Classical Carrots

While I'm the headspace for it, I finally checked a long-standing 'to-do' item off my list today and re-scored a couple of scenes for Jennifer Gilbert's film "Don't Sit On Your Brother". Earlier this year I did the film's sound and editing and put together a piece of music for the end credits. There were two other scenes that warranted music which used some production archive cues originally. The limited allowance fair use of these pieces decrees meant that the film couldn't be screened internationally without paying royalty fees, and so the best compromise was simply to create an entirely original soundtrack. For the opening sequence I've used a slightly-modified instrumental track from my eternally-in-progress fourth Struwwelpeter album. It has a sort of 1950s big-band flavour that fits quite well with the era of the film. Another sequence is set during dinner, and for this I wrote a more classical type of piano piece. All dignified like, innit? Here's a clip of the latter scene:
I think the film works well for its target audience. As with Veronika's film, it's a very different type of story than I could come up with, so it was nice to get to be involved with them both. Let the brainwashing of our nation's children begin...

Fully Booked

To quote the Professor: Good news, everyone!
Actually, I'm not sure what kind of news it is. Not bad, certainly...
Anyway, the 'House Guest' graphic novel has been selected by Lulu to be listed on Amazon, el internet bookstore-o supreme-o. I'm not entirely sure what their selection criteria is - not to denigrate my lovely book, but I'm guessing it may be random. I've been putting off promoting it properly before I hear back from a couple of potentially-interested publishing houses. Either way, this is helpful as it increases the book's visibility. Hypothetically, my book might pop up when somebody was actually looking for this:

Honestly, between this and that goddamn Sinbad movie...I'm gonna put a lot more research into all future film titles from now on.

The only issue is that they've automatically marked up the price, so take some advice from your soft'n'squidgy uncle Ben (me, not the rice guy) and buy it straight from Lulu. Well, you don't have to buy it at all, even though it could be the one vital thing that's presently missing from your life, but hey, I'm not going to pressure you. If you're a spendthrift (fair play to you) there's also the eco-friendly option of buying the digital download version at less than half of the price. You don't want to hurt those trees, do you?
Hey, let's keep talking about books!
In 2006 I put together a collection of various doodles, cartoons and comics I'd produced for student magazines, e-zines and anthologies mixed in with some stuff I'd scribbled out while on the can. Titled "That Isn't Funny, You Stupid Child", I kept it on the QT as I felt the humour itself veered toward the mean-spirited, callous and sometimes just plain disgusting. Looking through it again I think I was too quick to condemn it - there are no masterpieces of contemporary storytelling in there but you can see the seeds being sewn for my subsequent film work. Plus, compared to stuff like Drawn Together, South Park and pretty much anything on Adult Swim, the content isn't especially incendiary. In fact, the most unpleasant story featured - 'Honey The Hungry Hound' - is actually true, so it goes to show that my imagination is no match for the nastiness of real life.

Original layout sketches for the short story 'Cuckold'. A young altruist is savagely beaten while his vacationing girlfriend cheats on him. I'm not a mean-spirited person, it's just that sex and cartoon violence are both fun to draw.

As most of the publications that ran these pieces originally were low-budget, small-potatoes operations, the work featured was all in black and white. Having seen the quality of a full-colour Lulu book compared to a B&W Cafepress book (for the record, I still think Cafepress is the shizzle) I've decided to reuissue "That Isn't Funny..." in colour, as with the "Mitchells In England" anthologies.
With everything else that's going on I'm in no rush to get this done, but it would be nice if it could be ready by xmas.
My poor, poor relatives. If I actually finish the new album this year they'll all be doomed to a holiday season of having to accept my homemade pap with feigned, weary grace.
Mwahahaha.

I ate a donor kebab last night. If I'd gone on a killing spree I'd feel less shame today.

Weight loss has slowed down, still more or less on track but I'm gonna need to be a little more vigilant if I want to get to 95kgs in 20 days. I was sort of hoping I'd even wind up a little lower than 95kg at the rate I was going, but summer BBQs are starting up and I have less willpower than a sorority chick with daddy-issues at a frat party.
Anyway, currently at 96kg. Nearly nearly nearly.

Style Over Substance

Shortly after I finished 'Ground Running' and sent it to the first batch of festivals, I decided to keep it on the QT when certain similarities were pointed out to me. What surprised me was that the original version ended up getting into some of said festivals and garnered some pretty encouraging reactions.I've finally settled on an alternate opening sequence which, along with a few other new visuals that appear throughout the film, take it to between two and three minutes. It occurred to me, however, that if I'm going to change it to this degree, it may be worthwhile to extend the film in other ways. As most of the animation's done, it wouldn't take much effort to add clean-up and colouring, which would betray my original intentions (the whole point was to have a film entirely in pencil-drawing form, peg-bar holes and all) but, in all honesty, make the film easier to watch. The 'pencil-test' look has more appeal to me and my fellow animation-geek friends, but to the general public who are more or less conditioned to seeing cartoons inked-in and in colour, it probably just seems like it isn't finished.I have no intention of eschewing the original short - after all, it's done pretty well in its own right - but I'm not above making a comparatively slick version to appease its potential audience, especially if doing so will increase the film's visibility.
And if the whole thing turns out to be a horrendous, misguided disaster, I'll just pretend it never happened and finally get a real job.

Blank, Impassive, Beady-Eyed Faces...

The designer-toy-inspired character designs I posted a couple weeks back were quite fun to do, so I've been idly cobbling together a few more when I can. I'm trying hard to be as proactive as possible, to the point where I'm bringing a lap-tray to draw on into the john with me. I'm sure you all didn't need that visual, but I'm just a giving man at heart.
Here, look at these and take your mind off it:


As before, they all follow the same design principles, although I may adjust the head sizes on some of the characters during the CGI modeling phase.
I've also picked a song to use as the basis for the prospective music video. It's working title is '60s Pop' but I'm leaning toward 'Set You Free' now the lyrics are done. The retro style of the music I think will go quite well with these visuals. Click below to hear a clip.

Fuga? Musafir?

Got some pretty good news, both 'House Guest' and 'Ground Running' are going to be screened at the Romanian film festival Timishort (in Timișoara...they must have the same guilty penchant for delightful wordplay as I). This is especially cool as it's the first time both films have been screened at the same festival - hurrah! I feel like a parent who doesn't need to play favourites anymore.
They'll be included in the Panorama 2 screening at 4pm, Thursday 7th and again at noon on Sunday 10th. More info on the website.

Mild Shrinkage

Another quickie weight loss update, happy to say am on track and am hovering at around 97kg.
The downside is I'm at a point where I don't give a crap. This always happens a couple months in. I get withdrawal. I yearn for junk I otherwise wouldn't even touch. I actually contemplated walking into the Ms. Millie's on the way home tonight.

Fortunately the rational side to my brain won out. Grapes and water it is.

Right now this is like pornography to my pathetic, hungry brain.

I'm not having a good time. I don't want to be thin, frankly it creeps me out to be able to feel my bones underneath my skin. After I lost the first 70 or so lbs I got really worried because I could feel this hard bump on my neck. It was my fucking Adam's apple. By the time it developed initially I was already too fat to feel it so it didn't make an appearance until I was 23. That shit is chilling.
Why am I writing this? I need to go to bed. I'm all punchy.

Playing The Artsy Angle...

The rough, unpolished 'line-test' aesthetic of my animated short 'Ground Running' kind of fitted in with the film's central theme and helped me finish it on time all at once. It had also made the film eligible for Portugal's 6th Annual Black & White Audiovisual Festival, and I'm pleased to say they accepted it! So mosey on over to the Universidade Católica Portuguesa from the 22nd-25th April and check out the festival in all its monochrome glory!'Ground Running' will be being shown on Thursday April 23rd as part of the 'Video Competition II' segment at 9:45pm (WET). For more details - and to see what else is on - check out the festival programme here.
Just for the record, I'm keeping these festival posts brief from now on, as when I try to do long 'funny' ones I just come off as a smug douche. When really I'm a cuddly, lovable scamp.

Eeeww...

I just got off the phone with a doctor who told me that I need to 'lay off the exercise'. I never, ever would've predicted being told that kind of thing in my life.
It turns out my thighs have reacted badly to the sudden increase of Thighmaster usage, and something above the back of my knee has either popped, burst, clotted or strained. Whatever it was, I'm living with a slowly shrinking lump accompanied by a pretty nauseating bruise. There's absolutely no reason for me to take a picture of it and post it here, and yet I seem to have done exactly that.Hopefully you aren't eating. Well, if you were, you probably aren't now.
The upside to all this hazardous physical activity is that I'm still progressing well with the weight loss. Presently I'm at 98kg, and if I can lose about 1lb per week I should be at 97kg by the end of the month.Slightly less of me to go around.

Taking the Fun Out of Toys

It seems to me that too many have misinterpreted St. Paul's famous line:
"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things".
I'm not a scripture guy, but that's a quote that has some resonance with me. I'd assumed it referred to growing beyond the feelings of entitlement, angst and confusion we're plagued by during infancy and adolescence; A well-rounded adult should be able to acknowledge and eliminate (or, failing that, tone down at least) the distinctly childish aspects of who they once were, which by and large are negative - selfishness, arrogance, occasionally pissing oneself and so on.
What I'm seeing more and more of as I get older are adults who retain these charmless qualities whilst completely abandoning the joie-de-vivre, playfulness and curiosity that represent the positive side of childhood. They're putting away the good childish things and holding on to the wrong ones. The end result? Douchebags.
A lot of people also seem to take the phrase a little too literally, which brings me to the point of this post. Oftentimes folks actually 'put away' (or trash, or sell) the toys, games, books et al from when they were growing up. These things become embarrassments, articles that have been 'grown out of' and left behind. All I can say to that attitude is this:
"Shame! Shame on you all, you poor, deluded fools!"
This is for a couple of reasons - primarily that I rarely get the chance to call people 'deluded fools' and I embrace it when it comes. Also, I'm somebody who has never gotten rid of his 'childish things' in the physical sense - they're either all stored safely in my mother's attic or have been brought over to my apartment. Their function doesn't go beyond being ornamental, but just having them around is a positive reminder of who I was, where I've come from and why I'm here.Being a guy who finally came out of the geek closet and walked into a Forbidden Planet for the first time in 2003, I still succumb to the temptation of picking up character toy tie-ins of interests past and present. If I see a 'Big Lebowski' John Goodman toy, why, it just makes sense that I should own it. A battery-powered Roadrunner Pez Dispenser? Ring 'er up! They make a Starbug that opens up, shoots missiles and makes noise? Why didn't this happen sooner?!

Well, I'll be. Turns out all three of those things actually exist...

I have to moderate these indulgent purchases, especially in this climate when all money really does need to go toward, y'know, being able to live. If I had the means then there'd be no room to move in my flat for the Nightmare Before Xmas paraphernalia alone. But there's nothing wrong with the odd one, here and there - it's far more honest deco than any crappy department store-bought sculpture. It's who I am, which happily coincides with how I'd like to be seen. Oftentimes people find those two at odds with one another.Here's something that confuses me though - designer toys. I'm not entirely sure what the function or audience for these is. Is it so that people who secretly want to have toys on display can refer to it as 'art' or 'ironic' if anybody gives them grief? Are they just for people who'll collect anything and have more money than independent thought? Are they actually very fun and expressive while my small brain just doesn't get why?

They certainly make use of a very 'in' character design aesthetic, whose origins seem to combine South Park and old videogames in their symmetrical, big-head-little-body theme. Some companies such as UNKL rarely deviate from one model per line, the differences between characters entirely down to the graphic design, treating the generic shapes as a type of blank canvas.

UNKL's limited edition Ipecac range, probably the only instance of a Mike Patton toy ever being made. If they threw a Rahzel in there I'd buy the set.

I've been meaning to expand on my character design work, as I haven't had many opportunities to take on different styles. Given the simplicity of these types of avatar-esque characters, it seems worthwhile to experiment with some of my own, either for portfolio purposes or maybe to promote some of the new music I've been working on.
Here are some geometric sketches that I plan on referencing for CGI modeling. Starting with a cheap'n'cheerful, ultra minimalistic version of me and some other characters to get the ball rolling.



And here's a very fast, cel-rendered model that I whipped up on the fly to get an idea of an end-result visual.I'm thinking there's a new music video in this - this type of design work goes a long way toward selling a product. In 2006 my third Struwwelpeter album 'Agnosticaust' outsold any prior release by a long stretch, and several buyers who got in touch chalked that down to the album cover, which roped them in. It was adapted from a rabbit character I threw together for one of the music videos, which I would have made more detailed if it weren't for time restrictions. So one of my most successful design pieces (a shirt produced bearing the same design actually outsold the CD itself) turned out to be a complete accident.
In the meantime, I'm off to play with my old GhostBusters car and ponder why I'm not in any kind of committed relationship at the moment.