Archive for the ‘Stories’ Category

Captain Robert and the Search for Magni-Tron Transmitters

Captain Robert Play

Captain Robert Play

Anyone that has rummaged through a few pages of Thinkpierce.com, probably wouldn’t be surprised to learn that drama class was one of my electives as a senior in high school.  What might not be expected however was that I hated it.  The class focused heavily on Shakespeare type plays and other stereotypical content that anyone would assume to be a part of a drama class. It seemed to be something my peers could get in to, but it just wasn’t for me. When I dropped the class and didn’t return the next quarter something unique happened; for whatever reason, the drama teacher Mrs. Harbolt wanted me to come back to the class when the next semester started.  Around that same time I had already started working on a rough draft for a space based story during my homeroom period that featured a character named Captain Robert. I wasn’t really interested in coming back to the class if I had to keep doing the same type of stuff I had done the first quarter, however Mrs. Harbolt’s question put another idea in my head. I asked her if she would let me put on my own play if I enrolled in drama again next semester.  I don’t know why, but she said yes and that moment marked the beginning of what would eventually turn in to a play called, “Captain Robert and the Search for Magni-Tron Transmitters.”

Captain Robert Play

Captain Robert Play

Over the remaining weeks I finished writing the script during my homeroom class and once the next semester arrived I was ready to get started. True to her word, Mrs. Harbolt gave me control of the class for a set amount of weeks as well as a small budget to spend on costumes and building the set. I was truly blown away by the opportunity I had been given. I was allotted a specific amount of time to rehearse with the class and after a lot of work on everyone’s part the day finally came to perform the play. We performed it two weekend nights and had a really positive turn out. Many of the audience members who had seen it the first night, came back to see it the second night as well.  The zany storyline included anything from an insane choreographed rant about the lunch I brought to a woman swooning lip sync performance of Backstreet Boys’ I Want It That Way. Due to the positive buzz the play had created, the school administration asked us to perform it again the following week to provide entertainment for all of the seniors while the junior class was doing some testing. This brought a lot more exposure to the play that it wouldn’t have gotten otherwise and seemed to once again bring a positive response from the audience.

Captain Robert Play

Captain Robert Play

The experience of getting to create this play ended up being a landmark moment for me creatively. I owe a huge thanks to Mrs. Harbolt as well as my fellow drama class students for allowing me a unique creative opportunity that I’ll never forget. The only regret I have is that I didn’t take better steps at the time to get higher quality video footage of the performance.  Although I currently have a lot of creative goals that I have made a priority right now, one day I plan to make a unique movie version of this play. When that day comes, I will probably have such a natural high that people will think I’m insane….er, wait a minute…

Thinkpierce presents the story of Numlock & Gordon

Numlock & Gordon

Numlock & Gordon

“Numlock & Gordon” is the half-finished illustrated story of two characters that I sketched while working a call center job. It began by drawing a character named Gordon in a veterinarian clinic who was becoming obsessed with a rugged door wreath while waiting for his dog – you know, the predictable action-romance “Hollywood blockbuster” storyline that gets recycled and released every year? Yeah, that one. From there a rough plot began in my head adding a sidekick character named “Numlock” (named after the numlock key) and the Numlock and Gordon adventure began.

During that period, I was working as much over overtime as I could at the call center to raise money for The Turtleneck Club, an independent film I shot later that year. Drawing “Numlock and Gordon” in addition to a small army of other oddball characters and drawings was a way for me to pass the time during those long hours. Many of those additional characters and drawings were later used in a book of illustrated stories I wrote called, Zap Nugget.

Numlock & Gordon

Numlock & Gordon

After raising the money to shoot The Turtleneck Club movie, I had gotten what I wanted out of the call center job and decided to dive back in to remodeling work, which later turned into Utica Remodeling Company. Although I had reached the halfway point of the Numlock and Gordon storyline, I didn’t consider the project to be a main focus at the time and the drawings sat in a folder as I continued to remodel and work on other creative projects.  Years later, my interest in the characters picked back up when I was working with colorists to enliven some of my other whacko-spazzed illustrations, which later became Thinkpierce Art. That experience opened my eyes to the possibilities, and I was starting to envision Numlock and Gordon’s spastic tale in the form of a book app.

At that same time I was also in the process of redeveloping another story I had written featuring a character named Jim Jamkins. Working on both stories at the same time allowed me to see a lot of similarities that I felt both Jim Jamkins and the Numlock and Gordon characters shared. Since both storylines had such a similar feel and because I could start to see that I might be spreading myself out too thin by taking on more than I could complete, I came up with the idea of combining them, merging the qualities of Jim Jamkins and Gordon together creating only one lead character. Because I had already done more development with Jim Jamkins, I stuck with that name with the intention that Numlock’s character would be transformed in to a neighbor or friend for Jim later on.

Numlock & Gordon

Numlock & Gordon

With a new vision in place, I went back to the drawing board and created a redeveloped character sketch of Jim Jamkins. I then began drawing accompanying characters and scenes for the revamped storyline, passing them along for coloring. You can see some of the finished illustrations here. As the redevelopment process tapered off, the original story I had written about Gordon’s obsession with a rugged wreath was turned in to what would become the storyline for the first Jim Jamkins book app.

Looking back, the story of Numlock and Gordon is a perfect example of what can occur during the creative process and ultimately represents one of the development stages of what will eventually become the first Jim Jamkins book app. This process has also shed a light in helping me understand why some movies or stories can take “years” to make, ha ha.

 

Jonathan presents “National Debt”

National Debt

National Debt

As I was wrapping up Dick Spazway’s Road to Success I was already putting together new material for my next screwball booklet, which I ended up naming “National Debt.”  Still including plenty of garbled comics, Booklet #2 also featured short stories that were equally spazzed out.  Guided by what had become my golden rule; “The less sense it makes, the better it is,” it didn’t take long for the National Debt Booklet to become populated with oddball characters and adventures as my collection of fragmented stories took shape. After completing the booklet, I created a number of Xeroxed copies and sold them at my middle school for fifty cents. The “booklet roll out” ended up being a positive experience. My peers seemed to like the stories and I didn’t seem to have to bend people’s arm too hard to buy a copy from the stash I kept in my backpack. National Debt also took a musical detour when I got together with a couple friends to record the official “National Debt” song, which is included below for your listening pleasure or perhaps more realistically, persecution. Thinkpierce, Something New Every Friday!

Listen to the National Debt Song:

Jonathan presents Dick Spazway’s Road to Success

Dick Spazway

Dick Spazway

Sometime between elementary & middle school I started drawing ridiculous comics on pretty much whatever happened to be near me at the time.  It was during that era as kid when you and your friends have developed so much inside joke jargon that you’re practically speaking a different language at times. The comics were just one more way that jargon was being put to use and the less sense each comic made, the more it seemed to entertain me. I eventually assembled together the different pieces of paper & cardboard the comics were written on and my first booklet, “Dick Spazway’s Road to Success” was born. Even now as a digital read, Dick Spazway’s Road to Success still has the power to kill brain cells. But don’t take my word for it; test-drive Dick Spazway’s Road to Success for yourself and when you’re done get ready to go off the beaten path again with booklet #2, National Debt. Coming next week. Thinkpierce, Something New Every Friday!

Jonathan’s 1979 Ford Truck

Jonathan’s 1979 Ford Truck

Jonathan’s 1979 Ford Truck

One day I was taking a side street through a busy part of town to avoid traffic when I spotted an old 1979 Flat bed Ford truck parked in front of a house.  It didn’t have a for sale sign on it, but I was curious to see if the owner would be up for parting ways with it. Visit Uticaremodeling.com to see the video (featuring music by And There Stand Empires) and learn the story behind the coolest vehicle I have ever owned. Thinkpierce, Something new Every Friday!

From humble beginnings, Jonathan’s 1st remodel

From Humble Beginnings

From Humble Beginnings

I purchased my first investment property on one of the main street of Jenks, Oklahoma roughly a year after graduating high school upon ordering a real estate investment course from an infomercial on TV. Did it go as planned? Not quite! However, using what I learned from that first house, I went on to create Utica Remodeling Company. Click here to see the pictures and read the story about my very first remodel. Thinkpierce, Something New Every Friday!

Jonathan introduces uticaremodeling.com

Utica Remodeling Company - Tulsa

Utica Remodeling Company – Tulsa

I recently reached a point in my video editing when I realized I would soon be coming up on the video footage of the different remodeling projects I had done.  I began to brainstorm about how I would be presenting that footage and what place it would have in the Thinkpierce Platform.  After some thought, I decided to combine the remodeling photos and videos in to their own website… and that’s when Uticaremodeling.com was born.

 When I first started out in my remodeling business, I went by the name, “One Man Show Remodeling.” After growing the business further, I then updated the name to, “Utica Remodeling Company.”  Although I am no longer accepting new remodeling work at this time, I decided the best way to organize the videos & photos of my remodeling days would be by creating an additional “tribute” website (uticaremodeling.com) that existed in conjunction with Thinkpierce.com.

 Check out the newest addition to the Thinkpierce family; UticaRemodeling.com! Thinkpierce, Something New Every Friday!

Jonathan Shares his personal goals

Jonathan's Goals

Jonathan's Goals

When I decided to re-launch Thinkpierce.com almost a year ago, it started as just something that I had a desire to do.  I had a general plan of what I wanted to accomplish with Thinkpierce, but didn’t necessarily have all the details worked out. When I began, I just had a desire to share many of the crazy things I had done, like photo shoots and stories.  While digging through some old things I ran across a number of drawings.  From there I was inspired to turn them into something more.  To make a long story short, I worked with Josh Dunbar to add color to each one and when the dust settled, I had a number of illustrations that represented my humorous approach to drawing that now serve as the Thinkpierce Art Collection.

 At the same time I was working on developing the direction to go in for a character I had come up with named Jim Jamkins.  At the time I had two stories on the table, one was an illustrated story involving 2 characters named Numlock and Gordon and the other was a character named Jim Jamkins.  In the end I decided to combine both characters into one and I settled on Jim Jamkins.  I never had a solid illustration of the Jim Jamkins character, and I spent a lot of time coming up with different versions.  But I eventually got there and am now drawing backgrounds and story elements for an upcoming book app.

Thinkpierce Goals

Thinkpierce Goals

In addition there were also 4 independent films that I needed to make decisions about.  After doing research and learning that it is nearly impossible to get an independent film on iTunes, I learned that film makers where getting around that, by turning their movies into “Movie apps”.  It’s actually an awesome idea that opens the door to all kinds of possibilities and that is how I will be offering the 4 movies in addition to a standard movie download option at Amazon.

 All of this has been a work in progress. There’s never been one specific moment when I felt like I had it all figured out. But there was one thing that really helped me get here. I decided to write out a list of goals that I wanted to complete in the order I wanted to complete them and get it framed. This has really been something that has kept me on track and on the path to reaching these goals.  It hangs in my bedroom and below it I have already started drafting up the next round of goals.  Having goals for these projects has materialized in to a list of release dates, which can now be seen in the Thinkpierce store tab; something that wouldn’t have happened without the goals.

 I guess the moral of this story is, you may not have a clear definition of what you’re trying to accomplish when you begin, but begin anyways.  By sticking with it, you will start to recognize the direction you should go in.  On top of that, other opportunities will start to present themselves that you weren’t even aware of.  There have been many “aha” moments in the past months, but those moments can’t happen unless you’re out there trying things out.  Eventually you will find out how to narrow down your path and because of your experiences you’ll be able to recognize a way to pull it all together.  Just start with something basic, and your goals will mature as you try things out.  You may not choose to frame them like I did, but whatever you do, just make them happen.  In the end, you will be so glad you did!  Thinkpierce, Something New Every Weekday.

See the art work of our upcoming book app

Jim Jamkins

Jim Jamkins

Today I’m super excited to present the iPad menu screen image for my upcoming book app titled, Jim Jamkins: The most awesome wreath on the planet.” The book won’t be available until November of this year, but completing the menu image early was important in order to do some per-release marketing.  In this zany story, Jim Jamkins arrives at the veterinarian clinic to pick up his dog Chim Chim from a check up and toenail clipping.  What Jim didn’t expect was to encounter the most awesome wreath he had ever seen. The story unfolds from there with a series of events that even the most intuitive reader wouldn’t be able to predict.

So far I have 3 full color backgrounds completed including this one and if you’ve been following the daily posts here at Thinkpierce.com then you know that Josh Dunbar is currently working on the coloring for the vehicle Jim will be driving around in, which happens to be a 1991 Mercury Grand Marquis.  More work is ahead as I move on to completing the character development for the veterinarian in the story, Dr. Elington.  But I’m definitely past the up hill portion of this project. I will also be recording a short opening “Jim Jamkins jingle” that will serve as an intro to the book.  It has taken extra attention to detail on the drawings because the entire book will feature light animation throughout the entire story. You will get to see Jim walk, move and react as you read the story or have it read to you. There will also be an auto play option that will allow you to watch the story like a movie.

Of all of the Thinkpierce products, I’m positioning Jim Jamkins to be our “quarter back” product and will continue to produce a line of Jim Jamkins adventures long in to the future. I believe this character and storyline are truly unique and although it has been a big undertaking to create this book app, it’s also been a rewarding process. Stay tuned to Thinkpierce.com and watch the development of the new Jim Jamkins book app unfold with a new post every day! See you tomorrow for another Thinkpierce post, right here at Thinkpierce.com, and if you like what you’re seeing, share us with your favorite friend or enemy on Facebook or Twitter! Thinkpierce, something new every day.

Jonathan & The Red Bandit River Dancers

One day in high school I found myself sitting in the principal’s office.  It was kind of awkward.  An administrator was looking at me with concern and was somewhat dumbfounded.  I had just asked her if I could do a River Dance at one of the High School Football Assemblies.  Not really knowing how to respond, she told me to write up a proposal letter and bring it back to her.  Yeah, you know the ‘ol River Dance proposal letter process required before a River Dance can be certified and approved?  I don’t know if you’ve ever written one of those before, but it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity that you should at least try once if you get the chance.  I had already been choreographing the routine so if it was letter she wanted; it was a letter she would receive.  She was shocked when I actually brought her a full-page proposal explanation letter the next day.  Maybe just because she didn’t know what else to say, she approved.

I rounded up people to be in it with me and a few weeks later we were throwing our hamstrings to the ceiling.  Take a trip back in time and see just how effective a well-written River Dance proposal letter can be.  Thinkpierce, Something New Every Friday.

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