Creative Projects and Future Plans

You're tuned in to Steve Megatron on Altered

Geek. Hello and welcome to Altered Geek. I'm

your host, Steve Megatron Phillips, and joining

me this episode is... That's right, it is I,

the great Canadian geek, Mike the Birdman Dodd.

What's up, folks? What's up, man? What can I

say folks? Yes, that's right. We're here on alter

geek I am joined with Steve Megatron Phillips

and in this episode we're gonna try and take

a focus on Less of pop culture though. Ultimately,

you'll get a dose of that as you often do here

in the show We're trying to take a dive into

our creative project sort of give you an a behind

-the -scenes look of what we're currently working

on be it something for our website something

personal or just something in general that kind

of Yeah, so part of what I've been doing, anyways,

aside from playing games and kind of converting

people, I've been kind of going through old drives.

And I say that in the sense of I'm going through

old flash drives, old backups of things. One,

because I've been organizing family photos amongst

multitude of devices, but also because I'm trying

to dig up old GeekCast radio images that I made.

Some of them are prototype ideas that never came

to fruition. Some of them are ideas that I purposely

built an image for to redesign and tear apart

later. And then just never went back to it because

I like it. It's like a dog and shiny things like,

you know, the dog is on one one subject and then

all of a sudden there's squirrel basically. Yep,

basically. And so I go off in this other direction

and then it's totally forgotten, which is why

like every Several months I'll change like the

the podcast art for altered geek and the the

way that the featured banners designed and things

of that nature and I mean it allows for nice

evolutions, but at the same time it can get exhausting

because I'm never happy with my work and I am

at the moment and then it gets old and so I have

to do it. I have to change it So it was interesting

going back. I found like original images of Altered

Geek before it was called Altered Geek. Like

the original prototype image was Geekcast Radio

unplugged. Oh, wow. I had no idea. Yeah, I completely

forgot that it was titled that. Funny enough,

Mike Booth Ninja Powers helped me to change the

name. I came up with The Altered Geek, I believe,

and he's like, you know, you should still do

the unplug kind of thing. It's kind of a, you

know, spitballing podcast, and so... That's what

I went with and then it later became unlimited

and then unleashed and then unlimited and back

and forth and then it eventually just dropped

it because it sounded cooler that way. So I was

going through a lot of it, kind of redesigning

things, looking at old GCRN designs, looking

at what we currently have, move the site from

one host to another, except for the first two

days it went... kind of flawlessly other than

those two days. I lost about five years worth

of images from the back end of the site because

I thought I had them backed up. And I was looking,

I'm missing everything from 2009. I have some,

I have 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and then I'm missing

everything from 14 to I think it was, Part of

or no, maybe it was the other way around. Maybe

that's what I had a 2013 to March of 2017 and

then everything else was gone So it created a

lot of havoc in the back end memory wise for

the website mm -hmm so I I was gradually going

through and doing things to change it and then

I have this like mass image Uploader that would

kind of blanket image things based on category

Which was very helpful Out of the files like

I have them and it gives you and Mike hasn't

backed up on Facebook But it's still not the

original image that I worked from Yeah, and I

do have a majority of them the problem is is

the earlier stuff the the dimensions of the images

for the featured image was totally different

and so if I tried to use them now they would

just look terrible. So I don't use them at all

and that's why recently I opted to redo all of

the interview art. All 84 images. Oh wow. It

was a monotonous and tedious process and I had

to go find headshots of like modern headshots

of like everybody that were tasteful and find

parts of their franchise stuff, get all their

information and have this like uniform look because

they all were somewhat different and kind of

designed after the second version of the website

and I just kind of got tired of trying to fit

images in that were legacy because they just

didn't work. So I in essence decided it was time

to rebuild GCRN into a totally different updated

design, which I'm still working on. I've been

on it for about a month now, maybe less, and

it's coming along nicely. A lot of the stuff's

been reorganized. The design is something we've

never done, and I'm kind of... getting opinions

getting things worked out getting things changed

around everything has been rebuilt from the ground

up things have been imported from the old site

including our old archived legacy like original

programs from like year one and two that I've

deleted off the current site because there were

memory issues so it's it's it's been a fun process

Yeah, I mean, for myself, I mean, one of the

things me and Alex, if you've noticed on Twig,

has become more of my right -hand man as time

has been going on and moving forward here. We

started doing reviving things like the prototype

since my original co -host, Jamie Johnson, had

just, he just got busy with life. Life just got

in the way. So we've been reviving the prototype

to once a month. We've been trying to experiment

with different ideas. We recently did something

really kind of neat. You've probably, by the

time this altered geek comes out, you've probably

heard it. What it is, is we're taking out of

print movies and abandoned movies, movies that

never got a DVD release, that have been abandoned

by their creators. So there may not be a VHS

release even. And they're on YouTube. And we

do commentaries with them. For example, the movie

we just did, was Hulk Hogan's, what was it called?

Secret Agent Club. And they described it as True

Lies Meets Home Alone. That is a complete lie.

It is so mind -numbingly bad, but it's hilarious

at the same time. It stars Richard Moll, who

plays Bull in Night Court, Terry Hulk Hogan,

a woman from, I think it's Days of Our Lives.

and a bunch of nobodies you've never heard of.

Oh, no, sorry, James Hong's in it. It's also

vaguely racist at times, because of course the

Asian kid knows karate. And it just, it's ridiculous,

it's stupid, but it's amazing. Like these kids

rack up a body count. It's amazing. So it's like

surf ninjas. Yeah, it's weird. Um, at one point

they get a laser gun. They kill very Boswick

from like spin city. Uh, he played, uh, he was

the mayor on spin city. So they kill them with

a laser gun. They shoot it at a mirror. So it

bounces around a bunch of times. It pokes a bunch

of holes through them and you could see light

passing through his body. He's like, huh, I've

been shot. And then he passes over and dies.

And then they blow up Richard mall cause he has

like a a robot right leg. So kind of like me.

And they shoot him with a rocket launcher and

randomly his body part fall out of the sky. So

it reminds that's almost like spy hard. Yeah,

it's so strange, but it's amazingly funny. I

honestly really enjoyed this movie because you

can't get away with doing movies like this anymore.

So me and Alex started brainstorming ideas and

we found more Hulk Hogan movies. We're going

to do these as time moves on. We're going to

do It's a series called Shadow Warriors, and

there were two or three of them. There was one

called Assault on Devil's Island, where this

terrorist who's like the bad guy from, oh, what

was it? Some movie. He kidnaps like the US or

Korean gymnastics team, and he holds them literally

prisoner on this island fortress. So it's Hulk

Hogan, Shannon Tweed, and Karl Weathers. So the

guy from Predator all have to get together and

pick out and save the day. And then there's also

one called Assault on Death Mountain, which is

just as dumb as it sounds. Hulk Hogan and the

Shadow Warriors have to team up again and fight

somebody who has like the T -Virus or Resident

Evil. And it's at like a ski resort. And it looks

so dumb. Once again, Carl is back, so I'm excited.

We've also been looking at older horror movies.

Me and Pierce, that's a name you probably haven't

heard on Twig in probably about four to five

years. If not more. Pierce was a guy I worked

with back in college for Twig and a couple years

afterwards. He created a show called Geek Gore.

I remember that. And we had one podcast for it

and it just never went anywhere. So what we're

going to do, maybe me and Alex, is maybe look

at old 80s horror movies that once again don't

have a release. Maybe talk about them maybe more

of a educational sense kind of like the old twig

topic shows And maybe just pick one movie research

the hell out of it and just talk about it for

15 20 minutes Like one movie you should look

this movie up on YouTube. You really should it's

called spookies. It came out in like 1986 and

it's two horror movies spliced together into

one and it was an Italian movie I think and it

has two separate plots going on. The first one

is almost resolved almost immediately. There's

this wizard trying to resurrect his dead wife,

but he needs souls to do it, so he has this haunted

mansion, and these kids stop by his mansion because

it's a dark and stormy night, and of course,

we can't go out in the rain! Scooby -doo! We'll

get wet! Yeah, it's Scooby -doo, but with blood.

It just it gets nuts there's like a werewolf

cat person that kills a kid and that's the oh

there are three times in the 80s I can think

specifically where kids die in a movie that's

where cat cuts them up like bacon and Friday

the 13th no not Friday the 13th the blob remake

from 1988 did it they kill a kid in the sewer

like it's disgusting but it looks awesome And

there's one more that I can't remember the name

of. I want to say critters killed the kid, but

I'm not sure. But still. So yeah, we're thinking

about maybe doing that or something else. The

Toy Topic shows have always been one of our big

things. And I know we did the ones with the angry

video gamer, James Rolfe, now that I'm not in

the hospital dying. Maybe we'll do that again

this year. I know me and James had planned to

do The Chucky movies, so maybe I'll contact him

this summer and say hey, man We did all the song

movies now It's time to do all the Chucky's because

those are always a big download for us and they're

always so much fun I don't get a chance to work

with James nearly as much as I want Just because

he's a busy guy with his two kids now. He's got

two or three I think Another cool thing on the

back burner is we've been talking with Handsome

Tom from the Game Heroes. Yep, prototype. Yeah,

a prototype, Handsome Tom. And I pitched the

idea to him a couple of weeks ago, would you

come back and do Handsome Tom's useless knowledge

that I can just randomly throw in the shows?

And he's like, what do you mean? Well, All I

want is handsome Tom's useless knowledge Did

you know hot dogs are not made from from the

anuses and butts of pigs or stuff like that?

You know just randomly useless knowledge and

just drop those in the twig shows wherever I

get the chance Mm -hmm And we thought that was

kind of fun obviously Terrible warriors is a

big focus for us right now. I've been working

on the sideshow, which is the dice chronicles,

which is our actual play D &D podcast. We're

working on expanding that. We've done, as of

this recording, 35 episodes, I think, of actual

play for D &D, and that's four -hour sessions.

So we're thinking about maybe, in the second

season, we're gonna take a break, do a couple

of one -shots. One of them we're planning right

now is Marvel superheroes set in the MCU. literally

a second or two after Thanos snaps his fingers,

the Netflix heroes and our new guys have to step

up and save New York from Kingpin. Cause I think

that'd be awesome. And then we might do a couple

other games. Like we're looking at maybe doing

battle tech, maybe shadow run before we get into

the second season of Cambridge, which will be

a longer form game. But if you want more details

about that, We have a roadmap on the Dice Chronicles,

which you can go pick up at terriblewarriors

.com. We have our own RSS feed. You can check

that out, but we're going to be doing more one

-shot games, more stuff like we might do Cambridge

Chronicles fallout, Cambridge Chronicles mass

effect, stuff like that. So lots of neat stuff

to look forward to there. And that's been keeping

me going creatively is kind of, I decided I don't

like to create my own worlds. And what I mean

by that is the lore, I like to play with, if

you hand me a Lego set, Steve, for example, I

don't know what the hell I'm gonna do with it.

If you hand me a Star Wars Lego set and say,

it might build that, I can do that. I get that.

See, I can do both. Only create it so far to

a point. When it comes to graphics, I have to

see an example of something. and then I can replicate

it in any fashion like or even pieces of it and

create my own thing from it so it's completely

transformative but when it comes to like world

building or building out of Legos or because

like Legos I sit there and I look at the parts

that my kids have and I can build just about

anything out of them Because they all used to

be kits or used to be just buckets of Legos and

then they just got tore apart and because we

bought them at yard sales type stuff and some

of them were my old bricks and They're in like

this giant collection of bricks. And so like

I'll just go through and just build Cars spaceships

and boats submarines buildings like whatever

just it's just this weird amalgamation that I'll

put together It may not be uniform in color,

but it's it's still you know, this insane contraption

And my kids love it, my wife not so much because

I'm kind of handicapping my kids at Legos because

I sit there and play with them more than they

do. They're like, daddy, build this. And she's

like, you're not supposed to play with the Legos.

You're supposed to help them, teach them and

then leave them alone. I'm like, yeah, you're

right. So we you know, I mean I do that and then

like I I've always been good at world -building

and I kind of got that From when I used to play

with action figures as a kid and then when I

got into the seventh grade my my friend and I

that I met in that class he used to draw and

I used to uh come up with you know storylines

and between the two of us we would kind of uh

it was kind of an idea to create our own comic

books and then we started writing fanfic novels

and then um more or less he wrote them and then

i would give ideas and then he would put them

together and then uh when he dropped it i continued

it for a little bit um i get burnt out really

easy on ideas uh like so i may come up with something

and then i i may complete it and then I may never

revisit it again, which was the case with that.

But I did have like future storylines planned

for that and I just never wrote them. And then

in college when we had screenwriting class, and

actually even before, and some people have heard

this story on this podcast before, but I took

the superhero class on the EDX Smithsonian thing

and... You had to world build. You had to create

your own superhero. And so I created one that

was like in the future by like 65 years, 75 years.

And then the second class you had to create a

character again. It was essentially the same

class. I just took it again and I created characters

that took place 75 years before the one that

I created in the previous class. And then because

I did that, I created, I world -builded this

whole scenario and what these characters are,

how they're connected. And then as I started

taking more of those EDX classes, I kind of come

up with a more in -depth universe. And then when

I took my screenwriting class in college, I actually

physically wrote the pilot episode to if I were

to have my own series. I created all the characters.

I created all the, you know, the costume designs

for the characters, you know, because it's kind

of my own comic universe superhero type stuff.

And then my own names for all the little factions

and all the stuff that they came up with. And

so, I mean, it was all my own universe to play

in and it was kind of nice. And then I plotted

out ideas for, you know, future episodes and

kind of wrote. you know, descriptions of each

episode for a 13 episode season and then just

kind of it fizzled out after that because I had

a million other projects going on. I don't know

with me. I think you you said a word there that

definitely sums up me. I'm fanfic the game. You

give me a tool set like, hey, Mike, here's the

Harry Potter universe. Create something cool.

OK, I have this idea for this magical FBI. In

fact, Little bit behind the scenes if you want

to go listen to the full episode go check us

over at terrible warriors But I have a neat idea

For like you know how in Harry Potter. There's

Hogwarts and that's over in England, right? Mm

-hmm. So supposedly there's one or two magical

schools over here in North America. I Theorize

there's a magical division in the FBI and There's

a magical division in the RCMP. So the Royal

Canadian magical police Yeah, so something like

that where these guys have to go around and stop

magical crimes or something like that or there's

different divisions like there was a great K

and Peele sketch where they showed a wizard school

in Los Angeles and it was ridiculous go look

up K and Peele wizards and it's hilarious um

but stuff like that like I love fanfic stuff

though I'd never write it like I've never written

No, I've written a fanfic. The last time I did

a fanfic is I wrote a Mega Man X one back when

I was in grade 7 or 8. That's what we did. We

wrote a Mega Man X mixed with Dragon Ball Z.

Oh my god. Mine was epic. I created an original

character named Quantum who had time control

powers and a hunter named Crystal who was a girl.

You can guess what color her armor was because

I was like 14. Clear? No, it was pink metallic,

but it looked sweet in my head. And she fought

armored armadillo. But yeah, I had ridiculous

ideas. I did a Mortal Kombat fan fiction, which

ended up being 144 pages. Stuff like that. I

mean, one thing I've always wanted to do is,

I like a lot of TV properties. And one thing

I'd love to do for terrible warriors is find

the right system. Be it a D20 system or maybe

Fatecore or something else. Maybe Phase Rip.

And create our characters in The Walking Dead.

Like, okay guys, you're in Fear of the Walking

Dead. The plague has hit Toronto. What do you

do? And doing something like that maybe for like

Halloween or something and have the characters

accurately have each other. Actually I think

there's a role -playing game like this where

you literally I decide your stats and you decide

my stats. And my stats are different now than

they were six months ago. Before Mike could walk.

Before now Mike has to walk around inside of

the wheelchair. So... I'm at a disadvantage and

I'm probably the best shot out of our group because

I'm probably one of the only people that's ever

fired a gun before and I used to play with a

lot of air guns and BB guns and rifles in my

dad's backyard. So what do you do? Do you leave

me behind because I'm going to be trouble for

the group or do you bring me ahead because you

don't know what you're doing? So stuff like that

I've always wanted to kind of do for our terrible

warriors group plus I've always had a Thing something

this is a creative project. I'd love to get off

the ground. I have the time I do not have the

manpower. I have the idea I Would love to take

old HP Lovecraft stories and novels and adapt

them into radio plays If I could create a spooky

audio Drama like 15 20 minutes in length and

tell a really spooky and epic story that gets

under your skin God, I would love that but I

do not have the time nor the manpower to pull

this off Yeah, I mean I would love to do Honestly

some kind of an audio play thing I've done them

I've not produced them I've been in them on a

variety of levels, whether it's audio play or

fan dubs or things of that nature. But it's always

been something I've enjoyed is acting or voice

acting and it's honestly a lot of fun to listen

to it. I'd like to try voice acting, but I'm

not sure whether I could pull it. It would have

to be the right role for me to get into it. I

think I sound a little too much like a good guy,

but I'd love to play a bad guy. Like when I was

watching Marvel's Infinity War, the lines that

Thanos was delivering, like the one line, it's

from the trailer, but I love it where he's like,

Run from it, dread it, destiny still arrives.

My God, does that invoke dread, and I love that.

I would love to deliver Sephiroth epic levels

of spooky speeches where your world is about

to end and I am the one who holds the trigger

to it. That's awesome to me. That's creative

boner right there. But once again, just don't

have the time. I've got the resources because

I have my own microphones, my own recording equipment.

I'm pretty sure Blair would look at me sideways

if I'm delivering these world epic speeches while

looking my cat dead in the eyes. That would be

hilarious. He's looking at me right now, looking

at me like, daddy, why are you talking crazy?

Why you do these things? You're supposed to love

me. But yeah, it's stuff like that. I mean, that's.

The kind of creativity I want to get into and

who knows maybe there's somebody out there because

I've done audio plays before I got a chance to

play an assassin master for a kid's fan He did

a movie for his college thesis. This would be

about ten years ago. One of the guys from screw

attack Did it and I've done stuff for a Metal

Gear Solid play I think I did something for a

couple years ago And I did a voice for something

else. But I can't remember what it was. But anyway,

yeah, those are some of the creative things that

I'm looking forward to getting my mitts into

over the next couple of months or the next year

or so. So I'm really hoping the Twig DVD commentaries

will take off again. Like I said, doing the movies

on YouTube, but also finding movies that we love.

Like, I don't know. We did Jurassic Park so many

years ago. Maybe doing the sequels might be kind

of fun considering Lost or Fallen Kingdom comes

out soon. But pronouncing half those dinosaur

names, good luck. But I'd love to get maybe Mr.

Tristopher in on it, maybe Lee. So it's not just

the me and Alex show. Ta -da! It goes off on

Tant, it's like you wouldn't believe. But they're

always entertaining and strangely weird. Um,

but anyway, yeah, that's what I've got creatively.

Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm always, always trying

to come up with ways of, of flexing creative

muscle. And it's not going to lie. It's annoying

sometimes because I'm always moving on to the

next thing. Yeah. For me, I'm always flexing

my creative muscles with the terrible warriors

projects and dice chronicles. Sometimes I get

close to burning out, but then I take a day I

watch some cartoons and I'm like, okay I'm put

me back in the game coach. I'm good to go another

ten rounds and I'm ready to rock so I Think we've

taken this about as far as we possibly can obviously

we want to hear from you guys if you have Your

own creative projects. Let us know. Maybe we

will promote them Yeah, I mean that and what

are some things that you'd like to see us do

what are some things that You enjoy about specific,

you know, whether it's it's radio plays or Just

things in general It would just be interesting

to hear what what everyone has to say on these

things So you can you can reach out on the social

medias at altered geek wherever you may choose

Facebook Twitter Instagram, whatever. You can

also get a hold of me on the Twitter's at scp21.

And for myself, you can find me on Facebook,

Instagram, and Twitter at Birdman Dodd. I'm always

around in some form of social media. If you want

to follow Terrible Warriors, that's Dice Warriors

and Dice Chronicles. Dice Chronicles is the Cambridge

Chronicles specific one. Dice Warriors is the

Terrible Warriors main account. So give our show

a listen. If you're into role playing games and

that sort of thing like D &D, hopefully you'll

find something there you like. Yeah, so... Until

next time, get altered. Get geeky with the Altered

Geeks. Woo!