100 hands

this should really be viewed on a loop for best results. oh well, i'll post draft 2 soon, with more cussin yall.

more badland

these are some shots from working in the green screen room with my miniature sets. now the rest is up to the computer!
-big ups to J and D Amato, attorney at law for coming by to be a special guest DP (and also taking the production stills). very nice man to work with. I owe you a fruit salad.

sketchy

one of these sketches is an interpretation of the mayor of blake city's dream. can you guess which one?

nuthin but love

This weekend I painted Dominique Wilkins at Luv's Barber shop. Luv says that Dominique was his idol growing up and that not enough young cats today know who he is. He also thinks that his brother Gerald was nice. I have never really painted a mural before so I took a cue from a talent named Matt Luckhurst.




My boy George came by on day 1 and helped me fill it out. He was trying to keep his mouth shut when some guys were talking trash about D McNabb.

dominique wilkins

matthew ritchie

Last night, marie and i attended a rather fascinating lecture given by Matthew Ritchie at NYU's IFA. Ritchie talked a lot about how artists should use all of the available information that there is instead of reverting back to and referencing or paying homage to what has already been done (ya know, heaven hell, "the implosion of the art world"). He uses the concept of information as a source of inspiration, believes that information itself can become form, and break the space time continuum by traveling back in time. I didn't know that space time was shaped like a cone.
I respect him tremendously, I find his work fasciniting although unemotional. my only rub with the guy is that all of his lofty ideas about string theory and the shapes of the universe in isometric view are not at all evident for most normal people, and I suspect not even for quantum theorists. Regardless, I am not sure if we need to know where artists draw their inspiration from to appreciate it through our own lens, but Ritchie is certainly a good and funny talker so it might help to look at some of his interviews n' stuff.
Here are my lecture notes.

matte paintings

lately, i've been working on matte painting for our film's backgrounds. they have ended up being a mixture of miniature sets, photographic reference, and photoshop painting. 

although i am pretty happy with the way these look and ultimately think they are more beleiveable, i still remain nostalgic for the original photograph. even though things are slightly out of perspective, the original has a certain charm that the painted one doesn't. oh well. 

what do you think? (more to come soon!!)

more life

another fellow space ship builder.

i still draw nakey

this man is named chuck, a regular at spring studio. he has very strange proportions and even though he takes about a minute to get into the poses, they are well worth it.


after that i got my wisdom teef removed. back to being naive, hooray!

in other news, my film aethiopicus will be screening in front of the live nyu orchestra in march with newly composed music. hooray!

also, this is my new favorite thing ever!!!!

family reunion

hi everyone, it has been a long time, i know and i'm sorry. since i have last posted, andrew and i have had a couple shoots in the green screen room and we are moving on to some animation. finally. here is shot one:



in order to complete this spaceship, i had to take apart a few more electronic appliances including a scanner/ printer, a typewriter that mysteriously would not stop working, and a few small toys.
the outer shell of the ship was plastic air painted with metallic and acryllic paint.
this is the back rotary that probably won't be shown in the film, but it can rotate!
this is the ninja turtles hover hq playset. national wholesale liquidators was going out of business this week so i decided to get myself a little 8 dollar christmas present. unfortunately they didn't have the hypershell which, when combined with the hover hq makes the HOVER SHELL.
i rememember that the ninja turtles were so popular in my preschool that we had to have designated day when everyone brought in their turtleparaphernilia and played with it. an action show about one of the slowest animals, pure brilliance. in any case, maybe i'll be able to scrap some parts for my next space ship.
also, the mayor of blake city and JD Amato finally settled their copyright dispute in the annual egg drop. my initial designs for a rubber band ball egg didn't work so well, but sometimes you just have to try and make things bounce. am i right? a good time had by all (except for michael porcello who almost got 'shanked by a homeless man that our parachute landed on).

miniseries: SPACE SHIP TIME

hi readers! (umm, hi mom and dad) today i am assembling parts to build a space ship. This task seemed daunting at first. Do you have to go to a fancy geeky model store and purchase some babylon star wars crap? Nope.
First off, major shout out to NASA for putting their entire image library online and copyright free. You can even download OBJ files of some of their spacecrafts. So there is plenty of scientific reference to use.
Now, Any NASA scientist will tell you that there are really only two parts to any space craft: the smooth outer metal shell, and the wiry, coggy electrical inside part.

I went to home depot to find some shiny outer shell parts.



Now for the innards. We happened to have a VCR player that doesn't work in our house, (but yet we still leave it near the TV) so i got a screwdriver and starting taking things apart.


At times this can be frustrating, but try and resist the urge take a hammer and smash things open because you will most likely break something that could have been interesting looking. It had to be put together by an assembly machine, so chances are there is a relatively logical way to take it apart.
And the deeper you go the more treasure you find. Here are the cogs:
and here are the weird plastic shapes

open the VCR, and here's all the JUNK

Now enjoy the fruits of your labor! Taking apart things is fun, especially when you don't need them to work. I also opened up a remote control because the plastic shell might make some great wings. But I'll save that for next time.
ps. if anyone has a working vcr, let me know cause i have this vcr tape i've been meaning to watch. thanks!