Specials and Side-projects
Well, they made it through. We’ve finished up the meat of the Episode One story, and the next week and a half will cover the ‘epilogue’ that sets the stage for the rest of the series. So in a way, we’re really just now getting to the good stuff. As I’ve mentioned previously on this blog, Episode Two is nearly complete with production, and we’re underway with the pre-production work on Episode Three. But just to mix things up a bit, we’re pursuing a few side projects in the winter lull, exploring new areas of our creativity and expression.
One of the ways we’ll be keeping the website fresh and interesting during the off-season (about a month between the end of Episode One and the beginning of Episode Two) is with other stories from the Night Zero world. We’ve already got some stories and photos from the book that we’ll be sharing with you, and our camera-man Forest Gibson is set to helm the production of a new vignette. Directed and shot in the “white space” between our regularly scheduled productions, this will be a short, independent story that’ll go online right around Christmas.
It’s important to all of us at Night Zero to focus on the world beyond the primary comic serial, not just to mantain our sanity but primarily to show that the world of the post-apocalypse is as diverse as it is different. There is drama, comedy, love, and tragedy, and so much more than we could ever fit into our plot-driven primary story. Through short stories, vignettes, solo photos, journals, and other works, we’re creating a broad cross-section of the survivors’ society, and I look forward to sharing it with you over the next few weeks.
To flex our muscles in a different arena, our fabulous writer Alexander JL Theoharis drafted a short script to produce as a guest comic for our friends at Geist Panik. It’s a cute little comic about a ghost-hunting gal and her consortium of characters, pretty new but with a strong following. It’ll be off the air for a while next month, so we jumped at the opportunity to produce a Night Zero-style comic as a guest strip. With a new actor (the lovely Holly Nichols), different settings, and fun ghosty special effects, in a single evening we produced a full comic page of delightfully quirky, zombie-free fun. I’ll let you know when that’s published at the Geist Panik website. And yes, that is Mr. Gibson as the ghost.
Hard to believe we’ve been running the comic for three months already, and we’re just getting started. If you’ve had half as much fun reading the comic as we’ve had producing it, well, then we’ve had twice as much fun as you. And remember, we love to hear what you think of the comic, so head on over to the Night Zero contact page and give us a shout!
Stay safe and watch for signs of infection. See you next week.
The handsome Andrew Cardillo
...and the lovely Katrina Hamilton.
The happy couple.
Asst. Director Kelly Ota brings smiles to the set.
...while Forest takes a new myspace photo.
Hooray for publicity/gag stills!