Hey everyone!! Well this is Maddy Gaiman and I would just like to say that I am very tired! Today was a long day and now I totally know how dad feels after he gets done with a day of interviewing, or at things like Comicon.
Well we arrived at Laika studios this morning at like 10:00, ate a nummy breakfast, and went on a tour around the sets of Coraline. It was amazingly super cool!! There are sooo many sets for all the different scenes in the movie. Then I interviewed Henry Selick and my dad, then did a bunch of little TV spots for things like [censored by her father and Laika] and [censored] and [censored], where I would be all like "Hi! This is Maddy Gaiman. Stay tuned for an exclusive sneak-peek of the cool new 3-D animated movie CORALINE!".
After that I interviewed Georgina Hayns and Deb Cook who are the heads of the departments for puppets and costumes for the puppets. It was pretty wonderful. I love all of the puppets, too. I would never have the patience to do what the people working there do. With all the fine detailed things, and moving the puppets a tiny little bit every shot and taking a picture and then moving them a little more, my head would about explode!! That takes talent I tell you. Oh, and we also saw about 20 minutes of footage in 3-D and that was also pretty darn fantastic. The film is coming along great so far and I simply cannot wait to see the finished version!
Okay, well I better get to bed because I am pretty tired. But hopefully I will be back tomorrow with some more wonderful blogging!
Today it's off to Laika to visit the Coraline sets (all 40 of them) and to be interviewed for the DVD extras. Maddy will be doing the interviewing.
I have to get dressed... Here's Maddy:
Well helloooooo everyone I missed you so! Um well today we are going to visit the Coraline sets as I see Dad already mentioned, but I am very excited because everything is going to be super cool! Plus I'm going to interview people so you better watch out because the new Larry King is right here. :) Just kidding! Or am I? Anyways we have some pictures of last night's get together but I do not exactly have the camera with me right now so I guess you will just have to wait until later to see them. It will be the time of your life! Ok, well have a really great day. :)
Millions of swarming honey bees are on the loose after a truck carrying crates of the buzzing insects flipped over on a highway in Sacramento.
The California Highway Patrol says 8-to-12 million bees escaped from the crates in which they were stored, swarming over an area of Highway 99 and stinging officers, firefighters and tow truck drivers who were trying to clear the accident from the roadway.
CHP Officer Michael Bradley says at about 10 a.m. a tractor trailer owned by Inter City Inc. flipped over while entering the highway on its way to Yakima, Wash. The flatbed was carrying bee crates each filled with up to 30 thousand bees.
Bradley says several beekeepers driving by the accident stopped to assist in the bee wrangling. The beekeepers called their colleagues, who responded and came to help repair damaged bee crates and get them loaded onto two new trucks.
The bees were on their way back to Washington after being used in the San Joaquin Valley to pollinate crops.
(I don't think they were swarming at all. But hurrah for the drive-by beekepers.)
Sometimes I lose track of time -- Maddy and I are going to go to Laika in Portland for a couple of days, to visit the Coraline set. Truthfully, it's Maddy who will be doing most of the work -- they want her to interview me and Henry Selick and several of the crew. I thought I had many hours before I left. Days maybe. And suddenly I'm gazing bleary-eyed at the day as Lorraine tells me there's a car in the drive and Maddy and I leave in fifteen minutes and probably I ought to put on some socks.
Dear Neil,
Thanks for blogging the initiative to match Terry Pratchett's $1 million donation to the Alzheimer's Research Fund. In way of an update to that, there is now a website - http://www.matchitforpratchett.org/ and a Facebook group (naturally) - Matching Funds with Terry Pratchett. It might be helpful to mention these as well on your blog, if you were so inclined.
I got some wonderful presents from my family. My favourite was a scrapbook that Maddy made of the year filled with photos of the family and brief Maddy-style essays and commentary on the photos. ("Well father, even though we look like a two-headed person in this picture, I would like to say that it's one good-looking two-headed person. Ha :) . Mike's graduation was a wondrous family outing!!") It melted me.
I am afraid that I have somehow forgotten who sent me the link to a beehive-extension-in-a-bell-jar at http://www.hemmy.net/2007/09/16/bees-makes-hive-in-a-jar/ but I am already planning on buying a jar, or similar strange glassy thing and finding out what the bees make of it.
Hi Neil, Merry Christmas! I was wondering, in the spirit of the season and in honor of your swarms of yellow and black buzzing friends, if you would post a link to Something Awful's evil charity drive to flood the third world with bees VIA heifer.org. http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/bee-charity-drive.phpFor only $30 this holiday season you too can send 12,500 bees to terrorize unsuspecting civilians in places like Uganda and El Salvador, where the brave might try to make an alliance with the bees for their sweet, sweet nectar. By noon we've already given away a million bees to the needy and I figured you might be able to help get us to ten million.Thanks, Laura
I can do my best. After all, you cannot have a land flowing with milk and honey without bees. And, um, lactating mammals.
(Coincidentally, I just got a wonderful Xmas gift from a friend of a Heifer.org bee donation in my name.)
I just discovered this site, forgive me if it's old news, but I was wondering if the idea for this originated with The Corinthian, or if you drew on a previously existing "nightmare image" when you created him. http://www.freakingnews.com/Mouth-Eyes-Pictures--1741.asp
Good question. I think that the Corinthian was pretty definitely the first actual comics character to have mouths for eyes, although Steve Bissette (I think) drew a Swamp Thing Cover showing Swamp Thing with mouths for eyes a few years before Sandman. And I'm sure that you could go and find other occasions that people did the image over the years -- let me know what you turn up if you want to go looking. Mouths for Eyes has definitely become a lot more common since the Corinthian turned up, but that probably has a lot more to do with ease of photomanipulation than with the character creeping into the popular consciousness.
Honestly, I'm just glad to see how disturbing it is.
What are your thoughts about the US Library of Congress classifying all Scottish authors under the English literature heading? I can see smaller libraries trying to save space, but shouldn't such a large and respected library concern itself more with accuracy? I've included the link to the artice at the BBC below. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7157708.stm Sincerely, Christina
On the one hand, it's silly: Scotland is its own country, with its own traditions and its own literature, a literary tradition in English and Gaelic. On the other hand, it's less work for the Library of Congress. But then, they'd have even less work if they just filed them all under Books.
Re: winter butterflies This is actually not a question.Your entry with the picture of the butterfly last December 20 is actually not a butterfly but a moth. Moths when they rest have open wings, while butterflies sort of fold them vertically.
No, I'm afraid it was a butterfly... as to which one, the first person to identfy it was Heather, who said,
Dear Neil, Intrigued by the butterflies, I did a bit of research. It looks to me like a male small tortoiseshell, which is evidently very common in Britain. It seems it likes to hibernate in houses and may wander out if the walls are warm enough. Lots of information here and some wonderful pictures of the chrysalis: http://www.ukbutterflies.co.uk/species.php?vernacular_name=Small%20Tortoiseshell Happy writing! - Heather
...
Hi Neil, I am the Animation Supervisor on Coraline. We met briefly when you visited the Coraline studio awhile back. Anyway, the clip you posted is causing quite a (positive) stir on my website. Check out what they are saying here:http://www.stopmotionanimation.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=25&topic_id=4688&mesg_id=4688&listing_type=read_new We are now employing about 25 animators with over 37 stages in operation. When/if you have time, you may want to pop in and see the sets. There are many more cool things to see at this stage of Production.Happy Holidays & thanks for hosting the clip on your website. - Anthony
It's lovely seeing people begin to talk about it. It's over a year since I went out to Laika and saw them beginning to work on Coraline, and I've been really impressed with everything I've seen since then. ...
And waiting for me here when I got home, only a year or so late, were my own two copies of the Hill House limited edition of Anansi Boys. It is absolutely gorgeous. Possibly even worth the wait...
A few weeks ago someone asked if the Henry Selick Coraline 3D trailer was available online, and I said I'd try and get permission to put it up here. Which the powers that be said no to, because, well, it was 3D.
And then I asked if there was anything I could put up from Coraline. They said they'd see what they could do.
I wasn't sure we'd be given anything, so didn't talk about it. But it's here. I just watched it...
So, for your enjoyment (I hope), a small Christmas present. The first Coraline footage to be released to the world.
(It's not really from me. Laika and Focus chose it and did all the hard work, the Web Goblin did all the building it in the background. I just claim the glory and bask in the reflected wossname.)
It's still about a year away from it coming into cinemas. But here's a first look...
By some odd coincidence, these two came in back to back...
Hey Neil,
I've heard that with some prints of Beowulf there was a trailer for Henry Selick's Coraline adaption. Is this true? And if so, do you have it? Can you maybe link or post it? I'm sure many of us would love to see it. Thank you.
~Dylan
and
Hello Mr. Gaiman.
I was absolutely chuffed to finally see a trailer for Coraline when I went to see Beowulf. I'm really looking forward to the movie.
I cannot, however seem to find the trailer on the internet. Is it available anywhere? Do I simply have horrible Googling skills?
If you would direct me to a site with the trailer I will be most appreciative as I'd like to share it with friends who haven't yet seen it.
Many thanks!
Ashley
You can't find the pre-Beowulf trailer for Coraline on the internet, because as far as I can tell, it isn't there yet -- probably because it's only a 3D trailer (and it looks so much better in 3D than flat, especially the poking needle going through the buttonhole).
I've got a copy, though, and I've asked The Folk At Laika how they'd feel about me putting it up. Let me see what we can do...
...
Here's today's dog-bounding-through-the-snow photo, because he looks a bit wolfier or doggier and a bit less ice-weaselly.
Good lord. So I am. What a nice way to start a morning.
John Hudgens writes to tell me about about his film American Scary, the documentary on horror hosts (of which I am one), letting me know about a screening of the film at Comic-Con: The screening is at 7:30pm, Thursday July 26 in Room 26AB (south side of the Convention Center, above Hall H.
Because the con is so big and so much is happening, it's usually true that anything you want to see or do clashes with something else you also want to see or do, and in this case I think I'll be introducing a Stardust screening mostly for journalists that Paramount are doing that night. (The Will Eisner's Legacy panel, which was the only one I really wanted to be at, is opposite the Spotlight on Neil Gaiman panel. So it goes.)
In a recent Journal entry, Logan asked about novel word counts. Amazon.com has a feature for some books that gives text statistics in the "Inside this book" section. The American Gods trade paper has, according to this, 182,721 words, an average of 11.4 words per sentence and at their price you get 16,300 words per dollar, a bargain!
I like to think so. (Although priced per word, upcoming picture books like The Dangerous Alphabet, which Gris Grimly has illustrated, will work out at something nightmarish, like 10 words to a dollar or something... Then again, a picture is worth a thousand words, which adds about 30,000 words.)
The Comic Con schedule has been announced, although I know there are a few extra things that aren't up yet or decided, including a couple of Coraline-related happenings on the Saturday which Focus haven't yet announced so people won't know that I'm doing anything on the Saturday yet. (Or, if they don't get the information up quickly, ever. )
I wish I was on more comics or book-related events -- Thursday and Saturday it's basically just the giant movie presentations, which I tend to think of as something separate to real Comic-con, and movie-related events that may not be open to all or even to lots. (And a couple of events that were hoped for, one with me and JossWhedon, and one with me and Dave McKean, had to go by the wayside, one because of scheduling problems and one because of Dave not actually coming to Comic-Con this year.)
I'm just glad that Mark Evanier invited me onto his Jack Kirby panel on the Sunday morning.
And talking about Coraline, I meant to post this earlier. It's a long article that gives background on Laika (the studio) and on Phil Knight, and on Travis Knight, who is the lead animator on Coraline and is really good http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/117/features-the-knights-tale.html
Tabs, writing and why writers should not carry portfolios
I'm sending a box of Good Omens scents off to Terry Pratchett today. We have to vote on things like War (with or without ginger) and Shadwell (with or without condensed milk) and tell Beth at Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs what we think. If you put on a dab of War (with ginger) to see what it smells like on your skin, a large white dog will come and happily try and lick it off.
Ken Hazlett wrote to point out that I'd never linked to these dead insects battling dead fairies ("The thing that intrigues me is that it seems sort of half fairy-undead and half fairy biology/osteology, the singularity where science and magic intersect," said Ken, and he's right) which then left me wondering if I'd ever linked to these beautiful hybrids of insects and watch parts: science fiction as art.
Dave Mckean has finished the DVD of his short films, and it'll be out for San Diego. I see there are a few samples up at http://www.squidoo.com/davemckeanfilm/ -- "Me and my Big Ideas" was a proposed TV series based on The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish, and the short film up was a sort of a sample piece done for it -- it uses Dave McKean art, but I don't think it was actually made by Dave.
Hi, Thanks for posting the new location of that Penn Jillette podcast. I feel bad for making you (or your assistant) search for it when I could have done that but I console myself with the knowledge that I'm probably not the only one seeking that information and this was really something that your readers wanted to know.
I hope you are stretching and warming up before taking the dog out for a run.
Regards, Heidi
Agreed -- I should probably go and fix the original post. And I love Budgie's every-con-report-you-need-to-read post.
Hi Neil
I'm writing because I'm a big fan of your work, but also because I'm an equally big fan of the no-nonsense advice you occasionally dispense in your blog.
I've just had my first short story published (in The Sun Book of Short Stories), and have been invited down to an awards ceremony in London for the Quick Reads Learners' Favourite Award. I'm informed that this will be followed by lunch and an opportunity for "networking and discussion with partners involved in the Quick Reads campaign".
As I'm a total newbie to this sort of thing, I'm asking if you have any advice on the proper etiquette for 'networking' with publishing industry-types. Being polite and friendly is a given, but should aspiring writers carry around a portfolio of their work, or would that seem overly pushy? Should I have business cards? And in which order should I use the cutlery?
Hope you can help.
Gavin
First of all, congratulations.
Secondly, you're not an artist, where having a portfolio might conceivably be useful if you're absolutely gob-smackingly amazing. You're a writer. There is no social situation in which producing a portfolio of your work will be acceptable or useful.
Business cards are your call. I've always meant to get around to getting some, but never have, in almost 25 years of writing. But they are useful and they save you having to find a napkin to write your address down.
If you're in a social situation with editors and publishers and other writers, go and meet them and make friends. Meeting other writers is fun. They have the same problems you have and they have different problems, and you can grumble together or support each other. Meeting editorial folks is good -- you learn that they are human, and nice and what they want and so on. They will relax considerably when they realise you aren't trying to sell them something. Possibly relax enough that, if you do ever want to sell them something, they'll be pleased to hear from you.
Don't go there to work. Go to meet people and enjoy yourself. sir, after deciding on writing a fantasy novel, how should i pick up the story line?i am a twelfth grader and i have decided to write novels in my forthcoming summer holidays..(for which there is exactly a year's time left !!)
I'm not quite sure that it works like that, or it doesn't for me. I rarely go "I will now write a ..." (whatever. Fantasy, or pirate story or detective story or ghost story) and then try and find a plot. Mostly, I go "This would be a story..." and then follow it where it goes. I think that's more fun. Worry more about your characters -- are they people you would like to meet and spend time with? -- and what you're trying to say, what the story's about, than you do what the story is. Because if you know what it's about, then you can simply inspect and use or reject ideas.
Enjoy yourself.
Dear Neil,
Being a Very Famous Author, you may not need to worry about this anymore, but when you had deadlines that absolutely needed to be met, how did you focus in order to force words to come out of your head? I'm trying to write my masters thesis right now (about a cow lameness detection machine) and was wondering if you could give some tips on setting the mood to coax a brain into writing. Also, having read Winnie the Pooh when I was younger, I noticed you sometimes write like Milne did. Instead of writing "very famous author" you write "Very Famous Author," minus the quotes. Do you know if that originated with Milne, or is it just something that writers do? Cool dog by the way!
Phil
It's what comes of reading too much Milne and Noel Langley and people as a boy, I'm sure although I suspect I was probably more influenced by Milne's adult essays and short pieces, from collections like The Holiday Round, (which contains the wonderful Little Plays For Amateurs) than I was by his children's fiction. The judicious use of capitals for humorous effect predates them, though -- W. S. Gilbert did it, and Jerome K. Jerome, amongst others.
As for deadlines...
Like a hanging, I find they concentrate the mind wonderfully.
The best suggestion I can make is to stop doing other things. Turn off the computer, or take a laptop somewhere they don't have wireless. Don't play solitaire or bring a mobile phone. Then write.
It's amazing how much time you can spend not writing, without even trying. Make a rule that you can either write, or not do anything at all. (No TV. No long baths. No reading New Scientist. Staring out of the window is okay.) Pretty soon, you start to write, because it's more interesting than staring vacantly out of the window. (I think I got it from a Daniel Pinkwater essay in Fish Whistle, and it's a wonderful concept.)
Hello, Do you have any updates on Coraline for us? It's been a while since you have mentioned it. Thanks.-Jordan
I've seen a reel of the revised opening ten minutes, which they've tightened and made so it gives more information, with a very spooky opening title credits, and then I've seen a five minute sequence of Coraline talking to her parents while it rains outside and going and looking around the house, counting doors and blue things and so on, which was partially animated, and the animation looked amazing. It's still on track for a release by Hallowe'en of 2008...
Hi, I have a quick question in relation to your newly acquired pet, and pet name. I for one know I chimed in with Cabal. But I imagine about a million other people did as well. I was curious about all the different names you got sent. Did you see one time come up much more than others? Might give us insight into the group psychology of your avid readers.
TC Barnabas and Daniel were out there in first and second place, but I didn't want to name a dog after a fictional character. Well, not from one of my fictions anyway. I think Cabal/Caval/Cafall variants collectively were in third place. After that, a few Barneys and then a madcap assortment of names from Bob to Ditch to Blank.
I just got sent a photo of me actually looking at some of the characters and their possessions. These are painted models, not the puppets that will be appearing in the film. Henry is explaining, under the gaze of Georgina Hayns, the Puppet Fabrication Supervisor, how Coraline's father has a different kind of jaw movement to some of the other characters. He thinks I'm listening. Actually I'm just trying to figure out whether I should go "Oh look! A dangerous polar bear!" and then while everyone is looking around trying to see what I am talking about or running away or trying to find a nice plump seal to throw to the polar bear and distract it, I could put one of the models under my leather jacket. And then I am remembering that I forgot to wear my leather jacket.
And, because they knew it delighted me, the Coraline crew sent me a photo of one of the buttons that overwrote the "Mission Statements" belonging to the previous occupants of the studios.
Also, I just got an email saying
You're having too much fun with the labels on new blogger, aren't you?
After my visit to the Coraline set just before Christmas I said They are also doing technical tests -- it's easy enough for me to say in the book, and for Henry to put into his script, that as Coraline walks away from the Other House, the trees are less like trees and more like the idea of trees, but making an orchard turn into a misty abstraction is easier said than done when you have to build it. So they've built one, and are doing their camera tests to see if it will work.
I've just been sent a few photos from the visit... here's me and Henry Selick looking at the mock-up of the trees as she walks from right to left. (Click on the photo to see the bigger version and it will become easier to see what I was talking about.) Standing between us (and blocking the Coraline model) is Tom Proost, Shop Foreman.
And because those are a bit shadowy, here's a picture of Bo Henry, set construction supervisor, Henry Selick and me, surrounded by half-painted trees and a bit of nightmarish topiary. I have no idea what I was looking at, but I bet it was extremely interesting.
I'll put up a few more photos when I get them -- I hope they'll send over one or two with characters in. I mean, trees are good, but the characters are the thing...
Also today I read Henry Selick's first draft of the CORALINE movie, which was really cool (and really faithful to the book, sometimes almost disconcertingly so).
And because I have this power (apparently there are currently about 19,000 of you reading this thing) I'll recommend a few things: while I was travelling I read and enjoyed Nalo Hopkinson's yummy MIDNIGHT ROBBER, M. John Harrison's magnificent short stories TRAVEL ARRANGEMENTS, and the History of the Basque people by the guy that wrote COD. Also read Geoff Ryman's LUST on the plane home -- a powerful and odd book, about, it seemed to me, everything except lust.
And am currently playing Hamell on Trial's lovely CHOOCHTOWN a great deal, and because my assistant Lorraine left Lorraine Bowen's Bossy Nova CD in the car, I was getting very fond of the Bombay remix of the Crumble song before I came out to LA, bringing with me no music.
Yes, I know this is an American Gods website, and an American Gods journal, and I really ought to write about American Gods here. (And I'm just about to try a draft of the dustjacket copy -- I felt the first round might have given too much away.) But I thought I'd mention that my spooky children's book Coraline (which will come out in hardback from Harper about the time American Gods comes out in paperback) is being adapted by Henry Selick (who directed the Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach and Monkeybone). You can read more about it at http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/art-main.html?2001-02/15/14.00.film
