside his day-job is spent in Lovecraftian fetish clubs full of prosthetic and body-mod wannabes and arranging hook-ups through web sites servicing the tentacle-friendly. He's desperate to feel the unknown sensations he thinks he can only have when he finally meets something truly alien.
***
The core of the story is a first person narrative of a man seeking the love of the other he knows is lurking somewhere in the world. His life outside his day-job is spent in Lovecraftian fetish clubs full of prosthetic and body-mod wannabes and arranging hook-ups through web sites servicing the tentacle-friendly. He's desperate to feel the unknown sensations he thinks he can only have when he finally meets something truly alien.
I already see some risky overlap with Moore's Neonomicon, so I'll be avoiding those direct comparisons as much as possible, but it may be a good thing to be drafting in his and Lovecraft's wake.
The main character is jaded, no longer turned on by people with applied or tattooed scales, doesn't feel arousal at the strange touch of a hand with its finger-bones removed to better mimic tentacles. The smell of human flesh, ejaculate and blood no longer holds any interest. Through whispers in the darkened fetish clubs, and furtive hints left on message boards, he finds a trail to the alien and follows the dark path to satiation.
My one worry is this will be too dark - -like early Clive Barker dark - -and not be able to find the crowd for it.
My one worry is this will be too dark - -like early Clive Barker dark - -and not be able to find the crowd for it.
More thinking needed.
Comments
Thinking D33P1 may not read as clearly as D33P_1 or D33P-1 or even D33P_ON3, though it may be smarter still to opt for much easier to 'get' DEEP1. May not make up my mind until after I play with the design.
A quick mental cataloguing of the rest of the story and realising I can eject a whole expository scene, introduce the PI he's hired right away and make him/her instantly more trustworthy and now have the potential of a police investigation dogging the protag.
Few other changes -- he may be trying to find his sister and not a lost lover. Something about his standing back while she plunged then his being so broken about it made him less interesting. A brother who was going down this weird path with his sister then losing her in the darkness might be more sympathetic and his guilt a better drive to go through all this.
Was hoping to have the script done already, but Christmas and health issues really kicked my ass these last weeks.
~R
I do near-daily studies from photos -- usually pin-up stuff like above - - this is from a few days ago and I scanned it to go with a blog post about motivating yourself to draw. You can read it here if you're interested http://burningmonster.blogspot.ca/2013/01/a-vulgar-motive.html