Author - Artist - Voice Over Actor

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I don’t know what to write…

There are times when you don’t know what to Blog about.

I know I need to create a calendar and list of ideas for upcoming blogs, but sometimes that takes as much work as writing the blog itself does.

So where do ideas come from? I have no idea.

The Nerve You Say


Hi all,

I’ll be telling you about the Toastmasters speech in an upcoming blog once I get a good recording of it to share with you.
What I can tell you now is my nerves really got to me during the and I’m not really certain why.
I think it had to do with having to work with running my PowerPoint presentation on Zoom while maintaining eye contact with the camera while trying not to look at my script.
That’s all an excuse, I stumbled through it but I got it done. Surprisingly, people liked the speech, I’ll tell you about that soon.
I felt like I was back in school when I was scared to speak up at all. I’ve already told you about the one time in High School I gave a speech.
As an adult I was still nervous about doing any public speaking, but things began to change in our adult Sunday School when I began to speech up with my thoughts on what the teacher was saying and the Biblical verses we were studying. I then began finding myself volunteering to teach the class from time to time. My wife and I have taught together a few times as well. I was also being ask to do the Bible reading each week in class.
Then came the next and newest part of my life. An interest in Voice Acting. As a scriptwriter I wanted to know what the actor needed from me.
So, I took a voice acting class. I wasn’t expecting much, and certain I would be nervous stepping up to the mic in front of the entire class for the very first time.
You know what? I had no nerves what so ever and I read the script and performed with joy. I was so surprised by how I felt doing it I knew this was something I would continue to do. I would go on to take further voice acting classes over the next several years, have demo reels produced, and audition for roles.
So why did the nerves swell up during this speech? I really can’t say, but I won’t let them stop me from doing anything anymore.
Hope to have the speech up soon.

Kevin

Quick thoughts on writing

Writing can be one of the most joys filled actives, or the must torturous. More often than not, it is both at the same time.

It’s all Captain Picard’s fault

“Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.”

He commanded the computer, and the replicator produces a hot cup of the worse smelling and tasting tea in the world

Toastmaster, am I?

TOASTMASTERS

Thank you all so very much for reading my blogs over the last weeks as I wrote this series on comic books for my Toastmasters assignment. The series is complete, but I’m sure I have more to say about comic books in the future, but I thought it might be a good idea to tell you about what Toastmasters is and my involvement in it.

How the heck did they even let me do a whole project on Comic Books?

Dream of What Lies Beneath

My previous blog post was officially the last of my Comic Book series for Toastmasters, but I have one more story to tell.

While I was telling you all about my love for the Golden Age of Super Heroes, about Earth 2, the Justice Society, and the All-Star Squadron, one evening I had a dream.

Over the last week I’ve been drawing a pseudo comic book cover based on that dream.

Everything Built to this FLYING GLORY AND THE HOUNDS OF GLORY

My career in comic has been a long and slow journey, but from the very beginning as a child I was creating my own super hero characters.

My first character I created was called… Captain Combo <cringe, I know> – I tried to draw a character that was partially every character I knew in the DC Universe – The Superman Shield, the bat symbol, Flash’s lightning bolt, the Dr. Fate’s helmet with Dr. Mid-Nite’s goggles, and so forth. It was really silly, and long before I discovered the android Amazo which was basically the same thing.

My Career In Comics, So far…

This is probably going to be the more boring and least interesting post in this series, but let’s give it a try.

As mentioned, I was a young kid discovering comic books when I knew I wanted to be a comic book artist, and being an artist, I soon discovered that I was a story teller so that meant I was a writer as well. I emulated the artists and writers I loved in the comic.

Some of the Artists and Writers that Influenced me growing up.

I write my comic scripts on a laptop computer, and I draw my comic pages using a Wacom tablet in Photoshop. I couldn’t have imagined doing that when I was a kid. After writing with a pad and pencil, my mom allowed me to use her IBM Selectric typewriter. Which I started out doing with one finger hunt and peck. In high school I’d take typing classes (do those exist anymore?) As to drawing I just grabbed a handful of typing paper and drew with a pencil… (either that or drew on the brown paper bag book covers at school.) Eventually taking art classes.

Even though I was just a kid, and starting to learn how to drawn and write, I knew what I wanted to be. Learning would begin by studying and emulating the writers and artists I so admired.

My Love Hate Relationship with the Multiverse part 2

An Infinite number of Worlds, an Infinite number of You. All alike and yet each unique in their own way. No reason that should be confusing to anyone, should it?

My Love Hate Relationship with the Multiverse part 1

Doctor Strange and Spider-Man may have fallen through the multiverse of the Marvel Cinematic Universe a lot recently. However, my first real journey into parallel worlds began with my very first comic.

Love of the Golden Age

It first began by reprinting newspaper comic strips, and then it illustrated adventure stories had previously been in pulp novels and magazines, then the detectives put on masks and a man could leap tall buildings in a single bound. It was the Golden Age of Comic Books, the Golden Age of Super Heroes.

As mentioned previously, though I had read a few other comics, the first series I was committed to reading every issue was All-Star Squadron. A book that took place during that “Golden Age.”

I would discover and read other books at that time, some Justice League of America, Brave & and the Bold which would be replaced by Batman and the Outsiders, and The New Teen Titans.

Education of Reading Comics

When I was young, during my Elementary School and Junior High years, I was struggling with reading. It was recommended to my parents that I should take further classes and have special tutors. One such tutor was in an after-school period on campus, while another one was off campus at a place called “The Reading Game.” These tutors helped me, but there was other help that I received that would improve my education.


It was during this period of time I first discovered comic books, as mentioned in my previous post, and I was regularly reading them… and I was reading them not just looking at the artwork (and I’ll tell you about the artwork and artists in a later post).


One day when my parents are having a ‘parent/teacher’ meeting with my special reading tutor to talk about how I was doing. They brought up the fact that I was reading comics, and asked if this was a good thing or should they take the comics away to have me read “real” books.

Reawakening The Blog

Hi All.

            Hope everyone has had a blessed Christmas and happy holiday season.

It’s been nearly a year since my last blog post.

Did you like my interpretation of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer? He is the Shiny One.

Though I did update my Voice Over Demo Reel last month.

This post is to ‘reawaken’ my blog here and keep it going in to the new year.

I can’t write comedy, and some how, that’s funny

I have never considered myself a comedy writer, but that isn’t to say that I don’t write comedy. Rather, I never set out to write comedy, and in so doing the comedy tends to write itself.

If any of that makes sense, I hope what follows will as well.

I am a writer of characters.

Usually, I have a rough outline of a plot, hardly a skeleton to build upon. I start with a simple idea, usually a question. I see something, or read about something, and ask “What if?” Lots of times it has to do with looking at something from a different angle.

A lot, or a few, notes go down next. But that all just sits in a pile and does nothing if there aren’t any characters to march through it and kick up the dirt. Otherwise, it’s just a garbage heap of useless words.

Just writing that paragraph gave me a simple idea. A Garbage Heap. What follows is finding the story, and the first question I ask is “What is it like working on a garbage heap?” You know, those people who take our trash to the dump, and those that sort through it. Some for recycling, and those who scrounge around the dump looking for things they can sell in order to survive. (I know old door nobs can bring a penny or two.) But the job isn’t interesting enough. So what if I changed the question: “What is life like for those who live on the garbage heap?” I think there is some drama in that, and maybe some comedy too.

(Almost forgot my blog’s topic there didn’t I?)

We’ll have to wait and see if I actually discover a story in garbage heap and expand upon it. I see a lot of drama, even depression, about the people living in lean-to huts atop or even inside the garbage mounds.

But is there comedy among that garbage and depression? If you find the right characters there are.

What if our story is about a teenage girl working along side her parents looking for scrap and selling what they can. She has a boyfriend, but when he shows up to take her on a date (what kind of date can there be on a scrap heap), she complains that he was cuter before he took a shower.

Okay, that might not be the funniest thing in the world. Like I said, I don’t write comedy. However, if I wrote this story completely out, I think our little Dust Bunny (yes, I just named the girl Dust Bunny. The boy’s name is Smudge, no, Kruntch ) would have a whole lot of funny things to say as she is clearly the only person on the garbage island that enjoys being there.

The point, if there is one, is that comedy like everything else in a story comes out of character. Creating a funny situation and dropping your characters into it doesn’t necessarily make it comedy.

Learn about your characters; find out what makes them tick, and what ticks them off. Don’t tickle them; annoy their pants off. They’ll tell you what’s funny when they start throwing mud back at you.

Maybe I will write this story sometime. Maybe set it on a garbage planet (this story is getting gout of hand). (Kruntch is out; the boy’s name is Smudge again. The letter K didn’t test well.)

Then we’ll discover if I can write comedy or not, and see if I am really worthy of being:

Kevin Paul Shaw Broden

Four Names of Professional Creativity (certainly not of comedy).

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