The Ballad of 'Ol Shootin' Jed: Page 8

Shootin' Jed makes his startling debut in his eponymous tale.
As I go further and further into this story, I am beginning to realize just how difficult it can be to draw pictures to someone else's words. When I go about doing my own stories, I pretty much am creating a visualization of what I'm writing AS I'm writing it, far ahead of schedule of any actual drawing. This is much harder to do for a story I haven't written. My prep work mostly involves the selection of a given passage, reading and re-reading it in an attempt to give myself a frame of mind for the image to come. Sometimes, this technique is more successful than others, as i often find myself erasing large portions of a draft, or just starting over. Last week's initial draft looked a lot more like this, before I changed it up to Eddie's imagined barroom scene. So in that scene, Shootin' Jed's arrival on the scene was delayed by a week, bt that just makes it all the more triumphant. In fact, Shootin' Jed may be the only infant to emerge "triumphantly" from the womb [citation needed].

So the other day, I caught a wild hair, and as wild hairs are oft to do, it became a project. It all started with a friend's very clever play on words. From her facebook profile:

"That feel when Victoria Justice and Taylor Swift will never star in a buddy-cop television series called 'Swift Justice.'"

my response?

"challenge accepted..."

my second response, a little more than week later:

(note: you should be able to see this, whether or not you're a fan of my facebook page, however, it couldn't hurt to become one anyway ;-D)

I am not certain why this picture suddenly became so important to me. Perhaps just because i thought the idea what the right mix of clever and absurd that tugs at my heart-strings so. Perhaps I was just attempting to impress a girl. When all you can do is draw, you tend to find whatever reason to display to the world the fact you can do it. Whatever the case, like the magnificent narcissist I am, I totally love this picture, it makes me LOL every time I look at it, and like any good narcissist, I look at it often.

Next step, develop a 16-bit arcade style side scrolling beat-'em-up game, a la' "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time", "X-Men", "Streets of Rage" or "The Simpsons" based on this character concept.
Next step after THAT, direct a really cheesy, early 90's inspired "video game-to-movie" adaptation.

I can see it all now...

"One's a tough as nails country gal, the other's a street wise city chick! together, they're an unstoppable crime fighting machine!
Coming This Christmas!
Taylor Swift and Victoria Justice ARE:
...
SWIFT JUSTICE!

They ain't gonna let CRIME finish!"

Soundtrack by Vanilla Ice, MC Hammer, Michael Jackson, Coolio, Stevie B, New Edition and Run D.M.C.