A greatly enriched Fire Label reconvened its efforts with a triumvirate stratagem;  Timmy, Cutting Room and Smiley.  Having superior products in hand, the year was spent cultivating their ingredients.  Revising and enhancing the recipes were necessary, allowing the first stage of content to occur.... everything to ensure an extremely smooth blending for the year to come.

An enhancement of RockErode Productions facilities and minion morale were also undertaken and an increase in the inferno capacity for the Fire Label furnace was achieved.

Stepping into the new year with a Fire Label worthy of recuperation from Devinco's intensity I opened The Love Cult doors towards collaboration in the cinematic world once more, this time in an expedition towards the Antarctic.  The purpose of Wicked Snowman Productions was admirable, the establishment of an Ice Label independent of my growing empire.  Yet as is often the case, the prospect of Antarctica as an entity unto itself destroys the weak and the unprepared before they even complete their preparations.

With the import of such an endeavour, and finding myself in a situation where the Ice Label would be reduced to an expedition being dragged forth, clutching in its desperation to my coat tails, a dissolution of this enterprise was necessary.

Rest assured that the Antarctic Project WILL happen at some point, but not until a selection of participants comprised of superior fortitude and ability are found.

During all of this year, much was still being considered, discovered and developed for the Fire Label, and Devinco: Epilogue was exposed to the world at the Fearless Tales Genre Fest in San Francisco, CA, USA.

Throughout my entire life I have been intrigued by fire. The beauty, the majesty of the flame.  While I had watched immolation after immolation occur to those around me throughout the entire previous year, I managed to capture a few sparks and set out on the open road seeking the adventure only the wild unknown has to offer... and this time I was well equipped.

I managed to breathe life into those sparks and nurture that lovely little flame into a decent blaze, yet I was beset by bandits and a snake oil merchant.  Try as they might to roast upon my fire at the expense of my newly established Fire Label, I unleashed the hungry kiss waiting within the flames.  Their haunts throughout the forest were obliterated in the incendiary wave that followed, forcing the bandits and merchant to move on, away from the forest while the woods themselves merely destined to grow back in force.

I salvaged the true flame and the many new characters, discoveries and minions that had sought refuge and found purpose within RockErode Productions.

Ahhh, after a sabbatical of heavy ponderings and book learning it was back into the laboratory.  And it is here the largeness of my film scrapbook dawned upon me... it would surpass the music world in size, scope, and insanity. The saying goes that the trust of one's lab partners is a sacred thing. Well, I came to witness many mutations, mutilations, and false ministrations in my lab time for this year alone.

While these many horrors did well at capturing one’s sense of morbid curiosity, the exhaustion that that curiosity ends up taxing from you is a sure sign this magical liason is at an end, and the freedom of rolling skies and open roads lay ahead for the true seeker.

By the end half of the prior year I had already started searching for information on the brewing process.  Seeking the knowledge and wisdom already established by luminaries of the past.  This year's cinematic efforts were wholly devoted to that pursuit.  While rummaging through these blueprints I again discovered a far more valuable knowledge just sitting to the side of my vision, begging to be snatched up and devourted.

I started a new scrapbook on the nutty archetypes of the film world, and captured most of the archetypes for intellectual toffery in one sitting.  The greatest knowledge though was found in the roots of the art, the richness of its legacy, and the rogueries of this world as a whole.

And yet, on the flip side I also found the recipes to another pursuit. That of the power and the glory of propaganda.  The art and science of it.

The baby steps into brewing cinematika.  Learning to think in motion and how to animate to boot, all undertakeng over a eight grueling month stretch of night-&-day effort on two music videos... literally non-stop.  Much was discovered, and while there were many, many practical lessons, there were even more in understanding the importance of the legalities of the entertainment industry, the wanton ignorance of some towards those important facts, and an amazing character study of the last music rockstar archetype missing from my scrapbook of musical zoo experiences (this last being the "basement superstar").

As any upstart brewer will discover, mixing with uncertain ingredients is just going to make you walk away with a bitter taste in your mouth, but the lesson is to pay attention to how nasty that distilling process was. Why it reacted the way it did, and how to protect the rest of your stock from that bitter affliction.  If you think your mixes will be perfect from there on, you are fooling yourself (or so uninspired that anything you do will be so formulaic that your brewing existence is meaningless).