Shawn Bowers: The Website

I’m going to be restarting my Produce Yourself series over here on the official site.  Previously, I had been publishing it on another blog that I write for, but I want to bring it home because it’s going to be a lot of what I’m talking about over the next few months.

For an overview, the gist of Produce Yourself is simply that I want to help you along every step of self-producing.  I believe in the idea that it’s pointless to wait for opportunities to fall into your lap…if you want something, create it for yourself.  Of course, that’s easier said than done, which is why I’m going to talk about everything from venue booking to marketing to just creating a viable concept for a show.  The whole spectrum of creation from beginning to end is our fodder, and I WILL be jumping all over the place.

For the time being, I recommend catching yourself up on the first two installments, linked below.  They were originally written to go in a much more linear fashion, and I’m ditching that aspect of it, but I’m really big into the idea of narrative evolution, best-worst ideas and sabotaging your work, so these are good primers to some concepts I’m going to explore further down the road.

Produce Yourself – 30 Ideas, 30 Minutes

Produce Yourself- How To Sabotage Your Best Worst Idea

In college, I made an original short called Jesus In the Phantom Zone (which you can view right here). I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was animated…more that it was just a series of still images accompanied by voiceover and narration. Either way, I figured I was onto something as a means of being able to produce some of the stupid ideas I had in my head without needing a full crew of people to make a live action film.

With that thought, I began developing the concept for a series called NASCAR Samurai Priest Mystery Hour. The show would have been in the tradition of the Father Dowling Mysteries in that it was about a priest who solved mysteries, but it was SO MUCH MORE AS WELL.

Here’s the pitch: Trevor McRoy was a famous NASCAR driver…until he got into a big ole crash that managed to kill an innocent bystander with the debris.  Disgraced, he left NASCAR and became a samurai to try and find some balance and discipline….until he got into a really bad samurai fight and accidentally killed a fellow samurai with a sword.  Disgraced, he left the way of the samurai and became a priest, embracing his faith in a higher power.

But when the police discover the grisly murder of McRoy’s brother with a crime scene that prominently features evidence that could point to either the competitive racing world or the modern samurai world, they turn to the one man who might be able to help.  For Father McRoy, it’s not just a standard murder…it’s his sordid past taking its toll on those he holds most dear.

That was episode one, anyway.  Obviously (not obviously) it’s a comedy.  I got so far as to write down some loose outlines, but it never moved beyond the concept phase, and I apparently never went so far as to type up any of the stuff I jotted down.  I’m sure I’ll stumble across it one of these days.  I did find this character design for Father McRoy, though…

As you can see, this was before I was better at digital artworking.  I also found this still from the project, which I believe was intended to be at Father McRoy’s extremely modern church service.  Naturally, they had a DJ.  And that DJ was a robot.  And that robot’s name was Funkytron.  DUH.

And that’s how great ideas are born: combine a bunch of niche career fields into a crime story.

For more Stuff I Never Finished, click here.

I’m not going to lie to you and say that I haven’t reawakened as an obsessive portable gamer since getting my iPhone for Christmas.  Because I have.  It’s not my fault that there’s a ton of quality software out there for my little wunderphone, or that many of that software happens to be really good and worth playing as more than just an occasional timewaster.  It took me awhile to overcome that hurdle, as I still have nightmares of what mobile gaming USED to be…I’m talking Bubble Pop for your Samsung flip phone.  I shudder at the thought.

And so, like with anything that I discover I like, I’ve become obsessive about finding new games to play.  This is to your benefit, though, as it means I’ve sifted through tons and tons of crap to find some of the gems in the mix to recommend.  MAYBE WE CAN EVEN PLAY TOGETHER (if you have an iPhone or an iPod or an iPad (if you can get ahold of one when they come out (good luck))).

First off, a website recommendation.  Most all of the games on this list were downloaded for free at the time (even if they aren’t free anymore) using a site called AppShopper.com.  Don’t get the wrong idea…they’re not pirated and the site is totally innocuous.  It’s just an App Store tracker that shows when games are having price drops or free days.  I keep AppShopper.com/Prices bookmarked on my phone so I can check it every couple of days and stock up on a batch of new free games to try.  Even if there’s a game you want to actually PAY for, it’s worth it to keep a lookout on this site to see if you can’t save yourself a couple of bucks before you buy.

NOW THE GAMES, IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER:

Words With Friends

This one is probably the most common of these games, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth mentioning.  I haven’t spent a ton of time with the official Scrabble app, but it seems to me like they’re doing Scrabble better than Scrabble is.  The fact that you can download the full version of the game, albeit with ads that don’t really get in the way of the experience at all, is also a real selling point over the $4.99 that EA is asking for real Scrabble.  If you want to upgrade to the full version, it’s only $3 and they deserve your money for building a clean, effective word game knock-off.  It’s easy to connect with random opponents and you can have up to 20 games going at a time, so you almost always have a board to play on when you’re bored.

Download Words With Friends now!

Stackus

There are quite a few physics-based games for the iPhone, and some of them are quite good (Finger Physics comes to mind), but this one takes the cake in terms of stacking games.  The concept is simple: you take all the blocks on one side of the screen and restack them in whatever configuration you can on the other side to make a stable structure.  It actually sounds impossibly easy, until you realize that if any piece falls off of the increasingly small platforms you have to work with as bases, you’ll have to start all over.  I keep using the word “clean,” but it’s another example of a game with a very simple art and sound design that really make for a rewarding experience.  The sing-songy countdown clock when you complete your structure and the marimba celebration song upon your success will be stuck in your head for weeks.  And it’s free, though you can download a “Season Two” of 50+ new stages for $1.99 once you work your way through the first 50.

Download Stackus now!

Amateur Surgeon

This is an older title, but worth the mention.  Amateur Surgeon is from Adult Swim Games, and I believe there’s a full free version of it as a Flash game on their website, but it’s perfect for a touch-based game.  Imagine the game Operation, except with better graphics and instead of working in a hospital, you’re doing back alley surgery with chainsaws and staplers.  There’s a simple little story mode that goes along with it, but the game is long for what it is, and the surgeries gradually ramp up difficulty as you’re faced with case after case of bizarre medical emergency.  You’ll detoxify a body of poison, you’ll remove pieces of glass from someones liver, you’ll replace a rapper’s ribs with gold-plated bones and electroshock weird bugs crawling around inside a guy’s heart…and while the game gets a little bloody, it’s all done in an extremely cartoony style that makes even the grossest stuff look cool.

Download Amateur Surgeon now!

Bonus!  The Amateur Surgeon Christmas Edition is a free download that also acts as a semi-sequel to the original game.  If story means nothing to you, try out the gameplay with this short, holiday-themed version!

Alphabetic

Talk about another deceptively simple game…here’s the one-line description: you have to touch the alphabet in alphabetical order.  Except that the alphabet is bouncing and moving and changing color and filling your screen with random letters that you have to scavenge through to find the next item on your list.  The basic game doesn’t have a ton of replay (unless you get into a high score challenge with your girlfriend, which I may or may not have), but there is a Challenge mode as well that offers you specific goals, such as endurance or hitting a certain score or finding double letters.  The game is equipped with OpenFeint achievements as well, for those working on their iPhone gamerscore.

Download Alphabetic now!

Angry Birds

Another game with a great graphic style, Angry Birds is a tower-destroying catapult game packaged as a war between the titular angry birds and a group of evil pigs who have stolen their eggs.  Because that’s a thing.  This is another game that relies heavily on a realistic physics engine for much of its gameplay, but the feeling of knocking down these fortresses by launching specially-powered birds with a slingshot is immensely satisfying.  Best of all, it’s long…which is more rare than I would like for many puzzle games on the iPhone.  There are 105 levels of bird-shooting action for $.99, which is pretty damned good.  There’s a Lite version you can test, but it’s hard to find a better game deal for a dollar.

Download Angry Birds now!

——————–

So there’s a few of my recommendations.  Do you know an awesome game that I should try?  Leave me a comment and I’ll give it a shot!  It’s like they say in the Bible: “You can always find time for more games.”  No?  Maybe not the Bible?  Oh well.

Alexandra, the lady clown, stared at herself in the mirror.  With a puffy gloved hand, she wiped the thick white make-up off of her face with one of those make-up sponge things, revealing a series of horrible knife scars underneath.  She pulled the curly orange wig off of her head and tossed it on the nearest wig mannequin.

The end of the circus day was the only time she had to herself anymore.  Between the families and children who bothered her during the day and the unruly circus roadies who threw rocks at her trailer at night, there was no rest anymore, just solitude.  But judging by the heavy footsteps she could hear approaching outside, even that was a lost cause tonight.

The rusty tin door crashed open, letting in a burst of stinky elephant poop wind from the big top.  Alexandra’s father, Sergei, stood in the door licking a knife and pointing at her a lot, in the way that infers that you, the person being pointed at, are next.  She was the only person in her trailer, so the pointing was basically unnecessary, but he seemed to enjoy the theatrics.

“How many people did you make laugh today, Alexandra?” her father asked between licks.

She told him fourteen.  The licking stopped abruptly.

“Fourteen.  Pitiful.  That is but five percent of our daily ticket sales, Alexandra.  What kind of shitty clown can only muster five percent of laughter?”

She assumed it was a rhetorical question and continued smearing the last splotches of white from her neck.  Sergei hiked his sagging pants and lumbered over to her, pointer finger fixed like a laser.  He slid the dull edge of the knife’s back down her cheek, leaving a trail of slobber as it moved.  She refused to give him the satisfaction of looking at him, even though he was now trying to do that obnoxious double point from his eyes to hers in the mirror.

“We know what happens when we don’t reach our daily laugh quota, don’t we Alexandra?”

She totally knew, but obstained from nodding.  He flipped the knife in his hand and nicked her cheek in one fell swoop.  A slight string of blood trickled down her cheek, diluting in the saliva tracks her father’s knife had left behind.  It didn’t hurt, really.  Not anymore than the others.  She calmly lifted one of her gloved hands and used the thick foam lycra to wipe her cheek.

Sergei licked the blade clean of his daughter’s blood and awkwardly slid it back into his fanny pack, even though the knife was slightly too long and had to go in at a diagonal.  He zipped it as far as he could and then turned his attention back to his daughter.

“There is nothing funny about what I do to you, Alexandra.  You know this.  Tomorrow, be better.  It is the only way.”

The trailer buoyed slightly as he stepped back out into the night, leaving Alexandra with her quiet.  The cut on her face started bleeding again, and she held the sponge to her face to soak up the last few drops.  The banging of rocks landed on the roof of the trailer, and she could hear some derogatory yelling and a pick-up squeal off in the distance.

Alexandra flipped the switch on the side of the mirror and the make-up bulbs blinked off.  She looked pretty good in the darkness, the same way she looked pretty good with all that clown make-up on.  She smiled at the shadowy reflection in the mirror, stood up from her stool and went to lay down on the burlap cot that she called a bed.  As she lay there staring at the dented tin ceiling of her ramshackle home, the dull pain in her cheek throbbed just enough to provide a little internal rhythm to lull her to sleep.

That night, she dreamed of what her life would have been if she’d just finished that last semester of med school.

“The writer’s block finally gone, David sat down to write the novel that would eventually become his masterpiece.  The end.”

Jeff sat back in his leather office chair, arms satisfactorily rested behind his head, and let out a sigh.  Goddamn, he’d done it.  He’d written the ultimate novel about a writer writing a novel.  Sure, Stephen King had been coming close to perfecting the formula for years, but Jeff Mandel?  Jeff Mandel nailed it in one shot.

The secret, he realized, was that the writer in his story should be just like him.  We’re talking an average guy, someone everyone can relate to, but also really handsome in a noticeable way.  And the writer should be trying to write a novel, just like him.  But that’s where the twist comes in, because the writer gets some extreme writer’s block that just totally incapacitates him.  So instead of writing, the writer sits pensively for hours and reflects on his life up until that point, trying to find inspiration.  Real solid stuff, the kind that can go on for two hundred pages of adjectives alone.

Jeff made sure to click Save As, even though his copy of OpenOffice had document recovery should the program crash.  He clicked open his browser and ran a Google search for the word “publishers” to see if he could find some contact information on where to send this thing.  Boy, when his childhood friends go walking down the rows of books at their local B.Dalton, and they see Jeff’s name up there right next to Toni Morrison and Dan Brown?  They’re going to lose their shit.  They’ll be commenting all over his Facebook wall about it, attracting attention to the book, which will lead other people to comment and ask about it and then Jeff will have to write a whole blog post about it.  It’s just going to be a mess, really.

But then they’ll read it, and they’ll understand how important the work is.  That’s why he wrote the book, after all: to shine a light on the anguish of the common writer.  He was originally about eight pages into a mostly non-fiction novel about his opinions on Barrack Obama, but he scrapped it when he realized that he wasn’t really a political beast.  If anything, he’s like the stand-up comedian of the written world, just observing and riffing on the things that we all already know, but don’t really know (in italics).

They’ll know soon, he thought, because I’ll tell them (in italics).

He went to open another blank document to start a Contacts spreadsheet, but his cursor stopped before he could reach the File menu.  His computer had frozen again.  But it gave him a chance to reread the last few lines he had just written.  It all seemed to wrap up so nicely, which life so rarely ever does for people.  If anything, life is super tragic, and it would be a betrayal of truth for his fiction to depict anything but tragedy as an ending.  He nodded his head in agreement with himself until the cursor started moving again, upon which he promptly highlighted the last sentence and hit delete, except that he accidentally missed the letters “th” of the word “the” and had to manually backspace a little further.  He started typing again.

“The writer’s block finally gone, David sat down to write his hit novel, which would also serve as his suicide note because he would kill himself soon after.  The end.”

Jeff leaned back again, pretty much satisfied.  It just felt so much more real than that other trite thing he’d written before.  He clicked over to see what Google had found, but the first three links were all for the Publisher’s Clearing House.  He laughed silently at the irony of the search result.  Didn’t the Internet know that he had already won the lottery just by finishing this novel? (in italics)

The auto save feature kicked in and he closed his laptop for the night.  It had been a long Sunday, writing this damned book.  And as ideas for his follow-up project swirled through his head, Jeff dozed off, content that he had changed the world.