Let's all pray for Tom. A bonus update from Keith

Hey everybody, Keith here. I'll be playing the roll of the beloved Mr. Nguyen this morning for our weekly update. Our plucky little pal Tom has a debilitating neck injury; not sure how he suffered it but I'm told it's very painful and he can barely move.

So, long story short, while I play substitute blog hero, Tom is somewhere in Minnesota getting x-rays and MRI's and trying to figure out why his nubile young Vietnamese body is failing him.

I guess there's a segue here into how this comic-book lifestyle can take a toll on the spine. I know a lot of guys in this field who suffer from back and neck issues after a couple of decades hunched over their drawing boards. I have some minor recurring problems with lower back/sciatic nerve pain myself, nothing major but I now have the angle of my drafting table adjusted almost vertically so I don't have to lean over as much. Everything falls on the floor all the time but it's better than that sharp ache at the base of my spine.

Anyway, who would think that sitting still all day could take a toll?  Just goes to show you, no one is safe!

I didn't have anything planned to show this week so I scrambled a bit and scraped together some stuff. I mentioned in last week's post that I usually draw a rough layout of every page as part of my writing process so I wondered if you guys might enjoy comparing my original rough to the page of script to Tom's layout for the same page. I'm not sure you'll be able to tell heads or tails from my layout, they're pretty quick and crudely drawn but I always find it fascinating to see how what I have pictured in my mind is interpreted by someone else's imagination. So first...my layout. This is for page 3 of The Switch.

 And now...the page of script.

PAGE THREE

PANEL ONE

Cut to the interior of a demolished BANK. Lots of overturned desks, office furniture, scattered paperwork, chairs. It should look like there was a super-powered BATTLE in here.

Because there was.

Electricia is sliding through the debris like a shark in shallow water. It's dark in here; she's the light source. All shadows cast from her.

ELECTRICIA: Siiiiidekick...

PANEL TWO

Electricia flips over a nearby desk. Nothing underneath it.

ELECTRICIA: Don't make it harder for me to FIND you, kid.

ELECTRICIA: GAME OF THRONES is on tonight.

PANEL THREE

Electricia unleashes a massively powerful, double-barreled blast of energy, disintegrating pretty much everything in front of her.

SFX: ZZZZAAAXXXXX!!

PANEL FOUR

In the aftermath of Electricia's blast, there's now a LARGE, JAGGED SMOKING HOLE in the middle of the floor. The hint of a dark sub-basement below.

She's noticing it.

ELECTRICIA: I turn into a TOTAL bitch when I miss my shows.

PANEL FIVE

Close on Electricia's lips, smirking.

NO DIALOGUE

And finally, Tom's layout:

So there you have it. I think if you scroll up and down, you'll see some interesting differences.

That about wraps it up for this week. Hopefully, Tom will be back up to speed and will take over the production blog next week. There's just no replacing him!

We'll keep you updated, thanks!

Keith