DLYCW June - Chad Kintz

This time for Dress Like Your Character Week, I dressed up like my character Chad Kintz from my work in progress The Black Cat Diamond: a Lizzie Evans mystery.  Chad is Lizzie's brother's best friend, and a graffiti artist. (See this post for an interview with him).

This outfit was much simpler than the one for Tori was.  All it consisted of was jeans, the paint splattered shirt (Chad probably wouldn't wear that color, but the design went with the whole graffiti artist thing), and the baseball hat.

My hair was the trickiest part.  I had it up in a ponytail and then flipped it up toward my face so that I got that spiky look. It kept slipping, as you can see, but it worked in the end.


And of course Chad is not a girl.

I didn't really get any insight into Chad's psyche, but for some reason I got an idea of how he smiles. And no, I did not manage to get a photograph of it. 

Well, I think that's about it. Be sure to check for other DLYCW post this week!

An Interview With a Graffiti Artist

Today is my turn to post for the Teens Can Write, Too! March blog chain.  This month's prompt is: Choose your favorite of any of your characters.  Conduct a ten question interview with him or her.

Oh, this is going to be fun!

The character I chose is Chad Kintz, from my Lizzie Evans story.  Chad is Lizzie's brother's best friend, and a graffiti artist.  You'll find out more about him in a minute.

For this interview, I decided to set up a situation in which Chad is being interviewed by Albert Fishguy, a reporter from the local newspaper, for an article about teen artists.

Albert Fishguy: *Pulls out notebook and pencil* For starters, tell me a little about yourself. 

Chad Kintz: I'm Chad Kintz, Outdoor Art Wizard Specializing in Aerosol Borne Pigment...

AF: Excuse me?

CK: It's my title.

AF:  Okay...


CK: I'm in 11th grade, and I attend school at my kitchen table.

AF: What?

CK: I'm a homeschooled Junior. 

AF: Oh.  

CK:  I do all the posters and artwork for the local band Sonic Sardoodledom. I think that color is underrated, and that most common graffiti is an insult to the world of artistic expression.


AF: That actually brings up my next question.  One of the other kids I interviewed said you don't consider your art to be graffiti. Is this true?

CK: Yes.  Graffiti and what I do are similar, but different.  Graffiti is words and weird scribblings on abandoned buildings and train cars, and is generally an eye sore.  I do that too, but my words actually mean something. I don't write "Jenny heart's Reginald" or "Kitty Katz R Kute".  I quote Shakespeare.  I paint really out-there words like "Graviloquence", "Hymnicide" and "Whifflery" and include the definitions. If I can find a good spot, sometimes I'll do a really colorful mural.  Like the one I did of the ship The Anteloper.  My art is not an eyesore.

AF: What's an example of some of your best work?

CK:  The dragon I painted on the water tower, hands down.


AF:  That was you?  

CK: Yep.  I meant to make the scales glow-in-the-dark, but... something came up.

AF: What is your favorite medium?

CK: Spray paint.  That's why my title says "Specializing In Aerosol Borne Pigment".  Old stop signs are good too.  Like the ones that have been hit by semi. Those are fun.

AF: Where do you get your inspiration from?

CK: Various places.  Sometimes a lyric in a song will inspire an image, sometimes I'll find a new word.  Facebook is a good place for inspiration too. And sometimes even homework is inspiring.

AF: What else did you do besides graff-- I meant art? 

CK:  Well, I do lots of homework, I hang out with my friends, *thinks "I answer stupid questions"*, the usual.

AF: *Closes notebook* Thank you for your time, Chad.  I'll let you know when the article is published. *He leaves*

CK: *Pulls out cellphone and texts to best friend "Interview over.  Next mural will be of a clown fish with a notebook."*

Do you have a question for Chad?  Don't hesitate to ask!  (Thanks, Oliver Dahl for this idea!)

Do you wish to follow this chain of awesomeness?  Here's a schedule of where it goes!

March 5 — http://kirstenwrites.wordpress.com — Kirsten Writes!
March 6 — http://www.maybeteenauthor.blogspot.com/ – Struggles Of A (Maybe) Teen Author
March 7 — http://insideliamsbrain.wordpress.com –This Page Intentionally Left Blank
March 8 — http://www.thedreamersadventures.blogspot.com/ – The Dreamers Adventures
March 9 — http://lilyjenness.blogspot.com — Lily’s Notes in the Margins
March 10 — http://www.journeyofascholar.blogspot.com/ – A Box of Letters and a Cup of English Tea
March 11– http://weirdalocity.wordpress.com –From My Head
March 12 — http://thewordasylum.wordpress.com –The Word Asylum
March 13 — http://oyeahwrite.wordpress.com –Oh Yeah, Write!
March 14 — http://delorfinde.wordpress.com/ – A Farewell To Sanity
March 15 — http://noveljourneys.wordpress.com — Novel Journeys
March 16 — http://correctingpenswelcome.wordpress.com — Comfy Sweaters, Writing and Fish
March 17 — http://oopswasthatoutloud.wordpress.com/ – Oops Was That Loud?
March 18 — http://herestous.wordpress.com — Here’s To Us
March 19 — http://incessantdroningofaboredwriter.wordpress.com — The Incessant Droning of a Bored Writer
March 20 — http://teenscanwritetoo.wordpress.com –Teens Can Write Too! (We will be announcing the topic for next month’s chain)

Also, this was my 25th post. Yay!

Sonic...?

In my Lizzie Evans series, Lizzie's brother, Tyler, is in a band.  I spent hours (okay, maybe not quite that long) trying to come up with a name for them, be it by playing on a band name generator or by coming up with something on my own.  (Here's my favorite band name generator, it has this box where you can insert a word that you know you want in your band name, and it will create a name that uses that word.  I used the word 'sonic' a lot.)   Here are some of the names I found on the generator:

Charming Fractured
Snapped Celluloid
Redefined December
Defunct Intermission and the Daddies
Starry Cheese
Cobalt on the Voltage
Fellow Envelope
Noodle Mirror
Insane Blimp of the Stuck Wallet
Swollen Sonic and the Bladder Marshmallow
Sonic of the Refried Trial
Sonic Analogy of the Starry Country
Sonic of the Timely Cannibal
Evidence Buzz
Opposition Obvious
The Alloy Havoc
Missile of the Advancing Tenderloin
Flamboyant Newcomer Of The Self-inflicted Tofu
Glazed Sonic Doughnuts (Actually, this one was just 'Glazed Sonic', and I added 'Doughnuts')

Yeah.  Weird.  In some cases hilarious.  And those were just an example.
Then I found a name, and I fell in love with it.  It was Sonic Aftermath.  I know, it's weird, but go do a Google search for the top 40 new bands of 2011 and take a gander at those names.

[insert you doing said Google search here]

Yeah, there's seriously a band called Yuck. 
However, my time with Sonic Aftermath was short lived.  I did a Google search for it and found out that there's already something called Sonic Aftermath; an RPG website forum thing.  I was bummed.  I had thought that was the perfect name, and I couldn't use it.  (The same thing happened to me with Lizzie's favorite ice cream parlor and chocolate shop. I'll have blog posts about my naming adventures with them sometime soonish.)  Here are some of the results I got from the generator while looking for a replacement:

Sonic Chronic
Large Sonic Of The Ice-cold Vanity
Sonic Pumpkin
Sonic Howdy
Seashell Of Sonic
Lethal Sonic
Recycled Sonic
Sonic pasta sauce
Shutdown Of The Sonic Coconut
Sonic Hologram
Weathered Exhaust Of The Bound Scum
Jugs Before Explosion
Jingle Gateway
Proactive Feather
Cheese Of The Minority
Skillet Of The Tired Resin
Exploding Bungle
Ravioli Square
Fifteen Fuzz
Cohesive Grimace
Poisonous Foil
Quasi Smack And The Primary Talk
Frisky Crow And The Ethereal Management

In the end, the replacement I got was not one suggested by the generator.  I Googled lists of cool words, and found the perfect word to pair with 'sonic': Sardoodledom.  Sonic Sardoodledom.  Sardoodledom refers to a play that has an overly contrived and melodramatic plot.  It doesn't really fit with 'sonic', but it sounds great, and it's a lot better than some of those real band's names.  Now I just have to go back through my manuscript and add or change a scene so that it says that Sonic Sardoodledom is Tyler's band's name.

One band name idea I didn't mention earlier was acronyms.  There's an acronym generator made by the same people who made that band name generator.  I have a ton of acronyms for the word 'sonic'.  I may do a post on them later.

(Just out of curiosity, did any of you see the title of this post and automatically insert the word "screwdriver"?)