CHALKBOARD STUDIOS

Intermission

This blog is officially closed for intermission.

We'll be back posting again on June the 16th!

-Jay, Director

posted by ToFu @ 3:26 AM 0 comments

Website...

Hi all,

I've spoken to a web designer and a dear friend about the prospects about getting out site up.

Good news! She has informed me that this can be completed prior to my inital hopes of getting it up and running by october.

Now the next problem is deciding on a name for our firm and i can get started with the business site of things.

Anyway, this will be the last post by me. I hope everyone has a safe intermission and luck with their exams. I'll see u all at the next meeting.

-Jay, writer, Director.

posted by ToFu @ 8:53 PM 3 comments

COOKIE || you sneaky monkey

as planned, we got the group down to Cookie to check the place out and have a few drinks (NON-alcoholic, thank you very much!). there we had a impromptu meeting and discussed the following things:

(a) timeline of events
(b) who was working on what
(c) plans for intermission
(d) script

i think i've sent out the timeline to everyone; it's very basic and things can be added and subtracted if, as a group, we think it detracts from the story, is too long-winded or just doesn't make sense. furthermore, we assigned which scenes each head writer would be working on. as it stands now, jase and myself will be writing a very raw script, then handing it over to mark and brendan to read through, add or amend, and make notes as to what can be improved etc.

at the meeting, i told the guys that after today (friday) we should stop thinking about the comic and get our heads into our uni stuff. of course, everyone (myself included) is free to work on the comic but it was made clear that any work on the comic during the intermission period was definitely not to be made top priority. for those of us who don't have exams, or finish exams early - of course it wouldn't hurt to pick up those pens (or pencils) and get the ideas flowing ;).

the script, as i mentioned above, is mainly jase's and my job. it's coming along alright so far, with abotu 10% of it done. needless to say, they still need a lot of work and plenty of objective and constructive feedback from our other writers mark and brendan. only then will be do a trial 'scene' which will hopefully be fully drawn with dialogue and captions filled in too.

apart from that, i'd just like to thank everyone for putting in the effort to come to the city today and check out cookie (and the number one contender place for our launch). thanks also for putting in time out of meetings and your busy lives to get as far as we have. we've exceeded our six-month plan goals and are actually ahead in our pre-production, so excellent work guys.

just so i know when we can schedule the next meeting, can you guys let me know when your last exam is on? we'll have a couple of days after the last one of us has our exam, then reconvene meetings so we can get back on track.

enjoy your break guys, and good luck with exams!

-LOki, writer, project manager.

posted by LOki @ 9:47 PM 4 comments

Restructure

After initial discussion and the conclusion from analysing the market the following changes have been made.

I will be stepping down as Project Leader. The title has been awarded to Monin and all questions and queries regarding our production will be forwarded to him from now on.

The Project Leader's role are:
-Planning, coordinating weekly meetings.
-Progress checking on the tasks at hand.
-Modifiying and creating new and existing procedures.
-Overlooking the project as a whole.
-Other ad hoc duties.

Congradulations Monin!

The reason behind this the restructure is the oppurtunity for me to give this firm with the highest chance of success on our post-production.

My duties now will be:

-Arranging the website and plan it's content and launch.
-Market segmentation and product placement.
-Stemming out business activities to include publishing etc. (can't reveal too much)
-Advertising streams and sponsorship/funding sources
-Organising and planning meetings with regards to the business aspect.
-Analysing the market outside of Victoria
-Estimating figures (break even estimates, capital expenditure and growth charts)

On top of my duties as; Head Writer, Art Coordinator and Supporting Visual.

I made this change because really it's impossible for my to do everything.
I thank Monin for accepting this stressful role. Any questions about this change please feel free to ask me.

-Jay, Director

posted by ToFu @ 1:41 AM 4 comments

PRE-MEETING DISCUSSIONS pt. 2

tonight jase and i sat down with our publisher and good friend omer and described the project to him from conception till where we're up to at this present moment. i think omer was genuinely impressed with the depth of our comic as well as our very personal attachement to our work. i'm pretty sure omer sees his fair share of publications and it felt good that he seemed to really want to be apart of our one.

more to come soon, i'm tired :).

-LOki

posted by LOki @ 5:43 AM 0 comments

Progress Check

Hey everyone,

As you all know we're planning to have a progress check on Thurday night.
The plan is to leave around 5-ish at perhaps Oakleigh trainstation?

Any plan changes, please put it up in the chatterbox or comment in this post.

The aim is to collect as many city and structural and other misc. objects as possible.
Monin and i think we've found our opening venue so it'll be wise to come and see it!

After a quick check up on what needs to be done before the next meeting (a month away) we'll be set.

We have updated files and other character profiles and also we'll have ur folder ready by then as well Mark :)

God's in his heaven, all is right with the comic society.

-Jay

posted by ToFu @ 1:48 AM 8 comments

MEETING FIVE || can i get any of you cunts a drink?

well the day did start off pretty interestingly. as jase had noted, we went into the city to check out what the australian indies were currently offering to the comic-reading public. and needless to say, there really isn't much out there. as i told jase, to which he agreed, the one thing they all lacked was a decent story. they drawings were fine, but beyond that the comics we picked up had very little to offer in the way of mental engagement or even slight stimulation.

and i have to admit, getting those free pints of coke was pretty awesome. the guys that were interested in our work seemed to be genuinely into the whole graphic novel scene, and seemed cultured and knew their shit. it was uplifting and inspiring that those kind of people were out in the world and were interested in what two kids from the 'burbs were doing.

anyhoo, after a short break (being filled with a 1.5 hour-long torts tutorial), we had our meeting. as jase mentioned, we had a bit of hitch; we were originally going to have the meeting at monash uni, clayton, but then moved to the pancake parlour at chadstone. we ordered our drinks: a pint of cider, a pint of cola, a choc-banana swiss mountain, and another banana swiss mounted with a good ol' VB, and the meeting got underway.

in brief, this is what was covered at that meeting:

S.W.O.T. ANALYSIS
Checking out what's available in the market. This section was rewritten due to the important findings and strategies that will be implemented by this firm. Sorry :) - Jay, Project Leader

MARKETING
as jase mentioned, we were thinking of having the comic launch at COOKIE, which is an awesome venue; vintage, but chilled. i noticed that jase said he didn't want to give too much away so maybe i'll tread on the safe side and let out as little as possible :).

STORY TIMELINE
as a writer, i undertook to come up with the basic timeline of events, key scenes, and character interactions. while at cookie, i was able to draw up a very basic timeline as to the events in the story, with help from a nifty little diagram drawn by jase the previous night. things are moving quickly guys...

CHARACTERS
again, chracters were discussed in depth and with vito's awesome sketches (which to many would seem like completed works), we were able to really solidify what we were traing to capture in each character. it's easy enough to write a character in point-form, but it is quite another to see them come to life as an actual being. kudos vito, you're gonna kick so much ass.

dang, i've written quite a bit. but to end off, i'd like to reiterate jase's welcome to MARK HOLLINGSWORTH to the group. i totally agree with jase that mark's enthusiam and motivation, and overall good-nature made it easy to offer him the position as a writer, and later down the track as a PR dude too. thanks for getting on board.

furthermore, i'm quite honoured to be given the title of "vice-president".. but rest assured, i'm still gonna do what i've always done. there's no hierarchy here, and that's what i love.

until next meeting,

-LOki, writer.

posted by LOki @ 7:39 PM 8 comments

Fifth impressions...

What an interesting day it was.

Kick started with a visit to the city and Monin and i gathered info about what the Australian market has to offer, which isn't very much.

We settled down in a bar in the city called "Cookie" despite the crap name it's an awesome venue. The waiters there were very interested in what we were doing not to mention they were just cool.

"What are you doing there?"

"We write and produce comic books..."

"NO WAY MAN! THAT'S AWESOME!!"

And the drink was also on the house... a definate spirit lifter. We also were thinking about hosting the launch party at Cookie. Hmm.

Last night was the last meeting until July because of the upcoming exam, with a hitch up with Brendan the meeting we held at pancake parlore in Chaddy. As always, Mark came to check it out and we're very grateful for his participation and interest in the project.

We covered ground about our recent character development and our script. Vito also showcased his character designs and i must say they were nothing but spectacular and i'm certian i'm not alone on this.

Two annoucements were made in regards to our team:

1) Monin is now appointed Vice-President in operations and project management.
A job it seems he was born to do because he's so naturally good at. I'm blessed he is on the team.

2)Welcome aboard, Mark Hollingsworth!
Thanks for your excellent support, the enthusiasm you have shown for our work is truly an honour to have you on board. When you took it upon yourself to write your own character bios and decide to get urself involved in our work made you a natural selection.

That's all this week without revealing too much about our inner-operations i think :)

We're still on schedule and everything's great!
Thank you to the team and the people who have supported our work so far, we promise it'll be worth the wait.
And to the guys, thanks for having patience with me, especially Monin...
I hope this intermission will provide the break you all deserve, until the next meeting...


-Jay, Project Leader

posted by ToFu @ 5:37 PM 0 comments

PRE-MEETING DISCUSSIONS

in the last couple of days it was kinda obvious that things needed to be cleared up. we then decided to put this section in the blog where we'd post pre-meeting discussions here so it'd give the group somethings to think about prior to the actual meeting.

at the moment, the following things have come to mind:

CONSOLIDATION OF MAIN SEVEN CHARACTERS
* angus ("gus")
* bridget
HOW THEY GOT THERE
* how they fall
* the trials they face
* how they get out - and the consequences of it
KEY SCENES
* clare gathering stuff left behind at drop site
* bridget's song
* revelation of cause of fall
* angus' true nature
* terry's development
* dave's departure
* the calm before the storm a (when they finally escape)
CHARACTER HABITS AND ONE-LINERS
* used as recurring themes
* used as ridicule but others
CHARACTER INTERACTIONS
* bridget/clare
* clare/terry
COMIC SOUNDTRACK (subject to change)
* songs that will feature in the comic
* songs will be played at the comic launch :)

of course all the above are just ideas at the moment, and are open to interpretation and alteration. they can be taken out or changed completely if it ulitmately leads to a better outcome.

i guess all that is left to be said, we'll see you on tuesday!

-LOki, Jay (writer, project manager)

posted by LOki @ 12:59 AM 3 comments

MEETING FOUR || we're coming to get you barbara!

as jase noted, we didn't cover as much stuff as we had hoped. but i think, considering we had to cram two and ahlf meetings into one, we did alright as far as that was concerned. the main issues dealt with in this meeting included:

(a) review the framework
(b) discuss art directiom
(c) six-month outlook
(d) character finalisation

we had a look at the framework briefly jsut to get the feel of how the story was developing and where it was headed. unforturnately we couldn't have spent more time on it, but i think with the printouts we all have now, we can manage by jsut reading them on our own and contacting jase to clear up any confusion.

we spent a bit of time going over the six-month plan, plotting our projected progress on a timeline that would eventually lead to publication around mid decemeber. jase had broken the workload into mothnly intervals, as well as both pre-production and production stages. after having a look at what was proposed, all of us agreed that if we stuck to our guns, the timeline would be feasible.

art-wise, jase had done some panel drawings for one of the characters. basically, we were trying to see what kind of 'feel' we wanted to give off with the visuals, and as jase had told the group, the subject matter of the story is kind of serious and heavy, which meant that a certain drawing style would have to be adopted to accommodate that. as it stands at the moment, simple lines and shading are looking like a viable option. but at next weeks meeting, vito will prob have centre stage presenting his concept sketches of the main characters based on the writers' character profiles.

jase and i had come up with seven characters, two written by myself, three by jase, and one by brendan. although we had pretty much gotten the basics of each of these characters (well, as of yesterday only four characters had 'official' profiles), there were specifics that needed to be addressed. i understand that a lot of this expository stuff will go unnoticed by many readers, but i think it was mainly for our benefit that the characters had depth - but not only that, that they were also believable and not cliched. and i think, with last night's meeting, we acheived that.

i think jase has since written up two more characters to make a complete main cast of seven. at next week's meeting we'll be looking at supporting characters, and possibly gathering location references for the art guys.

next week, the meeting will be on tuesday, which means we've got two less days to get our stuff together before our month-long break from meetings to focus on uni stuff and exams. this also means that we'll have to try and cover a lot of our bases on tuesday night, so when we reconvene after exams, we'll be able to get right back into it and get the ball rolling a lot quicker.

-LOki, writer.

posted by LOki @ 3:28 PM 0 comments

Fourth impressions

We came prepared with our spiffy manilla folders with all our work up until today but we could'nt cover a lot of material.

I had about 2 hours to basically cover 2 weeks worth of meetings but i'm happy to report we have an idea of what we have to do.

I have moved the meeting to Tuesday 6pm at Uni because of Brendans vicious timetable on thurday. Next week will be the last meeting until the exam period is over.

I'm very tired atm, so i'll leave it at that until i remember more..

-Jay, Project Leader

posted by ToFu @ 1:38 AM 0 comments

one more time...

I've started writing some of the opening scenes and revised the initial framework we have.

I can really start imagining where this is going to go and i feel very good about it. Now if only the others can agree with me :P

Things are coming along very smoothly at the moment and i think there will be a mention about our organisational structure that will be addressed at the next meeting.

I've taken the liberty of putting up this little chatterbox which allows us to have immediate feedback and reponses to miscellaneous topics not covered in the posts.

Until next time.

-Jay, Project Leader, Comic Writers Society.

posted by ToFu @ 4:24 AM 1 comments