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I have no idea what I’m doing – a Cobra temple interior

As folks who have been paying attention probably know, I’ve been actively working on my next Dio-Story for several months at this p0int.  I even documented some of the set building process in my “Behind the Curtain” series for this Dio-Story.  I was feeling really good about how things were coming along and anticipated having much of the filming done at this point and ready to hopefully launch the dio-story by the end of the year.

Then the house move came about…  and I haven’t mentioned this to too many folks yet, but in the process of moving, the load in the U Haul truck shifted, and almost all of my constructed dio sets were destroyed.  My Cobra Temple awesomely constructed by Eric “Capolan” Vaughn?  Crushed.  The Cobra Commander throne room so crucial to the climax of the story?  Done.

It was pretty depressing.

But I’m determined to continue moving forward on this, and as part of that, I’m reconstructing the interior to the Cobra Temple, going in a slightly different direction.  Capolan’s Temple set was fantastic.  I absolutely loved it, and it served me great, but as the story of Darkness Falls has evolved in my head, I needed a little bit more size and scope, so I started from scratch to rebuild the internal lobby of the temple.  Yes, this means there will likely be some design differences and inconsistencies throughout the scope of the story, but I’m hoping some suspension of disbelief will allow folks to overlook that and just appreciate the story.

To give folks a bit of a taste of this new Cobra Interior, I documented the process, which will hopefully give people something to hold them over until Darkness Falls launches.  Though that launch probably won’t happen until next year at this point.  Click the “Read the Rest of the Story” link below to check out the process of constructing this new Cobra Temple interior.

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Key sequence of G.I. Joe Retaliation gets great reviews at BNAT 14

Last year, Butt-Numb-a-Thon, the Austin, TX based movie marathon kick-started by Aint It Cool News debuted the G.I. Joe: Retaliation trailer and it got stellar reviews by those in attendance.  This year, while we’ve all seen various trailers countless times, BNAT was still able to debut something new for the G.I. Joe: Retaliation film.  According to Devin Faraci on Twitter, it was the mountain battle sequence, and it was “incredible”:

In spite of the whirlwind of rumors that have surrounded the G.I. Joe: Retaliation film since it’s delay announcement, it seems like most folks who have actually seen footage are fairly excited about it.  Granted, these are all small snapshots in the overall film experience, but I think a reaction like the one above is a very good thing.

Meredith from Bad Ass Digest (the same place that Devin works for) also gave a BNAT 14 review and mentioned the sequence:

“Next we saw the theatrical trailer for G.I. Joe: Retaliation, which was more of the awesome same, and then a sequence of ninjas fighting on a mountainside that was honestly breathtaking. It’s so foolhardy of me to be excited about a movie this long in the making, but dammit if that footage didn’t make me excited.”

The folks hosting BNAT, Aint it Cool News also posted their own reactions to the sequence:

“We saw a new 3D trailer for RETALIATION, and it looked about as good as it expected to, with all sorts of metal stars and pieces of swords flying at the screen.  But the best thing about it was the scene where Snake Eyes makes his was into the enemy compund to capture Storm Shadow.  We get ninjas flying from mountainsides on cables, shurikens flying at the camera to be dispatched with automatic gunfire, a duel between Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes, all in 3D, and it looked amazing.  I don’t know how good GIJOE RETALIATION will be, but it sure looked fun.”

As I said, yes, these are just snippets of the overall film, and considering what the mountain sequence represents, it’s probably not surprising that folks found it to be so exciting.  Still, though, I think this is  good news for G.I. Joe fans and as we careen closer to March 29th, 2013 I’ll take whatever good news we can get.  We’ve had a pretty slow news year since the Retaliation push back…I’m ready for things to kick back into gear again.