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Gardenialand Phase Three
3 years ago
General
1997-2002
In college, I had an opportunity to make a video game in Director 6. After reading The Hero's Journey, I came up with the basic outline for the Gardenialand story and spent just about every free moment at school working on it.
(To summarize the story, just look at Gardenialand Flashback 1-114)
The basic gist: Pudgy lives in a secret campsite in Osceola, Missouri with Cupcake the bird and a blind panda bear named Patricia. Pudgy wanders down to a convenience store deep in the woods, where Scott the owl lives (I named the owl after Scott's Iconium Store). They fall down a ladder into Uncle Wiggly Cave (a place in Osceola) and the owl pulls a coupon out of a forbidden coupon dispenser. This opens an underground supermarket full of shadow monsters. Pudgy and Scott destroy the monsters with flashlights (I tried to make an action minigame with Director 6 but it didn't work so well). At some point it floods and their tents wash down into a magical furry Native American land ("The Ghatsi").
The Ghatsi are modeled after the Mic-O-Say Boy Scout organization. (Mic-O-Say teaches kids to appreciate Native American culture, crafts and customs).
I had ideas for a sequel, but I barely had time to finish the first installment. It already consumed one entire Iomega Zip Disk and half of another, with the sound and not-so-good cartoon clips.
People said the animation and stuff I made was like South Park. The teacher said "Good grief!" when he saw all the production notes I had on it. I got an A for the course, but the game was made on Apple and I wouldn't have access to expensive computers like that again, so I don't have much to show for it.
In college, I got captured by a crazy Korean lady and dragged into her Korean bible study group. It's because of her that Kimpap and Patricia exist in all versions of the Gardenia story. They're not stereotypes, I'm depicting the woman basically as I remember her. Including her ability to twist people's arms and drag them into things they don't enjoy.
They wrote their own bible study books by hand. That was their thing. And she was an amazing cook, except when she attempted to make American food (she made a pizza with ketchup).
My video game is outdated by now. All I have to show for it are some movie files. I could piece it together and post to Youtube if you're interested, but it's not very good.
The next semester I brought the story back as a comic book, using the Fred Flintstone method (ball point pen, cheap paper, colored with colored pencils). It didn't look very good, and I gave the whole thing to a friend who never returned it.
Lacking the comic book, I remade the story into the children's book, "Ghatsi Smoke," which you can see in my gallery. The good parts, anyway.
I made a couple color copies of the book at Kinkos, horribly expensive, and it only resulted in rejection letters from children's book publishers.
The important part: The back story to Gardenialand is firmly established at this point, and I was getting burned out on using Pudgy as the main character.
In college, I had an opportunity to make a video game in Director 6. After reading The Hero's Journey, I came up with the basic outline for the Gardenialand story and spent just about every free moment at school working on it.
(To summarize the story, just look at Gardenialand Flashback 1-114)
The basic gist: Pudgy lives in a secret campsite in Osceola, Missouri with Cupcake the bird and a blind panda bear named Patricia. Pudgy wanders down to a convenience store deep in the woods, where Scott the owl lives (I named the owl after Scott's Iconium Store). They fall down a ladder into Uncle Wiggly Cave (a place in Osceola) and the owl pulls a coupon out of a forbidden coupon dispenser. This opens an underground supermarket full of shadow monsters. Pudgy and Scott destroy the monsters with flashlights (I tried to make an action minigame with Director 6 but it didn't work so well). At some point it floods and their tents wash down into a magical furry Native American land ("The Ghatsi").
The Ghatsi are modeled after the Mic-O-Say Boy Scout organization. (Mic-O-Say teaches kids to appreciate Native American culture, crafts and customs).
I had ideas for a sequel, but I barely had time to finish the first installment. It already consumed one entire Iomega Zip Disk and half of another, with the sound and not-so-good cartoon clips.
People said the animation and stuff I made was like South Park. The teacher said "Good grief!" when he saw all the production notes I had on it. I got an A for the course, but the game was made on Apple and I wouldn't have access to expensive computers like that again, so I don't have much to show for it.
In college, I got captured by a crazy Korean lady and dragged into her Korean bible study group. It's because of her that Kimpap and Patricia exist in all versions of the Gardenia story. They're not stereotypes, I'm depicting the woman basically as I remember her. Including her ability to twist people's arms and drag them into things they don't enjoy.
They wrote their own bible study books by hand. That was their thing. And she was an amazing cook, except when she attempted to make American food (she made a pizza with ketchup).
My video game is outdated by now. All I have to show for it are some movie files. I could piece it together and post to Youtube if you're interested, but it's not very good.
The next semester I brought the story back as a comic book, using the Fred Flintstone method (ball point pen, cheap paper, colored with colored pencils). It didn't look very good, and I gave the whole thing to a friend who never returned it.
Lacking the comic book, I remade the story into the children's book, "Ghatsi Smoke," which you can see in my gallery. The good parts, anyway.
I made a couple color copies of the book at Kinkos, horribly expensive, and it only resulted in rejection letters from children's book publishers.
The important part: The back story to Gardenialand is firmly established at this point, and I was getting burned out on using Pudgy as the main character.
