Announcement: Mutwale Site Live!

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

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

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

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

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"

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

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

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

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

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.