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Showing posts from March, 2013

I AM NIGHTMARE Production Diary #9

Production is still going smoothly- I'll be animating full time for the next three days then I'll take about a week aside to create a new animated music video from scratch for Rabbit Junk- its an epic track so I really have to do something awesome for it- I use music videos to test new styles and techniques so I'll be sure to try some new things when I get to making the video this coming week. Teenee eats a sammich in front of his friends I'm animating pages 12-24 of the script this month which is 136 shots- It's the second sequence out of the films nine and I will complete it this month- I'll be sending out the rough cut of the films first 17 minutes to the voice actors some time next week- I've added my friend and fellow filmmaker Jimmy Screamerclauz to the cast as the voice of the films monsters btw- Speaking of Screamerclauz- that crazy guy and myself will be attending and showing our last feature films at the Victoria Independent Film Festival

Here's to "constructive criticism"! ^_^

If David Lynch offered me some advice I would listen- If Stanley Kubrick gave me some some constructive criticism I would listen- If Osamu Tezuka offered me some advice I would listen- Random people who DO NOT create work I admire offer me their unsolicited "constructive criticism" from time to time and I never listen- become great first and then I will pay attention to what you have to say- until then your words mean NOTHING but the blithering's of the status quo- fuck the status quo. I've NEVER done what other people thought I should do- I NEVER listened to unsolicited advice or criticism- If I did- I never would have had my own style and I would have never even made We Are The Strange- as I received advice against both of those things from "professionals" If I would have never done those things- I wouldn't be working on my third film- I wouldn't have traveled to over 30 countries for my films and I wouldn't have met all the awesom

How to render a 2 hour long cg movie on the cheap?

In producing my new film I AM NIGHTMARE I've been able to keep costs really low- since I'm using the same PC/equipment I used on Heart String Marionette which I bought with profits from We Are The Strange by the way-  I didn't have to buy any new hardware/software I was able to use what money I do have on hiring voice actors- The other major expense I've avoided so far is RENDERING- rendering takes a lot of time and does end up costing a lot of money because of the electricity consumed- it also depends on how much electricity costs where you live- In California where I live it happens to be one of the more expensive places in the US when it comes to electricity as you can see here In order to keep costs down I want to avoid rendering the film here- PG&E- the power company here REAMS you and they've only gotten worse since I last did any serious rendering- so I'm looking at other options- How much is power per kilowatt where you live? Its about 2

Before you post your film in progress online prepare for this

I posted a little behind the scenes video on my youtube channel yesterday as a sneak preview to people interested in the film- this is the video Here is a comment it got Now many of you have probably gotten comments like this on your stuff- I'm just showing you this so you know that it never goes away you just learn to deal with it- the proverbial "Haters gone hate" At this point in my career these comments just strengthen my resolve ^_^ They just add fuel to the fire that will never stop creating ^_^ I myself have NEVER left a comment like this on anyones work/film- if I don't like something I don't say anything at all- I mean what is the point? If I think I know better and can do something better shouldn't I be doing the thing in question myself instead of complaining about it? The more you know- the less you learn that you really do know- so knowledge and experience humbles you- Conversely with human beings- The less they know, the more they t

23 tips on cg animated filmmaking from M dot Strange

I'm M dot Strange- love me or hate me or simply go MEH- I get cg animated films made- no one can argue with that- I'll be releasing my third solo cg animated feature film this year with I AM NIGHTMARE -here are some things I've learned through my battles making my films over the past ten years. You can check out my second animated feature film  here . If you want to make 3d animated films then Storyboard - it will make your life so much easier, allow you to work faster, and give your films stronger visual storytelling and flow. If you're writing scripts and need a printer- get a cheap laser printer- inkjets fail us hard and eat all our money- I got this Canon Laser Printer and I love it- I also use it to photocopy/scan my Storyboards. Use a daily shot quota- do animation tests so you can know exactly how many shots you can animate a day without dying- use this knowledge to form an ambitious BUT reasonable daily shot quota. Since you storyboarded your whole film y

I AM NIGHTMARE Production Diary #8

Two weeks into production I just finished animating the films first sequence which was 200+ shots and equals 17 minutes of edited footage- Here's some screenshots of the damage M dot does in 2 weeks these days ^_^ Cinema 4d content browser filled with shots  Cinema 4d project files on disk   edited sequence in Premiere Pro Now if you've been following along you'll know that I'm not editing with final rendered shots- I'm using hardware renders to do an offline edit- once the entire film is animated I will then go through each shot and render out the final version- so I am NOT doing final lighting OR final rendering right now just ANIMATION and temp renders for the offline edit. I must say that the voice actors for this film are making it great! And they are making animating to their voices really fun! I'll introduce you to the I AM NIGHTMARE cast as soon as all the voice acting is done! I'm really lucky to have such a great cast! I'm act

Things are progressing nicely with the new film+

I've animated 20 shots a day for the past three days for the new film- two more days and I finish the first of the films nine sequences- which is about 15 minutes of animation and 200 shots- I'm editing it as I animate it so the plan is to have a locked edit on the sequence before I move on to the next- I gave myself a month for each sequence but I'm going to finish this months sequence way ahead of time which gives me time for.... MORE ANIMATION! I'll be animating a music video for new Rabbit Junk song starting on the 25th of this month- It will be finished on April 1st- the song sounds like it has big crowds of psycho people and much destruction- so I'll be creating that AND I'll be bringing back the rabbit characters I made for the last RJ video I did- so once this month is over I'll have done about 20 minutes of new animation- Then on April 3rd I'll be going over to Victoria, Texas for a film festival type thing- so that'll be five days off

My favorite classic anime films free on youtube

I was pleasantly surprised to find a bunch of my favorite old anime films in their entirety on youtube- if you're into darker animation and you haven't seen these- check em out! Demon City Shinjuku- I used to own the on DVD ^_^ Based on a book written by the guy who writes Vampire Hunter D and directed by the guy who directed Ninja Scroll Wicked City- I think this film had some of the first tentacle sex strangeness + an homage to The Thing with the final monster in the end ^_^ Jin Roh- I was lucky enough to see this one on film in a cinema Vampire Hunter D- the old school classic ^_^ D's voice isn't like D's voice in the English Dub but its still cool shit! One of the first anime films I ever saw Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust- I saw this in a cinema near UCLA on the last day it was being screening, at the last screening and I took the last bus there- seeing this film in the cinema changed my life and made me want to make animated films Fist of the No

Eviscerate the excuses

In my experience creating various things and also working with other creative people- I'm going to force everyone into two groups for the sake of this post. 1) those that embrace excuses and use them to avoid doing what they really want to do 2) those that acknowledge the potential excuses but instead of telling some sweet lies to themselves they pass the excuse by and do the work- or if they're unwilling to do the work they are honest with themselves instead of making excuses EVERYTHING is possible- its just about how bad you want it. Excuses may make us feel like we get a pass- as we temporarily avoided doing that thing- whatever it may be- but how long can you use the pass? Until your death bed? I believe a lot of people do- and they are filled with regret and live miserable lives. As that thing we want to do will be at the back of our minds reminding us about how we failed it- about how we are a failure. I don't like that voice myself 0_o If you want to write

Setting the mood for my "kids film" ^_^

Now that I've animated eleven minutes of the film I have a better idea of what the mood of the film is- I created my part of the film's soundtrack based on the script and now that I have animated a bit of it I realized it doesn't entirely match the mood as I don't have enough creepy or scary music 0_0 I can say now that I am Nightmare will be my funniest and cutest film but also THE MOST TERRIFYING because the first appearance of the monsters came out a lot scarier than I imagined- like serious nightmare fuel staring into your soul scary 0_0 So now the creators of the soundtrack, MadDashiell and myself are creating some creepy music- so if you pre-ordered and received the soundtrack already don't worry it will be updated and sent to you with new creepy songs ^_^ Here's the first little mood piece I've made... No more children, no more dreams by M dot Strange Doesn't really sound like a "kids film" does it? WELL it's an M do

An animation only workflow is so much better 0_0

So in about a week of production I've produced a little over ten minutes of animation- I'm actually surprised that its going to so fast 0_0 I made some changes to my workflow and that has allowed me to work faster than before and it has allowed allowed me to produce my best animation as well... As you know in being an Uberector or Forever Alone Filmmaker I have to do everything myself- with We Are The Strange and Heart String Marionette my workflow was like this during production- Animate the shot, tweak the lighting to prep for the render, do still frame test render until the shot looks right, send it to the render farm and move on to the next shot. And now my workflow is this- Animate the shot, do a hardware render of the shot, drop the shot into the edit, make sure it plays right with the adjacent shots and that there are no animation problems, if it needs a change, update animation and do another hardware render until everything is good- move on to the ne

Affordable gfx card that can run three monitors

As I'm working on my new film in Cinema 4d with my dual monitor setup I always find myself having to open a new window to access the Content Browser, Picture viewer and Render settings- I know you can put them on tabs but with my animation layout I try to avoid tabs- so I figured the only solution would be to run three monitors as I'd also like to avoid having to load a different layout to render out shots and watch render previews in the picture viewer. I've had graphics cards with 3 outputs in the past, usually a mixture of DVI, HDMI, and Display Port or all three BUT they could only run two at a time... Then this week I found this little $89 gem by Asus, the Asus HD 6670 It can run three monitors, its only $89 - $99, its a lower power card (doesn't even need any power plugged into it), its very quiet, and it has really good Open GL performance-  its a big upgrade to from old Ati 4870 card that I've been using up until now- My Cinebench Open GL score went

I AM NIGHTMARE Production Diary #7

So after less than a week of production I have 8 minutes of edited animation- I'm currently on a quota of ten shots a day- so far so good! Here's a pic of my boards I took whilst animating I printed out some animation reference sheets I found and tacked em up next to the walk cycle ref The movie is coming out AWESOME and I'm getting through the shots really fast! All the shots I've completed though my last 2 features plus all the short things like Badassery and Darksided have really helped speed up my workflow and the time it takes me to animate- I'm actually amazed at how easy animating this movie is with how good its coming out 0_0 Through doing the work you learn tricks and techniques to make things easier and faster so I guess I have learned a lot of those ^_^ I just got the rest of the voice acting stuff from the voice actors- I have an amazing cast- I'll introduce you to them soon! It almost feels like my first two films were practice

Nothing to prove

"Art reaches its greatest peak when devoid of self-consciousness. Freedom discovers man the moment he loses concern over what impression he is making or about to make" - Bruce Lee For a large part of my life I cared what other people thought about the things I made- this led me to situations wherein I felt I had something to prove. So I went ahead and made things to prove this point- it proved nothing as the people I believed would be proved wrong were nowhere to be found- the people that ridiculed my work didn't pop back up and say "wow you proved us wrong we take back everything we said"  The truth is- they never gave a shit- so why did I? A lot of us grow up with this sort of perfectionism and people pleasing thing built into us- if EVERYONE doesn't like what we do then we've got to fix that?! I would ignore ten pieces of positive feedback and focus on the one negative- Something I learned later- that was re-affirmed in this blog post by Seth G

Firing arrows into the darkness

If you can see the target.... fire the flaming arrows ignited by your passion and watch it burn brighter and brighter as people in the future meander past- They may be bewildered still- if then- there's no helping that as you're on to the next target anyway- Firing at the targets people hold up for you is like playing cover songs- they'll smile and clap when you hit the target in their hands but know that you're performance is forgettable and you're just playing favorites and trying to appease the crowds instead of answering the call of the fire that dwells within you. The fire won't generate ad revenue for you, no- BUT it gives you something most people don't have- something you cannot buy or borrow- something you cannot attain through any other means. Most "business" is had through doing what the customer KNOWS and WANTS- its too bad something as powerful as FILM- is being used to pander to people for change for the most part. It's

Official production begins today on my new film! ^_^

So this is where I'll be working full time for the next year to complete my next animated feature film I AM NIGHTMARE Script on the LEFT Storyboards+ RIGHT I hope my FRANKEN_PC holds together for another film! My friendly IT staff- their friendly enough BUT TECHNICALLY INCOMPETENT so I have to fix everything myself ^_^

I AM NIGHTMARE OST now included in pre-order package

As of today when you pre-order my next film I AM NIGHTMARE you will receive a download of the 26 song original soundtrack along with your hand drawn postcard. Here is a sample track you can listen to and download for free Dye and change us not by M dot Strange Besides the soundtrack there might be a little surprise extra thrown in with that "Ignore this folder"- You'll just have to pre-order or ask someone who has to find out what is in there ^_^