Welcome to Martina’s World, an educational program that will teach you how to make your own puppet unless Scurvy’s existential crisis gets in the way.
Be sure to come back next Wednesday for Ep003 – Whistle.
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The premiere episode of Moodoo Moments.
Scurvy interviews a questionable space pirate recruit. Will he make the grade?
Be sure to come back next Wednesday for Ep002 – 5 Stages of Scurvy.
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Finally, Super Mighty Mega Master of Manga is online.
We made this nearly a year ago.
Everything you need to know is in the video above.
Be sure to check back on April Fool’s Day for the first episode.
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The world needs puppets.
I have been putting together a short children’s program for a few months now called “The Many Maladies of Marty Mitchell.” It’s an educational show about a young boy who lives in a land of illustrations and animated creatures. He constantly causes problems and has to remedy them, learning along the way. I’m creating a short (~15 min.) test/pilot I intend to shop around. The last few months have included writing, boarding, scheduling, and all of the other aspects of preproduction for a tiny no-budget short.
Last weekend, we finally shot it. With help from a few friends, we converted my living room and loft into a greenscreen studio. Erika’s nephew played the main role and we spent Saturday shooting. Luckily I was able to borrow a quality camera and a few P2 cards. The crew donated their time, as did the actors.
Steps left:
voice acting, illustrating, animating, editing, keying, compositing, scoring, outputting
I’m hoping to have it ready some time this summer.
Here’s to many more low-budget productions throughout the year.
Many thanks to all who have helped and will help.
I hope I am a tolerable director/producer.
Monc (the musician I did a short animation for last year) contacted me a few weeks back about a new project he is putting together for kids. He’s been compiling these odd surreal songs about a number of subjects and characters he has created. It’s very cool stuff.
One thing that has perturbed me about children’s entertainment throughout my life is how often it patronizes its audience and ridiculously dumbs down any subject matter while trying so hard not to offend anyone that it becomes intellectually offensive. I have fought to make sure that doesn’t infect my work and Mike and I were always cautious not to tread that ground when doing puppet shows. Monc also seems to share these concerns. He has recorded these fun ditties that are peppered with imagination and oddness and never insult the intelligence of the audience. He asked me if I would be willing to do some concept art for a few of the characters. I was delighted to. I took inspiration from his music and lyrics (and our conversations) and threw in whatever my mind puked out while sketching. I hope you guys enjoy the results.
Oddly enough, while working on these, a need for storybook style illustrations arose on the Van Von Hunter movie at work. I spent a week putting together a few fun images for that and I hope to be able to share them in the near future.
It’s been nice to have an excuse to draw again and to develop my digital painting skills. I’m finally beginning to feel like I’m getting somewhere with digital painting, although I feel I have a long way to go before I am truly happy with my abilities.
Well, it’s only on TOKYOPOP.com, but I can now say that I have co-directed and co-starred in two Sega videogame commercials (even if it is internet only). Check it out on the website while they are still running. You may need to refresh a few times. Look for one of the images below and wait a few seconds for it to play.
Here is another music video I worked on at work.
It’s funny how long it takes for some of this work to get online, I finished this early in the year.
About a week ago, we put together a short pitch for a web show at work. It features artwork of giant robots from one of our books mixed with keyed footage of few of us acting like ridiculous jack-asses. It is pretty entertaining. Unfortunately, I can’t post it, but that won’t stop me from showing off a few stills. Steven (my supervisor) had a fantastic idea. He had me nab one of the images we used for the video and use it to create a shirt featuring one of our coworkers who played the villain as his birthday was approaching and we knew he would love it. One of his scenes from the short features him saying “activate super crush.” Today, Steven called him to a conference room where seven of us sat waiting to presumably castigate him. Instead, we revealed that we were each wearing a shirt featuring him and gave him one of his own. He was so excited he ran around the office showing everyone and taking pictures of all of us. At this moment, he is probably sending links to all of his family and friends in Japan.
Here is another music video I worked on. I didn’t direct this one this time around, but I am responsible for the editing and visual effects & color grading.
