some faces from the ol' sketchbook.

friends, strangers, people on tv & in print.  no one is safe.

michael jackson--also from indiana.

Hi everyone.  in chicken cowboy-related news, the DGA screening was great.  CC will screening next at the indianapolis international film festival 

IIFF is July 15-25.  check it out!  Indianapolis is my hometown, so this is especially cool for me. Like Canadians, Hoosiers are strange and often creative people.  Famous Hoosiers include Larry Bird, James Dean, Kurt Vonnegut Jr, Twyla Tharp, Wes Mongomery, and, as the security guard at the airport reminded me after seeing my driver's license last week, John Cougar Mellencamp. Someday i will paint a series of hoosier portraits.

Come have an omelette with me can also be seen this week at the NYC Food Film Festival. Check out the schedule here.  Lots of food-related films and actual food and drinks.

Here are some sketches of flight attendants

here is vadim.

and some paint chips.

you can see some dr breakfast in there. I would like to storyboard dr breakfast on paint samples. 

Finally, thank you all for the kind comments on let's make out!

hi everyone. Here's my latest short, "let's make out." I started back in march, and it's taken me a little while to finally get the thing done. Pretty much all cycles of animation done after work or during lunch. something to keep me busy...



It's much in the same style of come have an omelette with me. this one's a little more detailed though.

thanks to connie for some extra vocals there. The original idea was to have a bunch of different animators do make out cycles, but things got a little hectic as always.

Here are some stills.









If you're in Los Angeles on June 2nd, you can see Chicken Cowboy at the Director's Guild. Here's the schedule for tuesday. Many fine films playing. I'll be there as well.



Anyhow, with let's make out done, it's on to the next project. hoping to get back to dr breakfast a bit, but we will see.

some stills from the new short

it's not so bad.

I've been skimming through ezra pound's ABC of Reading on the train.  One of my profs, Nick Tanis, first recommended it in his writing for the short film class.  Pound's educated (and often snarky) criticisms firstly apply to poetry. But his writings also provide some fun exercises for writers, filmmakers, and animators alike.  Just substitute the medium.

Take the passage below:

You have, probably all of you, your favourite writers.

What would happen to you if you started writing immediately after you had been reading

A,

B,

or C?

If you wanted to say something they hadn't said, or something of a different kind, would their manner of writing make your statement more accurate?

More interesting?

. . . . . .

Do you know why you like . . . .

A

B

C

Do you in any way distinguish beetween writers whom you 'like' and those whom you 'respect'?

Why, and how?

What do you guys think?  What are your filmmaking or drawing sensibilities? Where do they come from?  How easily are they influenced?  Is this a good thing?  How critical are we of what we see?  I'll see how this is met before I post my own responses.  

some trees

It's been another good week for chicken cowboy. CC won 1st at asifa-east in the student category. Congradulations to all the winners! full list can be seen here. Chicken Cowboy also won best animation at the national film festival for talented youth. Thanks!

Here's some fan art!

This comes from Aspen Middle School. Aspen Shortsfest has a great program that brings filmmakers into the classroom to show their shorts and answer questions about them.


This one is from chris siemasko. I like it, but would probably like it more if it was drawn by a student.

naw i'm just kidding. yeah napkin drawings!

i'll start posting more again, not that you guys have been missing out on much.

this sunday, if you're in new york...

be there or be [ ]

The New School

Tischman Auditorim

66 W. 12th St.

(bet. 5th/6th)

here's another still from the project:

hi everyone. Here are some concepts for the short short I've been working on in my free time. With fewer scenes unfinished than complete, it's time to start thinking about the next phase. How are these all going to fit together? And how to color them (with as little work as possible)?

These are just ideas. Anything and everything could and will change. nothing is permanent.

from what I've been showing so far, you can tell I'm really pushing the story and the production value. Well, not exactly. This is another experiment to keep me going before my next big short gets underway. A sort of spiritual sequel to come have an omelette with me.

speaking of CHAOWM, if you're in new york you'll be able to catch the world premiere at the new york food film festival, June 13-19th. food and film excite me.

In other news, you can catch Chicken Cowboy this weekend at NFFTY in Seattle, or next week at Rincon International. I think some more screenings are still coming, just in case you're not sick of chicken westerns.

have I been dropping too many hyperlinks lately? sorry if it's a little tacky.

happy friday

first off, here are some hugging dolphins



It's been a busy past week. Chicken Cowboy won for animation at AFI Dallas, and won Aspen Shortfest's "High Five to Lo-Fi" award. I was told that means it had the best low-budget to high production value.


Going to Aspen Shortsfest was a blast too. Met tons of extremely talented filmmakers. It also made me sad to miss AFI.

It's really amazing all the work that goes into making these festivals happen. My hats off to all the organizers and volunteers.

Looking forward to getting back to work on this short short. It's going to utilize a lot of the animation I've been posting lately. Can you detect a theme?

hi guys.  if you haven't heard the news, here it is.

Thanks again to everyone who made chicken cowboy possible.  It was a great way to finish nyu. Tons of fun to make.  

Here's second drawing I ever did of chicken cowboy. It was waaay back, summer of 06. The first drawing I did on a beach in california-- I'm too tired to dig it up and it's almost too silly to post.


here are some other old paintings of cc.



I'm off to aspen shortsfest. Thanks to everyone who saw chicken cowboy at AFI Dallas and First Run this past week. In the next month it's playing at NFFTY and Nashville.

here are some more drawings.

it's going to be a busy week.

right about now i would trade internet for hot water.

Would you rather have internet or hot water?  For the rest of your life.  Why?  

so it goes

new dr breakfast painting

18 x 24 I think

.....

hi everyone. Things at work have gotten a little more busy for me. As a result, I've had to scale back a little on dr breakfast.

The good news is I've decided instead to take up another smaller project, more in the vein of come have an omelette with me, the thing I made this summer.


I'm not sure when it will be done. Here are some concepts.


Expect the limited production values of an after-work-just-for-fun-style project! And don't expect much of a plot.

More news. Chicken Cowboy will be screening at Aspen Shortsfest in April. Leaping lizards!

some more turtles.

for all those out in the world, you can catch chicken cowboy at a festival near you! In march cc will be playing at Dallas AFI Film Festival and the National Film Festival for Talented Youth (NFFTY) in Seattle. And for now you can still catch it on youtube, too.

some recent sketchbook stuff.

more koalas.

thumbnails.

I know that today is valentine's day because this morning one of my turtles died.  Goodbye lady geranium.  I wish winter would end sooner too.

batmen

deer bath



doctor breakfast is slowly moving beyond a random collection of ideas into something resembling an outline. It's strange to see it coming together a little more, and stranger still how personal this short is becoming. hopefully I can get started on boarding pretty soon.

"but as soon as I saw him I felt that he was my father, my flesh and blood, my future and my doom.  I knew that when I was grown I would be something like him; I would have to plan my campaigns within his limitations." -john cheever

I read this the other day and thought of my dad, of course. So here's dennis. Upon rereading this passage a more couple times, I've also realized it applies really well to the movie Teen Wolf.

And some koalas. I'll post more dr breakfast, but figured for today everyone's a little burnt out on floating breakfast ghosts and droopy eyeballs.


scuba diver man reminding you to swim safe.

the scuba diver


he's been stuck for thirty years.

Some pictures of a the giant nose.

It's a little sharper than I'd like, but that's paper mache for you. You either get lumpy or angular.

It hangs on my wall. Here you can see the coffee grounds that make the nose smell like coffee.

Here you can see the original plans (again). And below you can see the fan way up in the nose that blows out the smell. I think that, if we all had fans in our noses, a lot less people would pick them.

Here's some exploratory work for dr breakfast. mostly just train doodles.


The story isn't quite solid yet, but so far this film is feeling less concretely narrative than ones I've done before. I like the idea of playing with emotional continuity rather than narrative continuity. A stream of consciousness, more dream-like.



The process has been fun so far. Here's a larger painting I did. Excuse the lousy laptop camera.

Oh yeah--Chicken Cowboy is now on imdb. Still waiting on all the credits to process, but check it out, I guess.

FACE MELT

i did this way back when last year for a friend's live action short. it's amazing what you'll find on old usb drives.  best viewed on loop.

as a child I loved watching raiders of the lost ark.  but that end--jeez.  terrifying.  i think i still have the occasional face melting dream to this day.

hi everyone.  Lots of people out there haven't seen chicken cowboy yet,  and I've gotten a few requests.  so I decided, what the hey, I'll put it online.

I hope you enjoy it.

On a more theoretical note, the festival system is extremely goofy. I really appreciate film festivals, especially the ones that screen chicken cowboy, but others seem to have very arbitrary methods for selecting shorts and features. I haven't figured out a clear formula for what works and what doesn't. And it all gets in the way of what I like to do--actually make these films. the idea of festivals as a path towards eventual internet or video distribution further complicates things. Perhaps it's just me--I'm pretty impatient, and the process of building a buzz around a short for one to two years during a festival run before the world can see it online or on dvd seems a little anti-climactic, especially if I have a job and am not dependent on Chicken Cowboy for money.

Plus, who cares? I make cartoons.

Anyhow, I decided to put CC on youtube. Just for a bit, maybe longer. Some festivals have a problem with cartoons being available online while they're screening. So I'll see what sort of reaction I get--if anybody has a huge problem, I will take it down.  

I'd also like to make chicken cowboy available on DVD in the next year, along with my previous films shark suit and bigfoot's eulogy.  

you know, something for my parents to buy.

first off, a public service announcement from the cast of full house:

and now some ideas for dr breakfast

Too Art for TV opening is tomorrow!

New York's 3rd Annual Fine Art Exhibit for the Animation Industry

Opening reception - Friday, December 5th 2008, 6pm-9pm
December 5th through December 15th, 2008
at Erebuni 158 Roebling St. Williamsburg, NY 11211

Here's my nose design for the exhibit.

The final design doesn't use peanut butter, unfortunately.  There were concerns the smell could trigger allergic reactions in those especially sensitive to nuts.  So I used coffee grounds.  

Anyhow, come see all the cool work.