here are some stills from a new short short I'm finishing up. It's animated to a phone message my mom left, telling me she has to decide whether or not to put our dog to sleep in the next couple days.






A little depressing, but it was fun to quickly animate, paint & composite something. Expect it up to see in the next couple of weeks.

a hippo doodle

These are some quick backgrounds for a new mini-short I'm working on about my dead dog. It's the first of three under one-minute shorts I'm hoping to have done by May.



It's always fun making a 5-6 minute short, but I definitely want to explore this micro format more, concentrating on the idea and design rather than the huge, often bloated production process. Not that chicken cowboy hasn't been fun--this is just a break.

Plus, they're youtube friendly.

edit:
Speaking of youtube friendly, here's a random time lapse I did a year ago. Um ... enjoy?

A slight lack of new stuff means here's some old stuff.

I decided to finally post this thing I did two years ago for sight & sound film. Sight & sound film is a class that everyone takes at nyu. A semester to make 5 short exercises, all shot and edited on 16mm (flatbed steinbeck, what what). The best part is working in film, a messy and often unrewarding process. Still it has a weird charm.



It definitely has flaws, and plenty of things I would do differently. But my favorite part of sight and sound film was always the disposability of each film--you barely had time to finish one before you were making the next. And editing stuff with a splicer really makes you sure of your cuts, for better or worse. All in all one of my favorite classes ever. Even for a wacky animation student.

The bad part about shooting on 16mm...you can lose your film. Happened to one of my favorites, a 6 minute dream sequence. Lots of milk. Here's a still, one of the few things left from the shoot besides my memories.


That reel is out there somewhere. I offer a reward for its safe return.

note cards:

ben's wise advice


dinosaur chicken

rendering is for lovers

woody allen

the loneliest unicorn

Spring Break!!! Ahhh!! Weee!

Nah, I'm kidding. Everyone knows spring break is for rendering. But everyone also knows that rendering is for doodles.

I was suddenly and profoundly dumbfounded today by the idea that knights used to wear metal and kill each other with swords and maces. Just seems strange.

Hi everyone. Here's some more shark suit news.

Shark Suit: the Musical won 1st in animation at the Academy of TV Arts & Sciences Foundation's College TV Awards. It also won the Ruckus Pick award. Best of all, it was a good party. And I saw some really remarkable student films.

Here's my favorite pic of the night:

It all made me excited to finally finish Chicken Cowboy. I've been rendering away on most shots. I also got a grant a couple weeks ago, which means I can finally budget in some good sound. Spent a lot of time today in the foley room, breaking glass.

Fun stuff.

Little Guys™ is on DVD! It's a short from my pal David Pagano animated with legos. Lots of legos. There's cool stuff and an faq up on his website now, and I think you'll be able to order it soon.

http://www.paganomation.com/littleguys/index.html

This is an oldie, but a goodie. Ethan from Shark Suit as one of Pagano's little guys:

same old, same old.


time for class.

notecard doodles:

My brother and I eating hamburgers and drinking beer. It's almost enough to fill the midwestern-shaped hole in my heart.

Angry cactus.

Anyone ever get these after effects errors?

What is "Metaloaf?" And why does it make me hungry? Is it supposed to look like meatloaf? Or is that just me?

aw blerg.

Hi everyone. If you missed the symphony performance of "Bigfoot's Eulogy," here's what it looked like (minus the blur).

It sounded great! Congrats to composer Jaebon Hwang and to conductor Guerguan Tsenov. They had their work cut out for them and the show was amazing.

It other news . . . rough animation on Chicken Cowboy is done! The year is flying by so quickly it makes me want to cry:

Next up are some heavy animation revisions and post work. And lots of rendering.

It's sort of intereting to see what's changed from the initial concept drawings. These were done about a year and a half ago. Chicken Cowboy is a little slimmer and slightly streamlined. But I think I've stuck to my initial ideas and story concepts, who this guy is and how he changes.


I have some exciting news about Shark Suit. But I'll wait. Don't want to use up all my blogging ammo.

Here are some more note card doodles. I'm trying to do these every day now.


until I run out of notecards.

Hi everyone. The big news on Tuesday is sort of old news--Bigfoot news. My sophomore film, Bigfoot's Eulogy, is being screened with a new score written by Jaebon Hwang. The cool part is, Bigfoot gets screened with a live, 70-piece symphony orchestra playing that new score. And they play it live with the dialogue and sound effects, too.

If anyone's interested, here's the flyer:


Should be fun. And if you don't go to see mine, you should go to see films by my pals Lou Hamou-Lhadj and Jenn Tippins.

The best reason to go is that my dad will be there. Who wouldn't want to meet Dennis? Here are some stills from Bigfoot:





Not to leave out chicken cowboy, here's a still:


Hard to believe it, but I'm 4 shots away from being completely done with the first pass of animation. It's looking closer and closer to 6 minutes these days. Been a long two months, but hopefully I can take the next couple to just revise, mix, edit, and give everything a nice shine.