End of the Week: Battle Angel Alita Edition

Progress has been slow, but steady this week.

This morning I went with a few friends to see 'Alita: Battle Angel.' Back in my college days, I recall reading some of the manga, and not liking it too much due to how weird it was. They made the story much more straightforward in the film, but the weirdness is still there.

Not in a bad, way, though. Certainly Alita's overly large eyes are distracting, but you do get used to them as the movie progresses. I've heard they needed to increase the size of them to avoid having Alita fall into the uncanny valley.

It's a measure of achievement to realize that the main character, entirely CGI, is 'human' enough for you to accept that she is a real character on screen. Certainly she won't completely fool you, but the CGI is so damn good in some close ups you might mistake her skin for real skin. This film is a triumph of motion capture and the digital artists who spent countless hours on it.

TL; DR: The film is good, go see it. Especially if you like watching cyborgs get beaten to pieces. It has solid writing, and plausible plot points. Ignore the critics, they are idiots.

Hot Pressed

I spent most of this week working on a single scene. This is likely the trickiest part of getting the story's plot working due to the amount of research required to introduce each character and their costumes. This scene also has some exposition to move the plot forward and I needed to think through some of the world building before I could proceed.

I do think I'm close to finishing out this scene, after which our heroine will discover new and interesting changes occurring to her due to some opportunistic thievery, after which she will report to her spy master and the next phase of the story will begin. The plan is starting to take shape!

At 11,000 words already, this one is looking suspiciously like a ~30,000 word story. Which puts it a few months out from being completed. Dang.

I probably won't be able to speed up production due to the time I'm spending on proofreading 'Robot,' so I'm afraid I won't have anything to show for awhile. But do stay tuned if you like Steampunk fantasy crossed with Egyptians gods and goddesses.

Robotic Restitution

Progress proceeds, albeit at a sluggish pace. This week I've proofread another chapter, so now I am in the midst of editing chapter seven. If my word counts aren't too far off, this will be close to the end of the first book. Only two more books to go!

Re-reading these initial chapters, I've noticed there's a bit of a tonal shift after the first book due to plot reasons. While the first book seems very impersonal, containing almost institutionalized recruitment, as the plot proceeds and you learn more about Hive, the tone gets lighter due to the main character's relationship to Hive.

I briefly considered that this might be a problem, but let's save the grim dark plot lines for the stories that deserve them, shall we?

If I'm very lucky, I shall get up the gumption to finish editing another chapter tomorrow. That's probably an unlikely scenario, but I shall continue plugging away at it.