Archive for the ‘Music’ Category

Reflections and Resolutions

Wednesday, December 31st, 2008

My New Year’s resolutions for 2008 did not go so swimmingly. Let’s recap them, shall we?

1. Finish at least two movies

Ouch! Yeah, umm, that one crashed and burned… and how! Started out promising enough, but before I knew it Scary Monster Vs Lucky Frog was gimping towards month seven of production with nary an end in sight. Meanwhile, the first movie of my robot series was meeting its demise at the hands of a poorly-written story, and without episode 1 there’s no point in episodes 2 through 4. Quite the crap-tacular mess, I must say. Today both movies function in a zombie mode — very undead, shuffling around the house moaning, every now and then trying to sneak up on me to eat my brain. Jerks. My plans for them consist of embalming them with napalm and “accidentally” dropping a Zippo lighter…

2. Play more guitar

Well, technically I’ve met this goal, but the playing time has been so sporadic and laughably bad I wouldn’t call it a success if you paid me (well, maybe if you paid me…) Whenever I do play, I find myself rummaging over the same old stale unfinished riffs from ten years ago, coming to the exact same stopping points, without the first clue on how to finally turn these little “gems” into something resembling a song. Not even Garage Band helps, and you know it’s a hopeless case when Garage Band throws up its hands and says, “You’re on your own, loser.” Depressing…

I’m making a rude gesture towards the old 2008 calendar…

Any hope for 2009??? Yeah, I think so. Three-eyed Larry has progressed far more smoothly than I had dared to dream, which gives me hope for some of the other projects up my sleeve. I have some interesting design ideas for my films I can’t wait to try out. And our little zombie children are not total lost causes. After I torch their rotting corpses I have every intention of Supergluing the cinders back together, then using a ball-peen hammer and a loud mix tape of old Rush albums to shape them into something… well, less zombie-ish. At least then I won’t have to peer cautiously around corners to avoid zombie ambush at 3 a.m. when making a trip to the little boy’s room…

As far as resolutions go… well, I’ve always held that New Year’s resolutions were stupid ideas, and this year I’m going to stay true to that belief. Just say “no” to resolutions, dammit!

Status Report for February 4, 2008

Monday, February 4th, 2008

Saturday was an extremely productive day, with most of the remaining dialog for the robot movie finally getting recorded. I may have one or two lines from one of the extra characters to record, but the vast majority (more importantly, all the dialog I actually need to get rolling with production) has been finished. I still need to weed thru the raw audio files and figure out which takes are keepers; that can be this week’s focus…

On top of dialog recording, all the many keyframe drawings for the Monster movies got photographed and uploaded. You know, someday I’m going to break down and actually buy a scanner… anyway, I need to run those drawings thru Painter, build composites, and start setting up some sequences in POV, which can be another focus item for this week. Lots of keyframes left to go, and there are a lot of Real Life things to contend with this week…

The drum-machine POV script has been finished and seems to work pretty well. I’ve been creating some ’stock’ drum patterns at a variety of tempos so I have something to jam along with. Now all I need is a stone-cold money riff and a half-baked melody, and I’ll be set. Odds are pretty good, though, that the most I’ll be able to dig up will be some snarky punk thing that will just annoy people. Nothing wrong with that…

Oh, yeah, and one more thing… HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAD!!!!!!!

Status Report for January 28, 2008

Monday, January 28th, 2008

The past week has been a keyframe-athon of epic proportions.  I’ve got keyframes coming out of my ears for the first ‘Scary Monster’ sequel, and a couple for ‘Evolution’.  The drawings are scattered all around the studio — on the drawing table, computer desk, floor, kitchen, whatever.  I’ve found that the cheapo Blick-housebrand tracing paper works just as well as Canson or Strathmore paper.  The plan is to continue drawing throughout the week, as long as the drawing buzz keeps going, then this weekend I’ll start shooting the drawings, dumping them into Painter, and building composites…

New Year’s resolution update #1:  I stumbled into a local music store to purchase strings for my PRS for the first time in probably four years this weekend.  Let me tell you, fresh strings on a guitar is like waking up in the morning and realizing IT’S THE FIRST DAY OF SUMMER VACATION YAAAYYYYYYY!!!!  Cleaned off the finger grunge, slapped on the new strings, stretched them out, and before you know it my fingers are dancing around the neck making weird spaceship noises (mind you, it was very clumsy dancing, but my fingers didn’t care one stinking bit).  Life is good.  Makes me want to get the drum machine script for POV up and running.  I’m getting ideas…. hmmmm….