[Perhaps I should say AmyBCs, since I’m using her idea!]

A list of things that have to do with my Thanksgiving break.

A: Amy, Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, a quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
B: Baking, Buttersquash Ravioli, Beatriz y los cuerpos celestes
C: Cels for my animation, Clos du Lac, Casablanca, cake, courier
D: Directing (books on), Duets
E: eating
F: Fantastic Mr. Fox, frosty mornings, father-son mountain biking, Flying Fish
G: Guitar, grandparents, Gandalf the goose
H: Hanging out,
I: ingesting
J: Jokes
K: Krusy the Klown
L: Loomis
M: Midnight moon, mother-son painting
N: Never-ending supplies of fruit juice
O: Old Boy
P: Pumpkin pie
Q: Quaint neighborhoods
R: Run to Feed the Hungry, Run to explore Folsom Lake, Roa trip
S: screenplays, Sin Nombre
T: Ten kilometers,
U: Ultimate Frisbee
V: Vegetarian for the holidays
W: Whims
X: X-actly how I want to spend five days
Y: Yearnings
Z: Zucchini

So titled because that’s about how complete this project feels. I am but a few hours away from the final stage, the stage in which I get to lay out every transparent cel and (with the help of my mother) paint.

I have almost finished copying the pencil drawings onto the cels in ink (v. productive 9 hours of animation today, including viewings of Kung Fu Panda and Totoro), and will be finishing that up tomorrow during the day. That leaves Wednesday-Sunday for painting, with the film ultimately being shot a week from today. Everything’s right on schedule, and I feel great about it.

So great, in fact, that I am considering heavily taking the follow-up animation class next quarter, Film and TV 181C. It is a class without the exercises (to be posted soon) that took up the first six weeks of this course. The goal is to produce a three-minute or longer animation, with sound, over the duration of the class… and the way things are going with both the stories I have in mind and the people who want to keep pursuing animation, I’m having a hard time finding downsides.

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In Snickers news, the Photobooth idea is gaining a lot of traction, so I’m going to flesh that one, and only that one (quality over quantity, this new concept I’m trying out). Stay tuned for storyboards, a script, and the thrilling budget breakdown!

G’ni-…morning?

There is a Snickers competition up on Filmaka that I am thinking about entering. It is a hectic time of year, what with this animation sucking up free time worse than Facebook the night before a midterm and the first draft of a new short film being due soon, but I like the idea of directing a Snickers commercial and having it air.

So!

I brainstormed all last week and came up with eight ideas. To preface, the contest is looking for ideas that portray male camrederie, the idea that Snickers is a “rip and chew” type of food, it’s a MAN FUEL, and that the stories be unique and original, not just fads or things in vogue.

The final product must include a storyboard, script, and budget breakdown of how I’d make it for $10,000, and is due Friday… so fleshing out all of these ideas is impractical.

Actually, it’s probably impractical to work on this at all, but where’s the fun in that?

Without much more blathering, here are the ideas from my li’l Blue Book (ranked in order of my faves:

1. Civil War - Several men carry their fallen comrade into a make-shift medical tent. The wounded man is given the option of a remedy for the coming pain. He shakes his head for the whiskey. He shakes his head for the leather belt to bite down on. Instead, he grabs a Snickers, rips off the wrapper, and chomps down. His friends behind him grimace and he smiles widely… As the doctor tickles him and declares “There’s no need to amputate! My work here is done!”
2. Family Dinner - A sweater-clad teenage boy is at his girlfriend’s house for dinner. Her whole family is there, including her gruff, lumberjack-esque father who disapproves of the boyfriend with grunts and snarls. He takes his plate to the kitchen, and chomps down on a Snickers bar. He jumps back into the dining room, pulls out the tablecloth from all the dishes, rips off the father’s flannel and ropes them around his girlfriend, who is suddenly wearing an exotic dress that looks like a combination of flannel and table cloth, then dips her low. The now bare-chested father simply declares, “MARRY HIM.”
3. Photobooth - A couple is taking dorky pictures inside a photobooth. The boyfriend is handed a Snickers bar. He bites into it. Suddenly, a Fabio-esque model is inside the photobooth, hair blowing in the wind, girlfriend swooning. They take suggestive pictures, and then they both exit. The model walks off, and the girl turns to her right and sees her boyfriend chewin’ away at the candy bar.
4. Bite Size - Several teenagers are babysitting a toddler. The child sees that the teenagers, currently in the next room room, have left a mix of bite-size and king-size candy bars, and eats the king size one. Suddenly! A man wearing the tattered remains of a diper and an Elmo shirt burst through the wall and roars.
5. SNKRZ 2278 - It is the future. A future in which people survive off pills that give them every essential vitamin and they live to very old ages. They are healthy, but something’s missing. A discovery of a frozen trick-or-treater in a glacier! Lo! He has a Snickers bar, and it is tasted, and happiness and full stomachs reign again over the previously listless world.
6. Open Stomach Surgery - A surgeon is eating a Snickers bar while operating on his patient. He gets bumped from behind and loses the bar inside.  He looks around. No one has seen him do it. Three months later, check-up on the man he operated on. “I just feel completely satisfied all the time. That’s the best open heart surgery I’ve ever had!”
7. Snickers Fairy - Leaves Snickers under children’s beds when they get sent to their rooms without dinner.
8. Candy Bar - Manly men debating over which candy bar they’d like to snack on, a la Budweiser commercials touting Budweiser’s supremacy. In this one, such weaknesses as wafers and effeM&Ms are discussed, with Snickers being the full-bodied snack that doesn’t leave you wanting more.

If you actually made it this far, I’d love to hear what you think about these ideas. Do they seem doable in 30 seconds? Does it fit with what you’ve seen of Snickers commercials? If you could re-order this list in terms of your favorites, how would you do it?

Thanks for your help!

Sometimes the plan changes and you lock yourself, your friend, your bike, your cellphonewalletipodlaptopanimationbinderwaterbottlekeysdignitysweater inside the animation room… along with all the lights on, the TV playing the Incredibles, and the animation desk bulbs.

Here’s to hoping the TA can help us unlock it tomorrow!

D’oh.

Left the apartment about 10:45 pm and got to animation at 11pm. Left at 4:30am.

I experienced the crispness of chilled silence. How fast a bike can go when there aren’t pedestrians. How 101 Dalmatians is the one movie that could make me nostalgic for my childhood. How the 5th season of the Simpsons is so freakin’ funny. How a compliment can fuel animation marathons.

The downside, I imagine, from these late-night sessions is my social “life.” I’ve missed consecutive nights of hang outs and what-not, but I feel completely fulfilled after a night of drawing that any pangs of guilt for missing out are covered up with a growing sense of accomplishment.

Sorry friends! I’ll be back someday!

So… still no news on that front. The only contact I’ve had is that they’re still waiting on the answer. In the mean time, here are the handful I think that will win!

Whatchoo think? How do they compare to mine? Do they get people motivated to check out the www.vir.us website?

An interesting thing happened after watching Fantastic Mr. Fox (a movie I really enjoyed, perhaps to the tune of my favorite animation this year)… I started looking up every possible thing about the movie’s director, Wes Anderson.

I found Filmosophy’s week-long analysis of each of his movies, the Onion’s article 16 Films Without Which Wes Anderson Couldn’t Have Happened, and plenty of normal articles.

While I am a fan of his — Rushmore is one of my Top 3 movies — I don’t consistently love his movies, though I would admit to not fully understanding all of them either. What I found was an intense desire on my part to understand how he makes films, how he is able to exert such precise control, and how each of his movies can have such striking similarities, even between animation and live-action.

So I added the 16 films (minus a few that I’ve seen) to my Netflix queue and am going to re-watch his films and try to figure it out. I’m working on a new script that I perceive to be a potentially strong one, one different from what I’ve worked on before, and I want to be open to new influences.

I’m not sure what the results will be, but I think they’ll be interesting.

Another few hours animating tonight in the studio, this time aided by the wonder that is vending machine coffeeee ($1 French Vanilla?! Take that, Starbucks). I’ve reached the part of the animation that is the “punch. line.” and I am finding some struggles related to timing, which unfortunately is crucial to both animation and comedy.

So, I have maybe forty or fifty more pencil drawings, and then I can start tracing onto the cels that I picked up today. The cels are really legitimate, and make me feel like a nerdy animator!

More so, I guess.

Lotsa other updates coming!

A preface: I’m not sure where this post is coming from, or rather, I do know, but it’s so many places I’m not sure how it combines.

It comes from me being jealous of my peers making it further with their films than I made it with mine, of seeing their success and me being unable to see past that, to see that I’ve made improvements from film to film.

It comes from seeing the new portfolio and wondering about my voice, wondering what kind of stories I’m telling, wondering what I’m going to tell next.

It comes from a peppermint-mocha-drinking, almost-van-crashing, OK-Go-meeting, down-time-enduring, inspiring-performance-viewing, one-hundred-twenty-dollar-taco-ordering, lunch-and-dinner-omitting work day.

It comes from wanting to write just to show the day who’s boss.

It comes from seeing an infographic that Bill Belichick has been a head coach for fifteen years, but that followed his being an assistant for twenty years… and applying that to my own directorial aspirations. If I was told I couldn’t direct a feature of my own until I was forty, but that I would be a part of the feature world until that point…

It comes from wanting to make some noise.

Two weeks from today I’ll be in Melnitz shooting my animation (on film) for my final project, so it’s time to buckle down and make something worth making!

I’ve drawn 86 frames in pencil, which leaves about another 100 or so to go. After that they all get traced onto cels (transparencies) with sharpie, then painted over. And that’s it!

It was beautiful biking to campus after 10pm and using the actual animation room for some uninterrupted productivity, then lollygagging on the way back, exploring each and every bike path with a joyful deviousness.

I expect to repeat the process happily several times in the next week. Won’t you join me?

Re-edit

I would hope the ‘lite’ addendum is accurate… it’s both shorter and less serious.

A word or three on the new edit. I cut out 50 seconds. Some dialogue, some unnecessary silence. I added some ditties at the beginning and end to more clearly show that it’s a satire/comedy. I believe the sound is smoother than before, but some if it is not manageable.

I’d love to hear your feedback, even if it doesn’t seem like there’s anything different… because that’s a critique in itself because I was able to remove lines without sacrificing any of the story.

Anywho! Hope y’all are well!

( via frank-chimero )

I had a nice little meeting today to discuss a new project with Emma. We’ve got the groundwork laid for some creative characters, a great situation to have them put in, and the necessity of multiple shoots, real actors and more equipment. I’m ready to step up to another level, mentally. I need to direct more beforehand, but with the script and people I’m working with, I’ll get more confident.

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Also going to be some musical making tonight, as well as some animating for my flying fish project. I have a production schedule through the end of November, and though the amount of work per day is not overwhelming, I think it’s a good practice system for scheduling out what needs to be done.

Plus, my mom is going to help me paint the final stages!

Exclusive pictures from inside the illustrious CEC recording studios. Gia Jo on the mic, dropping beats that made Mattitude, Kid Freezy and Robespierre quake.

The track should be finalized within a few days. We’re working with a Spaniard living in Italy to produce, so there are difficulties in the trans-Atlantic dealings.

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On another note, apologies for not posting. I’ve been alternately frustrated by how poorly Stockholm Syndrome re-editing is going, my pencil test animation for this week, a cold, and a handful of other things and figured whining wasn’t going to solve the issue.

Keep a watch out for some music, eventually a re-edit, and some animation tests.

And …

PIE CONTEST THIS SATURDAY