Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (00:12):
Hey,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (00:13):
Welcome to the comic show, another Wednesday. And this Wednesday we have Morgan with us. Other way. Hello, Morgan?

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (00:21):
No.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (00:23):
Yep. That’s the way. And today our guest is Dan MacArthur. He is the creator of this beauty here. Metropolis Metopia, sorry. And yeah, so let’s get on with the show so we can have a chat with him.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (00:39):
Sweet. Wait.

Dan Macarthur (01:03):
Hey

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (01:03):
Dan. Hey guys. How going? How you

Dan Macarthur (01:06):
Going guys? Yeah, awesome. Hey, thanks so much for having me on the show.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (01:11):
It’s a pleasure to have you here, sir. And we have gday sp, we have bucket loads of questions because not only do we have someone that is a recent convert to comics, we are going to talk about, what’s it called, the robots, the ai? No, the thing, augmented reality. We’re going to talk about augmented reality and we’re going to talk about all that sort of stuff. But to begin with, I think it’s probably important we delve back a little bit, give people a bit of an introduction to yourself and where your creative journey started and all that sort of stuff. So talk to us about cinematography and where you first got interested in film and that sort of stuff. Where did it start for you?

Dan Macarthur (01:55):
Absolutely, Morgan. Well look, as a school boy and as a young person, I was obviously enthralled by the obvious things like Star Wars and all the great filmmakers from the early days, special effects had a massive effect on me as a young person, blade Runner and all the rest of it. So just coming out from that era, I was building models, I was making spaceships, all that sort of stuff. And then from there I just went. So I had this whole big interest in film from a very early age, and I was getting out with the old Super eight camera and I was buzzing away doing stop motion stuff. And then I was lucky enough to get a job straight away in the film business when I left school as a camera assistant. And this is back in the expo 88 days, which is back in the, oh

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (02:41):
Wow.

Dan Macarthur (02:44):
So here I’m at Fresh out of school, didn’t know the front end of a camera from the back and off I went working for this company doing documentaries and corporate videos and all these other things. So anyway, that was the beginning of my career and cut to 10, 15 years later and I was shooting away, making lots of short films and working for a lot of people. And then I started doing, once I branched actually into cinematography, I was doing a lot of music videos. So in the two thousands I was working with a couple of guys and we did a lot of big music videos that some of you might’ve seen from powder finger clips to Regurgitator blow up the pokies with the Whitlams and just a whole string of clips that we did, which was kind of like my, what do you call, my advancement in my career through to the next level.

(03:39)
And then just so in the early two thousands, then I started to do feature films. So I went on and did my first low budget action feature thingy, and then that got me in my next job, and that’s how it goes. One thing leads to another. So coming forward, so then, yeah, anyway, so once I got to a certain stage of understanding cinematography and being a director of photography, the next jobs came along and off I went. And so yeah, just ended up doing quite a big action film called Blood Money, which was just this crazy Australian action movie we did in Hong Kong and Miami and all stuff. And that then led me on to actually head over to India. So I went to India doing Bollywood movies for about three years. Oh

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (04:25):
Wow.

Dan Macarthur (04:26):
Big movies over there.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (04:29):
So Bollywood then, what are the big differences you’re seeing in that sort of setting versus what you were used to shooting over here?

Dan Macarthur (04:40):
Oh, for sure. Well, I mean, the budgets just were crazy bigg. And that’s why I went, I was like, it’s so hard in Australia to sort of Vance forwards into decent budget movies here in Australia. So that’s why I was like this opportunity came up to go to India. So I went over to Bombay, was this film called Go-Go Gone. It was the first zombie comedy film in India at the time. So that was about 2011 or something, or maybe, yeah, the Indian film industry is like this just nuts. I mean, you’re just talking about thousands of people and you’re dealing with the most chaotic situations and it’s just, yeah, it’s such a mind blowing culture shock situation compared to the way we work and all the rest of it. And I hooked up with this director down then in Chennai, which is mad, the old Madras, which is southern tumble area. So I hooked up with a big director there, and we did three big massive films down there. One, which one of the films went for nine months. It was just, you can imagine a film shoot that goes for nine months.

(05:52)
And so most of it’s like song and dance, that’s the hilarious thing. You’re just doing all these massive music videos and all that sort of stuff. So it’s classic material. The stories are just off the charts and the whole experience was amazing. It was, they’re beautiful people and it was just such a lovely experience all over. It’s always a spiritual thing when you go to India and dive in there. But we came back to Australia and we sort of picked things back up here, so, so continuing on, and obviously the whole roner hit thingy, but at the time, just before that all started, I was just kicking off this new idea that I had. We’ve been writing scripts, and my partner Mel, she’s a producer director as well. So anyway, we are toying around with these ideas and I sort of came up with this idea of, oh, I want to do, I was in Melbourne and I heard the T tra coming down in the middle of the night down the street.

(06:58)
I was like, that sound, this crazy tram coming down. I thought, let’s do a horror movie about a T Tram sort of thing, a ghost tran thing that comes along. And we work really closely with this writer called Ally Burnham. She’s based in Sydney now. We’ve been doing a lot of work with her over the years. So I said to her, look, let’s make a ghost story thingy about this tram. We call it the Death Express. So anyway, she wants this bit of a treatment, and then I’m looking at it and I’m like, in the back of my mind, I’ve always wanted to do a much bigger idea. I always wanted to create a bigger franchise thing. I’ve been working on concepts like that in the past. Anyway, and then someone introduced me to this idea, have you heard of Diesel Punk? And I hadn’t really heard of Diesel Punk, but I’ve heard of Theme Punk, heard of Cyberpunk.

(07:47)
And in the meantime I’ve been collecting Art Deco going crazy about art deco. I’ve always loved the sort of industrial stuff and all these aesthetics about it that then I realised, I was like, oh, hang on, diesel punk is this genre that I’ve actually been into all my life without realising it. So then I just basically converted that and I said, I went back to Ali, that writer, I said, I think we need to make this whole thing a giant city. This needs to be a big city that’s a diesel punk world. We’re going to cover cars, do the whole deal, and let’s just write this massive world surrounding that. You know what I mean? And so that’s how it all sort of started. And originally it was acro as well, it was a different title of the project. And then we ran into dramas with that name. So then we went through a name change. So in the meantime, so this has just been building up, and I was going crazy, and Mel, my partners just are going, you are mad. What’s wrong with you?

(08:48)
The madness thing is you’re dreaming big and you’re going, I’m going to make this big crazy world. So I was paying for this concept art from quite big name artists from around the world and doing all this beautiful artwork. There’s a lot of, it’s on the website, you can see it there at the back section or whatever, but if you dig deep, you’ll find stuff. But I was getting all this great artwork done, including the post that we did, and I was contacting these great artists around a well and trying to build this picture. And then I built a website, sorry guys, I’m nearly there. Built this website. And then luckily we went for the grant for screen Queensland for a proof of concept to do an animated part for our show. Someone said, why don’t you do an animation? It sounds like a perfect animated sort of scenario to do.

(09:41)
That was when, and then luckily it was winning the lotto. Next when you get the phone call, congratulations, you won the grant for a hundred grand to make your animation. So I was like, oh my God, this is actually happening. So all of this time, we’ve always been in the background, let’s make a comic, let’s make this a board game. Let’s do all these different multifaceted areas with this project, because it’s a big world. We can keep telling stories in all different sections and all rest of it. So that was when we hooked all that up, and that meant that we had enough money to then bring on an artist, which was David Thor for J, who was the artist. And we just went through months and months of design work and costume design work and all the stuff that we did and we could finance to do all that sort of stuff. So we made the 20 minute animation out of all that and learned so much about Unreal Engine and everything to do with it. And I’ve dabbled in modelling and animation before. So yeah, it was a massive great learning episode and was just, we were able to build so much infrastructure out of all that. So that was great. Yeah, so that’s the story.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (10:54):
Alright, so let’s dig into the story a little bit then. So I’ve

Dan Macarthur (11:04):
Got Problem around

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (11:06):
Maus is the title. So tell us a little bit about the story, the current story as it is or the part of it that you’re able to tell us without giving too much away.

Dan Macarthur (11:19):
Sure. Yeah. Well, maus is built into three different levels in the world. There’s a lower section called The Roots, and down there there’s the Roots Rebels and there’s a colony of rebels that live down below. And because of it’s kind of a class of structure society and maus. So it’s Mitros is the greatest industrial city ever built, and it’s a retro future concept. So it could even be the 1950s and 1960s in the timeline because the idea retro feature is you take a diesel punk is like, we went on this trajectory and technology kept going. So anyway, so then the whole world sort of revolves around a bunch of corporations that rule the world. So they sort of govern everything that goes on. And then part of that is the Roses. And The Roses are a faction of female law enforcers who basically govern the world and sort of set up what you can do and what you can’t do and based down on the laws and what’s going on in immigration and where people can go and all.

(12:29)
So it’s quite a strict world and within that is our main character, Goodall. He’s a detective. And hey, so yeah, just along with the story of Tropic, so our main character is Detective Goodall, and he was originally from The Roots and he’s come up into the filament and become a detective and became quite successful as a sort of a-political figure. And so he’s quite involved in the whole scheme of things. And then the storylines basically dove down where he has to go back into the roots to meet up with his older self, and he was with a wife and she gets murdered and there’s all these different stories. So the comic stories are like some would said in the past, and then it doesn’t actually interfere with our main story because the animation’s going to pick up in the present. And so there’s all these different involving areas, but if you picture our characters who live in this world that are stuck between two different major forces. So the rebels are all sort of doing all of the wheeling and dealing and the illegal activities, and then the roses are creating this very totalitarian society on top of all that. So yeah, we’re delving into a lot of modern themes as far as security and people being watched and controlled. I mean, you’ve got all that, what’s the 1984 syndromes and all that sort

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (14:03):
Stuff. Yeah.

Dan Macarthur (14:05):
So that’s our world. And then within that, our characters have to survive and their battle and against the greater affection. So yeah, that’s kind of where we’re at with the plot.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (14:17):
Great. Okay. So we have comic book, we have animation. We’re going to get into the augmented reality stuff in a tick that is super exciting. The robots are taking over people. I wanted to ask you though, there, it’s the comic. There you go. I wanted to ask you about moving from cinema to comic book. Both have a script, both have sort of storyboarding, both have art and all that sort of stuff. And how was that different for you from what you would normally do or how you would normally or was it different or did you just approach it the same sort of way that you would do any sort of shoot?

Dan Macarthur (14:59):
I think that the beauty of comic books is where it sort of connects with what we’ve traditionally been doing for a long time is that comics are just a great storytelling tool that are done so simply. You don’t have the luxury of a million different shots like you do in a film, but just the fundamental roots of a story with a comic book and the connection is we do a lot of storyboarding and that sort of thing. So we do do a lot of panels with the way we create things and show the story. And then all that pre-production effort is all about storyboarding and coming up with a plan of how the film works. So yeah, I just think it was, I mean, it’s such a great art form and it just obviously lends itself so well to this genre that we’re doing, and it was only natural that we wanted to do a comic and all the rest of it.

(15:50)
But yeah, it’s just something I love. I mean I’ve always loved comics and it’s just so gratifying to have our own comic of course, and build our world. So I think dancing your question, I think it’s been a great little journey because what we try and do as much as possible is always working with different artists as well. And David Thor, he’s such a natural comic artist, so Allie was wrote a nice script and everything to go with it all because we’re always all working together when everything and the scripts are being improved and we’re going through everything like that. And then it goes over to Dave and he’s creating such a great comic and all that sort of stuff. So it’s just a great rewarding thing to be working with people that come up with such beautiful work like that. So I mean, for me, it’s always a pleasure to be working with so many different people and artists, and that’s the whole objective of the whole project is to employ people and keep creating more awesome stuff. So that’s what we love about it. So in the future it’s designing more vehicles and more modellers and creators and everything. So yeah,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (16:59):
Welcome to the And a tabletop game. Did I hear that correctly? You’re looking at that as well.

Dan Macarthur (17:05):
Yeah, that’s right. We’ve been in production with the board game. So yeah, we’ve got board designers and everything who are working on and been workshopping a whole board game, which is basically the city that’s the board. And then you come in as a character and we’ve built in as many mechanics of the world as we can into the board game so the roses can come along and PSU and all these different things can go wrong. And I don’t know if you’ve seen any pictures from the board game, but if you go on, discord is our main area where we chat with everything on Discord, the Trois Discord, which find on the Twitter as well. There’s a link on the Twitter as well. There’s a link on the back of the comic, you get a chance to get one of those, but on the website there’s a link anyway to the Discord, but on there you’ll see all the images of what’s going on and everything that’s happening. So that’s just in testing phase right now. And then once we’ve got it all locked down with the mechanics and we’ll start the artwork, but that’ll involve a Kickstarter at some point to get it rolling and get it there, I think because great to have the Kickstarter anyway, because it just brings another audience. There’s an audience sitting there around Kickstarter looking for cool projects and they go, oh, I’ve never heard of Matus. So there’ll be another avenue of people that bring into the project. So that’s why we’re excited about that. Yeah,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (18:28):
And you’ll it, you’ll be going to Kickstarter already with a bunch of stuff already in the pipe and already done and everything, so it’s not like, Hey, here’s a little glimpse and if you give us some money, eventually you’ll get a thing. You’re already coming in with a body of work on the project.

Dan Macarthur (18:46):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that’s right. We definitely wanted to have, we’ve been test playing the game a lot with different people and I mean, we are keen to just really have it quite a locked down and sort of succinct about what the game is. And then yeah, we’ll do some test prints and then send those out for review and all the rest of it. And really the Kickstarter I think is about manufacturing it and getting it out to the masses to be able to get a certain amount of copies done and people can pre-order and all the rest of it. So that’s our strategy for that one. So yeah, that’s exciting stuff. So people love board games and everything they do, so what else they

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (19:27):
Do?

Dan Macarthur (19:29):
Yeah,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (19:31):
Let’s talk about the augmented reality. I’ve not come across a comic that’s doing this yet. This is the first one. And so everyone go to metopia.com and you can find out about the animation, you can find out about the comic, you can find out about everything in there, but you can also, I just did it before on my phone, no less. You can click on the little thingy and you can see amazing things that aren’t there but are really there, but they’re not because of the wonder of augmented reality. So yeah, what was the impetus for that? How did you figure out that thing?

Dan Macarthur (20:08):
It’s all part of the idea that with Mitro, we want to be in front of all the technology that’s around and what’s available because we’ve been using Unreal Engine, that’s another part of it is to use the augmented reality. So yeah, it was just more like a natural progression and I always thought that it would be a part of the comic and everything to do it. And then, yeah, it was quite an interesting process to actually get it made to be honest. But it was great to get it done because yeah, it did surprise me to be honest, because I’m not massively in the comic scene or anything like that I have to admit. But I had seen the augmented reality stuff happening overseas. I think I’ve seen, it’s not the first time that it’s been seen. So I mean, the idea did come through.

(20:57)
I was like, oh yeah, that’d be great to have something exciting for our audiences to do the augmented reality. So basically you scan this one here on your phone and it’ll bring it up through a HT ML, so you don’t need an app and all thats of stuff. And then you point at the front page or the logo and the train comes out. But so yeah, it’s just exciting to be able to bring that technology to the audience. And that’s just a really basic idea of what augmented reality can do. By the way, you can actually put a lot of animation and sound effects and particles and all sorts of things. So obviously we wanted to step it up as we go. The next comic’s going to have a bit more going on with the augmented reality so that we’ve got something more offer every time because these sorts of things, you can have objects moving around and particle effects going on and side effects and trends. You can have a lot of fun doing all that stuff, which is pretty cool. Yeah, it’s amazing. We’ve had an incredible response with the augment reality because we went to Comic-Con and Supernova, we took it there, we set up our whole stand and and we were showing people the augment reality and they were just losing it. So it’s pretty exciting stuff there. Great tech.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (22:15):
The next step is to somehow get into the second issue, something that hints to the third or giving away something or whatever, or maybe a death or a murder that you can only solve if you look through the thing. And

Dan Macarthur (22:31):
Yeah, that’d be an amazing thing to do. Yeah, exactly. I mean, definitely it’d be great. You get to the point where you’re like, exactly, you put your phone on there and you get extra information. You don’t see it on the page, but then when you bring it out, you’re like, oh, okay. There’s something hidden in the page when you use it. So things like that, it’d be a lot of fun to bring to the audience. Everything. There’s a lot of things you can do, so it’s exciting stuff. And have you guys heard of the Tilt five as well? That’s another board game, the Tilt five, which is an augmented reality board game one, it’s out for sale now. You wear the goggles and it’s like a board, and the whole board just turns into a full 3D 3D thing with augmented reality. Yeah, tilt five, check it out.

(23:16)
But that’s a really, really cool application that’s becoming more and more affordable. So we’re actually building the board game to be, so we’ll work until five, and then it’ll be basically then a printed version of that 3D World platform and everything. So that’s one of the things that we’re constructing at the moment as well. So yeah, that’s a really exciting thing. So yeah, lots of cool stuff happening. We’re trying to push the boundaries as much as possible with everything that we can do with technology and everything. So we’ve built all that stuff that we did in the animation’s, all been built in Unreal Engine, and we’ve actually got the whole city we can run around now as if it’s a game. So we’re setting up for the gaming side as well. Yeah, so

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (24:05):
That was going to be my next question. If you’re using the Unreal Engine already, is that the next iteration? Yeah. Wow.

Dan Macarthur (24:12):
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, definitely a lot of, because virtual reality is having a struggle and Metaverse is almost a dirty word at the moment because of matter, and it’s just a funny little floaty thing going on at the moment with all of that scheme of things. But definitely eventually the trophies will, that’ll be the thing. You’ll enter the world and you’re about to go play different games and including the card game and go and chat the people and then go see a band and do all these really cool things all in the world. So that’s the kind of the end goal with what we’re doing, including, yeah, that’s quite a huge tech thing world that’s blowing our minds every week, basically when we’re talking to people about the scope of things. So it’s definitely opening a lot of doors for us. So it’s interesting, really interesting stuff.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (25:11):
And so how you’ve gone to Comic-Con Supernova, a few of those sorts of things at the moment, you’re just selling directly and at the comics, I mean you’re just selling them directly over the internet and it shows and that sort of thing. Are you thinking that you’ll run crowdfunding for that later on, or just keep that as a sort of ongoing thing? Are you also thinking, I think there’s what, six, seven issues or something, or five issues? Are you thinking of a collected edition or hearing what you’re doing? You’re probably thinking of all of this and much, I suppose. What’s the plan for the comic?

Dan Macarthur (25:51):
Yeah, yeah. Well, this is series one, which is four comics, which will make up the whole story. So this is episode one or four that we’re trying to get to the end of, and that’ll become a graphic novel, hard copy as well. And at the moment, we’ve got it in the stores around Australia, so there’s Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne. We’ve got it in the shops, selling in the shops. And I think once we get it to the graphic novel, that’s when we’ll have a better chance of getting overseas distribution with it, because I think just got the one comic, it’s not really enough for them to really sink their teeth into. So it’s like a long-term process as far as getting the whole package together. And then that’ll just be episode one more or less, and then, which is sort of based on the ground level of metopia.

(26:39)
So that’s that storyline. And then we want to start another series, which will be down in the underground. So it’s like all to do with that world, and there’ll be connections between them and all the rest of it. So you’ll be able to follow a storyline, that’ll be another series of comics that’ll exist in another part of the world, and there’ll be connections through the storylines to each and all the rest of it. So we’re sort of slowly building the world up and we’re saving storylines in the past and in the future and all the rest of it, future storytelling. So it’s a very long-term thing. And you know how these things go. It’s tricky just to get things done quickly, but we’re in for the long haul and a lot of audience around the world are loving and sticking with us, so we’re not going anywhere. So we’ll get there eventually. So yeah, very, very

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (27:28):
Cool. It’s exciting. So you heard it here, people get out and support Metopia, grab yourself the comic, get involved with the augmented reality. I keep wanting to go AI instead of augmented reality, but thing get involved. It looks absolutely amazing. sle, I’m just giving you a warning, I’m going to throw to you for a question soon to show you. I forgot you. Yeah, it’s not all me, bro. If it’s not all me, let’s take a little bit of a side thing and I might throw in a couple of quick rapid fire questions for you and then I’ll throw to Sizzle when he’s had ample time to think of a question steal before he gets a chance to, alright, so first question, no worries. You have one choice, you have to choose Star Wars, star Trek, what is your

Dan Macarthur (28:28):
Choice? Star Wars.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (28:30):
So no hesitation. I think it’s very, very common with you cinematographer types to go towards the Star Wars side of things, and I can kind of see why that

Dan Macarthur (28:41):
Makes. I do love Star Trek back. Star Wars was my first love for me. I mean, I saw Star Wars on the big screen when I was seven years old in Papua New Guinea where I grew up in the drive-in, you know what I mean? Oh

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (28:57):
Wow. Yeah, I saw it in the drive it

Dan Macarthur (29:00):
Was actually released. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, I do love Star Trek. But yeah, that’s how that goes.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (29:09):
That’s fair enough. That’s fair enough. Alright, so in the future, let’s say the far, far future 2026, all Ink is removed from everyone’s body and it is mandated that everyone must get one single tattoo that is unique to them. What is that tattoo that you get and where do you get it on your person?

Dan Macarthur (29:32):
Well, it’s funny you say that actually, because I’ve been wanting to get this little symbol tattooed on me somewhere. It’s actually a ma symbol. I know it sounds corny, but see that little tiny little thing there? You can see it in the front of the logo. It’s like I’ve been wanting to get that circle thing on my arm right there you go for quite a while and then have it all augmented the alley so you can point your phone at it and some crazy cool car will come out of my arm.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (30:04):
Fantastic. Well that works on a few levels. Then you’re also marketing, which is what you got to do. People

Dan Macarthur (30:12):
Definitely don’t want to be marketing. That’s the

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (30:17):
Allowed, you’re allowed to pass on one toy from your youth to your children and future generations. What is that toy that you pass on?

Dan Macarthur (30:27):
Oh, good point. I was going to say he man there for a second.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (30:35):
Excellent choice. The twisty one, the one with the thing that twists or,

Dan Macarthur (30:42):
But it might have to be that or kiss. I dunno if I got any figurines from Kiss. But yeah, toys wise, the man, I was a big Kiss fan, but now around in the early days. But yeah, he was a pretty cool one. You got me there. I’m not sure that one, but yeah, there’s a swag of toys there somewhere in my brain.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (31:03):
So some sort of muscular figurine with either a twisting action or action man going, I

Dan Macarthur (31:12):
Have the action man with the rope and everything. That was us for sure.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (31:19):
Alright, so this is probably a good one. Given your background, you have to invent a new colour. What is it and why?

Dan Macarthur (31:26):
Ooh, that’s a good one. That’s a weird one. Yeah, Fluro Aqua with a shade of purple. It’s funny because when you’re working Unreal Engine, you can actually make these crazy colours because you can layer a multilayer layer colours so that as the object moves around, it’s like that metallic pink something or other. But it’s definitely for some crazy roller skating ring. There’s going to be some really cool colours and neons in this crazy semi purple red colour.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (32:00):
Alright, good luck. Good luck naming, whatever that is.

Dan Macarthur (32:08):
What it’s, and I’ll probably have a good answer there.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (32:14):
Hey. Alright, so what is one of the hardest fictional deaths and so sizzle, I’m coming to you next f yi. What is one of the hardest fictional deaths that you’ve had to deal with? It can be film, books, tv, anything, picture death that really hit you. Yeah,

Dan Macarthur (32:39):
I’m trying to think. Well AB one Ken was a bit of a shock, wasn’t it? That’s sure.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (32:46):
Yeah,

Dan Macarthur (32:47):
I was going to say, lemme try to remember. It’s a hard one to answer that one fictional.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (32:56):
I’ll tell you what, we’ll some

Dan Macarthur (32:58):
Tips,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (32:59):
We’ll come back to it. You could go Bambi, but Bambi’s mother, that old chestnut, we’ll go to sizzle then and we can come back to that one later on. So over to you.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (33:15):
We’re getting answers for it over here.

Dan Macarthur (33:18):
That’s good optimist, right?

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (33:21):
That’s a good one. Wait a minute, what do you mean? Is he dead? Hang on, hang on.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (33:31):
Okay, well my question will be going back to augmented reality. I don’t know if you answered this, but where exactly did you get that idea? Was it from other comics overseas?

Dan Macarthur (33:44):
Remember I saw the Black Eyed Peas did one, they did a comic where they augmented reality. Yeah, there was a couple of things I looked up. I remember seeing it on YouTube videos and all of it and they were using it and that was more directed towards having an app and everything. And once we came to the crunch with the technology, using an app as a real pain in the butt and everything because everyone else update their app and all that stuff. But anyway, but yeah, so to answer your question, yeah, it was definitely something on the net and I mean that was why I was kind of surprised when everyone was coming along going, oh my God, I haven’t seen this. And I was like, I thought everyone was doing this to make it interesting. Yeah. But it was definitely something that we wanted to do because we were so close to the technology anyway, so we could just chuck. I

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (34:35):
Was really surprised when I used it that it wasn’t an app. I was really surprised when I was expecting it to download an app and I’m going, okay, we go download an app and then it just started working. I’m like, holy crap.

Dan Macarthur (34:47):
Yeah, it doesn’t work brilliantly. And that’s the reason an app will actually use your phone tech to know where it is in space and all the rest of it. Whereas because it’s just using a visual, it has to track the page. So it’s doing a lot of brain tech with limited amount of resource to do it with because early on we were using the app and it was amazing. It’s next level with an app because the whole room can fill up with augmented reality. That whole tram was just in your room and you were just moving around the whole tram. It didn’t have to look at the page. Whereas this stuff, this tech has to see the page and that’s how it tracks. You got to keep it pointing at the page, but you can tilt it up and down and move the book around and move the object quite a lot because track with the page so you don’t have to be fixed. You can actually see it from all different angles as long as you’re looking at the page. But yeah. But yeah, it’s avoiding the whole app fiasco. It’s good luck. Good that way. That’s pretty cool.

(35:49)
Alright,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (35:51):
So I don’t know how you would’ve ever had a chance to think of another fictional death in that you’ve just been answering another question, but, so we’ll keep going. Yeah, that’s right. Are you okay if I do something I do in my other podcast? If I just bring it in here? Is that all right? You don’t even know what it is, so I don’t even know what it is, so I’ll risk it. Alright, let’s do it then. We’re going to do a little segment. I like to call the worst pitch. It’s a very simple idea. Basically we separately come up with a truly awful pitch for a film or book or comic book or anything like that. And then we just see which one is the worst. And it’s surprisingly hard to do because our brains are trained to try and come up with good ideas, but also whatever you come up with in it, you end up finding something good.

(36:42)
So I’m happy to go first. I have a long list of bad ideas ready to go at any moment, but that way you can have time to think through it. Yeah. Alright, so and Sil completely up to you if you want to join in as well, dude, because I’m throwing this on you without warning. Alright, so I haven’t got a title for this. So working title is whatever you want it to be. It’s about not surprisingly augmented reality. So there’s a detective that is investigating some sort of nefarious murder and using high-tech, augmented reality to see beyond the normal realm to see what’s happening. And as he’s doing this, within the first two minutes of the film, he solves the crime and then he takes home his phone, which has this augmented sort of component as part of it permanently. And then he notices that when he looks through the window in his kitchen at his neighbor’s studio apartment, he can see on the bench the food that will be on that bench the following day.

(37:45)
So he can see into the future. But he can only see food on the bench of his neighbor’s kitchen the following day. It’s of no use whatsoever. But he becomes obsessed with this thing and he kind of invites himself around the next day and then, but lo and behold, there’s a che. That was exactly what he saw and it smells the same as the, so he is trying to think what does this mean? And as you’re watching the film, you’re thinking, oh, there’s going to be a murder and he’s going to use this knowledge of future foods to somehow, no 10 minutes the first murder gets solved. And then two hours of just him looking through this thing and seeing different types of food. Yeah, no resolution, no nothing

Dan Macarthur (38:28):
Doesn’t get resolved. Nothing.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (38:30):
And we’ll call it Food futures. There we go. There’s your title. It’s

Dan Macarthur (38:37):
Terrible. Pretty inventive Morgan, I’ve got to say. It’s terrible. Yeah, very a great job of making something pretty bad there. This is really tricky.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (38:51):
All right,

Dan Macarthur (38:53):
You

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (38:54):
A, do you want to have a go Cy?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (38:56):
I don’t know if I can. I’m not really a storyteller. Everything I come up is a bad idea. So I guess anything,

Dan Macarthur (39:06):
Guy walks down the shop, he goes to the news agent like he does every day and he pulls up at the front and he’s looking at his favourite newspaper wondering what’s going on in the world. When all of a sudden a dog pees on his foot, he thinks to himself, that’s that bloody neighbor’s dog. I’m going to get that thing when I get home and I have no idea where I’m going with this story. That’s

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (39:30):
It, that’s

Dan Macarthur (39:31):
It, that’s it. Well, I got, I was like, you going to choose your own adventure? Someone else takes over. I dunno,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (39:42):
I like it. I like also, if you do a really long, drawn out, suspenseful, brooding kind of dark night sort of thing, and it’s just this dude going to the shop and then getting PE on by the dog and then the camera sort of turns in and he’s all that sort of stuff.

Dan Macarthur (40:01):
He knows. We know all instantly which dog it is. It’s like, no, what you

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (40:06):
Could do if you wanted to make it really, really terrible. So that’s your first five minutes is the setup and that whole thing and the peeing on the leg and the I’ll get you dog and then the dog leaves and the camera just follows the dog for the rest of the film. But the dog isn’t doing anything. The dog is just peeing on someone. The dog just goes and pees on different legs around the town and what he does. Yeah,

Dan Macarthur (40:29):
Exactly.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (40:31):
Eats some food. Vomits eats the vomit. Yeah, all that stuff. So the rest of the film, you’re just following the dog and then nothing.

Dan Macarthur (40:40):
You think it’s his story and then all of a sudden you go to the dog, you’re like, where’s this film going? He’s like, oh actually we’re just going to follow the damn dog.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (40:47):
It’s the dog. I like it. Part of me, if I had an endless source of money and didn’t have to work and everything, I think part of what I would do is pitch to studios, just the dumbest ideas and just see what reaction I can get with these truly stupid ideas that that would be so much

Dan Macarthur (41:07):
Fun. I think you get those on TikTok, no problems whatsoever. I’ll tell you what, the dumbest crap on TikTok and man, it goes off. They love that pissing on feet thing with dogs. That’s some grand entertainment right there.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (41:27):
Shout out to Alex Major and the farting girl. What’s the thing that he does? Si or the cartoons or a little girl? No, it’s a

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (41:39):
Woman. Sorry. It’s a woman dressed as a girl who farts from eating too many strawberries. That’s all I remember. I forget the

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (41:45):
Name. Huge. I mean, he’s an amazing artist and it’s animated and everything. It’s just amazing stuff, but huge. That’s all they want to see. They just want to see this chick farting on different things. That’s what they want. You better give them what they want. Wow, friend.

Dan Macarthur (42:03):
Yeah, no, you’re right.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (42:05):
Oh, sorry. You go, what were we going to say?

Dan Macarthur (42:06):
Oh no, I was just going to talk about cartoon called Lucky Luke. Did you remember that one? Cowboy Guy,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (42:13):
Lucky Luke. I do remember Lucky Luke. I do.

Dan Macarthur (42:16):
Yeah. Well apparently it’s still a big thing in France. He was watching it and it was all dubbed in French and it’s an American cartoon cowboy thingy. But anyway, I don’t dunno why I mentioned that, but it was just something that I thought was quite interesting. It was pretty funny and not that I could understand French, but he was telling me and reiterating all the crazy dialogue and everything. It seemed pretty cool. Yeah, so I think they do a lot of great stuff for French, but yeah,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (42:41):
Awesome. Lucky Luke. Although over there it would be LUC instead of E and it would be pronounced Lucky, I don’t know

Dan Macarthur (42:50):
French.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (42:52):
Lucky. Alright, so Sarah, I will give you one more chance to answer the question of questions and then I’ll have one more question for you and then we will do the big plug, the Shameless promotion to get as many people as we can to support Metopia. So before we do that, the hardest fictional death that you’ve had to deal with, has anything come to you?

Dan Macarthur (43:20):
Let’s trying to think. I mean, was it Romancing the Stone when Danny DeVito? Did he, I’m trying to think of the things from,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (43:36):
Was that really traumatic? Romancing the stone? I don’t remember terribly moving in that way. That is the first time anyone has brought up Romancing the Stone in any context on any podcast I’ve done, let alone this question. So I mean that’s amazing on its own. That’s fantastic. That references is gold

Dan Macarthur (44:00):
Flash Gordon, I have weird things in my brain. I don’t know, there’s just strange things go around. I wouldn’t have a clue.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (44:07):
Well we’ll say someone or something died in Romance Stone. I think that’s a good enough answer. That’s a classic film that I, you know

Dan Macarthur (44:16):
What, I’ll go away 20 minutes. I like, oh, I didn’t say that.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (44:21):
Straight away. Straight away. Alright, so the final question, and this one has a little bit of a,

Dan Macarthur (44:31):
You’re not throwing more,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (44:34):
What is it? It has stakes to it. So it is not just an answer a question. If you answer the question the wrong way, it will go one way or the other. And I’m trying to undo, so incidentally young Zach sent me a whole bunch of Bronwyn stuff and one of the things that I got was a little Vivian badge thing. So this is what is going to decide our fate. I will flip this and see the question is, in the far far future, humanity lives life of luxury because we have a new sort of servant class that looks after the stuff we don’t want to do. They service, they cook, they clean, they look after our kids, all that sort of stuff. You as the decider of all things for humanity get to decide which class or which group of beings are that servant class. They are either shackled, demonic creatures, so creatures that have been pulled up from hell and sort of shackled with magic and all that sort of stuff. Or robots, ai, self-aware robots. Which would you choose? And then which will find out whether it is our doom or our salvation.

Dan Macarthur (45:45):
I’m going to shackle demons and dragons,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (45:49):
Right? Excellent choice. Most people go the ai, but you’ve gone the other way. Alright, so here we go. I’m flipping

Dan Macarthur (45:58):
That sound like way more fun.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (46:01):
All right, so you make the decision. Demons are now the servant class of humanity. It lasts approximately as long as your reign does over humanity, which is just a bit over a week because they find a way to get out of that magic and they devour our children and give birth to hell spawn that then devour the rest of us and we just become effectively farmed meat for the rest of these demon hoards to eat for the rest of eternity. So

Dan Macarthur (46:36):
It really,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (46:37):
It didn’t go well, it didn’t go well. No, who knows. AI might not have been better. The robots might not have treated us well,

Dan Macarthur (46:45):
We would’ve turned into the matrix. It was the robots, wouldn’t it? Yeah,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (46:50):
Well that’s right.

Dan Macarthur (46:51):
Things out of the back of our neck enjoying life somehow

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (46:55):
It was just the wrong flip of the coin. Alright, so thank you very much Dan for joining us and talking us through your creative journey. Introducing us to Metopia people. You can go to meus.com, you can find everything there. You can Oh, look at that. Just fantastic. He’s right on the, you can order the comic book, you can get involved in the whole project. It sounds like there’s so much going on. So thank you very much, sir. Is there anything that you would like to say as your final word on the Comex Show?

Dan Macarthur (47:29):
Oh, thanks so much guys. It’s been great chatting and I just love delving in this world and we’re getting so many fans that are loving the diesel punk thing as well. We just can’t wait to bring more to the audience. And yeah, just stay tuned and there’ll be more coming from Mitro in the future.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (47:46):
Fantastic guys. You heard it. People get out and support. All right, awesome.

Dan Macarthur (47:51):
Thanks so much guys.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (47:53):
Thank you sir. You have a good night. I dunno how to end sizzle because it’s been so long since we’ve done it.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (48:00):
Okay, well first we’ve got to tell people to like the video.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (48:03):
Oh, like subscribe, share with your friends,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (48:08):
Subscribe as

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (48:09):
Well. Look at that. Yes. And it’s still bouncing. It’s going to do it until you subscribe,

Dan Macarthur (48:20):
So hang on.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (48:24):
Oh, we got to it. Thank you guys. Yep, not a problem.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (48:27):
Cheers Nathan. Thanks guys.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (48:28):
Cheers Nathan. Well that’s the show for the night. Thank you very much. Thank you to Dan. Thank you to everyone who watched. Thank you to Morgan and I’ve got to get on the right screen to be able to do this.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (48:43):
You can’t do it talk at the same time, that’s the problem. You need to be just talking blah, blah, blah. Just to give you a bit of

Dan Macarthur (48:50):
Space. Music, outro. We need some music. Outro, applauding or something. That’s it guys.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (48:56):
Good night all. Thank you very much. Have a great time. See,

Dan Macarthur (49:01):
Check

Voice Over (49:01):
Out Comex CX for all things Comex, and find out what Comex is all about. We hope you enjoyed the show.