Persephone: Pt. 5 & Weevil and Nightshade Update

Before my update on Persephone and Weevil and Nightshade's Compendium of Farables & Tales...These small quibbles, sentences, and non-nonsensical thoughts are all part of new farables I am writing,"I'd apologize only if it made you feel sad.""The lightning tried to shake his hand, as it always wished to say, "Hi.""If she could shape a cloud from life, then maybe her darkness... that ghost, would pass into light."-------------Excerpt from new Novel I am working on, "The Vastness." I am a big fan of Vonnegut, Hemingway, and McCarthy... in case the writing style seems a bit odd. Sam is just a few feet away, sitting next to the floor jack. I can see her dirty feet snuggled underneath her legs as she bounces the screwdriver and pliers around like two action figures.“Sam, grab me the socket wrench,” I say.Her little hands begin fumbling around in the toolbox and I can tell she has no idea which tool I’m talking about. Sweat begins to sting my eyes and my fingers are numbing around the starter as I feel it slipping from my grasp.Be patient. She doesn’t know. Take your time. My neck is killing me.“It’s the one with the black handle sweetheart.”“Ok daddy, she replies cheerfully.A pair of vice grips gets tossed across the dirt towards me. It stops just short of hitting me in the forehead.“Sam,” I say with clenched teeth. “This doesn’t have a black handle. The handle is black and rubber and it makes a snap-snap sound when you turn it.”I see her little hand reaching back into the toolbox and after an excruciating two minutes she pulls out another tool and slides it over and it kicks a cloud of dirt into my face which sticks to the sweat on my brow and cheeks.It takes a few seconds of rapid head shaking before I dare open my eyes.Black handle?Silver.Snap-snap sound?No sound at all.Sam leans underneath the car and smiles my aggravation to relaxation for her eyes are bright and blue clouds holding oceans of light and the long smudge of grease across her cheek and forehead is too cute for me to remember why I was mad in the first place.Until the starter slides out of my hand and hits me in the forearm.-------------PERSEPHONEThe talented folks at Animation Dynamics have been working for weeks on keying, building, and designing the world around Persephone and her cruel guardians. I visited them last week to discuss milestones and new developing phases.Vince Nimmoor has been spending his time working on fitting about a proper key on each shot... and the occasional rotoscope for those shots which are not cooperating properly.*attached photos are works in progress. Nick Nakadate, ADi's 3D technical director, has been experimenting with the impressionistic construct of the world around Persephone. On-top of building the geography and architecture of the buildings and environment, his fashioning of what we imagined into creation is going quite well. We are looking at completing all animation by the end of February 2012. Once this stage of post-production is complete, we will move into sound design, scoring, and narration. Pick-up shots for Persephone are scheduled for the end of this month and once those are complete, we'll be in the home stretch. Next week, the ADi team and I are meeting up to discuss transitional elements between each shot - which is going to be most exciting as much of the impressionistic dream-world in this project takes its cue and flow from these movements.------WEEVIL AND NIGHTSHADE'S COMPENDIUM OF FARABLES & TALESCollaboration with Carla Lee has been a consistent joy of mine. Everyday we are discussing her imaginative designs and illustrations which will compliment the farables in Weevil and Nightshade.Compliment is not the right word... as I believe the illustrations do more than augment the story beyond mere visualization. They have become integral to the story... for while they hold descriptive elements... they will also give the reader a glimpse into the soul of each character.Even a rat. The tentative release plan for the book is March of 2012.We will be selling a first-run, limited amount of books through our Kickstarter site which will also be used to raise money for sound design and music for the Persephone project.I figure, why not combine a book release with a fundraiser for a project that is based off of one of the farables in the book? The idea of offering incentives of physical substance to all those that enjoy reading fairy tales, poetry, fables, and youth dystopian-based books seemed like a fine idea.Of course, we will be offering a great many other things on the Kickstarter account once we're live... but there's more time for that later.Speaking of time... I believe I've taken up enough of whoever made it this far in the update.Have a good day and remember to check your dryer for goblins.- Mark