The Blackest of Fuzz

Okay! Almost sort of over being sick. Grrr-eat. Not too much to catch up on. My entire life routine has been thrown off by that one night of no sleep and the sickness that followed. I haven't been to the gym or karate since, but hopefully tonight I'll make my return.

Recently, the internet has been swept with fandom for Joss Whedon's 'Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog' and, being a veteran Browncoat and a huge Buffy/Angel nut, I couldn't be happier about it. The thing made ME want to start auditioning for musicals... and, well, I'm not getting my chance to do that, but I AM getting a chance to get one of my characters onto the infamous Evil League of Evil.

We had heard of the contest but knew that there was no way to enter it, since I was at home and everyone else in the crew was off at their various colleges... but then Jake called me and told me he was coming down for the weekend. Coincidentally, Jake was the person Mike and I were talking about entering in the contest, were we able to enter at all.

Earlier in this blog I talked about a comic book project I'm working on called 'Fast-Forward & Mr. Fizz!'. The villain of this piece is known as Black Fuzz. Essentially, Jake Goldberg was a friend of Fast-Fizz, but they visisted him nearly every day at his summer job in the mall's '2-Happy Bear' (a poorly translated Japanese Build-A-Bear) and hilariously forced him to do the one thing he hated most: his job. He grew sick of building the duo their random stuffed animal ideas, and told them he'd give them a free stuffed animal if they went and made sure his front door was closed, as he didn't want his dog getting out. Long story short, several sci-fi events happened on their way to Jake's house, and they never made it there, his dog escaped and was seemingly killed in a lightning storm, and Jake became their arch-nemesis... Black Fuzz.

Overly complicated? Only in description. Greeen lightning + whatever you're holding = super powers. Done.

Black Fuzz, essentially, has kinetic control over stuffed animals, and his costume reflects that. His costume ALSO reflects his tendency to take himself more seriously than he ought to, as he merely wears his work uniform (a 2-happy bear t-shirt and a stuffed bear helmet) and a purple cape. In his defense, the purple cape compliments him quite well, buuut it's not exactly threatening. We built the Black Fuzz helmet out of a duct-tape reinforced paper lantern, some stuffing from a now deceased pillow, and the most lucky find in the world. I was looking all over our local fabric store for the right color for the helmet, and I had settled on an ugly brown color. I mean, he was a bear and we had like a day before Jake had to go back up to college, so I copped out. But upon arriving at the fabric cutting counter, I saw the perfect stuff. Not only was it the perfect color, but it was also clearly teddy-bear fabric. It was super shaggy but super fluffy. It was perfect. We didn't get to finish the cape in time, nor the hilarious teddy bear boxing gloves, but we're hoping to make a Fast-Fizz feature film soon, so if this goes well we'll make the full costume and hopefully get some publicity.

One thing we're worried about is having to give up the rights to the character. This happened to Mike's brother Phil when he starred in 'Who Wants to be a Super Hero?' season 2. He had to give up Omnicron, who we wanted to make a comic about.

Fingers crossed that everything works out. I'm gonna go back to blowing off my SAT work.

Rock on,
dk