Ben Paddon

Category: Musings

  • PortsCenter’s First Year: What I’ve Learned, How I’ve Grown, And What I’ll Be Changing

    In 2011, with the help of a handful of friends, I produced, shot and edited the pilot episode for PortsCenter. The process from early idea to finished edit was surprisingly short, sparked from a conversation I had with Kyle LaCroix about the PSone port of id Software’s Doom. I wrote the first episode over a couple of days, purchased two grey PlayStation consoles and two copies of the game (with kind help from Teri Fisher and David Lewis, who chipped in funds for the pilot at a time when money was thin on the ground for me), and roped in a bunch of friends to help me shoot the episode and capture the game footage.

    Two years later, I’m in the final stretch of the first season. 2013 has seen PortsCenter join Retroware TV as a featured show and signed with Screenwave Media, a YouTube network that has been incredibly kind and supportive of the show. But most importantly, we’ve nearly completed our first full year of production on the series, with twenty completed episodes and a further four left to produce before the new year.

    Over the last year I’ve learned a lot, a lot, about producing content for the internet. I’ve learned a lot about what I need to do to make PortsCenter work. I’ve no idea how much of what I’ve learned is going to be applicable to others, but what the Hell, I’m going to write it down anyway.

     

    #1: Keep your mouth shut.

    It’s a fool who tells the world what he’s going to do before he’s actually done any of the doing of it. Don’t tell the world you’re going to climb Everest before you’ve bought your gear. Or before you know how to climb a mountain, for that matter. Do your research. Study. Figure out what you need to do in order to do the thing you want to do. Then, once you’ve done that, keep your fucking mouth shut until you have something to show the world. Don’t make promises you can’t keep.

    I’ve made this mistake often over the last fifteen years as I’ve hopped aimlessly from one pipe-dream creative endeavor to another. I still made that mistake with PortsCenter, by posting the complete list of games I intended to look at for the first season. You’ll notice games on that list that I sadly didn’t get to this season – Perfect Dark, Street Fighter II, Gears of War: The Board Game. The Gears episode is my biggest disappointment, because I’d announced plans to look at it before I’d figured out the logistics of filming four people playing a board game.

    For season 2, I’ll be keeping my planned titles close to the chest. No list, no episode list complete with intended release date that I have to keep editing to shift stuff around. Just the show, and the episodes I release.

     

    #2: Tell the world.

    You may think this contradicts my previous point, but it doesn’t. You’ve got to plug. You’ve got to be on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, Vine, everywhere talking about the video you’re filming, the song you’re recording, the comic you’re drawing. Then you’ve got to do it again when it’s released. Then you’ve got to do it again so you catch the people who didn’t catch it the first time ’round. Then you’ve got to do it a third time. Then you have to do it all over again when you’re getting ready to release your next video, or song, or comic, or whatever. If you don’t tell people what you’ve released, how is anybody going to find it?

    The trick is not to be obnoxious with it. I try very hard not to drown people with “WATCH PORTSCENTER!” messages on Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook every five bloody minutes. I use a rule of three – the day the video drops, the night the video drops, and then later in the week as I’m working on the following episode. This may seem excessive, but remember for every person who saw your first post, there’s probably someone who missed it who’ll catch it in one of the later posts. This is the internet. It’s global, and not everybody is going to be online or even awake at the time you make your initial post.

    Occasionally I’ll post something from an episode currently in-production – a photo of my monitor showing part of a script, or a voiceover outtake. Something fun, so it’s not all promotional. I mean yes, ultimately this sort of stuff is promotional, but it’s fun too. There’s a world of difference between a tweet that says “Episode 21 drops tomorrow!” and another that says “Wow, Ben can’t even get his lines out of his mouth without accidentally beatboxing.” Again, the key difference here is that I’m not stating an intent to do a thing. I’m showing you the doing of it.

     

    #3: Give a shit.

    If you’re talking about a topic, be it for a podcast or a video series, or just for your Tumblr blog, make sure it’s something you genuinely care about. I’ve seen people, occasionally friends, make videos solely to attract an audience, often about a topic they have no genuine heartfelt interest in. It shows in the work, and people will see through it, whether you’re making a simple YouTube video, or a blockbuster movie.

    On the flipside of this: If you have a genuine, heartfelt love of the project you’re working on, don’t phone it in. A “That’ll do” attitude isn’t going to result in a fun game, or a decent video, or a song worth listening to. It’ll be crap, nobody will give it the time of day, and you’ll wonder why you bothered.

    The point is, a labor of love has got to be exactly that. It’s got to be hard work, and it’s got to be something you care about. Forget just one of these ingredients, and it’ll just be a thing you did.

    This may sound silly, but I care deeply about video game ports. I’m fascinated by them. Almost obsessed. The version of myself I portray on the show is a little more aggressive about his fascination with ports than I am in real life, but the passion is still there. Ultimately, without that passion, PortsCenter wouldn’t be what it is. If I were just making this show because there aren’t other shows about game conversions on YouTube, it’d feel hollow. I think that’s an important distinction to make.

     

    #4: Push your limits, but know your limitations.

    Plan to make stuff outside of your comfort zone, outside of your knowledge level, because in doing so you’ll learn new tricks and techniques which will make your work better. You may fail, but you’ll still learn something and you can use that knowledge in the future. Or, as Thomas Edison allegedly put it, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

    That being said, keep in mind your resources, talent pool and technical ability. It’s one thing to write:

    A giant robotic spider lurches over the city, firing lasers from its eyes and swatting down aircraft like flies.

    It’s another thing entirely to actually film it. If you know you can, do it. If you think you can, go for it anyway. If you know you can’t, or think you won’t be able to, scale it down to something more manageable and realistic. Remember to push yourself, but don’t overdo it and don’t try to run before you can walk.

    That, ultimately, is what bit me in the arse with the Gears of War: The Board Game episode. I have no bloody clue how to film it. I still don’t. I want to include the episode in the second season, and I’m working on how to make it happen, but it’s nowhere near as simple as pointing a camera at my couch and making jokes about it. Mind you, two of my webseries projects for next year are going to be… well, not exactly simple. Yikes.

    And finally…

     

    #5: Make the sort of content you want to see.

    This is an extension of sorts of Point #3. If you want to see a webcomic about a sentient cheeseburger trying to make it in a world populated by anthropomorphic geometrical shapes, start drawing it. If you want to watch a webseries about a guy with rabbit ears applying for a business loan, get writing. Write, draw, film and record the sort of stuff you wish existed, because either you’ll spend the rest of your life waiting, or someone else will beat you to the punch and you’ll regret not acting sooner.

    PortsCenter exists because nobody else was making a show about video game ports, nobody else was making a video game show with this kind of sense of humor, and the one person I secretly hoped would make one, Charlie Brooker, seemingly had no plans plans on following up his single Gameswipe special, although in a few days his next gaming project, “How Video Games Changed the World”, airs on Channel Four in the UK.

    So that’s it. That’s what I’ve learned. Except that I’m lying, of course – I already knew all of this. The trick is remembering it, and acting upon it. Here’s hoping that next year, be it PortsCenter, Dalek Gary or the other projects I have in the works, I’m able to keep a firm grip on these words.

  • So I Said to this Bloke…

    It really pisses me off when people tell me that Texts From Bennett is fake. It’s not because I think the site is genuine – in fact I’ve no real opinion on the matter, largely because I don’t think it makes any difference either way.

    Would it really be less funny if it were fake? Not really. It’s still funny, and whether I’m laughing at the inane thoughts of a genuinely baffled American teenager or piercing satire that veers into Poe’s Law territory, I’m still being entertained. I’m still laughing. At the end of the day, that’s all that really matters. If nothing else, as my sister points out, we grew up in a town where people talk more or less like Bennett practically all of the time in a wholly unironic fashion.

    I have a similar reaction when people debate Karl Pilkington’s veracity. Is he genuinely that confused by life, or is he a character conceived by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, or possibly even Pilkington himself? Really, does it matter?

    The people who will decry Texts From Bennett as being fake, or accusing Karl Pilkington of being a very talented fraud, are like people attending a live stand-up show and shouting, “This anecdote didn’t happen! He’s making it up!” – to whit, they’re fucking ridiculous. The audience doesn’t care whether or not Bill Bailey joined a Welsh experimental youth theatre group, or whether Dave Gorman actually uses 50 pence worth of stationary for truly evil purposes*. The audience isn’t there for facts. It’s not a bloody lecture.

    What I’m saying is, if you look down on someone for having a bit of a giggle at a site like Texts From Bennett, then, y’know, basically, fuck off.

    * I’d wanted to use a different example – part of Dave Gorman’s stand-up set where he lists a number of amusingly offensive puns his nephew suggested he say as part of his act – but it doesn’t appear to be on YouTube, and I’m not going to be the one to upload it. Suffice to say, you should buy Dave Gorman’s DVD “Stand Up. Live.” if you want to see it.

  • SoulGeek

    As many of you know, I’ve been quite heavily connected to SoulGeek for the last three-or-so years. I’ve helped site founder Dino Andrade coordinate convention appearances, I’ve helped to organize the Singles Nights over in Van Nuys, and I even co-host them with Dino (it still baffles me that Dino credits me as “creator of JUMP LEADS” when it’s a webcomic with a small audience, but who am I to argue?). Over the last few years I’ve become close friends with Dino and his better half, Casey. They’re family. I love ’em to bits.

    I feel very strongly, very passionately, about what Dino is trying to accomplish, and what he’s already accomplished. I may have a personal bias – I met my girlfriend on SoulGeek, and I’ve made many great friends through the site – but I am completely behind what he’s doing. He didn’t create the site to “cash in”. He does what he does because he genuinely, genuinely wants to see geeks like us be happy. I think that’s fantastic, and I feel very privileged to have been allowed to contribute to that.

    For those who are interested, SoulGeek will have a presence at the Long Beach Comic-Con this year. Dino will be there at booth #941, along with an absolutely cracking guest list that includes the likes of Walter Jones (Zak from “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers”), Gregg Berger (“Transformers”, “Men in Black”, “Halo Wars”), Alexis Cruz (“Stargate SG-1: Children of the Gods – Final Cut”), Richard Epcar (“Transformers”, “Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe”). Then there’s Dino himself, of course, who has voiced characters in “World of Warcraft” and “Brutal Legend” among others, although my favourite performance of his is definitely his turn as the Scarecrow in “Batman: Arkham Asylum”.

    I might even be there myself, if I’m able to go. Might be my last chance to attend a convention with SoulGeek for some time, so if I can squeeze myself in I’ll be there. And you’ll continue to see me at the Singles Nights, of course – who else is going to bring Rock Band, after all?

  • Perchance to Dream

    Every day people get into cars they haven’t finished paying for, drive to jobs they don’t like to earn money to pay for things they don’t necessarily want but that will distract them from the soul-crushing tedium of life.

    You know what these people need? They need a TV show to remind them of the joy of life, a sort-of Sesame Street for adults that says that, yes, you may not like your work, you may have a mortgage to pay, you may not be as young as you once were, but you can still chase your dreams. You can still achieve your dreams. There is nothing, literally nothing stopping you from being the person you want to be, from living your life how you want it to. Those dreams are still attainable.

    Far too many people have let themselves be pulled down by a cynical world. Far too many people I know have given up on their dreams and desires because the world tells them to get a job, get a car, get married, get a mortgage, have some kids, as though this is the only adventure one could possibly hope to experience in one’s brief flicker of a life.

    When we were children, the world seemed impossible and vast, like a place where anything could happen. And we dream that we might grow up to be astronauts, or race car drivers, or Elvis. As we enter our teens our dreams get a little more sophisticated, and we decide we want to be writers, inventors, physicists, actors, musicians.

    Then after school, possibly after college, we get ourselves a 9-to-5 job, and this cynical world begins to have its way with us. We end up working in a Purchasing department, or as Head of Marketing for a company that makes toilet seats, or maybe we get stuck doing data entry for the next ten years. It wears it out of you. It strips you of your energy, drive, ambition, and you begin to believe that maybe this is about a far as you can possibly go. And though you may rise up the corporate ladder and one day become VP of the Sanderson Bobble-Head Company, is it really what you wanted? What dream did you sacrifice for this illusion of stability?

    So that’s what we need. A half-hour show every day that reminds adults that they don’t necessarily have to be so adult about everything. That it’s okay to be a little childish once in a while, to hold on to childish things, and to dream.

  • And Now: A Writer Critiques A Cartoonist

    Firstly, full disclosure: Scott Kurtz and I had a bit of a falling out last year. Despite this I remain a huge fan of his work, and once my finances are more balanced I intend to pick up the books I haven’t bought yet (namely, all of the post-Awesomeology ones). PvP is consistently one of the most entertaining webcomics out there, and it’s one of the comics I look forward to each day.

    Despite this, it’s hard to ignore that Scott’s art has been a little… well, difficult to look at lately.

    I’m no artist, but take a look at the latest PvP. Compare Jade (black top) with her sister, Miranda (the “hot librarian”). Compare the physique of the two – Jade is well-proportioned and distinctly cartoony, while Miranda appears to have a cartoon head affixed to a body with reasonably human-ish proportions. The two styles don’t mesh. It hasn’t worked, and it pulls me out of the comic. That’s not even touching upon Miranda’s hair, which is apparently a character all of its own with its own feelings and motivations.

    This bizarre juxtaposition of the real and the cartoon also occurred in the previous strip, where Miranda is a little less cartoony than in today’s strip, and yet is still human enough to clash with the distinctly cartoon appearances of Jade and Brent. The proportions of her head are even worse in this strip. If Miranda had always appeared in the comic in this form (and she hasn’t) I’d wonder if she and Jade were actually biological siblings. Perhaps Miranda was adopted. Perhaps she was found amidst the wreckage of a small, slightly too-real space vessel, the last survivor of a planet on the edge of the PvP reality and a bordering “trace-comic” universe that was destroyed by, I don’t know, space zombies or something.

    And here’s that weird reality-bending look again, this time with Jade appearing to be the quasi-real person instead of Miranda.

    Looking through some of Scott’s other recent strips, it becomes rather apparent that his weakness appears to be the female form. All of the male characters – Cole, Brent, Francis, Robbie, as well as Skull the Troll (gender variable) – are distinctly cartoony, and drawing those male characters seems to come incredibly easily to Scott. I mean, look at this strip. The character designs, the shapes… they’re brilliant. Yet Jade and Miranda aren’t coming as easily as they used to back in the old “head and shoulders” days. Drawing a cartoon-friendly version of the female form isn’t something Scott’s quite got a handle on yet.

    It’s likely because he’s trying to push himself by drawing his characters in more dynamic poses other than the more static look of earlier strips – something I definitely approve of – but you can see it’s still a learning process. He’s not quite there yet. He’ll get there, provided he can push beyond the “trace stuff from the real world” phase he’s been in for the last couple of years and start using reference photos as, well, reference photos.

    For now, though, he’s stuck in this weird webcomic Uncanny Valley. It’s a tricky spot to be in, and it’s far too easy to get comfortable in that space and not want to leave it, but hopefully Scott can push forward. In fact I’m all but certain he can – it’s been a joy to see his art grow from strength to strength these last few years, and I look forward to seeing that stuff because once Scott has it all figured out his art is going to shine brighter than ever.

    Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to tell Jamie Oliver how to be a chef despite my having virtually no experience in the kitchen other than operating a microwave.

  • Words

    I’ve been thinking tonight about the stories I want to tell, largely because I decided to sned my friend Tealin the email equivilent of lunging at her wild-eyed* and yelling “WE… MUST COLLABORATE!!” Her response was positive, which is good, because she is an incredibly talented artist and the idea of creating a world with her is exciting. I’m excited.

    I’ve sat down and thought about the stories that I want to tell right now. One of those stories has actually been floating around in my head for quite some time and tackles the subject of religion, but I can’t figure out exactly what I want to do with it or, indeed, what the message is behind it (although I’m closer to knowing now than I was when I first came up with the idea). Tealin has pointed out, though, that there’s a risk of it becoming “vindictive”, and that’s definitely not what I want this story to be. I need to let it stew for a little longer, so back in the Corpse File it goes.

    The other story that pops into my head is very loosely autobiographical in nature. I’ve mentioned this before, and I almost started working on it last year. The problem there, and again I may have covered this in a previous entry, is that it touches upon elements of my personal past that are long behind me now and that I don’t feel a strong connection to anymore, even though those elements really only contribute to the back-story and not to the actual goings-on themselves. I’ve sat down a number of times to write this story, but nothing ever comes out.

    So where do we go from here? I find myself wondering what sort of thing I want to write. I’m hesitant to do more scifi and I’m not sure I’d feel confident tackling fantasy. I have a few ideas in my head but nothing’s really leaping out at me at the moment. Maybe I just need to write something and see what my brain thinks.

    * For some reason this sentence put me in mind of any time during the Back to the Future trilogy where Doc Brown had to tell Marty something catastrophic. I truly believe that Chris Lloyd is the hallmark for wide-eyed craziness.

  • Not Quite Life

    I stopped writing my slice-o’-life webcomic before my artist had even drawn the first strip because, frankly, I found the entire thing boring to write. I couldn’t engage with the characters I’d created, which is perhaps problematic because the central character is basically me. The premise was semi-autobiographical, dealing with a young man who gets out of a serious relationship and tries to reconnect with his former best friend, someone his ex had tried to push out of his life. That happened, and I wanted to tell that story.

    The problem is that I wanted to tell it three years ago. Now I feel like I’ve moved well beyond that point in my life, and revisiting it just to try and tell a not-quite-what-happened version of it for a webcomic doesn’t sit well, especially as I was trying to make it work in a gag-a-day format. So, no. Not interested. Pass.

    This presents an additional problem – I want to work on a gag-a-day comic again. Fried ended in 2006 when, after three years, I realized I was bored with it. Jump Leads exceeded Fried‘s lifespan at the start of this month, not just in duration but in quantity. Jump Leads remains fresh because by its nature it has to. We’re never in the same universe for more than a few months. It keeps things interesting.

    But in a weird sort-of way I want to do something a little more grounded, with characters I can drop into random scenarios and just have fun with. I think I’ve come up with a concept that is grounded enough to work as a gag-a-day, but quirky enough to keep me interested. And funnily enough, it’s based on a short film I wrote back in 2007.

    Last night, for the first time in three years, I sat down to sketch characters. I don’t know if I’ll be doing anything with those sketches – I’m no artist, by any stretch – but that’s also how Jump Leads started way back in 2006. I’d like to take that as a Good Sign.

  • Of Plums and Puddings

    Michelle recently told me that I use name-calling far too often on But, Sir…, which undermines the entire point of the blog. She is not wrong. It used to be that I would use insults sparingly, but recently I’ve been using them a lot. A lot of a lot, actually. It’s lazy, and I’m sure I could justify it all by saying “I’ve had it with these motherfucking morons on this motherfucking petitions site”, but if that were true why bother writing the blog at all? Why half-heartedly consider the possibility of putting a book together at some point in the next twelve months?

    This week Andrew and I had a lovely email conversation with a man who objected to me calling him a “fucking plum”, and then changed his position so that he’d only objected to me using the word “fucking”, and then threatened to call the Police. It highlighted two very important points – that there’s nothing wrong with name-calling, and that I really should tone it down a little. So I have done. I posted a bunch of petitions on But, Sir… today and there’s nary an insult amongst them. Considering one of those petitions came from recurring problem petitioner Keith Jones, I think I did rather well.

    Jump Leads is updating again, and I have to say it’s a bit of a relief. JjAR had taken a month off to try and work on becoming a freelance artist, but the work just isn’t out there in Russia so he’s stuck behind a desk still. I’m hoping I can pull from my exhaustive list of contacts to try and get him work on this side of the pond – maybe even a Work Visa. We’ll see what happens.

    There’ll be a new episode of Ben Paddon’s Feeble Excuse going up hopefully tomorrow featuring an awesome interview with the Grand Daddy of Nerdcore himself, MC Frontalot, and I’m once again collaborating on a project with Kill9 Studios that should be oodles of fun to write and shoot provided we don’t all get exterminated in the process.