Michael B. - author, screenwriter, game designer, comic writer, filmmaker, scriptwriter,
blogger, creative writing coach, cartoonist, producer
writing - novels, comics, games and scripts. drawing cartoons. blogging.
creature design. producing movies, mech, software and hardware.
science fiction and fantasy. urban, rural and suburban fantasy settings. creepy, absurd, violent, morbid, silly and fun stories. introverted, self-referential/self-flagellating, quirky and cerebral slice of life drama. poetic emotional expression.
If you like weird, unique and intelligent content or need help with your writing, you need Mike's Workshop. Also be sure to check out my timeline for my upcoming projects.
"People assume that because I'm doing alot of different things that I must be really busy. But I only work on my projects for 4hrs/day. That's 2hrs writing and 1hr study - coding and/or Adobe Illustrator cartooning, 1hr freelancing/blog. In my free time I learn about business concepts, am starting a twitch channel on mostly retro video games and enjoy reading. Ideally every day, but at least 5 days/wk. I'm still trying to get gigs as either a virtual assistant, freelance manuscript assessor, character designer or custom cartoonist.
Side-Hustles: Putting together some tutorials on subjects I know fairly well - writing game design documentation, creative writing and producing movies. I also dip my feet into song production for movies - often using my own lyrics.
I’ve been writing stories since I was four. Wrote my first 300-page manuscript when I was thirteen that’s also when I started writing game design documentation. I studied my Bachelor of Applied Arts in Creative Writing - Screenwriting Specialisation in College, graduated in March 2011. I did a Level 6 (just below degree-level) Diploma with honours (2.5yrs) graduating in 2013 in 2D Digital Art at another college.
In 2000, I studied a Certificate in Television, Theatre and Radio for 1 year. Very practical, learned alot about making and editing short movies for television - then producing the videos at the tv station as part of a magazine show (also operating the sound booth and a camera in the studio); radio - performing as a dj, promoting the radio station, ad copywriting, programming ads, interviewing people, voice acting for ads and learning the tech at the audio recording/mixing suite; and co-writing, crewing and performing for children’s theatre - toured local primary schools by bus.
Beginning my career as a classically trained freelance poet/author/scriptwriter/manuscript assessor and cartoonist in 2012, I have written my way through a career spanning 6 years and counting. (but began writing game design documents in 1993 and large fiction manuscripts in 1995).
In 2018, my professional contributions were in mentoring as a Manuscript Assessor and in art services as a Custom Cartoonist. I am also developing professional projects in graphic design as a Merchandise Designer, in theatre as Scriptwriter and Puppet Designer, in video production as a Scriptwriter/Producer/Art Director/Song Producer and sometimes Director (animation), in software development as a Writer/Designer/Producer/Art Director, in design as a Mech, Creature and Attraction Designer, in technology as an Indie Video Game Producer and Hardware Designer and in publishing as an Author, Movie Critic, Game Writer (pen and paper RPGs) and Comic Book Writer (with a goal to also self-publish comic books).
My focus is on custom cartooning, design drawing, game art, merch design, game design, writing interactive comics and screenplays (and other scripts.) Also software /hardware/mechatronics design. I have a degree in screenwriting and can help you with your script. Or if you have an idea for a cartoon but aren’t confident as an artist, I can draw it as a unique mixed-media (pencil and Photoshop) full-colour character design or scene - and you can use it for whatever, for a one-time affordable fee.
This is a moment in time, view my portfolio for the best of my early work. I have plans to improve my skills in robot drawing, digital art and drawing fundamentals, so that these kinds of cartoons will be better, but also so I can create more complex and detailed works. My ultimate goal is to create games, mech illustrations and designs, design-as-art pieces, surrealist detailed cartoon-style digital paintings/illustrations and quirky, fun illustrations for t-shirts and postcards - with humourous pop culture/cult entertainment influences.
Currently I am excellent at my personal style of custom cartoons (sketches, scenes, characters) with digital patchwork from pencil sketches. And my cartoon portrait style has come a long way as well. An eventual goal is making open-source software and producing affordable websites, and doing art for other people’s games.
I have completed five short movies shot on video each with a zero budget. Written a tv pilot script which was well received by the national tv station TVNZ, but it was passed on due to budget constraints. I also wrote 4 short novels (unpublished), a stage play, a book of poetry and 4 screenplays (unproduced.) I self-published a bunch of poetry and short stories online.
I won a 10hr mentorship sponsored by the New Zealand Society of Authors in 2012, for my novel in development. In 2019, I have 5 manuscripts almost completed and have chosen places to submit this body of work. I also have begun another 5 manuscripts.
In addition to this work, my goals are to tutor in “writing a good script”, "making a movie from scratch", “micro-budget video production” and “writing game design documentation”.
I write quirky, minimalist action/drama and horror stories with morbid and absurd humour, urban/rural/suburban fantasy settings, mostly. I write screenplays and other scripts. I have dabbled in writing novels, comic books, interactive novels, games, and scripts for TV and theatre. I also write a blog reviewing games and movies, a food blog and a game development blog. I would love to direct animated movies. At the moment, I write and produce micro-budget movies which my friend and I will direct together. I'm also interested in freelancing as an entertainment event organiser and micro-budget fundraiser for struggling amateurs. I manage two creative teams - a local team (called The Band) making movies, theatre, technology and animation; and an online team making webcomics, graphic novels, collaborative indie video games, board games and a webzine.
I consistently write 3-500 new pages + 1,500pgs rewrites yearly on 6 manuscripts + 1 short manuscript + producing: software, hardware, mech, short movies, creatures, cartoons and songs. And t-shirt design.
I enjoy collecting and reading comics in my spare time, I started with: Green Lantern, Batman, a little X-Men and Uncanny X-Men, (obscure stuff like Ravage 2099, Wildstar, Hellshock by Jae Lee, Sensei by First Comics and Tony Wong), Plastic Man and Wolverine, Punisher, Spiderman, Spawn and Ken Reid.
Still into those but getting more into: X-Men, X-Man, Michael Holt, Captain Atom, Deadpool, Wildstorm, Curse of Spawn, Silver Surfer, The Eternals, Suicide Squad, Sinister Six, Death's Head, Checkmate, Lucifer, Slave Labor Graphics, Bill Loebs, JSA, Marvel Zombies, Elseworlds, Black Adam and Richard Thompson.
I am a world-builder. The world-builder style of fiction writing has become overpopulated, but none are as sophisticated and well-loved as Stephen King’s Derry - Maine, Dune, Discworld, the DC Universe including Wildstorm, the Image Comics Universe, Star Wars, Alien, X-Men and L. Frank Baum’s Oz.
When I was a kid I was in love with language and storytelling, I would consume Roald Dahl, R. L. Stine, Douglas Adams, Spike Milligan, Paul Jennings and Terry Pratchett.
When I was ten, I picked up It by Stephen King. He gave us this constructed world but it was a complete world with the theology - these ancient Gods (It and the turtle.) With psychology of sociopaths, deep as hell characters, a story of sexual and emotional maturation, a horror story and an epic history of both a town and a smaller society; this group of friends, the losers club.
I was truly inspired by this book and three years later attempted to write my own epic fantasy story about the world as I saw it. I didn't get published, so I kept trying. I studied alot - a degree in creative writing and two other courses - one in cartooning the other in media studies (video production major.) I have written poetry, songs, short fiction, novellas, a novel, screenplays, comics, theatre, scripts for tv and games. Other influences include rural life in New Zealand, Paul Bonner's Nepharite warlords in the Mutant Chronicles tabletop game Universe especially agents of Semai and Algeroth and growing up playing Magic: the Gathering. My novel won a mentorship in 2012 while in development. But I’m still trying to get published.
I later discovered Patrick McGrath, Greg Egan, Stephen Laws, Justina Robson, Glen Duncan, B. F. Skinner, Nabokov, Lorenzo Carcaterra, Douglas Coupland, Dale A. Dye, Shane Koyczan, Scott Adams, F. Paul Wilson, Orson Scott Card, David Brin and Sergei Lukyanenko.
I also find great value in reading non-fiction about: game design, filmmaking and accessible science - engineering, imagineering, psychology, social science, anthropology.
My sense of humour is absurdist, inwardly bleak, caustic and morose, self-referential, rebellious and defiant, even in some cases sadistic, but overall sincere and even in the tragedies, hopeful.
My biggest aspiration is to turn my creativity – writing, creatures, mentoring, game designing and critiquing, drawing, producing video and software/hardware and comic book creating – into a profession. And build my dream tiny home here in New Zealand."
Critique of Mike's First Major Script
Notes on a Film - Critique (originally a feature film script graduating college assignment)
By Lynda Chan-Wai Earle
Okay, Michael is an intellectual risk taker, no doubt about it. He deliberately defies the format
requested for this feature-length film script assignment and writes outside the square. He’s a
rebellious writer, anarchistic and defiant to the end. So, what’s the central question raised by
this work? What exactly is the point of his piece? Honestly, I’m not sure if I can answer that within
this assessment.
This 'script' reads like a sharply observed, fiercely intelligent, densely layered, yet arguably
barely cohesive thesis. The very premise (audacious as it is) on which he bases this piece of
writing, is arguable.
It felt like an emotionally charged, philosophical discussion in the extreme,
about the crafting of storytelling through film 'script writing' to be precise. It reads like
Adam/Mike’s bleakly humoured, self-aggrandizing intellectual critique on the foundations and
processes of scriptwriting itself.
The piece starts in BLACK (funny that). Michael has written in a richly layered prose-like
style, in the present tense, mostly third person, with characters and sporadically, with
dialogue. Up until ‘Dystopia’ I follow these internalised monologues with their basic storylines
as I would read prose. Michael’s descriptive language is vivid and complex. His novel
contains morbidly precise, detailed action with some sequences (the orang-utan and the red
monkey get the most action in the first part). His perfectly formatted short film script
contained at the end of the whole piece, ironically titled ‘Dystopia’ is a kind of philosophical
argument about why we could never attain Utopia (n- imaginary place with perfect social and
political system, Oxford Concise). And Michael gives us Adam Bennett, a central protagonist
with whom we struggle to empathise, as well as a host of other characters including, rather
humorously, the unfortunate Mr Desmond (Des) Harper, the script writing teacher whom
Adam dislikes and has an uneasy and competitive alpha male relationship with.
Anti-narrative and non-linear as it is, whether Michael likes it or not (and I suspect it would
be deliberate) there’s even a sense of three acts to this piece as a whole, or am I
unconsciously reading these acts into Michael’s writing because I just can’t help myself?
VIDEO WORK
Mike has written, produced, done art direction and storyboards, and DOP for 5 short movies shot on video. Mostly student projects, 3 x 1 day shoots, 1 x 5 week shoot. Re-edited 4 of them in 2013. He also directed all except the 5th but the footage was never recovered for that one - an untitled poltergeist movie with some pretty impressive cinematography and FX - He produced it and it was a major undertaking, loved every minute of it. All were shot on zero budgets with cheap handycams and a little stage lighting - burning a friend's carpet at one point (Michael had to pay for damages - approx. $100 He learned his lesson about using outdoor lighting inside.) And he worked on 1 other short movie for the 48hr filmmaking competition as story writing supervisor and script co-writer (uncredited.) These projects were a huge learning process and he is very excited about doing more micro-budget producing - especially for television. Currently writing micro-budget scripts and saving his pennies with his local team, The Band, to make another short movie. They're also learning animation. Michael produced the music (French A Capella) based on some of his lyrics for the soundtrack on his first two surviving short movies. And is writing a short movie and a number of screenplays to send to directors he likes, for feedback. He continues to write and produce songs for movies - previews on soundcloud.