Skip to main content

Strange little things matter in life


Sometime around 1997 a friend and I were driving through our neighborhood on our way to see a movie or play basketball- I can't quite remember which- anyway- I spotted a doll head in the gutter and asked my friend to stop the car-

I got out and retrieved the doll head- I put it on the floorboards of my friends car- we went and did whatever we did and I took the doll head home-

At the time I was making live action short films using the name "SomeGuy"- I was just beginning to play around with animation-

I kept the doll head on my desk- this is some old album art where you can see the doll head sitting with my stuff way back when-


In that photo next to the doll head are some Barbie parts I found in the street- they had been run over a few times which gave them this nice texture that made it looked like they were burnt- asphalt road rash burn-

Why I am I talking about this stuff?

I kept that doll head around and started using it in my weird little animations- I used it in a short animation that played in a art/animation festival in Australia called "Straight out of Brisbane"- I think I met the curator through the 8bit/chiptune online scene I partook in at that time-

Anyway- thanks to that doll head I was able to get my work exhibited- that was the first time that had happened and I was excited about it- the festival peeps were really nice, they even sent me a dvd from the fest with all the works on it- that was the first time I had seen Paul Robertsons stuff-

I used to talk to the doll head- I felt like he wanted to be a star so I'd say to him "some day I'll make you a star"

I started to plan a full length film for him to star in- it ended up being my film We Are The Strange which opened the door to everything awesome thats happened in my life- it changed my life-

It was all because I happened to see that doll head in the gutter and asked my friend to stop the car- if I would have never found "Emmm" as I came to call him- my life would certainly be much different-

So a strange little decision ended up making my dreams come true (there was a TON of GRUELING work involved as well I must say) but who knows if I would have tried to do anything at all without that doll head?

That random doll head in the gutter caused me to make this-



Because of that movie I went on to make two more and tons of other stuff- I got to travel the world on someone else's dime- Like I said- almost all of the great stuff in my life came as a result of making that film which started with finding a doll head in the gutter-

At the time when I saw the doll head in the gutter- I just had this strong felling like " I must get that doll head! " and as it sat on my desk I had the same strong feeling " I must make this doll head a star! "

I also had to make him a body and get him some clothes- which I did on a stay in Yokohama with a friend in 2004- He ended up wearing a woman's uniform because thats the only one that would fit in the various Japanese shops I combed through-

So yep- I found a doll head in the gutter- made him a body out of wire, paper clay, and liquid latex- dressed him in Japanese women's clothing and it changed my life-

SO if there's strange little things that matter to you- do them! You never know- they might be the thing that ends up changing your life for the better!

P.S. I'll be in Japan in June for a few weeks- So if you have a doll head to give me I would gladly meet with you. Email me at mdotstrange@gmail.com

Thanks for reading and best to you my friends,

M doTs

Double P.S. - I'm working on my "big deal" game- a third person 3d platformer/adventure in my world +  in the early stages of a new animated feature film

Comments

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