Base14

This has been a terrific week for Base14! We were  officially invited to two major film festivals this week on opposite sides of the country!

On the East Coast, we will be featured at the Animation Block Party in Brooklyn, New York. This the self-proclaimed premier animation festival of New York City, and features the work of some legendary contemporary animators from around the world, including one of my favorites, Don Hertzfeldt. In fact, his work was such an inspiration to the comedic timing of Duck ♥ Teslacoi, his name appears in the credits. The Animation Block Party runs July 24-26 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Cinématek.

On the West Coast, Duck ♥ Teslacoil will be showing at the Feel Good Film Festival in Hollywood, California. As soon as I heard about the Feel Good Film Festival from a friend (Thanks, Kate!), I knew it was a perfect fit for Duck ♥ Teslacoil. I mean, the film was made to leave you feeling warm and fuzzy! Well, evidently the festival programmers agree. It’ll be held August 7-9 at Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre right on Hollywood Boulevard. Classy!

Well, I’m absolutely thrilled with all the exciting places Duck ♥ Teslacoil is going. With luck, we’ll be make it into a few other film festivals. And maybe if I can scrounge up some money for travel expenses, I’ll even visit a few. Strangely enough, I still haven’t experienced a large venue showing of Duck ♥ Teslacoil yet!

Microsoft made some interesting moves earlier this week, first by offering free upgrades for consumers buying Vista-equipped computers from now until the Oct. 22nd Windows 7 release, and then by slashing the price of Windows 7 upgrade pre-orders on Amazon.com in half. Apparently it has generated a bit of excitement, as Windows 7 Home Premium and Professional surged to the top one and two software spots on Amazon, respectively.

Anyhow, now that Windows Vista is living out its final days, I thought it was a good time to publish this comic. I’d like to think this is the start of a very nice series of summer comics, since they were so neglected all Spring as I finished Duck ♥ Teslacoil. If my classes stay as mellow as they’ve been going, it probably will be.

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This announcement is coming out a bit late, but we wanted to spotlight our good friends over at Deny Conformity and The Crazy Monkeys, who have been cooking up some interesting music lately. This “electro-house sensation,” credited to an alternate identity called “Smac,” comes in the form of a free-to-download LP that you can snag right here. I’m told that the sound clips in this music were originally recorded for the Peabo movie, and somehow drove the album’s creation. If you survive this record, you might also like Smac’s earlier EP. And if that’s still not enough, there might be more on the way.

On Wednesday I visited West Lafayette, Indiana to reunite with production artist Eli Glasch, voice actor Shauvon McGill and composer Rick DeSutter to record commentary for the upcoming Duck ♥ Teslacoil DVD release. Since it’s such a short film, it helps to pack the DVD with as many special features as possible. So during this session we recorded several commentary tracks: One was just me, discussing how I conceptualized and developed the story. Second was myself and Eli Glasch, discussing the visual style development and animation process. Third was the whole crew, filling in the remaining gaps and talking about the music, voice acting and long-distance collaboration.

The other highlight of the recording session was the custom-made snacks. Alysha and I took some time the night before to bake and decorate some very special Duck ♥ Teslacoil-themed cookies, which tasted as good as they looked! The idea to make cookies that looked like Duck and Monster was mine, but Alysha was the one who figured out how to pull it off. Take that, Martha Stewart!

Today I’d like to share with you some of the final results from my Spring quarter classes here at SCAD. The first is my final project for 2D Character Animation I. It’s essentially another dialog animation that allows us to keep refining our sense of timing, overlap and progression through animated speech. The sound clip, as you can see, was selected for ultimate amusement.

The second is the fifth studio from my graduate directing class. The assignment was to communicate inner character emotion though visual components only (i.e. no dialog). In this case, the inner emotion was isolation and disillusionment. The empty bottle represents his despair… or something. I’m not even sure anymore. I think I’ve found that all of this “visual symbolism” stuff isn’t my style. It just seems like a snooty way for narcissistic filmmakers to boost their egos by confusing their audience with ambiguous splatters of meaning, instead of taking the time to design and articulate a rational and comprehensive story structure.

If anything, I’m proud of the color effects I did for this piece. Can you believe that soda was originally green?