Marshcast #1 - Part 1: Years of reflection and the adventure begins for JM.net - Transcript
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KC Webb: KW
AR Puttee: AP
Introduction Music
AP: Welcome to marsh cast, the office pod cast of johnnymarsh.net. The home of Dream Raider, A Johnny marsh adventure.
Intro music
AP: hi everyone and welcome to the first episode of marsh cast where’re your hosts, I’m Anthony
KW: hi I’m Kev
AP: it’s been a long time coming and here we are just doing the first pod cast
KW: yeah it’s something I had never envisaged… I never thought I would be sitting down recording something like this.
AP: no…
KV: totally blows my mind on where we have come in 13 years, it’s been a long hard road, it really has but it’s been so rewarding and so enjoyable it’s been quite amazing. What has happened in that amount of time, have had lots of kicks in the teeth.
AP: oh yeh it has been the easiest road at the same time, it’s been very rewarding
KW: oh yeh… definitely, but it’s also been a very difficult road to tread at times
AP: we have to learn the process as we are going
KW: that’s it the publishing industry itself has been a tough nut to crack
AP: you haven’t knock backs and things
KW: it reminds me of those Looney tunes cartoons with that little squirrel running around trying to crack he sees nut after and nut starts with the pea nut works his way up then eventually it’s a coconut and he’s like WOW
AP: this is great… after all this time…
KW: he spends the whole cartoon trying to crack that nut, it won’t break, doesn’t matter what he does, that’s what’s it been like for us
AP: yeh but it did crack.
KW: it did
AP: It would have been 12 months ago
KW: it was just over 12 ago now
AP: Because I remember, I think I got a txt message or did you call me?
KW: I sent you a txt
AP: I was in New Zealand at the time
KW: yeh you were on holidays
AP: I was on top of Franz Joseph glacier at the time and I got your txt, it’s like OMG!! You just had lunch and got the go ahead.
KW: yeh that’s right, I just had the phone call at that stage to say that its favorable and I remember saying oh that’s very nice. Inside I’m going OMG what does that mean? (laughs)… I wanted to shout down the phone… does this mean it’s gonna get published or what?
AP: I got that txt message and I was on my holiday and I couldn’t believe it, I was screaming. I was driving at the time, I was doing a lot of driving that day and pulled over that evening sorting out accommodation and stuff and finally gave you a ring back saying we got it, it’s awesome, that was like at 10pm at night.
KW: yes… well after so many knock backs of trying virtually every publisher in Australia and overseas we tried a few publishers too. What we had to remember was its wasn’t that the quality of the writing wasn’t any good or the book wasn’t any good, it was quite simply that financially they just weren’t willing to take a chance on someone brand new and untried.
AP: yeh
KW: you had to keep that in mind because for anyone out there listening trying to get published and going through this, hang in there and eventually it will happen.
AP: persistence is everything... isn’t it? That’s what we found.
KW: yeh for sure, but be prepared for plenty of disappointments too.
AP: but it’s important to probably say that in all this time, believed in Johnny Marsh enough, we have had so much passion for it. We’ve never wavered from the vision we had.
KW: you got involved with it in the first week or two of the process I think. Going back all those years ago. I just brought my very first IBM compatible computer, which it was back then.
AP: laughs... gee that’s going back a while, considering what I’ve just managed to upgrade to
KW: I know, I know, the things that we are using these days are quite incredible compared to the computer we had back then. What I found was that I actually had a computer that allowed me to save my work and put it into files, I didn’t know much about computers at that point but I always felt the need to sit down and type something out, or write something out. I actually did. And the first time I did that I was 33 years at that point and I have suddenly realized for the first time in my life I know what I want to do with myself. And I know what road I should be treading, what path I should be going on, and I sat there and I starting writing this little story called Johnny Marsh Monster Hunter. It was all about these little kids and one of them was being frightened at night by something and he didn’t know what it was and he was going to be involved with this other kid called Johnny Marsh and was going sort of be a hero and come in and save the day. As I started writing these characters just got older and this creature that was attacking and frightening him at night, suddenly became real and very very involved and very scary and frightening, and it was just at that point that I just changed it that Anthony came over one day, he had been a friend of the family for god knows how long, long time.
AP: and I was doing lots of drawing, and visual arts and concepting and stuff at the time, I was doing a lot of projects.
KW: you were still in collage then, you were learning to do animation and stuff like that and Anthony’s art work had always impressed me, he has always had these wonderful drawings and this great imagination. He came up to me while I was writing this story and said “what ya doing Kev” and I said oh I’m writing this story.
AP: because it’s really your first time actually sat down and really jumped into right into the whole writing thing.
KW: It was the very first… apart from one other thing I’ve written previous to that was 4 pages on the story of my life, and that was that pretty important to give out, then I realized that after that I could write, basically thought will I can do something about this and I’ve always wanted to write a little story and that when I started that. And then became a massive story, a lot bigger and just amazing, because it actually grew before my eyes, like watching a pie rise in the oven. You sat there watching and it starts to expand and then starts to overflow and drip down the sides because the ideas were coming so fast and so quick that I couldn’t write fast enough to keep up with it and sp this amazing idea and this amazing concept and these wonderful characters just jumped out at me and started running around my head and I had to get rid of them I had to get them out. So then the story grew from Johnny Marsh Monster Hunter to Johnny Marsh Supernatural Investigator for what it stayed as for nearly 13 years.
AP: it was only up until 12 months ago…
KW: less than that, just before last Christmas our editor god bless her Penny Springthorpe said to us I think you should change the name and I’m like OMG!
AP: (laughing) we’ve had this name for so long, you’re asking us to change…. What are you doing?
KW: Could you ask me to rename my children (laughing) give me something a little bit easier to do you know. But when you look at it now, we absolutely adore the name Johnny Marsh Supernatural Investigator because that’s who we were I suppose and umm... Dream Raider is an awesome name.
AP: it is.
KW: we are so comfortable with Dream Raider we just think Dream Raider is so fantastic.
AP: and we still kept the name Johnny Marsh because it’s his story.
KW: there his adventures.
AP: people are basically going to be reading these stories and growing with John as he grows.
KW: I hope so, I hope so John is a very interesting character he has many facets to him.
AP: It’s just part of the interest that has kept us going for so long.
KW: Anthony will a test to this, we see them as real, I mean that’s why we are so passionate about them, because there like friends of ours.
AP: we have lived with them for so long.
KW: yeh.
AP: and to just start actually, when I actually came on board and started doing visual concepting and stuff which helped inspired a few ideas for the writing and that kind of thing and doing the illustrations really helped to visualize and flush it and these characters lift off.
KW: it made things even clearer for me. I mean I remember the very first time he grilled me about Manjucus, and said what does he look like, what’s his hair like, what’s his eyes like, what this like what’s this like.
AP: I basically went ahead and came up with Manjucus.
KW: when he came back the next day, the very next day he came over with this picture of Manjucus and I just went don’t change a thing, that’s him, you got him, that’s amazing.
AP: that’s the picture that went on the original cover.
KW: yes it was. For Anthony to come over and in one evening to draw him and bring him to me the next day and say don’t change a thing you got him.
AP: the style of him and representation of him changed a little bit but his initial design and character pretty much stayed the same.
KW: all his eye make up.
AP: yeh all of that kind of thing stayed the same.
KW: Because I said to Anthony everything about Manjucus is dangerous.
AP: If he’s in town you want to leave as soon as possible.
KW: he’s not like anything you’ve ever seen in your nightmares before, I was just, it was really quite amazing, he really did a great job on John and Wrongy. One of my favorites is Wrongy, I just think he is fantastic, I mean I sort of designed him with glasses that sort of hide his face. And of course Max the ever loving pooch.
AP: he’s great, he’s great Max is awesome.
KW: Max is fantastic.
AP: I have him in my head, just trying to project that on the page.
KW: that’s right.
AP: doing other concepts and things that aren’t actually illustrations like in the book but other things that have helped us flush out the story in the world, like Manjucus’s actual whole costume remember changing that we had the different pages and I had the different bottoms and the tops and the sleeves and everything and folding them in half.
KW: I remember that Anthony having all these drawings of theses trousers and these shirts and a picture of his head.
AP: it’s like going through a whole wardrobe design basically.
KW: that’s right, it was like there was a collage of them and we kept swapping the tops and pants and everything like a girl does with her doll (laughing).
AP: pretty much.
Both laughing.
KW: we were.
AP: seeing what works, what didn’t work.
KW: and we came up with this fantastic design, and we know exactly what he looks like now and what his costume is and his costume is quite stunning. You guys don’t get to see that but we know what it’s like and you will.
AP: and his stuff has been a great inspiration over the years for us hasn’t it... we get inspired by different things don’t we?
KW: for me mainly its science fiction movies, I mean one of my favorites has got to be Aliens.
AP: it’s a classic one, any sci-fi buff.
KW: it doesn’t matter how many times I sit and watch that movie…every time, it just fantastic.
AP: for me I used to watch Ray Harryhausen films.
KW: I remember them in the cinema when I was a kid.
AP: I still have those.
KW: they are fantastic movies, huge statue come to life, I mean that frightened the hell out of me when I was a kid.
AP: and that was before computers and digital effects got to the stage they were now and that’s what he was able to bring to fantastic films.
KW: (agreeing with enthusiasm)
KW: yeh those sorts of things are brilliant because they just fire the imagination.
AP: we are very visual with our ideas I think.
KW: (agreeing) and I think that’s why we click and why we have been on this project for so long and why we have believed in it for so long because we both can see where this was gonna go.
AP: and we’ve had quite a few people read it.
KW: how many people I’ve handed this out to over the years and said have a read of this see what you think, I’m after comments negative or positive I really don’t care you know I just want some feedback, so I know if I’m on the right track or whatever else you know.
AP: (agreeing)
KW: and so many people have said man this is awesome, this story, love it you know. Ok how can I improve it you know? Ah no don’t touch it, leave it alone, its great you know. It was a bit…. I was sort of… I was hard for sometimes because I really wanted someone to say you need to dig…
AP: come in you know and say I know you probably think it’s good but it could probably be crafted better that little bit you know.
KW: that’s where Penny came in.
AP: and that’s where she came in.
KW: yeh and I mean she really helped us incredibly, she picked up on so many things, but also so many little things in the book that I wrote that I thought I was doing really well and she would say you need to look at this… and I would go .. ”why, why do I need to look at that?” and she would give me the reasons and I would go ok well um... she would say re-write it for me and I would go (unsure) “do I have to?” and she would go just re-write it for me , and I would go away and come back 2 days later with a re write and send that down to her and she would go “that’s what I’m looking for!!” and I’m like really? She’s like “yeh yeh” and I would read and go… oh yeh that is a little better (laughs).
AP: that’s what it needed.
KW: that’s the sort of objective opinions I was looking for.
AP: and it’s important for people to get those.
KW: definitely.
AP: that’s the hardest and being a professional artist no one likes being …
KW: no one likes to be criticized.
AP: no they don’t.
KW: but you must look at things in an objective manner and say can this be improved some more and if someone has a suggestion, at least look at it.
AP: (agreeing) yeh, to be able to develop that thicker skinned to be able to take on people’s points of view and listen to their opinions… can only make… makes you work stronger.
KW: (agreeing) yup.
AP: when doing things like commercial art and that kind of thing weather its video games or books.
KW: or writing.
AP: and writing for that fact.
KW: I would always read through it and say what can I do here? what can I do here? And I’ve had help from friends who’ve read through it and said well we need to do this… we need to do that... and we would discuss things and go through it, and we would edit it a little bit more . I mean it’s been a huge process but one that has only benefited from, any extra time you could spend on your projects is well worth it... well worth it...
AP: is to craft and to refine them it’s a great process, and will change as the writing’s evolved the cover’s evolved and the illustrations have evolved and they were a bit of a tricky thing and having done the drawings over a period of many years, obviously your skill grows and your confidence grows as well, a few of the drawings, the trio in the front of the book…
KW: that’s the original trio and I mean I know that Anthony’s probably not really happy with those three characters standing there. He probably thinks “I could draw them better now” but what we want you to realize is those are the original characters that Anthony first produced and I said to Anthony “keep them original” and sometimes I can see a little disappointment in Anthony (smiling).
AP: well …
KW: he’ll be saying I can draw them better now, I can make them look better.
AP: after 12 or 13 years you constantly grow we all improve.
KW: (agreeing) but as I said to Anthony I really want people to see this is how they were.
AP: there’s a bit of history there see…
KW: definitely.
AP: there’s a bit of history there, history in those drawings we wanted to hold onto that and nostalgia that we also had for those drawings that helped us get through the process.
KW: yeh because like I say these characters are real to us I really wanted everyone to see exactly what we saw 13 years ago , which is why those 3 characters are sitting there in front of your book.
AP: that’s right.
KW: so ah, we want you to share in that , see them exactly how we saw them and this was Anthony’s idea , like I say Anthony was 18 years old and he really hadn’t even started his career he was working at one of the large chain stores, weren’t you mate?
AP: yeh that’s right.
Both laughing
KW: so yeh, you were still doing work at tafe / collage.
Anthony agreeing
KW: something like that with regards to your computer animation.
AP: yeh well I had done a lot of drawing and stuff at school and knew that that was the kind of direction I wanted to go creative direction computers would just come into there, just starting to break into where they could offer artist and things that have more opportunities.
KW: you had a real interest in that, and computer games definitely the shoot-em ups.
AP: like movies just creative inspiration.
KW: they are.
AP: ah... I think we’ve run out of time with this episode, well thank you all for listening and we’ll talk to you next time.
KW: see you on the next pod cast.
AP: see you guys… bye.
Outro
AP: thank you all again for listening stay tuned with us on Johnnymarsh.net and be sure to check out part 2 of this episode coming up next week, just remember if you would like to contact us with any questions you can use the handy feedback form by clicking on the contact us link on the johnnymarsh.net home page. Talk to you next time. Bye bye
Music and lightening sounds
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