This Is Me:

The Official blog of Rotten Sandwich co-founder Dan Lam, his drawings, doodles, pictures and mindless jabber as you like. This may be the only thing keeping his sanity in check and his mind off of smoking, at least till his fingers leave the keyboard.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Treatments

Yesterday was spent writing treatments and plans for a science fiction comic series currently titled '1894'. It's an epic that will span three books, roughly three hundred pages each. I'm keeping the story and plot under wraps until I get the first few issues penciled. I've been doing research for this story for a month now. I'm trying to get the language down and even history.

I'll probably have a script done late August. In the meantime, I'm going to work on designs for the world and characters. I want this to be a sprawling epic comparable to the works of Osama Tezuka, Hayao Miyazaki and HG Wells.

I probably won't have any material out until mid-summer next year. Which is a long time, but considering that I'll be working most of the time and finding a team of artists that can put to together without pay, I expect it to be done on people's invested time. It's a passion project and most passions take time.

Monday, July 23, 2012

The future of 'Outdoodled!'

As some of you may know, 'Outdoodled!' is a comic mini-series I worked on with my good friend/artist Shogo Kadoya. We worked on it for a year and have kept it sitting quietly on our bookshelves for a while. We met up yesterday to go over some editing notes I had on the work edition.

We also discussed about the way we wanted to distribute the comic and I think we've come to a decision to put it all into one volume and shop it around. One particular venue we look forward to is the Brooklyn Comics and Graphic Festival, which happens every November. We'll also try out for independent comic book stores and online venues to distribute our work.

I'll also give RS Blogged readers a first look sometime soon. So be sure to check it out.

Sunday, July 22, 2012

State of Blogging

Blogging and updating has never been my strongest suit. When I blog, I blog about things I'm interested in such as photography, film trailers or music I'm listening to. Naturally, I have days where I work on film projects or TV shoots and that keeps me busy for a period. Then I forget I have a blog and it keeps me from writing whatever it is that's on my mind. Even on my days off, I tend to fill it with killing time wandering about the city, consuming on movies and concerts. The point of me starting this blog was not to only share my interests, but to also share my work. Whether it be photographs, drawings or even video clips. The idea was to be able to express myself on a public forum and receive critiques from fellow artists like myself. But lately with technology being so accessible and on top of my laziness, I've stopped being creative for a long time. I use Instagram to take most of my photos now (which you can follow @madebydanlam).

I've been working on this TV show for the Biochannel called 'Celebrity Ghost Stories' for two and a half seasons now. It has been a great source of finance and community for me. Now I have two weeks off the show before working on it again and I feel like I would like to use this time to get back on the creative horse, as it were. In doing so, I want to make a point of document my progress, here on blog-o-sphere to share my experiences and the changes I've gone through. So far, the list of things I plan to do for these coming weeks vary. One is a comic book that I've collaborated with a High School friend of mine, Shogo Kadoya, we've completed the pencils over a year ago and haven't gotten around to finishing the product. Today we are meeting up to discuss the final edits of the remaining issues. I've seen the first issue and it has come about nicely. It's still funny after years since I've wrote it. Which gives me hope that we'll complete the darn thing and share it with the world.

 I've several writing ideas that I want to develop. One is a science fiction comic book and the other is a dramatic short (possibly feature) film. I'm thinking of working on a treatment for both ideas before fully investing my time on one of them. The science fiction comic book is a retake on George Orwell's classic dystopian novel '1984', of which I've already made several sketches of the technology of that world. The dramatic film is something autobiographical and deals with my explorations of sex and death, or the idea of mortality.

 I also have plans for collaborations with my friends. Most likely within the photography and video realm of things. I've several photography projects I would like to work on, one is portraits of my friends. The other is something more interactive.

I also have friends that are in bands and I would like to propose music video ideas to them. I have also been meaning to do a small personal documentary on my grandmother and her experiences growing up in Vietnam, then immigrating to the United States. So check in from time to time and feel free to comment, critique or make suggestions. I want to put myself in an environment that nurtures creativity and productivity.

 Until then, keep on making stuff! madebydanlam