Posts from — February 2008

Happy Leap Year! Earlier this month, I sat down and wrote out a shooting schedule for the next “Scary Monster” installment. One of the goals was to finish drawing and shooting all pencil roughs by the 2nd of March. Doesn’t look like I’m going to hit that goal — there are waaaay more drawings than I had anticipated, and I’m losing my next two weekends to Real Life things. Fortunately, I put some extra buffer in the schedule for just this scenario, so overall I’m still looking good.

I’m hoping next week to put up a test animation of a couple of scenes from the roughs.  If not next week, then the following week for sure.  I’ve got thirteen out of twenty-one scenes shot, so if all goes well I should be inking by the end of next week.  Woo hoo.

Not a rhetorical question.  This is actually how my weeks have gone the last two months…

Monday:   I have time to eat dinner, socialize with the family briefly, then take ze Munchkin to the soccer footskills clinic.  It’s very late when we come home, and I usually pass right out…

Tuesday:  Basketball practice — almost two hours of writing and storyboarding bliss, but no keyframing.  After practice, I have about an hour and a half, maybe two hours to do actual keyframing. 

Wednesday:  Nothing happening.  A good two-plus hours of keyframing & tweening, whilst the other people who camp out in my house watch “American Idol”.  Next to Tuesday and Saturday, the one day a week I feel like I’m accomplishing something…

Thursday:  Maybe an hour of keyframing.  “The First 48″ is on AMC, and the Better Half and I happen to like grisly crime shows with dead bodies and detectives grilling dimwitted suspects… 

Friday:  Are you kidding?  It’s Friday!!!  NOBODY works on Friday, you silly goose…

Saturday:  Panic sets in when I realize the last two days I’ve worked only an hour, at most (why didn’t I do anything on Friday???  Curse you, Friday!!!).  The sunlight that filters into my room is perfect for illuminating the drawings I’ve done for photographing (I’ve had a scanner on my Christmas and birthday lists for the last three years, but no one seems to get the hint).  The rest of the day I’m compositing images in Painter, doing some tweens with the Wacom, and enjoying Real Life.  Saturday evenings I plop in a movie or watch some tube, interact with the family unit cuz, you know, you gotta do that if you want a sane, happy family unit…

Sunday:  A day of suck.  During the AM it’s house-cleaning time (insert random swear words here), then the afternoons are swallowed up with hoops games for the Pint-sized One.  The games themselves are not the problem - it’s the dead time from when I finish cleaning til we have to get ready to go to the gym.  I’m not very good at forcing myself to be productive between two fixed points in time (I prefer an open-ended arrangement).  Usually get an hour in the evening to draw…

That’s the winter schedule.  The rest of the year, there’s soccer coaching and lawn mowing and a variety of other goofy things to do.  Then you have to take into account I like to come up with some less-than-intelligent schemes and sundry distractions that guarantee most of those keyframing hours are spent not keyframing.  Brilliant, no?

Soooo, the point of all this is…????  No point, really.  This was in case you’re wondering why in the @*$!% it seems like it’s taking forever for me to finish any of my movies.  I am a blockhead.  Get used to it…

Last night was the final basketball practice of the season for the Squirt.  There’s a tournament and a make-up game this weekend, and that… is… IT!  Done!  This means I lose my semi-private script-writing-leave-me-the-hell-alone space until the late fall.  Crap!  Fortunately, I made this last practice count and finally finished the rough draft to the “Stupid Bee Jokes” movie.  Woo HOO!!

Let me re-phrase that:  I finally finished most of the rough draft.  The very, very end still remains, but I know how it goes, so as far as I’m concerned I’m finished.  I think.  Maybe I should write something done…

Anyway, here’s the problem:  where and when am I going to do the rewrites?  In two weeks Tuesdays morph from happy-basketball to crazy-soccer days.  Since I’m one of the coaches, I don’t get the luxury of camping out under a tree with a notebook and ignoring everyone around me.  And, I’m up to my fuzzy dome with “Scary Monster 2″ keyframing & tweening for the foreseeable future (more on that at a later date).  What’s an old fart to do?

Well, for right now I’m not going to worry about it.  The rough draft is done, and I’m in a good mood.  I’m sure some time will magically free itself up.  At least, I’m pretty sure it will… sort of… I hope…

Anybody watch the Oscars last night?  Seriously, anyone?  No?  Me, neither.

I suppose, being a filmmaker and all, I should care about what films win what award, and most years the Better Half and I make a concerted effort to watch at least some the nominees so we can come to our own conclusions.  This year’s crop, however, was a rather uninspiring bunch, to say the least (2007 in general was a pretty worthless year for films, if I do say so).  I’m sure all the winners will end up in the Netflix queue, but I have a feeling it’ll be like 9th-grade English class where we were forced to read Dicken’s Great Expectations — it may be good for you, but swallowing that pill is going to be a bitch…

Anyway, the nice lady who lives with me made a go of the Oscars for about an hour but got bored silly.  Meanwhile, I happily composited pencil sketches, then discovered Men In Black was playing on Turner Classics.  Sweet.  Saturday night The Matrix was on AMC, so two of my favorite films from the 90s in one weekend…  I think I know what I want for my birthday…

I am officially tired of winter.  Stupid single-digit temps and wind chill… grrrr! 

On the plus side, at least I’m not in Alaska.  Alaska takes whatever girly concept of cold you may have and pummels it mercilessly with brass knuckles and chainsaws.  Twenty years ago today, I was probably crunch-crunch-crunching thru the knee-deep snow on my way to the ops center, with a balmy -40 degrees sucking the oxygen out of my lungs and freezing the snot that was pouring out of my nose.  I’d show up to work with a mustache made of mucous — a snot-stache, if you will.  God, I miss those days…

I’m ready for spring.  I want to chase tornadoes and coach soccer in the rain and mud…

All the school districts in Omaha got a case of the cold heebie-jeebies and cancelled school on Wednesday — the minus-25 wind chill was going to be uncomfortable for kids walking to school or waiting for the bus or some such nonsense.  Uh-huh, yeah, try getting away with that when you join the real world, ya little hooligans…  Anyway, the Munchkin got to hang out with her dear old dad at home — drawing pictures, playing school, chasing the Mutt through the house, kicking me around, giving me attitude.  I took the day-home opportunity to get a buttload of drawings done for one of my problem scenes & generally be a nuisance.  If I could only convince the boss to let me telecommute…

Yesterday I was as unproductive and sloth-like as I could get, to make up for all the hard work I’ve been doing the past week.  Caught a high school girl’s basketball game last night with the Bambino.  One of her teammates has three older sisters that play for Omaha Westside, and the winner gets a trip to the state finals next week.  Great game, very exciting — came down to two missed free throws with one second left, and Westside squeaked out a one-point win.  Basketball is so much more fun in person than on TV.  Wished more people would’ve been there to see it; the auditorium was between half and three-quarters full…

I’m rambling.  I should get back to work.  Someone leave me a comment or something…