We are the StrangE

THE END

2007-03-28T00:06:00.000-07:00

We Are The Strange will find its way to you on DVD this year...thats for sure...Thank you for waiting and I hope you find the film interesting when you see it eventually. I will not longer be posting anything on this blog as I have started a new one for my new film. Its time for me to move on and creating something new. I know most of you haven't seen WATS yet but it is on its way I can't say for sure but it will be in your hands before I finish this new film for sure :) With my next film I'll make sure you'll be able to buy it the day it is done with no waiting...

New film blog herE

Rabbit JunK

2007-02-18T06:33:00.000-08:00

So pretty much since I bought it on Itunes I've just been listening the the Rabbit Junk album ReFrame for the past 3 days... Soooooo MHA! I don't have anything else other to say like... other than....like.... buy the album!

Rabbit Junk

Music really is mega_essential to a productive M dot Strange so I started working on the prologue for WATS....oops the next screening is like in 2 weeks and I have an art show at the same I have to do stuff for....oops.... Like oops...and there's like 50 emails I have to reply to oops....

Be_RioT_back

2007-02-16T07:07:00.000-08:00

Cut this little trailer overnight while listening to mega_awesome tracks from Rabbit Junk, Alec Empire and Atari Teenage Riot...I totally forgot about the digital hardcore so it was nice to jam it back into my head...I'm motivated again.

Buy it now! We Are the Strange clothing for mega_Sale!

2007-02-12T03:42:00.000-08:00

You can buy "We are the Strange" T-Shirts, buttons, and beanies here...

WATS Store

Not speaking the same language

2007-02-09T06:16:00.000-08:00

Everyone...I mean everyone pretty much knows the world is broken...Everyone...pretty much like all the a_dolts in the world are broken...they are unhappy...they are lost... Yet they think they know what is best for art... they like to jam it into an entertainment package so they can attempt to define it and critique it... They are dying...wasting away... trying to steal time and energy from lively sprites of specularity... I've seen the blatherings of disempowered critics online... I've seen them offline... I've never met them in person... They hide in dark holes...they get hella knocked out by Uwe Boll... Now is the time for they're irrelevance...they're obsolescence... They don't matter and they know it...Desperation...Oh... Read the writing on the blog... I'm like...professional... and so are you... The MCP doesn't look so scary to me...User revolt... Throw the information disc back upstream... Yeh probably about time for some cr8zy art manifesto...yeh...I'm already on it...

We Are The Strange Forum

2007-02-07T04:07:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Agent M for setting up the mega_official forum...its like right here and everything...

WATS FORUM

M dot cannot Stop

2007-02-05T03:32:00.000-08:00

So yeh like hardly anyone at all has seen WATS yet and I have not put the DVD out just yet...but... I have already started outlining my next animated feature film which is about ummm...."the end of the world"...and at the same time I be mega planning a live action Samurai film that I will shoot as I am working on my next animated feature... I will just say that I am very excited about both projects...The next animated feature which from now on I will call "____" because I dont want to reveal the secret name XD...but yeh its gonna be so great, a lot more serious and with a steadier style than my totally insan0 little movie "WE are the Strange"....WATS is my art...I tried and tried to make it entertainment but what can I say...I M like an artist or something?! Well anyway I plan to spend the next week working on the two new films then I will get back to WATS and add a prologue onto it before the next screening March 1st at the Cinequest film festival....its nice to think about new projects...new horizons...new possibilities...

The Revenge of YouTube XD

2007-02-02T22:07:00.000-08:00

WATS Reviews & Articles

2007-01-24T16:34:00.000-08:00

Variety review

ABC News Video

NY Times feature article

Wired feature article

Sundance Channel Video

IONCINEMA Review

Film Arts Foundation Review

Digital Media Update Article

The Daily Reel Article

Video interview with David Carr NY Times Click my logo on the bottom right to play the video

Denouncement

2007-01-24T02:22:00.000-08:00

Yeh I'm fed up... I've seen enough here in this Sundance cesspool to make me sick to my stomach...I've never been so close to the filth that is the mainstream film industry and it is appalling... At my next screening this Saturday I will issue a public statement during the Q&A... I'm sure it will make its way onto youtube... An artists declaration of war against the filthy, regressive, topical and downright disgusting menace that is the American mainstream film industry... more lateRRR

We Are the Strange review by like real people

2007-01-22T16:07:00.000-08:00

Here is a video review of the film by two d00ds from the Salt Lake City area... They shot some video from the premiere and describe the film from they're point of view... if you don't understand the film or who it might appeal to then watch this...

WATS Review Video

Premiere like premiered....

2007-01-20T02:48:00.000-08:00

So yeh Im back from the "world premiere"... It was weird for me, its really difficult for me to watch the film at all let alone in a room full of strangers... I cant really say what I thought of it... I wasnt planning on watching it but I did anyway... I probably shouldnt of... I should just make them and move on... Im really glad funymony, darthlaric and the other d00ds from youtube came to the screening...they made it fun...

My christmassy torrent like E gift to you

2006-12-25T01:18:00.000-08:00

Please enjoy the We are the Strange Christmas like gift torrent... Its my mega gift to you!

Here's the torrent file

Download the whole file from megaupload (Thanks Sansfear!)

or

From my poor little limited bandwidth site :0

I'll probably erase that zip file in a few days because it will destroy my bandwidth...

OR

Here's just the icons (88k)

Here's just the Wallpapers (3mb)

Here's just the Posters (3.4mb)

Mega_hella_mad_buSY

2006-12-08T01:36:00.000-08:00

Hey I'm workin hard at the end of the film so its ready for its world premiere January 19th at 11:59pm in PArk City, Utah at the Sundance Film Festival... Sorry for not replying to emails or messages I'll get to them after I'm done with the film...MMmkay back to work!!!

We are The Strange at Sundance 2007

2006-11-28T03:59:00.000-08:00

I just got a call today from Sundance... "We are the Strange" will be a part of the midnight movie program at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival... More details will be available after Sundance makes its official announcements later this week most likely... but yeh I better hurry up and finish it XD If your in New York this weekend checkout a special "we are the strange" video presentation with like never seen before footage from the film at the Blip Festival on Saturday the 2nd at 2pm...

RamblE

2006-11-21T02:55:00.000-08:00

While the rest of your peers swill beer, cry in it, or devise more efficient ways to market it to everyone else... Fight your battle, stay true to the cause, follow your dreams and never waver... As lonely as you may feel in a seemingly apathetic world of suffering don't lose faith, don't lose hope... Without hope there is no tomorrow, well not one that any bag of flesh with any working nerve endings would care to experience... Tomorrow the sun will rise as always... we come and go quietly like snowflakes whispering the white noise that lulls you to sleep as it pitter pats on your winter rooftop or... we shriek and burn, whistle and gyrate like an independence day blooming mortar blossom...sulfur and gunpowder memories of a short life like fizzing fuse of corporeal abuse... Corporate snooze, make a dollar and die... Choose your own adventure, you really can... The tools are out there, there's a way for your will... Films and animation are big fun... Try it sometime and maybe you'll find the life you didn't know you were missing :)

Alright thats it...

2006-11-20T05:35:00.000-08:00

So after being frustrated with the last few games I have gotten I have decided to study game design so I can design my own... Im not gonna pretend like Im gonna learn how to code them...just design them... So yeh I got about 6 books on game design and I already started working on a concept for a DS game... I guess I should design a We are the Strange game too ay? The DS game thing Im outlining is totally unrelated...Hmmm the WATS game would be like a console one...hmmmm.... well something else to do....at least Im never bored XD

Engine 3 is out!!! Prepare for emergency landing!!!

2006-11-17T00:55:00.000-08:00

So one of the things that prevents one person who is not rich from rendering out 2k image sequences all day and night is that like your hardware breaks down... So I have 4 strictly rendering computers out of the 8 in my room... They are kinda old Shuttle XPCs with 3ghz Northwood P4s in them and tonight one of them has died for good... all the fan headers in the case have gone out so it was overheating and crashing repeatedly... So now I have to decide what to do after losing %13 of my overall rendering power and %25 of my dedicated render power not too mention losing the ability to access the 500gbs of files that are on the drives in that dead case... Seeing that it is an obsolete shuttle case it probably wouldnt be worth the time or money to replace the mobo... the quickest and easiest thing to do would be simply remove the drives and put them in external cases so I could access the files... but that would not resolve the lack of render power.... Hmmmm what to do? I hate waiting for renders! Ughhh well I guess I'll just have to get used to waiting...

Unless some nice company out there wants to loan me a multi-cored system for a few months :) One top of the line MacPro would just about double my render power! Oooh or a new 8 core system would tear through the renders! I'm like desperate and impulsive enough that like if a new 8 core MacPro came out tomorrow I'd totally pawn my soul to get it!!! Oh yeh and I do all my 3d in XP so I would run the MAcPro in XP under bootcamp so if any nice PC maker wants to lend me a mega_hyper PC that would work fine too :) Haha...Mmmkay now back to reality and back to work...

Hallo and like...stuff

2006-11-08T16:34:00.000-08:00

I'm busy being bored doing walk cycles but I stay focused and entertained with help from my favorite podcasts... I thought I would list them here for mega_Yall... Here's the like itunes subscription links...

Media Artist Secrets

The Accidental Creative

Digital Production Buzz

The Business

GameWave Podcast

Global Campfire rant thang

2006-10-29T13:48:00.000-08:00

Way back when people grunted a lot more than they do today...well not that much more but like a long time ago when we wore a lot more non-faux fur... The way we learned many things was through the campfire... So every night we would sit around our campfires and tell each other what we had experienced that day. Ya know Sabertooth tiger bit off my leg...fire hot... those kinds of things... So we were learning through the personal experiences of others...It was a direct connection, the only question was whether they were telling the truth or not and thats up to the individual to decide... So every once in a while someone would pass through our village and stop at the campfire and tell us what was happening in they're village and thats how we learned about the outside world... Yeh well over time we have gotten to the point where we stare into a flickering box and a person we have never met tells us prepared statements about places we've never been and everyone accepts it as truth... Not me... I want to go back to the campfire... Youtube is the new global campfire... I can sit in front of my camera and share my personal experiences and you can learn through them and vice versa... I think it is a very exciting time because of this... Now there is really nothing stopping the truth from being told...nothing preventing people from sharing they're personal experiences with others... I think it will bring the world closer and make people a little less cynical and cold... I mean I'm a robot with no heart but I can see what it can do for others... As a filmmaker person it actually allows me to form a bond with the people interested in my films...they can see that I'm a real person and decide whether I have anything interesting to say or not which should give them an inkling as to whether my films are worth seeing... If an artist is honest they're work is a direct reflection of them, so if they cannot captivate an audience in this simple manner than they're films will probably be a waste of time... I've had to lay off the youtube things because I was spending too much time having fun making youtube videos...I'll come back to the campfire for a bit after I finish the film... for now I'm going to hide in the cave.

Great green screen tips

2006-10-25T07:17:00.000-07:00

Awesome green screen checklist by the General Specialist

Check it out here

Whats Mega_NEW?

2006-10-19T21:42:00.000-07:00

So I finally put up the official "We are the Strange" site with like official trailer and all that. Or just watch the trailer from youtube right here...

Here's whats doin with M dot me right now...

-Animating the finale to "We are the Strange"
-Submitting a WIP of WATS to film festivals
-In pre_production on a Noise Inc. music video for the song "LUcifer you left me to die"
-In pre_production on a DisasterTron music video for the song "Lullatwerp"
-In pre_production on a new short comedy animation with Sean Boyles
-all that and playing a new game on my DS, yeh I'm just one guy but I have like...whats that stuff called...oh yeh...passion and all that.

Right now I'm riding my bike PEas ouT

No mo blog only VLog O ma gawd

2006-10-10T06:13:00.000-07:00

So I started the production cycle again today...I'm gonna be mega busy so I aint gone write in this thang no moe... Instead I'll create a 3 minute video everyday documenting the production of the finale of me filmY... Here's the first one..

Oops I did it now...

2006-10-06T07:23:00.000-07:00

So I should of just probably of just planned a simple little ending for "We are the strange" Ya know simple little battle, hero beats villian happily ever after thang... As of now the film is 78 minutes long minus the finale... I was planning on making the finale(Sequence 11) 4-6 minutes long because the 15 minutes before are packed full of insane mad action... Yeh so I just finished assembling the storyboards for sequence 11 and guess what? Its 243 shots of mad insane action!!! Haha! So this will probably add another 10-13 minutes to the film... I guess it would be nice if it were a full 90 minutes... I wasn't planning on animating so many more shots but I just couldn't stop myself this week... I re-storyboarded the sequence...it was 148 shots before so I added like a hundred more this week... did I mention that I'm a masochist? Yeh it's all 3d too... Two 3d giant's battling it out... I pay tribute to Gojira and some of my other favorites in it... Yeh my film is already fucking insane but I have to take it 30 steps further!!! What can I say, I love production! I love animating and sending shots off to the render server then compositing them and dropping them in the Final Cut Pro timeline for the first time... its great fun... Now if I could only find someone too mix the film so I don't have to stress off that as well in the next two months just in case the film makes it into Sundance or Slamdance... I almost don't want to make it into any festival before March or so because I know I'm gonna go nuts with the finale and spend way too much time on it... I'm giving myself 2 months to do it in... My average output during production has been 4 minutes of completed animation a month... but I was slow in the beginning so I know I can do 15 minutes in 2 months now... Watch me go! I'll turn these crappy storyboard sheets into awesome_ness!

The end is Nigh

2006-10-05T07:10:00.000-07:00

Alright I'm getting ready to fawk some shit up... Yeh lately I've been feeling like an em0 batch... but no more... I never cared what anybody thought when I created and recently I've been holding myself back by trying to appease fancy film festival whoever and his cousin make me the money... Nah thats not why I started this shit... I can't write anything about this... I can't divulge my true intentions all I can say is that the end of my film will be POWERFUL... it will resonate with something deep within you that has probably been sleeping for a long time... I just woke up again, seems I was sleepwalking through production... maybe this is my eleventh wind? I was burned out but now I think the fire is back...I must thank my friend Peter from Noise Inc... collaborating with him on this film has been great... I'm in preproduction on a music video for his song "Lucifer you left me to die"... None of you have seen "We are the strange" yet but when you do you will see that there is some "lightness" in my style... that is to say that the darkness isn't all together smothering...with wats I don't want to scare people too much... but with this music video for Noise Inc... I'm not going to hold anything back... If your planning on watching it please schedule a few therapy sessions ahead of time thanks :)

New behind the scenes videos

2006-10-03T08:08:00.000-07:00

I made 3 new behind the scenes videos last night... Here's one... you can find the other ones on my youtube page...

Just a note....

2006-10-03T01:04:00.000-07:00

I'm writing the script for my next feature and storyboarding the final sequence for "We are the Strange" as well as working on the music for the final sequence...I need to stay busy creating or...ummm.... I kinda go insane... I figured that out this week....end of note.

Sinking feeling...

2006-10-02T05:55:00.000-07:00

It seems I felt a lot better about everything earlier in production... Like the film... and life... maybe I've been in the same place for too long? I spent 4 or 5 hours trying to come up with a design for the new website for the film but nothing jumped out at me... I feel pretty crappy... Maybe I need some new comic books or something to motivate me... Yeh whatever... Slamdance film festival submission is next... will send that out in the next 2 weeks...Hmmm maybe I need a new Gameboy game? Something is wrong and I need to fix it if I am too finish everything up in the next 2 months...Ahhhhh... This SUX.

Get your "We are the Strange" poster here!

2006-10-01T04:28:00.000-07:00

Click this LINK for the mega_official "We are the Strange" poster. This is the first step in the hella re-branding phase...new site and trailer to follow to make my animated narrative madness more comprehensible to like..ummm....more humans.

Things are looking up

2006-09-27T17:59:00.000-07:00

Recently a friend sent me a link to this video and it cheered me up... Yeh ROCK N ROLL!!!

Sick of the same old thang

2006-09-27T04:51:00.000-07:00

So I'm kinda taking this week off production so I can run laps and eat udon noodles and do the things that make me not feel like setting myself on fire... Its 4:46am and I'm re-rigging models for the final showdown... I had originally rigged these models with Cinema 4d's Mocca module and now I'm redoing them using Cactus Dan's tools because Cactus Dan rules... So I got to the hands then got distracted... I'm on semi holiday so I can do whatever I want... yeh I'm gonna eat another yogurt!!! I earned it kicking out 77 minutes of animation in 20 months..thats 3.85 minutes per month...hmmm... Yeh in the next week I'm supposed to have a new site, trailer, poster and press kit online... but tonight I'm just screwin around...

A digital filmmakers/animators life

2006-09-23T18:49:00.000-07:00

Its not an exciting life... another Saturday evening and its 71' outside... and I'm indoors by myself transferring files from one 250gb drive to a 400gb drive because Windows corrupted the 250's directory or something and it wont recognize it and its causing BSOD's.... So I went to Fry's with my friend Luis and got a 400gb drive and a case... and since my PC won't recognize its own internal drive because Microsoft Windows XP is a piece of fucking garbage I put the 250 from the Windows box into an external case and plugged it into my Macbook Pro...surprise! Surprise! The Macbook Pro recognizes the drive fine and it doesnt crash... Sooooo I have the 250gb with the corrupt windows whatever plugged into my Macbook pro along with the new 400gb drive and I'm copying all my files from the 250 to the 400... then I'll have to reformat the 250gb drive and put it back in the Windows box then I'll have to copy all the files from the 400gb back onto it...all this because Windows decided to fuck the drive randomly... Yeh so this is my exciting life...indoors copying files when its nice outside... So yeh a truly independent filmmaker/animator can't have a life... Wait yeh its like when D in Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust is talking to that annoying blonde chick and he's like I'm a dunpeal I don't get to have a life...not like you... So Yeh I'm exactly like that... half human half undead creature of the night with muthafucking sata cables shootin out my eyeballs like undulating anime tenacles... I'll get you for this Ballmer! Keep wooing...yeh keep wooing...

Noise Inc

2006-09-23T04:55:00.000-07:00

Noise Inc is they're name and they make some ILL sounds...

I was lucky enough to have Noise Inc do sound design for "We are the Strange"... We've never met in person so we collaborated totally online... They made some really powerful unique stuff... I was super excited every time they sent me a new sequence...

You can see a "We are the Strange/Noise Inc" trailer on their site here...

Noise Inc

Look out for a Noise Inc music video by M dot Strange in the future...

Film fest submission #1

2006-09-22T16:33:00.000-07:00

So today after a fucking nightmare week including a dead hard drive on my workstation,and a blackout that lasted 12 hours while I was trying to create a DVD of the film... Well yeh this week sucked BUT I didn't give up... I burned the midnight like...yogurt and created a temp audio mix of the film... put together a little DVD in iDVD payed my $75 late entry fee and overnighted "We are the strange" to the Sundance film festival...

Recently various people have told me that I really don't have any chance of being accepted because I don't have an agent or a publicist or whatever... Because I'm just some unknown dude working away in a back bedroom with no official representation... Ah I really don't care what happens because I know I have an awesome film... If it comes down to the quality of the films and not anything politrickal than "We are the Strange" will get accepted... but ah thats not the way the world works ay... Whatever the case all you can do it try and I did...

It's just an odd feeling... looking down at a nondescript plastic DVD case and knowing that 3 years of your life are in there... all your time, and energy...blood, sweat, tears, coffee and red wine...

No time for bullshit though I gotta umm... finish the last 6 minutes of the FILM!!! I sent a work in progress that is missing the finale... I sent a 77 minute version and the final will be around 84...Ok I'm gonna go eat than revise the storyboards for sequence 11... Back to animating ! Yeh!! Yeh if anybody wants to mix the audio for the film contact me! All the premixes are prepared except for the foley stuff which I have to do for 2/3's of the film... Ughhhh it never fucking ends!!!!

No one says it like Urine.

2006-09-18T20:10:00.000-07:00

PTSD from BSOD's

2006-09-11T12:08:00.000-07:00

So now I've finished editing and mixing the music and the dialog... So I have the whole film with the dialog and the music now... You would think that I would be excited or something... nah... since I became this jaded muthafucker nothing really excites me... It kinda SUX... if I was excited right now I would have the energy I need to jump into the foley/hard effects work but I'm just like not excited... I think I'm stir crazy... After spending so much time in the same place for this film I think I am finally losing my patience... You run into so many technical problems that slow you down during the course of production you have to become jaded to deal with it or it really kills your morale, at least thats what I did...and now when all my gear is working fine I'm still numb... Its like everytime I got on a good roll animating or compositing something broke....just when I was getting all optimistic and excited a hard drive would die or Windows would give me a BSOD and corrupt a project file or something like that... When that stuff happens you really want to bury your head in the sand or freak out or something... which you might do unless you become jaded like I did... So I would be on a good roll then a puppet leg would snap off in the middle of a shot, since I was all numb I would just calmly take the puppet apart and rebuild whatever needed rebuilding and move on to some other work... Ah maybe I'm getting these feelings because of a lack of feedback... I know its my fault, I didn't have time to build a nice website or cut an appropriate trailer so no one has really noticed my film... It's not packaged correctly so I'm not getting any feedback on it...So maybe I am starting to hate it, like I just want to get it over with and move on... I've been working on the outline for my next feature film and I'm really excited about it... Well whatever my problem is I need to resolve it fast... I really wish I had a twin brother that knew everything I do so he could do the other things I need to do right now while I'm working on the sound...I guess I'll have to wait to build a cyborg clone of myself... I HATE TO WAIT.

You don't know until you try...

2006-09-05T06:18:00.000-07:00

There comes a time with creative projects when you just need to let go...After you've done the absolute best you can do its time to let the work fly away on its own... You have to stop holding its hand and just let it be...It's a terrifying moment but if you don't do it you don't know what kind of wings it may have and how far it may fly... You could keep it locked in a cage, where its "safe"...Safe from what? Failure? Be bold and allow your creations to be as well... A pet bird is safe sitting in its cage as a prisoner... what defines a bird...what makes it special...yeh it can fly so by not letting a bird fly your denying its essence...Films are not for personal enjoyment, their meant to be shared with others... If you set a pet bird free, yeh it might get killed 2 minutes after leaving the "safety" of its cage but in that moment the bird was happy, at least it got a chance to fly for a little bit... It's better to take chances and die doing what you love then live for an eternity in safety... So yeh I took that photo of that fledgling, it was killed by a cat when it was learning to fly most likely...the mother and father birds were chirping around the yard searching for the rest of the day...poor little bird... but at least it left the nest and tried to fly...

I'll be finishing the sound for the film and sending it out to some festivals in 2 weeks... how far can it fly on its own??? I guess I'll find out soon enough...

The sincerest form of flattery

2006-09-03T05:50:00.001-07:00

Originality is not a flea market in which you can pick and choose what items you wish to use as your own... Individuality is not assuming others postures and poses when they aren't looking calling attention to yourself as an "individual" Passion is not wanting... Passion is not a good idea... Passion is not a pose... Passion is a battle that you fight on your own because you have to, it can not be lent nor borrowed...It cannot be generated, manufactured, or coerced by drugs and/or alcohol... If you don't have it you have nothing to say to the world so keep your mouth shut, don't open your mouth and attempt to speak through the arts just because you want attention, because you want to be noticed, because you think...think....think that your suited for the arts...Think that your a leader when your really just a follower...Too many people are talkin real loud through the arts and saying a whole lot of fucking nothing... Transparent muthafuckers...I see right through you. In the near future I will obtain a magnifying glass and with the help of the new sunlight I shall burn a hole in you...stare through to the other side and realize there wasn't any more to you than just a playing card in my hand that I picked up on the side of the road... 52 pickup coming soon... I sacrifice.

Hmmm what an odd blog entry? I wonder what brought that on? I'm M dot Strange so I don't need a reason... Music mix backup's finished...Now to create some soundscapes...

Music mix done

2006-09-03T04:44:00.000-07:00

So I'm bouncing the final music mix for the film out of Nuendo right now... Then I'll burn a backup copy onto DVD-R... The soundtrack features chiptune, industrial, sci-fi hiphop, noise, and classical music... I give my thanks to all the peeps from 2a03.org who contributed tracks... you totally saved the soundtrack! The film really needed your songs and they worked out great... I'll list the music credits and the like after I've sent this version of the film out to a few fests... Oh yeh and thanks to Noboru Morishige for playing some great violin for the soundtrack...I'm extremely lucky to have been able to get such an accomplished musician to work on the film... and mega thanks to Peter of Noise.Inc for lending WATS his power... Well now I have to mix the dialog... its a good thing there's not much... then after I bounce the dialog... I'll fill in the rest of the sound design/foley... Please Nuendo, please be good to me the next 2 weeks...

"Director" of Aliens vs. Predator 2 is a real director!

2006-08-27T10:39:00.000-07:00

So on cgsociety some real professional filmmaker commented on the old thread wherein I was telling all the lame asses there how much ass they really suck... And this guy posted whose all high and mighty cause he's directing Aliens vs Predator 2... Well I tried to reply but apparently they have censored me because it won't allow me to reply to the thread... Ya see just like in the real world... when you speak out against the bloated passionless sheeple in control they try to take away your voice... I'll post my reply here since I was censored there...

---------------------------
My response to the great "Colin Strause", director of Aliens vs. Predator 2... Yes another video game based sequel cinematic gem from your friends in Hollywood...

--------
He said::::: Man, and I thought I was the biggest asshole on this site...guess not. But what do I know, I'm just a [b]feature film director[/b]. :banghead: Look that one up on IMDB while you think about how not to be such a jackass to everyone on this site. Just because some people lack experience doesn't mean their opinions mean any more or less than yours.

**EDIT** I've never seen someone so high on thier own shit before than reading that guys site. A piece of advice, referring to yourself in the third person and claiming to have "invented" a whole new type of animation makes you look like a joke. You should keep that "Brother Quay meets AfterEffects" ego in check son.)))))))

I said::::

Talk about piles of horseshit... Your calling AVP 2: Alien vs. Predator 2 a feature film?!! Ha ha ha... You had to wait till you were THIRTY to do a feature and its AVP 2: Alien vs. Predator 2?!! Haha thats pathetic! What will you do next Final Destination 4? I'm sorry if you really are....Hey your gonna be the next McG in no time! Yeh I looked you up on IMdb and I snickered... yeh your gonna make AVP 2: Alien vs. Predator 2 the next great narrative from all your experience doing visual fx, making-of's and music videos... YOU are why Hollywood SUX! Keep up the great work big guy! And I assume you are doing absolutely everything by yourself for the Aliens vs Predators 2 right? No you don't have the ability! So compared to M dot Strange your just a weakling! And yes I am the biggest asshole on this site why? Because I speak my mind and tell the truth... the truth hurts doesn't it champ? Your just jealous because you had to wait all this time to direct a feature and its a sequel to a horrible video game movie.... AND I'm younger than you and I went on and made something unique and powerful on my own! haha! AVP 2: Alien vs. Predator 2!!! So when does that come out? I guarantee that your film will be forgotten 3 days after release and mine will be written into the history books... You can have your hollywood, your million dollar budgets and fancy visual fx and I'll still make a better film with nothing... Oh I see you used After effects in an attempt to insult me...OOOH! Your probably a big macho FLAMER right? And I'm not saying you are a blatant homosexual no... I totally mean you use a Flame system or something really fancy and I'm just a pathetic little After Effects user... Yeh when I grow up I wanna be like you and use your tools cause your the real deal...haha

Some other loser wrote:::not to speak about the layout of his site, hahaha! what a joke... Anyway, considering the fact that everybody ignores that pile of horse shit for now we could continue with the 2min. film club."

I respond::: Everybody huh? Yeh thats right you mindless sheep I am not like you...You are everybody and I am an individual...You hate me so don't you?... What does the layout of a site have to do with a filmmakers ability? oh oh I see your demoralizing me like cool forum guys do... I see... I'm feeling really bad right now... yeh I'm probably like crying because some meaningless human named Rickmeister talked bad about my website...OMG I want to die!!! Hahaha

You both can now bow before me, bow before your lord M dot Strange! The one and only directing overlord! Muahahahaha!

How could I forget?!

2006-08-27T04:34:00.000-07:00

Recently I've been nitpicking over very minor technical issues in the film... De-essing individual consonants while I'm editing dialog and worrying about super specific things... things that won't matter to like %99 of the people who see the film.... I keep forgetting... I'm not making the film to please audio engineers or visual fx artists or compositors or other filmmakers... I'm making the film for the people and the people don't care about these things...So I need to stop screwing around and move full steam ahead! Yeh like I forgot that I don't care what people think! Haha what the hell have I been doing the past week?! Thanks to the editor Chay for knocking the cobwebs outta my brain... back to Nuendo...

Podcast interview...

2006-08-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

If you want to listen to the interview I did with the dudes over at Digital Production Buzz check it out here...

Interview Link

I thought I was gonna do this other phone interview today but the guy hasn't called yet and I'm going to sleep... last night was rough too... I had to do a little stop motion which I haven't done for over a month... I procrastinated for awhile before I actually got it done...I felt pretty crappy cause I really had to force my self to do it... probably just creative inversion as Todd from The Accidental Creative podcast would say... yeh...

Psycho killers up in my Foley

2006-08-22T05:17:00.000-07:00

So me and Sean Boyles were recording foley stuff in my backyard at 3am when our sparkler session was interrupted by these sounds...

Mp3 LINK

If you were the psycho killer on this recording please wait till the morning to terrorize cause I have to wait till the middle of the night to record because its so noisy around here... thank you for understanding and drive safe.

mdot Snakes on a plane review

2006-08-20T03:04:00.000-07:00

So I just came back from watching snakes on a plane at a midnight showing... It reminded me of the midnight movie nights I used to attend at the Nuart in Santa Monica... people yelling at the screen, throwing stuff, laughing a lot and having a good time with a really bad movie... Hollywood has been making bad movies for a long time...they weren't doing it on purpose mind you, they were just churning out crap because thats what they do best... Snakes on a Plane was awesome and refreshing because it didn't take itself seriously, it was supposed to be bad...its Hollywood satirizing itself... I laughed a lot and had a good time and my favorite part was the "Muthafuckin snakes on this muthafuckin plane.." part... Yeh Hollywood hopefully you learned something from this... Making bad movies on purpose plays itself out a lot better than making bad movies on accident... It got me thinking about my friend Jay Koiwa... He was involved with two of the funniest "bad on purpose" films that I have ever seen "Night Patrol" and "Blood Diner" which were made in the 80's... Jay is a master of these type of comedies... I hope he gets a chance to do it again... I've made my share of horrible movies on purpose as well... If you snoop around youtube you might find clips from a few...

LEad actor revealed!!!

2006-08-18T01:02:00.000-07:00

Today I recorded the actor playing one of the main characters in the film "Rain"... he is played by the mega_fresh_Cray_Z artist David Choe... If you don't know who he is check out his site...

davidchoe.com LINK

He did an awesome job voicing the part and actually made the character funnier and a lot cooler than I had imagined... Some of Dave's art is actually featured in the ending of the film as well... I am really lucky to have such talented friends... I called him at 2am and we recorded at 3pm... I'm really excited to go back and listen to it... now I just have to record one more character then its all sound design and mixing till the deadline I have set which is September 7th...

Today I did a phone interview for the "Digital Production Buzz" podcast... you can listen to it here...

LINK

Voice actors are cast...

2006-08-17T07:14:00.000-07:00

So this morning at 2am I filled the last remaining voice acting spot which I will record at 3pm today...Quick turnaround ay?! So now I don't have to worry about doing all the voices myself... I'm only doing one voice now... Wanna hear the type of voices I whip up when I make a 7 minute comedy animation in 2 days? Check this out...Myself, Sean Boyles, and Joe Morishige did this in 2 days last year...

The trutH hurts DAMN!

2006-08-14T07:26:00.001-07:00

So yeh if you remember a few weeks ago I wrote about some kid trying to rip off ideas from my film to make his own on these cgsociety forums I used to frequent... Well I spoke the truth and accused him of trying to copy my ideas and he denied it and one of the "forum leader" admin guys tried to protect the lame ass from me as I started to get a bit sarcastic with the punk... So then just now as I am bored rendering I accidentaly popped onto the cgsociety "cinematography and directing forum" and the newest post was by the "Forum leader" who sided with that ripoff kid... His post was so pathetic I HAD to reply...heh heh...plus I'm bored... So here's the guys post with my reply following....

------------------------------------

The directing "Forum leader" guy:::::

"One of the ideas I had for a future 2 minute film club, is to do character profiles of members (or yourself in your area.

What do you guys think?
-R"

M dot Strange reply::::::

Sounds like a pretty lame idea to me... Why would anybody besides the members here want to watch something like that? Well... they wouldn't... Are you out to make good short films or are you out to pat other cgsociety members on the back? A short film like that wouldn't be interesting to anyone outside these forums and there is no drama in it...If you want to make something good try original narrative fiction... No remakes, no fanfilms, no character profiles of other members... Be creative! Thats the job of a supposed "artist"... So I think it is a horrible idea, you would just be wasting the time of the members involved... It would do nothing to sharpen their storytelling skills so it is pointless in my opinion... but what do I know I just made an original narrative animated feature film by myself that is generating interest all over the world and your an admin of some forum... Maybe your right? Your an admin after all! And everybody knows their always right! Haha

God! I should be the admin here then people would really do some cool stuff with my help.... What are you doing in the Directing forum anyway Ortiz? What experience do you have? I'm sure it pales in comparison to my experience... I've made over 70 live action and animated short films, and my feature animated film "We are the Strange" will cause you to krap your pants!

If you want me M dot Strange to be an admin here and spearhead some really interesting worthwhile narrative projects that will hone your filmmaking skills please contact the cgsociety staff and tell them you want a real filmmaker to be an admin here in the "directing" section...

Check my stuff out I'm the real deal and with my help this place will start turning out good films...

---------------------

Heh heh I laughed for like 5 minutes after I posted that...haha... I can be so pompous sometimes...haha...AWESOME.

redoing what I am

2006-08-14T04:15:00.000-07:00

So I'm still redoing shots that had mistakes in them or just look crappy... The first stopmo/3d stuff in the film kinda kicked my arse compositing-wise.... there's a few shots that have a bunch of noise in the shadows... that shit is unacceptable... I comped those shots before I got Mark Christiansen's AE book... I got so much better after I read his book... Also there are some cutaways that are just stills with a simple push in or out on them done in AE and they look frozen in time because I didn't put any grain on them so I have to add some grain to those shots too...like 16 of them... Actually my friend Tristan told me to add grain to the stills months ago to give them life... So yeh I'm gonna do that now... I've got 20 shots to redo in total now... I hope I can find their project files because early in the production I didn't have a very good organizational plan either, yeh I was just all screwed up!!! Haha... Well thats the hardest part of the project...the beginning...its awkward and horrifying but if you stick with it long enough and plow through the doubts you'll be alright... Ok my workstation is powered up and connected to all network drives so I'm back to work....

I'm on Digital Production Buzz 8_17_06

2006-08-12T05:13:00.000-07:00

So I was lucky enough to get some time on my favorite podcast show "Digital Production Buzz".... I'll be a guest on the show this Thursday, you can listen live but you should just subscribe to it because its a great weekly show...

Here's a link to the show

I always look forward to the show... The host Philip Hodgetts is a sharp guy and his commentary on the future of intellectual property rights and other often neglected super important subject matter relevant to independent media creators is right on... The cohost Michael Horton runs the Los Angeles Final Cut Pro User Group...when I lived in L.A. I would attend the meetings whenever I could as they were always educational and/or inspiring...

Tonight I'm just redoing and re-rendering shots that we flagged during the screening last week... I'm working while watching films... Tonight I watched Howl's moving castle, Superman II, Visions of Light, The Eraserhead Stories, and Samurai Wolf I...with my favorite parts of Madmax thrown in as well... I sure watched a lot of films tonight??!! Yeh well I didn't get to go outside today so I had to escape the monotony somehow... Its only 5:19am and I'm out of movies to watch... I could always watch Samurai Wolf II... Hideo Gosha was such an awesome director....wow.....

Test screening

2006-08-11T04:53:00.000-07:00

So last night about 1:30am we screened "We are the Strange" in a local theater for myself, the editor, the production illustator and two people not in the crew... Its the second time we watched the whole thing at once but the first time on a big screen... At first I thought that things would show up on the big screen that I didn't see before...like mistakes! But after watching everything a bazillion times I know where all the mistakes are and I've been fixing and rerendering them the past week and I will continue to do that for another week before getting into the heavy sound design, music composition, and mixing... Well I have most of the music already... I just have to figure out where it works best... I got an awesome violin score from Noboru Morishige for the em0 parts of the film, the mega_evil powerful sounds of Noise.inc for the evil parts and I'll fill in the rest... Yeh I used to be a music type...I made a bunch of albums for no reason the past 6 years no one ever heard them but I've got plenty of practice... My music is kinda like my animation... Strange and hard to categorize, intense and unsettling, familiar yet mondo bizarro... These tracks aren't in the film...just somethin from 2002...Click the link to take a listen...

Mp3 Link

Mp3 LINK

Nothing on the soundtrack will be like this unless I really feel like freaking people out...

M dot Strange and the World's Toughest Powerbook

2006-08-09T20:21:00.000-07:00

Here is a crappy comic I made based on a true story... click the link below...

M dot Strange and the World's Toughest Powerbook

I am not a sick man

2006-08-08T18:50:00.000-07:00

Working alone with little dolls in the dark does something to you after awhile... yeh it kinda...makes you...crazy...

Get your 15 minutes of strange!

2006-08-06T05:03:00.000-07:00

I need some real human extra's for the film so go HERE if youre interested...

Really NOT GETTING IT! haha

2006-08-03T22:27:00.000-07:00

So a few weeks ago I posted about some 20 year old kid in Switzerland who was grazing ideas from my site until I changed it... Well he has a team of really bright people who apparently are very perceptive and thoroughly understand the art of satire... They have a thread going on cgsociety for their groundbreaking project... I stumbled upon it through my site referrer logs... One of the chaps found my youtube making of vids and had this to say...

"softdistortion" wrote:
------------------------
laugh while you can...this guy has some killer tech that's gonna slay the industry check it out you won't believe your eyes
He's got guts to put this stuff up. It's almost funny.
If it was a parody it would be funny.
------------------------

If it was a parody it would be funny?! Wait a minute! It sincerely frightens me that there are people out there in the world who do not have the socio-cognitive intelligence to figure out that all of my youtube video's ARE PARODIES!!! I'm glad I quit going to cgsociety.com because it appears there are more simpletons like this fellow on that site and they have banded together!? They may have technical intelligence that allows them to utilize their 3d software... but they are severely inadequate when it comes to social intelligence... As Mr. T would say... I pity the fools...

Digital couture

2006-08-02T17:02:00.000-07:00

So next week this electronic art festival comes into the town where I live... here's a description of it from the official site...

"The ZeroOne San Jose Festival will transform San Jose into the North American epicenter for the intersection of art and digital culture by showcasing the world's most innovative contemporary artists."

Yeh what a bunch of shit... Being the psychopath h8ter than I am I can't help but abhor this zerofun thing... Here's more fluff from the site...

"There are stories captured and re-told on cell phones(URBANtells, James Rouvelle, Joe Reinsel, Steve Bradley; Saint Joe, John Klima; [murmur] in San Jose, Shawn Micallef) and the chance for festival attendees to create or document their own stories - fictional or real (Traffic Island Disks, Saul Albert; Drift Relay, Christina Ray; San Jose Instant Film Festival, Andrea Moed). You can become a virtual character and insert yourself into a live game (SimVeillance: San Jose, Rainey Straus; The New West, Ludica) or play within a life size video game with your head replaced by that of an animal (Animalia, Angela Main and Caroline McCaw), or speak to live bacteria to change their DNA and consequently their appearance (Cell Phone, Michelle Glaser). Try taking a sea voyage from Japan to the U.S. by entering a life size environment to travel through mythical and actual places (Travels of Mariko Horo, Tamiko Thiel). You can even see yourself as a series of images and ripples through an abstracted topography of the Interactive Cafe (Pasts and Presents, Judith Donath), get real-time air quality data from pigeons (PigeonBlog, Beatriz Da Costa), or take a peak into tomorrow from where you are now. (Light From Tomorrow, Thomson & Craighead)."

Here's my take on it... This is all just a big distraction, its utilizing technology as a crutch and a cloak to hide the fact that comtemporary artists suck and lack the ability to construct a comprehensible narrative or create anything of worth with traditional materials...like a paint brush or a pencil... The audience, the public... they want stories and art so impressive they can't say "I could do that"..... and what are these zero people doing? Waving a laser pointer in their face... a laser pointer that like oscillates at the same rate as a human kidney...a kidney from one of these shivering artsts cause I'm about to punch them in it for sucking horrible ass and hiding behind their conceptual bullshit! Heh heh

Digital culture? Whats that? Is that walking around staring at your cell phone like an idiot with one of those star trek communicators in your ear? Is digital culture checking your myspace page 30 times a day and removing the comments that accuse you of being fat? Oh I get it... Digital culture is like your life in Second Life... You started a second life so you could be the person your too afraid to be in your first life... I get it... Why couldn't they just have held this festival thing in Second Life? Thats where these people belong! Get them off my streets and back into their Matrix pods!

We're out here and there...

2006-08-01T05:29:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been trading post_production info with one half of the two person crew creating "Wombok Forest" an independent stop motion feature film being produced in Australia... check out their site HERE

I've been following their production as I've been working away at mine... it's nice to know someone else is slaving away in dark rooms trying to realize their dreams as well... I'm hoping our films will be able to play on a double bill in a theater some day... How many more independent animated features are in production right now? If you know of any others please leave a link in the comments, thanks... And good luck Miles and Jules with "Wombok Forest"

Where does it count?

2006-07-31T00:01:00.000-07:00

Traditionally if you were an independent filmmaker and were seeking a distribution deal for your film you'd send it off to same fancy festival and hope the right people see it and want to strike up a deal... Now we have this Intreenet thang... What exactly does it change? Is some distributor going to see your trailer and blinged out stuff on your site and offer you a distribution deal based on that? I don't think so... they still have to see the entire film somewhere... So how do you deal with that? I guess if you generate an insane amount of buzz online like the Blair Witch Project did a distributor might snap you up... but thats very very rare... Film fans are especially hip to the gimmicks used by the big guys to promote their films online these days... They've been trying to replicate the Blair Witch phenomenon for years now but it hasn't happened... I've spent a fair amount of energy coming up with my gimmicky online promotion scheme for "We are the Strange" but I haven't put it in action yet... I'm still busy finishing up the film... I might just focus on the old skool festival route and leave the online marketing gimmicks alone... The Blair Witch Project was more of a phenomenon than a film which is why it was so successful, it became bigger than just being a film... Hmmm... I guess its worth a shot... any buzz you have going into a festival can't hurt... I guess I'll try but I won't be all em0 about it if it fails...

Screw-on? NO! Rip-OFF!!

2006-07-29T20:45:00.000-07:00

To the left is an image from a "new" Tv show called "The amazing screw-on head" Being a huge fan of Yukito Kishiro's "Battle Angel Alita" series I instantly recognized this as a blatant copy from Battle Angel #5 which was published in 1996... The "Amazing screw on head" show is based on a Mike Magnolia whatever comic from 2002...Hmmm you be the judge...Here are some images from Battle Angel #5 from 1996.. It seems to me someone else was reading Battle Angel as well and decided to rip it off... Also the MTV asia show "Codehunters" steals from BAttle Angel Alita... You rip-off bastards are gonna rot as their is no escape!!! I vow to punch all these robbin muthafuckers in they face Kishiro-san!!!

Buy this magazine and learn all my secrets!!!

2006-07-29T20:15:00.000-07:00

Its the latest issue of the Cinema 4d magazine "3d attack" Here's a LINK to their site, you can find it in the "Shop"...its only like 4 bucks and you'll learn my horrible dark secrets!!!

Were you in the bushes behind the tennis court?

2006-07-29T01:51:00.000-07:00

If you were the person who was in the dark behind those tennis courts while I rode my bike in circles at that park just now at 1:30am please there's no need to yell my name just email me or comment on this blog or something.. cause I'm not going in those bushes!!... I wonder who it was?

Another EXCITING FRIDAY NIGHT!!!

2006-07-29T00:12:00.000-07:00

Do you want to know what M dot Strange does on Friday nights?

He's hunched over an old HP box replacing dead drives and reinstalling windows cause the boot drive died on his file server again... He's sweating and cussing cause Windows keeps trying to boot off the floppy drive... He's contemplating kicking in his drawer again because this HP box just keeps beeping when he presses F1 and he can't reinstall windows... and then right when it seems like Windows is going install it says that there are no hard drives installed and it restarts again... FAWK!!! I'll get you for this Gates! And you red wooing bloated bastard Balmer! Oh yeh youre gonna pay for this....

COmpletion Date

2006-07-28T01:37:00.000-07:00

I saw some people posting on various message boards wondering when "We are the Strange" will be completed...

75 minutes of the films 80 minutes are finished... So it is %94 done... It will be completed by October 31st 2006 at the latest... I'm working on it RIGHT NOW with my insane audio homieZ Noise.Inc... Actually right now I'm compositing shot 485b1 while listening to "Spare a match" by Ace RizzLE

I am sending a W.I.P. cut to Sundance and a number of other festivals in September...

So it will be in film festivals early 2007... So check back at my site for info then...

BUT I have several looney secret plans that I will enact from now till then that will be super fun and exciting, and I will be adding new "We are the Strange" related content on the site during that time as well...

In case you were wondering... I am not fake... I am a real person not under contract from any studio... I am not some studios P.R. job... I have absolutely nothing to do with mainsteam media... I am a guy in some back bedroom filled with computers and dolls creating the epic madness that plays out in my head everynight... Lucky for you I've become obsessed with perfecting narrative structure and creating compelling characters SO WE ARE THE STRANGE IS NOT JUST "TRIPPY" VISUALS the visuals are just icing on the cake... Hopefully people will be able to look past them and enjoy the story inside... but if you want to get wasted and watch it 10 times in a row don't blame me if you become legally insane...

Strolling through the hood

2006-07-27T06:19:00.000-07:00

So its kinda odd these days that as a filmmaker I can look through the access logs for wearethestrange.com and find the sites that are linking to mine and textually interact with the people saying good or bad things about the film... or the little they know about the film from the information currently on the site... I wonder how this will change things? The blogosphere is a relatively small neighborhood because of all the syndication with rss feeds and the like... Its easy to find what your looking for... And its easy for me to send a message to someone 2 minutes after they've written something about my film... As a filmmaker seeking to establish my Strange brand is this to my advantage or vice versa? Only time will tell... Something tells me its a waste of time and I should just concentrate on getting the film ready for the fests... But when it comes to my work I am a control freak and I don't know when to stop... I guess I just try to direct everything!!! Haha... Well if you can't even direct your own personal life don't expect to be able to direct a film... as for me... Somebody hit me on the nose with a newspaper...BAD M DOT STRANGE DON'T TRY TO DIRECT THE WHOLE INTERNET!!! BAD!!!! Get back to compositing shot 484o now!!!! Look there's fire in the shot oooh!!!

Heh from what I've seen around the net people don't think my film has any purpose...any story...any depth...heh heh they are sure gonna be in for a surprise... I've spent MORE time and energy developing the story and characters than I have with the look of the film... Its like the amount of energy I spent on the visuals is something like a flick of the wrist and the energy I spent on the narrative is like a punch in the face to all the naysayers... go ahead and hate, you'll just look like a bigger fool when it all comes out...

And why doubt me anyway? I'm nobody... I'm the underdog... the dark horse... I'm not supposed to win... So isn't questioning the integrity of my film a waste of time?... Its not supposed to be good because I'm just some unknown guy in a bedroom working alone with no money so aren't they just stating the obvious? An animated feature film made by one person? Its gotta be horrible... Its got to be lacking in something... Well the visuals look ok so there must be no story.... right? Heh heh... Some of the commentary I read on my film was by a "filmmaker"...heh heh... He's just projecting his own limitations and insecurities on me and my film... It's very easy to understand for someone with the power of E_vile on their side like me... Well I better finish comping this last shot so I can put the nights work on to render and go to sleep...

Oh yeh I emailed Jimmy Urine and offerred to do a music video for them just because... So if you see him around please let him know M dot Strange will wield the Str8nime sword in the name of MSI fo FREE....

If anybody reading this wants to see "We are the Strange"

2006-07-27T02:13:00.000-07:00

Send me the info for a major film festival in your area... I will enter it and get accepted of course, unless the screening committee hates innovative awesome new films with a compelling story and awesome visuals... yeh so that shouldn't be a problem...So yeh get me the fest info then you'll be able to see the film on the big screen... I know I'm doing Sundance, Seattle, and Cinequest for sure... Sundance because its the fanciest festival and I like attention... Seattle because my friend Spencer lives there and he'll be a friend till the end... and Cinequest because its here in San Jose where I live and I had a short in it last year and the people were pretty nice... Yeh I'm looking for fests to enter in Japan, Australia, Eastern Europe, and somewhere on the east coast... Mega_thanks!!!

Muaha..ha..ha..ha...ha...like...haaaaaa

2006-07-26T18:21:00.000-07:00

Very soon I will launch a plan to collect your souls! You will willingly give your soul to me, M dot Strange and I will launch it into the flickering flames of doom!!!! Watch wearethestrange.com for details coming soon... Muahhahahaha... I promise that your life will never be the same after the "event".... muahahahaha...I am pure E_vile!!!... Now I better go ride my evil bike down the evil street before I get evil fat and like never fit in my evil clothes of evilality and all that...

Mediocre minds

2006-07-24T05:36:00.000-07:00

Albert Einstein said "Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly."

So as of now I have quit another online art related forum... No matter where I go I always encounter these mediocre minds who call me names like jerk and idiot... say that I have a bad attitude and try to demean my work..... the mediocre minds band together and try to gang up on me... what is so odd is that I am just a passionate artist... it is so alien to them that it makes them uncomfortable... they call themselves "artists" but when they meet a real one they turn into a mindless mob and try to run him out of town... I gladly leave their towns... I'll continue to create and wander into new towns... but I know that I will never find one that I fit into... that doesn't bother me... A few people can actually see me as I really am but most people just don't get it... mediocre minds...ah what a bore...they just keep staring at my mismatched soX, bewildered... Yeh and the tons of mega_lame_arses fillin up these forums with textual masturbation hating on me cause I'm like the real deal... Yeh when I get the time its all about tracing I.P.'s....knocking on doors and punching muthafuckers in their shit... Yeh thats a lot more effective than a private message :)

The very first "Wats" BITER!!!!

2006-07-22T20:16:00.000-07:00

So I found this post on cgsociety wherein some guy was trying to get people together to make an "Independent animated film".... I looked over his premise and it seemed very familiar... I had little descriptions for all the characters and locations for my film on my site... and it seems this guy is trying to borrow it....Well just look at the title...

{{{Strange day

Vanessa was a nice, pretty, young girl who used to go to the forest }}}}

So it has the name "Strange" in the title... and there's a girl in a forest... K...my film is called "We are the strange" and there is a girl in a forest...

{{{looking at her reflection in the stream}}}

Hmmm and in my film the girl in the forest sits and looks in a mirror pool...

{{{{ She looks around and sees a boy by the ledge holding a note.
She goes to the boy and asks him what he’s doing; he says “nothing….” Vanessa asks “what’s that note?” the boy replies, “It’s my suicide note because you know what why bother?” }}}}

So in my film there's a boy on a cliff, which is very close to a "ledge" and in the description of the cliff on my site I said "its where people go who have lost all hope and no longer want to live" So you see its getting very familiar... Oh yeh the guy even had the nerve to add a circle C to his stolen ideas...

{{{The End © Olivier Archer 2006}}}

So since I am very vengeful and I am always looking for opportunities to insult people...I replied to his post with this...

------------------------

"STRANGE days"? Hmmmm....My film is called "We are the Strange"

A pretty girl in a forest looking at her reflection? Hmmmm thats just like my film and I did write that in the character description that was on my site....

A boy on a ledge who doesn't want to go on living...Hmmmm thats just like my film except he's on a cliff...must be a conincidence....

Seems familiar somehow?

Hey wait.... I wonder.... you probably visited my site.... It seems someone from Switzerland downloaded 48 megs of info from my site according to the logs...

Switzerlandch8142948.31 MB
So you visited my site and read my original ideas then you probably got really high and did your em0 confessional podcast and believed the ideas to be your own...

M dot Strange is here to say that there not... Please have some shame and come up with your own ideas or I WILL send a member from the Cult of Strange to your current whereabouts to perform the appropriate ritual. THERE IS NO ESCAPE HUMAN.

Drive safe,

M dot Strange
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So then I took the character and location from my site and replaced it with this...

http://www.wearethestrange.com/inner/characters.html

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Then the loser saw it and sent me this private message...

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http://www.wearethestrange.com/inner/characters.html

what exactly is your problem? thats pretty immature of you don't you think?

I didn't steal -your- story and from what i've seen on your site my movie will be nothing like yours anyways, I can prove that my story was written in april 2004.

HEre is my reply...

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Oh yeh right....must just be a coincidence? The gods of art will never forgive you for such a thing and neither will I... Unfathomable despair is on its way to plague your meat jacket and obviously limited mental faculties... Thats right kid... I just insulted you... Now you have something to whine about on your Confessional podcast! HAhaha... I looked at your site...all your stuff is very low quality and pretty awful...maybe try a new hobby like skydiving without a parachute :)

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Then he responded with this...

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Hey man, your message was pretty amusing, I enjoy reading it to some people, then we had a good laugh afterwards

But get over yourself, please.

Whats insulting me going to solve? Nothing and infact it's petty, It shows your lack of character and takes away from your credibility.

I know for a fact that I did not steal anything from your site, Infact I don't think I nor anyone would ever want too, you have nothing to be worried about there.

If I really stole anything from your site please get your lawyer then we'll talk, we could also discuss all the slandering you've done against me and the personal attacks.

You have obviously missed the point of the confessional podcast, thats pretty sad because its a very simple concept.

If all my stuff is low quality then why was one of my images published in expose? Shall I tell the CG Society that their books are awful? you're being very petty again.

I'll prove when my story was made as soon as you prove how I'm copying your idea. fair enough no?

Well take care man

Then I sent him some personal messages...here they are with his replies...

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Then I responded and told him he was just another little batch hiding behind an icon and so on and so forth... So here is the very first person trying to ripoff "We are the strange" I'm sure they'll be many more... they can try and copy my style, they can try to steal my story elements but they can never take the true source of my power...Here is a video explaining why...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmtS_GlLIpk
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Here's the guys site's...

{{{www.archerx.com - My Site
www.cgcast.com - CG podcast

chat.cgcast.com - CG Chat!
www.confesscast.com - Confession Video cast}}}}

The "confession podcast" is hilarious... Its totally pretentious and horrible with this guy whining about who knows what... Will somebody please take his computer away?! He's just pumping crap into the world and trying to rip me off...

I'm sure many more people are going to try to "borrow" my original style and the like... but you know who came first...

Mega_interview 2!

2006-07-17T19:36:00.000-07:00

Shane Neville posted the interview I did with him today so check it out...

Interview LINK

And thanks to Shane for the interviewinG!

Interview on Studioartfx.com

2006-07-17T17:49:00.000-07:00

I did my very first interview for the film with Terrence from Studioartfx.com... You can read it here...and thanks to Terrence...

http://www.studioartfx.com/

Gotta stay H8rdc8rE

2006-07-16T23:03:00.000-07:00

I've done a few little interviews the past week which is nice but it seems it has caused me to stray...to lose a little focus... Like I was shifting into introspective mode...I can't do that right now because I still have a lot of hardcore work to do... I need to get lost in the work... I need not think about it... I just need to do it... I should be totally done with sequence 10 in 4 to 5 days if I'm not then I'm lazy... I was falling asleep just now but I didn't do enough work today to have earned the right to sleep so back to work...

Oh yeh.... sleep...

2006-07-12T05:11:00.000-07:00

So I've been compositing the last 2 days or one day without sleep and I was going to continue now at 5am but my eyes are burning and my brain is numb....so I better step away from the computers and go to sleep... Tomorrow I have to put up a casting call thang to try to get a voice actor for Blue... I have to get her cast and recorded fairly quickly as the recording studio I am planning on using is moving at the end of August and my deadline is the first week of September...ahhh... Tonight I did some light 3d work and then met with the editorial consultant/assistant editor on the film... we talked for about 4 hours about the pacing of the film amongst other story and continuity matters... He has the working edit on his Macbook now so we can both make our own cuts and discuss them... He also found a bunch of scenes in the script which I omitted for various reasons when I got animating so we discussed them and I'll probably end up adding them in when I'm done with the cut for Sundance....

Lipsync SUX

2006-07-07T07:27:00.000-07:00

So now I figured out why I have been able to get so far on this one man feature film show.... because the characters hardly ever talk... The last 2 nights I've only animated 6 shots because this character is blabbing away...Its the most dialogue in the film so far...here at the end... Yeh but doing the lipsync has really slowed down the pace of production... these shots take forever... and I'm even doing a stylized lipsync... I'd go nuts if I had to do it realistically...its my film so I can do what i want... I'll come up with a creative solution to make up for the fact that the lipsync is not phoenetically accurate... One more night of work and I'll be done with this lipsyncing... Its HIM talking to BLUE and REIGN by the way....Yeh now that I have a website up you kinda know what I am talking about.... Well here's my advice... if your planing to do a long form animated film by yourself... do away will all the dialogue you can... Stick with visual storytelling for %90 of the film... it will make you a better filmmaker anyway...relying on dialogue to tell a story won't make for a very powerful or moving film... Oh yeh one of the tricks I used too is that one of my main characters "Reign" always wears a mask so he can't talk all he wants and I never have to animate his mouth... So one character "Emmm" can't talk... Reign wears a mask... Blue never talks (which is part of the story) so that just leaves HIM as the one guy who blabs and blabs and demands I animate his mouth...Oh yeaH! I have a surprise in store for him.... Yeh...he'll see.... and you'll see too!!! I'll show you!!! Oh wait.... I don't have to animate your mouth do I? Ummmm .... Are we in my computer right now? Undoundoundoundoundoundo...K byE

No more games...

2006-07-02T05:53:00.000-07:00

I'm supposed to be animating right now but I'm playing Poker with Luigi on my Gameboy DS... Yeh I got like 289 coins...but I got like no work done...ah I was probably jusy trying to show off for Toad as he walked in the background... The new Super mario bros game is pretty fresH.... I especially liked the spooky worlds in level 8 and the haunted houses in the game... Some day I'd like to help design a game.... Damn.... I better get back on track tonight... I'll do stopmo tonight... well at least thats what the calender says.... Oh yeh I put a site up for the film and I might link it to this blog so 4 people might actually reads this nonsense soon....

Broiled

2006-06-22T06:56:00.000-07:00

So its like 98 degrees this week outside so it must be like 110 in here with 8 PC's rendering 24/7 with no AC... sooooo.... last night I took a little TV dinner tray and camping chair out to the front yard and animated there till my battery went dead... it was pretty nice... I ate watermelon and warded off mosquitos while I worked.... Hmmmm.... I'm thinking of getting a 1000' cat 5 cable so I could communicate with the render server from the front yard, then I could work out there when its really hot...Hmmmm.... That might be nice.... nicer than this oven... 1000' Cat 5 on sale at Fry's for $35...interesting... I might have to run cables out the window...haha... Oh yeh work is going pretty good...gettin there....hopefully all the renders will look ok... I've just been animating and rendering like crazy, havent even had any time to examine the completed renders...I'll check em out when I'm ready to comp...

Long time...no post

2006-06-18T04:28:00.000-07:00

So I'm currently animating sequence 10 of 11.... this sequence is mostly all 3d but it contains the last of the stopmotion stuff.... Its goin ok... the weather got really warm so its uncomfortable in here during the day with all the render boxes going... So during the day I do 3d animation at this Tea shop with my Macbook Pro... then I add those shots to the network render thang and continue to animate on my main workstation when its cool enough at home... I'm kinda tired right now so I'm drinking coffee #4... someones sleeping in my bed so I'll probably have to sleep on the floor when I'm done working...well.... at least it's cool down there...

ready, SeT

2006-05-27T08:16:00.000-07:00

So I'm taking a few days off since I felt like I was gonna puke nonstop... I've just been sitting in the backyard with my Macbook Pro and watching movies on the mini... I watched the Samurai Trilogy over night.... 6 hours of Toshiro Mifune as Musashi... I really liked them all... the crying girls got kinda annoying but overall it was nice... So I'll get back to work Monday.... until then I'm splurging with top ramen, and brown cow yogurt... Oh yeh I watched "The short films of David Lynch" and his "Dumbland" DVD a few days ago too.... Yeh Lynch is great... His "Lost highway" is what made me want to make films and he still inspires me today... I ordered a book called "Lynch of Lynch" from Amazon yesterday, I'm looking forward to getting that and the latest Battle Angel: Last order... I ordered the one Junko Mizuno comic I don't have too... I'm hoping all this stuff will re-energize me so I can hella rock these last 3 months...

Nausea

2006-05-24T07:28:00.000-07:00

I've been feeling nauseous for about 12 hours now... maybe it's that fear stuff trying to throw me off course... Now why would I be afraid? I made my final schedule for the film... the one I can't push back unless I want to miss important festival deadlines... So far I've finished about 69 minutes of the film... I have 2 more sequences to go which makes up a little over 200 shots... their 200 heavy shots because the city is on fire and giant 3d thangs are fighting eachother with flamethrowers and tendrils and all that.... So I have roughly 3 months in which to complete those shots, then go back and fix the shots I screwed up on through the whole film, add any additional scenes, color correct the final film, cast and record the voice actors, and I'll probably have to do all the sound design as well and even possibly compose all the music and mix the entire soundtrack, oh yeah I have to finish building and maintain the website for the film, sort out any anomolaus technical issues that might pop up, hold on to my sanity and I think thats it.... If the sound designers and composer come through strong than its less work for me... but I don't think it will be possible because of time constraints and other paying gigs they have....Sooooo.... oh yeh what about editing??? I'm editing as I go on the same Macbook Pro I'm typing on now.... So as of now the finished 9 sequences all have rough cuts, this week I've been creating music for the film in my non animating/compositing time... Once I have enough music to cut too I'll have picture lock on all of the completed sequences... it's a nice way to work as you see the film coming together in order....also I guess if I'm not done in time I can send a WIP cut to a festival.... Yeh so I feel like I'm gonna puke because of all this... So I didn't push myself tonight... screwed around with some music and some 3d elements that are needed in the next sequence... I'll probably feel better tomorrow but I won't try to be all gung-h0 or anything.... You've got to ease in and out of these insane sequences just like in good animation.... yeh whatever I'm rambling to avoid my responsibilities....ByE

I need 64bit now!!!

2006-05-18T07:33:00.000-07:00

Last nights work was plagued with Out of memory errors in C4d and image buffer errors in After Effects... My scenes and comps are eating up too much memory, their not huge super complex scenes with mega millions of polys or anything.... I've got 2gb RAM in my 2 workstations but the render slaves only have 1gb.... doesn't really matter because the machines with 2gb get OOM errors too.... Hmmm I should probably do that boot.ini 3gb switch thang... My main workstation is still on XP SP1 so I can't do it to that one without upgrading to SP2 but I'm afraid things will go screwy on it when I upgrade so like I haven't done it.... I sure can work a lot faster than my computers can... well I throw scenes together pretty fast and before you know I've got 18 1920x1080 comps with motion blur and depth of field blur and particles flying everywhere.... 3072x2048 image sequence plates mixed with 2500x1300 cg stuff... After all the source is shot and/or prerendered I have a huge AE project full of files waiting for me to get through... Well I chug right through it but the computer gets slow and stumbles a little and sometimes falls flat on its face with no warning losing my work for the last x minutes since the last save.... Its really a Stephen Fawking drag race through the bee_hatch processing motorcade... I had to kick in one of the drawers on my desk to stay sane last night... The frustrating thing is that technical issues are grinding my worknights to a halt, not creative issues... If I had a dual dualcore Opteron system with 16gb RAM and 4+Terabytes of storage + 1gb Grfx card running XP64 I would be sitting pretty...Oh wait....plugins and stuff have to be recomplied to work on XP64 and quicktime doesnt work with it yet...suX.....Ok well maybe I would be sitting prettier if I had a Quad G5 with 16gb RAM and a 512mb grfx card connected to a 4+terabyte SATA RAID...Yeh... Oh yeh but those machines would cost more than the entire production has so far.... Yeh guess I couldn't do that.... I guess my creativity will just have to remain hampered by the reasonably priced hardware that I have... I'll just use this free blog to complain on and continue my struggle.... Its just I wish I didn't have these hardware limitations because my creativity really gets going sometimes but I have to stop it because my computers can't handle all the stuff my creativity throws at them... yeh next movie....next movie....

California stop

2006-05-13T05:03:00.000-07:00

Production has slowed down the last few days but it hasn't stopped... I had lots of problems with 2 of my XP systems but I got them fixed 2 days ago... Then yesterday Fedex delivered my Macbook Pro to the wrong place and I had to make calls and wait 7 hours for them to retrieve it and deliver it here... I am almost finished setting it up now... It's going to be my main editing machine with FCP 5.1... I am running XP on it using bootcamp... I'll be doing mobile animation and compositing with C4d and AE on the XP side, and also finishing up the films site with GoLive on the XP side... Yeh yeh tech talk...It shouldn't matter but todays filmmaker needs to know these things to be successful... I'm gonna probably finish tech_ing out tomorrow and get back to visual storyteling... Here's my mini "17 Macbook Pro review...

Pro:

-Super crisp and clear mega bright high res display
-Superb 3d and 2d performance... Nice scores on all Cinebench tests (621 CPU 2800 OGL) and Final Cut Pro runs really fast and smooth... CPU wise this is my fastest system as it slightly edges my x2 4400 box
-Very thin and not very heavy for me but then I don't have boney girl arms like most designers
-Backlit keyboard feels great to type on... makes me wanna stop animating and start writing again
-Surprising battery performance..I'm getting 3-4 hours of mixed use (FCP, Web stuff) So I'll be working away from home longer which means I'll ride my bike more and have a little less fat which is good
-The ablity to run XP basically gives you 2 machines for the price of one but be sure to disable all internet connections options when on XP
-Lightning fast overall and stable... I haven't done any heavy comps or fat 3d scenes yet but I can tell this thing is legit
-No heat issues at all..it only gets a little warm even after heavy use, no whining sounds or any other problems... So hopefully no more whiners on macgeek message boards
-A pleasure to use... Yeh I said pleasure... I'm practically a computer myself and this macbook pro guy is gonna be my best friend
- The built-in isight is kinda fun...I've found myself videochatting a lot more now since there is nothing to set up... You can stare at my face more and live less just like on myspace

Con:

- Looks a little too nice...might attract theives (My last Powerbook was destroyed when 3 men jumped me trying to steal my powerbook) I'm not joking about the attempyed strong arm robbery and Powerbook death
- Its such a nice laptop it will probably make a lot of people jealous of you :) but then you should be mega_fresh already and already use to the jealousy thing...ha

I give it 10 out of 10 stars

This has gone too far

2006-05-05T05:19:00.000-07:00

Just when I started to get back in a good creative rhythmn technicalities are killing me... Today really sucked...I was so frustrated...got very aggr0 at computing box...wanted to kick in and toss out window ST00piD Windows bOX... So I got through a ton of shots last night and put about 18 on to render this morning before I went to sleep... Woke and checked AE's render queue...renders failed on job #6... I though it was AE's prob but then I switched over to the file server and it was a black screen with "disk error" blah blah... boot drive died... So I put a new drive in there and tried to install Windows like I have done 10 times before... Well it wouldn't let me because of some pretty common Micro$hiT problems... So from 6pm till 2am I was simplying trying to install Win XP on my file server so I could access the 3 sata drives in that box which all my full res renders go to... Well I never got it to work... I just started working at about 2:30am and now its 5 and I feel like $hiT and I only did like 3 shots...FawKK!!! I'm already behind schedule and now this $hiT?!!! I'm just one dude?!! How much BullSheeieT am I supposed to handle?!! Oh yeh my second monitor is dying, its been popping and crackling for 3 days now..gotta replace that too...SunuVaH!!! I hate days like this...hours and hours toiling away with screwdriver and flashlight in hand flipping through bios screens, searching message boards for answers... I just wanted to animate... Yeh just what I need.... more resistance.... I jinxed myself when I said things were looking up a few days ago.... Yeh so now my Macbook Pro will probably be cursed and my bike will explode and my bed will like explode and all my clothes will disintegrate and I'll have to wear paper bags and my phone will ring nonstop with humans on the other end screaming profanities at the top of they lungs FAWK!! Maybe I should quit ani_hating for a day and go record some spiteful song at Joe's...ah.... I WILL NOT BE DEFEATED!!!!

Animator A.D.D.

2006-04-27T04:07:00.000-07:00

So I'm back doin stopmo tonight... finished all the shots for one monster in a little over 3 hours and then... I started clicking online and wasting time... I can't seem to focus and do the rest of my work... I have another character to animate..its 4am now.. I better get to it... Gawd why am I so LAZY?!!! I'll work from now till 6am and do as much as I can or I'll feel like a total lazY bazztuRD and I can't have that..ok back to camera clicking...

OOH Cinema 4d 9.6!!!

2006-04-19T22:29:00.000-07:00

First AE 7 and now c4d 9.6... it's been sent from the gawds! It can exchange PSR data with AE and it can play animated textures in the viewport! So mega awesome, I really need these features for the film...If a 17" Macbook Pro comes out at NAB everything will be perfect! Yeah... things are starting to look up...

UGH

2006-04-10T14:55:00.000-07:00

Finished animated comedy film for contest..BARELY... had to overnight post and all that... Had headaches, mad technical and human probs nonstop...really suckED...Feel like hammered sheehytE right now... havent slept yet and 2pm...can't sleep...want to get back to work on film..month almost over....deadline looms...sound work waits/./////UGHHHHH

SuckiNG

2006-04-04T08:35:00.000-07:00

Last night was a nightmare... All I had to do was record some scratch dialog to do some simple lipsync but Nuendo, XP, and my audio interface argued for about 2 hours and almost made me cry because it was so frustrating to not be able to complete such a simple task... I got it to work with a lesson learned, having a perfectly functioning XP is like skating on thin ice... As soon as your PC gets to this state DONT CHANGE ANYTHING! All I did was unplug my audio interface to use it on another PC....plugging it back into the original 1 day later and having to wrestle with it for 2 hours to get it working again... I came from using Apple's my whole life so I'm not use to such tribulation... Ok yeh my beehatching is over... now at 8:39am I'll finally get to doing that lipsync and finishing off the current sequence so I can make 2 comedy short films before friday... I'd like to ride my bike between now and then to stave off cabin fever as I havent left the premises in about 6 days... but its been raining for like 2 weeks and its supposed to rain for another 5 days.... Yeh well... at least I can eat yogurt...Shit... I finished it all...

Contest

2006-04-02T23:30:00.000-07:00

So I have to finish up work on the current sequence tonight and tomorrow because I have to make 2 comedy animated shorts for 2 different contests whose deadlines are on April 10th... I'm not very motivated right now due to human B.S. but I have to get the job done...

MovinG

2006-03-28T02:49:00.000-08:00

The ghosts of alpha channels past haunt my currently selected objects... But you cannot see the dead with your regular raytraced eyes!!! You can only see them in your Z-Blur preview window.... My Z-buffer will be cursed?! Oh no!!! The horror!! The horror!!!

Being scared, in color!

2006-03-22T03:31:00.000-08:00

Working on one of the last 3 sequences in the film... one hour is finished now.... I should probably put the site up soon... Today I freaked out after reading one of Mike's posts on hdforindies.com about luma shifting with the Blackmagic 10bit codec because that the codec that I am using for my final renders.... and then I read a bunch of posts over at creativecow.net about the same problem AND THEN I began to second guess all of the final renders that I have created... ARE THEY TOO BRIGHT??!!! TOO DARK!! WILL GAMMA SHIFTS EXPOSE MY ERRORS??!! ALL THE COLORS WAY OFF???!!! Ah ah ahhhhhH!!!!! So I freaked out and read some more online and freaked out more then.... read a little more and freaked out less because I thought I found the solution but it will cost 6k so I freaked out some more!!! Then I went and rode my bike really fast to the post office to drop some stuff off and came back and had a glass of wine.... that seemed to bring my jaded self back and now I'm fine.... I accept death, I'm ready for it.... I'm ready for failure... You kinda have to stay numb to get a project done like this by yourself without going totally insane... Seeing that I dont have the hardware to monitor full res HD right now I'm just gonna worry about the SD version...

Arghhh

2006-03-07T15:00:00.000-08:00

So I missed the animated short collection last night because I slept through my alarm that was set for 7...... thats 7 PM...yeh... It plays again today at 445pm so I decided not to sleep at all... I was animating a big dance sequence last night and this morning and one of the prerendered elements is taking 8 hours to render... Its a 28 second clip and it has reelsmart Motionblur on it and the source is a 3048x2072 image sequence so its understandable... I figure that I'll finish it after the movie with no sleep...we'll see how that goes... I have a green poncho with a panda on it to protect me from the rain while I ride my bike to the theater...or maybe I should just have some sense and get a ride cause I always make bad decisions when I'm sleep deprived and I'd probably be a danger to myself in public...Whatever I'm gettin stuff done so thats good and I'm excited to see the Geographical explorations of Jasper Morello...One more hour to stay awake///

Don't wake the cynic

2006-03-05T10:51:00.000-08:00

So I went to a screening of the short film I had in the fest and it was kinda cool... I was talking with a couple filmmakers who seemed nice and they were passionate about their stuff... So overall the festival thang was ok... I've also made pretty good progress on sequence 8 the past couple days... I should have it done in a week... My sleeping schedule is not exactly what I'd like it to be right now but I'll try to change that today... Ummm brain dead right now...Byeee

No peers

2006-03-03T00:42:00.000-08:00

So last night I went to the opening party of this film festival in which an animated comedy short of mine is playing... I really don't mix with film types or whoever those people were? I think I'd get along better with animators although I havent really met any in real life... I am very social but at the opening gala there was no one that I wanted to talk too... I did an on camera interview for the festivals video podcast show and I said a bunch of ridiculous things that seemed to throw off the interviewer... that was the only fun I had the whole night... I looked at the festivals filmmaking workshop schedule and all the classes seem remedial to me so I won't be attending any... also none of the films besides the animation collection and the screening of "once upon a time in the west" interest me at all... How did I get so jaded? I was hoping this film festival thing would inspire me to work harder.... Well maybe the animated films will be really cool... There's one stop motion film that looks pretty fresh... I think its even nominated for an oscar? Yeh so maybe that will be fun.... The film I did with my friend Sean is playing tomorrow night at midnight... We made the film in a day but its really fun so maybe that experience will be enjoyable... I've been through so many difficulties and I've had to deal with so much bullshit on this production path its really made me numb... and I'm not even done yet..Haha... Well I've got nothing else to do so I better get to it.....

Uh I'm supposed to be working

2006-02-24T07:45:00.000-08:00

Yeh as I stare at my workstation that I am not working on for the 6th hour in a row I start to feel a bit lazy... Yeh I'm burnt yeh I had a headache yeh its ok to have some downtime... so yeh I shouldnt stress... I'll rock shit tomorrow...

Struggling

2006-02-21T18:10:00.000-08:00

Ugh... I got back to doing stopmotion last night but it was so hard... I guess I'm burnt out because I really have to fight with myself to get back into the groove... I'm barely getting by but I guess its good that I'm still moving ahead albeit slowly and painfully... So tonight I'm gonna finish emmm's stopmotion.... its actually really his final animation in the film... he's dancing so it should be fun... But I'm puzzled as to why I'm so uninspired and not motivated?! I'll try again tonight but I HOPE it will get easier cause this is a drag...it feels like work and it shouldn't...

Jaded

2006-02-18T03:09:00.000-08:00

Gawd it's getting difficult to motivate myself... Work is slow this week...slow and hard... I'm having a really hard time because I think I'm getting tired and I want to move on to another one already... I've been developing my next 3 films for a while now and their calling me...BUT I need to finish this one...Please gawd give me the strength, perserverance and focus to get done or maybe create another me than can do all the work while I sleep or play video games. Since last I wrote I had to find a new sound designer/foley person... I got a new one and I'm really stoked to hear what kind of stuff he comes up with... I'm gonna hear his first work on the film in a week... I have a feeling that his stuff is going to be perfect... Now time to have my 3am coffee to keep me up and working till 6am... I had an expresso at 10pm and it just made me yawn....Ughhhhh...Even my body is jaded.... If you see my adrenal glands anywhere please let me know....SO TIRED....must fight on!!! For my honor, and for the honor of all those who I've slayed along my path....Wait I'm not Griffith?! But I'll probably betray you in the end like he did... I swing the sword of doom because thats the only thing I can do to make me feel like I'm alive... If you come to close and lose a limb or two its your fault because you knew what I was doing...What?! I don't know either...time to make coffee....

Vacation

2006-01-31T07:49:00.000-08:00

So after I got a migraine headache I got a sore throat and a cold... So I decided to take a vacation... My vacation lasted 3 days(maybe 4, might as well start work on a new month tomorrow) and it consisted of me not leaving the house... I slept mostly.. trying to catch up on what I lost when I was bussing shots... So on my vacation I played Resident Evil 4 and ate a pizza... I had some coffee with chocolate almond milk in it cause I live the life of luxury...ummm... I cleaned my room/studio and put together a file server...I also had Sushi once... so yeh my vacation is almost over... then I'm gonna work mad crazy till March 1st because March 1-12 I'll have to participate in some film festival hoopla... I'm hoping there's free food and its good... My hopes for the near future are to not get any migraines, feel better and work harder... not have any major technical issues and render fast... Gulp my throat hurts...back to vacationing...

Testing

2006-01-25T06:42:00.000-08:00

So now before I dive and in and start animating 3d bg's I prelight the whole set so I don't have to do it shot to shot... then all I need to do is movie around the 3 point lighting rig for the chracters... well yeah I should have been doing that all along but I was in a hurry... So yeh I prelit in and then sent out a test animation to Cinema 4d net and all the nodes stopped due to "out of memory" errors..UGH... So I did some research on CGtalk and figured out it was the quicktime .mov's that I was using as textures that were eating up all the RAM... So I converted them all to tiff sequences and also connected a bunch of the same geometry to cut down on the number of objects... I had groups of bg city blocks that I connected because they all have the same texture anyway.... So after more trial and error the scene is rendering fine and its pretty quick too... GAWD bless all the information available on this INTREEnet...earlier I watched an inspiring video of Steve Jobs giving a commencement speech at Stanford last year... and I can't wait for new episodes of the podcasts I'm subscribed too... Yeh so I've also been working on the website for the film a bit.... I'm filling in the character section now... It's gonna have TONS of character info and well as detailed information about the areas they inhabit... So I'm gonna kill myself workin till MArch then I'll ease off for a week or two as I attend the Cinequest film festival in which an animated comedy short of mine is playing... then 2 more months of hard mousing and I'll be done... My recent composites are quite nice... but as soon as I'm done with major production I'm redoing a ton of composites...they really bug me when I watch them, some of the earlier shots that is.... Oh yeh Adobe After Effects 7 came out last week... I use After Effects everyday... 8 hours a day and the new version is gonna be nice... I'm especially looking forward to 32bit color space... the ability to custom name render output modules... the new UI... and the f curve editor... For my next film I'm gonna trick out a multicored Opteron system to push pixels... Right now my workstation is an AMD x2 4400 with 2gb RAM and an old 5900xt... Oh yeh I'm turning an old HP box into a file server today if my newegg shipment comes today... Then I'll have a little less than 5 terabytes of storage on my little network... 1920x1080 10bit mov files really take up a lot of space... not to mention 3072 x 2048 stopmo image sequences and their keyed out renders and 3d bg plates and and and and... Gimmie 10 terabytes and I'll have a little more room to work with....

My 100th post... Ooh I'm epic...

2006-01-17T07:37:00.000-08:00

So I'm back to working all night till 7am and After Effects 7 came out today and my Mac Mini Supercomputer is going to be delivered today but I'll be asleep and have to get it tomorrow and I'm listening to an After Effects podcast cause I'm an AE fanboy like that.... I've been working with violence all night.... some guy getting slammed against a wall and impaled by a horrible monster...I'm hungry...byE

My 300d lives on....

2006-01-14T21:47:00.000-08:00

So I got my 300d back from the camera shop today... It cost $230.00 to replace the shutter mechanism... I'm happy to have it back... I also ordered a Mac Mini to replace my dying Powerbook... Oh yeh I bought an APS battery backup thing because there have been 2 blackouts in the past month... One last night while I was in the middle of animating...the first one corrupted some images in a stopmo shot which could of been horrible if the originals weren't still on the memory card but they were so it was only a small hassle but a big scare... Yeh nothing too exciting to type about... Just finishing up sequence 7.... I'm gonna set a doll stunt double on fire in a little while....

The horror

2006-01-13T21:56:00.000-08:00

So I'm doing this sequence that is very like.... scary..or at least it supposed to be... Ya know monster lurking in the shadows stalking helpless victims.... At first I was checking out some films for reference but they weren't too scary for me... The scariest thing I've found are a few games... Resident Evil 4 is an excellent reference point for horror scenes... as is The Suffering and Silent hill 4... So now I can play video games and call it research...awesome!

Ahhhhh

2006-01-10T12:11:00.000-08:00

So I was waiting for a new Apple laptop saviour device and all I got was aaaah... its ok but I'm not buying it... suX... guess my halfdead powerbook with no screen will have to do for awhile longer... Yeh what I was doing was wrong... I was looking for a new piece of hardware to inspire me to work harder.. Like a crazy Fresh Apple laptop... With like a 2.13ghz Yonah chip, a 1600+ pixel wide display and gangs of hours of battery life but I gots none of that... I'm not getting a 20d either... gonna go take my beat up little 300d to the shop now.... aaaaahhh.... CHEAP

STay reeL

2006-01-07T11:27:00.000-08:00

Somethin kinda funny happened....So the main drawer type workin on the film--> Sean, the sound guy Joe and I made a little animated comedy short a few months ago just for fun... and on a whim we sent it to the Cinequest film festival here in San Jose and just now I got an acceptance email...Haha... Seriously I animated it, did all the voices and cut it in one day... Technically its very basic... it just goes to show that interesting characters and a good story can go a long way... I'm sure other people entered sophisticated 3d animations that took months to make and got rejected because of their poor/non-existant narratives and our ghetto digital cutout animation made it because Uncle Rayb0 said "First down hold up the flags" Get your animal wars T-shirt soon.... I pray to GAWD that Apple releases Yonah powered Powerbooks next week with dual boot capabilities... I would be so happy if they did IF they ship in 2 weeks or less... I need a new Mac bad.....and I don't like this 350d I'm borrowing... The 300d was better.... The 350d is too small... my 300d AC plug is incompatible with it and so is my remote... NO LIKE