Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Write Club: Who is Kurt Christenson?

Hello all of you who've been checking out the blog and the podcast. Thanks so much for stopping by and giving us a read and a listen. You're probably wondering who we are though.

My name is Kurt Christenson. I am a writer and have been working on breaking into comics for the last ten years. In that time I've taught myself lettering and production ends of putting together a comic, as well as anything and everything I could about sequential art.

I am currently finishing up a novel that I have written over the past 6 years when I went from living in a suburban prison to moving to NYC and all the insanity that went with it. It's called the Tower of Brahma and I have been posting a chapter a week up every Monday for the past year. My latest and most favoritest chapter, #61 - Inferno, is now up.

I've also been working on lettering a 200+ page graphic novel called Legend of Liquid Fury, drawn by the mad genius named Chris Chua. This has been a labor of love, frustration, anger, bliss, beauty, and an unbelievable ride through the comic industry as we talked to every professional creator we could. You can read the first act over at TenTonStudios. You can also keep up with the progress of new pages and see some behind the scenes stuff over at the Liquid Fury blog.

Speaking of TenTonStudios, Chris & I were two of the founding members of this collective of artists that are slowly beginning to dominate the comic book world. From Marvel to DC to Image to White Wolf, these guys have been working it hardcore to make it as working artists and they do it well.

About a year ago, I was laid off from my job as a paparazzi photo editor, and at the worst time considering the economy. It was then that I decided that I needed to take my writing career seriously, and within a few weeks Tim & I had started a blog and a podcast.

We met up every other week or so and began recording. We tried to get some webcomics going but they stalled out. Tim found StripGenerator and began our ongoing webcomic Write Club Funnies which I took over a few weeks ago. The content and guests, and our comfortability recording, grew with every post.

Last Fall we attended King Con and interviewed a few creators we knew or got to know through friends. They were all making moves and getting published. We met some up and coming creators, and I saw that spark, the glimmer in their eyes as they attended their first convention with work in hand. And I remembered.

I thought back to New Years Day 2001 when I decided I would write comic books after a decade of being a voracious consumer of them. I just wrote scripts for myself, which turned into writing them for money, but the books would never be released. So I started my own book with a fresh from Kubert School Chua, and for years we toiled away.

Somewhere along the way, it became work, with no payoffs, and very little recognition. It seemed fruitless and comics were a burden more than a joy. I stopped reading them, I began to hate making them, and I guess I didn't want to have a complete book and fail so I began to self-sabotage, to doubt, second guess. Bad luck and pitfalls blossomed all around me. I had failed by not finishing anything.

But my story isn't over yet. As I approach the tenth year at making a go of this, I aim to redouble my efforts, using this site as a platform to keep my head in the game. It's not too late to make it happen. And as I look around I see others picking up where they creatively left off and forging ahead.

So thank you to all the creators I have met over the years who have had a kind word, a friendly smile, or an insightful anecdote that has helped me continue to do what it is I was put on this Earth to do: create stories.

And if I can help anyone else out there take just one more step towards their creative passion endgame, well that's really all I could ask for.

Keep at it.

K

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Notes

Liquid Fury blog.
Plan B review.
Moonlighting review.
Gang of Fools review.
WCF - Indie Club
Power Play
Sub*Text layout
EX script
American Slackers outline
ToB chapters
Sub*Text Saturday
TenTonTumblr

Forgotten Animation
Liquid Television
SpyGroove
Calamity Jane
CyberSix
ActionMan

Animation Notes

Zom!Bot
Music video

Space Intro
Graveyard Intro
Zombie Grave
Robot Spaceship
Stalking Montage
Attack Mankind!
Worldwide Destruction
Conflict
Hellfire Fusion
Zom!Bot born
Wolf Priests
Uncovering Rotting/Rusting Remains

***

Write Club!
Pulp detective
A mystery, adventure
A lost Alan Moore script
Buried Grant Morrison screenplay
Underground Warren Ellis manifesto
Fanboy collector
Tracking down missing Kirby art
Comic Book Illuminati

***

WCWWFX
Reality show confessional
Retrospective
Superhero team dynamics

Fortune & Glory

That's what I'm in it for. To build an empire of quality entertainment. To get paid for my ideas enough to have major influence on pop culture as possible. I see nothing but talented individuals squandering away their passions at day jobs, wasting skills learned at college, a creative vision dissipating.

I have ideas and they're good. Fun. Better than current standards. The time of the independent creator, working in mass media, is upon us. A time where a thousand empires will rise across the world, digitally connected and generating a blanket of fiction across the collective unconcious. Giving shape and form in universal acceptance.

This is what's at stake. 2012. The singularity. iPad. The world is sucking up the potential of the masses in a way that has never been fully explored. Every person in the world holding a Coke, eating a Big Mac, wearing Mickey ears, rocking out to their iPod. The net is tightening.

You fear the future. The power you will wield. The decisions and hard work that will be ripped from you while handling the mundane details it that make up an entertainment empire. Countless individuals questioning your creative impulse, the skill in your words, the judgment of your ideas. Frustration killing your passion.

But days will come. You will sit down, put words down, draw lines, connect them and be paid for that act. And paid well. And then you'll see it transformed from a raw idea into a fully rendered product. People will pay to sit down and watch this collaborative project with you as the basis. That cool scene that popped into your head one day. There it is. Not quite like you pictured, but they all get to see it too.

I am hitting a wall and looking for a reason to continue. I need money. I need success and recognition. Fans and attention, photo ops and magazine spreads. Underground legitimacy, neo-gonzo sensibility, anything is possible mentality. We need electronic celebrity.

The fans are the base. Each a step to another mind. An audience. A scene. A movement. Mass appeal. Find immediate audience and produce for them. Who has the money? Intellectual Property Pirates. Hosting a circus in their mind, an alternate universe for their conciousness. Take the money, and run.

Build and create.

The ideas:
Tower of Brahma.
Novel.
Self-pub e-book.
Subway self-promotion.

Sub*Text.
Alt.Lit 'zine.
Blog.
Magazine.
Publisher.
Genre/Pulp/Experimental.

TenTonAnthology.
Comic book. Graphic novel/magazine.
Pulp. Military Manual.
A pitch packet.

Film.
EX. Webseries.
YouTube.

Write Club.
Short films.
Genre.

Rock'N'Roll Massacre.
Pryzmalite Massacre.
Indie film. Slasher.
NYC locations.
Guerilla filmmaking.

DeadBeat.
Horror/Detective.
Formula. Dramedy.
USA Network.

Time & Space.
Union Squared.
Sci-fi/Rom-Com.
Spec script.

Animation

Liquid Fury.
Graphic novel.
TV series.
Spike. Adult Swim. FX.

Zom/Bot.
Band.
Animated musical.
Music videos with bookend scenes.
5 min snippets.
Different genres.
Heavy Metal meets Gorillaz.
Live performances. Puppets.

***

These are the ideas I have been working on. If anything seems appealing let me know and we can develop it.

Right now I want to kick this zine off and start the Liquid Fury blog.

I have an idea if you wanted to do a Write Club cartoon for our webcomic side. I was looking at some new books from Top Shelf (send links later) that are paperback sized and then have a stacked two panel grid through the whole book. It's a cool unique format. But if it was individual panels, really rough and more experimental, storyboards for a short film, then we can get our prep work out there for public consumption and maybe get it published, or at least self-publish.

We could then write a script on the side, something to sell. I haven't heard from the guy with the William Morris connection, so. That's kind of back burner, coming together as it does.

I've also got a Marvel in that could be interesting. I want to try and pitch something without Reilly or Khoi connections and I may have an in. Maybe to get a menial job there as well. Possibly freelance proofreading a day or two. So I have some Marvel ideas I wanted to bounce off you.

You're in a funk. I'm in a funk. I'm going to keep throwing this stuff at you till you're too busy to even think about relationships or anything else except bringing your ideas to life. You are my number two in this world Boston. I recognized it as soon as I met you.

In just a year out from NYCC we did alright for ourselves considering, and we had enough insane relationship bullshit to last us a lifetime, so this is the moment where we ignore all that, make the final push, and get our careers off the ground.

Love always,

K