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.