BenPaddon.co.uk

With ficlets.com seemingly suffering technical woes, I’m unable to actually post what I’ve just written. It was largely inspired by this new story that Andrew shared via Google Reader. I found it difficult not to turn it into some kind of story.

Detective Merope stepped out of the rain into the smoke-filled bar lit by neon signs promoting various brands of beer. He’d never been much of a beer man. Scotch was more his drink. It’d be the death of him one day, if this job didn’t get him first.

Merope saw his man at the bar and hovered towards an empty seat at his side. Time was of the essence.

“Buzz on the street is you know who’s behind the Mallory Road killings,” said the Detective, keeping his gaze fixed on the bar in front. People, he’d found, were intimidated by this.

“Yeah?” said the gaunt man next to him, a beer in his hand and a drunken twinkle in his eye. “I don’t know nuffin.”

“You’re testing my patience and I’m running out of time,” rasped Merope. He pulled his coat back to revel his weapon. “I really don’t wanna have to use this in front of all these nice people.”

“Yer bluffin,” the man smiled. “You gots one shot with that. Two, tops. Then yer dead.”

“You willing to bet your life on that? Because the sweat on your brow says otherwise.”

I’ll post it on Ficlets once they get their act together. I’m considering cross-posting ficlets here from now on as well.

Interesting Sidenote: This is my 100th ficlet. Or it will be, once it appears on the site. In the words of Socrates, “Woo.”

Edit - ficlets.com is now up and running again, so I’ve posted the ficlet there as well.  I’ve had to make some minor tweaks - MSWord originally counted twelve less characters than I’d actually used.

Remember that “webcomic dumping ground” idea I wrote about earlier today? I’ve only bloody gone and done it.

This morning Paul Southworth this tweet about today’s Ugly Hill:

Today’s comic is what happens when I don’t feel like I have an outlet for any other ideas. Wish I could do it more often.

That got me thinking: What if there were a website where cartoonists could put up such strips? Think about it - a daily webcomic with different comics every day by different people, for those occasions where they come up with an idea that doesn’t fit into their own comic. Somewhere to put ideas that might work for one or two strips, but probably couldn’t be sustained over a long period of time.

Say Krishna comes up with a funny idea for a strip about zombie proof-readers. One quick joke, one quick strip, but it doesn’t quite fit in with PC Weenies or Uncubed. Or say Jim wants to take a break from Outsider and do one or two quick little three-panel strips about a Leprechaun Pimp. They could draw a strip and send it on to this site, and then it gets put up in a few days as that day’s comic. One day you’re seeing Jim’s Leprechaun pimp-slapping someone, the next you’ve got Krisha’s zombies lamenting the number of spelling errors in their latest document. A different comic about something different every single day, forever.

I’m seriously considering setting this up. GhostHamster.com is going woefully unused at the moment with no sign that Eric and Jeremy are interested in actually getting around to launching it, so maybe I’d stick it there. Or maybe I’d set it up as something new. But it’d be interesting to see what people think about it. I’ve already had some positive feedback on Twitter.

Any thoughts?

In an attempt to make my blog seem as mundane as possible, I’m now going to talk about my posture.

Those of you who listened to Saturday’s edition of The Program with Kris Straub might recall a very brief discussion about how photogenic I’m not. Kris mentioned that he’s seen photos of me and I always seem to be slouching, which is something I’ve been vaguely aware of now for a long time. I’m 6′ 4″ and a lot of stuff - door handles, bathroom sinks, elevator buttons, etc. - seems to have been positioned lower than I require it to be. Plus I like to keep eye contact with the people I talk to, so if I’m walking and talking to them it’s easier to simply lower myself down so that they’re not looking up my nose. That and it’s less intimidating. Also I’m scared of heights.

However, Kris is right and I need to be less slouchy and more upright and awesome. That’s been my goal this week - stand tall, walk proud (I narrowly avoided the urge to write “Walk Hard”), etc. I’ve been pretty successful save for the fact that since I’ve been keeping myself upright my back has begun to ache and, as I mentioned above, everything seems to be just out of reach. It’s annoying, to be sure, but I imagine it’s something I’ll get used to.

In other news, I had lunch with Dino Andrade on Tuesday. For those of you who don’t know, he is (amongst other things) the voice of Skull on PvP: The Series, and the founder of geek dating site SoulGeek. He’s also a good friend and a top bloke, and I’ve been wanting to work with him for a while now. Fortunately for me he wanted to work with me as well, and he’s decided I would be the perfect guy to produce and co-host Radio SoulGeek, the official SoulGeek podcast. So lunch was mostly us talking about what we want out of our respective futures (there appears to be a fair amount of overlap there, which is nice) and planning the format for the podcast. It’s all looking incredibly promising and I don’t want to give away too much but besides the usual stuff - Geek News, Interviews, music, all of which will be delivered in a unique, fun way - there’s some really cool stuff that I don’t want to go into too much now for fear of ruining the surprise. I can promise you that it’ll be available to everyone (not just SoulGeek members) and, assuming we do it properly, it’s going to be a must-hear podcast. Whee!

There’s also some very cool stuff happening with Jump Leads in the near future but I definitely want to keep that one to myself for now.

Anyway, that’s enough from me for the moment. I have work to do!

I’m in a really surreal sort of mood at the moment. I want to write, but when I load up Word the urge vanishes and no ideas come to mind, so I close it. A few moments later I feel compelled to write again so I open up Word again and nothing comes. At all. It’s irritating. Nothing is holding my attention at the moment. I can’t play any games because they bore me after a couple of minutes, I can’t draw because I get annoyed with what I’m drawing and scribble all over it, and I can’t write for the aforementioned reasons.

I feel like I need to be doing something, but when I start doing something I lose interest. What the fuck is up with me today?

Vincent came into work yesterday after spending most of the week suspiciously AWOL, bringing with him one simple command: “Look in the freezer.” A short walk to the kitchen later, opening the freezer revealed… well, nothing. That is, until Vincent put his hand in and pulled out a nondescript plastic bag. He handed it to me, and I immediately knew what the contents were. I peeled away the slightly stiff packaging (arf) and inside was the Ninth Doctor, still bound and gagged. He has since been returned to his rightful triumphant position on my work desk, but there are questions which still need answering.

For instance, how did Vincent know? He claims he was little more than “just the messenger,” but I’m sure he’s more than just a simple Pez Dispenser*. I might even be inclined to say that he’s the mastermind behind the entire thing.

I shall keep you all informed.

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* “Pez Dispenser” is a term I coined to describe any sort of job which adds an unnecessary component to a workflow. The thinking behind the term is this: Pez, those horrible yet somehow enticing fruit-flavoured candies, generally come with those horrible plastic dispensers in the shape of a cartoon character. The candy goes in and they can be dispensed by pulling the head back (apparently teaching kids that there are sweet rewards in store for breaking peoples’ necks). The thing is, you have to spend time and effort loading the candy into the dispenser before it can be, well, dispensed. It’s quicker, easier, and less of a chore to just eat the fucking candy and skip the dispenser altogether.

Euan has “redubbed” the latest PvP strip. I’ve posted it up over on SkyScraper, our collaborative writing blog. Enjoy!

This blog post contains some spoilers for the second issue of Jump Leads, so if you haven’t read it yet I’d suggest not reading on. There are also potential spoilers for parts of the third season of Doctor Who so if you’re not up to speed with that show - no actual text, but some links to episode descriptions. If you don’t want those spoilt for you I’d advise against clicking those particular links - you’ll know ‘em when you see ‘em.

Read the rest of this entry »

Euan and I have been secretly planning a collaborative blog called Skyscraper for the last couple of months, and the site is finally live although there’s no content on it yet. Eventually we’ll be using it as a sort-of central hub for all of our writing (except my Ficlets, natch) but for now it consists of a single post, a single comment, and an unfinished “About” page.

I want to do another webcomic.

I’m obviously not abandoning Jump Leads, so don’t worry about that. I’m constantly writing scripts, constantly coming up with ideas, and that story is far from over. No, I’m very much feeling the need to work on a more traditional three- or four-panel “slice o’ life” comic. Something a little more close-to-home. Something semi-autobiographical.

And I want to draw it myself.

Yes, I know, I hate everything I draw. But I want to get past that. I want to break that barrier and try to get myself to a state where I am once again happy with my cartooning. I have no understanding of anatomy, no real grasp of technique, my style is wobbly and any hands I draw look like shit, but I want to give it a go again. Two years ago I decided I was too frustrated with my art to continue working on Fried, and I decided I wasn’t good enough to do Jump Leads. But I want to break that cycle. I don’t think I’ll ever be good enough to bring Jump Leads to life (and just as well really, as JjAR is doing a much better job of that than I ever could) but I reckon I could get myself to a place where I can say, “Alright, I’m ready. Let’s go.”

Hopefully I’ll have something more concrete for you in the near future.

I haven’t been doing Ficlet Fridays in a while, probably because my ficlet-writing has sort-of fluctuated from Every Damned Day to When I Damned Well Feel Like It. That means some days I’m writing three or four, and some days I’m writing bugger-all. But I’m writing, and that’s the important thing. So the Ficlet Friday updates will be sporadic, with updates usually every two or three weeks listing the ficlets I’ve written… well, since the last one.

So here we go. Read the rest of this entry »

I currently have two ideas fighting for supremacy in my head. The first idea is a Jump Leads script, which is an idea I’ve had in mind for a while now and features the rather important return of a character who hasn’t actually appeared in the comic yet. The idea has been brewing and growing in my brain for the past few months and it’s sort of come to the boil now. I’ve started to write it down, and I’m going through and expanding and improving the idea as I go along. I think it may well be the single most important thing to happen to Meaney and Llewellyn.

On the other hand, I have an idea for an episode of Doctor Who festering at the back of my mind too. Now, I’ve long since kicked the habit of writing Fan-Fiction. Actually this is a lie, but I have at least reached a point where it’s not being distributed anymore. It’s just for my own enjoyment, as a sort-of writing exercise. However one of my long-term goals, and I don’t have any problem sharing this with you although it is perhaps a little sad, is to write an episode of Doctor Who at some point in the future. I want to do it, even if it’s just the one. Even if it’s poorly received by the fans, I want to do it. Maybe one day I’ll get that opportunity.  But in the meantime I have this idea sort of gnawing away at me.

Now logically, the best thing for me to do is to ignore Doctor Who and get on with the Jump Leads script, being as it is that nothing may ever come of the Doctor Who one. But despite the logical reasoning going on here, I nevertheless still find myself drawn to putting the Jump Leads idea aside for a bit.

I don’t know. How silly am I, eh?