Here’s the second of the talks given last January 30, 2010, during the character creation workshop at the official launch of Project 20:10 at the Ateneo High School Fair. This time it’s Yvette Tan imparting words of wisdom:
Second part after the cut:
Last January 30, 2010, Talecraft’s Ria Lu gathered a bunch of Filipino creators to talk about creating characters (Paranormal/Supernatural characters specifically, although really, similar rules apply across the board) during the official launch of Project 20:10 at the Ateneo High School Fair. For the benefit of those who couldn’t make it, I took some footage of the talks, which I’ll be uploading (slowly, because I can haz slow internets) to the site over the next few weeks.
We’ll start off with the first speaker–me, actually. I truly find it difficult to watch a recording of myself, but I do hope that a few of you will find some use in my little dissertation on the “Five C’s of Characterization”. (Look, lawyers like mnemonics ok?) I divided the video into three parts of around eight minutes each (because apparently my awareness of time goes out the window when I start talking–sorry guys). The video quality gets a bit jittery by the third part, but the audio still stays solid.
Parts 2 and 3 after the cut.
Carljoe Javier is the author of “And the Geek Shall Inherit the Earth“ (he also did a recent guest post for the site), and an avowed geek whose particular background and history gives him a unique view of life and geekdom in the Philippines. In the first of a two-part interview, we talk to him about that background, and what the word “geek” means to him.
What’s your family like? Are they geeks like you or the type who love you in spite of the Emma Frost action figures?
My mom is totally non-geeky. She’s very supportive, but I get the sense that she kind of just nods along and thinks, O sige anak kung yan ang gusto mo.
My younger brother, who is also back in the States, is a bro in geekhood as well. Though there’s a five year gap between us, we share a lot of geekhood, we used to hang out in the comic book store and he went a step further by actually working at the comic book store (whereas I just worked at the library). He’s also got a much better Magic: The Gathering ranking than me. And we played a lot of video games together; we’d have our specialties. I could never beat him at fighting games, but I always pwned him at sports games.
I’ve also got a younger sister who I am trying to influence in geekiness, but she’s in high school so she’s still worried about looking cool and fitting in.
As for the extended family, cousins and the like, I’m a bit of an outsider, no geeky group around.
I know that you spent part of your formative years in Los Angeles. How long did you live abroad?
Yeah my mom and I moved to the States when I was three. I’m the eldest, so by the time we moved back to the Philippines when I was fourteen, we were making the trip back with my younger bro and my sister who was a baby at the time.
What was the biggest adjustment you had to make when you moved back to the Philippines?
Oh, the heat. haha. That and the mosquitos. Seriously, I spent the first couple months in air-conditioned rooms and the mall.
But culturally, I found myself in a pretty middle class neighborhood and I had come to the country assuming that I would have to learn and assimilate whatever was in front of me.
In that sense then, language was the hardest thing. I came back to the Philippines armed with enough Tagalog that I could hold a conversation, but the idioms were very different, (the only spoken Tagalog I’d been exposed to other than that spoken by other Fil-Ams came from Tito Vic and Joey and Rene Requeistas movies). People would use words and I’d look them up in the dictionary and they wouldn’t be there. Case in point, “Pare, ang lupit nung flipkick mo kanina.” I’d run home and look at the dictionary and it would say “Cruel.” And I’d be wondering how a flipkick could be described as cruel.
Also, on my first day of school, people laughed at my accent, and I’ve made a conscious effort to not have that accent since then. But then sometimes when I’ve been drinking the accent will sneak out and make an appearance.
As I’ve mentioned before, tomorrow (Saturday), 30 January 2010, I’ll be one of the speakers at the Project 20:10 launch at at 1:00pm, Instructional Technology Center (ITC) viewing room 2, Ateneo de Manila, High School. Organizer Ria Lu (who I recently interviewed on Metakritiko here and here) has generously given me the complete list of speakers for the Character Building workshop that will launch the Project, and I’m honored to be in such prestigious company:
…and of course, me.
So if you’re looking for some writing tips this Saturday, looking to support local creators, or simply in search of something to do to kill time on a Saturday afternoon, come on down. If you get bored, you can always head to the fair and try to get yourself caught by the Marriage Booth or something. (They still have those at fairs right? It’s been so long @_@)
Click to go to a larger image
Thanks to Ria Lu’s twitter, I’ve just discovered that budding game designers in Manila have their own version of… well, I don’t quite think NaNoWriMo would be a fair comparison, so let’s just say something akin to the 24 Hour Comic Challenge from a ways back. This year, Manila will be participating in the Global Game Jam by holding an event from late this Friday (January 29) to Sunday (January 31) at the UP Information Technology Training Center. You can find more details at this website as well as a handy FAQ (which mentions that while registration is nominally at 2:00 p.m., as long as you can make it to Friday by 8 p.m. you’re fine.)
They’ll start uploading the finished products (to the global site I presume?) around 3 p.m. Sunday. Here’s hoping for some SF games in the crop… I want my Kangkong vs. Kapre game ASAP!
This Saturday, 30 January 2010, I’ll be one of the speakers at the Project 20:10 launch at the Ateneo High School Fair. (For those interested in the project, the first part of my interview with Ria Lu is up on Metakritiko today.) I’ll be talking about creating paranormal characters, so I thought it might be a good warm up to talk about a few more-than-human characters from Philippine Speculative fiction and komiks who I’ve found to be memorable, and to try to analyze why I found them memorable. These aren’t necessarily my favorite characters mind you, as that’s largely a matter of reader preference/affinity for particular personalities… but whether or not the reader remembers the character is, I think, something a tad more objective, and a more universal goal for creators to aspire to.
That being said, this is still a personal and subjective aggregation (and in no way comprehensive), so please feel free to suggest others in the comments.
(Images from the slider image are attributed below)
Key words: Unity of Elements.
Why I remember him: While the fact I was so young when I first saw him is certainly a factor (nothing takes so permanent an impression as a child’s mind), the striking–yet simple–character design is probably what makes Zuma such a memorable character. While it would take years for special effects and costume technology to reach the point where heroes such as Batman and Spiderman could be rendered on-screen in a non-campy way, the 1985 Zuma film pretty much nailed its title character–not that difficult a task really, since all they needed to do was shave Max Laurel’s head, dye him green, and give him a two-headed snake. Yet those three elements were enough to convey the other-ness, the power and the malice which defined Zuma as a villain. While his costume, so to speak, is basic, every aspect of it was geared towards producing a singular impression.
(Image source: Artwork by Gilbert Monsanto)
The Philippine National Red Cross has a page up with information for those who want to help the people of Haiti in the wake of their worst earthquake in centuries. You can find that information here, but I also found a few other ways to help that might be of special interest to genre fans and creators.
First up, DriveThruRPG is selling a Gamers Helping Haiti bundle, where for a US$20 donation, you get to download a cornucopia of RPG ebooks with a total worth in excess of US$1000 (yes that’s one THOUSAND dollars). Even if you’re not a gamer, if you’re a writer you might find RPG source books can be a great way to jumpstart your imagination–I certainly read through dozens when I was young, even if I never used them in an actual game. The promotion lasts until the end of January, so please head on over and take a look.
Next, we have Crossed Genres’ Post a Story for Haiti initiative. Authors can post stories at their own sites and make them available for free online, then once they notify Crossed Genres the stories will be added to the list of stories already contributed (which includes stories from the likes of Jeff Vandermeer and Jay Lake) as an incentive for donors. If you’re a writer, feel free to contribute (and hey, let us know when you do), and if you’re a reader, why not use the stories as a way to reward yourself after sending in a donation?
If you guys know of any other ways to help, feel free to post in the comments. I’ll update this post if I stumble across any more that might involve the genre in an interesting or unique way.
(Image source: PNRC)
… specifically, the excellent World SF News Blog, an excellent source of news, interviews and features (we’ve linked to them many times) which casts a spotlight on speculative fiction and comics worldwide, especially works from authors/or which originate from places beyond the traditional bastions of the genre in the U.S.A. and the U.K. (Yes, that includes us here in the Philippines, as Bibliophile Stalker Charles Tan is one of the contributors.)
The WSNB is a companion blog to the Apex Book of World SF and now they’re asking for some help from readers in order to sell 92 more copies of the book by the end of January, as a way to support the site. In case you didn’t know, and could use another reason to support the site and the book, the Apex Book of World SF contains “The Kite of the Stars” by our very own Dean Alfar.
The book has received good reviews so far–here are a few I found online:
(Image source: Amazon.com)
Business World writer Johanna Poblete, who previously featured and reviewed Usok, gives Ruin and Resolve the same treatment in the pages of this week’s Business World Weekender (it’s a Friday-Saturday edition, so it should still be available today. Minor spoiler warnings apply.). While she has details her favorite stories in the review, as well as those that didn’t quite work for her, she seemed pleased overall with the charity anthology:
But outside its being a charitable donation, this newest [Spec Fic] anthology isn’t a throwaway piece of literature; it’s worth buying for its own sake — lending credence to the publisher’s self-effacing introduction of “we hope our stories and poems make you feel all the happier to have helped those in need.”
Credit once again goes to all our generous authors, as well as the Artspice! crew, who provided me with the art which I incorporated in the cover. Please continue to spread the word everyone–I’ve received news that some of our less Internet-savvy readers are a bit intimidated by the Smashwords registration process (a few have just given me cash in person @_@) but the process is actually very simple, and I’ve made a small walkthrough of the process here.
Still adjusting to my new schedule, and trying to balance Metakritiko editing/writing duties with Rocket Kapre and my own fiction, and couple that with my Internet outage (attributable to my router dying apparently) and that means I’ve been a bit behind on my news-of-relevance-to-Pinoy-SF… but that’s nothing a Chained Links post can’t fix!
Philippine Spec Fic News:
Genre and Fandom:
Reading and Writing:
Adam David Awards budjette tan call for submissions Carljoe Javier celestine trinidad charity Charles Tan chiles samaniego Contest Crystal Koo Dean Alfar Dominique Cimafranca ebooks Eliza Victoria Estranghero Press fantasy Farthest Shore Filipino artists Filipino writers horror interview interviews Joey Nacino kajo baldisimo Karl de Mesa Kenneth Yu kindle komikon komiks manila international book fair Philippine folklore Philippine Speculative Fiction Project 20:10 Review Ruin and Resolve sales secondary worlds trese USOK usok 1 World SF Writing tips writing workshop yvette tan
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Rocket Kapre is an imprint of Eight Ray Sun Publishing Inc. (a new Philippine-based publisher), dedicated to bringing the very best of Philippine Speculative Fiction in English to a worldwide audience by means of digital distribution. More info can be found at our About section at the top of the page.
