Move along, Nothing to see here

This years Thanksgiving disaster...has ruined Christmas!

2009-11-29T04:38:01Z

While I was out of town, at my Dads house, my upstairs neighbors water heater exploded...into my condo! I got the call this morning from the home owners association, I was 300 miles away at the time, so I had to call a friend to check it out and make sure my computers didn't start an electrical fire.

By the time Cheryl got there the inches of water had receded, and the carpet while damp, wasn't soaking, but Oh-The SMELL!

She salvaged what she could, getting things off the carpet and up onto tables to dry out, and placing plastic under what could only go on the floor, so nothing would be completely ruined in the six hours it would take me to get back.

Upon my arrival I discover:
1. A nauseating smell
2. My thermostat is burned out, and now I can't turn on my heat or air conditioning
3. four of my most valuable and rare books were at ground zero(I should have left them at Kara's)

So, now I've got to get in touch with the owner of the unit upstairs(which the homeowners association was kind enough to provide me with) get her insurance information, and try to get enough money out of them to replace my carpet, Air conditioning unit, and some of my ceiling!

I've been meaning to replace the carpet and such to get this place rent or salesworthy, but damnit if now my hand isn't forced! And on top of everything else, the probability of all this getting done before the holidays is next to nonexistent...and I have a final to finish...

Godammit!

...And a congratulations to Kara...

2009-09-17T20:45:38Z

So for the first time since I've known her, she now has her very own vehicle!

Too bad she's been too sick and down to enjoy it.

Y'know, I've got to find a way to make black hair work for my cartoons, that purple shit makes it look all anime :/

This is what I worked on when my original plans were shot, since I had to help a friend move.
(I had intended to get drunk in Church with Cheryl-A/K/A Greek festival) My days were shot, but my nights were open, (Kara was too sick to talk) so I made cartoons in stead.

Flogging Molly:Float

2009-08-21T03:33:32Z

Some beautiful stop motion animation in this video. I particularly like the way the guy seems to be made of organic material, all sticks and pine cones.

They realy are making better cars than they used to...

2009-08-15T21:15:59Z

After putting 100,000 miles on my Yaris, I stayed home this weekend to get some maintainance done on my car. My greatest fear being the cost of replacing a timing belt.

Well, as it turns out, that won't really be altogether necessary since I don't actually Have a timing belt.

I've got a mother fucking TIMING CHAIN!

Those don't tend to break too often...slip yes, but you can still finish a trip home with a slipping chain.

So, just a coolant flush, and changing the clutch fluid, and I'll be good to go.

Still drives the same as it did the day I drove it off the lot.

Animator for sale! CHEAP!

2009-07-30T22:10:31Z

After hanging out with the Slow Poisoner last weekend, I recently rekindled an old attitude about touring and playing that I had long since forgotten. It seemed in the past, that if you were in a band, and you got payed for a gig, as long as it payed for gas and a meal, it was a good gig.

I'm trying to have the same attitude about my artwork again.

So consider me the coffeehouse folk singer of the animation world from here on out. I need a portfolio, and since it's easier to get motivated if there is a tangible reward for your work, I henceforth will do whatever work anyone requires for whatever anyone is willing to give me for it.

If it pays for my supplies and a meal, then I'm good.

So how about it? Any takers? Anyone need some mindblowing images playing in the background with their band on stage? An advertisement for their website? A video to one of their songs? Just make sure I have the time to do it, and let's talk turkey.

Looks Like I'll be in town for my birthday...

2009-06-18T16:17:35Z

Tomorrow's my birthday, and It would appear I'll be here for it...but I'm not sire what I'm gonna do about that.

Kara will either be catching a train, or coming down with Joe on Friday, or Mouse and/or her sister on Saturday...either way, they're intending to do "Return of the Bats" on Saturday, and I'll have a full house as a consequence.

Any other regular sojourners who might be around for a change?

Chris? Pet? Beuller?

nothingtoreport @ 2009-02-28T14:17:00

2009-02-28T19:07:15Z

I have the plague.

Y'know, those weird dreams you have when you've got a fever are some of the most horrid!

I'll have some freaky-ass artwork to draw when I fell better.

weird programmes I recall watching as a child...

2009-01-21T11:14:33Z

I recently realized that my memories of "Thunderbirds" are actually of another TV show called "Terrahawks"! I watched it again on youtube recently, I remembered the cubes and spheres, and realized that I'd never actually seen Thunderbirds.

This got me thinking about certain shows I remember watching in the 70's...

I remember seeing The Hobit in the theater, the scene with Gollum really freaked me out. Somehow I recall vampire movies that I would later rediscover as an adolescent were "Kolchak the Night Stalker", and "Salems Lot." I remember Mom and Dad shooing me out of the living room for those.

And finally, I remember watching some strange Japanese imports like "Battle of the Planets"(which we commonly referred to as G-Force) and Ultraman.

Y'know, the funny thing is; I noticed that the lips didn't match the words for G-Force, but never seemed to notice in Ultraman, Gamera, or Godzilla...come to think of it, I didn't even notice that anybody was Japanese!

Which brings me to my last strange television memory. This was a live action Japanese import, meaning it could be a product of either the 60's or 70's(I know it truly exists, since my sister remembers it as well) but I can't for the life of me remember what it was called.

This is what I remember. The villain flew around in this strange ship that looked like a giant bat, and looked to me a lot like the Duke of Doubt from the old Burger King commercials(extra points for anybody that remembers those) His minions were the standard faceless Ninja types. And the heroes were these Giant robot types that would turn into rockets to travel from place to place. There was a boy robot, and an old man robot.

...weird huh? And again, this was live action, not puppets or anime.

Anyone else know what I'm talking about?

petilla? ablemagawitch? You guys are the most likely to remember this. Any Ideas?

Rusalka.

2008-12-16T06:56:48Z

A rather beautiful piece of animation by Aleksandr Petrov titled "Rusalka"

It is oil paint on glass, quite a feat of animation if you ask me.

Note that while the word "Rusalka" is often translated as "Mermaid" this is not quite accurate. While Rusalkas are water spirits, they are the souls of drowned maidens.

Incidentally, as far as I can make it out through the mumbling, the prayer that the monk is reciting appears to be Ave Maria in Russian.

It's OK Honey

2008-11-13T23:01:09Z

I've never once deluded myself into believing that any of your friends actually liked me.

as The Onion poinantly puts it...

2008-11-05T10:41:09Z

'Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job

November 5, 2008 | Issue 44•45

WASHINGTON—African-American man Barack Obama, 47, was given the least-desirable job in the entire country Tuesday when he was elected president of the United States of America. In his new high-stress, low-reward position, Obama will be charged with such tasks as completely overhauling the nation's broken-down economy, repairing the crumbling infrastructure, and generally having to please more than 300 million Americans and cater to their every whim on a daily basis. As part of his duties, the black man will have to spend four to eight years cleaning up the messes other people left behind. The job comes with such intense scrutiny and so certain a guarantee of failure that only one other person even bothered applying for it. Said scholar and activist Mark L. Denton, "It just goes to show you that, in this country, a black man still can't catch a break."'

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/black_man_given_nations?utm_source=slate_rss_1

nothingtoreport @ 2008-10-30T21:48:00

2008-10-31T02:45:40Z

Yeah...I'd SO love to be at THAT party

And yes, as soon as I get the chance I'll get off my ass and upload that video...well, more like, as soon as I figure it out.

It is finished...

2008-10-23T12:37:01Z

In the immortal words of Jesus..."it is finished"
(my animation project that is)
Finally I might be able to get a good nights sleep.

But wait...there's one more problem...writing it to a readable DVD. The trouble I seem to be having is the same trouble I have with uploading, every time, I seem to lose frames. This may be due to the fact that they're .mov's on a windows based OS. Perhaps if I had a Mac I wouldn't have this trouble.

I have one more option that I can think of other than running by a friends house:

RF modulator to DVR (that is provided I can find my RF modulator, I may have loaned it out)...this may be my last ditch effort, so we'll see how it works. I can't turn in crappy work if I'm looking for recognition, right?

As soon as I get the quality problem solved, I'll upload it for everybody else.

And now maybe I can respond to all those E-mails, comments, phone calls, and other things I've neglected.

the subconcious is a horrid thing...

2008-10-15T17:15:11Z

Last night, I fell asleep while planning a scene for my animation...

The next thing I know, my cartoon characters are singing and dancing along with Rick Astleys "Never Gonna Give You Up"

In other words I GOT RICK ROLLED IN MY FUCKING DREAMS!!!

What the hell?

Animation is frustrating work sometimes.

2008-10-12T07:47:36Z

Ugh...it seems like I've been working on the same damn scene forever! It seems like a simple concept, but in execution it's far more complex then I would have expected.

The image was simple enough, during the solo of the song, I had the idea to have zombie versions of the peanuts kids dancing in the same form as they were in the Christmas special. I sat and watched the scene over and over again to gain familiarity with each of the characters dances as such and drew up zombielike versions of the characters in my own style...and then I realized that almost no recognizable peanuts characters are in fact in this scene!

Now, Schroeder is playing piano, Pig-pen is on bass, and Snoopy is playing guitar, but I wasn't planning on putting the band in the scene.
Linus and Sally are doing something like the fox-trot, but then, none of the other dancers are terribly recognizable...

There are two unidentified boys dancing in different area, one of them has his arms out like a zombie.
Frieda (the one with the curly red hair) is kind of swaying back and forth.
Violet appears to be repeatedly punching herself in the head (watch it and see, she's also got a real concerned look on her face).
There are two twin dancing girls kind of off to the sides...no idea who they are.

Where is Charlie Brown?
I'm sure Lucy's humiliating him somewhere, but I think he's kind of into that kind of thing by now...I wonder if he calls her Mistress Van Pelt.

End result, a group of zombies that just look like a group of zombies...guess I should make a Linus or Snoopy ghost or something...Snoopy might be best, but he's too trademarked...how to get the point across without being too similar is the question. With both Charles Schultz and Bill Melendez(the animator and voice of Snoopy) being dead, maybe it's more or less public domain, but I don't like taking such risks.

And you may be asking, what could be so hard about that scene? Well, each of the dances are different, and they're not actually in time with one another, meaning I can't just put them all on the same cell, but about ten different ones...just makes rendering take ten times as long that's all.

Why is this so hard? Good Grief!

Return to Oz...

2008-10-06T23:05:32Z

Way back in the 70's, on top of a mountain in North Carolina, they at one time built a Wizard of Oz theme park. Now, I have a vague memory of going there when I was a little boy, but I'd heard the tore the place down in the 80's.

Not so, it would seem. Kara found out that on the first weekend if October every year, they open the park back up to the public for one weekend only...and so naturally, WE HAD TO GO!

When the park was still open, you would ride up to the top of the mountain in the Ski lift type things made up to look like balloons! Now, you can take the bus, or a hay ride.

We chose the hay ride, but had to get a picture of the buses

Naturally, there's a yellow brick road...

but stay away from the witches castle.

A flying monkey tried to steal away my girlfriend...the Cowardly Lion kind of hit on her too!

Kind of a family resemblance don't you think? I AM OZ! GREAT AND TERRIBLE!

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain...Kara definitely wanted to play with that thing...I sort of wanted to too!

The sad thing is, they DID tear down the Emerald City...It's now a Ski resort. But one of the slopes is called the Oz run.

'course...there's always corndogs!

Anyway...that was our weekend...I'm sure Kara will have some better photos on her journal before too long.

Cartoons that aren't mine...it's not anime either OK!

2008-07-11T04:28:43Z

Only a few people on my friends list will understand these...tell everybody else how funny they are.

nothingtoreport @ 2008-06-04T16:43:00

2008-06-04T20:44:56Z

I sometimes think that cars should be equipped with two different sounding horns.

A polite "Hey the light's green" or "Hi how are you" sounding horn, and a separate, angry "Hey you could have killed me" type horn...either way, the horn in the Toyota would still sound like a wimpy, asthmatic, irritated old man. So I guess it wouldn't matter then would it.

A new project...

2008-05-22T19:15:00Z

So for a quick animation project, I decided to do a bit of Anti-porn...

I had intended to purchase the website Notporn.com, but wouldn't you know it, it was already a porn site.

Oh, well...but anyway, my next little project is a series I'm calling "not porn"...sort of as a joke on a website, like rick rolling if you will...you think you might get porn, but you're not.

In reality, these images will frankly be barely animated and only a few seconds long...it's more of an exercise in lip sync than anything else.

Here's some concept art:

and of course, my version of 2 girls 1 cup:

I'm trying to think of a few more...like "rusty trombone"(could be a persons name too)
Ain't I a stinker?

An advertisement for Micron Pens...

2008-05-08T18:34:13Z

Today while emptying a load of white shirts from the washer, I notice a Micron pen that I'd left in the front breast pocket.

Not one drop of ink leaked onto my white Oxford shirts(Thank God!)

...and the pen still works too...

I didn't win!

2008-05-06T16:55:16Z

Oh well...I never really liked Radiohead anyway...

For once, I was right!!!!

2008-05-06T02:10:22Z

Last weekend(or was it the weekend before) I got in an argument with several friends over who did that creepy pedophile sounding song "It's the time of the season"

Everybody was SOOOO sure that it was the Mamas and the Papas

WRONG!

The correct answer was:

The Zombies

...and no, there was no Mamas and the Papas cover either.

Summer perfume for Kara...

2008-05-05T13:18:22Z

1 Part Bayberry oil
1 part Jasmine oil
1 part Sage oil
A hint of Citrus and Cucumber oil
a few drops of Lavender to Sharpen it up a bit
a few drops of Sandal to soften it up again
Some Myrrh for color(Why that's important to me I couldn't tell you since if you can see what a person's wearing, there's something wrong)

It's a bit soft and feminine, and I'm not used to making perfumes like that, but I think it's nice...in a few days, I'll uncork it and see how it all mixed together...and next week I'll give it to her, after I've got a decent bottle to put it in.

Plugging myself one more time...

2008-04-24T14:49:09Z

Although I'm sure everybodies still seen this...but hey, I miss things from time to time so why should I assume that nobody else does?

These are the storyboards I did for the Radiohead in rainbows video contest, the public votes, and if I win, I get paid to finish what I've started.

Anyway, heres the link:

http://www.aniboom.com/Player.aspx?v=204613

Since I've only got like four days left, please feel free to vote for me, I need all the help I can get. Opening an aniboom account is pretty painless and spam free.

In the nick of time...

2008-04-17T19:00:49Z

Well my storyboards for the Radiohead contest are finally up...only thing is, the audio on the website seems to be about two seconds behind, how annoying,the sync up perfectly at home!

Anyway, heres the link:

http://www.aniboom.com/Player.aspx?v=204613

Since I've only got ten days left, please feel free to vote for me, I need all the help I can get.

Later,I can show you them as they were supposed to be viewed.