Buttons & Meat

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I saw two movies over the weekend.

Coraline turned out quite well. I think it is Henry Selick’s best work by far. It has been several years since I read the book and I recall enjoying it, but I think the movie left a stronger impression on me. I hope it turns a profit, because I want to see stop-motion animation and dark material for children rewarded.

Brooks sprung the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre on us. It felt more like a treatise on the meat-packing industry and carnivores than a horror/slasher movie.

Chinny Studios

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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.

More Production Stills ahead

Motivation

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A faltering economy, constant layoffs all around me, and my encroaching unemployment in April have had one very beneficial side-effect: I am motivated and inspired. I’ve been working like crazy on a variety of different things. I’ll post more about many of them as they develop, but I’m mostly keeping mum for now. One of those things is a new portfolio site. I haven’t had the chance to do one properly (hopefully that will happen before April), but I have really been needing to get my reels online. Thus, I threw together a new portfolio site that isn’t too terrible. It’s wonky and full of outdated work, but the reels are brand new and represent my video work over the last couple of years.

Have a moment to waste?
Stop by Chinnystyle and watch the reels.

On a side note, I also uploaded a few more of the old terrible movies we used to make in high school and college on the YouTube. Only about 30 more to go.

Define obscenity, then define god while you’re at… or love… or infinity

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My friends’ page brought an interesting and infuriating case to my attention today:
Read about it here and numerous other places.

Essentially, a man in Iowa was arrested for importing manga from Japan deemed obscene. The collective opinion seems to be that, in this case, “obscene” means illustrated kiddie porn. As is to be expected, numerous people from both sides are up in arms. The difficulty in defending the right of someone to own illustrated child pornography lies in the fact that many will assume you are defending the right to molest children. Clearly, anyone who stops for a moment and applies logic to the argument will see this is not the case. Molesting real children and owning fictional representations of children engaged in sexual acts is not the same thing. Below is something I posted on another journal that should help elucidate my feelings:

The reason child pornography is a crime is because it endorses the victimization of a child. A child is molested and photographed. This is a crime. The ownership of this photograph makes the owner a criminal by proxy. The owner is aware a child was victimized and endorses this activity.

Illustrated child pornography is a victimless crime, its victim is fictional. To charge someone as a criminal for the ownership of pornography featuring fictional characters is to charge this person with thought-crime. The assumption is an owner of illustrated child pornography is a pedophile and therefore a baby raper. Yet, being a pedophile is not a crime. The act of molestation or molestation-by-proxy is the crime. Ownership of fictional material does not equate sexual action in reality.

Any time the court is brought in to decide our freedoms and define what is acceptable art, we open the gates for a multitude of freedoms and artistic expressions to be reviewed and potentially criminalized. Do we want to open up that debate because of a victimless “crime?”

Many others with much more credibility than me have discussed this much more eloquently elsewhere: (I highly encourage reading their rants especially if you disagree with my stance)
Neil Gaiman’s Thoughts
Carl Horn of Dark Horse

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is always accepting donations and doing their best to make sure the comics community is treated fairly. Feel like donating?

Illustrating for the Kiddies

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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.

Several more images if you click here, children!