The “Nap and Nosh” Bed and Breakfast….

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The “Nap and Nosh” Bed and Breakfast….

July 23rd, 2008

So as some of you might already know, earlier this month my parents invited my wife and I out to Bloomfield Ontario to visit friends of theirs who have opened a beautiful bed and breakfast called the “Nap and Nosh.”

Now this actually was my first bed and breakfast experience and I have to say… If all B&Bs are that nice… I’ll be staying in them a lot more often. Now Bloomfield is a small town right next to Picton Ontario, and is known for being a wonderful wine region and a haven for artists. I have to say it is gorgeous region, and luckily we had some wonderful weather for the weekend we visited. From what I understand the Nap and Nosh has been converted from an old country home that has had a sizable addition built onto the back end of the building, and it really has maintained the comfortable home like feel. It really is a relaxing environment and I never once felt as though I was intruding on the owner’s home as the entire front half of the house has been reserved for guests’ use. However there is something that will set the Nap and Nosh apart from most people’s homes… the collection of stunning art and furniture the owners have gathered from around the world.

Sonny and Jane Stevens have been around the world and had the foresight to amass a collection of furniture from various places they lived and shipped it back to Canada. As I understand it, they have had the idea to open a B&B when they retired for quite a long time and in my opinion they have succeeded in the most amazing fashion.

Not only is the house itself beautiful, but the service itself shines. The N&N has 3 different rooms for accomidation, each with it’s own theme, as well as a “tea area” located at the top of the stairs with complementary coffee, tea and bottled water in a fridge, as well as a collection of information on the restaurants and areas of intrest in bloomfield and Picton. And last but by no means least I have to mention the food…. It is FANTASTIC!!! Jane posts the breakfast menu on the bulitin board the night before listing what will be available for breakfast the following morning. The meals are out of this world… Saturday’s breakfast consisted of Yogurt with a Rasbury Coolis, A freshly baked muffin, Sausages and an artisticly created homestyle french toast. Sunday’s meal was equally luxurious, Caramelized peaches with a yogurt sauce, a fresh croissant followed by a herb creppe wrapped omlete, drizzled with melted cheese and served with an oven roasted tomato.

Now, like I said we were lucky enough to be traveling with my parents who know Sonny and Jane very well and so we spent a decent amount of time with them and I have to say, they are some of the nicest people I have met in a VERY long time. They seem to have no end of patience and love to chat with their guests. They really have put together something special in Bloomfield and I would wholeheartedly suggest to anyone who is planning a trip to the area to see if they have an open room, cause I gaurentee that you’ll remember the experience as a great one…. Oh and by the way check out the back yard…. Sonny did all the work himself….

Check out their B&B Canada website for details and reservations : Nap and Nosh

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 11:09 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

The Process: Writing

September 22nd, 2011

So week after week I find myself doing something that I never thought I’d spend so much time and effort to improve…. Writing.

Maybe it comes from my art and programming backgrounds, but I am constantly trying to find some kind of formula or exercise that will make the construction of a storyline an easier process. Now that may feel like a kind of clinical and antiseptic way of approaching what is very much an art form. But to be perfectly honest, that’s how I approach my artwork. Now granted, that isn’t how I always thought of art, but in college I learned that a well drawn character begins with a solid construction from basic shapes, so why should writing be any different?

I tend to start my writing sessions by recapping what is happening to the characters, what they might be feeling, thinking, what they want to do… just something to get the writing juices flowing. A little like a warmup sketch.

The next step is for me to write out a series of Plot Points I want to hit. I don’t try to fill up every slot in a month of comics or anything, adding in more points between them to achieve a proper pace for the story can come later. I just throw in anything I can think of that I’d like to have included in the storyline. These Plot Points can be as detailed as fully fleshed out comic scripts or as vague as a single sentence that gives a loose idea of what will eventually become a script.

At this point I look over what I’ve got and I just kinda guess at where I need to add another strip or two between the existing plot points to correct the pacing. This is one part of the process that I don’t fully understand myself. Pacing is just one of those things that I can just tell is off by looking at it. I know it’s not particularly helpful, but it’s true. Sometimes I can just tell that I need to add a strip before a change in location or subject matter, like it needs a transition… I dunno, it’s hard to explain.

This is the point when I’ll often have a hard time coming up with ideas for those filler strips. Luckily I recently discovered a writing trick that helps me come up with some new ideas. It’s a variation of brainstorming I think of it as “the what if game.” I just make a big old list of what ifs that relate to whats currently happening in the strip.

What if the car breaks down on the way to the hospital?
What if Brody discovers he’s allergic to the gel in disposable diapers?
What if Abbey goes into false labor?
What if Max breaks his arm and they all end up in the hospital together?

You get the idea…

So this list will generally generate enough options that SOMETHING in there will spark my imagination that will eventually become a joke. You know it’s been said that ideas are cheap, that the execution of those ideas are what matter. This is true for writing comic strips. I have learned that ANY situation can become a joke, you just need to find the right angle to approach it from. Humor comes from the unexpected. Present a problem or situation and then resolve it in a way your audience wont expect and you illicit a humor response.

The last thing I do when writing a strip is simplify it. Again with the writing as a formula…. This is the point where I take the joke I have and I optimize the script. I try to take the most basic essence of the comic and I try to reduce it down to as few words as possible. Editing down your scripts is important, but there is such a thing as doing it to aggressively. You still need to maintain the tension in the strip. By tension I mean you need to build up the tension in your first two or three panels and then release it on the final panel. That tension can be lost if you edit the script down too far. But that’s what I mean by optimizing…

Anyway, that’s my writing process… Hope you guys find it interesting.

I’d love to hear from you guys regarding your own writing tricks and tendencies.

Rawb

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Where there’s a whip, there’s a way…

May 26th, 2011

Sorry about the lack of updates lately guys… I picked up a neat little contract to work on in my spare time and it has completely dominated my time over the last couple of weeks and will continue to do so for a little while longer. I’m not sure how much I can share about the project at the moment, I’ll have to defer to my collaborators on divulging information on it. But I will say that it is very much the kind of thing you all might be interested in.

I’ll be back with some more information as soon as I can.

Rawb

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