After last Newsletter’s movie rant about Matrix Revolutions, we now return to our regular Jimbo-centric programming.

Good things seem to be afoot. Stresses as always and rough spots, but I think I’m hitting an okay stride with all sorts of things happening in my life right now. Trying not to get too distracted, trying to remember all the important stuff.

Gala’s headed to Edmonton for the Christmas holidays. I’m still figuring out if I’m headed with her for it as well. We’ve talked about setting up a toggled X-Mas schedule: one year in Toronto, the next in Edmonton. As we get it nailed down I’ll let you guys know.

The hard work from the summer is slowly turning into the paychecks of the fall. A tiny trickle currently, but by the end of November it looks like a good chunk of money owed will be coming in. It’s the scary part of freelancing, the 30-60-90 day waits while clients pay for work handed in. All the other jobs I’ve had were based around a standard pay period. The key seems to be making sure that in 2 months there will be equal or more money constantly arriving.

Seeing books and products with artwork on it that I participated in is still really strange. I picked up the latest issue of Dungeon Magazine and there were some pieces I penciled and one that I colored in there. Strange seeing them there on the page, very cool too though. Next month will be particularly odd because I collaborated with one of our painters to do the cover image for Dungeon. It’ll be there right on the cover. Bizarre indeed. Between that and a bunch of other books coming out from White Wolf and other companies, it’s going to be really wild.

It seemed a good time to clean up my personal website:

http://www.makeshiftmiracle.com/ZUB.html

Gave it a slightly different look and jettisoned artwork that had been on there far too long or that I wasn’t happy with. I think I kept so much of it on there as some sort of a badge of honor. A weird “Look, I’ve done all sorts of things so I must be sort of an okay artist.” Chopping it down will hopefully spur me to “fill” it up again with new and better artwork. Time will tell.

I’ve been reading a lot of Live Journal’s lately. For those who don’t know, a Live Journal is a website where you can quickly jot your thoughts down and put it up for all to see (or limit the posts so that only friends can log-in to see). It’s such a strange phenomenon. People typing their inner most thoughts or building up ideas over the course of weeks and showing it off for so many people to browse and read. Random ones of strangers aren’t much to look at, but the ones of people I know are fascinating. You get a totally different window into who they are or what types of things are happening in their life. A couple people I met at conventions over the summer I now feel like I know better and a few people in Toronto that I didn’t even like I now have a totally different perception of. One artist I know (who isn’t on this Newsletter list) who has art I really enjoy I now find annoying and bitter because of posts on her Live Journal page. I’ve even thought about ditching this e-mail list for a site that people can choose to read or not, but I haven’t decided yet. Let me know what you think.

The micropayment system called BitPass that I put Makeshift Miracle on in the summer has been surprisingly successful. I checked up on it yesterday for the first time in many weeks. It’s not like I’m making a horde of money from it, but I’m getting a few sales of it every day even without advertising or promoting the site. That’s pretty amazing; $2-3 every day for something that runs itself. I intend to make another web comic push and that should increase things as well. The BitPass payment system is still in beta, so when it fully unfolds, that’ll be another booster.

The cool January opportunity that I mentioned in my October 15th e-mail is a reality. Instead of going to Seneca in January for Maya 3D animation training, I’m going to be teaching part-time at the school as part of their 2D faculty. Weird turn around, eh? Classic drawing and 2D artwork just keep holding on to me for dear life, so I’ll resist the dark side of 3D for the time being. It’ll be a good way to bring in a bit of extra cash on a regular basis and reconnect me to teaching, which I really enjoyed. The fact that I don’t have to give up working for Udon full time doesn’t hurt either.

All these career things that I like (comics, RPGs, teaching) packaged into one span of time – I’ve gotta pinch myself.

That’s the report. Thanks as always to the people who let me know how they’re doing.

After picking up Gala from the University yesterday, we decided to zip out and see if we could catch a showing of Matrix Revolutions. Grabbing tickets, we had a nice dinner and then sat down to enjoy the show. When it comes to big movie releases like this and the opening credits come up, I just try to focus on the flick and cross my fingers (figuratively speaking) that it’s not going to suck.

But it did suck.

It sucked in a black hole reaching, clawing and gasping kind of way, draining everything of light and sound. Holy crap, did it ever suck.

A lot of people were unimpressed with Matrix Reloaded, but I found it relatively entertaining and there were only a few scenes that were wince-worthy. But Revolutions is a 2 hour eye-rolling embarrassment. Cardboard worthy emotional scenes intermixed with seizure-inducing special effects. Telling us unnecessary things instead of showing them but then showing us a point over and over and over and over again. I appreciate people trying to break the rules with movies, but some storytelling conventions exist for a reason. Use the tools to make the material work and break them if you can make something more effective, don’t go against the grain just because you want to do something different.

I won’t spoil the movie, so you can still read this even if you haven’t seen the flick.

There were so many moments where people stood around asking moronic questions or paused for dramatic effect that I just wanted to scream “DO SOMETHING, ANYTHING!” But even when the action finally hit, I didn’t care about any of it. 30 minutes goes by without Neo, Morpheus or Trinity being in the film (that’s not an exaggeration by the way) and it’s just become this bloated mess with new people I don’t care about. Worse still, when we do get back to the main characters, I realize that they’re not worth watching either. They’re either doing the exact same thing they’ve done before or are spontaneously useless, suddenly unable to be anything but victims.

Classic sequel-itis: all the good character growth gets used up in the first film and then people just become walking talking parodies of themselves.

People die, a little kid stiffly tells us cute and annoying things, billions of machines explode, characters spout platitudes, cookies get baked and the universe is saved by kung-fu (oh wait, no it isn’t…that’s just 10 minutes of action that ends up being unnecessary).

I didn’t need to walk away from the theatre with all the answers about the Matrix. But the gaping holes and useless information we’re left with make it all the more annoying.

Heh. I’m kind of surprised I filled a whole Newsletter e-mail with my movie review. Oh well, maybe I can save you guys $12 and a few hours of your life. More useful information next time I write. Promise.