Skip to main content

Strange Update 4-2-17


Working away in obscurity on things unseen and unknown by eyes outside of your tiny inner circle- that's what I've been doing whilst working on this game-

I've put in a lot of time on this thing- it sort of reminds me of We Are The Strange in a way as I'm some unknown dude working on some crazy original ambitious project no one knows about-

You know me... I can't just make a simple, short "intro" level can I? Gotta be all ambitious 0_0


And the conceptual core of this game- the "story" or concept behind the world of the game is the original idea behind the world of We Are The Strange- it never made it into that film- the original idea behind that film never made it into the final- but its something that has always intrigued me- and it means a lot to me-

If I'm going to work for hundreds of hours alone on a project I have to believe in it- I have to believe that there is something I'm putting into it that is important- some message- some emotion- something that can't be bought or sold- something that possibly can't be explained but it feels powerful and important to me-

I know- a lot of fancy talk with nothing to show ^_^ Right now I'm just some random dude working on a PC in a back room- its kind of nice to feel like a mad scientist working away on something that could be brilliant or explode in your face and kill you- that's how programming/game dev makes me feel every other hour-


My usual days consists of working inside on my PC, working out outside with my kettle bell and riding my bike to go get food or to do some paper work at a cafe or Whole Foods- I don't socialize- I don't "hang out" there's no time for that- there's too much to create- too much to do-

Video games are crazy- you can create a digital world filled with living digital beings- set the rules- set the stage and let a living human engage/explore your world to discover the paths and experiences you have made available for them- its awesome-

Anyway- enough about that- I hope to have something to show you soon-

For now all I have are these photos from my sketchbook AND OH SHIT I LOVE these VELA notebooks- I use the hard/dura covers- they are great if you need a tough/nice sketch/note/evil plan book



Did you know that I'm also a music producer? Yeah I didn't know either until recently....

If you've followed my work you know I'm a prolific unknown musician that's made a million songs no one has listened to except Latham and Jemilla down there in the AU....sup yall ^_^

Through all the experience working on my own music and through doing the audio stuff on my films/games and other peoples films etc I've gotten pretty decent at audio/music production- I'm not some mixing/music genius but I've got the basics down ok-

Long story shorter- my wife, who is the musician ÝRÝ has a friend from childhood that is also a talented musician- she lives in Brazil and self produced an album- I heard it and thought I could add a lot of production value to it- so I offered to help her redo her album- I'm "producing" the tracks I guess?

She sends me the midi files + vocal audio files for the complete songs- I replace/add instruments using her midi files and try to re-shape the song for maximum win-
Before


After


That reminds me- in recent years after doing all different kinds of creation/work I've realized that everything is storytelling and math/logic- a good movie is of course a good story- a good song is also good storytelling- builds/point/counter-point/rhythm/timing- marketing is storytelling- everything is.....

A single good animation is good storytelling- the principles of animation are good storytelling-

Its everywhere- and everywhere that its not math/logic is there- I rant to the few people I talk to irl about this these days- if I still did a podcast I'm sure this is what I'd be talking about these days-

Anyway-----------

We've finished all 10 tracks for the album now- I'm also going to help her with the album art and make her a music video as well-

I'm doing this all for free of course because I really like her music and because she's my wife's best friend since childhood- here's a little sample of one of the songs-


We don't know what song it'll be yet but I'll be starting on a music video for her this coming week- so new music video soon and I really think you all will like her album.

SPEAKING of albums- my wife ÝRÝ  will have her new album finished soon- its being mixed/produced by our awesome friend Einar in Iceland- he's the man behind the Icelandic band Noise seen here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZlORRB2JlI

I got to see them play last summer in Iceland and they were awesome 0_0

Regarding Iceland- since I'm married to an Icelander and my father in law got me an Iceland shirt for Xmas AND because I blacked out on moonshine with a sailor named Ragnar my first visit to Iceland AND because I walk around in the Icelandic freezing wind with only a t-shirt unlike those DAMN AMERICAN tourists crawling all over the main shopping street-

Wait, where was I going with this? Oh yeh so I was vouching for my Icelandic cred- I also eat giant ice cream comes with the luxury chocolate dip every day when I'm there- don't believe me? Here's me and my music god friend Endika with said Ice cream cones from last Summer-
Serbian man with hair, Croatian man with no hair + ice cream cones

I forgot where I was going with this whole Iceland thing- Oh yeah- I'm there like every summer so if you are going to be there some Summer let me know and we'll get ice cream or Kebab at Mandi- I know it doesn't sound Icelandic, its not- its a Syrian kebab place and its the best-

Places- my wife and I used to love going to this coffee house there called "ten Drops" in English BUT they stopped serving the Skyr cheesecake?! How could they?! BETRAYED- this is our favorite coffee house now even though the American guy working there was an annoying drama queen-

Icelanders! Fire and exile all Americans please- They ruin everything- trust me, I was one of them until I burned it out of myself with bottles of Brennivin ^_^

Of course I'm kidding except for the exiling Americans part and the Brennivin thing- I burned something but I'm not sure what it was-

The bottle contained a white skull on the black label, in order to warn against consumption, later replaced by the map of Iceland. Therefore, it was sometimes called "svarti dauði" (black death).

Have you been around my bloggy place to remember me going on about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency? It was in 2013- well if you bought in then and HELD/HODL you've got some pretty nice gains eh? AND if you invested in Ethereum when the crowdsale launched pretty nice eh? I think I was posting on twitter about it-

I stopped using Twitter as its a shitty company like all the rest of the centralized shitty  companies- I'm not saying THIS IS THE ONE! throw all yer money in their crowdsale if/whenever they do it BUT I've been posting/playing with Akasha since the alpha launched- I think I was one of like the first ten people to sign up but you can find me on there- its still every early but its promising-

I thought this Youtube comment from Alan on one of the music vids I did  for my wife was coo regarding Akasha-
I've been posting my recent music video works on Akasha and it was found by this Web 3.0 traveler-

Another thing I never knew I was until recently- I do offer crypto-currency related financial advice to friends and those that have listened have made MAD GAINS BRO haha

Oh yeah back to Youtube comments- I got this one on I AM NIGHTMARE recently- 

Shiiiiiit I guess I better get back to this game work- and oh yeah- this is back on the internet in case you missed it.

Before I go- I'll be in Los Angeles April 12th - 16th- If you would be interested in meeting up please let me know in the comments and/or contact me. 

P.S. Ricky, Sean, & Juan- hope to see you maniacs down there- fucking love you guys maaaaaaaaaaan.




Comments

  1. Hey man, give credit where credit is due... my best friend and I still blast Predator_E all the time and have since middle school

    ReplyDelete
  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love these rambling blog posts, MDS! And for the record you are not alone and struggling in obscurity - you got a whole raft of people who are inspired by your work and life. I'm one of them. Can't wait to see you and Rakel later this month.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Very glad to see you've been able to accomplish so much doing what you love, that's pretty awesome.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Man Iceland seems like the place to be. And ive got to meet you in the IRL someday, that's my next milestone goal!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What format should I render out of Cinema 4d with?

UPDATED 2_27_13!  RENDER USING EXR Lossy Zip16! Since I'm working on a new feature film that will generate over 1500 shots made up of image sequences I need to make sure I choose the right file format to render to lest my hard drives explode. What I need from my format is  at least 16bit, an alpha included and preferably small size. I rendered out a frame from my film tallied up all the file sizes here- their all different types of codecs listed from smallest file size to largest. The render includes an RGBA pass, Depth pass, and Material Luminance pass because thats what I always render out. 1.00mb 8bit-Photo Jpeg %100 1.27mb 8bit-PNG 4.65mb 16bit- EXR lossy ZIP16 5.75mb 8bit-PSD 6.23mb 16bit-EXR lossy PLZ 6.44mb 16bit-PNG 7.94mb 8bit-TIFF 8.50mb 16bit-EXR Lossy 24 9.05mb 16bit-EXR Lossy Run Length 14.6mb 8bit-TARGA 22.4mb 32bit-EXR ZIP16 24.6mb 32bit-EXR Zip1 25.6mb 32bit-EXR PLZ 29.3mb 16bit-TIFF 29.3mb 16bit-PSD 40.0mb 32bit-EXR Run Length 58.7mb 16

Aggregated feedZ

So I totally aggregated all meh rss feedZ...So in this one handy like feed thing you can get... -Meh blog posts -Meh EXCITING Facebook status updates (ex. "I'm so FACE") -Meh youtube videos -Meh Vimeo videos -Meh Blogtalk radio episodes - and much more (actually just like some other xml code that i don't understand) Just subscribe via this link and you can get all that for a low low price of...oh wait it's totally FREE ^ ^

So a guy is trying to take credit for my film...

TLDR- Scroll down to THE THIEVERY My name is Mike- I make films under the name "M dot Strange" and I have done so for the past 10+ years- this is my story as a filmmaker culminating in a recent event wherein a "filmmaker" tried to take credit for my life's work Here's my imdb page with my film credits  My web site Here's a reel with stuff from my original films in which I wrote/created/designed/animated etc everything that you see- I can and have performed all aspects of animated film production on my films- thats sort of how I made a name for myself- by being a one man animated film studio Here's a presentation from 2014 with me discussing the production of my last film My first animated feature film "We Are The Strange" premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007 Sundance archives link Article about the film Link to the film Film's site Because of the buzz that film generated I was given offers to sell the