The Draw #6: Carl Mann

A new series for the TAPAS blog. I wrote down names on little slips of paper, the names of everyone currently in the TAPAS Facebook group and Discord server, 41 people altogether, and will be drawing one name every day to write about them and their history with the group.

So, er, yeah, as of the nine-day gap between this entry and the previous, this is no longer a daily series. These things happen. Today I drew the name of Carl Mann -- my uncle, my mom's big brother. Someone I've obviously known all my life.

The Elvis gig is part-time. A restaurateur by trade, an artist in spirit. It stretches far back into my memory, when I was under six I spent a lot of time with him. One of my first Halloween costumes in life was a gigantic veiny eyeball, and he made it out of... plaster? Or something? Only the foggiest recesses of my memory can reach back that far, but it's definitely there. I wonder if any photos still exist.

I vaguely recall sitting alongside him while he worked on this 50-foot mural on the side of a local supermarket. The place was demolished several years back, and I only seldom saw it throughout my life. I remember the reference photography he used for the scene. If memory serves, the women on the far left were a bit more boobtastic than called for by a grocery store mural, but I'm hardly one to talk, you've seen my art on this blog.

He showed me the wonders of computer art when I was very little, making animated videos where a live-action me would transform into a rocket ship or an eagle and fly off.

As an autistic child, I flitted from one interest to another, endlessly jabbering about them for months at a time. Spent more years obsessed with Barney than most kids do, spent the first grade endlessly spouting Pokémon statistics to people who had no clue what in the living hell I was saying -- when my interest turned to a video game which, unbeknownst to me, was based on Dungeons & Dragons, Carl alone had some inkling of what the heck I was talkin' about.

As I got older, I started having crazy big ideas for creating film franchises, full of big Hollywood stars, and wanting my family members to star in them too. I wonder if anyone who remembers those days can remotely take me seriously as a creator now... I suppose I'm still a lot of hype and not a lot of follow-through, but I'm gettin' there.

Carl's always had a house full of comic books, so he's certainly someone who's been living the dream amidst the golden age of superhero films we've seen recently. In recent years, I discovered he likes anime too. Didn't think he was the type, so that was fun to discuss now and then, I don't think I'd have ever heard of Assassination Classroom if it hadn't been what he was watching.

He also has a prolific face-painting side hustle. Kids at picnics love it, and sometimes sports fan will pay him pretty well to prep them for the stadium like so.

The story of how he officially joined my team begins with the character of Merlin in the Keys & Kingdoms universe. If you hadn't heard, the premise is that Merlin will make a little cameo once in every K&K story, never doing anything important, just popping up like Stan Lee. And when working on the voice work for the Keys & Kingdoms: The Choices pilot, I'd tapped my grandpa to play Merlin -- who isn't in the pilot, I just had in mind that he'd record some later appearances for much the same reason that, during filming of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, they filmed a whole bunch of Stan Lee cameos all at once in case they lost him before Phase 3 was over.

After working his lines a bit, Grandpa told me he just never had what it takes to be a performer, not even for a little cameo. And so he suggested I turn to Carl, which was something I had already been contemplating. We don't need any Merlin lines yet, but I imagine he could in fact play it with a Stan Lee impression.

And, for obvious reasons, we also discussed set design at the time, but haven't really gone in-depth on that conversation. Maybe we should. An upcoming task is about figuring out how we'll go about set and background design prior to, you know, actually designing some. The time approaches.

Cast of Characters: The Choices part 8

A continuation of this series! We'll be introducing all of the currently-planned characters in TAPAS's upcoming series Keys & Kingdoms: The Choices.

The Keys & Kingdoms universe is an intended gaming setting that combines the feel of typical Dungeons & Dragons-style high fantasy with that of a Disney fairytale musical!

Spoiler warning: While this presentation will try to avoid any details about backgrounds, plotlines, or relationships in order to focus entirely on the characters and not give away the story, some details that might be considered spoilers will inevitably leak through now and then.

We go now to the vast southern empire of Akhmis, where both our heroes and our villains have pasts to confront in the towns of Mochalli and Nashivir.

These character concepts were drawn by me and therefore aren't very good. Linework and color by McKenzie Eby. It's hard to come up with a different snarky remark for this paragraph every time. Maybe no one will notice.

Click on the images to zoom in and read the descriptions.

Cast of Characters: The Choices part 7

A continuation of this series! We'll be introducing all of the currently-planned characters in TAPAS's upcoming series Keys & Kingdoms: The Choices.

The Keys & Kingdoms universe is an intended gaming setting that combines the feel of typical Dungeons & Dragons-style high fantasy with that of a Disney fairytale musical!

Spoiler warning: While this presentation will try to avoid any details about backgrounds, plotlines, or relationships in order to focus entirely on the characters and not give away the story, some details that might be considered spoilers will inevitably leak through now and then.

Continuing from the Namarion installment, here are other characters encountered in the frozen north of Athundoft.

These character concepts were drawn by me and therefore aren't very good. Linework and color by McKenzie Eby. My pencil is not at all the right tool to convey how truly impressive I picture these characters being. Sometimes I wish Kenzie wasn't so good at perfectly replicating my sketches, lol, but the point of this blog is to crank out as much as possible all at once, so I'm not about to ask her to put the effort into making them better. That's for later.

Click on the images to zoom in and read the descriptions.

The Draw #5: Hannah Komperda

A new daily series for the TAPAS blog. I wrote down names on little slips of paper, the names of everyone currently in the TAPAS Facebook group and Discord server, 41 people altogether, and will be drawing one name every day to write about them and their history with the group.

Today I drew Hannah Komperda, who I met as a fellow ensemble member in the 2017 production of She Loves Me. We connected quickly over massage therapy, which is what she does. At the time I had just finished massage school but not yet passed the exam that would give me my license... though I continued studying for many months afterward, I never did retake the test and never became a massage therapist... at no point during my months of schooling did I ever believe I had learned anything about massage. Not only did I quickly forget everything I learned, but I've also completely lost the natural instinct for it that inspired me to pursue it in the first place, so I know less about massage now than I did before I started. I'm baffled at how I ever managed to make anyone feel better, because I can't make heads or tails of people's muscles anymore.

But back then, Hannah did know to turn to me during one rehearsal when she was having trouble with her leg. And I had an appointment with her once; I drove to her place and got a massage. I don't drive anymore either. Nothing in particular ever happened, driving cars just very slowly became a more and more stressful experience until I couldn't do it anymore. So, there's driving, there's massage, just two of the things I've completely lost my mental capacity for, to no trauma in particular... but this isn't about me.

Hannah joined TAPAS in 2021, when Emily Dozier wished to drop out of the role of Natha Lee in Keys & Kingdoms. The unease at having to replace an OG team member managed to pass rather quickly when I thought back on others I had worked with before, and Hannah came to mind right away. I did more prep work with her than with the other actors, to put together a set of notes and tricks to get the character's Swedish accent just right. Then she raised the valid question of why Natha Lee has a Swedish accent, inspiring me to regale the entire team with the story behind why elves very occasionally have Swedish accents throughout the AE:GIS multiverse. ...I won't go into that here, you'll have to find out another time.

So, I respect that commitment! It's been a while by this point since the voice acting was done, and it's for certain going to be well over a year before we hear the bulk of those performances, but I'm so proud of my K&K cast and hope they'll all be back on board once we start taking steps beyond the pilot. :D

The Draw #4: Jen Shackleton

A new daily series for the TAPAS blog. I wrote down names on little slips of paper, the names of everyone currently in the TAPAS Facebook group and Discord server, 41 people altogether, and will be drawing one name every day to write about them and their history with the group.

Today's draw was Jen Shackleton! I first met Jen in the theatre's 2018 production of Mark Twain's Is He Dead?, having already been acquainted with her husband Sidney from the earlier Spamalot production. In Is He Dead?, he and I formed a comic trio alongside a very significant TAPAS figure you'll hear about later; I was very pleased to unexpectedly receive a bombastic and show-stealing role as the fast-talking and scheming art student Agamemnon "Chicago" Buckner, and Jen played Chicago's demure yet fiercely jealous girlfriend Cecile.

I recall being nervous before rehearsals began, about the scene near the end of the show in which Cecile plants a spectacular kiss on Chicago. I'd never done that onstage; how does an actor become comfortable getting so close and personal with another actor? When the time came to rehearse the scene, Jen simply planted a spectacular hug on me instead, and that's what we went with all the way to performance day. So... I still don't know the answer to that question. It's probably not that big of a deal. Most actors have done it. But... yeah. It'd be weird to kiss somebody for a show. It's a part of acting I'm totally okay with not having experienced yet.

Shortly after Is He Dead? came the first official TAPAS project - recording the Irregular Webcomic! character soundsets for Icewind Dale. Following so closely on the heels of our production together, the Shackletons were cast as Alvissa and Mordekai. It was really fun to dip our toes into voice acting for the first time, from emotional surprises I didn't know my script had until they were performed, to having a hard time getting in the headspace for all the wordless grunting that goes on in a fight scene.

As time went on, I prepped for an upcoming return to Quincy by asking for auditions for Keys & Kingdoms - Jen took up my request to audition for Kinzie, giving her a posh accent I hadn't expected, shaping the way the character's been written and portrayed ever since... about two years after that, I was finally beginning to assemble the casts to actually start recording! Jen was all set to be the only person in both shows, being Kinzie and reprising the role of Alvissa for Irregular Fantasy!

But about half the actors I had collected had to drop out once the time came to seriously commit, and the Shackletons were among the last to do so. I soon learned why when they posted the announcement that Jen was pregnant with twins. Best pregnancy announcement ever: two Dungeons & Dragons character sheets, supposedly for an adventure scheduled to happen, oddly, in several months. The hint at what was really going on was found in the background: way off to the side of the character sheets was a small stack of books about being pregnant with twins.

So they have adorable twin girls now. It's always fun to see their many updates!

I finally got to work with Jen again recently in The Hobbit. So, not starring in both TAPAS flagship series anymore, but I hope she can appear in both shows in the future. I heard her mention once during Hobbit rehearsal that she only does non-musical plays because she can't sing. I'm always curious to what extent that's true, when people say that. Being able to sing in a stage musical is a very high bar for singing. Singing as an animated character, standards aren't quite as high. Just being in character can suffice sometimes. Depends on the role, of course.

And, there we go. Jen's been in since the ground floor and I hope our viewers get to hear her voice again.

The Draw #3: Jerilyn Dufresne

A new daily series for the TAPAS blog. I wrote down names on little slips of paper, the names of everyone currently in the TAPAS Facebook group and Discord server, 41 people altogether, and will be drawing one name every day to write about them and their history with the group.

Today I drew Jerilyn Dufresne. Well, not sure how much justice I can do to her story by starting with the part where I came in, but that's all I know.

I first met Jeri in the cast of my second show at QCT, She Loves Me, in which she regularly came in and out as a grouchy old lady. Offstage she wasn't grouchy at all, and the script didn't necessarily call for it, but I could tell she was loving it.

Her name came up again when I returned to Quincy, intent on producing Mason Ellison's play, Better Yet?, as an audio drama. We were still short one cast member, someone to play the therapist. Only in passing did I mention it to the theatre director Brandon, but Jeri's name immediately came to mind for him, and Mason agreed that was perfect.

As I discovered, this wasn't just because she has the warm and kind personality, but because she is in fact a psychotherapist. As such, she spent some of the show's early development gently revising her lines to be more authentic to what a professional would really say. Her scenes were the first part we recorded, and she came back for the Chit-Chat episode with much wonderful insight.

Then when I was in Beauty and the Beast, she worked backstage; helped me with a tricky costume change I had to do, and one night helped me work through an anxiety attack I was having as the show was about to begin... couldn't tell you why that happened to me. If there was a reason to panic, I don't remember what it was. I know that performance anxiety is more prevalent in the general population than the fear of death, but for me, performing in a show that I've been rehearsing for months is the least anxiety-inducing thing I can imagine. Odd.

And our most recent collab was in the student production of The Hobbit, where I was Smaug and she was a few dumb goblins, getting just as into the fight scenes as all the kids.

Our most recent interaction came as a result of my work with my employment specialist. Having lost my dishwashing job, I was feeling that the only thing I could possibly do... is write. Surely there had to be a way, other than making it big, that I could make money with the one thing in the world I don't suck at. Not knowing where to begin, my specialist set me up for a video call with a local writer. It was a bit weird to be scheduled for a business call with my good friend Jerilyn.

For Jeri is the author of the Sam Darling mysteries, currently a nine-book series that's run for as many years -- not annual or anything, the first four all came out in the same year. In our meeting, she told me about how she went about publishing the series; how at first she put the money and effort into promotion and got the series on the bestseller list, but subsequently hasn't bothered, relying on the existing reader base to pick up new installments when they come out; not making a living as an author, just a hefty side hustle.

She confirmed what I had suspected: that freelance fiction writing isn't a thing that people do. Freelance writing focuses on academics and journalism, stuff that's way over my head. People with a story to tell, even those with money to hire writers, tend to believe they can write those stories themselves. I'm not about to assume they're wrong. Ghostwriting exists, of course, but it's a very sus and shady field from all that I've seen.

So... I'm washing dishes again. But Jeri's advice was to write a book. So I'm pondering that as well, alongside all the other stuff we're doing around here.

Cast of Characters: Irregular Fantasy! part 8

A continuation of this series; we'll be introducing all of the currently-planned characters in TAPAS's upcoming series Irregular Fantasy!, based on David Morgan-Mar's webcomic Irregular Webcomic! In short, it's a typical RPG adventure set in a typical fantasy world, taking the silly atmosphere of the comic and making it our own.

Spoiler warning: While this presentation will try to avoid any details about backgrounds, plotlines, or relationships in order to focus entirely on the characters and not give away the story, some details that might be considered spoilers will inevitably leak through now and then.

These characters are first encountered when the Irregulars take their final step toward the Golden Citadel, crossing the Great Sea of Storms.

These character concepts were drawn by me and therefore aren't very good. Linework and color by Naty Jenfjord. It's hard to come up with a different snarky remark for this paragraph every time. Maybe no one will notice.

Click on the images to zoom in and read the descriptions.

The Draw #2: Dominic Regner

A new daily series for the TAPAS blog. I wrote down names on little slips of paper, the names of everyone currently in the TAPAS Facebook group and Discord server, 41 people altogether, and will be drawing one name every day to write about them and their history with the group.

Today's name was Dominic Regner. As of this writing, the most recent addition to the TAPAS Discord server. He's been part of the team for a couple of years, he just didn't join the Discord until last week when his role started necessitating him to be there. That's not an interesting fact to lead with, what the heck am I talking about?

I've known Dominic since the very dawn of TAPAS, the moments that sparked the idea that I could get a team together -- for he was in Quincy Community Theatre's 2015 production of Spamalot that I joined while briefly in town visiting my grandpa, the thing that changed the very trajectory of my life.

Dominic was a member of the four-man male ensemble, and I tended to feel more comfortable with the ensemble guys, younger guys like me at the time, than with my fellow principle cast -- I was Sir Robin, an impressive get for a first-timer. Dominic highlights in the show include getting the baritone solo line of "I have to push the pram a lot~" and, when I doubled as the Swamp Castle guard who likes to keep things straight, it was Dominic (rather than the actor playing Patsy as is the show's usual tradition) who played my voiceless, hiccuping partner.

I... probaby saw Dominic a few times after that, nothing comes to mind, but we began interacting extensively starting in the 2021 production of Beauty and the Beast, in which we were both ensemble, where his impressive physicality was immediately noticeable; every gesture striking and deliberate, every cartwheel, brandished weapon, and wolf attack way more impressive than the other guys'.

Everything he does radiates discipline -- not for nothing, as he stays in shape by walking all the way to neighboring towns and back on long hikes he calls adventures, giving him a reputation as a local curiosity the papers call "the Highway Hiker".

Helpful, super friendly, throws himself 100% into everything he does. Near the end of the Beauty and the Beast production, as I was picking up a few extra team members, I asked Dominic if he'd be the production manager on Irregular Fantasy!, inspired by the stage managers I've known throughout my handful of QCT productions, the overseer of the entire production, organizer of all the director's ideas.

What holds TAPAS back a lot of the time is that I have ten years' worth of endless ideas that my brain just keeps on overflowing with, and though I've managed to write them all down, actually organizing them is a task that's not exactly getting any easier as the new ideas keep on comin'.

So, Dominic is credited as production manager on the Irregular Fantasy! teaser, but he didn't fully step into the role until about a month ago. The impact of a month ago can't be overstated -- along with Mason (currently serving as production manager on Keys & Kingdoms: The Choices in place of Gretchen, who's occupied at the moment by actually stage-managing the production of Matilda that Mason and Dominic were recently roped into as backup dancers), he assembled a very simple schedule of collective due dates for the entire team to follow as we progress through the production of both of those projects. It was brilliant, and ever since late December we've been meeting our deadlines; small ones for now as we kind of brush the dust off the rusted old TAPAS machine, as it were, but I feel (knock on wood) that we're getting on a roll and 2024 will be ours~

You've seen these images on the blog before, Dominic portraying Kyros and Draak in the reference photography for the Irreguar Fantasy teaser. Powerful, powerful posing. I'm excited to see more of that in particular from him, and I'm eager to see what he might have in store in the world of choreography, voice acting, maybe a bit more sound design which he also assisted with for the teaser, and insights he may have when we start bringing him in on podcasts. A solid, epic teammate we're all glad to have in our corner.

Cast of Characters: Irregular Fantasy! part 7

A continuation of this series; we'll be introducing all of the currently-planned characters in TAPAS's upcoming series Irregular Fantasy!, based on David Morgan-Mar's webcomic Irregular Webcomic! In short, it's a typical RPG adventure set in a typical fantasy world, taking the silly atmosphere of the comic and making it our own.

Spoiler warning: While this presentation will try to avoid any details about backgrounds, plotlines, or relationships in order to focus entirely on the characters and not give away the story, some details that might be considered spoilers will inevitably leak through now and then.

In this section, we run through characters encountered in the Swamp of Terror and surrounding that general story arc.

These character concepts were drawn by me and therefore aren't very good. Linework and color by Naty Jenfjord. My pencil is not at all the right tool to convey how truly impressive I picture these characters being. Sometimes I wish Naty wasn't so good at perfectly replicating my sketches, lol, but the point of this blog is to crank out as much as possible all at once, so I'm not about to ask her to put the effort into making them better. That's for later.

Click on the images to zoom in and read the descriptions.

The Draw #1: Chris Davis

A new daily series for the TAPAS blog. I wrote down names on little slips of paper, the names of everyone currently in the TAPAS Facebook group and Discord server, 41 people altogether, and will be drawing one name every day to write about them and their history with the group.

The first name I drew was that of Chris Davis, a member of the Facebook group I haven't actually had any real contact with in several years. At first that felt like an inauspicious beginning to this series, but then I realized it actually makes for a pretty good introduction to the chronology of TAPAS and Stuff Productions.

It all began in late 2017. Several years after happening upon the theatre scene in Quincy, Illinois and finding it the one place I'd ever been where I didn't feel like a clueless loser, I returned with intent to start TAPAS -- the group was properly founded on March 28, 2018, and Chris is one of the small handful of people who's been part of the group from that very day.

But before that, back to Quincy I came, quickly joining the cast of their production of She Loves Me and with big plans in mind. Inspired by the theatre community I had found and my recent deep dive into the complete works of Team StarKid, I had written a musical about the classic Dungeons & Dragons hero Drizzt Do'Urden, in the style of the Harry Potter musicals which had put StarKid on the map. With a completed script and lyrics, and an idea for the melody of roughly half of the songs, the next step was to get a composer, and I was sure such a mind could be found in Quincy. Speaking with director Brandon Thomsen about it over the course of She Loves Me rehearsals, he eventually guided me to Chris Davis.

We had a meeting at Steak n' Shake, facilitated by Gretchen Wolfmeyer, now a TAPAS staple, whom I had just met during She Loves Me. I pitched the project to Chris, we went home and I sent him all the material via email... and that's the end of that story, nothing ever came of it.

The last thing I'm aiming to do is try to paint Chris as flaky; he was not the first composer I'd met with, filled in on all the details of the Drizzt musical, and agreed to get started, only for things to get in the way before it ever began. Nor was he the last. I might be tempted to suggest all composers are that flaky; let's just say that we at TAPAS have had terrible luck with them over the years. Getting better all the time! These were all steps on the journey and I learned a little bit each time.

Probably for the best that the pursuit of the Drizzt musical never took off at the time. The script was twice as long as it should have been, and Drizzt is not as obscure of a character as my hipster ass believed him to be; I expect the fact that I've only read half of his adventures has resulted in a number of terrible inaccuracies in the original script which people would have noticed for sure. I'll get back to it one day, after gaining a thorough understanding of the entire Drizzt saga and the community surrounding it.

And so, yeah, haven't spoken to Chris in a few years. When people don't follow up with me, well, I'm not willing to nag them very hard. Sometimes I wish I was, but I can't imagine that going well. People have rich and detailed lives going on and often agree to take on more than they can handle. That's just life for you.

But he remains in the TAPAS Facebook group, where he's often among the first few people to see any given post. And he's active on Facebook in general, where little glimpses of his life pop up for me now and then. He speaks highly of his four children, as he should. Every year he posts a tribute to his late father with the exact same photograph each time, every Thanksgiving he shares "Alice's Restaurant", and, ah, here's a picture of him hanging out with Ed Asner when he came to town in 2018, so that's freakin' sweet.

I always like to imagine that everyone I know has a future with TAPAS, so I hope I haven't seen the last of Chris. Thank you for reading part 1 of this series on the blog. The other 40... have the potential to be out in the next 40 days. We'll see.

Cast of Characters: Irregular Fantasy! part 6

A continuation of this series; we'll be introducing all of the currently-planned characters in TAPAS's upcoming series Irregular Fantasy!, based on David Morgan-Mar's webcomic Irregular Webcomic! In short, it's a typical RPG adventure set in a typical fantasy world, taking the silly atmosphere of the comic and making it our own.

Spoiler warning: While this presentation will try to avoid any details about backgrounds, plotlines, or relationships in order to focus entirely on the characters and not give away the story, some details that might be considered spoilers will inevitably leak through now and then.

In this installment, we look at characters encountered in the village of Footcrag, the last stop before entering the Orcrift Mountains, and the characters encountered in the underground depths of the mountains themselves.

These character concepts were drawn by me and therefore aren't very good. Linework and color by Naty Jenfjord. And, uh, yeah! As ever this is getting me super hyped for what their final designs will look like waaaay down the road.

Click on the images to zoom in and read the descriptions.

Cast of Characters: The Choices part 6

A continuation of this series! We'll be introducing all of the currently-planned characters in TAPAS's upcoming series Keys & Kingdoms: The Choices.

The Keys & Kingdoms universe is an intended gaming setting that combines the feel of typical Dungeons & Dragons-style high fantasy with that of a Disney fairytale musical!

Spoiler warning: While this presentation will try to avoid any details about backgrounds, plotlines, or relationships in order to focus entirely on the characters and not give away the story, some details that might be considered spoilers will inevitably leak through now and then.

In today's installment, we visit Natha Lee's hometown of Namarion, a sprawling underground city of dark elves.

These character concepts were drawn by me and therefore aren't very good. Linework and color by McKenzie Eby. And, uh, yeah! As ever this is getting me super hyped for what their final designs will look like waaaay down the road.

Click on the images to zoom in and read the descriptions.