Research

Saw Watchmen last week. Bought the soundtrack on Monday. Loved it. One thing I never really grasped before, was that it's not a hero movie in the traditional sense. It's a group of vigilantes and one super human. The whole office went and enjoyed it. We spent at least 3 hours talking about it post-theater and on Monday we added that and Dark Knight Returns to the company library :-D

After watching Akira on Blu-Ray I've decided to go back and re-read the manga again. I have the entire run that was done by Marvel Comics subsidiary Epic from way back in the day as well as one of the hardcover reissues by Graffiti. I've heard recently that I should check out the Dark Horse versions as the translations are better, but alas they are long out of print. Akira was the first book I read that spanned more than 5-10 issues and held my attention the entire time. The detail with which Otomo rendered the world of 2019 Neo-Tokyo is still unrivaled IMHO. It's also the standard against which I judge my own work. On a side note, in a spirit of the moment otaku product sweep, I lucked into a cherry copy of Akira Mechanix 2019. I am eagerly awaiting my copy in the mail.

I just finished the book "One Soldier's War in Chechnya" by Arkady Babchenko. This the tail end of a research project I did on Chechnya which included a lot of ugly ugly stuff. I read pieces from every angle, strategic, humanitarian, separatist, federalist, etc. Working on BPRE I've really been educated up on my Central Asia/Middle East history. I'll post more of my reading lists here shortly for those who are interested. I read quite a lot ^_^;

After creating drafts of 4 maps for BPRE I'm switching gears and doing a pass on the RoninSVC social network portion of BPRE this week. Over the past few months Phil spent a significant portion of his time researching and studying games on Facebook and MySpace where we learned a whole lot about what works and what doesn't in social network gaming. While it's not a 1:1 analogue, we've made a few additions and a extractions that streamline the user experience. Go Go Echelon Software ^_^;

On another note, after spending some time tearing draft 1 to pieces I'm going to Fayetteville to start draft 2 on the screenplay for the graphic novel next week. Have a better one.