Supe:// concept

Let me explain the universe to help clarify supe://
First off, the name is a pun on a number of things, it's a pun on http:// the programming language obviously, it's the term given to improvement of something e.g. To supe up one's car, and is also short for superficial, for reasons to become apparent.

The world is essentially our own but takes the idea of body modification one step further (read, too far). As technology progressed, medicine reached the point that allowed various body parts to be replaced for people who lost them in accidents e.g. Cybernetic arms, legs, eyes etc. however, since humans have simultaneously been working towards the ideas of body modification in the form of cosmetic surgery, and technology that allowed augmented reality (like the google specs that are in the design stages right now) the technologies ended up being incorporated and exploited for vain or technophile people to enhance their bodies.

These additions are now called "boosters" colloquially and, as you may expect, they vary greatly depending on the manufacturer, the individual's needs and the aesthetic required.

I thought of the idea by thinking forwards to what might next be the step for people who care more about their appearance and personal convenience than their own bodies. Not necessarily to their detriment, but to how it may appear to an outside appearance.

I would like to explore this in a bit more depth, but for now I have chosen to introduce people through this short that I will probably dub Supe:// the girl. I think it will serve as a snapshot of the world and the conflict found therein, distilled to it's base elements.

The story consists of an opening shot of a booster clinic, just one of many, with its eye catching billboards and advertisements. A young man exits the establishments with his new boosters and a group of girls (themselves all augmented in various extrovert fashions) instantly clamours around, remarking on the shiny new additions and cooing affectionally as the man snaps his fingers, causing a small jet of flame to erupt from his thumb from which he lights a cigarette (itself symbolic of the disregard of his own health and lungs the man has in exchange for spectacle). The boy smirks, his new ear booster glints impressively in the sunlight and the girls swoon.

Enter a new girl, who strolls on by, oblivious to the group. The man pauses to look at the girl, then his jaw slackens and his cigarette tumbles to the ground, sparking violently. The girl has no boosters whatsoever and the man is awestruck, how can such a plain girl grip him so effectively?

The man shoulders through the group and begins tailing the girl through the streets (mickey mousing, knocking over trashcans, peering around corners, hanging off of ledges and generally being obnoxious in his pursuit). The girl carries on happily unaware, her wide hips rocking, long hair waving.

During this point I'd like to spend a bit of effort highlighting some of the variety of boosters, just in passing, on various background characters. I'd relish some designs from the other artists working with me, since there will be as many designs as manufacturers of boosters. One idea I had was of a woman sat at a table outside a café watching a video on a holographic screen displayed before her eyes, which swivels as the woman notices the man and turns her head to follow his progression.

The man eventually manages to overtake the girl, and waits at a corner for her to approach him. Note at this point that his head is turned so that his ear booster is obscured. He smiles to the girl warmly as she approaches, who smiles back at him, he turns to her and she flinches noticeably at seeing his booster, which covers his left eye and ear (see pics). She walks past swiftly and he looks crestfallen, catching his reflection in a puddle/shop window/reflective surface, he looks thoughtful and raises his hand to his booster, running his fingers over its glossy surface. Fade to black.

Next we see another street some days later, the same girl walking nonchalantly by (wearing another outfit to mark the passage of time) when suddenly we see a pair of legs step into shot before her, blocking her path. Camera reveals the man, boosters removed, his face restored to its natural look, wearing a sheepish smile (new gained humility). The girl contemplates the man then smiles sweetly.

End

And that's the plot, as you can see not much happens but we see how the man changes his outlook on body modification drastically by realising with the help of an outside perspective, just what it is he has become. I had initially written a longer and more in depth scenario that included more exposition, but it all boiled down to man has new boosters, foreign girl is repelled, man has epiphany. The universe can be fleshed out later, provided people want to learn more, and I think they will do, since it may well pertain to what our own future holds. Anyways, enough talking for now, let me know what you think :D
Sam

Horsefeathers!

Okay so I'm trying to male my poem Horsefeathers into an animation in earnest now, I have various sketches and concept drawings, I have an accomplice named Akle (screenname) who is supporting me by drawing background art and another guy named nickleseye (screenname) providing sound effects and music.

Obviously I'm really excited about getting this going

I've also taken the time to create an animatic (moving storyboard) to act as a rough outline of the plot, which can be watched here;

There is no sound as of yet but will be added soon enough.

Next steps!
1. Add sound to animatic
2. Show the animatic to prospective animators
3. Support project as much as possible with additional sketches and direction
4.
5. Profit

I have other ideas for animations and will likely draft a few as shorter pieces in order to get more experience working with a team and different animation styles

check out my dropbox for more horsefeathers related media such as concept art, storyboard sketches etc.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/7kmk6fw3s4kuoly/jg0Y82xrDu?m

Help wanted draft

Here's a little piece I wrote some year or so ago, it was the first piece of creative writing I attempted as an adult, before "Nome". It depicts Joel and Faye on an average day (well the start of one) it's unfinished obviously but acts as a stepping stone between help wanted and bedlam.

Anyway, enjoy. In many ways I prefer this over my attempts at writing bedlam, it was a bit more murky and depressing, which is great.


Joel rolled onto his stomach, coughing loudly without restraint. The previous night was a blur of wretched sights and disgusting odours but then again, he thought the same of work and his apartment so business as usual there. Lifting his head to peer out of the window across the room, he glimpsed the bomb, Bedlam’s largest structure and monument to the isolation of the town, through the haphazard slats of the blinds. Grasping wildly with the hand not pinned beneath his torso he found his cell phone, squinting painfully at its face, feeling annoyed that it showed so much life so early in the morning.

The new girl had started at the coffee shop a few days previous and had wasted no time in making him feel unwelcome there, not through hostility or distance, but by turning his shift into a half-decent experience which made him shiver. Working was the bane of his existence and the thought of looking forward to it turned him to the drink he was desperately trying to keep down. Tumbling from his single mattress he slid into the adjoining bathroom, knocking miscellaneous objects aside with his bloody feet. Aside from the familiar cracks and crunches a desperate squeak filled the air about his shuffling gait, signalling that the mice had come back. Joel didn’t mind the mice, they were company after all and anything they ate was something less to bundle into trash bags come the end of the week.

He wondered what day it was, but couldn’t bring himself to check his mobile. Its cheerful obedience reminded him too much of her so he fell into the shower and lit one of the many cigarettes he kept littered about the space he occupied. Leaning heavily against the cold tiles he closed his eyes, trying to remember what he had said to the new girl that sparked the drinking binge he was trying to desperately ignore. It was no use, he had become accustomed to shutting things out whenever things became too much, and besides, his head was making a spirited attempt at punishing him for his addictions. Slapping the walls with bandaged palms he found the faucet and turned it. It didn’t make much difference which he used as hot water was a luxury he didn’t have.

With a pathetic hiss his cigarette went limp. Allowing it to drop, he set about the arduous job of washing himself, noticing he hadn’t removed his clothes at any point. Pulling the drenched contents of his pockets out and placing them on the nearby cistern he proceeded to clumsily unbuttoning his shirt, hurling it at the pile of clothes lined up nervously in the corner of the bathroom. They smelled of mildew and Joel was sure something was living in them but evicting them seemed hypocritical to someone who didn’t belong in this god-forsaken town to begin with.
The walk to work was hell, not only did he feel like shit, he hated himself for walking faster when he thought of her waiting, panic-stricken at the door for him to let her in. She was always on time and insisted that they would get in trouble with the manager if they didn’t work hard. He remembered snorting at this remark as, knowing the manager, the place could burn down and attract more customers. Either way, she had set about “organizing” the place which meant he had nowhere to sleep as the stock room was now filled with boxes and chemicals instead of the trash bags of clothes he would prop himself up against.

He rounded the corner to the store, shielding his eyes from the sun now cresting over the bomb, a fake sunrise that was so brilliant as to overshadow its first attempt four hours previous. Painfully peering through outstretched fingers he saw her in front of the store, pacing and furiously mashing her phone. After a few steps the shrill sound of his own device filled the empty street, causing her to look up from her fervour and exclaim, half excited, half anxious that he was over half an hour late and that she wasn’t sure he was coming.

That sparked something in Joel’s mind but before he could chase it up she had closed on him and was grasping at his bandaged hands in a mothering way, muttering about the state he was in. His jaw half-opened he said nothing, staring blankly at her purple hair partially covering her face. Shaking himself mentally he was about to tell her to ignore it when they met eyes, causing his voice to shrivel and his stomach to drop. Swallowing, he brushed her aside and thrust both hands into his pockets, busying himself with finding the keys to the grille covering the service window of Bucks Coffee shop. She coyly pulled at his sleeve but he determinedly told her to get the machines ready, tossing her the keys and pulling a bent cigarette from a sadly squashed packet.

My profile

Okay, so this might be a bit of a shock to you but I'm on a dating site (what? you? Mister popularity?) so I thought I'd do something weird and copy down my dating profile here.

You see, as I'm a writer and all-round grumpy bastard I took the liberty of making my profile as creative as I could whilst being autobiographical, this means I probably won't be getting many messages from women unless they, too, like making jokes about cancer, have blue hair and hate children, and at the end of the day, they're the only ones I'm in the least bit interested in meeting.

The following is my unabridged dating profile, yes it's long but I've had a while to work on it. Again, yes, you'd think I would be looking for one day max before I was up to my eyeballs in women, I'm just trying to break it to you gently.

About Me

I'm Sam. Six foot two, thin and awesome. Still with me? Read on;

Firstly, I dont have a car, I have a motorbike. There wasn't an option for that possibility :(
It's blue, and despite what everyone assumes I don't have a passion for motorbikes, I just own one. You eat, right? Does that make you a food connoisseur? No? Okay, moving on.

Im a punk rock sort of guy. I love scary movies, animation, japanese rock, foreign films, punk rock music and animals! I'm a proud geek and utterly despise football, clubbing and TV, which admittedly makes me as popular with my own gender as I am with rhesus monkeys (which football fans remind me of come to think of it. A lot of obnoxious whooping and no real brain activity)

I have five pet rats that I adore (two girls, three boys) and would like to get a dog one day. I love to talk at length with good friends and good wine and at some point I want to go to Japan to absorb some culture, mainly since I've yet to find any in England.

I think manners and being respectful is important as I would expect the same from a stranger. I cant stand rude people or men who mistreat women and call them "love" or refer to women as "birds". Im not uptight however, I just prefer to be a nice caring person, which makes me a minority come to think about it,

I have seven piercings (eyebrow, lip, three in one ear, two in the other) six tattoos (both forearms, back of both legs, side&stomach and chest, all stars) and am planning on getting more, I also dye my hair different colours, blue, green, red you name it. Even went pink once, it didn't end well but I got the restraining order removed eventually.

I exercise regularly and try to stay fit and active. Im not quite an athelete but an active lifestyle makes me feel good about myself. I swim almost every day to stay fit and healthy and because I love water. I'm mad for water parks, which is a shame as this is England and the closest you'll get is getting rained on in a playground.

I've recently rediscovered my love of literature, shakespeare, isaac asimov, terry pratchett, bruce coville, tolkein, edgar allan poe etc. ive written a few short stories and am writing a novel. Everyone has a novel in them, it seems like I have quite a few stored up so its about time I got them down. Looking to be a published author in the near future!

I'd like to learn Japanese, I enrolled in a course which was cancelled due to people dropping out. That sucked.

I volunteer at my local Oxfam bookshop to raise money for starving people across the globe, I also lie to charity collectors on the high street so they'll leave me the f*ck alone.

Dislikes:

Children (they aren't all bad, just yours)
Fashion
Hoop earrings
Chart music
Text speak, or just bad grammar in general (I know when to use your and you're correctly for example)
Bigotry/racism/intolerance in all its forms. Grow up, its not big or clever to discriminate, it's just sad.
"Wacky" people. It's usually a cover for being dull as pig sh*t to talk to.
People who settle for less. If you aren't doing the job you want to be doing because it pays the bills, you need to rethink your perspective.
Facebook petitions. You want to make a difference? Volunteer.
Drum n bass, hip hop, dance music, pop, eighties music, all that sort of shit.
Metal (yeah, really)
Chavs
Overweight people (I work out, why can't they?)
Clubs
People who don't drink responsibly
Careless drivers. If you break the speed limit habitually you're a d*ck, end of discussion.
Women who cheat/play games/don't give a rats ass about my damn feelings. Yes, men have them too.
Dip dying (don't follow trends, set them)
Anyone who describes themselves as having a "bubbly" personality (it basically means you don't have one)
Religion/religious people. Seriously, stay the hell away from me.
Anyone who is "just an average girl". I'm not average and I don't want average, I want interesting, sorry.

What I'm looking for:

I'm looking for a cute girl with flair & style. If you have piercings and/or tattoos, have a crazy hair colour and generally aren't fashion-conscious or trendy I WANT TO MEET YOU! The first step to loving yourself is to dress how YOU want to dress, not just to be like everyone else.

Bad girls should definitely drop me a line, nice is great but boring at the end of the day.

I love intellectuals and having long conversations about important matters. Good sense of humour is a must! Im a connoisseur of many types of comedy and can always find the funny side of anything. Even cancer, it might be deadly but the pounds just fall off, great for dieting.

I draw and write so someone creative would be nice, or at least someone who can be supportive of my skills and kick my ass for procrastinating. Im always up for friendship too, I recently moved to Winchester from Canterbury so could always do with a few more friends. If you like the sound of movies and games with takeaway food then we should totally meet up.

As for the date itself, pizza, a coffee, or just sitting and watching the world go by. Life is for living so take it easy.

Some of my first dates:

Coffee and muffins followed by deep conversation and endless jokes.
An anime convention in London.
Playing videogames with a bottle of wine
Taking photographs by a scenic river for poetic inspiration (yes, really)
Massages, oil, candles, the works.
Pizza!
Hacking my date into small pieces and feeding them to orphans

(Okay, I was lying about the pizza)

You had to be there

Here's a poem I thought up while swimming, thought I'd share.

The other week, when it started to snow
Something hilarious happened
Now, how did it go?
Ah, yes, you see it all transpired
As I was walking the street and a car backfired
The sudden noise caused me to look up and stop
Just as a man came hurtling out of a shop
It turned out the man was a desperate armed robber
And he was hotly pursued by a vigilant copper
The chase, it seemed should have been but a trice
But the policeman happened upon a stray patch of ice
He flipped right over and banged his head
And when I rushed over to help, he was certainly dead
And that's the whole story
But you're starting to stare
So I'll smile and just say
"You had to be there"

Christmas wishes

It's christmas! That's the sound of hypocritical atheists singing festive songs about a messiah they fervently deny the existence of, mixed with the drunken rantings of working class people trying desperately to escape reality for one fleeting moment and underpaid teenagers totalling up your myriad of purchases of festive bullshit and ill-thought-out gifts for people you despise to unwrap on a day that was viciously misappropriated from an even older religion in the name of bigotry and genocide!

Deck the halls with boughs of holly, fa-la-la-la-la la-la-la-la!

And here's a poem:


Christmas wish.

By S.M.Curd



Every christmas I dream of you

When the nights are still and cold

I lie awake and count the hours

And feel ever so old



It's warm and bright

And holds me tight

And all around is gold



But there's a chill in the air

And now I despair



The clock ticks eerily

And you dance so merrily

And flutter so joyfully

Out of my reach, not mine to hold



As when I'm awake in the dark

And the candles grow dimmer, and calm

And at christmas I'll toast

And smile over the roast

But what I want the most

Is a christmas to spend in your arms.

The story of Bedlam part one

Bedlam?

People who know me well (so hardly anyone) know that I've been toying with an idea for a story for some years now. I've written half of the story, scrapped it, rewritten the first chapter in a better style, abandoned it again, so that I might first hone my writing skills, and here we are.

Bedlam wasn't just an idea that I came up with off the top of my head, it was an idea that started small and evolved to what it is now. In a nushell it's a city secluded from the rest of the world. A town built in a wasteland around a humongous bomb. The inhabitants have no idea why they are there and have no contact with the outside world due to humongous walls surrounding the town on all sides. Make of it what you will, a study in seclusion, a pastiche of society, the fragility of peace and the first world or just the crazy imaginings of a twenty-something year old hermit (that's me, by the way).

One day I'll write that book, it's depressing, shocking and an unhappy tale of two young people trapped in a town that hates them (metaphorically speaking) but what may be more entertaining in the short term is just how this town came about so I decided to chronicle it here. It spans a few years, a mental breakdown or two and a few failed relationships. So let's get started;

Secret of The Ancients, my magnum opus, will be chronicled at a later date.

When it all started

It all began when I was working in SPAR, the crappy convenience store. I had to smile and pretend like I gave a flying fuck about customer's needs and wait for ages whilst they fished around in their pockets for loose change to buy cigarettes or bottles of cheap brandy to fuel their addictions, and I found myself wishing that I could just tell them that I thought they were scum and that if they were hit by a bus on the way home it would be a net gain for the world.

Joel - he says what we're all thinking/ Faye - she's sweet, sensible and a bad influence.

Okay, perhaps not so harsh as that, but I wanted to tell them to hurry the fuck up and that I couldn't care less about how the price of a tin of soup was different to the sticker price by two pence. I imagined a world in which people could act how they wanted, if you were having a bad day it would be okay not to smile and if you were pissed off you wouldn't have to smile because your contract says you have to. And thus the town was born.

It was a place with all pretence stripped away and people said it like it was. There was truth in advertising and people acted stupidly because of their own stupidity, like not being able to sue a company for not putting a warning label on their product. It's silica gel, used to keep packaged goods dry, you don't need a warning to know not to eat it but there is one because some dumb shit did.

"Help Wanted" episode one. It was ugly and wooden but introduced Joel and Faye.

Help Wanted

The first iteration was to be made whilst I was dabbling in flash animation from 2008-200. I made a short animation (it took fucking ages and was tedious and arduous) called "Help Wanted". It was about two people, a man named Joel and a woman named Faye, who were to work in various roles and inevitably get fired over and over for speaking their minds and treating the annoying general public in the manner they deserve. I made the first episode, set in an unnamed department store and had the pair cause an old man to have a heart attack and a five-year old to be tackled by a security guard because they were interrupting their conversation. (Trust me, it was funny on paper but the execution was wooden and involved awkward pauses and only one camera angle)

He probably deserved it.

The series was to evolve, I had drafted more episodes that were sleeker and harder-hitting, involving recurring characters, improved visuals and jokes but they never got past the design stage. (I learned that I am NOT an animator. I am a writer) so the series kinda died on its feet and the first episode was never published due to horrific errors in the programming stage that made the file far too big to be usable. After some time, I sketched a coffee shop, called "bucks coffee" that would feature in a later episode (and become Joel's coffee stand in the Bedlam novel) and made an animatic (a rough storyboard with sound) in the hopes of working with an animator in order to make the series go further.

Someone liked the idea and put me in contact with a man named Jordan Duchynz... something like that, under the screenname of Duchednier. He was an excellent artist and agreed to make something with me. We decided to make a shorter animation to test the water and it was here that Bedlam, the town, was born.

Warning labels was pithy, funny and had a message.

Warning Labels

A short minute-or-so long piece about warning labels (entitled "warning labels") which was set in this as yet unnamed town was created and won an award for best daily submission on the website "newgrounds.com", pretty much the only place online that caters to amateur animators who use adobe flash (commonly called flash animations). The piece was written and visuals designed by myself, with Jordan putting in the "leg work" and animating it. I felt throughout that he was expecting to share the animating with me, but I simply didn't have the talent or knowhow to be of any use.

Watch Warning Labels here!

Sadly, shortly after I had designed an episode linking "warning labels" to the "help wanted" series, Jordan contacted me with a very odd link to a video. The video was about this meta-faith thing called "the secret" which in a nutshell is the belief that all successful people know something that makes them successful and other people don't know this "secret". It seeks to educate people and promises to make them successful too. I told him exactly what I thought of this (bullshit, incase you hadn't guessed) and shortly afterwards Jordan told me that we wouldn't be working together any further. The thing was, I thought that he was trying to make a joke or simply asking my opinion, I had no idea that a grown adult could believe in something so ridiculous and not be institutionalised. Turns out he thought it was true and the reason for his being a good animator and was upset that I didn't feel the same way. Sometimes I wish I had gone along with it as we made quite the team but then again, I don't like lying to people or to myself so maybe it was for the best.

Warning Labels was unwittingly set in Bedlam. It was here that the visual style of Bedlam was born, as well as the bleakness, cynicism and some of the town's main locations and characters.

What happened next

Shortly after publication of "Warning Labels" I wrote this on my Newgrounds account. nothing came of it but it helps highlight  what was going on at the time:

Info time!
The town warning labels is set in is "Bedlam", a city of restraint and freedom, a contradiction i know but read on:
Bedlam is a growing town being constructed around a gigantic bomb, whether the bomb is active or not is unknown and the residents seem not to care. the knowledge that death can come at any time gives people an uncaring attitude and they act however they want all the time. people's true feelings are released and whether they are crushed by depression or elated with vindication is up to them.
The main corporation running the town is the Rappy corporation, an uncaring faceless company determined to keep the townspeople blissfully ignorant as it sucks their money and privileges out of them, forbidding travel out of the town but keeping crime levels low through constant surveillance.
I'm hoping to introduce the town and it's inhabitants in more depth with future projects, and for people interested in seeing more - the next project is titled "Bedlam: Help wanted" and is in production now, watch this space!
Dil

I ditched the Rappy corporation idea once I realised how it wasn't corporations, but people and their own idiocy that made people miserable. It's not a corporation's fault that you're broke and feel insignificant and unattractive, it's your fault because you spent all of your money, aspire to something you can't be and think you need to look a certain way to feel good about yourself. Live the way you want to, not how the media says you should.

To be continued...

So that's what I have on the origin of Bedlam so far, there is more to come and I'll post the next part soon. Watch this space.

The butcher

Here's a short something I wrote in my creative writing classes.

We were told to describe a person, a butcher to be specific. Whilst everyone was writing about balding middle-aged men in an apron, handing out pork chops or sweating over a pig carcass in a walk-in freezer, I was going the other way and describing a man called "the butcher".

Just goes to show how against the grain I like to think. I always stretch the definition of the task and it's made me quite popular in my course.

..............

They called him the butcher, but you wouldn't think it to look at him. He was a thoroughly well-to-do man in his late thirties, dressed smartly and to all was affable and adept. He had a wonderful penchant for the violin and spent his weekends volunteering at the local homeless shelter washing blankets and collecting money in a tin by the railway station. The problem was that he had a character fault, minor though it was, in that whenever the sun went down he just couldn't stop killing. The voices in his head bargained for him to stop saying "now, pete, you know these people don't deserve it, go have a mug of lemon tea and watch that nice movie about the holocaust again" but he would block them out by whistling jingles from television adverts. No, you wouldn't think it to look at him that this selfless civil servant had over a score of dismembered body parts hidden about his home, but after all, don't we all have a few skeletons in our closet?