Ambition
I'm not a perfectionist (cue a chorus of "duhs" from the audience...). I'm not saying I don't admire perfection. I'm as big a fan of the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings triologies, Watchmen, Top Ten, and WE3 as the next guy. And I'm not saying that I'm not striving for perfection in my own work. I'm just smart enough to know that I'm not there yet, and probably won't be for some time to come.
No matter how badly you wanna criticize my work (and believe, given the sheer level of imperfection in my work, that's an easy task), you absolutely cannot deny that one of the strengths of my work is that it is Ambitious. I'm doing things that most other wouldn't dare to, in ways that most other people wouldn't approach (of course, whether this is commendable is debatable...). Hell, just the fact that I'm self publishing comics on a modest salary while working a full time manual labor job in a town in the middle of nowhere is pretty damn ambitious. I remember reading an article on some chick who self published while working full time in a deli. I thought to myself, "Deli, huh? Man, bet that's easy..."
The point of this Rant is this, I would rather watch/read a technically flawed work that is Ambitious, over a technically superiour book that is just another batch of the same old same old. What prompted this Rant is that over the weekend I watched "From Beyond". Here's the rundown. Director Stuart Gordon had just finished "ReAnimator" (an absolute B-Movie CLASSIC! If you're into to horror and haven't seen ReAnimator, than for the love of all that is holy go out and rent a copy today), which was based on an H.P. Lovecraft story, but was essentially an incredibly inventive Zombie movie. For his follow up, Gordan wanted to make a film that was truer to the Lovecraftian mythos. So he did "From Beyond" which is about a pair of scientists that build a machine that harmonically resonates, stimulating the dormant pineal gland in the brain. As a result, they can see all the horrible things that live with us day to day but we can't see cause they exist at a different harmonic resonance, and of course, the horrible things can see them. For all intents and purposes, "From Beyond" is a great movie. Great acting/writing/directing/soundtrack. So why have you never heard of From Beyond? Three words. BAD SPECIAL EFFECTS. In Gordon's desperate attempt to recreate the unspeakable horrors from Lovecraft's imagination, he ended up settling for cheap latex costumes that fall apart upon close scrutiny. Of course, it was the early 80s, and CGI was unheard of, so whadaya expect? Having said all of that, I own a musty old copy of "From Beyond" which I spent months searching actively for. Why?
Because I respect ambition.
That and there's at least one really good decapitation...
No matter how badly you wanna criticize my work (and believe, given the sheer level of imperfection in my work, that's an easy task), you absolutely cannot deny that one of the strengths of my work is that it is Ambitious. I'm doing things that most other wouldn't dare to, in ways that most other people wouldn't approach (of course, whether this is commendable is debatable...). Hell, just the fact that I'm self publishing comics on a modest salary while working a full time manual labor job in a town in the middle of nowhere is pretty damn ambitious. I remember reading an article on some chick who self published while working full time in a deli. I thought to myself, "Deli, huh? Man, bet that's easy..."
The point of this Rant is this, I would rather watch/read a technically flawed work that is Ambitious, over a technically superiour book that is just another batch of the same old same old. What prompted this Rant is that over the weekend I watched "From Beyond". Here's the rundown. Director Stuart Gordon had just finished "ReAnimator" (an absolute B-Movie CLASSIC! If you're into to horror and haven't seen ReAnimator, than for the love of all that is holy go out and rent a copy today), which was based on an H.P. Lovecraft story, but was essentially an incredibly inventive Zombie movie. For his follow up, Gordan wanted to make a film that was truer to the Lovecraftian mythos. So he did "From Beyond" which is about a pair of scientists that build a machine that harmonically resonates, stimulating the dormant pineal gland in the brain. As a result, they can see all the horrible things that live with us day to day but we can't see cause they exist at a different harmonic resonance, and of course, the horrible things can see them. For all intents and purposes, "From Beyond" is a great movie. Great acting/writing/directing/soundtrack. So why have you never heard of From Beyond? Three words. BAD SPECIAL EFFECTS. In Gordon's desperate attempt to recreate the unspeakable horrors from Lovecraft's imagination, he ended up settling for cheap latex costumes that fall apart upon close scrutiny. Of course, it was the early 80s, and CGI was unheard of, so whadaya expect? Having said all of that, I own a musty old copy of "From Beyond" which I spent months searching actively for. Why?
Because I respect ambition.
That and there's at least one really good decapitation...
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