ASIFA Book Review

My book has recently received a new plug from ASIFA Hollywood. I had a review copy sent to Larry Loc who is putting together a Stop-Motion Expo on April 21 in Los Angeles. The review is posted here...

I'm a little bit confused by the comments on the dope sheets, as I made it clear in the text what their purpose was. I know that stop-motion can be done without dope sheets, all straight-ahead (I didn't use dope sheets at all for Snot Living) but for certain things like dialogue and the morph, it is absolutely necessary. But otherwise it's a generous review and I'm glad for the publicity, especially since the timing of the Expo itself is not convenient. If it wasn't at the tail-end of our Michigan trip I would have loved to make it down there. But there will be other opportunities like this another day.

Speaking of Snot Living, I finally got a digitally re-mastered version from Steve so it will soon be making its 10th Anniversary Special Edition debut!

Stop-Motion Dialogue #5

The latest collection of dialogue from my stop-motion students!

Cow Town

Well I'm goin' down to Cow Town,
A cow's a friend to me,
Lives beneath the ocean,
And that's where I will be,
Beneath the waves, the waves,
And that's where I will be,
I'm gonna see the cow beneath the sea...

-They Might Be Giants

You might have guessed I'm in Calgary! Came here to do some info sessions for VanArts, and tomorrow it's the same thing in Edmonton. Whirlwind trip, but nice to have a change of pace all the same. I miss my girls though. It's lonely on the road.

Anyway, back to reality before too long, and our Michigan trip gets closer and closer. A world of huzzah.

Bring Me to Life / Lord of the Rings

I've finally managed to post a music video I edited for kicks one weekend a long time ago. Enjoy!

Film Production Diary

Since we have cancelled our Prie-believing.com website due to lack of use, I'm adding a link to my old "Storytime with Nigel" production diary here so it doesn't get lost or forgotten.

http://madkap.diaryland.com/older.html

Any new updates will be posted here instead. Basically I'm at the point now where only a few scenes remain to be finished, mostly just in-betweening is needed. Awaiting a number of completed scenes back from Steve and his students.

Adventures in Babysitting

So let's see what's going on...work is work, month is March, I'm in my jammies, going to Alberta in a couple weeks, my wife is cute and so is my baby. She is trying to figure out crawling and so far can mostly go backwards and in circles. (That's Ariel I'm talking about. Most of the time Jay can walk just fine.) Tonight I'm pretty sure I saw her take at least two "steps" while crawling.

The other night she got a ride in the laundry basket. Much cuter than a dirty sock.

Planning for Michigan trip in April...will be taking shuttle bus to Seattle and then flying red-eye flight for 4 hours and hopefully sleep through most of it.

Been transferring all of my disposable videotapes to DVD as an on-going project, and trying to copy as many as possible before we go so there's stuff to give away at our garage sale upon returning. It's a great space-saver. Still debating if I should sell most of my home-taped cartoons at the garage sale or see if the internet animation historian community would be more interested. Will have to figure that one out still.

I recently got my copy in the mail of the DVD project I worked on over the summer for Galen. It was really neat to see it all finished and all of our animation colored in. The whole thing turned out great. In the trailer here you can see a brief snippet of my animation, with a kid in a striped shirt holding his breath. We were especially excited to see Ariel mentioned in the end credits as the "Production Baby." My film will have the same credit as well (Hell, at this rate, perhaps there will be two of them!).

And now a word from Ariel: "DADADADADADADADADA"

Apparently she has a thing for modern art.

And cooking with nothing in the pan.

On the floor.