Base14

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?

This past weekend was the big shoot for Brian Paulson: Tree Dropper. It marked the second full film crew I’ve directed while here at SCAD, and I feel as though I’m definitely improving, much in part because of my graduate directing class, for which Brian Paulson was the final project.

Brian Paulson: Tree Dropper was considerably more complex than the last piece I directed: Planting Friends. The latter had only one location and no dialogue, whereas Brian Paulson had three major locations and a whole slew of comedic dialogue, all penned by me. (Yeah, we wrote our own scripts — I brought this on myself!) To add another degree of challenge, we were fighting the rainiest weather Savannah has seen in half a decade, and filmed a lot of scenes as fast as we could in between rain showers. (Even the best cut will show inconsistent weather conditions.)

But some things you can control. In the past two years of producing films, I’ve come to discover that the success of a film is largely dependent on how well it lives up to its initial goals, and adjusting those goals realistically from the beginning is crucial to a project’s relative success. In that sense, Brian Paulson was a success. I wasn’t trying to get Hollywood-grade cinematics or Oscar-winning performances, but did want to make something that helped me learn how to direct and made people laugh. Based on the response of the rough cut in class on Tuesday, mission accomplished!

Once the rough cut is groomed a bit more, we’ll be putting Brian Paulson online for all to enjoy. (Now falling from a tree near you?)

Photos by Jennifer Sparkman

Myself and many of my peers around here are obsessed with two major things: Movies and the Internet. So wherever those two intersect, we completely geek out. Case in point: The Internet Movie Database.

That’s why I’m majorly geeking out today, because Duck ♥ Teslacoil has carved out its own page on IMDb for all to see! Not only that, but credits for all the key players in the movie are also listed! Woah, wait a minute… that means I have my own IMDb profile now. It’s a dream come true!

Naturally we won’t let all this Internet “celebrity” go to our heads; the movie still has yet to prove itself in multiple festivals. (Which we’re still waiting to hear back from.) But it’s a big step for Base14 as a company with significant cinematic work. Check it out!

This quarter, I have noticed an ever-growing number of students in my Animation 332 class choosing to cast aside the shackles of traditional pencil and paper and complete their assignments in Flash. Is it a divine calling towards the future of animation, a holy quest to define a new generation of animators as ones not confined by the limitations of graphite on tree pulp?

Or is it just laziness?

The jury here is still out, but one’s thing is for sure; it really does seem to speed things up. Although I used Flash for planning a lot in my Animation 202 class last quarter, I always still transferred things to pencil and paper in the end. This quarter, though, I jumped on the bandwagon and just turn in a movie exported straight from Flash. Below is the most recent animation: “Dialog I.”

Duck ♥ Teslacoil took home its first two honors Saturday night when it swept the Iris Film Festival at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. The film got a terrific response from festival goers and judges alike, winning it the Honorary Audience Award as well as the Overall Jury Award! Wowzers!

I have to admit this is a pleasant surprise and very encouraging first step for our latest film, and we are certainly looking forward to seeing how it fares in additional venues across the country. Still no word yet on future showings, but I expect to hear from some additional festivals later this month, so hopefully we’ll have more good news for you.

Until then be on the lookout for production tidbits from our new live-action film, “Brian Paulson: Tree Dropper.” Yes, we still make live-action movies. And this one will be no doubt the most elaborate one yet. In fact my grade depends on it!

Happy May Day folks! I thought I’d take a moment to pause from whatever one is supposed to do on May Day to dish out some leftovers from the past two weeks. It’s all the news that’s fit to print when bunched together in one big super-post!

First off, Duck ♥ Teslacoil got some press this past week after its world premiere at the Digital Cinema Contest Award Ceremony. The site LafayetteOnline featured the results of the contest and not only mentioned DHT, but also provided a direct link to our blog! Update: We were also mentioned in a Purdue News press release which basically said the same thing. Actually to be fair, I think it came first.

Secondly, there’s been a bit of new animation I’ve been pumping out for my 2D Character Animation I class here at SCAD. In Character Animation I, emphasis is put on designing strong character key positions, mapping breakdown positions and interpolating character inbetweens quickly and on model. There’s a head turn we did based on Mushu from Mulan, a take with some generic dude no one’s heard of, and then most exciting of all is the weighted object assignment where we could chose who to animate. Of course, I went with my favorite, Donald Duck. Donald was not an easy character to draw or position, believe me, but I think it turned out good enough for a first try. And it was kinda cool to be animating my childhood idol. Thanks, Don!