What creative projects have you been working on?

I'm working on a new track, I'm fairly happy with it so far but I still need to figure out the ending a bit, and polish it.

I'm currently working on quite a few things. Mostly, and I wouldn't call this a creative project as it looks on the outside, but I've currently got a YouTube channel (CityboundForest) and I intend to do some interesting and creative things that I will keep secret for now. My college major is mostly creative work, so I guess I can also count all of that. I'm also working on creating quite a few languages (a la Tolkien).

1. Last week I finished the first treatment of a screenplay based on a short story I published here some time ago. Sent it to be registered at my country's copyrighting authority — a legal requirement to participate in public contests. I think I have a good shot at getting financed.

2. I'm at the end of the brainstorming phase for a feature-film screenplay project^[1] that I will submit to the same public contest. It is called Endless Night, and it's about a couple that will most certainly break-up as soon as the day starts, even though they love each other very much. But somehow their love (or something like that) causes the night to never end, in an unconscious effort to avoid the inevitable end. Things get very crazy and they (and their party guests) end up spending years in this interminable night.

3. I'm collaborating on a screenplay for a short-film called Drops of Blood, which as a twist to the classic Pact With The Devil trope. It resembles The Omen — but with a lot more gore. This is the third project I will submit to the public contest. Fingers crossed!

4. I posted on my blog after months of inactivity - a brief analysis/commentary about the movie The Lighthouse. Right now it's only in Portuguese, but I'll translate it to English in the coming days.

^[1] If I win, I get paid to write the screenplay and develop the project, which I can submit for production the next year.

I took up painting in the last year or two, gouache and some acrylic too. Taking a drawing class too.

I have been working on a project that you might find interesting and is relevant to this question. It's called Futureland and its a way to discover, share and finish your creative projects. It's a combination of community and powerful Journals that interpret the progress of your projects visually and help you finish them.

Here's my profile: futureland.tv/internetvin - it includes Journals of a variety of projects I've done recently including teaching myself how to code by writing code for 365 consecutive days.

Max is a computer programmer who is using Futureland to develop a game. Here's the Journal for his project: https://futureland.tv/max/gamedev

Saph is a student who taught herself Visual Art by using Futureland to create some kind of Visual Art for 365 consecutive days. Here's the Journal for her project: https://futureland.tv/saph/visual-art

Karl is a filmmaker who recently started using Futureland to document the process of making his film and establishing an independent film studio in Toronto. Here's his profile: http://futureland.tv/karlkai

Futureland is currently in Alpha. I'd love any feedback if you decide to try it.

Vin
vin@futureland.tv

This weekend I am gonna try my hand at making an ecorche model. I am hoping that doing so will help me learn some useful anatomy for art.

Not so much working as ideating.

One idea I had is how to upgrade a prominent old fictional setting of mine. I like the idea of zombie apocalypse, but the fact that everyone is using zombies as a standard, easy-to-discern threat with a unified image of rotting flesh was not a thing for my plate.

The thing I came up with at the time was having "zombies" be humans with an advanced IoT chip in their brains. The chip is supposed to keep you constantly connected with the Internet, including searching and sending messages by thinking about it. Since a large portion of the population had it (something like 25~30%), it would make for a realistic numbers game. They become "zombies" – zeds, in this setting – after an unknown virus spreads online; one of the virus' effect is breaking the chip in a way that caused brain damage.

Except, in this case, somehow, instead of simply killing the users, it revivified them with lesser brain capacities while still maintaining Internet connection.

The idea here was to create "zombies" that would naturally fall into packs (because the chip registers nearby chip users, and this is much more familiar than the "bland" humans), including hordes (which are massive packs), whose existence would deprecate the use of the Internet without restricting the rest of technology (humans accessing the Internet register on the "radar" of zeds but are not recognized as kin and are, therefore, hunted down). The way I thought about them was something akin to wolves, where the reduction of higher brain functions naturally increases the prominence of the tribal/pack instinct in a zed's mental framework.

I still like this idea, but it's just too zombie for me. A few days ago, I came up with something different:

Instead of creating Internet-assisted wolves in human form, the chip damage still reduces some brain capacity but keeps users somewhat sapient still. Rather than be a shambling horde, these brain-fried humans – "blues" – are still social, tool-making creatures. The precise limits of their higher function I'm yet to outline; the current milestone is dolphins-and-a-little-more.

What makes the blues difficult to deal with is not simply their failure to communicate: it's the fact that their aggression is provoked by the least slights. Startling one may cause them to attack you. Accessing the Internet is likely to, as well.

Blues, in contrast with regular zombies, are capable of both surviving for longer than a month (because they can still hunt and scavenge for food and water) and, potentially, building a civilization of their own. What I'd like to explore is how some humans, instead of immediately attacking the blues, seek to compromise, deal, and even trade with them. This may evolve into a precarious peace of sorts – or it can all crumble because of a small group of humans being to afraid of the new subspecies to coexist.

Of note is the existence of The Cured, where a cure for the zombie disease was found. The film explores the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse, and particularly the attitude of survivors towards ex-zombies.