Indiana Jones and the Mayan Secret - Chapter TWO!!

Lance Quazar

Well-known member
Hey, gang! Here is the second part of my Indiana Jones photonovel. I hope you all enjoy it!

Would LOVE to hear any and all feedback from my fellow Raveners. Positive, negative, critical, complimentary, what-have-you. As a community of die-hard Indy fans, your opinions mean quite a lot!

So if you read this and have a moment, please take the time to share your thoughts. All comments are VERY much appreciated! All the best....

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Lance Quazar

Well-known member
By the way, need to give a shout-out to our own Inky Skin for his amazing help with this project.

Inky created the phenomenal customs that we see here, the "Lizzie" character and the villain. In fact, there are TWO versions of Lizzie that you may be able to detect if you look carefully. Thanks also for his proof-reading and dialogue polishing help and tireless moral support!
 

Stoo

Well-known member
More sensational work, Lance!(y) I'm really blown away by all the background sets, details, etc. and the motion blurs (especially during the chase) add a lot of excitement. Must have taken a heck of a long time to put together (and, yes, Inky's customs look great).

Even though it's much smaller in real life, I LOVE how you included Vermeer's, "The Astronomer", amongst the stolen loot because that painting was actually taken by the Germans during WW2. Did you know or was that just a coincidence?

Another fun detail is the "Yank" magazine! Subtly hiding most of Willie Scott's name was a great decision because, in my opinion, that's the way nods & winks should be handled.

I think my favourite shot is the one of Indy in front of the church doors, holding the bloody sword.

Can't wait to see the rest! (In the future, it might be a good idea to post links to the previous chapters.)
 

Dr. Gonzo

New member
I literally laughed quite loudly when I saw that "Yank" Magazine!
Willie Scott was definitely a bonus, but just that magazine in general: top drawer!
 

Lance Quazar

Well-known member
Stoo said:
More sensational work, Lance!(y) I'm really blown away by all the background sets, details, etc. and the motion blurs (especially during the chase) add a lot of excitement. Must have taken a heck of a long time to put together (and, yes, Inky's customs look great).

STOO! Thank you so very much for your detailed and enthusiastic comments. It really means the world. This was a labor of love, but sometimes far more the former than the latter. ;)

I've been sitting on those amazing Inky customs for a while, so I'm thrilled Lizzie finally got a chance to shine.

Stoo said:
Even though it's much smaller in real life, I LOVE how you included Vermeer's, "The Astronomer", amongst the stolen loot because that painting was actually taken by the Germans during WW2. Did you know or was that just a coincidence?

No, all that's quite deliberate. I put a stupid amount of research into this stuff, I just love trying to fill it out with tiny details that only a few will notice. So, thanks for catching! :hat: (another example - the spearhead patches on Indy's helmet and the corporals' shoulders are OSS insignia, etc.)

In fact, all of the paintings in the "church" - though only a few are visible - are actually reproductions of paintings stolen by the Nazis, including, most notably, "Portrait of a Young Man", which meets an unfortunate fate. (and which, in the real world, is still missing.) Alas, my research did not extend to properly sizing the paintings in scale with the figures, but that was more a failure of me hastily assembling them for printing. They were all much bigger than I planned.

The church was a fun scene to shoot because it allowed me the chance to break out a lot of the tiny little accessories and odds and ends I collected over the years to go with my Indy figures. Everything from the actual Hasbro "relics" to little Buddha and Shiva statues, miniature scrolls I bought on ebay, a Terracotta warrior from Chinatown, sarcophagus from the British Museum, etc. etc. etc.

Stoo said:
Another fun detail is the "Yank" magazine! Subtly hiding most of Willie Scott's name was a great decision because, in my opinion, that's the way nods & winks should be handled.

Thanks! And I agree. If you belabor a wink so it draws too much attention to itself, you've missed the point! :)

Stoo said:
I think my favourite shot is the one of Indy in front of the church doors, holding the bloody sword.

Cool, thanks! Was hoping that'd be a cool "hero" shot.

Stoo said:
Can't wait to see the rest! (In the future, it might be a good idea to post links to the previous chapters.)

Thanks again VERY much. And that's an excellent suggestion, consider it done!

:whip:
 

Lance Quazar

Well-known member
Dr. Gonzo said:
I literally laughed quite loudly when I saw that "Yank" Magazine!
Willie Scott was definitely a bonus, but just that magazine in general: top drawer!

Heh. Thanks very much! My tiny brain really does get obsessed with those small little throwaway touches when I should probably be, I dunno, looking for a job or something.

:D
 

Billy Ray

Well-known member
Wow, more great work Lance! You can tell you really put a lot of work into this. Can't wait for the next chapter! These photonovels are usually kinda meh, but yours really has me hooked!
 

Montana Smith

Active member
More cool stuff, Lance.

In fact this part was even better with those great vehicle racing across what looks like good use of Lemax cobblestones!

And Indy in the oversized helmet giving the assassin a Glasgow smooch before falling over. :D
 

Lance Quazar

Well-known member
Billy Ray said:
Wow, more great work Lance! You can tell you really put a lot of work into this. Can't wait for the next chapter! These photonovels are usually kinda meh, but yours really has me hooked!

Thanks VERY much for your comments, Billy. Much appreciated! Glad you're enjoying the story! :)



Montana Smith said:
More cool stuff, Lance.

In fact this part was even better with those great vehicle racing across what looks like good use of Lemax cobblestones!

And Indy in the oversized helmet giving the assassin a Glasgow smooch before falling over. :D

You know, I don't think it was actually a Lemax product, that cobblestone mat, but obviously something very similar. :)

Thanks very much for your feedback, Montana! :) That "artifact fight" culminating in the headbutt was pretty much made up on the fly, but felt very "Indy" to me.

:)

Cheers!
 

kongisking

Active member
Holy smokes.

I enjoyed the first part, but maybe it's just the fact this one had Indy himself, and some classic Indiana-Jones-style thrills even in freakin' still image form, but I really loved this part. I'm fully hooked. Greatly anticipating more!

Seriously, massive kudos on that chase. Somehow, you made it feel tense and exciting. And you have a gift for Indy quips and banter.

:whip:
 

Lance Quazar

Well-known member
kongisking said:
Holy smokes.

I enjoyed the first part, but maybe it's just the fact this one had Indy himself, and some classic Indiana-Jones-style thrills even in freakin' still image form, but I really loved this part. I'm fully hooked. Greatly anticipating more!

Seriously, massive kudos on that chase. Somehow, you made it feel tense and exciting. And you have a gift for Indy quips and banter.

:whip:

Thanks very much, kong!! I like this chapter better, too! Very happy to hear it was working for you.

Really appreciate your feedback, thanks so much for checking out the story and checking in!
 

inky_skin

Active member
Stunning work Lance, simply stunning. What you've created here has real cinematic qualities and in my opinion is the TRUE successor to the on-screen trilogy (um, Crystal what ?). Aside from the plot - which I'll comment on later - let me compliment you on the technical and artistic skills you've displayed in your entry. As I've already compared it to Indy's celluloid outings, it makes sense to me to break it down as you'd see in the credits of a movie...

- Script: I think this will probably be a separate post - it certainly deserves it - you've obviously spent a great deal of time weaving a number of different strands into the story. Not only do we have the dynamic between Indy and his adoptive son and the mystery surrounding the McGuffin, there are also a compelling group of supporting characters - from what promises to be a subtle portrayal of the villain (no literal "Black Hat" here) and Indy's feisty Marion-esque female equal, to the various soldiers and the archetypes they portray (bully/coward, victim, hero).

- Cinematography: The curse of the bad photonovel is wide-shots of a few figures placed randomly in a sandbox. None of that here. You've pulled focus in tight on the characters and used a variety of angles to convey kinetic energy, claustrophobia and other aspects difficult to imbue in a static image. The cropped images and their misdirection of Shorty's reveal in the opening chapter was delicious in the way it evoked Indy's introduction in Raiders.

- Production: I know how much effort goes into completing just a few effective shots for a photonovel. Consequently, output of this volume and quality from a single individual is all the more impressive.

- Props: That's an impressive toybox you have there ! Again, it would have been easy just to slap down a couple of out-of-the-box accessories from the Indy figures and consider yourself done - but instead you've evidently put a great deal of thought and effort into crafting a number of custom props. As Stoo mentioned there are several that are historically accurate - a level of depth that I simply wasn't expecting, but I also love the subtle little nods that sit in the background (e.g. the poster in the Allied Zone in Berlin) that add to the atmosphere and elevate the overall authenticity of the piece. Indeed, you've crafted and entire self-contained world here - scaled architecture, jungle environments, cobbled backstreets and all. Tickled by that little tip of the fez to another great fictional Doctor as well (Who ?).

- Costuming: I don't think I saw a single figure in this photonovel that you hadn't customised in some way (I appreciate the acknowledgement and had great fun crafting Lizzie in her various incarnations - but lets not detract from your efforts here). While some were fairly minor tweaks - insignia added etc - you certainly went all-out on Dr Jones. It wasn't simply a case of throwing a few military items into his existing wardrobe though - the colour-palette was carefully chosen, the way in which the gear was combined was effective and the overall look reflected perfectly how I imagined his wartime apparel to be. It's a step away from his classic adventurers outfit but still perfectly consistent with the Indy "look".

- Special Effects: You clearly spent a lot of time in "post" on this one. The motion blurs, sound effects, subtle shifts in lighting, compositing - it all combined to make this an immersive and hugely enjoyable romp that leapt off the page (screen).

In short, it's about time the Academy introduced a category for photonovels - you've certainly got my vote.

More to follow...
 
Last edited:

Lance Quazar

Well-known member
inky_skin said:
Stunning work Lance, simply stunning. What you've created here has real cinematic qualities and in my opinion is the TRUE successor to the on-screen trilogy (um, Crystal what ?). Aside from the plot - which I'll comment on later - let me compliment you on the technical and artistic skills you've displayed in your entry. As I've already compared it to Indy's celluloid outings, it makes sense to me to break it down as you'd see in the credits of a movie...

WOW! Thank you so much for the incredibly lengthy and detailed comments. I really appreciate it, I'm delighted you enjoyed the story, but I don't think that I've quite earned all the praise and superlatives. But, hey, I'm not complaining!

I was very jazzed by the introduction of the 2008 Indy line and have been planning a photonovel off and on (mostly off) since then. Despite assembling lots of figures and props and dioramas, I was no closer to actually making one until Hemble's contest came along, so I'm grateful it finally gave me the kick I needed to get going.

:)

I definitely felt that KOTCS was "off" in a number of respects and wanted to avoid falling into those same traps, so to speak.


inky_skin said:
- Script: I think this will probably be a separate post - it certainly deserves it - you've obviously spent a great deal of time weaving a number of different strands into the story. Not only do we have the dynamic between Indy and his adoptive son and the mystery surrounding the McGuffin, there are also a compelling group of supporting characters - from what promises to be a subtle portrayal of the villain (no literal "Black Hat" here) and Indy's feisty Marion-esque female equal, to the various soldiers and the archetypes they portray (bully/coward, victim, hero).

Thanks! The challenge with a photonovel is to try to convey character as briefly as possible. There just isn't time to go into much detail, so I kinda deliberately fell back on some well-worn cliches with a few of the supporting characters (especially the soldiers.) The last thing you want to do is bog down the PN with too much dialogue. Both with this and with last year's Star Wars effort, I was conscious as few "balloons" of dialogue in any given panel as possible to make the read flow.

inky_skin said:
- Cinematography: The curse of the bad photonovel is wide-shots of a few figures placed randomly in a sandbox. None of that here. You've pulled focus in tight on the characters and used a variety of angles to convey kinetic energy, claustrophobia and other aspects difficult to imbue in a static image. The cropped images and their misdirection of Shorty's reveal in the opening chapter was delicious in the way it evoked Indy's introduction in Raiders.

Over the years, I've made a handful of stabs at making photonovels. It took six years to finally finish ONE star wars chapter. But I have been a big booster of the medium going back at least to the early 2000s. I love reading PNs, I helped curate the collection at the amazing http://www.photonovelalliance.com website and I've read and re-read so many of them.

You learn a lot by watching what others do well and as much from what they do poorly. I've seen a lot of PNs with the "figures on a table" look due to poor framing and bad angle choices enough to drill into my head to never do that. :)

And the opening scene was obviously a deliberate echo of the opening of "Raiders." I'm not a very visual guy, so if I can steal ideas from somewhere else, all the better!

inky_skin said:
- Production: I know how much effort goes into completing just a few effective shots for a photonovel. Consequently, output of this volume and quality from a single individual is all the more impressive.

- Props: That's an impressive toybox you have there ! Again, it would have been easy just to slap down a couple of out-of-the-box accessories from the Indy figures and consider yourself done - but instead you've evidently put a great deal of thought and effort into crafting a number of custom props. As Stoo mentioned there are several that are historically accurate - a level of depth that I simply wasn't expecting, but I also love the subtle little nods that sit in the background (e.g. the poster in the Allied Zone in Berlin) that add to the atmosphere and elevate the overall authenticity of the piece. Indeed, you've crafted and entire self-contained world here - scaled architecture, jungle environments, cobbled backstreets and all. Tickled by that little tip of the fez to another great fictional Doctor as well (Who ?).

Yeah, that's just the culmination of six years of collecting whatever toy and other items I thought would look cool with Indy. I still occasionally stop by toy stores or ebay or museum gift shops to see if there's anything that would look cool on the shelves next to the Indy figures. Part of it was planning for a possible photonovel, part of it was just for fun and display purposes. Since this will almost definitely be my only Indy PN, I wanted to showcase, however briefly, as much of that collection as possible.

inky_skin said:
- Costuming: I don't think I saw a single figure in this photonovel that you hadn't customised in some way (I appreciate the acknowledgement and had great fun crafting Lizzie in her various incarnations - but lets not detract from your efforts here). While some were fairly minor tweaks - insignia added etc - you certainly went all-out on Dr Jones. It wasn't simply a case of throwing a few military items into his existing wardrobe though - the colour-palette was carefully chosen, the way in which the gear was combined was effective and the overall look reflected perfectly how I imagined his wartime apparel to be. It's a step away from his classic adventurers outfit but still perfectly consistent with the Indy "look".

Well, and thanks again for your advice with crafting the Indy custom and, of course, for your stellar work with Lizzie! One of the things that kept me going when I should have long abandoned plans for doing an Indy PN was having the Lizzie figure around. I knew she deserved her moment in the sun!

However, not ALL of the figures here have been modified. The Japanese soldier figures are exactly as they were out of the box. ;)

inky_skin said:
- Special Effects: You clearly spent a lot of time in "post" on this one. The motion blurs, sound effects, subtle shifts in lighting, compositing - it all combined to make this an immersive and hugely enjoyable romp that leapt off the page (screen).

As long as it took me to shoot these chapters (much longer than anticipated), the editing, especially the chase sequence, was a hellish nightmare from which I thought I might never escape.

Mostly because I used a blue (blue screen style) backdrop for the characters and vehicles which left terrible digital artifacts around all the edges. I had to very painstakingly go through and delete as much of that as possible, sometimes literally pixel by pixel. I realized too late that if I had just used a gray backdrop, it wouldn't have stood our nearly as much and I wouldn't have had to do all that extremely frustrating, extremely time consuming busywork. Ugh!

inky_skin said:
In short, it's about time the Academy introduced a category for photonovels - you've certainly got my vote.

More to follow...


Thanks again for this EPIC comment post and for all of the amazing support and help you gave over the years, from creating customs, to bouncing ideas off, to moral support, to proof-reading and dialogue help with these two recent chapters!!!!

:D
:D
:D
 

Scarchaeologist

New member
Excellent work! I'm looking forward to seeing more of your work!

I just an idea! Maybe you could do a teamup between Captain America and Indy! Captain America did fight during WWII. But still I really liked what you did with the story.
 
I loved part 2, this is like my new walking dead! Can't wait till the next episode comes up! LOL!

How come Shorty calls Indy "DAD"... i thought it was Mutt who was going to show up at some point lol.
One thing would help is , that we see that the character is ducking from the sword, there is no need to add a text box describing exactly what's happening on the image, at least I don't think ....just my humble opinion. The image is very well done and I 'm sure it takes you a while in photoshop to achieve this results.

OK man, take care!
 

Lance Quazar

Well-known member
Scarchaeologist said:
Excellent work! I'm looking forward to seeing more of your work!

Thanks for checking it out and commenting in BOTH chapter threads! Much appreciated, glad you enjoyed it!



Scarchaeologist said:
I just an idea! Maybe you could do a teamup between Captain America and Indy! Captain America did fight during WWII. But still I really liked what you did with the story.

That seems like such a natural idea. Not going to happen for this particular story (which is already planned out), but I'd love to see it some day. Maybe now that Indy is under the same corporate umbrella as Marvel they could do a cross-over comic, which I think could be terrific.

Thanks again!



CAZAFANTASMA said:
I loved part 2, this is like my new walking dead! Can't wait till the next episode comes up! LOL!

Thanks for coming back for part 2!! Chapter 3 hopefully by the end of April. :)

CAZAFANTASMA said:
How come Shorty calls Indy "DAD"...

In my mind, Indy adopted Shorty after the events of "Temple of Doom" and brought him home to the US.

CAZAFANTASMA said:
i thought it was Mutt who was going to show up at some point lol.

What?! No, Mutt sucks, Short Round rules! Heh. But even if you DO like Mutt, this story takes place 12 years before KOTCS, so not only would he just be a little kid, but Indy wouldn't know about him yet. :)

CAZAFANTASMA said:
One thing would help is , that we see that the character is ducking from the sword, there is no need to add a text box describing exactly what's happening on the image, at least I don't think ....just my humble opinion. The image is very well done and I 'm sure it takes you a while in photoshop to achieve this results.

SEVERAL people have made this exact same comment and I totally get where you're coming from. In fact, I have resolved to go back and remove some of the extraneous narration.

I was honestly worried that the action sequences might be hard to follow. Wasn't sure how static shots of action figures would play out, but clearly it is not a concern and many people have said it's redundant and even gets in the way a little bit.

So I will make a few small adjustments and just quietly replace the relevant images.

Thanks very much for your comment, I really value that kind of constructive criticism and I'll be more careful about that kind of thing next time.

Really appreciate your feedback and enthusiasm! Thanks!! :hat:
 

AC_in_SD

New member
Wow! This is really phenomenal work. The detailing in the scenery, especially in that first setting, the Nazi storehouse, is absolutely terrific. I really like the fact that Indy has sort of a hybrid of his standard attire and a military uniform, and the way you had that idea of losing helmets woven into the story really works well to create an implied history with Lizzie. What head was the base for Lizzie, anyway?

Your ninja assassin made me slap my forehead. I just sold my Hogun, but of course he would have been perfect for some ninja custom!

I'm a bit of a writer myself. Since photonovels are closer to comic book storytelling than they are to cinema, you might be interested to browse through some of Scott McCloud's books to get ideas on how to make the most of the medium. Alan Moore also had a good (but very short) book on comic writing. I do recall him saying that a comic has some advantages over film. You can play with time and focus in a way that would be awkward in a movie, stretching out a second over several panels or focusing on a relevant image while characters speak via word bubbles while remaining out of scene. While I think your story is rolling very well, these could be some fun concepts to play with.

One last thing: Mayan gods and spears of destiny sound like perfectly plausible plot elements in the world of Indiana Jones. They sound cool, mysterious, and we know just enough about them to know we would rather Indy have them than the Nazis. See? How hard is that? I would trade your MacGuffins for all the crystal skulls in creation!

One last, last thing: Maybe it's just because Stormshadow is the one figure I find at every yard sale or swap meet, but when I look at Short Round, I see Stormshadow instead. The Power of the Jedi Bespin Guard head would probably be my choice for a grown-up Shorty.

One last, last, last thing (for real this time): Thanks for bringing back Short Round and for making him such an integral part of your story. He was always one of my favorites.

Can't wait for part 3!
 
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