dune – M. Szal

I started my new position as a mechanic at Jersey City Kia in the first week of May of this year. It has been such a great experience, yet I did not want to write about it on the blog until I completed my first six weeks. I love test-driving our new K5 (which replaced the Optima) model. I plan on buying an old KIA to bring back to life, similar to my Nissan Versa (which also started as a project car).

Kia is a strikingly different brand from GMC. GMC vehicles are designed with future repair work in mind as a priority. Yet, KIA is much more focused on luxury, and the vehicles are designed to be repaired by a professional and not a customer. I am super excited to learn more about swapping engines and transmissions with proper training from the manufacturer, not just ad hoc training from a more senior mechanic. KIA also has some very nice hybrid and fully electric vehicles, which are the way of the future, so learning to service and maintain these engines is critical.

I have been so tired from work, hanging out with my new friends and drawing/painting the beautiful historic buildings in the NYC area that I have been slow-playing work on the Arrackeen Nights project. I have been fine-tuning the candy analogies and references to Dune with all the characters and making some interesting new backdrops (my specialty) of desert buildings in ruins.

Stay tuned for more updates. I will release “Arrackeen Nights” on YouTube instead of Instagram this time, like “The Flying Dutchess.”

After several years of working on The Flying Dutchess by myself, I have decided to wait until I can get a deal with an animation studio like Cartoon Network or Disney to release more content. Since I began making animations in college, I have been trying to develop quality content for my portfolio. Animation is a graphic design specialization, ranging from title credits to CGI.

In the interest of my demo reel and since I love Frank Herbert (I call him Frank Sherbet), I have started work on an 8-episode mini-series based on the first Dune book entitled “Arrackeen Nights.” There was so much stuff in the David Lynch movie and the most recent film from the 2021 movie that was absent; I felt it was important to make some content with some of my favorite quotes and sections. The second part of book one is entitled, “MAUD’DIB”. The main focus is the two years when Lady Jessica and Paul are left in the desert after the fall of House Atreides.

Everything is candy-themed now, and instead of spice, our characters are mining blue raspberry candy from the candyjar region of Arrakis. Instead of worms, Dune is covered with gummy worms. The Harkonnens are now the Honeycombs of the planet Gummy Bear Prime, ruled by the famous Vladimir Honeycomb and his champion, Pepermintzophen.