How I Got Involved

A quick explanation of the purpose of this blog. I'm an actor, costume and prop maker, and one of the main writers of ASSIST ME!, a popular(ish) web-series on YouTube. It's a tutorial for the video game Marvel Vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds, and later Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3.

That's me on the left. The fat one.

The series is in its final days now, and I'm honestly not sure it'll ever be fully released. It makes, like, no money, and costs a bunch in both supplies and time (of which the cast and crew now has very little.) Anyway, I'm going through old notebooks, cleaning up a bit, and realized I have a lot of notes about the production, story lines that we changed, etc. I've already tossed out the oldest of them (a mistake I now regret) but I'd like to share them with the fans that are into the story, or perhaps even interested in what a low-budget fan production is like.

I got my start in the show because I cosplay Albert Wesker of Resident Evil fame. Since then I became involved creatively. I've written over half of the episodes in the series, have made many of the costumes and props, and have done a lot of the casting. At the end of the day I think that qualifies me as a producer as well, but hell if I know. I didn't go to film school. I've also played Deadpool, Thanos, Rocket Raccoon, and a few extras when needed. I've been involved enough that I think my experiences might be interesting to, like, one or two readers.

I first got involved not long after the very first episode (Doctor Doom) debuted. Matt Simmons (who plays Doom, among others, and is also involved creatively) contacted me with a link to the videos and asked if I was interested in playing Wesker for the second episode. I knew the series creator/director Max through Simmons, had met him a couple times, but didn't know him or his crew at the time very well. I have been close friends with Simmons since I met him in 2004 though, so I said sure. Sounds like fun. Max sent me the script and asked for some insight since he was a little rusty on Resident Evil lore. I think I might have suggested some alternate lines for Wesker, but otherwise I was good to go.

Interestingly, a week before we even met for filming, Simmons and I attended Sakura Con in Seattle where we met popular cosplayer Spif Zaya.

Popular mostly for her hair (not pictured).

She and I had arranged to meet up for a photoshoot as Wesker and Jill. Simmons pointed out that if she was down to travel to Santa Monica, Max would probably like to shoot a Jill episode. At that point in time, Max had no storyline really planned out. We filmed episodes based on which actor/friend and costume was convenient, and we made story work around that (this was true only for season 1 though.) We asked Spif if she was interested, and she totally was. We stayed in touch.

The next week I packed my Wesker costume and headed up to Santa Monica. We filmed the Wesker episode over two long days of work, starting with the fight scene and winding down with the couch scenes til it was all done. It was hot as absolute balls. We were filming in the end of April, and the lights Max had at the time were unforgivingly hot. Plus, I was decked out in head to toe vinyl. Our sound guy Dan would hit me with a paper towel between takes because I was sweating like one of those old Gatorade commercial models, just with way better hair.

Sexy as fuck.

At the time I didn't know anything about MvC3 (I suck royally at fighters) and really didn't know much of Max's popularity within the FGC or any of that business. I was just helping some friends make an internet video. I had no idea what I was getting myself into...