c'est moi

Dear Ms. McBride, Here is the photo you requested. I hope it pulls a big smile on your face

Another Update

I'm almost done with my animation and that's really exciting.
Ran (1985) is on TV right now and that's great because it's a really good movie.
I need to work on homework and go on a run but i can do the latter later.
two more weeks until winter break, that's nice.
uhhmm... oh I got about six or so photos done for the WOA and I think they all look pretty good.
What else... nothing except to remind myself about the secret Santa

Another Week

so I haven't started the work of art yet, oh well. I haven't completed more work on my animation, oops. I don't know I've been in a sort of awkward rut and I need to get out of it as soon as possible. So that's really it. There's a long break coming up maybe I'll get some work done then...but I doubt it. This is depressing.

The big day

I went to my screening today at the Whistell Auditorium and I have to say it was really something seeing my film on a big screen instead of on my little computer screen. Then afterward there was a panel with the judges and some indipendent filmmakers. What I definitley got out of that was them saying that I had to love this to get what I wanted out of it and that I would have to clean some toilets along the way and that was a literal expression.

Also more big news:

After I finish Between Gentleman I'm switching to a new animation program! That's right because Flash is giving me so many problems and is malfunctioning to the point where working around these unsolvable errors is pointless. So now I'm going with Toon Boom Studio! Toon Boom Studio is an amazing program and although it isn't the king of the internet media, Flash's domain, it's still a for more impressive animation software and is more geared toward what I want to do, which includes exporting high quality quicktime videos (time to play catchup on that Flash) that I can put on DVD's and not have to say "close enough" but instead "perfect that's what it supposed to sound and look like!", much better I agree. Also it has this cool 3d camera tool in the program that's super confusing but I can't wait to figure it out eventually I'll figure out the program and my next short will be better because of it.

Also I'm uploading this trailer I found for a film that uses the same program I'm now using plus other Toon Boom programs. I believe it's like a ten thousand something receipt for just the programs. It's called Chico&Rita and it doesn't have a US release date yet.

What a busy boy

Ms.McBride was kind enough to give me an extension on my self-portrait and WOA#3 challenge so that I would more time to work on my more immediate projects.

So my deadlines are now:

Wednesday, a French quiz

Thursday: A DBQ is due as is my animated short "Between Gentleman" and my live-action short which is still untitled.

Friday: an SQ3R

and Sunday I have to finish and submit my college application to Emmerson.

to finish my short animated film I have to stage everything, put in credits, then censor credits for submission to the Young Arts Festival and in sound and music.

As for my live action short I have to complete two more scenes of it (which I am completing today and tommorow) and then I am editing it at the speed of light and calling it done.

...I'm getting an anxiety attack just talking about all of this


Can I get a Hell Yeah!

The Word of the Weekend is...

I twisted my ankle, and I have a lot of work to do so I guess that's convient. Lets see this weekend I need to finish my WOA challenge #2, push forward with my animation which I thought I might be able to finish this weekend but I also have to work on college essays (who needs sleep amirite?) and study for some school! So I'll have a lot to do and maybe I'll be able to start my self portrait while I'm at it.

I think I need a shave& a haircut
...but that will have to wait

College app, school, life vs art

maybe it's not fair that I compare the two like that, but having to spend a weekend writing papers, working on my Common App and studying for an AP don't exactly move along a process. I got practically no work done this weekend on my animation and that's really upsetting because this was deadline week. I feel overcumbered by school and its hardly even started yet. Maybe if I was able to get more work done on my animation I wouldn't feel that way but it doesn't help things when I don't.
I need to start my self portrait I just need to get a photo of myself (I'll take care of that in class) I'm thinking of an abstract comic it should be pretty interesting.

I'm going to get this out of the way now and say it so nobody keeps telling me this later IF they actually care to read this I WATCH A LOT OF MOVIES
this weekend I saw four movies
A swedish film: The Virgin Spring, directed by Swedish landmark director Ingmar Bergman
A French film: Henri-Georges Clouzot inferno, a documentary about Clouzot art house mess and how that whole ship burned down (thank you Mrs.Grimm for reccomending it to me)
An American film: The Social Network, its really good. It's funny, clever and intelligent
and a Belgium Film: A Town Called Panic,

got to see it, have to see it and glad I saw it!

All these ideas I have in the back of my head for future shorts keep getting weirder and more out there. In a lot of ways I like the abstraction and the ability to experiment, but at the same time I want to make sure I don't isolate myself.
I think I might also want to do a western, that would be cool.


Okay funs over back to school work

Sore throat...

...and hatin' it. I hate being sick. So I never got to the game or the dance, but to be honest I never really liked the dances (music sucks, and people I meet there are either really out of it or act like a pervert). I rented two movies this weekend: Faust and The Straight Story.




None of you (or the majority) I would think would actually like Faust since it's very surreal, very bizarre and very much out there. But I think Jan Svankmajer made a pretty good picture and I actually enjoyed it especially his stop motion work that he is so famous for.




When I put the words David Lynch and Disney together The Straight Story is not what I would picture (more of a Blue Velvet on ice) but after seeing this picture I came to this ultimate conclusion... you have to see The Straight Story!!! It's incredible, its beautiful, and the music is great too. and unlike other David Lynch films it's simple enough that you can understand the story itself in one viewing (I'm still putting together the pieces of Mullholand Dr., and Lost Highway).


I did animation over the week but not very much over the weekend. I really can't wait to finish this project becase it's driving me crazy how close it is to being complete. I'm also concieving my next project that will be done in a different kind of animating style. I'm really excited about it especially the part where it might not take as long as this one (the same goes for the other four shorts I have to do)...I need a haircut.

I've been reading my brothers blog Delinquent Diaries and all that's really done is make me very envious of my brother and all the fun he has all the time, but still its really funny and entertaining "check it out y'all". And I'm going to try to go to facebok less because all it does is show me how much fun everyone I know is having while I'm sitting at home on the computer watching tv with no plans, feeling like an absolute loser... I hate the internet.

The Summer...

a short list of things that happened over the summer

1. I interned at The Hollywood Theater and made a documentary about kids that hate me

2. I went to Boston chicago and New York... I'm still really happy about that

3. I worked on "Between Gentlemen" and am two weeks from completion (I recently told myself I wont shave until I complete it as incetive to finish on time... at least its not as itching anymore)

4. I did a lot of art,some of which Abby thinks looks like trannies (thanks)

5. I met one of my idols (a tale for another time)

6. I decided that I'm not going to do all my projects the same way (thank god)

7. I listened to a lot of Classical music and obscure Jazz and realised that I haven't taken an interest in any band in over five months... i also discovered that it doesn't bother me

8. I've started getting into the works of William S. Burroughs and hope to read Naked Lunch soon... but I still need to read Hearts of Darkness (its only like ninety pages what am I procrastinating about?)

9. I didn't see very many friends so I made new ones

10. I scrapped some old ideas for animating (not really scrapped as much as tossed them aside for further scrutiny and meditation)

11.I watched a lot of movies! ( Although I wish I didn't see Saturday Night Fever, but to be fair I was expecting something else. You know what's a really good movie, Altered States)

12.I became a David Lynch fan and I wish he would make another movie the same goes for Sofia Coppola


I plan to do a lot of work this year and to get more out of it


Oh and heres big news. PULP was accepted for inclusion in the 2010 Northwest Film Center's Young People's Film+Video Festival. Out of 150 submission mine was picked along with 15 others, I feel special.

AP 2-D Final

if I had any wisdom to pass on to future members of AP 2-D it would be to give you're concentration room to explore. don't be specific or else you'll get really bored with it. If you pick some as specific as Teenage relations... you're going to have to do teenage relations 12 different ways. Maybe you're really interested in that, I don't know, but I would be really bored after concentration piece #3. For my concentration I chose Storytelling through Animation... maybe I'll tweak that a little through the next year maybe not but there's a lot of room in there to expand and that's what I like about it.

By far the best piece I created this year was a from of a man sitting in a ball thinking pensively. it didn't take very long and I liked how it came out in the end. I didn't need a model or a reference I just used pure memorization and craftsmanship to draw this person and that feels really accomplishing.

what I learned about myself this year as an artist was I am way more the Animator/Filmmaker than I am the Illustrator/Painter. I think that's because I don't like to freeze everything into one singular moment. It's nice for a painting when you sit their and appreciate all the vast little details of it but in film and animation you don't really have that. Instead you are given the ability to tell a much larger picture over a period of time. It also helps because some people tend to just look at a painting then walk away, but with what I'm doing they have to sit there and pay attention to it. Also I came to the conclusion that next year me and the giant Light Table are going to be very attached to one another.


Since I was only in AP for half a year I can't really say what was or wasn't the best because I wasn't there the whole time. But I really liked going downtown to the Jesse Reno Workshop where we could really just let loose and do whatever was in the moment. It was really nice making that transition from planing every aspect of my art form, the Barbeque was really good too, I just wish I brought a bigger appetite also the Scholastic Art Awards were great, not just because I received an award but also because it was really interesting seeing other artists at my age and what there doing.

In ten years, lets see I'll be 27 So hopefully I'll be doing something like being a director working on music videos, short films, and commercials. A best case scenario (and a long shot) would be to be directing feature length films which would be really, really great.

It was a good year and I look forward to the next.

I'll leave now with a couple of memorable quotes...


I passionately hate the idea of being with it; I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.
~
I do not suppose I shall be remembered for anything. But I don't think about my work in those terms. It is just as vulgar to work for the sake of posterity as to work for the sake of money.
~
Create your own visual style... let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others.


-Orson Welles

Concentration so far

also currently in the works:

Pulp (cleaned up) storyboard

Between Gentlemen (short film)

Hardcore (short film)

and an Untitled third short film

So the first Animated tests are done and they are...

okay, really their are some fixes that need to be made but overal they're really good! especially after cleanup. My last film was completed on December 4th 2009, its now April 16th, I'm seventeen and my next film still is not finished. I feel like a failure. I have five more films to complete by this time and that's a lot of pressure and even more work. Soooo I need to find a system where I can work on these movies. I'm also feeling like reading more I'm going to try and make a reading list at some point but it's going to be out their. I'm watching the Naked Gun right now and on TCM of all places? also on Monday I'm having a screening of my hipster documentary in Provosts Room at Second lunch on Monday, so if you want to show up you can (unless you're not cool enough, then go buy some tight pants, join a band and then maybe). I really want to make a movie in live action. It would be nice to get something done faster and collaborativley. I'm also very excited for the A-P retreat in May and Cirque du Soleil on the 22nd of April. this was fun I should do this more often but I need to make more plans.

Pictures from Duel

More pictures from production of Between Gentlemen, just some characters and how there supposed to look when I draw them. Since I'll wind up drawing thesese two for who knows how many times it's important to know certain things that need to stay the exact same for every single jaw-dropping, mind numbing frame of animation. I think this one will be about a minute or so longer than Pulp which is yet to be determined whether or not that's a good thing or a bad thing, although it's hard to do anything in only 1 minute.

by the way, Pulp has an IMDB page now

heres the link

oh and Newport Beach has also rejected my film, this is just a guess but its probably due to poor AVI quality, so future films are going to be formatted on Quicktime for better quality image.

Rejected!!

so I've decided to submit my films (actually I made this decision in December but whatever) to film festivals. It's wonderful to see you're stuff on a big screen and what better way to get it onto one (with a real audience I might add) than in a film festival. So I've submitted PULP to three festivals so far
ASIFA (don't remember what the acronym spells out)
Newport Beach
LA Film Festival

,and I plan on submitting it two three or four more festivals.
Recently I heard back from ASIFA as to whether or not I was submitted

Dear Michael,

First, thanks much for submitting your work to ASIFA Portland's Spring
Showcase. We (the showcase jury) spent a lot of hours trying to
whittle a surprisingly strong batch of entries into a streamlined
program. We had the luxury of having a lot of animation to choose from
(including work from luminaries like Joanna Priestley, Teresa
Drilling, and Rose Bond) but also the chore of having to cut more than
a dozen good submissions. We won't be including your piece in the
final program, but hope you're already working on something to submit
next year. It's great to see new young talent step up in this field.
Thanks again!

Well thank goodness the good movies were accepted.
maybe my next movie will fair better and I still have two
more festivals to hear back from.
Just going to keep it positive.

And of course! news on Between Gentlemen. I've started animating certain scenes although I still need to figure a couple more things out (what three of the characters will look like and what the manor in the background will look like) but I'll get to that no worries.

wow this was a long post!

Storyboard for Pulp

Well for anyone that's interested here's the whole storyboard which incluedes a character sheet for the two main characters.

It's a bit messy but I'll make a cleaned up version of the storyboard for my concentration.

So I've been thinking...

About my concentration and what it will be. And I've decided that It's going to be animation. Now why you may be asking, well because I'm the only doing it and because it's a great thing to expand on. With animation I can push what I'm working with to whatever. I can explore new ideas and themes with this medium and do that in a story form that can be followed and interpreted in many different ways. I can do my next two films that I've already planned on doing then do something completely different (I'm feeling a noir).

And btw I'm planning on putting up my storyboard for Pulp, but be warned it's a messy one.

An appropriate evaluation of PULP

so after last night I was spent and couldn't really work on an appropriate evaluation since it took from when I got home to just before I went to sleep to get the video uploaded. So now I will give an honest critique of my piece, PULP. and while I can't evaluate on all of the critea from the Blog Update and Critique handout, I will still give a few words on it.

I can't really say it's a good piece (being fair to myself it is my first), but I am proud of it. I think one of the best shots in the film is the opening shot and the closing shot of the two boxers standing in the ring boxing them out from the rest of the masses. Making there strife and struggle to defeat one another an isolated incident only to be pervayed and enjoyed by the masses. which is what the entire film is about, violence being used as a form of entertainment. While we as a society or culture normally would never condone violence as an enjoyable thing there is still a great facination with the idea of watching people beat themselves to a pulp and to add on to that even enjoy it. Possibly it's human nature.

Pulp film Uploaded!

Holy moly!!! it took about an hour but it finally uploaded (and at only one minutes and 25 seconds), well come pervay all of you wipper snapers and come watch some moving pictures.

I should probably (definitley) put up the storyboard for this film as well, but be warned it's messy.

Anyways enjoy the movie

Storyboard for "Between Gentlemen"

Well that's the entire storyboard for my next film "Between gentleman". I'm currently in the process of timing it which I'll follow with some extreme frames for the film. It was a pretty messy process getting the photo's up since my scanner is smaller than the pages I do my storyboards on (oh well).

I've been trying to get my film "PULP" on here but it's been difficult so I'm just going to put that task on hold for now, unless anyone objects.

So, I'm going to get back to work now see-yah.

Alright so the plan so far

I know without a doubt that I'm going to make two more animated pieces (to accompany "PULP") that will follow my concentration of culturally accepted violence. Now if I get all my storyboards and Timing done soon enough I could get them done by late April...probably. Now what I'm going to do with my nine other pieces I'm not totally sure. I could use my storyboards in my concentration (a well paying job I've heard) and maybe do posters, or some concept art. Well I'll figure it out in time just can't take too long.

And I should probably put "PULP" up here soon.

bye

I'm officially in the class

I was kicked out but now I'm back... umm check in later for more news ya'll