The Proactive Pachyderm

An animator, an illustrator, and a screenwriter meet a painter in a bar...

2011-12-02T17:54:00.012-05:00

And it's all the same person. He picks the crust from his eyes, hangs his coat dejectedly on the back of an uncomfortable swiveling stool, looks around at some much-loved old friends and says,"I've worked thousands of unpaid hours this year. Anyone want to buy me a pint?"

Man, it's rough out there. It doesn't help the self-esteem when the likes of Bill Plympton, Pat Smith, Don Hertzfeld, The Vaccese Twins, Signe Baumane, and practically every animator known to man seems to be releasing their film and visiting fests, or announcing their new film and getting underway. More power to 'em!

But... Dammit! In the time it's taken me to develop and storyboard and begin production on my animated short, people have made entire shorts, built animation/motion graphics portfolios, even started companies. Granted, I cut an HD feature, PA'ed for Bridezillas, relocated twice, and volunteered videography services to countless individuals. But... Just the same. Point is, this film is huge, it's still huge, and it's not getting any less huge. It's not a music video, it's not stick figures, it's not under ten minutes. It will never be any of those things.

In any case, my film is on hold- this is a terrible, terrible thing. Every day that I don't touch it feels like sacrilege. But the money must flow. I can't find any editing work, despite having a solid pedigree. And while my last job was pretty great for a service gig- it ate up most of my time. So. There's this webcomic that could, in fact, bring some small amount of income. Therefore, finishing issue 1 before the year turns is a major, major goal. The faster I get this finished, the faster I can get back to the film. Either way, I'm not seeing much pay for any of this.

Dear universe: I'd like to do my fucking work now, please.

In the meantime, I am going broke laboring on amazing projects that won't pay off until question marks. Wanted: a new day job or any available sugar momma.

Sept. 2011

2011-09-20T16:32:00.004-04:00

I am still alive, and I apologize for not posting. The job situation in my life has changed recently, allowing me more time for my XL friend (the month of August in particular brought some grand developments, including the best animation to date,) but with this change also brings a threat anew: poverty. I have been working on M since July of 2008, and as of July 2011 I've set a soft deadline of April, 2014. With everything going on outside of the project, I am unable to justify spending immediate time making the latest work available for viewing. Nevertheless, there are those interested in helping- and I am soon to enter a recruiting phase for scanning, cleanups, and color flatting. In the meantime, enjoy a pic from my secondary project [hopefully a moneymaker to free up some time and funds for this ongoing pachyderm epic] the unearthly graphic novel Bloodless.

Update May 2011

2011-05-19T01:44:00.001-04:00

Working hard, working well. More time needed, but it's coming along nicely. More to come soon.

Mutwale : Timelapse 01 from Jeff Martell on Vimeo.

Inspiration/Influence: Richard Williams

2011-02-01T11:01:00.007-05:00

I've been tackling a couple of title sequences right at the outset, and I'm reminded of something Richard Williams says time and again. "Sophisticated use of the basics." An important phrase for an animator that isn't doing Tex Avery style BOINGS or hard takes, but must instead focus on subtle anticipation and soft accents. Knowing the basics and how to apply them in a sophisticated way is one of the most effective methods to keep things organized while retaining a working sense of freedom.

Since my lead character weighs a couple of tons (his head alone could be up to 800 lbs.,) I'm going to execute a traditional human walk cycle separately just to cut my teeth again. Steps on 12 and 24, passing position at 6 and 18 all on ones, loop. Totally basic. Timing and spacing is paramount for mobility and believability in action. The only reason I even know the true difference between timing and spacing is Richard Williams. Everyone knows the man- he's responsible for integrating cartoons with live action in Roger Rabbit, (part 2, part 3,) the famous Pink Panther introductions, thousands of commercials, and the mostly completed 24-year endeavor Thief and the Cobbler (or The Princess and the Cobbler, or The Cobbler and the Thief, depending on the cut you get.) I could go on for pages about the man and how much he's helped me understand the art of animation. Animation at its simplest is translational math without numbers. Even more though, it's performance. Animation is acting. Richard Williams can cite Art Babbit (one of Disney's "9 old men" responsible for the Queen in Snow White) and Ken Harris (the classic Warner animator known for the Coyote) as masters, employees, and friends. He remains one of the only comprehensive encyclopedias of traditional animation technique on the planet. Any animator will point you to his book, The Animator's Survival Kit. There also exists a 16 DVD set called the Animator's Survival Kit: Animated, which is a lecture series compiled with over 400 animated exercises and illustrations of the most common animation techniques and mistakes. If you lack a mentor as most of us seem to, I can honestly say both of these are invaluable resources. If you can somehow get your hands on it, the animated lectures are fantastic.

Don't overthink. Anticipation. Action. Reaction. Work it until it works.

Post deleted.

2011-01-10T15:45:00.005-05:00

This post has been removed in the interest of keeping this production blog apolitical. For a copy of what was posted here, provide your email address to jpmartell@gmail.com.

Paper-to-Post Pipeline

2010-12-28T17:11:00.010-05:00

I've devised my methods- save the main coloring processes, which I still need to nail down for the narrative portion of the film. I think I'll keep that pretty traditional (three-tone) for the first pass and augment with an additional beauty pass. Until I get there, though, I've devised the scanning/compositing methods and chosen the final output res.

The scanner I picked up is a Mustek Scan Express Pro A3 1200, which fits 16f (12.65X17") sheets comfortably. The drivers are a bit dated, but it's inexpensive and TWAIN compatible with photoshop -- and that's all that matters.

Scans will be 16-bit color @ 200 DPI. Why not grayscale? Personal preference. I'd rather avoid a grayscale->RGB conversion step in my photoshop phase. Even tho macro automation makes it fast, I don't want to deal with software conversion of colorspace or bit depth between the scan and the composite.

Been working with After Effects for 2D stuff until now. This time, I'm bumping up to Combustion 4 for almost all output. Output will be Digital Cinema 4k 1.85:1, or 3996 × 2160. About twice current HD. This is pretty close to actual film, the difference being that the crop to 1.85:1 will occur during the actual composite. (For those not interested in techie stuff, skip: Combustion 4 doesn't actually include a comprehensive image sequence editor. There is an edit node, but having 60-150 images in line as a footage layer proves pretty unstable and actually makes for a huge hit to performance. There's also a fine .TIF sequence import, but since it only allows for single frame numbers, it's far too labor intensive to reorder any drawings as the animation may require. So I'll be importing the individual drawings into AE or similar motion graphics suite, and exporting these layers as uncompressed .movs with premultiplied Alpha to import into C4 as footage. It'll work, even on my 6-year old G5 rig. It's actually not too taxing on the machine until you try to render a preview to RAM- which is when 1/4 res proxies come in handy.) The goal here is to create something that can withstand the next rollout of HD media, which will be larger than 1920X1080 (1080p.)

Finally, instead of just a trailer- I've decided to execute a whole sequence of the film to use for fundraising. I think the film timeline is too large and varied to open up with a musical trailer mishmash, so I'll hit the story. After that, I'll see if a teaser or two is in order for publicity and go from there.

Insert Money into Mouth.

2010-12-07T20:09:00.002-05:00

Day job acquired. This has been a major step forward in my film's production, as I must now pay rent on both living space and a studio. More soon.

At last..

2010-11-08T22:01:00.012-05:00

Some animation. Had to test the scanner, so I used M23_Shot286. Scanner works, Mutwale lives. 523 shots to go.

Need to double-check the timing- I don't have the drawings themselves, so I don't have the original charts. The pencil test seems correct, the alpha composite seems a tad slow.

More as it happens.

Industry Rant: Piracy, DRM, and The Corporation as a Victim

2010-10-29T19:13:00.018-04:00

I'm a Pirate. I'm not sorry that I'm a pirate, it's necessary to survive the age of bloatware and rebuys. I also purchase a lot -most, I'd say- of the applications that I use professionally, so if that opening admission makes me a target, shame on you, Big Software. I'm a supporter.

Let's define our terms.

Highware: Large companies and corporations need software to function. This software is priced pretty exorbitantly because companies will pay it or, even better for the developer/publisher, buy bulk licenses. If you're a teacher you know this to be true because, almost always, the academic discount shaves off a *significant* percentage. Companies that make this software- I'm not mentioning names because it doesn't matter- generally don't care if the software is stolen or not. If you steal it and use it properly, you'll eventually get to the point where you're a professional and you're making money using that software. It will pay for itself, and you'll buy it. Everyone wins. If you suck at using the software, you haven't lost any money and you aren't eating into the industry that uses it. Personally, stealing software is only harmful if you use it for personal or monetary gain without (eventually) giving back to the team of creators- tho as we've mentioned, they usually aren't hurting for cash. (I'd been calling this Bloatware, turns out that's slang for software that uses up more system resources than considered necessary or efficient. So for now I'll call expensive software suites HighWare.)

Rebuys: My family has purchased the movie Jaws on VHS, Laserdisc (yeah, laugh it up,) and DVD. I pay for netflix, so in the event that I need to stream it to something, I can do that too. Now I'm supposed to buy it on BluRay? No wonder people freaking steal movies. Corporations, meet me at camera three. Hello there. You know those things on the backs of products called barcodes? They are used to keep track of inventory. How about you let me use the barcodes on the back of my old products for a discount on new formats?* Or if I've purchased the Alien Legacy QUAD SET collection on Amazon, you let me scan the barcode and send in for 50% off the BluRay? Or a free soundtrack disc? Or freaking... Poster. Something to commemorate how much freaking money I have already thrown your way. I think you see where I'm headed with this. Help the consumer, don't hurt them. And if one thing is absolutely destroying consumer confidence, it is this:

DRM: Digital Rights Management. This is a form of copy protection that either kills or limits the consumer's ability to duplicate, copy, back-up, transfer, or alter digital media that they themselves have purchased. This is one of the largest fallacies of the information age and it has less to do with copyright law and more to do with the corporation being a huge headless beast. There are a few great (grave?) examples of DRM that I'm going to mention and tear apart.

1)iTunes store files:

Ever buy a song, show, or movie using the iTunes store? Ever try to play that song, show, or movie on someone else's computer? Yeah. No dice, unless you authorize that hardware address. You can't share anymore. Remember- the difference here is the delivery. Technically, when you buy a CD, you're buying a non-exclusive license to play that music privately for yourself. You don't own the song. You own a disc of it. The benefit of the hard copy is what I like to call (yes, I make up my own terms to organize toughts) the Kindergarten Principle. --Sharing is caring. Like an album? Share it! Burn it and pass it along. This is technically illegal, including back in the days of the first CDR drives or dub-ready stereo machines, on and on. What the DRM-using corporation doesn't realize is that this is the greatest benefit they could have to their market. Firstly, it puts sharing tracks and mixes in the hands of users. This uses not one but two of the the very definitions of advertising in the new Century of the Self- involve the consumer and make the consumer define or inform him or herself with the product itself. It's all about making them feel like they are building something alongside the artists and craftsmen. Mixdubs and mashups, internet radio, build your own smart playlists, again... on and on. Come up with new ways to involve and inform the consumer. And since it's music, hell- people have been defining themselves with musical choices since operas- but I'd argue that the walkman really turned the music world upside down. Suddenly life had a soundtrack, and that involved people in a whole new way. Btw, RIP Sony Walkman. ... Where the hell was I? RIGHT. DRM is crap and those that use it for music files are actually limiting their own market saturation, their own growth. If you cut out some of this DRM nonsense, let the files spread a little, you'll find that suddenly people are finding new bands with ease. Word spreads faster. Things catch on faster. More artists grow new fans. Everyone wins. With DRM, everyone is losing. When's the last time you bought something on vinyl? Artists and publishers that provide vinyl now often include a digital download of the album with the purchase. BRAVO! This is the path. Inclusion, not limitation.

2)Steam game apps:

If you don't play video games you are ridiculously stupid. Sorry, that... That came out wrong. If you don't partake in any form of video games, or worse, you are down on them for being childish or time-wasting, you are a sad, sad relic of a dead era. Sorry... I just don't understand people that are down on games. Interactive New Media is a fantastic new wave of entertainment that is growing and expanding at a dangerously speedy rate. Even more than music it exemplifies the nature of the new century in allowing the user to take part in the generative, or, dare I say, creative process. Little Big Planet and Sleep Is Death are great examples of how interactivity and creativity can join together to form something challenging and unique... Even communal. But we're not talking about games. Let's get back to DRM.

So you aren't one of those dead-era persons. You're a gamersperson. A gamesman. You pick up this PC game via a download store called Steam, Valve Software's online gaming store. It's a rainy day, a storm knocks out your internet, or your wireless is acting up because your roommate is torrenting porn. Whatever. You're having trouble connecting to the net. You boot up Steam to play your new game and LO! You can't play it because you can't connect to a Steam server. What's this then? It's a single-player-only game, how could- Oh, THAT's what that is. See what happened? Steam has instituted a DRM policy that *requires* an internet connection to "verify" your "licensing." Every. Single. Time. You play. I'm sorry but this is ludicrous. How can you not just build an offline key specific to an account and a hardware address? Store this key in the user's online account and build a new replacement key if they want to transfer to a new system?* I realize that sites like GOG offer DRM-free game downloads... Wait, they just closed down. /sigh.

I think I understand the source of the problem. The corporation doesn't know how to be a victim. They can't stop suing their own consumers. It's ludicrous out there! The RIAA, the MPAA, Cable companies are SUING THEIR OWN CUSTOMERS FOR COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT. They don't know what to do so their flailing around like characters out of Peter Bagge's HATE and hoping that fear will stop all this unabashed piracy! Two things. First, most pirates are Chinese, European, Scandinavian, and Eastern-European users that won't have access to what you're selling for another 8 months or more, if at all. It's a global economy, morons. Get with it. If it's good, everyone wants it, and they want it now, not 8 months or a year after America. Second, pirates that are 'stealing' your music and shows and movies and games are going to watch them and play them. They will recommend the good ones, building cred, word-of-mouth, support, and consumer base. These will sell more than usual. Equally, they will *not* recommend the bad ones, and no one will buy your crap any more. Suddenly the market is gaining intelligence and sources, thus not paying for crap when it comes out only to find out it's crap. Suddenly the product matters again. Suddenly the corporation is responsible. Scary stuff for this headless mass, so used to pushing people around and defining its own trends without a care for the individual consumer! Information isn't changing these waters, it is the water itself; the consumer is evolving past the old line of corporate sales and into a new realm of user-defined consumption. Let's all make it a responsible realm. Support your artists. Buy things from those that need the attention, and, hell, steal it too. And blog/tweet/status update about how awesome they are. Culture will grow with or without capitalism. I am an artist, and I support piracy.

*I think this is a bang-up idea.

Grant #1

2010-10-06T22:26:00.005-04:00

I'm doing a serious amount of job hunting and resumé polishing, but in the middle of all that Mutwale has achieved a major milestone- it's been given its first grant from the Metropolitan Arts Council. This means I need to continue the tight paper trail and change a few legal terms on my pages. It also means I should get back to work on the film itself, which I plan to do as soon as I get on my feet. Earning is getting in the way of this project at every turn, but it's necessary to survive. If only I could just raise this budget properly and put this paycheck nonsense aside... This would all be so much faster. Cest la vie.

Batcave

2010-08-17T19:28:00.002-04:00

It's about time I showed up. Here's the studio I built.

I am very pleased with it. Now I am going to make a film. I still need a flatbed scanner. Any ideas for inexpensive [legacy] scanners with a max document size of 13.5X17in? I'm usng 16f paper for background sketches.. so technically I don't need a scanner that big. But I like keeping background interaction as loose or as locked as it needs to be.

Another Day at the Office

2010-08-15T22:21:00.006-04:00

1 hour 37 minutes 29 seconds 13 frames later... After making over 2300 cuts across 100+ scenes, I have been wrapped from upstart local feature More Than Diamonds. I signed my contract and began work on December 3rd, 2009 and completed delivery tonight. Pending some act of god or unforeseen disaster, the uncompressed feature is on its way to color correctors in Burbank, CA on a couple of terabyte drives.

I will be abstaining from freelance work for as long as I can to continue work on Mutwale. Several visitors to the studio seem very impressed with the setup and the few shots I have going. Now all I need is a large-format scanner on the cheap and some more life drawing. Always with the life drawing.

Yes, it's been a while.

2010-07-27T18:14:00.003-04:00

And I still haven't got time to post. The feature edit that I've been working on on and off since December is about to wrap up and head off to color correction. Meanwhile I *do* have several pencil tests done for Mutwale, and shots of my studio, which is finally built. I promise I'll put them up as soon as I get some more of these errands and side projects out of the way.

Freelancing + Personal Work = Delicate Balance

Also if anyone has a lead on a good, inexpensive large-format scanner let me know. Legacy scanners are fine.

An Open Letter to Gamers and The Entire Video Game Industry, Especially Journalists

2010-05-25T18:53:00.004-04:00

Dear Gaming Community,

Are games art? YES. Now STFU.

Cheers.

Industry Rant: The Meta-Score Fallacy

2010-05-16T19:35:00.008-04:00

I use metacritic a good amount. It seems like a fantastic idea to form a huge amalgam-review from all the individual voices out there. But there's been something bothering me for a long while.

Check this:

On the left is films. Wide releases are at the top, limited (indie, foreign) releases are at the bottom. See all that yellow? See all that red? Now. Music is on the right. Music appears to be limited to only wide releases. By which I mean there are no 'limited' releases.

Look at all that fucking green. What is that? There are... SEVEN MIXED REVIEWS and NO BAD ONES. You actually mean to tell me that ALL featured music is that good? Do musicians get a grading curve? Is a prerequisite of music critique being addicted to Xanax? If all music was this good- all MAINSTREAM music, mind you- nobody would be able to figure out what to purchase at the store and everyone would listen to every genre. Every genre would also not have any varying degrees of quality production- everything would be green. Like it appears here. But it's not. So.

Hypothesis 1: All the music is actually this good, and films, especially wide-release ones, are just so incredibly bad that they deserve harsh perspective.

Refutation of Hypothesis 1: I've heard lots of this music. Most of it is not what many would call "good." When "souldj4 boiiiI!1i1" is your only red score in 6 months, your critics are broken, your scoring is questionable, or both.

Hypothesis 2: There are more film releases than movies, so there are bound to be, statistically, more bad movies.

Refutation of Hypothesis 2: I have no desire to look into the release statistics of records versus films, but I think it's safe to say there are probably plenty of releases of both and each carries a certain percentage of crap. Whether these percentages vary is not the issue- the issue is that not a single album up there has been universally panned as being the crap that it probably is. Why? Why are these albums not called crap? Also, film actually has 2 sections- one for mainstream, which features much of the crap, and one for limited, which, while featuring more good stuff and more stars and highlights, is still riddled with average and bad reviews. Music doesn't even *have* a section for limited, it seems that popular culture is all that need be reviewed. I mean, it's all just so damn good, right?

Hypothesis 3: It's a matter of taste or genre.

Refutation of Hypothesis 3: Nobody reviews films according to genre. Some music publications seem to align to genre, but we aren't talking about singular sources, metascores aggregate multitudes. It is possible that genre helps music scores because people that focus on genre are more likely to relate to that genre and harbor an inclination to be kind, while people outside of the genre will score in a more objective manner. But this would make me think that the scores would even out, and more mixed reviews would result. And if it's a matter of taste... Really? I can't see how. The MPAA and the RIAA have very similar systems of cash cow talent and mainstream milking. Similar marketing ploys. Hell I think Hollywood's adoption of the ARG (Alternate Reality Game) as a type of marketing is downright brilliant. Music doesn't do that. I'd argue that the music industry is just as much a harbinger of schlock and crap as the film industry. So why the scores? People's taste? Critics enjoy all this crap? ALL of it? I just don't see it. Is it possible that the reviews chosen per album do not accurately reflect enough of a varied sample-set of critics? Are music critics being manipulated or brainwashed?

Hypothesis 4: Musicians have it easy.

Refutation of Hypothesis 4: Hey- it's just as difficult to break into the recording industry as it is the other entertainment fields. But industry aside, I'll have to go with this one. It seems like there's just no such thing as a music critic that actually knows anything about music. There. I said it. Video game journalists seem to have a better track record than these schmoes! And video game "journalists," are mostly no-talent wankers.

Go find one of your favorite albums of the last decade, look at its metascore, then read some reviews. If you can make it through more than 3 without wanting to slap the author come tell me which albums they are. And no, one of them can't be Brian Wilson's SMILE, that doesn't count. Everyone loved that album for 7 days and proceeded to forget it ever existed.

In any case, yeah. I've been gone a while. More [on the film] soon. Needed to rant off on that tomfoolery for a bit. Metacritic should adjust their music scoring curve so that 50's and 60's amount to 20's and 30's. Or something.

I wanted to include games and books-- Games were often mixed like film, while book reviews were majorly green with singular mixed reviews and an odd "bad." But metacrit did away with book reviews years ago.

Finishing Edit

2010-01-27T13:50:00.004-05:00

Working on this finishing edit has been quite a learning experience. Technically it's my first feature (the first feature I worked on did not get entirely in-the-can,) so it's been a refreshing step up from shorts. You can really dig deep into character when you've got two hours (90 or so minutes in this case) and pacing and flow is definitely something I've been pushing.

It's Grant Skellenger's first feature and he's still learning boatloads of new things day by day. I've picked up some new lessons with him, having never attempted one of my own. But 4 years of hands-on school and plenty of industry experience means I had a few tips for him as well (Coverage! Coverage! Coverage!!!) so it's been a healthy back and forth. Both about getting this film to be its best and how to improve future outings.

Right now, in between yelling at Bill Plympton and Pat Smith on their joint blog for being down on story, or animators that place too much emphasis on story (wtf, inorite- as if 2D animation didn't have enough idiots in the sandbox. God forbid some intelligence, or some emotion or maturity swoop in and create something... *GASP* IMPORTANT...) I'm cutting a trailer for this beast. The teaser that Grant has already:

LOL- Sooo over-the-top. I've seen the film and this is pretty much a different tone than the whole thing. hahah jeez. Gotta love that music. Hardcore monk Latin chants have become the standard trailer music. Ubiquitous and... unnecessary. In any case my job now is to cut a full length theatrical trailer and that's whattam 'bout to do.

I look forward to getting this done and starting up my film like a marine looks forward to hugging his child and puttin' some loving on his wife when he comes home from battle. And yes, this feature edit has been a battle.

The Gauntlet, The Standfast, and the Intuos

2009-12-09T15:31:00.018-05:00

I built this abomination in order to do some paint-on-glass work for Plus et Plus. This was my second time doing something for them with this medium, unfortunately it turns out they didn't need much of it.

The Gauntlet:

Canon EOS SLR (in this case a 20D) controlled via DSC plugin for Framethief 2.19 mounted to c-stand via superclamp. Panasonic HVX (or summat) on a tripod for lo-res playback. A few units from a light kit. A desk lamp. 2 pieces of plexi, 1 opaque white, 1 opaque black, cut to size at T and T plastics, 315 Church St. just up from Canal. Then lots of acrylic pumped full of retardant and stored in squirt bottles. For those of you paying attention, yes, due to the use of opaque plexi this is a top- (or front-)lit rig.

I've never really had this much trouble from a setup. Some of it was my fault, some of it was the fault of the studio in charge of the equipment, and some of it was just plain bad luck. My Mac died on day 3 and had to be replaced- The DSC plugin for FT is crummy and doesn't support newer cameras, so when we wanted to switch to an EOS 5D that held a Zeiss 80mm Macro lens, it wouldn't work. So we put the lens on the 20D- which wouldn't work. Evidently the lens and the body wouldn't be friends and upon any attempt to take a picture, a big "Err 001" sign would flash in the EOS LED, then the whole camera would lock up.... On and on like this for days, every day.

These are just a few tests I did one day, then the client cut all my paint-on-glass stuff. I was all pumped to do some moving Turner-like fog, but evidently they misunderstood what "paint-on-glass" animation is. So, again, I never got to take the stuff past simple one-off tests. It seems that just when I'm ready to get rolling with this stuff, I get cut off. Grr.

The 1080p versions are a bit more eye-candy lookin', but they're still just tests. I will say this: I'm strongly considering picking up Dragon Stop Motion for my stand alone P.o.G. rig. Framethief works for pencil testing, and I own a commercial license for it. Still, DragonSM works the same way but with a better interface and more support for various models of SLR cameras, and in some cases allows for viewfinder preview without an additional firewire video source. This cuts out a whole fileset and piece of gear so I'm considering taking the plunge. Not to mention they aren't charging an exorbitant amount for their software, something I truly appreciate these days.

The Standfast:

Now that I have my own camera stand, I could theoretically get some non-drying sculpty and do some stop motion films with no added setup. Oh, I forgot to mention. My lovely, fantastic, amazing cousins donated an old camera stand to my efforts. It's a CS-5 TestRite. No more jury-rigged tripods.

And, for my christmas present to myself, a brand-spanking new Wacom Intuos 4. Cost: Relative. Size: Medium. Impact: Huge. After years of gifted graphires and hand-me-down tablets, I had to take the plunge and get a pro model.

Next post will be about this feature film that I'm cutting on contract. It's nearing completion, I'm just waiting on some pickups. After this job, I'm not taking any more contract work until my film is complete.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Boarding Process is Complete

2009-12-04T21:00:00.005-05:00

No posts ≠ A lull. Quite the opposite. I've been meaning to finally announce it but haven't had the time: Storyboards are finished, and the animatic along with them. The film grew quite a bit, and when people hear the final running time they seem surprised. Maybe even a bit wary. I assure you, it moves very quickly and the run time doesn't feel long. Trust me, I loathe nothing more than a short that overstays its welcome. I sincerely appreciate, probably more than most, a short that holds itself to under or around ten minutes. But gods, this thing got epic. The story is almost worth blowing up into a feature. With much effort, I've paced it out quite deliberately so that the run time doesn't feel long at all.

A quick statsheet before all-out breakdowns and budget revision begins:

Paperwork

527 shots.

29 minutes and 37 seconds give or take a few credits and thanks.

5 paint-on-glass sequences interspersed with the traditional 2D.

Opening sequence covers social change over many centuries of history in 1:48 seconds.

Backstory: History as Truth and Symbol

Main character first appears at shot 22, almost 2 full minutes into the film- and isn't seen in full, in daylight until shot 58, the first few seconds of minute 4.

First elephant fight sequence from 7:18 to 8:40.

Only ONE dissolve to relocate/pass time, and it's a match move. There are 3 more dissolve transitions in place, but they are to denote when 2d gives way to paint-on-glass in the animatic. All other necessary transitions are done through an original visual or audio cue.

10 Distinct, remarkable *NOMS* ...For some reason, food became a motif all its own.

NOM #3

So I'd love to say that I'm starting animation yesterday, but as it turns out there have been several welcome contract jobs of late. So, I've been slammed with other people's projects. My next post will be covering my second attempt at a paint-on-glass rig, a pile of gear I arranged for recent work in NYC on a MAC cosmetics corporate and online promo for their Spring 2010 line. Unfortunately, they cut most of my paint animation- it turned into more of a photography job. But that doesn't mean I didn't abscond with photos of the rig and the few animation tests that I'll post here soon.

Battered Diplomats

My most recent gig is finishing editor for a local SC feature by Skellenger Films, "More Than Diamonds." At the moment I'm working through several difficulties to migrate all the footage to my edit bay- the largest of which seems to be the strange tendency of the SONY EX1 to shoot .MP4 extension files that feature the MPEG-2 video codec shell called MPGV. It seems Apple and Quicktime don't like this new devilry. Oh, tech. How often I loathe thee.

Until the next.

Research : Don't #$%^ with an elephant.

2009-10-26T18:05:00.002-04:00

As Jeff Corwin once learned, something that is 10-20 thousand times stronger than a human doesn't always know its strength. Or always let you know when enough is enough.

Skip to 3:30 for the frightening incident, or watch the whole thing if you wish. It's not too bad.

Bull fight:

Close call, vehicle damage:

Smart Driver:

Horrifying attack. NSFW- DO NOT WATCH if you are afraid to watch someone and/or an elephant get killed:

When the elephant bursts through the gates, and a human actually tries to stop it- that is when you really get a sense of how powerful these animals are. Don't do what that guy did. He's very lucky to have only been knocked back several feet and then rolled around. Unfortunately a human, the circus trainer, died in the initial attack. In this case, the animal killed its trainer. In another case, it killed someone (who got close) in front of its trainer, while being chained up.

Again. NSFW- DO NOT VIEW if you can't handle scenes of real violence. Skip to the end.

This person most likely died in this attack. I hope people are reminded that elephants in particular are feeling animals, and mistreating one can lead to disaster. Or maybe we just shouldn't use them to do things like this:

Yeah. Somehow I don't think training an elephant to do that is going to help it get along with humans later in life.

Modest Milestone IV: The 400 Blows

2009-10-20T16:51:00.000-04:00

Passed shot 400 in the boards yesterday. I'd be further (farther?) along but I picked up a nasty bug last week, it took me down for a few days. Either that or I've been harboring the same sinus infection since March and it finally caught up with me. In my mind this is entirely probable.

This film keeps getting bigger. Paperwork now fills some of my time instead of a little. Storyboards/Animatic completion imminent. Then breakdowns and style frames. Perhaps a color test or two. Then animation and onward to victory.

In many ways, my own story begins to parallel that of my protagonist. Perhaps such things are bound to occur when you dive into something so deeply. Or perhaps I'm meant to be tested and tried at every turn. I know, I know. Don't tempt the gods, right? Could always be worse...

"Announcing your plans is a good way to hear God laugh." - Al Swearengen

Power through.

Persistence is all.

Recap

2009-09-29T08:38:00.004-04:00

I realize there's been some off topic posts, apologies for that. It was my goal when I started this blog to stay on target.

This is the production blog for my upcoming short film, "Mutwale." (Moot-wall-ay) It is based on the true story and folk legend of an elephant whose life is irrevocably altered by the events and circumstances surrounding the Hundred Days genocide in Rwanda.

This film will be animated by my hand, with the help of a few and the support of many. It is a fiscally sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts collective based out of NYC. Donations in behalf of this project may always be made via the offical site, or through whatever means is most convenient.

The film started as a sort of blip on my creative radar; my sister came home from a six month stay in Kigali with a brilliant story about an elephant that befriends a fisherman. From there the idea simmered for a while- years, maybe- before it finally opened up in my brain and presented itself as The Next One to tackle. My sister and I broke it down into plot points and research. She dove into the history of the story and locale, and I read up on elephant behavior and started rough thumbnails of the story in summer/fall of 2008. After an intense stint as a jack-of-all-trades freelancer at design firm Plus et Plus, and an even more intense relocation from NYC to South Carolina, I finally sat down to hammer out the story into complete storyboards. I'm still working on storyboards as we speak.

It seems like preproduction is taking forever. It's coming up on a year since I started preproduction proper. But I'd rather get it done right from the start so that there are fewer surprises when animation is underway. Nothing's worse than having to redo a scene or fix a big error during production itself. So the boards are being done digitally for the first time in my workflow- I'm literally putting together a full-length, fully-edited animatic (complete with camera moves, layers, all that) simultaneously with the boards. New territory for me. And while it's meant to be a time-saver (so far it's been a fairly successful one,) there have been plenty of necessary distractions to keep my from my film. Everything from designing tee-shirts to working as a Production Assistant on Bridezillas (Season 6 if you must know- and yes, reality TV is so produced it might as well be scripted,) have kept my hours a bit too divided.

So that's where things stand. I may put a few scenes of the animatic online for feedback and whatnot. Certainly all contributors will be getting a look at the whole thing. I look forward to animation starting- the film is my most ambitious to date, and a regular flow of pencil tests would help liven up this production blog as well.

An Open Letter to The Hadidas, Roger Avary Regarding Silent Hill 2

2009-09-15T22:27:00.014-04:00

Gentleman. Congratulations on moving forward with a sequel to Silent Hill, a labor which produced perhaps the most faithful video game adaptation to date. I can't say that I agree with all of the creative choices made for the film, namely restricting the main character's need to kill in order to survive. But you probably don't care what I think, after all- who the hell am I? Well it doesn't matter who I am, that's argument ad hominem. We aren't talking about me, don't change the subject! We're talking about Silent Hill. Most importantly, the upcoming sequel being written by you, Roger Avary and produced by you, one or both of the Hadidas.

In 2006, immediately after seeing Silent Hill in theaters, stuck in an hallucinatory state brought on by flu, torn between what was right with the film and what was folly, I sat down and in six days produced a first draft of Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams. After a second revision it's still admittedly a bit rough around the edges. Some of the dialogue is rocky, there's far too many parentheticals and ellipses, it sometimes relies too heavily on the details of ammunition count or status... You get the picture. But it also contains some real gems- original action sequences motivated by character and location, creative use of lore to tie together films one, two, and three, and most importantly- a few really affecting scenes that are straight out of a Lynch nightmare. Of course having one of the most cinematic game stories ever told to build upon was a big help.

I contacted the CAA in 2006 to see if they would put me in touch with you. As I expected, they sent me a nice big middle finger disguised as industry lingo. I have enough experience to understand the screenwriting business, and why I'll probably never be a contributing professional on the industry's terms. That's why I'm self-employed, setting my own terms, animating my third film with my bare hands and making sure no punches are pulled. Regardless of you, your status, your skills, our industry, our economy, I am here to kick ass. I am here to produce things that push boundaries, challenge the mind, and I will no longer stand for tepid tripe stuffed with fake, forced universality.

It is evident through what you attempted with your adaptation of Konami's first Silent Hill title that you have this fire in you as well. I want the sequel to be great- hell, we all want it to be better than great, and we all want to see it smash [video game adaptation] box office records with a great opening weekend and a long, smoldering wide release that brings steady ticket sales. I don't want to hear most of the crowd booing or japing about how they want their money back as they did after the first Silent Hill at the UA Court Street Stadium 12 in downtown Brooklyn. So I want to offer some additional fuel for your fire. There is good stuff here, and it's stuff you don't have. How do I know you haven't got it? That's easily answered: because I'm currently the only person on the planet that does.

I know you don't need this per se- that's why you're here, Avary. A Hollywood staple and proven screenwriter, WGA member (presumably) and all-around industry workhorse. I don't presume to stick my foot in your door like a vacuum salesman. I certainly don't want to undermine this process or in any way replace anyone. But I do presume to know when I'm sitting on art because I'm an artist. Classically trained, time-tested, industry-approved. And, sirs! Gentlemen! There is art in this script. It's not ready for shooting. Hell, it would need another revision or two to stand on its own. I wanted to do this but in 2007 I put the spec down because there's just no way for me to get it into hands that give a shit. That is the travesty of this broken industry- collaboration is squashed, new talent is crushed, original ideas are squandered for no good reason. None of that matters for your purposes, though. I understand this.

So make your sequel! If you do it without any of the scenes or sequences in my script (US Library of Congress Copyright dated 2006,) then you are missing an opportunity to imbibe some really inspiring Silent Hill material. I daresay your film will be poorer for it, but then I don't know exactly where you're headed after the first one so don't take that as hubris.

If you are even slightly interested in these fresh ideas, I would be happy to put inexpensive exclusivity on the table. I'm not unreasonable, but I know enough about the industry to know that I shouldn't be the one offering any deals as of yet. Just know that I require hardly anything at all from you if it means making a better Silent Hill experience possible. I know something like this is outside of the industry standard but so long as it doesn't violate union rules I fail to see the harm in something unorthodox if it promises to be mutually beneficial. After all, nearly any deal can be made provided the proper documents be drawn. In any case, you've probably got paperwork or scheduling to do. I've got an original animated short to get back to. All the best.

Cheers,
-j-
Jeff Martell

Edit

In light of Roger Avary pleading guilty to drunken driving leading to the death of one and the severe injury of another (his wife) it looks like this will most likely suffer a delay.

I may not be in the immediate position to screw up another Silent Hill feature, but at least I'm not in jail for vehicular manslaughter.

Modest Milestone III: Not-so-modest

2009-09-09T17:44:00.006-04:00

Today brought shot 300. This thing is quite a beast- thankfully it should still clock in at under 20 minutes, which would be nice for the workload. For now, though, it'll be as long as it needs to be. Can always trim things down after the whole story is in place. Or not.

It's excruciating to hit road blocks/ little snags in the story that I hadn't anticipated. But it's wonderful to get past them. Now to get these boards finished... Looks like October may actually bring the animation. Fingers crossed.

I'm not one for pride but this is going to be quite a film! More soon. Next post will be a recap of everything to date, and hopefully the post after that, well- it should be a good one.

Small Marmot Carrying Baby Marmot :3

2009-08-29T16:22:00.006-04:00

Intentional? Maybe. Adorbable? Yes.

Modest Milestone II & Moar Music

2009-08-27T18:24:00.009-04:00

Greetings. The film is at over 220 shots which puts it at just over 13 minutes now. If I want to have any hopes of getting this finished in *ahem* my lifetime I need to get production in gear ASAP. Preproduction feels like purgatory sometimes. Still, it's looking good and I've got lots of support, support which seems to grow every day. So don't take these statements as any sort of complaint. I'm doing what I love and loving what I do.

There's another composition I'm considering using for some of the earlier segments, when M is just a wee bebbeh and things are somewhat wondrous in his new territory. I'll post it here but please keep in mind that it's a rough cut and may or may not be used - and if it is used, it will be polished.

This piece was played live in three layers using an Ensoniq FiZmO with a tweaked-out sinusoid preset, then recorded and edited together in Digidesign ProTools LE 7.4. It still has some kinks in the edit.

Antagonism: Quadruped Enmity

2009-08-12T10:36:00.008-04:00

A convincing naturalistic fight scene that combines traditional cinematic conflict with the unpredictable and unbridled order of Nature. The outcome is set. I will not reveal it here.

Off to day three of week 4- the most productive week yet!

Borystoards: Modest Milestone

2009-07-30T21:54:00.007-04:00

I am tired.

Passed shot 100 this evening, and this has put me just past the 7:00 mark.

Have I mentioned how mazing it will to be to finish boards and have a full animatic that has been completed simultaneously?

The days are just packed.

Music (aforementioned)

2009-07-27T13:46:00.011-04:00

It's been requested that I post that music track I've recorded- I don't really know html so I'm uncertain the best way to embed an MP3 here in my blog.

In the meantime, enjoy this dancing hamster. Wait. Aha! I found something. Thanks Odeo embeddable player. There's no need for a Hamtaro gif. You're safe. FOR NOW.

Play it loud. Comments of course welcome- I'm not entirely set on the chord progression but I'm pretty happy with the voice/oscillators. (I think 2 voices @ 2 oscillators = 4 oscillators.) There's a pop or two when the higher-velocity base notes hit, I'm going to clean those up later.

In other news, my brand new Sakura Electric SE-2000 Portable Cordless Handheld Eraser arrived in the mail today! w00t. The first in a line of materials shipments. Things are happening. I am giddy.

I lied. You've been exposed to a Ham-Ham.

Storyboards Continued, Some Light Music

2009-07-25T23:17:00.009-04:00

Research has its merits but in this instance it was a real pain. I started thumbs back in October of 2008 so there's a sequence or two that I discovered simply wouldn't work. Logistically, there would've been no elder elephant population in Akagera when my group of younglings arrived, so I had to rework some things. It's for the best because Mutwale gets more development this way- but deviating from the thumbs put me in a tight spot- momentarily. It's hard to mess with a timeline about an elephant Family's development so I ended up cutting a big chunk and replacing it. Slight detour.

In other news my synth-tastic synthesizer, an Ensoniq FiZmO and I had a session concerning this very film. I've had some ideas for music but I'd really not laid anything down. Until today! Simple chord progression with pretty advanced waveforms and some intensive EQ'ing yielded a little gem. I don't think it's fit for final but it's a good start and at the very least a solid reference.

Industry Rant: The Animation Sandbox

2009-07-17T14:43:00.010-04:00

Here's the thing about animation.

It's fun, it's quirky, it lets the creator do just about anything. One can turn humans to liquid or a dog and cat duo into incredibly emotive lead characters.

The biggest strength of animation is also its biggest pitfall. All this freedom- essentially telling stories without the constraints of the natural physical universe- well sometimes that leaves the story out to dry and the viewer is left with a running demo reel.

Take the film "Sorry I'm Late." It's a gorgeous, fun, creative little romp. Check out the behind-the-scenes work- a whole pro crew, a slew of props and techniques, test shoots, casting, lighting. And for what? A play reel. It's quirky and creative, sure, but at the end of the day the film isn't actually about anything. It's literally a jaunt from an undisclosed point A to an undisclosed point B. No discernible reason for the trip and so there's really no reason for me to care. It's eye candy. Actually, it's more like eye fast food. An excuse to go play in a sandbox. And honestly? You might as well skip the pro budget and be these guys. It's less expensive and just as fun.

You can spot a similar trend with some of the leanings of the shorts of le Gobelins.

A quirky setup, a big chase with Rube Golberg style situational escalations and gags, then finally a payoff. Nothing too engaging and certainly no emotion or thought beyond some good solid laughs. And of course there's nothing wrong with a few laughs now and again.

I love Oktopodi. It got an Oscar nod last year.

I'll end with a counterexample. Pat Smith, a cool dude by any standard (I used to work at his studio so yeah, shameless plug) and his work is pretty wicked. A simple film like Handshake (one of my favorites of his) shows how in a few short minutes, with one location and two characters interacting, an entire story can really unfold. Boy meets girl. Girl meets boy. Sparks. Muddled existential dual identity crises. Relationship clashes, woes, humanity. Over and out. Rinse. Repeat.

It's not too innovative and the style is recognizable to the point of being familiar- but it's an original take on something timeless. And most importantly, the story is present both on the surface and between the lines.

In any case, everyone's a critic, and I'm no exception. I've been trying to put my money where my mouth is for years (which is hard with little to no resources) so-- no day like today! Until the next, I suppose.

Storyboards Continue

2009-07-17T14:43:00.006-04:00

Pushing on ahead with the boards. Everything is going well now that my system is back up, and I discovered a nifty little OSX clone tool that happens to be free/donation-ware. (Support it if it works.) I've been doing root user backups but I've really been dying to find something incremental. I've got a redundant clone going now so hopefully everything should be kept ship-shape if the worst strikes again. *knocks wood*

I'm currently on shot 57, which puts the film at 00:03:57:12 and it's looking to roll over into minute 4 any panel now. I'm still jumping between books 1 and 2 of the thumbnails- eager to hit that stride where everything progresses in an orderly fashion. If any part of production can indeed be described so.

And now I'm off to find myself in the strange position of scanning/taking macro photos of sugarcane stalks. Textures needed.

Of Macs and Men Pt. II

2009-07-10T10:23:00.006-04:00

So there I was. Staring straight at my monitor in disbelief, unmoving. Like a parent approaching a new but not entirely unexpected situation with a problem child: Not angry, just disappointed.

My G5 suffered catastrophic system failure last week for the 5th time. For the third time in 5 years, OSX suffered a fatal crash that permanently dismounted the system drive. While 5 years seems like a good run, let me explain something: This HD was brand new, installed in January of this year. I'm beginning to think that it was simply a dud from Seagate, but then it was also a root user restore, which means any existing permissions problems would have carried over. Of course I back up often but that's not the point. And certainly I prefer it to the previous issues with this machine: constant Kernel Panics due to a faulty Logic Board (which has been replaced twice and still doesn't want to recognize DV firewire signals from the tower ports. Yes, the firewire bus is tested and working.)

It's pretty well known that Macs have the hardware issues, PC's have the software issues, and Linux users laugh at everyone. But this Mac- my Mac- is from a batch of bad Apples (heh) from 2004. Second gen, first issue liquid cooled G5's that were rushed out the door to fill orders for the first gen machines. (I ordered a first gen machine, not in time to avoid being screwed.) These are the G5's from hell. Before they went out the door, they gave Steve Jobs cancer. They were christened with the blood of sacrificed goats, washed clean with the bile of Hedonism demons, and delivered to the doorstep of unsuspecting professionals everywhere.

In any case, yes, 5 years is a good run and most PC users would say it's about time for a new machine because, DUDE, yer hardware is like SO out of date. But the simple fact is that it's not. I built a monster 5 years ago and it's still up to the task of some of the most advanced compositing and animation tasks you can throw at it. It's just never been stable hardware, and that's entirely Apple's fault.

Sure, it's a PPC chipset that can't run most of the latest and greatest upgrades, but 1)it runs the last generation- CS2, CS3, Final Cut Studio 2- just fine and 2)the latest and greatest will likely have its own issues for a year or two, not to mention a modicum of superficial upgrades that I don't need. I'm fine running what I do, it gets the job done. When it works.

Will my next computer be a mac? Yes. Am I going to rush into a new chipset and order an early generation build before all the kinks are worked out? Absolutely not. Never. Again.

So this time, I'm running an internal scratch drive and installing only the software I need to use immediately. Regular permissions repairs with advanced third party disk utility software should keep this puppy rolling for another year or two, which is all I need.

But yeah. No posts recently because there's not been any work recently. Tech's a bitch.

Sketchbook: Style Frames I and II

2009-06-25T21:18:00.002-04:00

I'm working with style frames instead of an overall style guide as things progress, there's no reason to spend weeks putting together a briefing packet if you're flying solo for most of the production. When I do bring in additional hands it will be colorists and background artists who can work from color guides and rough layouts. The exception, though, is the sound designer. In that case I'll be doing a full cue sheet for sound to work from, something I've neglected to do with my films outside of schooling- and I've seen how the work can suffer from this oversight. Anyways. This post isn't about sound.

A style frame every so often throughout the boards should keep the palette/styles unified. There will be multiple techniques used throughout the piece so when I sit down to a scene I need to know at a glance how it will look and how it will move. Sometimes things get jumbled up in the old noggin' and the references can be invaluable. Of course animators/filmmakers know this already, I thought I'd mention it because... I wanted to.

So here's style frames I and II- these both come from the first 30 seconds of the film. There's earlier posts covering this sequence and hopefully these frames illustrate the stylistic choices I've been discussing. There'll be some animation tests soon but until then it's back to storyboards.

Research : Soaking up History

2009-06-18T20:20:00.000-04:00

"The power to define is the power to destroy/ It is the truth for every girl it is the truth for every Goy." -Robert Anton Wilson (paraphrased)

So, in the first two minutes of this film I'm summarizing the history of Rwanda from late pre-colonial to early post-colonial and then jumping to 1977- around the time that baby Mutwale was spared from the elephant "depopulating," "cleansing," or whatever euphemism one might use to describe a massacre. He was subsequently displaced to Akagera Park in Northeast Rwanda near the border of Tanzania. So my timeline is spread across pretty much the whole 20th century and into the 21st, but this bit at the start is really important for establishing just about everything that takes place in the post-colonial timeline.

Lots and lots of research has been done for this, and I've got to give props to my sister. (Props, Jess.) She's been in and out of libraries, gone through entire bibliographies of Rwandan history, memoirs, scientific papers, written eyewitness accounts and a story outline, been in touch with historians and researchers, and yes, even lived in Kigali for 6 months. That last bit is how all this came about, so even more props for stumbling onto this story that I've grown to inhabit. Thanks for being such a fine catalyst. Mad props.

I've been through several briefings on the sequence of events: the prevalent semi-caste system in place before colonization by Germany, the taking of the "territory" (among others) of Rwanda by Belgium after WWI (made official in the "League of Nations Mandate") and the subsequent tidal wave of influence that followed after the Belgian government and Christian missionaries decided to redefine the entire society. One of my favorite little poems by Robert Anton Wilson describes how one's ability to define something, whether or not it fits that description, is one of the most destructive forces available to humanity. I forget which of his books uses it, I believe it's Prometheus Rising. I take his use of "Goy" to be the literal Hebrew translation meaning "nation" or "people," as he was not Jewish and would not likely use its modern, informal connotation. Anyways! Here I must interject with what brought on this post: I was going over the current storyboards with a donor, one that has an interest in European history:

She mentioned that the crucifix I'd used to adorn a wall made the missionary/Belgian conglomerate colonials represented in the scene appear Catholic. She then went too far back in history as a correction, thinking that perhaps I should be looking to the Huguenots (who?) for those who would've been responsible for the colonization, thus changing the relevant symbology. This is totally forgivable as most people don't realize that the first meeting between a Mwami (Rwandan King) and colonial factor (A German Count) was actually in 1894. Germans started entering the country in bulk between 1897-99. That's yesterday in terms of Rwanda's entire history. Anyway, back to Catholicism. I hadn't thought about denomination really, but it dawned on me that the implications (that missionaries essentially caused an irrevocable schism that eventually led to a major genocide- not exactly Jesus' plan, methinks) won't go over too well. With the symbology that I've got going, getting the specifics right isn't nearly as important as not getting them wrong. I decided to follow up a bit.

After some additional fact-checking it turns out the missionaries in question are indeed Roman Catholic. Along with the Belgian government, colonial forces emphasized the distinction between Tutsi and Hutu and Twa so heavily- even to the point of having registration papers that listed the distinction- that the manifesting discrimination eventually becomes the trickle-down-hate that leads to the events of the 100 days of killing. ...Over 800,000 dead in 100 days. Most killed by machete. Christ. I keep meaning to pick up a book of photography that documented the atrocities or the account of the 100 days by the head of the UN peacekeeping mission, but I just can't right now. Some part of me is afraid that the results will alter my film's focus and the rest... is just afraid.

Of course it's all more complicated than this, but it's a pretty clear path from here. Cause. Effect. Though, this film isn't about the genocide. The history I'm squashing into two minutes is kept pretty broad. It's important to understand that the history of this nation isn't just these atrocities. Though you could also look to the Hutu's precolonial treatment of the Twa as an argument that colonials aren't such a singular source of negative influence- hell, look at Japan's treatment of the natives of the northern island of Hokkaido or the disenfranchisement (how's that for a euphemism?) of the Native Americans by... Well, I guess that's colonists too. Still though, this history- It's more. One of the things my sister mentioned time and time again is how much information there is on the Rwandan genocide and how little available information there is on Rwanda. How little tangible documentation exists that isn't seen through the lens of colonialism or the prism of genocide. Maybe some of this is due to the market for information and maybe some is due to the... spectacle. Gods know some of it is due to the lack of recorded history for the area. In my case, in the case of my work, I don't think I need to point fingers or even stick to the history too closely. Then again I don't want any glaring discrepancies either. This often feels like a tightrope walk.

I'd already known that missionaries and government pushed the caste distinction because they thought the Tutsis- being taller- were sons of Ham, literal descendants of Noah (via his son, Ham.) Yes, the 'Arc' Noah. Helluva tale. I wonder if the author knew about this particular historical interpretation.

Anyway, my first instinct (the traditional Christ-on-a-Cross adornment) is actually historically accurate, whether it lends recognizable context or not. It does, I think. Stroke of luck or brilliant coincidence, I think it's a good sign. Angles are lining up. Pieces are fitting into place.

More exciting posts soon. Take that "more" to mean both quantity and degree.

Inspiration/Influence: Иван Максимов

2009-06-09T15:41:00.000-04:00

It's always nice to discover a body of work that consistently rocks, but one that does so with a unique style and incomparable intelligence is a rare thing. I think I stumbled upon Ivan Maximov by accident when youtubing around for Alexander Petrov clips. I'll be sure to cover Petrov in this blog when I get closer to a working paint-on-glass rig, but right now Maximov's interesting combination of simple geometry and texture is a great place to stop and visit.

Niti ("Strings") is a fantastic little piece. Simple shapes and colors make it easy to discern key players and goings-on almost immediately. The layout/blocking is particularly interesting- it feels as though the abstract landscape is a real place. The story moves through the populated world pretty seamlessly. And of course the tale itself is poignant, resonant... uplifting and bleak at the same time. The love story ends happily, all is well. That final shot, though, of those strings bereft all ownership- all these connections and relationships dead with time. Spent and useless. Littering the world. It's an abstract sort of symbology that neither slaps you in the face nor becomes so elusive you can't grasp the meaning. Such imposed ambivalence is the stuff of true contemporary storytellers, IMHO. You'll find that the films of Petrov often fall victim to a kind of sappy sentimentality that often accompanies flights from reality to the fantastic; this is a tendency Maximov has never visibly been prey to.

You can tell from this Bolero short that Maximov has a distinct grasp of consciousness as the Gödelian self-referential strange-loop. (In short the model exists within the model ∴ the model defines itself; an inescapable gap of logic that Kurt Gödel proved mathematically. This destroyed the Principia Mathematica text and changed the face of logic and philosophy forever. It, like a fugue, is a perfect analogy for consciousness.) Something about this film, too, has that odd Kafkaesque sense of horrific inescapable monotony- simultaneously fear-inducing and comedic. The psychology behind both of these stories (as different as they are) isn't your average Freud-quoting superficial skim over the top of the psyche. These films dive deeply into what it means to live as a conscious being and they do it without words, imposed context, or forced didacticism. I think he even sneaked a toilet joke into that Bolero piece. Nice. By the by, I suspect this Bolero piece is Replacement Animation (using shaped cutouts) but I'm not sure.

And who doesn't need an occasional bizarre multicolored trip through a surreal wasteland led by a dog that turns the moon into many-threaded strands of taffy creatures? Nobody in their right mind, that's who.

I LUV the sound and music in that final piece.

Thumbnails Complete, Onward to Boards

2009-06-02T09:43:00.000-04:00

Thumbnails are complete and full-on storyboards are under way.

5 notebooks of approximately 1096 little frames and the basic story is locked in. I'll have full breakdowns only after the storyboards and animatic are complete but so far I'm happy with the outcome of the preliminaries.

Announcement: Mutwale Site Live!

2009-05-28T13:12:00.000-04:00

If you scope its recently created website you'll see that Mutwale is quickly approaching full on production. I'd like to take this time to mention that technically the spelling of the Kinyarwanda word for "chief" is "Mutware." However, due to an R/L substitution it is pronounced "Mutwale." Having studied enough Japanese to feel strongly that Romanization is a load of crap however you cut it, I've decided to spell it closer to the phonetic pronunciation than the colonial-influenced Romanized form.

The film itself! It seems like I've stuck in prepro for ages but if one cuts corners in this phase one will to pay for it later with mistakes in everything from blocking to prop continuity. Animation isn't immune to the problems that show up in Live Action- though most animators treat the medium like a sandbox with very few constraints. This makes sense- it's one of the strengths of animation- but often the story falls back behind the craft. I will likely rant on this later.

This is not how I roll. I just hit my 5th thumbnail book and the end is in sight. The story is cohesive, engaging, endearing, and best of all, it pulls no bloody punches. Don't get me wrong- I love things by, say, Disney, but you have to admit the worldview of the Magic Kingdom's films is pretty naïve.

I've been working on thumbs for this story since Oct2008. Not every day. Not even every week (gotsta get paid, son!) but little by little it's been coming together. Usually I race through thumbs and hit quickly-drawn boards in order to get an animatic going as soon as possible. Here though, I never wrote a script and therefore thumbs have become crucially important to breaking the production down into a proper workflow. Not only this, I'm trying something new by doing all the boards digitally with Toon Boom Storyboard Pro. I don't go for vector-based software very often but this is a nice little suite that offers layer-based single frames, script importing and dialogue/script note per-frame options, realtime playback, multiple timeline schematics, sound import, simple camera move playback, etc etc on and on. My favorite thing about this software, and the only reason I switched over from tradish storyboards, is that once you're finished boarding you've practically got a finished animatic. From there you can time and pace everything out and get an accurate running time for each shot. No scanning, no composites, no renders, no extra files and folders. My one complaint is that the frame cache is limited to 25 and the performance of the software is a bit slow for running on the desktop I've got. Lots of colored-pinwheel beachball spinning between frames.

In any case, the story is nearly locked- and it's looking good. Real good. My largest concern at this point is the length of the thing. I'm aiming (hoping, praying) for under 12 minutes. Thus far I think it's... Not under 12 minutes.

Sketchbook: Warmups, More Fishermen

2009-05-20T05:01:00.000-04:00

Often my daily warmups yield morsels that can grow into new paintings or projects. I think this is because warmups don't have the immediate restrictions of concept. I've noticed my experimental roots are really starting to split rock. In particular my obsession with the neurological sparks spread by optical illusion. It's like a visual form of garden path parsing. Often artists that use advanced optics become pigeonholed as novelties but if one looks to Italian futurism or even some cubism, the illusory confundus is a recurring techinique. I <3 it with so much <3tred.

In any case, to replace that last round of the fisherman, which I find less than inspired, this latest round from the sketchbook is getting closer in both anatomical and stylistic choices.

Sketchbook: Fisherman and Animals

2009-04-13T14:56:00.000-04:00

These sketches are from a few weeks back. I'm finally honing in on the Fisherman character's look and got around to some brief practice with gazelles and wildebeests. BBC's Planet Earth on BluRay (not my setup) provided some fantastic reference material. Gotta luv the Beeb.

Finally set up with all my gear. Not to mention some wicked fast internet action. I think this is the fastest connection I've ever had the pleasure of using. Maybe I should boot up Q3A or some QW for old time's -- NO. No. no. .......no. I'm here to work, not to pwn.

Antelopes are like mini-yaks crossed with demons. I love the skin on their face and the shape of their heads. May have to throw one in there even if it's not true to the wildlife region.

more o so soon.

Inspiration/Influence: The Street Sweeper

2009-03-30T23:09:00.000-04:00

Couldn't let March fly by without a single post.

My favorite short. I saw this on Liquid Television when I was in elementary school and I've never been quite as enraptured since. Why the hell has there been nothing to replace Liquid TV?

Almost back in working order after a most hellish move. Yes, it's taken over a month so far. The marathon continues. Until the next.

State of the the State of Things

2009-02-20T16:47:00.000-05:00

There are certain realities that I've been facing for the longest time; now ranks among the more palpable of them. I've worked for many others- a dishwasher was my first job. One of my favorite things from that was playing with all the leftover wasabi from the sushi platters. From there I graduated to busboy- and aside from breaking a glass in the ice chest one night (complete service-job snafu followed by madness and chaos) I excelled. It was expected that I move on to server and that through high-school I would move on to assist the chef and possibly stay on for managerial or even chef positions. Alas, my artistic skills got in the way.

Since then I've worked many jobs. I worked retail at the extinct video game shop Multimedia 1.0, a staple of St. Marks until the lowlife owner with many fine children fled the scene of his enormous debt, selling the store to a compadre of what I can only assume has similar sinister conceit. Offer under 10% of value on something then mark it up to about 150%. Jerks. The sad fact of this job was that again, I was very good at it. I know video games and could sell the proverbial sand to the proverbial desert-dweller. I rarely did this as game taste is easily measured in just a few questions. Just the same; not to be. Not unlike the relationship I was in at the time (psycho much?)

After that was freelancing: nonlinear cutting of promos, shooting some corporate videos, interning at an animation house, nominations for some films, and freelancing at an NYC design firm of note. Sadly all this has come to an end, the economy is bunk, the United States will collapse if the Obama administration doesn't have a perfect run, and I'm staring down the barrel of the blogosphere.

I regret nothing. I know my potential and I know I've not yet scratched the surface of it. I know that there are those that believe in me. I know that they are right to, and thank them for it.

I am a few days away from packing up and about a week away from leaving NYC. Balls!

Production on this film will continue regardless of where I am so tune in anytime.

Industry Rant : "The Information Economy"

2009-02-08T17:09:00.001-05:00

Lots of people think they know lots of things. In my experience they know half as much as they'd expect, and expect they know about twice as much as you'd guess of them during a conversation. Well, I'm not one to judge but I've had this conversation with too many people who don't know what they're talking about when it comes to media. Essentially they the argument is that the models of digital downloads will replace retail and in many cases, the need for retail and manufacturing altogether.

Here's why that's not going to happen for at least a decade, if at all.

First, people aren't taking into account quality. Anyone who knows anything about data knows that the highest file sizes in media come from two places: sound and moving image. With audio, compression can save you a good amount of space at the expense of quality, but hi-quality audio gets pretty massive. And in first place of course is video. Moving pictures, even at a compressed rate, become absolutely astronomical very quickly. Codecs (compression/decompression algorithms) aren't going to save you that much space when you're talking about delivery of quality assets- 1080p HD video with 5.1 or 7.1 surround is what people want to fucking watch, alright? Hell, they expect it. And when you talk about digital media downloads, of films and such, you're not only talking about taxing storage solutions, but you're also talking about dealing with the [unnecessary] bandwidth caps of most American ISPs.

Second, people are forgetting ownership. If you buy a film digitally, it's sitting on a hard drive. If you buy a film in stores, it's palpable. It's on your shelf. It's unique in that it is your copy of something. It's a tangible purchase. Whether or not you think this is a good thing, you can't ignore the fact that having a tangible collection will always be more reliable, accessible, and collectible than digital media. Or, in some cases, some studios are bright enough to include a lower-res copy of the film for ipods/itunes on the disc(s) as well.

Third, Look at Apple TV. This is essentially the same thing you're talking about. So far it's been a dud in the Apple lineup. This comes back to quality. Why buy a movie if it's going to be 640X480 resolution? And still push 300-600 megs a film! Storage is getting cheaper, but that doesn't make these look any better when you full-screen the thing. Sure, they'll play on an ipod but nobody crowds around the ipod to take in a good flick.

People expect some kind of information revolution to whisk away the need for stores and hard copies of things on disc, but they don't realize that what they're talking about would be another product to replace a computer or DVR that essentially does the same thing in one concentrated place. (Another box on the shelf that does stuff? Good luck, Marketing.) I just need something that plays movies, man. Console movie downloads, iTunes movie downloads and rentals, instant viewing on Netflix- these things are a step in the direction for the so-called 'information economy' taking over media distribution. But completely replaceing cold, hard hi-quality media is pretty far away for those three reasons above and more.

To be fair, the people I talk to about this don't work in, on, or with this media. They're actors, journalists, writers. They'be never had to allot hard disk space for HD renders or spend hours tweaking compression for download and then cringing at the inevitable picture/sound degradation. They also don't realize that for the last 10 years, DVD sales have been 46% or more of the revenue stream for the major studios. For a good reason. Reliable, good picture quality, disc-based, attractive replacement for VHS, simple to use.

I could be proven wrong. Someone could blow Apple's h.264 codec out of the water and combine it with a solid-state storage solution with a low-cost fixed-rate fiber optic delivery system and a sleek, fast UI that puts every movie ever at people's fingertips. But if the quality isn't top-notch it won't go anywhere and lots of investors will lose lots of money on phantomware.

I was just writing a post to those people and those who agree with them blindly, saying, basically, it's like flying cars. Don't hold your breath.

A self-indulgent post? Maybe. But media is in the half of what I think I know that I do actually know. I think.

Inspiration/Influence: Svankmajer

2009-01-23T19:31:00.000-05:00

A brilliant piece by one of my favorite animators. Part III is really an inspiration for what I'm going for with certain characters and design for the first two minutes. Part II has the craziest Foley work I've heard and is probably my favorite of the sequences.

If you like this, check out more of his work. I own his first major collection of shorts and one of his features, Faust, but both remain hijacked by Datach'i. Man, I need to get those back.

Meanwhile, my storyboarding and thumbnailing continues. That's all for this week.

A Question of Technique

2009-01-19T21:38:00.000-05:00

I'm trying to nail down what I want this opening to look like. The initial idea was for a simple earthy textures- a different texture for each person or layer- to be the clothing base and then have skin tones colored traditionally.

I had attempted to put up an animated GIF of the test but it's not playing.

Anyway. An idea pops up. Some Rwandan artists do this great banana-leaf cutout artwork. My sister sent me this card:
If we could include this look it would unify the symbology of the opener and give me a nice motivated simplicity. What more could an animator ask for? So I'm trying to work out a way to achieve this look without using actual cutouts. I will most likely end up seeking banana leaves (or similar,) and drying them out, scanning color blocks, and using a limited assortment of alpha channels to separate the hand-drawn character components into cloth, skin, etc. Another test will determine if this is a viable techinique.

Fiscal Sponsors

2009-01-13T16:20:00.001-05:00

Ahoy! 2009 is off to a grand start. Artists' collective Fractured Atlas has chosen this film project worthy of their fiscal sponsorship program. This means not that they are offering money, but that through them contributors receive tax benefits for cash contributions to the film, which is now an entity of the Arts. There's also benefits for contribution of services and equipment but these get a little convoluted so I'll come back to them. It also gives us a bang-up look for government grants and for employee-matching in corporate funding opportunities. Here's to hoping this film can become a full-time gig for me because right now it's really the only thing I want to do.

By the end of the week I should have more of this fleshed out but there's no question- this is a hefty workload. Pre-Production just got real.

One last thing to be done this week before this film turns into priority one, and that's polish off this series of commissioned paintings.

Aught Nine

2008-12-31T16:33:00.001-05:00

Through the thick and the thin of this year- and after all the crap I've been through in the last 3 weeks, I'd like to quote everyone's favorite pocket-picking, booze-hound robot:

"I'm back, bebbeh!"

See y'all on the flipside. May your toasts be heard by all.

Sketchbook: Frames and Fisherman

2008-12-29T00:34:00.000-05:00

A few frame studies of things that are working themselves out in thumbnails. It feels good to flesh out some stuff beyond contour-heavy thumbs.

Yeah, I still have a little ways to go with elephant anatomy. There's also this fisherman character I'm starting to get an idea of. He's the only human that holds any significance to the story in any individual sense so I need him to be emotive and charismatic without that over-the-top caricature that so often pops up in animation.

These could be cleaner but I have no access to a tablet right now.

A whole bloody new sequence has been added from some research my sister has come across. It'll be interesting to fit this into the timeline and see how it effects the pacing. Like all the good ones, this thing keeps getting bigger.

A History of Violence

2008-12-16T14:31:00.000-05:00

Almost finished with thumbs for the opening segment of Project M, which crams about 200 years of history into less than a minute. Basically the challenge is to explain the circumstances leading up to the Rwandan genocide simply and without post-colonial skew. I think I've got this wrapped up so that I can move on to locking down the meat of the film and getting some style frames done. The latter has been set back by this system drive malfunction, but I eagerly await the replacement. Did you know you can get an internal Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM 1TB drive for just over a hundred bucks? Freakin' A data is cheap these days.

Meantime I've received a commission from an old friend to do a series of 9 small paintings and this will be a welcome return to traditional media, which never crashes or needs repair.

Industry Rant: "The Land of Catch 22"

2008-12-13T17:07:00.001-05:00

My system drive is kaput and in the process of being replaced.

In the meantime I'd like to discuss screenwriting- a quirky but vital scrum on the field of entertainment. Yeah, that's a rugby metaphor. Anyways, most people don't understand the craft because they don't need it. Particularly animators and advertisers that just sort of fly straight to boards and play in their films like a big sandbox. Meeting Chen-Yi Chang, lead character artist at Disney for years, I learned Tarzan didn't even have a script. They threw out the latest draft and went straight to boards. In any case, I've had the pleasure of studying basic and advanced Dramatic and Visual Writing under both pros and struggling amateurs. All forms of this training served to give me a great idea of what to expect out of the industry: Nothing. Nobody's going to help you. Nobody wants to read your scripts. Nobody cares. You have to pry your way in with a godsdamn crowbar. [TL;DR see POINT below]

Here's the thing. You can't sell a script without representation. You can't get representation without selling a script. This isn't made up. This is the way the industry works. I've discussed it with agencies, with fellow writers, with speakers at the WGA headquarters and with WGA reps visiting Tisch. It's broken. It's archaic. It's inbuilt exclusivity that has nothing to do with good writing and everything to do with networking. It's literally a catch-22 and the only thing that the system as it stands serves to do is to make it incredibly hard for new talent to enter the industry and to ensure (via "membership") that hacks and frauds with little regard for art become entrenched among other respectable writers.

The WGA does nothing about this because exclusivity ensures a tightly-knit circle of pros and it keeps demand manageable, measurable even. Sadly, I've seen a brainwashed member defending this system. I've seen the face of old whitey* shouting "We all have to go through this! We all pay our dues!" Easy for you to say, old man. You're a fucking member of the WGA.

So, what can one do? One of the most helpful things to keep in mind is the 10% rule. Which is to say, avoid making this specific list of errors and you're already in the upper 10% of screenwriters. Not a bad bump for the first step. Then find agencies that accept unsolicited works for reading and start pinning rejection letters to your wall. After that, for now, your only option is to schmooze your eyes out, make your own films, or to be born into a Hollywood family. Oh, finally, it helps to be good at writing and storytelling. Sort of bass-ackwards but that's the industry for you.

Finally, and this is a personal complaint- for an industry that demands impeccable grammar and tosses out a script with a typo before page 10... Who says they know a damn thing about grammar? What did they major in English before moving to LA to become a skeez? I diagram sentences in my sleep, bitches, and I don't trust these agencies to know the difference between an appositive and a comma splice.

POINT: The Studio System as it pertains to screenwriting is an archaic monopoly perpetuated by obsolete unionized lapdogs and a system of nepotist and/or prejudiced agencies that maintain exclusivity based on a set of arbitrary self-referential requirements that have nothing to do with screenwriting.

I have an idea about this but putting it into action has taken a back seat to my next film or two. More next week.

Of Macs and Men

2008-12-11T11:30:00.000-05:00

So I animated a walk cycle, planning to use it as a base for a few style frames and test shots, and suddenly my workhorse computer Escher decided to eat my system drive and stop booting up completely. Again. Thankfully I performed a root user backup a couple of weeks ago so applications, email, all that's safe. However, I am most likely going to lose some important layers on a particularly large piece of concept art. Bollocks.

I love macs to death but these prevailing hardware issues are killing me. From what I understand second-gen G5's -the first of the "liquid cooled" generation of 04- are just quirky machines. Evidently Escher's quirks are occasionally dropping firewire bus recognition and transforming into an expensive paperweight once every 2 years.

Thankfully I have ole reliable here, a graphite G4 known lovingly as Bertha.

Anthro-projection & A Few Sketches

2008-12-08T13:39:00.000-05:00

Thor towers over Saibulu, whirls, cracks his ears with abrupt motion and sharp sound you can get by snapping a wet towel, walks sideways towards Saibulu, and that is enough. The gesture strips Saibulu of his status: Saibulu turns, lowers his head, and moves quickly away alone, leaving no urine trail. Thor follows to complete the encounter.

-Katy Payne, Silent Thunder: In the Presence of Elephants

There's a tendency in media to project human emotions and feelings onto animals. I'm sure you've noticed it; avoiding all the celebrity-voiced anthropomorphic squirrels, donkeys, and hippos bouncing their jovial, flatulent 3-D asses is all but impossible. Replace these animal stories with people and you've got the same drivel as every other disposable comedy- it's just easier to sell because suddenly it's a kids movie and families have no choice but to eat it up because it's there. That leads me to a digression that I'll come back to in many a later post: The broken studio system and the catch-22's that keep it exclusive and dumbed-down.

"But!" Say the fans and the Blue-Sky/Dreamworks/comparable shite-churning studio employees, "this approach allows for new approaches to storytelling!" I agree. Y'know what? I want to see the inside of a beehive! I want to see bees going about their chores with boredom, longing to leave the hive for something better. It's a great idea. What do I get? Bee Movie. Trite, worthless crap with a vomit-inducing candy-coated color palette and lawsuit jokes.

Watership Down and Animal Farm both use anthropomorphicized creatures to brilliant [literary] effect, but the unambiguous truth is that 99.9% of this type of projection gets tossed about as a gimmick.*

I bring this up because I'm making a film about an elephant. It is a true story so for now I'll call him M. M and his fellow relocated denizens still exist today. I ran into trouble with my limitations. Will this be any fun to watch if I keep it fairly true to life? Thankfully, this research into elephant behavior has proven astoundingly illuminating. I don't need to worry about projecting emotion into the lives of these creatures because they have a surprising amount of emotional range and complexity on their own. It's amazing what field research reveals about these huge beasts. They communicate with a language of grunts and body language as well as infrasound calls generated from their nasal cavities that have a range of 4 kilometers. Males and females lead distinct lives but the Family group (a community led by a steadfast matriarch) serves as a roving social unit with as many clicks as you'd find in a human neighborhood. At one point it was documented that members of a Family ripped branches from a tree in order to cover the body of a recently deceased lion.

The deeper I delved the more I realized that the question was not the degree of emoting but the externalization, the method. Practical mannerisms and actions. These animals do indeed feel and love and remember and they do it all without talking.

*Pixar is founded and staffed by inhumanly talented storytellers and thusly unincluded.

Research and Pachyderms

2008-11-24T23:25:00.000-05:00

The closest social unit is the "family," a group of a dozen or so related females and their offspring. Certain families have a strong preference for each other's company. The families so affiliated are a "bond group." Families and bond groups are often expanded by the visits of adult males, but on the whole males live rather separately from the families, in bachelor herds and independently.

-Katy Payne, Silent Thunder: In the Presence of Elephants.

One of the greatest lessons I took from my storyboarding class with John Canemaker: Research, Research, Research. Going into a scene, know as much as possible about set and setting as you can and the visual details will fall into place. Many filmmakers write/create from what they know. I would imagine the Kevin Smiths of the world often don't often dive into a subject with much depth because they live it. They write stories that come from the shit they talk with their mates and the porn they watch every night. Or afternoon as the case may be. And bravo, that stuff's amusing.

I've never been this type of filmmaker, though. I work from a palette of whatever I can imagine and this dictates the types of stories I want to tell. And while some would scoff at it, I've been suffering from a veritable onslaught of too many viable ideas and no way to do anything with them. 3 Shorts, 5 feature loglines, and an amazing series written by Patrick Udomsak that deserves a bigger fanbase. The latter of which has grown into a fortress of data and development rivaling the mythos of the LOTR. Well, our planet is younger than Middle-Earth but let's not get into it.

In any case, I'm moving forward as of today. Should end up between 7-12 minutes but I'm aiming for less to keep production time down. Still, the priority will be quality and if it wants to be longer, I'll let it breathe. For the first time, I'm not even writing a script. Straight to simple thumbs and boards, and into pencil and media as quickly as I can get there. I'll deal with sound and post when those ships sail. For now, though, filling out this outline that my sister and I worked through, and lots of research on African elephants.

The more I learn, the more I love these animals.

h4x0red!?!

2008-11-10T18:04:00.000-05:00

Some nefarious blackhat has been attempting to infiltrate one of my sites! My web host was kind enough to warn me. Who would do such a thing? An acquaintance scorned? A stalker? A porn monger looking for free hosting? Whatever the case, if the attempts continue these cocksuckers will soon find themselves staring down the barrel of "We just fucked with exactly the wrong sort of person."

That out of the way, welcome to my production blog. I will update it regularly with goings-on in my work as well as my experiences in the entertainment industry, which aside from a few friendly acquaintances in indie film and the arts, has proven to be a broken-down rancid pit of absolute grade-A American bullshit. Enjoy your stay and hey! Come on back anytime now.

My next film is gearing up. Its conception and birth will be chronicled here. I will be spending considerably more effort on the animation this go round.

Peace.