Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Drawless Animation ?

Here's a 4-minute film school vid by Rob Schrab where he talks about drawless animation. It's pretty interesting stuff - mostly using green-screen techniques.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Crooked Teeth !

Don't you just LOVE discovering a cool new song? I was watching this thing about 'Drawless Animation" by Rob Schrab - and he talked about a video he did for a song by the Group 'Death Cab For Cutie' - which is also one of the best names for a band I've heard for awhile too.

I found it on YouTube - and proceeded to watch it about twenty times !



Fantastic stuff - and I SOOO want to make a wee film like this some time !!

Monday, July 28, 2008

It seemed like a good idea at the time...

If I EVER suggest / say / hint / communicate in anyway that doing a film project in a co-curricular way with kids at school is a good idea in future, you have my permission to dunk my head a barrel of piranha fish. HUNGRY piranha fish. Having fist glued a tomato flavored stetson onto me.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Classifying Angelo’s crying

In the last three months I have been learning to interpret the different kinds of crying that Angelo does. Hey – it passes the time when the poor little guy is crying ( far from a pleasant thing – but not as bad as I thought it would be ). Here are some of my findings, in order of severity :

The Houdini Grumble
Largely a thing of the past now. This was a regular when we were swaddling him before we put him to sleep. He didn’t seem to like his hands being restricted, and had an uncanny ability to wriggle out of the tightest of my swaddling ( until I was almost at the point of duct-taping him into a blanket ! ). The Houdini Grumble was the grunting exertion noises he made as he worked his way to freedom.


The Lah
Another one which seems to have largely passed now – though I’m not entirely sure why ! A cry indicating a moderate level of being upset, this was a series of short wails which would sound like he was saying ‘Lah!’. Would be almost cute, if he wasn’t feeling bad !


The Squeaky Lah
A more severe version of the Lah. The extra-loud expelling of the ‘Lah!’ would result in a sharp intake of breath, making a squeaky noise, so the overall effect sounded like ‘Lah ! Squeak ! Lah ! Squeak ! Lah ! Squeak!”. Like the Lah, seems to have gone ( for now – at least ).


The Black Lagoon Special
Angelo is getting pretty beside himself at the point of the BLS. He thrashes around making a lot of snorting / grunting sounds. He does sound a bit like a wee creature from the Black Lagoon ( hence the name – though in all honesty I can’t remember what noises the creature from the Black Lagoon made, if indeed it make sounds at ALL. Maybe


The Banshee
Baby def-con 2. Really just screaming. Not nice at all.


The Machine-gun
You can tell when Angelo is REALLY REALLY upset when you get to the machine-gun stage. This is a weird little stuttering that he does with the cry ( the side-benefit seems to be that it required more breathing power - so the actual noise level diminishes a little ... ), which sounds a bit like an uzi. Just as long as he doensn’t get HOLD of an uzi at these moments – I think we’ll be okay !

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Bad Family Art Assignment

My good pal Hix is publishing his RPG 'Bad Family' ( formerly known as 'The Lucky Jones' ) and he asked me if I would help by contributing some art for it. Hey - I'm up for helping out a pal in a artistic way - and seeing as it was the holidays and I would have the necessary time, I was up for the challenge.

Seeing as Matt has put his contributions up ( and a fine collection of images they are too ), I thought I'd do the same.

Hix gave me a number of starter ideas to work from - and this is what I came up with :

1. A little girl being taunted by the tree she's scared of climbing.

I had initially worried that the tree looked a little too evil - but Hix had way more problems with the tree's non-pointing hand ( at first it was wrapped around it's tree-like belly ). Got it sorted in the end though !

2. A grandfather being pursued down the highway by cops, cars and helicopters

I had to change this to a grandmother as Matt had done a grandfather in a hi-tech wheelchair. I like the grandmother better !


3. A drunk mother trying to deliver a lecture to her kids

I went for only the one kid. I thought the sermon on the horrors of soda-pop while wasted out of your head was a nice ironic touch.

I fair degree of work here, but time well spent I think ! Hix liked 'em I think, and I'm looking forward to seeing them in print !