Dog Day

I fired the humans and replaced them with dogs.




Lucia doesn't like me. She was O. K. at first, then I picked her up -she's lighter than Murray the Cat. Now if I come within 10 feet she starts barking and runs away.

Makes it hard to give her scenes to animate.



I just call this one "fluffy dog". Apparently, her name is "Bijou". Fluffy dog, it is!

Fluffy Dog weighs 4 pounds. That's 1/3 the weight of Murray the Cat.



Layabout dogs must not have heard about the humans getting fired.

Hair Today

One year ago today I cut off all of my hair. I haven't cut it since. Now, it measures about seven inches.

Thinking of hair and hair cuts reminds me of Roland Topor. An artist told me a story about him, I don't know if it's a true story but I like to believe it is.

Topor, of course, is responsible for the look of La Planete sauvage -a film made haunting by its intricate and gruesome design. He also wrote the novel on which Polanski's The Tenant is based, played Renfield in Herzog's Nosferatu and created a French "news" show hosted by a puppet cat.


above: Telechat

As the years passed, Topor (as will happen) began to lose more and more hair. Occasionally he would notice this in public, at a cafe, on a park bench, in a meeting. He would tape down the lost follicle and draw an elaborate illustration based on the line.


above: titles to Viva La Muerte


above: the beginning of Fantastic Planet (La Planet sauvage)

Topor has left us these films and countless incredible illustrations. Just as I like to imagine there's some 10 year old cancer patient out there robbing banks and littering the crime scenes with my DNA from the wig they got last Christmas, I like to think that restaurants of Paris are spruced with ornate doodles of monsters and sexual organs.

Demo Demo

What I like best about having a production company -after the money wrangling from corporate monoliths, never ending insurance bills for things like "domestic terrorism" and minimum wages I bring home -are the trappings of a studio.

Making sample reels, post cards, Christmas cards -the fun stuff.

We've taken to seasonal reworkings of our sample reel. The packaging on our first version was straightforward.

We had to figure out a few things. Design-wise, how to treat the logo against a background. It uses saturated tints of the primaries leaving us few options. The flat yellow was the simplest answer. The logo plays well on this color field.

In the winter we wanted to dial back the palate and stick with the four colors of the logo.


The logo now rests on the lower left hand corner against a blue pulled from the logo's color scheme. A thin white drop separates it. Blue, obviously, for winter.

Here's the inside, with the DVD.

Different media and different applications process and print color in different ways. This is an early unsuccessful test to try to get the tones to match.

This winter reel from last year was our first effort to win the Nobel Prize for Demo Reels.



We built this simple open that plays upon loading the disk.

It lands on this menu.

The snowflakes turn blue as they cross into the white. The animation runs on 3 or 4 minute cycle.

The "about us" and "contact" menu also have little graphics activated upon clicking.



For the summer the packaging got little more cartoony. This is our attempt at being "fun".

The contents of the disk reflect the website design -which is picked up in the graphics of the cover.
Here's what happens when you click contact.



These clips play here without audio. The audio was laid in DVD Studio Pro and I'm too lazy to redo it in an editing software just to upload here.

For our Fall packaging we've retained the same menu setup as the Summer Reel (but changed the contents of the reel as well as the music selections).

Taking off from the Asterisk exhaust of the Summer rocketship, we're using the logo here as a pun. I think it's playful and maintains the emotional integrity of the logo.

My Favorite Buildings

One of the benefits of the old days of working at The Ink Tank was its proximity to Rockefeller Center.

Unlike many tourist attractions -The Empire State Building is just an office building, The Statue of Liberty is well out of walking distance -Rockefeller Center was designed for life in New York City. It's possibly the pinnacle of urban architecture in America.

The friezes on the facades of each building in the original complex were created by Lee Lawrie.

As Rockefeller Center is nothing but superlatives in the world of architecture (and American achievement, in general) these reliefs are superlative in the realm of Art Deco sculpture.

Lawrie's work on Rockefeller Center pulls the hat trick of public design:

1) It captures the spirit of the age. Social realism blended effortlessly with Art Deco angles, detailing and color. This combination presents a thoughtful optimism for the state of the nation during the Great Depression.

2) It presents patriotism as communal. The national symbol, the eagle, flies throughout Rockefeller Center. In the image above it flies alongside the maiden. Such images of community are represented all through the building complex.

3) It connects the presents to past, placing itself (and us) within the continuum of history. These buildings were made by men long dead, they honor those who tread before them and invite us, the living, to share the space they created.

I was introduced to Lee Lawrie's work at The Ink Tank. That studio occupied the space created by and once used by Bertram Goodhue, who is best known in New York for his church architecture.

Goodhue employed Lawrie on almost all of his commissions. Even in Rockefeller Center, the cathedral of Capitalism, Lawrie couldn't escape the profane.

The walk up a few blocks to 53rd and Fifth Avenue offers the other end of Lawrie's work.

While most tourists are taken by St. Patrick's Cathedral just across from Rockefeller Center, they're missing the real sacred gem of the avenue. (For the best of Renwick's work, skip St. Patrick's for the Grace Church on Broadway. Take the tram to Roosevelt Island for a glimpse of his two ruined asylums and still extant lighthouse.)

Saint Thomas' Episcopal Church is as Gothic as you get in New York City without heavy eye make up.

This is Goodhue's Gothic high point. He evolved into an extraordinarily interesting architect (that's for another post), but here he was working to outdo his old master's work down the block.

Lawrie's dominating sculpture are what makes this building special.
Of course, all of these sculptures have a story and a meaning behind them.


St. Thomas' showcases some of the finest Gothic work in America, just a few blocks north of some of the world's great Art Deco.

Brilliant artists can be brilliant in many forms.

Sometimes, if the elongated body and angular features of this saint are any proof, they tip their hand a little and we can divine the progression of their senses.

Here's What I Did Yesterday

06:53 Murray the Cat beats the alarm, waking me 7 minutes before it rings
06:55 Daily grooming activities
07:40 Dilly Dally
08:00 Drop off laundry
08:05 Take L Train
08:15 Purchase pies at Union Square farmers' market
08:20 Take R Train to 28th Street
08:25 Arrive at studio, make coffee, eat some pie
08:30 Deal with morning email and junk
08:35 Go over storyboard Brian worked up after receiving script at 6PM previous night (film is due today)
08:40 Record scratch track
09:10 Call Patrick Smith. Ask him if he wants to be the star of this test spot
09:20 Record additional takes of scratch track
09:45 Christina (artist) phones. Her train is stuck out in Long Island
09:50 Ask Ryan (intern) to make copies of storyboard
10:10 Jessica and Nina (artists) arrive with Lucia (dog). We discuss vaguely what we need to do by end of day
10:15 Set Ryan to assemble the rough storyboard (20 pages, many with a single drawing per page) onto one or two pieces of large Bristol board
10:20 Assign prep work for a few scenes to Jessica and Nina
10:30 Edit scratch track
10:45 Receive a scratch track from ad agency (we didn't know it was coming)
11:00 Talk to Brian on the phone
11:10 Go over board with Christina. Isolate a sequence for her to start on with the graphic elements we have
11:30 Fax board to agency. It's rough and unintelligible
12:15 Patrick Smith arrives. Socialize and dilly dally
12:25 Talk to agency about board
12:40 Set up for photo shoot
12:55 Call Waldy's for lunch
13:05 Start photographing Patrick
13:30 Pizza arrives. We finish shooting.

13:40 Patrick leaves. Check in on artists.
14:00 Import photos/pull selects.
14:05 Get revised script from agency
14:20 Lean out of 12th floor window to photograph overhead of Brian standing across the street
14:25 Assign selects for Ryan to prepare. Show him how to prepare the Photoshop documents using Masks.
14:30 Figure out what's different about the new script
14:40 Jessica goes to voice lesson
14:50 Go to bank
14:55 Call Brian to ask him to switch Nina over to finishing what Jessica started
15:10 Return from bank. Bug Christina about her shots
15:25 Brief call with agency
15:30 Dame Darcy calls. Wants to make sure I'll be at her book release party, I tell her of my "situation" and hopes to make it
15:35 Pull live foot from tape archives. We've done work for this client before, so we had some material that could be used for this
15:45 Cut selects (three shots) against voice track
15:50 Receive logos from agency
15:55 AfterEffects color treatment of live shots
16:10 Cut in first of Christina's sequences
16:15 Have short phone conversation with Steve Kerper. Probably about becoming a fan of Murray the Cat
16:20 Go over revision with Christina, start her on new sequence
16:35 Start on AfterEffects of two shots
16:40 Notice someone has finally cut into the pumpkin pie (ALSO NOTE: this is an observation right after I set myself to do actual animation related work...)
16:55 Go over Ryan's work. It's good
17:05 Go over Nina's work. Also good
17:10 Cut in new shots from Christina and my scenes
17:20 Go over Nina's work. Give her new shot
17:30 AfterEffects scene that Nina prepared
17:45 Cut in that shot
17:50 Go over Nina's work
17:55 Christina starts on shot Nina prepared
18:00 Nina goes home. Brings barky dog with her
18:05 Fine tune piece with exception of one missing shot
18:10 Martha calls. We talk for 15 minutes
18:20 Christina starts to render final shot
18:30 Christina goes home
18:35 Realize that this last scene is (4 seconds) is going to take forever to render because a) some stupid effect that's on it and, more importantly, b) it's the last shot
18:36 Start reading: Murder at the Vicarage
19:05 e-mail agency producer with status update. Another "20 minutes" per computer estimate
19:45 talk to agency producer. They've just finished a meeting will get dinner and stop by
19:55 render finish/cut in shot
20:00 Export/compress/upload quicktime
20:20 Email link to agency
20:45 Mix studio calls. Different guy, same conversation.
20:50 Talk to Alex to bide time. Complain about agency not showing up yet
21:05 Agency calls. Loves what we did, but asks us to re-do about half of it
21:15 Start on revisions. Break into five sections -straight editorial (easy), end (cut in a version we already did, but didn't show plus new logo treatment and end frame -fairly easy), resizing (essentially, although it's more complicated than that -somewhat easy), new approach to 15 second sequence (brain work), new live action pulled from web (pain in the ass).
21:20 Editorial revision complete. Start digging through Christina's work to find the right stuff
21:25 Agency calls back to make sure we're not mad. We're not mad, we always seem cranky -we like to think of it as efficient
21:30 Brian heads out
21:35 Render resizes on Christina's machine
21:40 Find YouTube clip
21:45 Download YouTube clip
21:55 Convert flv to quicktime
22:10 Cut in quicktime. Doesn't work because flv to mov conversion is awful
22:15 Figure out work around. Quality still looks terrible, but it'll have to do for this project
22:20 Cut in resize revision
22:25 Deal with end sequence revision
22:30 Brian calls to check in
22:40 Talk to Alex some more while trying to figure out what to do
22:45 Cut in end sequence revision
22:50 Start to figure new section revision. Pull select images, drop them in time, find better images, make transitions
23:50 Make alternate version of new section identical to what we discussed with agency (I couldn't really see what they wanted until I figured out how I would do it, then what they wanted was clear)
00:30 Cut in both versions
00:35 Make timing revisions on new section
00:45 Fine tune entire edit
01:05 Export/compress/upload two versions
01:30 email
01:45 burn DVDs
02:00 leave studio
02:15 discover L train isn't running. Begin 40 minutes of MTA hijinx
02:55 get out of D train (don't ask) at Broadway-Lafayette. Catch cab. Cabbie sings "Let's Get in On" along with the radio. I don't not accept the offer
03:00 home
03:15 sleep
07:30 pick up laundry
08:05 drop off final at mix studio


Here's Pat Smith. He was the only guy we could think of with chiseled Aryan good looks of a guy who would make high end luxury purchases.

I should say, this isn't typical -but it happens every once in a while. A client, usually someone we've worked with in the past, will ring up and need something right away. In this case "right away" meant, literally, the next day.

There are "24 hour film" competitions all of the time. I think they're a waste of 24 hours. Sure, its a decent enough school exercise but in reality if you've come down to such a short time make something its due to poor planning. Film making, animation in particular, is about planning (or as we like to call it, courtesy of Gerard Goulet, "planification").

Revised Reel

While making a film the crew creates a cocoon. They inhabit a self-contained world of messy larvae and slime in the hope of growing into a pretty, pretty bug.

This hibernation makes working easier- shared common language, a shared goal, and ultimately a unified point of view.

The downside to this, of course, is that your audience may no habla your lingua franca .

That's why directors focus group their pictures, to make sure the point gets across.

While I tend to be a little arrogant when it comes to the clarity of our work -in my mellowing approach to certain death I've began to show pieces in progress to make sure their point is coming across as strongly as possible.

A couple weeks back I posted our Fall demo montage and sent it around to folks. Several people had the same reaction, and we could appreciate the validity to their thoughts.

This revised cut incorporates the feedback from our loyal fans.

Buy Cool Merchandise!

A little while back we worked with Steve Kerper to create a bunch of pieces for MyDamnChannel.

One was a series of live action bits with pan and scan storybook illustration. We got to use some fun illustration on those bits. I did a poor job photographing the live, but they're cut O.K.

That was a case of multiple rounds of editing with Steve and Brian. That's the toughest sort of edit -when a few people are throwing out ideas. They may all be "good" ideas, but you can't execute them all at once. Then, on the other hand, there are some ideas you instinctively know will not work but are obligated to try.

In any case, we also did three animated bits.

You can collect fabulous merchandise here.





The spaceship was made in Maya, the characters animated in Flash, compositing in After Effects. Here's a case where Flash allowed us to create "better" animation. The animation short cuts are the same that would be used in a low budget Oxberry stand shoot -the girl's arms reaching across frame is a pan cel, for example. We timed holds and added flourishes in the same manner any drawn film would be done -except the drawing was done with a tablet.

This leads to some art production that I'm not crazy about. The line work doesn't have the finesse or control that I'd like. Time constraints of producing on a budget are more responsible for this than anything inescapable in the Flash production process.

Ultimately, these films work because of the sound design. JZ Barrell did the music and sound effects.