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.