Personal

Please put your hands together and welcome the newest member of the Goofy Graffix army:

iMac

I’d show a larger picture, but the iMac’s sheer power and beauty would frighten mere mortals and small children. I myself have to wear protective “doom-proof” clothing when operating on it, to prevent its evil from overwhelming me…

Living and working dangerously, all for you. Thanks ain’t necessary…

All wisecracks aside, I’m pretty darn pumped up about my new little toy (well, not really little — the 20″ screen totally dwarfs the measly ‘94-Quadra-era beige monitor I’ve been staring at for 14 years). I’m in the process of adding all the programs and doodads I need to make it into a smokin’-hot rendering machine, and trying to figure out how to work the new OS 10.5 features (some are sure to be absolutely worthless, but there might just be that diamond in the rough).

What happens to the old G3? Well, nothing bad. I’m still going to draw with Painter on it — the Wacom tablet uses the old ADB port, which the iMac lacks. In fact, in the next few weeks, I’m going to pimp it out with a faster processor, more RAM, a bigger hard drive, and probably a new graphics card (that way I can toss the measly ‘94-Quadra-era beige monitor I’ve been staring at for 14 years, in favor of a flat panel). It’s not broke — it’s just slow, like me…

So, I think we can pretty well write off getting anything movie-related done for the remainder of the week. Which is fine. I’m back to having fun now. Fun rules.

Punched through the big Four-Three on Saturday. Woo hoo. I celebrated by putting the young ‘uns through another grueling soccer practice, then hanging loose with the family and stuffing my fat face with food. Life is good.

To commemorate the astounding personal achievement of continually breathing for another 365 days, the nice lady who shacks up with me presented me with the following gift:

Ain’t she purty? It’s got loads of pockets and sketchpads and pencils and charcoal and all sorts of fun artsy-fartsy stuff that I dig. Just the right size, too — I almost never work with anything larger than 9″ x 12″, and if I did I don’t think I’d want to tote it all around Omaha. I can now finally retire my scruffy green book bag that’s I’ve been lugging about for the last ten years.

Life is good…

This is the final week of pencil drawings for ‘Scary Monster 2′. I have this entire week’s drawing efforts scheduled out, and so far I’ve been able to get everything done I’ve planned on. A minor miracle, I must admit… anyway, I have Sunday as the final day, and then we move on to inking. Aren’t you thrilled? Aren’t you excited??? The toughest phase is nearly done, just two more to go… First official soccer practice is this Thursday. I hope the girls haven’t forgotten everything they learned last year over the winter break…

Real Life is such a jokester. I planned on spending my weekend zipping around Omaha like a gypsy, toting Little Miss Hoopster from game to game for her basketball tournament. And then, wouldn’t ya know it, the little twerp comes down with THE FLU. Sky-high temps, looking like a train hit her, and just like that we’re chained to the domicile, pumping all sorts of fever-reducing drugs into her, visiting the doctors at Urgent Care, happy stuff like that.

But wait — there’s more… The Disease Queen, being the kind and giving soul that she is, decided not to hoard the virus fun all to herself, so guess who has the bug now? Go on, guess…

Thanks, hon. Nice to see you’re looking out for your old man…

Seriously, though, the lack of a tournament freed up the weekend enough to let me tackle one of the most difficult scenes for the ‘Scary Monster’ short. I’m really starting to get comfortable using the Wacom to pencil the inbetween frames, which speeds things up considerably (no more fighting with tracing paper or digitizing drawings). I’m hoping someday the paper thing will be necessary only for general sketching, and all my keyframes can be done direct with Painter. Then I can concentrate on actually learning how to draw…

The rest of the week I have plans to finish up all the pencil drawings for the remaining scenes. Most are pretty simple, but there is one more big, bad, scary scene that I’m sure will make me totally crazy. I lose this weekend to a trip to Kansas City, so whatever I do, I have to do it before Friday. Could get interesting…

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…

This past Saturday was another extremely productive one, with many keyframes & tweens drawn.  At one point, the Mutt decided to camp out on my lap, preventing me from getting anything further done.  I’m certain my astounding work output left him green with envy, considering he hadn’t lifted a helpful paw all day.  Lazy vagabond (observe the stoner expression)…

Mmmm, warm lap…

To get him to leave me alone, I was forced to bribe him with a rawhide bone.  No doubt, that was his plan all along.  Devious lad (observe the satisfied smirk)…

Nom nom nom nom nom!!!

And that, friends and neighbors, is the most interesting thing that’s happened all weekend.  Sadly, my life lacks much of the drama and tension required for interesting blog-reading material.  I’m a crashing bore, and I’m perfectly okay with it…

Tonight and Thursday night I’m at the basketball court for the Munchkin’s practice.  Should be some more good scriptwriting time…

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!!!!!!!

I’ll keep it fairly simple:

1.  Finish at least two movies
2.  Play more guitar

Why did I pick number 2??  I started playing guitar close to thirty years ago, and ever since my gigging days went away (five years ago?  Six??), the old axe has been collecting a fine layer of dust in the closet.  I’m a person who hates hates HATES seeing things go to waste, and the guitar sitting around, unused, represents a colossal waste of time, blood, sweat, and tears.  It’s also embarassing when I do pull the guitar out to record soundtracks and I have to struggle thru simple little riffs that I would’ve blazed through with the greatest of ease a few short years ago.  Therefore, since I don’t want a blood vessel to rupture in my head every time I think about it, I decided to pull my guitar out of its case and start playing again.  The first couple of forays have not been encouraging, but I plan on hammering away at it til I stop looking like an idiot.  Might be awhile.

Normally, I tend to avoid making New Year’s resolutions because the exercise is usually a waste of time.  New Year’s tends to be the dumping ground for those make-myself-a-better-person ideas that apparently weren’t worth considering the other 364 days of the past year.  We all say we’d like to lose those twenty pounds, or call the kids more often, or quit smoking, or whatever, but the fact is most of us haven’t even given it any thought until we gaze at the clock, notice it’s ten o’clock in the evening of December 31st… and completely flip out.  “Oh my GOD!!!!  I need to think of a resolution right NOW NOW NOW NOW… hmmmm… thinking thinking think… you know I’ve always wanted to start going to the gym again - SAAAAY!!!  That’s sounds GREAT! I’ll do it!!  THAT is my resolution for the year ____!  Yay for me!!!!”

Yeah.  There goes one well-thought-out plan.  No possibility of failure there.

Oops, I forgot to mention, at ten o’clock you were on your third shot of tequilia, which is three more than you’ve had all of last year, so the elevator isn’t anywhere near the top floor (more likely it’s dangling by one frayed cable while you heave your guts out).

I’m feeling pretty good about my resolutions… well, the first one for sure, mainly because I resolved to finish these movies three months ago, so it should be immune from the normal post-New-Year’s letdown.  The second one should be okay, too because I realize the alternative is an aneurysm for me.  That would suck…

I’ll keep you posted on my progress.  If perchance a couple of music MP3s appear on Goofy Graffix, you’ll know things are doing fiiiiiine…………

Time for the obligatory year-end navel-gazing…

Major developments:

1. No new movies were released this year, but it was still pretty darn busy. Break Time battled blizzards and tight deadlines to show off at the 2007 Omaha Film Festival and 2007 South Dakota Film Festival, to much acclaim and applause and whatnot. And for a brief time, I had an actual movie groupie stalk me at OFF ‘07 til she finally realized I wasn’t the director of One Rat Short after all. Ahh, well, easy come, easy go…

2. We moved from the scary gun-toting neighborhood to the peaceful gun-toting country, trading in police standoffs for evil owls hunting us. I can safely say selling a house is as enjoyable as shoving a burning cactus through my colon. On the positive side, I finally got a room for myself and my studio toys. No more do I have to share my creative space with the cat’s stinky litter box in the basement, for which the cat is grateful…

Other than that, life was pretty normal these past twelve months. Now that the earth has stopped shaking (or at least slowed down enough to let me stagger over to the drawing table), I’ve been hard at work doing what I love doing most: drawing silly pictures and making silly animations.

Life is good…

Have a GREAT New Year!