What's the cartoon called?

The title will go unannounced until we're sure this thing is really going to work out. Stay tuned.

What's the story about?

Making a living.

When will it be finished?

Sometime in 2007 is our best guess.

May contain one or more of the following:

- satellites
- private moments
- ~~burning at the stake~~
- birds, dead and alive (also, owls & wild dogs)
- fluorescent lighting
- farmers "doing it"
- the water
- fear, boredom, transcendence, hypocrisy

Chris Harding is making a new short, and documenting its hideous gestation on the internet!

On this page, we will post occasional production art, with the oldest material sinking to the bottom, and newer stuff piling on top of it.

As we progress, scrolling down the page will be like going on an archeological excavation through sedimentary layers of creative detritus. (fitting, as this project is unfolding on a geological time scale)

ALSO! More frequent updates and musings will be posted in the production log.

PLUS! Join the Chris Harding Animation Dispatch mailing list to get early updates, shop discounts, and exclusive clips and artwork not available on the Web site.

STEP 2:
EARLY BACKGROUND EXPERIMENTS

Trying to make parts of the environment look like they just exist, rather than having been drawn by anyone… The pictures you get at the end of a roll of film have that weird film-end thing. I don’t know what causes it, but if you zoom in really close, it can look like a horizon, or a sky.

Then you mess with the color and combine them with other things, like torn paper, concrete, and ink-soaked blotter paper…

…And you start to get things that look like weird, distant landscapes. I’ve got a long way to go to figure out how this all fits together, but these have potential I think:

STEP 1:
FIRST SKETCHES

These are some of the very first crooked little sketches made for the Mystery Work in Progress. They aren't intended to reveal much about how the finished piece will actually look. They are mere thumbnails, jotted down to save ideas from falling into the memory vortex. As of this posting, there are about 27,000 of these little "gems" to weed through.

As usual, almost all sketches are done on lined notebook paper, using Chris Harding's drawing tool of choice: the Sanford Uni-Ball Onyx Micro rollerball pen. A glorious instrument.

As you can see here, this is already shaping up to be a happy cartoon, filled with cheer and wit.

CHRIS HARDING ANIMATION CONCERN