Thought I'd show some photographic evidence that all this zombie duck cartoon nonsense actually had some legitimate application when it came to getting me an MA. I'm highly edumacated! Along with several others who helped out here and there with 'House Guest', so thanks again in photographic order to Hanna Merilainen, Verity Ross-Smith (script supervisors), Helen Shaw, Cari Merryman, Vibeke Cleaverly (clean-up/colouring assistants) and of course my family for their amazing support.
'I Castelli Animati', an Italian animation festival, has picked up 'House Guest' and will screen it as part of their International Showcase on November 27th! So, if you've been looking for an excuse to visit that delightful city, why, this should be the clincher. In truth I'd be there myself except, naturally, it falls on the day of my graduation. Not only would it have been amazing to get over to Italy, but the whole festival looks like it'll be a blast. Check out what's on offer at their website if you don't believe me.
On a related note, my MA coursemate Michael Rokes's film 'Bertha & Bruno' was recently shown at this year's 'Flip Animation Festival' in Wolverhampton, alongside such greats as Smith & Foulkes and even Bill Plympton! Having had a front row seat to all the blood, sweat and bloody, sweaty tears that went into the film, I have to say it undoubtedly deserves all the success and accolades it will hopefully garner. Plus, my name's on the credits for composing the score and I need all the exposure I can get. Ah, backhanded, self-serving compliments. They make the world brighter, don't they?
Rather than let the idea evaporate in the wind (as ideas are wont to do), I'm making a concerted effort to find time to make 'House Guest: The Graphic Novel' a reality. Indie publishing companies like Cafepress and Lulu would make distribution a breeze, and I can say that from experience. I've sold albums, merchandise and books through them in the past at no cost, and if the product is good, people do buy it. Of course, if the product is crap, then not so much. Hopefully the 'House Guest' book will fall into the former category. The bulk of the book will, naturally, be the adaptation of the film itself. I've broken it down in an almost-indecipherable way:Believe it or not, those have proved very dependable in terms of laying out the comic. It comes to about 64 pages though, which in my opinion is a little skimpy. I think to graduate it from just a 'comic' to a 'graphic novel' it'd need to be 100 pages, minimum. So I'm not quite sure what to do next. Do I have enough material to pad out 40 pages? I could possibly collect some roughs and concept art, or maybe even include another story ('Ground Running', being largely a visual film, would translate very easily into a comic). I guess time will tell.
After the encouraging news of the 'Ground Running' festival premiere the other week, I'd been pondering as to whether or not 'House Guest' would ever get screened, being such a different type of film. It was nice to see it responded to positively at the bar screening last month, so it seems a fair enough assumption that it won't send the average festivalgoer fleeing up the aisles in revulsion and disgust. With that in mind, it was a well-timed piece of good news to hear recently that on November 30th 'House Guest' will get its UK festival debut during Nottingham's 'Bang! Short Film Festival'. Yahoo! This festival has in the past shown films by my MA coursemates Miho Matsuda (including her super-creepy graduate film 'Dancers of the Stolen Heart') and Maria Gracia Bisso. Check out their website and, if it's your thing, go along and give my flick a look see on the big screen. Well, I'm assuming it'll be a big screen. Big-ish at least.
Well, it didn't get snapped up by Depict, but my naked-baby-adventure-romp 'Ground Running' has fared better elsewhere. God bless those Greeks, particularly the ones at the Thermaikos 2Min Film Festival. Although it was only confirmed today, 'Ground Running' is among the films that will be screened at the event which starts this saturday (Nov 1st). For more info check out their website. So, if you've always wanted to go to Greece but never had the right excuse, what better than to see a film of mine that runs at about 90 seconds? Okay, there are many, many better reasons to go to Greece. Culture and architecture and blah-de-f*cking-blah...but, I mean, c'mon, look at how cute the little rascal is...
When ‘Ground Running’ was screened for the first time one of the evening’s fellow directors came over to our table to say some nice things, mentioning briefly that my film reminded him of a viral Xbox commercial he had seen. I told him I’d give it a look and, well, I did. Frankly, I’m a little freaked out as the commercial is staggeringly similar to the first few seconds of my film. A woman in the agonising throes of childbirth shoots the baby out of her v’jay and it smashes through a hospital window. From there the similarities diminish, with the baby aging as it flies through the air and landing in a coffin (I guess somehow representing that…I dunno, ‘Life is short’, so waste it playing Xbox games?). As my film is primarily about being a postgraduate weighing up his options, the bulk of it is, in its own right, original. But watching this commercial is unsettling as it’s like looking at my idea done in live action and with a budget. Here’s the kicker - they did it first. I am making absolutely no claim of being ripped off as this advert was made years ago (the youtube upload is from 2006) - but at the same time I am absolutely certain that I never saw this commercial. If I had, I probably would’ve sent it to everyone I know as, to be fair, it is pretty cool. So, it’s a dark night of the creative soul for me. Is it really just a coincidence that my film’s opening is so similar? I decided the only way to make peace with myself is to dissect the process. Looking back at a previous entry I remembered thinking about other funny birth scenes from film and TV. The ones that stick out in my head include the fantastic intro to Addams Family Values, the pacing of the birth scene being very cartooney in and of itself.
I think other inspiring elements came from Ren & Stimpy… …As well as a lovely sequence from Big Fish where the baby is popped out and slides along the floor. Given that was a pretty high-profile flick, I’d imagine that said sequence could’ve also been a springboard for the Xbox ad. Elements such as the timing and the ‘bungee umbilical cord’ are unique to my film as far as I know, but as a visual it could easily have been done before. The real pisser is the baby flying out the window. I can think of a number of sequences from cartoons and movies where things are hurtled out of windows comedically, Looney Tunes, Farrelly Bros. movies, again Ren & Stimpy most likely. Later on in the Addams Family film the baby gets hurled through a skylight... With all this in mind I’m fairly confident that my idea was the product of my own independent bricolage process. Bricolage being, essentially, the deconstruction of pre-existing ideas and their subsequent reassembly to create something new. To be honest, all creativity could be seen as a type of bricolage, as nobody can really create something new without drawing upon the cultural and societal influences around them. I think it would take a particular brand of arrogance to dispute that. I’m still not comfortable with it, though. I think it might be worth it to create new footage for ‘Ground Running’, maybe get the runtime up to at least two minutes and change the structure of the opening scene so that it doesn’t share the same similarities. Until then, I think I’ll put further festival submissions on hold. Now I find myself asking that vital question every young man asks himself at one time or another - ‘how do I get that baby out of the vagina and into the street without accidentally plagiarising an Xbox viral?’ Why, it’s a question as old as time itself.
A couple months ago I wrote about the possibility of developing a character from my old webcomic ‘Mitchells In England’ for a graphic novel (or possibly several). This has been incrementally taking shape, but only as far as the writing is concerned. I think it’ll be a funny and interesting story when it comes together, but I’ve been going back and forth as to what kind of visual style I should use. While my usual ‘Mitchells In England’/’House Guest’ look seems logical, it may be better to approach the artwork in a more contemporary way. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it, I guess. In the meantime I’m still eager to produce a graphic novel of some sort, and a friend of mine came up with a pretty nifty idea: adapt ‘House Guest’ into one! In theory it’d be pretty easy - as all the artwork produced for the film could be used, converting it to a comic-book format would just be a matter of laying out the stills and text. I could probably even include segments that were eventually edited out of the film, so it wouldn’t just be a picture-book of material people are already familiar with. It’s early days (well, early first day) but I think that with some thought it might come together really well. I actually got so enthused last night that I even whipped up a concept for the book cover:How do you like them apples, Spiegelman?
Today I got my first rejection from a film festival. It’s basically the same type of template letter you get with applying for jobs or schools or whatnot. I’ve known from the off that ‘House Guest’ wasn’t for everyone, and that inevitably I wouldn’t get through to most of the festivals I submitted it to, but it is a little disheartening for the very first reply to be a fob-off. As the great Les Claypool once sung, ‘lack of persistence is surely a sin’, so I’ve resolved to find two more festivals for every ‘no’ I get. So long as I stick to the ones that don’t charge (or don’t charge all that much) there’s nothing really to lose. I found out recently that most studios actually have people on staff whose entire job is to scour the listings for festivals and send films off. So a (pretty good) studio film that’s won a couple of awards out of twenty-odd festival screenings was submitted to about two hundred festivals. Them’s shit odds, and for us indie folk who don’t have the staff or the time to send stuff out to that extent it’s a pretty unbalanced playing field. On a cheerier note, last week I decided to thank Adam Carolla personally for his unknowing contribution to the completion of ‘House Guest’ by calling into his show. If you have any interest in hearing me kiss arse, you can listen to the archived segment here (skip to about 9’30” in). Carolla brings up a fantastic web animator Michael Narren, who had previously created some short webtoons using snippets of conversation from Carolla’s prior show Loveline. They’re brilliantly executed and work really well as standalone shorts to people who have never heard the show. You should check them out at his website, or take a look at my favourite ‘Grand Theft Submarine’ (and see why the phrase ‘cone opens’ cracks me up).
Here are some more layouts from my Depict submission-in-progress.I doubt this one'll be too popular with the ladies, but it's helped me get in touch with my feminine side. Plus, giving birth is generally a bit trickier when you keep your legs closed.Here we see the baby's dramatic entrance.Cut to a side-view and the poor little whippersnapper is snagged on the still-attached umbilical cord. Here are the latter two images in motion: It's a tiny detail but I really like the way the arms and legs settle into position. It really conveys a sense of tension and balance.This is a similar shot to the first appearance of the baby, although with an acceleration to the speed of the approach to the camera. In the first animation the baby slows down as it gets closer, so with each in-between less distance is covered. In the animation below (combined with last entry's 'skid' shot) the baby speeds up as it falls so each in-between this time covers more distance. Does that make sense? Does anything I say, for that matter?
My initial plan to produce my new film 'Ground Running' using a combination of 2D animation and cut-outs/pixellation has been somewhat hampered. This is for a number of reasons, including time, economics and, primarily, my friend who I'd hoped would help with the photography just bought a puppy. On one hand, just having the film limited to 2D animation on its own will doubtless see it less interesting aesthetically. On the other hand -Aaaaw...So cuuuuute... Actually I think the film will work fine this way. My lament during the production of 'House Guest' was that a lot of the charm in the animation was lost when the rough pencil tests were cleaned-up, inked-in and coloured. It'll be cool and somewhat fitting thematically to have a film be done entirely pencil-on-paper. This way I'm gonna have to make the animation shine through to make it visually impressive, as I won't be able to hide behind any slickness or polish. Here are some layout drawings I've come up with based on the storyboard: For when the baby is skidding along the ground. Although no real harm comes to it, I want there to be a couple Kricfalusian moments where you wince a little bit.On that note, the doctor's glasses are a little homage to John K.I want the facial acting for the woman in labour at the start to be fairly true-to-life. Slightly panicked...and sweaty.The baby graduates! So foolish and full of hope. Poor bastard.
Thought I'd show some photographic evidence that all this zombie duck cartoon nonsense actually had some legitimate application when it came to getting me an MA.
'I Castelli Animati', an Italian animation festival, has picked up 'House Guest' and will screen it as part of their International Showcase on November 27th! So, if you've been looking for an excuse to visit that delightful city, why, this should be the clincher.
Believe it or not, those have proved very dependable in terms of laying out the comic. It comes to about 64 pages though, which in my opinion is a little skimpy. I think to graduate it from just a 'comic' to a 'graphic novel' it'd need to be 100 pages, minimum.
This festival has in the past shown films by my MA coursemates Miho Matsuda (including her super-creepy graduate film 'Dancers of the Stolen Heart') and Maria Gracia Bisso.
Well, it didn't get snapped up by Depict, but my naked-baby-adventure-romp 'Ground Running' has fared better elsewhere. God bless those Greeks, particularly the ones at the Thermaikos 2Min Film Festival.
So, if you've always wanted to go to Greece but never had the right excuse, what better than to see a film of mine that runs at about 90 seconds?
A couple months ago I wrote about the possibility of developing a character from my old webcomic ‘Mitchells In England’ for a graphic novel (or possibly several). This has been incrementally taking shape, but only as far as the writing is concerned. I think it’ll be a funny and interesting story when it comes together, but I’ve been going back and forth as to what kind of visual style I should use.
How do you like them apples, Spiegelman?
Today I got my first rejection from a film festival. It’s basically the same type of template letter you get with applying for jobs or schools or whatnot. I’ve known from the off that ‘House Guest’ wasn’t for everyone, and that inevitably I wouldn’t get through to most of the festivals I submitted it to, but it is a little disheartening for the very first reply to be a fob-off.
On a cheerier note, last week I decided to thank Adam Carolla personally for his unknowing contribution to the completion of ‘House Guest’ by calling into his show. If you have any interest in hearing me kiss arse, you can listen to the archived segment here (skip to about 9’30” in).
I doubt this one'll be too popular with the ladies, but it's helped me get in touch with my feminine side. Plus, giving birth is generally a bit trickier when you keep your legs closed.
Here we see the baby's dramatic entrance.
Cut to a side-view and the poor little whippersnapper is snagged on the still-attached umbilical cord.
This is a similar shot to the first appearance of the baby, although with an acceleration to the speed of the approach to the camera. In the first animation the baby slows down as it gets closer, so with each in-between less distance is covered. In the animation below (combined with last entry's 'skid' shot) the baby speeds up as it falls so each in-between this time covers more distance.
Aaaaw...
So cuuuuute...
For when the baby is skidding along the ground. Although no real harm comes to it, I want there to be a couple Kricfalusian moments where you wince a little bit.
On that note, the doctor's glasses are a little homage to John K.
I want the facial acting for the woman in labour at the start to be fairly true-to-life. Slightly panicked...and sweaty.
The baby graduates! So foolish and full of hope. Poor bastard.
