A Mystery Work in Progress and Its Hideous Spawn
April 21, 2007 - posted in work in progress
The 8 or 10 of you who read this production log have no doubt been wondering, “Where has Chris been lately? Has he fallen ill? Joined the Army? Gone to prison? Has he killed again?! Oh, dear. We should have kept a closer eye on him!”
It’s a funny thing, life. The last post I made here was about how I burned out on comic strips at the age of 23, and have never looked back.
Well, in putting that post together, I was forced to look back. And with ten years’ distance, I actually kind of liked what I saw.
Long story short, I’ve been experimenting with something new.
I might be announcing this new thing in about a month. It takes a different approach to the same material I’ve already been dealing with in the Mystery Work In Progress. Work on the short will continue too. But the story and its characters have become too big for one short, and have splintered into two projects– one animated, and one NOT ANIMATED! What?! Yes.
I feel very weird and unsure about all this. These past couple of months have been a hell of a bizarre trip, with flashbacks and strange feelings of being young again, even though I can’t stay up past 9:30 anymore. But I’m following my gut, and that’s never failed me before! (oh, wait…)
Stay tuned!
The Insects
April 19, 2007 - posted in sundries
Here are some specimens from the ol’ robot entomology collection. Might these have anything to do with the Mystery Work in Progress? Probably not. But I’m not sure yet. The words that best describe the Mystery Work in Progress are: a) “Mysterious,” and b) “In Progress.”
Green Screen Movie Magic
April 18, 2007 - posted in work in progress
Last night I put Post-It Note tabs on my fingers and waved my hand in front of a video camera for a few seconds. Why did I do this? Don’t worry your pretty little head about it. It’s all part of my patented Cargo Cult animation process.
This has nothing to do with the cartoon, but I noticed in the background of my weird little green screen experiment, you can see a hilarious NYT Style Magazine spread on my desk. On the left is an article called Starved to Perfection: Why Are We Not Entitled to Take Up Space? which documents the horrible images many women have of their bodies and the obsession with looking thinner at all costs. Fair enough.
On the page facing the article is an ad for Tummy Tuck Jeans shrieking:
INSTANT GRATIFICATION!
LOOK ONE SIZE SMALLER!
This is obviously a subject NYT Style takes very seriously. And as you can imagine, it really got me thinking about how fat and disgusting my hand looks in this video! God! It’s so fat and ugly! My finger is, like, bulging out around my ring! God!
I’m putting my hand on a lettuce and cigarette diet until it’s pretty again.
Redesigns
April 10, 2007 - posted in work in progress
Scene 2 of the Mystery Work in Progress is coming along nicely. (I’m only on scene 2! Dear God, when will it end?!)
Scene 1 was pretty much done when it became apparent a major character redesign was needed. At every step of the process, the characters have asserted their “robotness,” even though I wanted to make them very organic and bendy like the original sketches. They just seem to want to move and act like machines. I think it serves the story well, so I’m letting it happen. And by “letting,” I mean struggling through hours and hours of painful trial and error. But in the past week I’ve stumbled on bodies that are beginning to work, and am nearly done reworking scene 1 and some of scene 2.
In the early stages of animation on a short, it takes a while to get the rhythm of the characters. Especially when you don’t know what you’re doing. So there tends to be a lot of “over-acting” which mellows out as I move along. (get lazy)
To the right is a still from scene 2. I didn’t want to spoil anything, so I shrunk it down a little.
A Shark Dream
April 9, 2007 - posted in sundries
I dreamt that I was scheduled to give a lecture on the subject of Sharks at some university in St. Petersburg, Russia. I showed up at the campus with some friends and family. They were planning on going to a museum while I gave my talk. I hate giving talks and I wished I could go with them instead.
About an hour before the lecture I realized I had forgotten everything I ever knew about sharks. (In the dream I had apparently given this talk before) So I sat in the hallway and tried desperately to remember something– anything– to say about sharks. All I could come up with were vague feelings of awe and fear.
Then I remembered that I had been faking my way through the previous lecture as well. I know nothing about sharks and never have. And I remember thinking that these people were easily fooled– not only had they failed to call my bluff the first time, they’d actually invited me back to speak again!
When it was time for the lecture I said to the students, “Rather than listening to me drone on and on about sharks, let’s make this an open discussion. I want to hear what you all have to say.” And it went pretty well. I faked my way through it yet again!
I only mention it because somehow, deep down, that dream probably had something to do with pretending to be an animator.
