The Boundaries of Fantasia

New Website!

2011-02-20T16:51:00.000-08:00

Announcing...my new website! I now have a central place for all my "stuff" on the internet: articles, movie reviews, books, animation, videos, links to my personal and professional work, and plugs for my friends online. Still a few twix and tweax to make here and there, but the basics are there for anyone to enjoy. This blog shall remain for archival purposes, but for now friends, follow me on my new site as I update it with more of my unfolding projects. You can also follow updates for the site on Facebook. Thanks for following the Boundaries, and feel free to keep poking around here to look back on years gone by.

New Website:

http://www.breathoflifeanimation.com/

Beyond the Boundaries...

2011-01-01T18:17:00.000-08:00

Greetings friends! If you're still checking in or stumbling upon the Boundaries now and again, I realize it's been awhile since I posted anything here. Shortly after the last post, my workplace moved into a new building, we had an amazing family vacation to Michigan and New York, and the Fall season moved forward as I continued through the journey of life, work, faith and everything else. Just prior to this time period, my life was pretty much all-consumed by building my online course, which segued right into my son being born, which segued right into the extremely consuming process of my 'advanced stop-motion' book. Combining all of this activity with the exhaustion it would inevitably cause, along with the act of posting funny pictures & movies or interesting things I'm doing being replaced by the quicker, easier, more personal method of Facebook has caused me to re-evaluate how I can best pursue having a presence online for the world to share.

As of today I am in the final stages of a major freelance animation gig with a tight deadline, but taking a moment to simply announce my gradual shifting and shuffling of all-things-Ken online. This blog will likely remain for archival purposes, but a new website shall be underway in the next little while which organizes all of my work into one place.

More on this soon...

The Book Has Arrived!

2010-07-14T23:20:00.000-07:00

Took awhile, but I finally have a copy of my book in my hands! The kids like it too. Jay had to take a picture to match the one she took 4 years ago with my first one.

Stop Motion Marvels

2010-06-27T15:52:00.000-07:00

I'm proud to announce here the release of an amazing DVD I have been privileged to co-produce with my friend and colleague Steve Stanchfield and his company Thunderbean Animation...STOP MOTION MARVELS!

This disc has been in the works for about 7 years, and Steve and I would talk about it often, waiting for all the necessary material and research to be collected at just the right time. The material you will find on his disc is nothing short of amazing, particularly the lost shorts by the Kinex Studio. I was blown away by these films when I first saw them, and I'm so glad the secret is out for all the world to enjoy them. Steve and his colleague Stuart McKissick did a great job compiling all of the research behind these shorts, all laid out in a 12-page booklet that is incredibly well-written. Commentaries are contributed by Mark Caballero and Seamus Walsh at Screen Novelties, Puppetoon animator/puppeteer Bob Baker, Larry Larson, Jim Danforth, and also Steve Stanchfield and myself (commenting through Skype between BC and Michigan).

I also re-animated Steve's ThunderBean logo in stop-motion using tiny clay replacement puppets, and have documented the production process in my new book.

ORDER A COPY TODAY! It may be the most amazing thing you purchase all year.

Lyfe Updates

2010-06-27T09:21:00.000-07:00

Trying to fill the blog up with some random highlights of interesting things that have happened recently during the interim months of finishing my book and gradually coming out of hiding. Let's see...

Ariel was in a JELLO commercial! Through random pulling people off the streets of Ladner and offering to shoot them eating pudding cups, Ariel got picked to be in the final cut. For this 1 second of fame, she got $500, which pays for her plane ticket to Michigan & New York later this summer. We might need to get her in pictures if we want to travel more eh? Watch for her to flash in at the :20 mark.

I got to travel across Canada to give some Info Sessions for VanArts, visiting Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Calgary and Edmonton. Didn't see much of Winnipeg at all, but I did get to meet a fellow artist from the online stop-motion community, Emily Baxter, known online as emmyymme...always a neat thing to meet online folks in person. Saskatoon was quite a beautiful city and I got to catch up with my old friend Augusto Kapronczai and see the animation studio where he's working. The whole time I was traveling across various time zones through hotels and family homes, my book was in the middle of the editing/layout process and the editors were scrambling to squeeze in all the content...it was pretty crazy.

Let's see, what else...my dad visited us and we had a nice time hanging out with the kids and seeing sights of Vancouver.

3 generations of Priebe!

I won an award from the Canadian Church Press for my Breath of Life article!

I am also featured in a book from Belgium about puppets. The author, Hubert Stuyvert, wrote to me about a year ago asking me to contribute some words and images about stop-motion puppetry, specifically how to apply it to teaching children. So I sent him a little blurb, and it's all been translated into Dutch. The rest of the book looks great...I wish I could read it, but apparently they're seeking a publisher to print some copies in English.

Found an old family photo of my ancestors, Bartholemew and Gertrude von Potassium-Spatula. Strangely enough they look so much like my own kids.

We've also had lots of weddings, lots of fun family gatherings, and lots of wine (well, me at least).

I'm gradually moving into a new role at VanArts, dissolving out of Admissions and into the role of Communications Director, which means doing more of the stuff I enjoy like videos, web stuff, publicity, and maintaining the website & social networking. I'll be learning lots of new stuff so expect some new developments coming soon, including a new website for myself on the side. Oh yeah, and the school is also moving into a new building. Woot.

And finally, my new book is now in stock. Here is my little teaser commercial for it.

The Advanced Art of Stop-Motion Animation from Ken Priebe on Vimeo.

Ariel's Post

2010-06-27T09:12:00.000-07:00

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ariel

Breath of Life Animation Festival 2010

2010-06-27T08:48:00.000-07:00

It was another successful run of Breath of Life this year, with a great team of regular and new volunteers and participants. Workshops were led by myself, Gautam Modkar, Raghuram Vannemreddy, Blake & Nicole Standard, Bronwen Kyffin, Melanie Vachon, Mike Jahnke and Jenn Isaak.

Here's a reel of the day's animation! Good times!

Breath of Life Animation Festival 2010 from Ken Priebe on Vimeo.

Cut, Print, that's a Wrap!

2010-05-22T08:39:00.000-07:00

I've finally come out of hiding to the Boundaries again after several months of hard labor in the stop-motion mines, but this will be a quick announcement post to simply say the book is officially out of my hands! Also below is what I posted on SMA.com for what you can find inside. I will post more later to catch up on this and everything else.

Ken Priebe's new book 'The Advanced Art of Stop-Motion Animation' is off to the printers for release date of June 23, including a Foreward by Henry Selick!

SEE...the first full documented history on 80 years of feature-length stop-motion puppet films, from 'Tale of the Fox' to 'Fantastic Mr. Fox'.

SEE...new coverage of puppet-building techniques using plug-ins, silicone, rapid prototyping, replacements, and the inner workings of puppets by artists such as Dave Hettmer, Ron Cole and the Chiodo Bros. Uncle Creepy!

SEE...information on shooting with Digital SLR cameras, camera rigs, and stereoscopic 3D.

SEE...information on animation techniques and tons of coverage on digital compositing and visual effects.

SEE...8 new interviews with the following stop-motion artists:
-Mark Caballero, Seamus Walsh & Chris Finnegan of Screen Novelties
-Pete Kozachik, ASC
-Trey Thomas
-Bronwen Kyffin
-Larry Bafia and Webster Colcord
-Marc Spess
-Ryan McCulloch
-Justin and Shel Rasch

AND...on the enclosed CD:
-QuickTime Animation Clips for studying animation principles, dialogue, and compositing, including 2 clips in 3D by Justin Rasch.

-2 additional Bonus Appendices in pdf format, with loads of content and pictures on...

~Stop-Motion Education (Courses at CalArts, Sheridan College, Academy of Art University, workshops by Jurgen Kling & Lee Skinner)

~The Stop-Motion Animation Community online and in festivals, with URL links embedded to take you DIRECTLY to many amazing websites and production blogs.

Available for pre-order now at Amazon.com!

A huge THANK YOU to everyone who made it possible!

Puppets on the Brain

2010-02-27T17:20:00.000-08:00

Here is a menagerie of puppet characters in progress, in the flesh, on the brain and in the world but not of the world...

At Spark FX several weeks ago, Jason Vanderhill, local curator of all things Colargol (Jeremy) the Bear, brought his collection of original puppets to show VanArts VFX instructor Shawn Tilling, another big fan of the show...

Took the kids downtown for the Olympic festivities and met giant-sized puppet mascots Miga, Sumi and Quatchi...

As I assemble various characters for the book, here's where I've been spending a good number of hours these days, in my newly converted drawing desk to a puppet workshop desk, getting light-headed from the latex fumes. The other night I was having a difficult time trying to find a way to snap some doll armature pieces together. Ariel, ever the concerned daughter, started talking on her pretend cel phone...'Hello, helpers? Can you come over and help my daddy with his puppets?'

Out on the deck, where it's better ventilated, she continues to be a big help as progress moves forward on a sea creature for Halfland!

Here's another guy hangin' around while he dries and ponders life as a puppet while his creator looks forward to burgers.

Overdue Blog for 2010

2010-01-24T21:55:00.000-08:00

Sigh...yes, I'm still alive. Way too pre-occupied with book writing, caffiene, family and work to keep the Boundaries filled, but that is no excuse. So Happy New Year! Woot!

I suppose I'll start by posting some pictures of our family visit from over Christmas-time. It was certainly one of the best Christmases we've ever had, and extra special since it was Xander's first one, and the first meeting for my mom and brothers. Very special indeed.

It was really nice to relax for a few days before returning to work. Since then, life has been pretty much all about coming home, playing with the kids for awhile and then cracking open multiple Coke Zeros to work on the new book. At this point, my interview chapters are pretty much done, pending a few more images, so the rest of it is the 'instructional' stuff on cameras, puppets, animation and effects, plus the history of feature-length puppet films. The next few months will involve lots more writing, along with lots of puppet-building and animation, which I really need to get crackin' on. I've been debating my preference for the book's title. Currently the publishers have it tentatively titled 'The Advanced Art of Stop-Motion Animation', which is true in the sense that this book covers more advanced material than the first one. But part of me is wondering if 'The Art of Stop-Motion Animation, Volume 2' would work better. Any thoughts?

My stop-motion course has also started up again and I have 4 enthusiastic students so I'm expecting it will be a good run. In my opening history lecture, one of my students brought up a freaky stop-motion series she remembered as a kid growing up in Iran based on Rupert the Bear. I had seen hand-drawn cartoon versions of Rupert but didn't realize there was a stop-motion version too. So we quickly looked it up on YouTube, and I was absolutely TERRIFIED!!! The shots of these freaky puppet heads zooming towards the camera is incredibly disturbing. Of course I love stuff like this, but this is almost too much.

My online students start up again in a couple weeks too. Also this week is Spark FX, which I'll be volunteering at and checking out a few events...looking forward to catching up with whoever I run into from our local animation/fx community.

I shall try to post more as I move forward into my marathon of book writing and other stuff. We shall see.

Stop Motion Dialog #10!

2009-12-11T20:20:00.000-08:00

Once again folks, here is another collection of final dialog exercises from my latest batch of stop-motion students at VanArts!

Profile Interview on Stop Motion Pro website

2009-12-07T21:41:00.000-08:00

Paul Howell at StopMotionPro has graciously published an interview profile on myself and my stop-motion teaching over at their website!
Click HERE to check it out.

Breath of Life: Options Magazine

2009-12-01T21:46:00.000-08:00

My Breath of Life article is published again, this time in Options Magazine.
Here is the link to the online version: THE BREATH OF LIFE

I'm Not Dead ... a random update blog post

2009-11-29T21:04:00.000-08:00

Ugh...it's been a long time since I posted anything here. But as the peasants say, I'm not dead.

So anyway, here's a little update, at least for the interesting stuff, sparing the gory details of how work is really exhausting right now. What's also really kept me busy is working through the tentative content for my new stop-motion book. I've been transcribing interviews and trying to come up with an outline to follow for the upcoming chapters. I expect that will continue to dominate my time over the next few months. Luckily Jay blogs enough for the both of us, and eventually I'll come out of hiding.

Life with the kids is fun. Xander is smiling a lot now and is fun to play with. He's still very introspective and mellower than Ariel was. We keep thinking he's going to be the quiet, thoughtful kid who likes to read and go on nature walks, or build castles. But who knows, he could be storing something wilder.

Ariel had her first ballet recital in her class, where the families were able to attend. It was so amazing to be there for her and experience that. I was so proud of my little girl. She's definitely going to be a performer of some kind.

Jay and I completed a new painting for Xander's room. It had been awhile since we did one of these...we have a series of them from years ago, still all over the house. It was lots of fun to draw...I had been in a funky mood when Jay was encouraging me to draw it, and it definitely helped to bring me out of the funk.

Then of course her paint job just brought it to life!

I finally got a copy of the latest animated short film I worked on over the summer, for BigFott Studios, The Gym Teacher from the Black Lagoon. Everyone did a great job on this one as usual, and Ariel has already watched it a million times. Xander got a 'Production Baby' credit too! Click HERE for the film's webpage and trailer...there is a short clip of the homage to King Kong I got to animate (and actually used the original film as literal reference).

I went to an advance screening of Fantastic Mr. Fox last week, and really enjoyed it, not only because of the obvious fact that it's a stop-motion feature and will hopefully bring some well-deserved attention to the craft....but that's a damn good reason. It's a very funny film no matter what, but the quirkiness of the way it was animated certainly helps. Makes me want to re-visit some of Wes Anderson's movies again and give them another shot...some of them I liked more than others and some I haven't seen.

Today our good friend Kathy surprised us by randomly (or not-so-randomly) running into us at church and asking if we wanted to have a big bag of children's books for Ariel. There were at least a dozen or so, and as it turned out, I was extremely tickled to find out that some of them were ones I had read as a child! In my church growing up, they had some copies of this series of illustrated books made in the '60s. This one in particular stood out in my memory as being significant, as it was my first introduction to the story of the Good Samaritan. I'm still not sure why to this day, but this story always intrigued me as a kid, and still does. I read it to Ariel this afternoon, which was really special, and I plan on going through the rest of them with her as time goes on. I love the illustrations, which have that modern 50s/60s feel to them, so here's just a few of them.

Perhaps I shall post more of these in the future. It's all good stuff.

Family

2009-10-01T23:06:00.001-07:00

1 month with the X-Man

2009-09-27T22:21:00.000-07:00

Xander is now officially 1 month old...wow, how did that happen? Well, what can I say, the little dude's awesome.

In many ways it's been a very rough month, going through all the unknowns and challenges with Jay's health, heart and happiness going up & down. Like everything else she does, she's handled everything well with her amazing strength, faith and spirit. Ariel really loves her new baby brother, always eager to show him off and protect him. I feel blessed to have these two amazing little hobbits to teach, raise and watch them grow. Looking forward to that first real smile from Xander!

Spark Animation 2009

2009-09-27T19:50:00.000-07:00

At last, my little report on Spark Animation '09 which happened in Vancouver Sept 16-20. I wasn't able to attend the entire festival but I still feel privileged to have had a small part in planning it with the good people who are the Vancouver SIGGRAPH Chapter. It was another roaring success and I think that each year this event will continue to grow bigger and better.

I was present opening night for the industry mixer and premiere screening of The Secret of Kells. This is one of the most beautiful animated films ever made, in terms of...well, everything. The design, the story, the animation, the music, it's all truly awe-inspiring and a treasure to behold, especially on a big screen. The director Tomm Moore and art director Ross Stewart were there to introduce the film, and the following day they gave a very enlightening presentation on how they made it, loaded with exquisite concept art. I got to chat with them a little bit and tell them how much I loved and appreciated their film...it deserves every ounce of support it can get, so if you have the means, SEE IT!!! I've already bought the soundtrack and am eagerly awaiting the DVD to be available in North America.

The following day I was honored to introduce the Coraline presentation by Martin Meunier from Laika, who brought Coraline and a menagerie of other puppet parts with him. Needless to say I was like a kid in a candy store getting to touch, study and pose these. When I hold any stop-motion puppet in my hand, I just have to move the joints and feel like I'm animating them...it becomes a fixation. So it was very hard to put Coraline down.

Martin's presentation, which went on for 3 hours, was fantastic and mind-boggling, with TONS of fantastic production photos and exclusive time-lapse footage of animators at work. The amount of 3D printing done for the film was amazing...it wasn't limited just to the facial animation. Even the VW bug that Coraline and her mother drove around in was meticulously modeled, part by part, in CG, printed on the 3D printer, and pieced together like an intricate model kit. (This was partly so the animators could remove the doors and the hood, animate the puppets, and then snap it all back together again.) All of this and more was great just to learn about, and good resource material for my next book. Martin and the other Laika representative who we brought up for the festival, Mark Shapiro, were also great to chat with and very generous. Many thanks to them for bringing Coraline to Vancouver!

The other presentations I got to see that day were from the Gobelins school, Starz Animation on the making of '9', and of course the making of Secret of Kells. I really liked the Gobelins presentation and the excellent caliber of work done by the students there. '9' was a very short presentation with some interesting visuals and very intriguing information on how they made the film on a tight budget. I haven't seen the film yet but most people who have are saying the visuals are the only major redeeming factor. The trailer has always been a favorite of mine, partly for the integration of the animation with Coheed & Cambria rocking the soundtrack.

The other big highlight for me being a part of Spark was getting to introduce and view the Stop Motion Night double feature of Mary & Max and $9.99 that closed the festival on Sunday night.

Mary & Max is an absolute masterpiece, not only for the emerging renaissance of the stop-motion animated feature, but I dare say for film in general. It is funny, sad, dark, disturbing, emotional, real and beautiful all at the same time, and it is a work of genius in terms of the screenplay, lighting, animation and character development. Adam Elliot deserves any and all praise he gets for this film. The ending is truly touching and a great testament to the power of love and friendship in a dark and confusing world.

$9.99, though not exactly the spiritual dose of inspiration I was expecting after seeing the trailer a long time ago, was also very good. If it had been a live-action film, I likely would have written it off as a film I don't normally enjoy, but the fact that it was animated, and very well I might add, helped to hold my attention throughout. Overall I was glad we were able to bring both of these films to Vancouver and lend our support to them.

Cheers and thanks to all who made Spark Animation happen, and click HERE for more pictures of this fun event. Already looking forward to seeing what Spark 2010 brings to town!

Animated Ariel

2009-09-12T13:07:00.000-07:00

To keep Ariel entertained the other day, we made some animated films together. Enjoy!

Life with the Kids

2009-09-10T14:07:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a real roller coaster since little X-Man arrived. He's been a very good baby...eats, sleeps, poops, all very well. And Ariel is a very sweet big sister, always wanting to help and show off her brother. Jay had been struggling up until last Thursday...short version of the story (the long version is of course on her blog) is she turned out to have post-partum heart failure and we went back to the hospital to get her treated. Still waiting for more definitive answers from the cardiologist tomorrow, but so far she's surely improving. We've had a few outings but mostly she is taking it easy and I'm trying to help out as much as I can.

Here's some choice pics of the X-Man.

It's a great feeling having one of each, and I'm enjoying the completeness that comes from having a family of four...it's a new feeling, surreal and scary but beautiful. Here's my twitchy-witchy girl Ariel all ready for her first day of pre-school, and more family pics.

In other news, Spark Animation is coming up soon and once again I'm very proud to have had a small part in selecting content and volunteering. I will only be able to attend certain fragments of the show this year, primarily checking out The Secret of Kells, Coraline, Gobelins, 9, Best of SIGGRAPH (sponsored by VanArts), Mary & Max, $9.99, and of course the Saturday night party. Be sure that many pics will follow here.

Check out the line-up: sparkanimation.ca

SPARK Animation '09: Festival & Conference from Vancouver ACM SIGGRAPH on Vimeo.

...and also in other news, I might as well break my silence and say that I'll be writing another book for Thomson(Cengage) publishers, tentatively titled The Advanced Art of Stop-Motion Animation. It's a second volume for my original book, going into more updated detail on the craft, slated to launch June 2010.

With all of this plus online teaching, onsite teaching, usual work stuff, two kids, Halloween, and plenty of coffee & good tunes for the road ahead, I stand like Atreyu with Auryn in hand before the Southern Oracle ahead of me, and walk forth to ask for confidence to follow the Lord's plan for me. Stay tooned, my friends.

It's Xander!

2009-08-27T15:55:00.000-07:00

Here is our son!
Xander Ambrose Priebe
Born August 26, 2009
8:29am
8lbs 7oz, 53 cm long

We're home now, recovering and enjoying our new little guy.

Anticipation

2009-08-19T22:11:00.001-07:00

One week from today we'll be holding our son. Here's Ariel and I hangin' out while we wait, and sleep while we still can.

Breath of Life Article: MB Herald

2009-08-07T19:51:00.000-07:00

"Breath of Life" has now found another incarnation as an article I've written for publication in MB Herald magazine. Click the link below for the online version...
THE BREATH OF LIFE

Calm Before the Storm

2009-08-02T22:07:00.000-07:00

Back to the blog! I've been rather consumed by lots of projects for the past little while, but I'm happie to say that my ANM 382 Stop Motion Level II course and my animation for the latest BigFott film is now complete! I now officially have very few major things to do, outside of work, relaxing, family time, and anticipation for the arrival of little Xander in just a matter of weeks! I'm hoping to catch up on lots of movies and other things I've been putting off.

Here's some totally random bloggie goodness of neat things and what's been on my mind...

We had a beautiful thunderstorm last weekend, which unfortunately doesn't happen very often here, so I was very excited. Got some neat pictures of the show.

Yesterday we had a Lilo & Stitch Luau for Ariel's 3rd birthday party, in honor of the day she was supposed to be born! It was really nice and a very good time spent with friends and family. Part of the party was the annual "storytime" reading of this year's children's book we wrote & illustrated for Ariel, which can be viewed online here: ARIEL'S MAGIC DANCE SHOES

MORE PARTY PHOTOS ON FACEBOOK

My little "twitchy witchy girl" (as I now call her, based off the song Coraline's father sings to her) is growing into such a fun, intelligent and delightful little person. It's been nice having my projects finished so I can spend more quality time with her these days, which is important for us to bond before she has a sibling in the mix.

"Don't mess with me or Stitch will kill you."
I have some other project ideas brewing and some thoughts about my future involvement with animation teaching. My Saturday courses have really dried up in the past couple of years, and I've rather gotten used to having full weekends for a change. At this stage of my life, I've decided I really need to quit teaching part-time animation courses at VanArts on Saturdays. I want to be able to spend more time with Jay and both of our kids, have the freedom to do more family outings together, and possibly start some more creative projects. I'm thinking of passing along the 2D course to someone else and finding a way to continue my stop-motion course as an evening class during the week. I'll also be teaching my online courses for AAU, so that's plenty to keep me in the teaching fold. I'd also really like to start some animation workshops for kids, as a way to start moving more in that direction as an additional career path. I think this is extremely important, especially as I continue to see the declining quality in a good number of the portfolios that show up at work. Art isn't being taught properly in schools, and neither is animation, so anything I can do to fill the void with some better creativity is a pretty worthy investment. There's a hell of a lot more things in this world to draw than Anime characters, Spiderman, and people carrying big guns.

Storytime with Nigel of course is still on the back burner and I hope to get some more scenes farmed out as the dust settles this month, to try and make some more progress on it. I have an idea for a very short stop-motion film which I may also try and find time to throw together. My hope is that I can whip it up, post it around and enter it into some festivals, as a way to possibly drum up interest in getting some support to finish Nigel off. It's just a thought, or a hope...

I'm also hoping to bring my "Breath of Life" presentation 'on the road' at some point, and sharing it in some Vancouver churches.

And I'm really looking forward to seeing this movie...

Praying for Lisa Jane...

2009-07-03T20:41:00.000-07:00

My friend Paul Moldovanos told me today that his associate Lisa Jane Gray is currently in the Vancouver hospital in critical condition, so we're all praying for her and her family. Lisa Jane has many years of experience in the stop-motion animation field. I got to meet Lisa Jane recently and she's a great person full of talent.

UPDATE JULY 10th: Lisa Jane passed away today. A great loss for the animation community. :(

Faith & Film: Taking God's Detour

2009-07-02T22:44:00.000-07:00

The sermon which I gave at Cedar Park Church on May 3rd, based on Pixar's film CARS, is now posted for listening to online. The audio clip is also framed with opening and closing prayers by Pastor Dave Esau.

Faith & Film: Taking God's Detour

All Work and No Play....

2009-06-30T21:02:00.000-07:00

Been spending a few days off, but not much relaxing. I may be off work-work, but work of other kinds continue here at home. I'm balancing two major projects that have deadlines looming, both my online stop-motion course for AAU and animation for Bigfott.

Today is our 8-year anniversary, which is very special! Despite the occasion it was pretty much a regular day...we had a Doctor's appointment (Xander is doing well), went to the mall, and I spent the whole afternoon animating. Jay is feeling uber-preggers and didn't really feel like going out or doing anything fancy, so we got take-out from the Boot and just had a nice little dinner. We may go to Seattle for a day-trip in a few weeks when things settle down, or maybe do something a little more romantic.

I downloaded a bunch of rare movie soundtracks today from VINNIE RATOLLE's Records, an awesome pop culture blog. Pretty great stuff...while animating in my studio, my iPod was graciously providing soundtracks for The Secret of NIMH, The Goonies, Gremlins, The Shining, Little Shop of Horrors and the Rocky Horror Picture Show. This also made me happy.

Meh...

2009-06-26T08:49:00.000-07:00

Apparently I was so shocked and numbed by the Michael Jackson news (a big bite out of my childhood culture) that all I could think of to do was post a music video I did for "Thriller" back when I was 14 years old, using a bunch of horror movie clips...(and using 2 VCRs hooked up to each other....major old school)

I'm not sure how I feel about it now. Too much death already. It's here if you want to see it.

UPdate on Life

2009-06-23T11:48:00.000-07:00

If you want to know what's been going on in my life these days, simply read my Hollywood Jesus review for Pixar's UP.

Breath of Life Animation Festival 2009

2009-06-16T22:17:00.001-07:00

Finally, here is my full report on the 2nd Annual Breath of Life Animation Festival at Cedar Park Church, June 6 2009. Much of it was the same as last year but we changed up a few things and added some too. Overall it was a big success, more organized and yet still a continuing work in progress.

All the kids filed into the sanctuary, assigned to 5 groups A through E with their group leaders, for an introduction and welcome by myself...don't let the scattered looks of this crowd fool you; we got quite a few more people by the end of the day!

Workshops included DRAWING CARTOON CHARACTERS with the talented Mr. Gerard DeSouza...

...FLIPBOOKS with the lovely husband & wife team of Blake & Nicole Standard...

...CLAY SCULPTING with the Amazing Clayman, Paul Moldovanos, who helped the kids create little clay worms for the following workshop...

...the CLAYMATION WORM RACE, led by the incredible stop-motion super-heroes Lee Skinner and Bronwen Kyffin...

...and PIXILATION with the incredible team of Amanda Emery and Matt Smith, who gave the kids a great time getting animated.

...open stations like the Doodle Room, animation demos, the Ten Thousand Villages table and 16mm film projection were also a big hit...

After topping off the workshops with a short film screening was the Animator's Picnic, a time of food and fellowship, wrapping up an inspiring day of creativity for all who joined in.

Thanks everyone for pulling off another great festival!

Presentation & Festival this Weekend....

2009-06-02T12:20:00.001-07:00

DELTA OPTIMIST ARTICLE

Cartoon Culture Sightings...

2009-05-31T14:57:00.000-07:00

It appears that the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cameo found in the Little Golden Book for WALL-E has now become a running gag with the Pixar artists.

It's a little bit harder to spot this time, but take a close look at Carl's book in this illustration from the UP Little Golden Book.

Also spotted these ads in Vancouver's West Ender newspaper. Looks like Casper and Popeye have found a way to beat the recession by selling scrap metal.

Breath of Life...1 week away...

2009-05-29T21:11:00.001-07:00

Musee Mechanique and more Adventures...

2009-05-10T20:33:00.000-07:00

I'm now home from San Francisco recovering from another excursion of animation instruction and exploration. Despite puppets that kept wanting to fall apart on me, I'm happy with how the demos went and wish I could post my animation here, but it's all part of my course for AAU, so sorry.

I made really good time in wrapping up my shoots time-wise each day, which afforded me a good amount of time for relaxing, eating and exploring. I ate at my beloved American Graffiti-shrine Mel's Drive-Inn again, this time accompanied by local fellow- Hollywood Jesus writer Elisabeth Leitch...we had a great chat and it was nice to have some company.

Friday after all my shooting was done, I think I lost half my body weight walking around Fisherman's Wharf and elsewhere (but then I probably gained it all back at dinner.) A really cool destination point this time around was the Musee Mechanique, a museum of classic early 1900s arcade attractions, slot machines, nickelodeons, carnival attractions and creepy animatronic treasures! I love stuff like this so I took lots of videos, and many pictures viewable on FaceBook.

I decided to walk around to find Coit Tower for a nice scenic view, but wasn't aware it would involve climbing up a steep never-ending labyrinth of stairs just to get to the base of it. It was very tiring...not sure if it was really worth the trek by the time I got to the top or not. The view was nice though.

There was also a living monster shrub attacking people on the wharf.

Another highlight ended up being my final decision of where to treat myself to a really nice dinner. After perusing a few menus I stumbled upon The Franciscan, est. 1957 and really had that beautiful classic '50s style that I love.

And the food...holy crap...

A cup of clam chowder, glass of Franciscan private label Merlot, crab, garlic mashed potatoes and boneless short rib. They probably serve food like this in Heaven.

Top it off with a sunset like this and life is good. The only thing missing was my family being there to share it with me, but someday we'll come back with the kids in tow. Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39 is a fantastic place to take lil' folks, so I look forward to that day.

Speaking of which, I finally felt Xander kick for the first time yesterday! Active little guy. Now it's back to the work week...I found out while I was away that Pixar is opening up a studio in Vancouver, which could be really good for the local industry and for the school. The adventure continues...

Back to San Francisco

2009-05-06T19:56:00.000-07:00

I'm back in San Francisco for another round of video shoots, this time for my Stop Motion Animation II course for Academy of Art University. I got here yesterday and spent most of today shooting, which went pretty well. By the way, just before coming here the big events from the weekend were Janet's 30th Birthday Party (documented well on her blog) and I also spoke in church on 'Faith & Film: Taking God's Detour' focusing on Pixar's CARS. Once that is posted on the church's website, I'll post it here.

So anyway, here's some of the stuff I've been doing here...

This morning I had breakfast at Lori's Diner, where they had a guy dressed as Charlie Chaplin greeting people at the door. He was an older guy and his make-up was overdone so he looked like a very disturbing clown. There's one picture I took of him but I won't post it because it scares me.

They also had a cow.

I found this strange box in a store on the way to the studio. Never heard of these, but I think they're funny.

After a long, exhausting day of shooting and a little nap, I decided to treat myself to dinner at John's Grill right down the street. This is a historic Steak & Seafood restaurant in the city and one of the settings for The Maltese Falcon. I'm sorry to say I've never actually seen that whole movie, but since I love movies I figured it would be an important place to check out. Lots of celebrities have eaten there, and their autographed pictures covered all of the walls. Damn, the food was good too.

And a few more pictures from a foggy night...

OK, time to make replacement mouths.

A Boy!

2009-04-21T13:31:00.000-07:00

You will travel far, my little Kal-El. We will never leave you, even in the face of our deaths. The richness of our lives shall be yours. All that I have, all that I have learned, everything I feel, all this and more, I bequeath to you, my son. You will carry me inside you all the days of your life. You will make my strength your own, see my life through your eyes, as your life will be seen through mine. The son becomes the father, and the father, the son.

Xander Ambrose Priebe...coming soon to a crib near you!

New Stop Motion Dialogue

2009-04-18T19:04:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile, but here again is another great sampling of dialogue from some talented students of mine who finished my VanArts course today.

Breath of Life '09 - Teaser Trailer

2009-04-14T22:01:00.001-07:00

Jonathan's Amazing Memory

2009-04-13T23:09:00.000-07:00

My brother Jonathan, who is almost 31 and autistic (our family Rain Man), has the most amazing memory. We all might have the potential to remember things this well, but for most of us those doors in the brain are not as open as his, or just entirely locked. On a regular basis (as long as I remember to write him back) I get e-mails from him that go something like this...

On Christmas 1990, I received the dinosaur pajama bag I used to have when I was in middle school. It was green. I also received Steve Winwood's album "Roll With It" on cassette. I remember the air flute I used to have. It was purple. Daniel was in the second grade on Christmas 1990. Mom was 40 years old on Christmas 1990. I was in the sixth grade at Brownell Middle School on Christmas 1990. Two months after Christmas 1990, we celebrated your 16th birthday at Club 500 in Detroit. That was February 1991. In April of 1991, there was a big, fallen branch in the back yard at Mom's family home. We hired a couple of men to cut it up during Easter vacation of 1991. Also in April of 1991, Grandma and Grandpa Priebe had their first visit at Mom's family home. They took an airplane from Arizona to Michigan. Daniel was eight years old in April of 1991. After Easter 1991, we celebrated my 13th birthday on April 30, 1991. That was 18 years ago. A month later in 1991, our friend Annette had a baby shower at Mom's family home. That was May 1991. I used to make cards for our neighbors on Anita when I was in middle school.

And I have a hard time just remembering what I did last week.

"Don't mess with me."

Happy Easter...

2009-04-12T00:00:00.000-07:00

...from the scary drug bunny!

Explorations in Stop-Motion History

2009-04-11T20:28:00.000-07:00

I've had stop-motion on the brain these days for various reasons. One of them, besides my course-building and other projects brewing, is due to recent talks with Steve Stanchfield about an upcoming stop-motion DVD for Thunderbean I'm helping him with. As part of our research and planning, I ended up contacting L.A. puppeteer Bob Baker, who was an animator on George Pal's Puppetoons in the 1940s. I was delighted and suprised that he left a message on my cel (which happened to be off & charging) very shortly after I e-mailed him. Upon calling him back, I found him to be a really nice guy and we had a great chat about the Puppetoon studio. He said he's still helping author Mike Hankin with his forthcoming book on the subject, which I've heard about before and very much looking forward to. I asked Bob about something I had noticed & wondered about the Puppetoon films, in that their style definitely began a gradual shift from abstract stylization (of a very tubular variety)...

...to more natural, realistic caricatures after moving to America.

Bob confirmed that and explained some of the reasons for this. It partly had to do with what the public was willing to buy, which was the more naturalistic style made popular by Disney. There were also very few wood-workers in America who could create the same kinds of puppets Pal had been able to create in Europe. Pal became less involved with drawing the designs for his puppets, needing to rely on other artists who joined the studio, who drew in a style closer to the modern American cartoons. Additionally, Pal's friendship with Walter Lantz had an influence...Lantz actually encouraged him to make his puppets less tubular and stylized, to make them more appealing to what the American public was used to.

And here is a summary of another piece of research I had been looking into awhile ago, regarding the Mo-Toy Comedies by Howard S. Moss from 1917, and a little film re-packaged by Stirling Films in the 1940s called Toyland Ice Capades: The Adventures of Mugsy. Steve gave me a copy of this film many years ago, and it's also on YouTube courtesy of silent film guru Tom Stathes...

Another film recently un-earthed by Steve is a Vitagraph film with title Dolly Daisy in Hearts and Flowers, directed by Howard Moss and animated by Charles Bennes. It's undated, but has the same 'Mugsy' puppet.

Now, a few accounts of the Howard Moss films refer to a film called Cracked Ice in 1917, which fits the story of the Toyland Ice Capades film. (All of his films, except for Mary & Gretel a year earlier, are dated in 1917, which is also strange.)

A little Google searching reveals the following...

1) Howard S Moss on IMDB (mentions Cracked Ice in 1922 and a few other films)

2) ...and the Peter Pan Film Company on IMDB (mentions tons of other titles)

3) And a longer Filmography for Howard S Moss, which is very similar to the IMDB one...

4) 'Before Mickey' (page 265) lists 'Cracked Ice' as being an undated print in the archives of the Film Center of the Art Institute of Chicago, by Howard S Moss as a MoToy Comedy for Peter Pan Film Co., describing the hero as a caricature of Ben Turpin.

Silent Film star Ben Turpin

5) But this website clearly describes 'Cracked Ice' (1924) as the 'Mugsy' film by Edwin Miles Fadman.

6) and this site lists 'Cracked Ice' twice, once in 1917 by Howard S Moss, and again by Fadman in 1924.

7) A list for Funny Face Comedies on the IMDB (pointed out to me by Tom Stathes) has some similar titles to the Peter Pan list (Jimmy the Soldier Boy > Soldiers of Fortune, for example)

My guess is that Howard S Moss created the film Cracked Ice in 1917 or later, and then Edwin Miles Fadman either stole or bought the film and released it in 1924 as a "Funny Face Comedy". The only other film Fadman supposedly made was called Mose and Funny Face make Angel Cake (also in 1924) according to one of the websites above and also in Bruce Holman's book Puppet Animation in the Cinema (which also attributes 'Cracked Ice' to Fadman.) And IMDB refers to a film called Angel Food. Perhaps, based on the title, this was his version of Moss' film A Kitchen Romance? Fadman's name also comes up in Google searches as a book publisher for Einstein's 'Theory of Relativity' in the early 1920s. He sounds more like a businessman or producer than a filmmaker or animator.

Hearts and Flowers as a title doesn't show up on any of these lists, so I'm not sure which of them was the original title, but the fact it has the Mugsy Puppet in it along with Howard Moss' name at least confirms that Moss indeed made the "Adventures of Mugsy" film under the original title "Cracked Ice" and some historical wires got crossed over the years.

Animation history is like detective work sometimes. It's fun.

Preview of our Coming Attraction

2009-04-07T17:14:00.000-07:00

Yay!!!! Puppetoon #2 looks a bit more like Mommy so far, we think. We don't know if it's a boy or a girl yet, but will find out in a couple of weeks. Stay tooned.

Pure Joy

2009-04-04T19:56:00.000-07:00

This is wonderful on so many levels...

Weekend Gifts

2009-03-29T21:34:00.000-07:00

My wife Jay found a cool thing at the Thrift Store for $3. It's an old animatronic Big Bird toy from the mid-80s, when everyone jumped on the creepy Teddy Ruxpin talking toy craze. Surprisingly, it's in very good condition! There's a tape deck in his butt with stories narrated by Carroll Spinney himself as Big Bird, and nicely illustrated books to go with it. Unfortunately, his beak no longer works, but his eyes blink! Pretty cool. The best part is, Ariel loves him.

Jay also made a burger cake this weekend for her Dad's birthday celebration this evening. Yes, this is actually a cake, with icing for ketchup & mustard and gumdrops for lettuce. Inside is chocolate. It was good.

My brother Dan sent me a disc with tons of Frank Zappa albums for my iPod. I discovered his music when I was at U of M and became an obsessed fan for awhile. Most of the CDs I had were stolen from my apartment in Vancouver, so it's been a long time since I heard many of these tracks. I'm not as fond of some of his later material when he got a little bit too political and cynical even for my liking, but you can't beat his 70s period with Flo & Eddie and his band line-up from albums like Apostrophe, Overnight Sensation, and my favorite album One Size Fits All. The really early Mothers stuff like Lumpy Gravy and We're Only In It for the Money is also good for just plain ol' bizarre Dada music. Yes, good stuff.

On a very different musical note, another song I'm become obsessed with is from our good friend from church Gayle Salmond. Gayle is our worship pastor's wife and they are a dynamic song-producing team. Her song 'The Lorica' has been played in many of our church services lately, and it's based on the Breastplate of St Patrick. Absolutely amazing and uplifting. Check out an exceprt here (and click on The Lorica)

I also got the new platinum edition of Pinocchio on DVD, and watched it this afternoon with Ariel, who calls it 'Pee-kee-o.'

Also discovered a link to author Brian Sibley's blog which has some fascinating posts about the film, and also a really cool history of Snap, Crackle & Pop. Amazing stuff.

Pinocchio: Puppet's Progress
Wah Chang's Pinocchio model
Snap, Crackle & Pop

So much pop culture, so little time!

Stop Motion Walk

2009-03-25T12:31:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick-and-dirty walk I animated last summer in my VanArts stop-motion course...just batted it out for demonstration purposes while my students were working on their puppets.

Space Ghost Stop-Motion Test

2009-03-23T23:31:00.000-07:00

As a way to test out TVPaint for my online stop-motion course (which focuses totally on dialogue), I did a little test tonight. It's nice to animate again.

Recut Movie Trailers

2009-03-22T22:20:00.000-07:00

I LOVE re-cut movie trailers. I made one of my own for Star Wars awhile back, and there are still lots of others out there that continue to inspire me. This is the first one I ever saw several years ago, and it's still one of the best out there...

And these ones I found several months ago which are also classically good...

Just found these ones tonight and they're awesome.

...but this one BY FAR takes the cake (no pun intended). An absolute masterpiece!!!

Yay!

Muppets on Disney Channel

2009-03-14T20:00:00.000-07:00

I love this video that Jay found to show me. Seems the Muppets are really coming back on their game with some funny material these days. They're bringing many of the classic characters back who they've left out in recent years, like Scooter and the entire Mayhem band. The timing and performance of Beaker in this clip is absolutely hilarious, and the girl is pretty darn cute too. (Jay agrees with me so I think I'm allowed to say that.) I also LOVE the way Animal moves on the drum set...even though the clips of him are very brief, it looks like they are trying some different puppetry techniques on the arms to make it look more like he's actually playing, compared to the old days. He looks awesome.

Great stuff.

Gerald's Last Day

2009-03-12T23:30:00.000-07:00

Justin and Shel Rasch of Stop Motion Mission are all the rage these days in the online stop-motion animation community with their independent stop-motion short Gerald's Last Day in the festival circuit, and deservedly so. I got a review copy the other day and here is my little testimonial:

"Gerald's Last Day is a triumph for independent animation and the art of stop-motion. It's a beautiful example of exquisite character animation, where the moments of silence and stillness say just as much as the moments of expression and movement. Justin and Shel have set the bar for what a creative family can achieve through hard work and pursuing their dreams to make entertaining films, just for the joy of watching inanimate puppets come to life."

-Ken A. Priebe
Author, The Art of Stop-Motion Animation

Check out the press kit and give them a vote for the Delta Airways Fly-in Movie Competition!

Winter

2009-03-08T16:36:00.000-07:00

Been away from bloggish things again for too long, so here's some random blurbish for anyone who pops in to check on me now and then. Not that I don't have much to say, it's more I have much to do and I'm not sure how much of it gives me something to say. I work. I drink coffee. I come home. I keep Ariel entertained while Mommy gets a break. I work some more. I sleep. Whee!

But there's been some cool stuff going on too. Like finding giant gnomes and scary clowns on Vancouver Island...

Weddings...(Congrats to Ross & Kailey, and Graeme & Kalia!)

My girls, always cute...

Finding Puppetoons on the internet (just too much fun to watch)...

And enjoying the fact that people with too much time on their hands decide to compile together all the moments where Snoopy says "Bleaahh." This makes me & Ariel happy.

My major projects sustaining all of this weird stuff have mainly been trying to get the busy graduation-orientation time period at VanArts overwith, so I can get past the post-intake crash...(time change and winter weather doesn't help)....and get going on building my online course. Will be in San Francisco again May 5-9 and can't wait to eat at Mel's Diner again. I also have another 2D animation freelance project going with BigFott. So lots of work and caffeinated good times lie ahead.

In-between projects and procrastination I've also been chipping away at transferring some old videos & recordings of fun times with my old friends from Michigan, for the purpose of mailing off some surprise care packages to them. Always fun to look back at fun times with old ghosts who I miss at times, particularly in these reflective winter days when the rain falls, the eagles are everywhere, and my mind wanders to think about my blessings in a fog of nostalgic joyous melancholy.

Hmmmmm.....

Coraline

2009-02-08T00:34:00.001-08:00

I was absolutely blown away by Coraline in 3D last night, and I'd love to see it again sometime soon. I think it's a wonderful landmark film, not just for stop-motion but for all animated films in general. Truly inventive, technically brilliant, beautiful to behold, funny, scary as hell and just plain weird at times.

I felt a personal connection to Coraline herself, since she is from Pontiac, Michigan and cherishes her Detroit Zoo snow-globe. Just like her I grew up just outside Detroit and eventually moved to the Pacific Northwest (I believe because many of my favorite movies were shot here). The film has that misty Twin Peaks vibe that oozed BC/WA/OR out of its very sprockets. The circus scenes and eccentric characters were very David Lynch-esque (and also very Henry Selick!) My comment to my friends walking out of the theater was that you could totally tell it was made in Portland.

Everything about this film was exquisite…very deep and beautiful on many levels. While viewing it, I wasn't sure if it would connect with most modern audiences looking for mindless kiddie fare, but I'm pleased to hear comments raving all over the internet on the positive response it's getting. For that reason and countless others, it’s a film that deserves to be paid attention to and thought about.

My new review for Hollywood Jesus barely scratches the surface of what could read into this masterpiece, but it's a small start...

Coraline - Hollywood Jesus Review

Spark FX!

2009-02-04T22:02:00.001-08:00

Amidst the whirlwind of life it's taken me awhile to blog about Spark FX, which happened Jan 21 to 26 here in Vancouver, hosted by our local Siggraph chapter that I am so proud to be a part of. These guys are all so dedicated to making cool stuff happen in our rainy little city.

I don't have a huge number of pictures unfortunately, but here are some of the highlights I was able to experience...

Earlier in the festival planning, I had written a letter to Ray Harryhausen to see if he would be able to be part of the event (cuz it never hurts to try!) His colleague and co-author Tony Dalton kindly wrote me back to say that he was no longer traveling large distances from the UK. So by proxy, Wednesday night I was honored to kick off the festival by introducing a 35mm screening of 7th Voyage of Sinbad. Really nice looking print, and so much fun to see on the big screen. Then ironically, after getting home late that night, I logged on to the SMA.com message board and discovered that legendary Harryhausen-film producer Charles Schneer had passed away that same day. If I had read that news earlier, I would have mentioned it to the audience and dedicated the screening to his memory. Oh well, I did send an e-mail of condolences to Tony Dalton asking him to tell Ray that we screened the movie that day.

Since I'm more of an animator than a visual effects artist, some of the talks I sat in on were a little bit technical for my liking, but I've always had a keen interest in seeing how all of this stuff is done. Through Thursday & Friday there were some really cool retrospectives and presentations showing everything from old-school 80s splatter effects & animatronics to the modern-day wizardry of Pan's Labyrinth. Wicked stuff.

Saturday was a long killer of a day, starting with an incredible presentation by the great Dennis Muren. Unfortunately for me, I never got a chance to really chat with Dennis while he was here, outside of briefly shaking his hand. I thought he would be attending the dinner we had for the chapter that night, but it was not the case. Royal bummer, but perhaps we'll have him back another year when his book comes out. Just hearing him speak that morning was inspiring enough as it was.

I did, however, get to chat with another legendary film artist Harrison Ellenshaw, who supervised the effects for TRON and created the original matte paintings for Star Wars: A New Hope and Empire. The presentation he gave, about the film work of David Lean and general aesthetics for inspiring movies, was also extremely riveting and entertaining. Chatting with him about classic movies was a sheer delight...very nice guy who painted many lasting images from my film-going childhood.

Me with the legendary Harrison Ellenshaw.

Another person I got to connect with a bit more was local animation historian Keith Blackmore, who taught at VanArts back before my time there. He gave a great presentation on Sunday covering the history of visual effects, including a 16mm screening of The Old Mill.

The new improved VanArts booth, where I hung out to prey upon the flesh of the living.

My buddy Marc Fournier, grand sultan of Sophia Books.

Overall the event was a success and I believe it helped to re-ignite some inspiration into the shaky industry here. Already we are percolating plans now for Spark Animation '09, happening September 16-20, so stay tuned...

In the meantime, there are plenty more adventures in babysitting, writing and animating to be had, between naps, hugs and coffees.

Back to Teaching Full-Force

2009-01-12T22:06:00.000-08:00

So it appears it shall be a busy winter/spring session for me in terms of teaching. Both of my Saturday courses (2D and Stop-Motion) have adequate enrollment to go ahead, which only happened once last year. In 2008 things really dried up in terms of interest for my stop-motion course, but it looks like things are turning around now for this year. In addition to being back to my 6-day work week, I'm starting to build Stop Motion II for AAU, PLUS finally getting to teach my Stop Motion 1 course, PLUS teaching another stream of Experimental Animation. That's 4 courses in all plus the usual full-time admissions wibbles.

So this shall be me...

In other news, watch for me at Spark FX coming up next week, namely introducing the '7th Voyage' screening, or hanging out Thursday & Friday afternoon and all day Saturday.

More Random Stuff

2009-01-04T17:56:00.000-08:00

Here's some more random strange things I've discovered lately. Jay got cornered by some old folks at the thrift store and got a wooden storage box with ugly Disney wallpaper thrust upon her. Since we're trying to get rid of stuff rather than hoard it, we had to throw it out, but I had to get some pictures first, as some of the pictures are pretty strange. Especially, why is Daisy holding a Baby Pooh bear and why does Pinocchio look stoned? Is he pushing a boat through a slab of concrete?

I found this awesome 1950s stop-motion film, which I'm guessing is a coffee commercial, by the Joop Geesink studio. I love the human puppets and the happy coffee beans.

Found this cartoon too...the narration is strange and the animation is fun.

And this is a brilliant puppetry piece that my friend Galen found and posted on Facebook. Done in a Bunraku style with black suits and rods against a black background, there appears to be 2 puppeteers operating this little guy who is merely made of foam. So simple but beautifully done, and a good example of how line-of-action and posing comes across for a great live character animation.

Whee happy fun.

Farewell, Muppet Shelf

2009-01-04T17:38:00.001-08:00

A major project of ours over this long weekend has been a gradual re-arranging and de-cluttering of stuff around our house. We'd like to get as much done over the next couple months before Jay gets too pregnant to handle piles of junk shifting around. Since the new baby will be taking over Ariel's current room, Ariel will be moving into our current "studio" room which has housed our computer, animation desk, sewing stuff and most of our toys. So this weekend we started by moving the animation desk into our storage room so it doubles as more of an office space for the occasional animation job. So another big feature of our studio room has always been our infamous "Muppet shelf" where we displayed our collection of the Palisades action figures. But of course with trying to conserve space, grow up and expand the family, we decided it was no longer practical at this point to have them all out as they were. Besides, they usually got too dusty. So I took some pictures for posterity before we packed most of them away. The shelf unit was moved into the new office space where it now stores the animation book collection and some videos. We kept the Swedish Chef set and the Electric Mayhem on the shelf for now, and may perhaps get out some of the others and spread them around in the future.

So it's been fun, folks, but it's time to move on...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

2009-01-01T15:26:00.000-08:00

The year ahead...

2008-12-30T11:16:00.000-08:00

I try not to look ahead too much for fear of jinxing life but I always do, as I like to plan and be prepared for things, and anticipate the coming events of the year so I don't miss anything important. Looking ahead to 2009 it's going to be another packed year, more or less revolving around baby plans.

But at this point, a month-by-month forecast of 2009 in terms of things that will happen, might happen, or might not happen looks something like this, a teaser trailer for a new year of Boundaries blurbs...

January
Starting January 1st, I'm starting a goal for myself to actually get through the Bible in 3 years, through the structured 'Word-Wise' program our church has put together. Several people got through it over the past 3 years, but I got lazy and couldn't keep up with it as a daily habit. I have a dream book project on the back burner and have decided I won't feel adequate to write it until I can actually say I have read through the entire Good Book itself.

From the 21st-26th, the Spark FX festival will be held in Vancouver, including visits from Dennis Muren and many other FX legends. As a member of the Siggraph chapter hosting it, I'll be involved in some planning and volunteer capacities, including an introduction for the 7th Voyage of Sinbad screening that kicks it off. Should be great geeky fun.

I will also begin writing a Stop Motion Level II course for the Academy of Art, and hopefully teaching my Level 1 course as well. At some point in the Spring, writing Level II will involve another trip to San Francisco for some more video shoots.

February
My birthday is on the 5th, Coraline comes out on the 6th, there is a Friday the 13th which means a weird film night at VanArts is in order, students graduating and the Oscar party.

March & April
This will likely be peak time for course building, and possibly a trip to Mexico as a guest speaker at a university there, but the jury is still out on that. All depends on several factors which are still being worked out, so I don't know, we'll see.

May
Jay turns 30, so I have some plans up my sleeve that I hope shall materialize.

June
The 2nd annual Breath of Life Animation Festival at our church is tentatively slated for the first Saturday, so will need to start planning this in the Spring. At the end of the month is me & Jay's 8-year anniversary, and we're thinking of leaving Ariel with family and getting away to Seattle for a few days. There are some restaurants & attractions we want to check out, plus a Jim Henson exhibit.

July-August
At this point we will be in major countdown mode for Baby, with launch sometime in late August perhaps. Ariel will turn 3 right before, so we'll need to have a party.

September
Pretty much all about settling into life with a new baby, plus the second annual Spark Animation Festival from the 16th to 20th.

October-November-December
Our friend Meeka is getting married in Ottawa, so hopefully we can work out a way to attend. Other than that, it's hard to see that far into the future but I'm sure lots of other stuff will come up.

Life is always full of surprises! Amidst all of this, I'd like to make more good progress on my film as well, and perhaps get it in the can in 2010, perhaps?

So to bid farewell to 2008 and look to the future with anticipation and hope, here's a random picture of a duck.

Merrie Neue Yeer!

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-25T14:42:00.000-08:00

It's a Holly Jolly Christmas and to all a good night!

Here is our Christmas family portrait...

...now, had we a little more advance notice, we would have gone with a different picture to possibly suggest not just 3 of us, but maybe a subtle hint towards another...possible...addition?

Oh well, maybe this will work...

Ah look! Mr. Stork on his way!

That's right, Baby #2 due to arrive by Sept 1, 2009. A very good Christmas gift for us all! Whee!

A Claymation Christmas from Church in Motion

2008-12-21T19:22:00.000-08:00

Here's the short film made by a group of kids & adults from our 'Church in Motion' series of Sunday School sessions. This was fun...I liked the special touches they added. Lots of sheep!

Random December Boundaries...

2008-12-09T22:51:00.000-08:00

Time for an overdue random Boundaries blog about what I've been doing and thinking about. Christmas is coming...yay! Looking forward to some quality family time this year and a few days off to catch up on movies, work on projects and basically just play around.

Ariel is excited...can't you tell?

It's been fun pulling out the Christmas videos and watching them with Ariel, starting to expose her to the classics. So far she won't sit still through all of them, except for Arthur's Christmas and Christmas Eve on Sesame Street. The Grinch was on TV the other night but ABC cut off the ending to make room for more commercials. Just as the Grinch was about to lift the sleigh off the mountain, CUT! Sorry folks, time for a crappy sit-com. Bah humbug! I used to feel that having these specials on video kind of ruined the nostalgic novelty of seeing them only when they aired, with commercials and all...but if the networks are gonna piss on them then I'd rather have my video to watch.

I did a funny little puppet show for the Single Mom's dinner at church recently, and have also been leading a Sunday School class for media arts, i.e. stop-motion animation! With a mixed group of kids, youth and adults we're making a little clay animation film of the Christmas story. I'll post it when it's finished in a few weeks. We just got all the clay figures built and will be animating this weekend.

I've enjoyed re-connecting with many long lost friends on Facebook lately. It's quite an amazing invention, once people catch on to it. I've been able to find and communicate with childhood friends of mine who I haven't seen or heard anything from in over 20 years! It's amazing.

I'm very excited to see this film, whenever it's available to see locally. I've been spreading the word about it to my friends...Ron Reed has also posted it on his blog in reference to my comments on the film.

I anticipate stop-motion animation being back on the map and very much on my brain in 2009...for various reasons the Boundaries will share when the time is right....

My daughter is a winged unicorn.

2008-11-25T21:22:00.000-08:00

2D or not 2D Animation Festival - Seattle 2008

2008-11-16T18:22:00.000-08:00

Friday November 14, Calvin Leduc and I traveled down to Seattle for the opening screenings of the 3rd annual 2D or not 2D Animation Festival. We made really good time driving and got into town mid-afternoon, so we walked around town a bit to get our bearings and get some exercise, seeing as how we were sitting in the car for 3 hours and would be sitting in a theater for most of the weekend.

I commented to Calvin that most times when I come down to Seattle it makes sense to me why they chose this area to shoot Twin Peaks. There is a vibe to the place that just seems surreal and creepy sometimes.

Where else can you find a bar & grill with a big scary clown head?

Or a school for girls that is apparently represented by someone doing aerobics, a phone, an eagle, a pencil sharpener and a minotaur...

...and has a row of dead rubber chickens in its window?

Anyway, the festival is being held at the Pacific Science Center on their Imax theater. Some of the first people we encountered were James Baker and Joe Haidar, former colleagues of Calvin's from his days at Disney Feature Animation. They have a film playing in the festival which we got to see that night, called Animated American, a live-action short with 2D animation characters composited in, 'Roger Rabbit' style.

Really good production values and great animation, and the film has already won some prizes in the festival circuit. Really nice guys...it was fun to hang out with them throughout the weekend.

The first screening had some good stuff, in particular a clay animation mockumentary called Token Hunchback (interviews with an actor who always plays Igor), a cute CG short called Abridged (where two towers of a bridge fall in love), and a wacky Flash film Last Time in Clerkenwell (which sticks in your head long after you've seen it)

Then was a presentation by Dean Yeagle about his life and works. Dean started his career in animation with people like Jack Zander, Emery Hawkins, and Preston Blair, so those stories were great to hear. He centered most of his presentation on his famous Mandy character and the books he's created about her. I had seen some of his work online before and it was nice to see much more of it and learn about the man behind the art. He's an amazing talent.

Following was the second screening of films, some of which were experimental and abstract in nature. I particularly liked Endless Tunnel (trippy abstract piece dealing with paper cutouts), The Cave: Adaptation of Plato's Allegory in Clay (a stop-motion myth), The Owl House (brilliantly done stop-motion pantomime piece of a blind old woman living in a house in the woods)...

Farewell (beautifully drawn and rendered film of a fairy and butterfly, reminiscent of animation from Pink Floyd The Wall), and the most entertaining film by far was Chicken Cowboy, which really can't be described but has to be seen to be believed. It's basically a surreal tale of a western showdown between a gang of human cowboy villains and a chicken cowboy with his horse who barks like a dog and is attached to his beloved toaster.

Just a little snip...

Absolutely brilliant.

And now, Saturday in Seattle!

First big event of the next day was a presentation by Peter Moehrle about his painting and artwork for films like Rock and Rule, Ice Age, and Lilo & Stitch, to name a few. His art was amazing to see, especially on a huge screen in the Laser Dome.

The program went overtime a little bit due to some technical issues, but I was able to zip down to the other theater to catch most of the next presentation by Don Hahn, who was showcasing a program of rare Disney shorts. I got in at the tail-end of Der Feuhrer's Face but got to see again a few films that Don showed at last year's festival(Lorenzo and Little Match Girl, plus How to Hook Up your Home Theater) and also two that I had never seen: Destino and One by One. I was totally enthralled by them both...One by One I never even knew they made into a film, but I know the song from the Rhythm of the Pride Lands album. Pretty great stuff and very inspiring, all of it!!!

Next on the docket was concept art for Guild Wars by art director Daniel Dociu, which was pretty amazing to marvel at as he took questions from the small informal crowd. I'm not a big gamer by any means, but I'm trying to educate myself more on the work that goes into creating them. I certainly appreciate the level of artistry that goes into them these days, and Daniel's work was definitely worth checking out for the atmosphere and imagination alone. The sci-fi geek in me was intrigued and impressed.

After this was a much-needed lunch break at 2:00, over at the nearby food court with Calvin, Jim Baker and Joe Haidar, conversing about animation over burgers. Next was Don Hahn again, presenting about the ideas behind his new book, The Alchemy of Animation. Don is an amazing presenter and always has incredible artistic complements to his talks. Especially rare and precious to me were some behind-the-scenes clips of the Nightmare puppet vault and Mike Belzer animating a scene with Jack and Oogie Boogie. Drool drool...

I got a signed copy of his book for myself and one for the VanArts library. It was really nice to see Don again and talk with him. While on the subject, I must back-track a bit to post an incredible film he produced, which showed at last year's festival (and won an award too!) I've been wanting to see this film again ever since, so I'm thrilled that it's finally online. This is one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen, The Chestnut Tree by Hyun-min Lee.

So after Don's presentation we had to zip back to the other theater (sure needed some breaks scheduled in between presentations, I tell ya...) to see Barry Cook, director of Mulan and current resident director at Laika. It started with a screening of Roger Rabbit's Trail Mix-Up short, which he also directed. I liked his presentation, which was something he had prepared for another conference, all about good storytelling. He included some entertaining clips, from Mulan and even the classic Mighty Mouse skit by Andy Kaufman, which I realized is also good animation reference!

NEXT was the third program of short films...a mixed bag as always, but of particular interest to me were The Tortoise and the Coyote (classic hand-drawn animation), Max's Words (by my friend Galen Fott)...

...Broken Rainbow (not sure if it's a good film or not, but it's an absolutely messed-up acid trip experience...check it out here if you're in the right mood for it, but be warned, it doesn't make any sense.), a great Italian stop-motion film called Lupo Dentro, and Again & Again, a neat experimental music video that's worth checking out here.

My favorite short of this program, and one of my favorites from the whole festival, was this one by Zach Parrish, Carried Away. I felt it really took advantage of the medium and told a fanciful story that made me feel like a kid. I appreciate (or sometimes just accept) all kinds of different films for what they are, but I love going to festivals partly to seek out gems like this that make me feel glad to be alive.

After the screening we grabbed a quick bite and came back for the award winners, which included Joe and James' Animated American film...congrats guys! Also we got to see a video of Tony White presenting the Roy E. Disney award to Dick Williams at Digipen a few days prior, and that was pretty amazing to see in the wake of meeting him as well.

The evening concluded with a Gala event that included a performance by Hummie Mann's Pontiac Bay Orchestra, a mentoring orchestra that mixes youth and adults. They did a really nice program of music from animation & film, everything from Fantasia to Narnia to Charlie Brown.

I congratulate my good friend Tony White (and his comrades Ken Rowe & Saille Shumacher) for pulling all the stops on another great festival to celebrate the art of animation. The turn-out was very good and everything was certainly on a bigger scale than last year. There was a slightly different vibe comparatively...being in the small town of Everett vs. downtown Seattle certainly gave it a different feeling overall. Overall I think the different vibe came from some of the casual conversations we had with some of the students and attendees...it seemed that many were being hard-hit by financial worries, lay-offs, and other nervous tales about the state of the industry & economy at present. As an outsider from across the border, it was a different America even a year later. Even though we fully enjoyed ourselves and got to see some inspiring work, there was a somber vibe too, just based on how things are in this twilight period of post-election uncertainty and unrest.

This morning before Cal and I left our hotel to head back to BC, this was the view outside our window, which I think sums things up poetically, both for the state of our world, the state of our industry for the art of animation we came here to support. It's a bit foggy, but the light is still there seeking an opening to shine.

Star Wars - Recut Trailer

2008-11-12T22:04:00.000-08:00

So the last couple o' weeks since Halloween have been pretty hectic. This time of year is always rather nerve-wracking as we try to prepare for the spring intake, but things are starting to look up. Between torrential rain, late nights and the time change, it's been rather Twilight Zoney but this week things are good!

To blow off steam, over the weekend I had another random creative impulse which actually came to me in a dream, literally. For some strange reason I had a dream about being part of a video contest that involved making a Star Wars parody, and afterwards woke up in the middle of the night with all of these random ideas in my head. Since I love the concept of "recut" movie trailers that are usually found on YouTube & elsewhere, somehow I came up with a wacky idea of re-cutting Star Wars to make it appear that Han Solo joins the Empire. After thinking it over, much like my more uplifting Dare You to Move video from several months ago, I went ahead and edited the damn thing.

Part of me felt rather torn over this, as it seems cruel to mess around with the motivations behind characters who seem like real childhood icons, and to turn such a feel-good movie into a downer. But ultimately I ended up justifying it by musing over the following possibility...

Before Star Wars brought a new sense of hope & adventure to pop culture, films of the 1970s reflected the corruption of the post-Vietnam & Watergate era. If George Lucas had stuck with the status quo of '70s Hollywood, what would his film have been like?

Yes, I'm fully aware I'm a nerd.

And on a lighter note, the 2D or not 2D Animation Festival is this weekend, so stay tuned for a full report folks!

Halloween 2008

2008-11-01T21:11:00.001-07:00

Richard Williams

2008-10-29T21:07:00.000-07:00

The anticipated day finally arrived this Monday, with an added bonus. Not only did we have the evening presentation, but were also graced by an informal visit to VanArts by Dick Williams, his wife Imogen (Mo) Sutton and 14-yr-old son Leif. Alan (president of VanArts) knows Dick from years back when he used to live in the Gulf Islands, so they shared some stories about flying in Alan's plane with Bob Godfrey. They dropped by around lunchtime so we gave them a tour of the school and the animation labs. The students were simultaneously stunned and excited, and plenty of them got photo opps and Survival Kits signed.

Along with Charles & Calvin, we all went out for lunch at Malone's. Conversations ranged from everything from animation stories to travel to foreign currency and everything in-between. I had a lively discussion with Dick about how music and animation relate to each other and how musicians make good animators. I was so amazed by how funny, cordial, humble and laid back he was, still talking the same way he does in all those old documentaries.

Charles is soaking up those stories...

At the theatre before the show, Dick and his family very graciously took the time to check out my story reel for Storytime with Nigel, as he seemed intrigued by the fact it's narrated by Bob Godfrey. He enjoyed it and I was glad to share it with him, as I feel that a lot of my animation style is inspired by his work.

The presentation at the VanCity Theatre was a smash hit to a completely sold out crowd that was lined up around the block. I got to introduce Dick before he took the stage to answer questions and present clips from his new DVD series. The clips he showed were priceless...very funny at times and of course loaded with exquisite animation. (There is a sequence of different animated eye designs morphing into each other which alone is worth the entire price tag to watch!) The evening concluded with a very long autograph line-up, and I got to see many familiar faces there too.

So the whole day was an absolute thrill to say the least, and I was truly honored to spend time with Dick Williams and his family. Thank you Dick for your inspiring work, kind spirit, and dedication to preserving the incredible art form of animation!

Richard Williams coming to Vancouver!

2008-10-17T20:48:00.000-07:00

Well, it's official and I can finally break the silence...Richard Williams is coming to Vancouver! The event is being hosted by Vancouver SIGGRAPH and I'm involved in coordinating all the details. I'm sure looking forward to meeting him and hearing what he has to say. See the link below for details on the event!

Richard Williams: The Animator's Survival Kit - Animated
followed by special screening of ''Who Framed Roger Rabbit''
October 27, 2008

October 27, 2008 - 7:30 PM
**FREE**
Tickets at the door - first come, first served.

Richard Wiliams, triple Oscar winner and Director of Animation of ''Who Framed Roger Rabbit'' has now combined his best-selling book ''The Animators' Survival Kit'' with his legendary Masterclasses. He will present the 16-DVD boxed set filmed at Blue Sky Studios in New York which is inter-cut with over 350 specially animated examples in a mini- Masterclass.

www.theanimatorssurvivalkit.com

Richard Williams will be present in person to engage in Q&A with the audience, followed by a book signing and a screening of the feature film ''Who Framed Roger Rabbit'', which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year.

2D or not 2D '08!

2008-10-11T23:41:00.000-07:00

Here is the great Tony White presenting a trailer for his 2D or not 2D Animation Festival which is coming up soon! Can't wait...if you can make it, I'd love to see you there.

Weekend Ketchup

2008-10-11T23:18:00.001-07:00

Here's a brief stream-of-conshess-ness post about stuff that's happened recently in my life as I sit here bleary-eyed from the chemicals that are present in two glasses of wine, two servings of monstrous Thanksgiving turkey dinner, and a decaf coffee...

I went to Seattle for a day...I gave blood...I went to work...I found a website through a Facebook group that allows me to download Old Time Radio Shows for my iPod...I went to Portland for a day, where I got to visit Bent Image Lab and Ward Jenkins' art show b-boy (still there if you wanna check it out!)...a student at VanArts died, which has never happened in 10 years of being there and I hope it never happens again...I went to his funeral, which was really sad....I was rather depressed & confused for a few days...been pondering my faith and getting back into the basics about Jesus and what he means to me...I'm starting to slowly come out of my funk and appreciate all who I love and all that I have...Thanksgiving (Canadian version) is a pretty good time to do that. And sleep is a good thing.

After the roller coaster week I've had, watching videos online with Ariel led me to the funniest damn thing I've seen in a long time. Pretty good therapy.

Poor Jon

2008-10-08T17:31:00.000-07:00

I can relate to this.

garfieldminusgarfield.net

I Heart Pocoyo

2008-10-01T21:04:00.000-07:00

I first discovered this show a few years ago and instantly fell in love with it. And now recently I've gotten Ariel enjoying it on Treehouse and more often on YouTube. It makes her laugh! (Not to mention her Daddy) Everything about it is rather brilliant...in particular, the design and the posing against neutral backgrounds. I think it's definitely the best use of computer animation I've seen for TV.

Hitting the road for Portland tomorrow!

SPARK 08!

2008-09-26T21:04:00.000-07:00

At long last, now that I found some extra pictures to add to the few I took (thanks to Jason Vanderhill and Daryl Anselmo!), here are some reports on the first annual Spark Animation Festival in Vancouver.

I first arrived to the festival Friday afternoon and had to get settled in getting all the VanArts gear stored away for the following day.

The first full panel I was able to check out was on Directing Animated Features with Mark Osborne & John Stevenson (of Kung Fu Panda) and Steve Martino & Jimmy Hayward (of Horton Hears a Who). I must say the whole conversation, though completely drenched in profanity and f-bombs from Stevenson and Hayward, was brilliant and very inspiring! All of the ups and downs of directing & dealing with studio politics and art departments were explained candidly, honestly, and in a very entertaining fashion. John Stevenson's career began as an artist on The Muppet Show, and his story about his first day on the job at age 19 was nothing short of breathtaking, and very funny. He even had the same voice intonations and mannerisms as Frank Oz, but with a British accent...incredible! Afterwards when speaking to him briefly, he told me that so much of his career was indebted to the good lessons he learned from Jim Henson.

Later on during the festival I got the chance to chat with Mark Osborne as well, whose roots are in stop-motion and the Oscar-nominated short MORE. I like his work very much so it was an honor to meet him as well...I ended up signing a copy of my book for him. He told me he's hoping to get back into another stop-motion project at some point...us puppet-pushers gotta stick together and keep returning to our roots now and then I think.

Late Friday afternoon I got to be part of the Best of the Web panel, thanks to the gracious invitation of moderator Daryl Anselmo from Propaganda Games. Joining me were local animators Andrew Duncan, George Samilski, & Johnny Darrell...unfortunately I don't have any pictures of us. The crowd was moderately sized and casual, and the highlight was simply getting to show off our favorite clips from the web. Mine mostly included stuff I've previously posted here, such as David Lynch's Goofy Movie and The YuYu...also made reference to my regular blog visits and artists of note (PES, Cartoon Brew, Michael Sporn, Ryan McCulloch, Justin Rasch, Ward Jenkins, and Garfield Minus Garfield.) Some other great stuff I got to see for the first time included...

Burning Safari
&
A Gentleman's Duel

Great stuff!

Much of the rest of the day was spent between events catching up with so many old friends, former students & colleagues from VanArts who showed up at the event, and meeting some new people as well, including another stop-motion animator/director Bronwyn Kyffin, who had worked at Cuppa Coffee, Edison & Leo, and most recently on Jibber Jabber directing many of my VanArts comrades. Always great to meet others in the field and see how we're all connected. That evening I got to catch most of The Pixar Story, which I had first seen in Seattle last year. (I hear it's going to be available on the special edition of WALL-E which is good to know.)

The following day, Saturday the 13th, was a full day of festival-going for me, starting by setting up the VanArts booth and the Free Stop-Motion Jam lobby activity. A little bit of drama ensued as I discovered I had a faulty fire-wire cable and had to run over to the school to grab another one. Once it was all going, things were good. I set up a table with some clay and action figures, and set StopMotionPro's time-lapse feature to automatically take a frame every 30 seconds. Between screenings people could just dive in and animate whatever they wanted.

Here are the results from the day...notice how the shadows move across the table!

The first presentation by Pixar's Paul Topolos focused on matte painting & production on WALL-E, and he was a funny & entertaining speaker (with a dead-on Brad Bird impersonation!) Got to see some deleted animatics from the film and it was really interesting.

The following presentation was one I was really looking forward to, which was Ed Hooks. He had some wonderful, inspiring things to say about animation as an art form and true form of acting...and much to say about the pitfalls of animation becoming too much of a product & money-grabbing machine. One of the central themes of his talk was that with early man, the storyteller and actor were the same person, and stories were told because there was something the tribe needed to hear...or the storyteller had something to say. The best films are made when the storytellers and actors are one & the same, and when they work from the perspective of "what does the tribe need to know?" rather than "what will they buy?" I found this to be very inspiring and true. Ed weaved countless other philosophical bits of wisdom in a stream-of-consciousness fashion that was truly captivating.

The following presentation was Paul Herrod from Bent Image Lab, a stop-motion studio in Portland. They've done some great pieces for music videos, TV specials and commercials which were great to see, and also meet the puppets in person...

Robot Puppet from They Might Be Giants music video "I'm Impressed"

Paul was great to speak with about the stop-motion craft, and he's graciously invited me to visit the studio next week, as I'll be in Portland briefly, so I'm looking forward to it. That day I also had the pleasure to meet his wife, independent animator Joanna Priestly, whose work I had seen & enjoyed at Platform last year. They're incredibly warm friendly people and very passionate about the creative work they do, so it was great to meet them both.

As an indie animator, the next panel was especially informative and inspiring for me, as Joanna Priestly was joined by Mike Grimshaw, Martin Rose and Marv Newland. I picked up lots of good tips and advice for things like film funding, festival entry, and general nuts-and-bolts of the independent scene. It's been difficult finding the time or motivation to get my film back on the stove these days, so this panel gave me a good dose of ammunition to start trying to move things forward again. I asked them about some options for funding, so I'm going to look into the things they mentioned.

Following the afternoon panels, I got to catch up with Jerry Beck who had just arrived to host his Worst Cartoons Ever show! I had seen this show at Ottawa years back and it always makes for a fun wacky addition to any festival. I gave Jerry a brief introduction, and after his little speech, the show was on...the show included some new material that blew me away in terms of its utter strangeness, especially the Sam Bassett cartoon. Holy crap was that messed up, but hilarious!

After recovering from the plethora of strange animation, it was time to party! They had a huge electronic screen that people could draw on with an electronic pen, kind of like a giant Cyntiq or Magna-Doodle...kind of hard to describe, and challenging to draw with, but I managed to play around and do some neat stuff.

Tired, bleary-eyed but inspired socially, artistically and spiritually, I headed home to crash, and we left for Disneyland the following morning. What could have been better?

Ariel & Stitch

2008-09-25T19:07:00.000-07:00

Since Ariel got to meet Lilo & Stitch at Disneyland (and was actually scared of Stitch at first), I realized I probably should have introduced them to her on screen before we left. But she pointed them out by name looking at a picture frame we have, so I figured we would catch up on the real thing.

Of course she was mesmerized the whole time...got concerned when Stitch got run over and laughed when he threw stuff. Now she loves Stitch and has a new friend.

Such an awesome movie! Then ironically Cartoon Brew posts today about Chris Sanders' next directorial venture...hope the 3rd time's a charm and he actually gets to stay on this one.

Disneyland!

2008-09-21T14:26:00.000-07:00

What a great week we had! I thought Disneyland was fun when Jay & I went on our honeymoon 6 years ago, but add a little girl to the mix and it makes things even that much more special. There is something about that park that separates it from all other parks and vacation destinations. I can't really put my finger on it...perhaps it's the history and vision of the place. As we walked around I couldn't help being reminded that Walt built it and walked around it himself, and his team of animators designed the original elements. Pretty amazing to think about, how one man we've never met in person still seems like a close friend who lives on within this park. I've been pondering over exactly why one gets emotional and welled up being there...is it simply because it makes you feel like a kid again, or is there a glimpse of something spiritual going on? Walt intentionally envisioned Disneyland as stepping into another dimension of reality, and it really does feel that way after you step through the gates and especially going into the 'dark rides.' Perhaps that's a big key to it...a glimpse into the actual realm of the unseen being brought to light. Plus, few places satisfy my animatronic critter obsessions better!

As always, Jay has documented the entire day-by-day details on her blog, but here are my little Boundaries bytes of special moments and reflections...

Right away on our first night there, we got Ariel's first set of mouse ears!

...and she really enjoyed the "horsies"...oftentimes the simple stuff is best.

I love this picture of us experiencing the incredible fireworks show, which included a live Tinkerbell flying by the castle, sound bytes from the Haunted Mansion, the Star Wars theme, and all the classic Disney music that made me just well up and glad to be alive.

The perfect topper to the fireworks was getting to meet Mickey on the way out (immediately after Jay commented that we hadn't seen a single character yet...hehe)

Finding Donald was especially great, as he is my absolute favorite cartoon character of all time.

Yay, my favorite people, including Stitch!

A meeting of two Ariels.

This animatronic Mr. Potato Head was frickin' amazing! I shall post some video soon, as it was truly fluid and alive-looking.

"He's actual size but he seems much bigger to me..."

The Pixar parade was pretty sweet too. I think because they are already 3D to begin with, seeing them in actual 3D is more convincing. The 2D characters either translate well or they don't as much.

Dale and Ariel share a ticklish moment.

Threatdown...BEARS!!! It was funny how everyone was referring to these guys as 'Brother Bear' and the character-handlers had to remind us what their real names were, since the film itself wasn't all that memorable. (Gee, I wonder why we never saw anyone from Atlantis or The Black Cauldron?)

Jus' when you thunk you done seen every-thang...

Ariel loves dogs, so this was the ultimate dog for her to meet.

This picture says it all...

Spark...

2008-09-14T00:59:00.000-07:00

Well, my involvement with Spark Animation has come to a close and I would like to post plenty of details to do it justice...but I shall have to wait because I only took a few pictures myself and I know that others took some good ones I'll be waiting to get sent to me. For now I will simply say I had a great time...it was wonderful catching up with old friends and meeting new ones. It was also very inspiring and I feel so humbled, honored and blessed to be part of the committee that planned & hosted it. I hope we can now do this every year!

Until I am able to post more, the Boundaries of Fantasia shall be all about Disneyland! Praises.

Happie Weird Weekend Stuff

2008-09-06T14:51:00.000-07:00

This new animated short by my friend Ryan McCulloch made me crack up laughing today.

Owners who Look like their Pets
Uploaded by TertiaryProductions

I feel very happie and relaxed this weekend...the new batch of students has finally arrived at VanArts, last year's batch is graduated and ready to move on to greatness, and I have my first batch of online students at AAU getting ready to rock. (My own course didn't fly for this semester, so I'm teaching one of the pre-requisite courses in Experimental Animation and hoping that my course will run next semester.) So for right now, it's wonderful to have nothing to do or worry about except family time,Spark Animation next week and Disneyland right after that!

Oh, and one more thing...somebody should write to the folks at McDonald's. AT-ATs and Stormtroopers are cool by themselves, but this is the most retarded thing I've ever seen in my life.

Getting life organized and reflecting...

2008-09-01T14:43:00.000-07:00

Happie September! Today is the 10-year anniversary of the day I first landed in Vancouver to officially live here. It's pretty amazing to think about, and to think about how far things have come since then. 10 years ago today my friend Brandon and I were on the last day of our big American road odyssey across the country from Michigan to Vancouver, which is all still lovingly documented on my old website here. Ah, good times. It's also ironic that part of the same road was recently trodden on when we drove to Yellowstone a few weeks ago.

Ken & Brandon at age 23, a modern-day Lewis & Clark about to discover America.

September 1, 1998...Ken looks to the waters of Washington pondering his future.

10 years later, he's still pondering...

This long weekend has also been one of re-organizing and de-cluttering our house, going through old things and throwing many of them away. As time goes on, so does the amount of stuff one can easily collect, which must be dealt with at some point, to make room for more stuff. In light of reflections on 10 years in BC, one thing I found and decided to keep was this drawing I did (Click on it to make bigger and actually read my scribbles). I remember after Brandon flew back to Michigan it was strange having so much time to myself alone in new surroundings. The summer leading up to that time was so busy and chaotic, it was a bit of a culture shock until school started and I was around people again.

Lots of other mementos, old tapes, and random pieces of the past have been disposed of this weekend, but the most important stuff has been preserved and well documented. Another something from home I've archived a bit today was a collection of photos from my vacation to Walt Disney World in 1979 when I was 4-years-old and Jonathan was 1. Since we're preparing to take Ariel to Disneyland in a few days, I felt it good timing to get these pictures into a new photobook and scan a few of them in.

More pictures here!

I'm also excited that re-organizing things and changing "where we put stuff" has allowed me to put all of my animation-related books and other rare treasures onto one bookshelf. Before they were all spread out in different places around the house, so this will make life easier. Ah, my precious...

Ariel's had a fever all weekend as well, but is still her jovial self for the most part, except when she gets tired. Poor thing...hope she feels better soon.

Here we are watching Ariel's new favorite "movie," They Might Be Giants' Here Come the 123's, which was a birthday present from Uncle Dan...I've been meaning to rave about it here...as it has some great animations & puppet bits included. Several of them are by a 2D Flash animator named Pascal Campion, who has his contributions to the set on his website as well...worth checking out!

One Dozen Monkeys

Nine Bowls of Soup

813 Mile Car Trip

Hooray for things!

Falling in Love with the Movies again

2008-08-31T00:49:00.000-07:00

It's a long weekend so I'm getting a chance to catch up on a couple movies I've been wanting to see, both of which I enjoyed.

First off I was sent a copy of Son of Rambow for a Hollywood Jesus review. Awesome 80s trip, great fun, hilarious and also very touching and sweet. The two lead actors were fantastic together and reminded me so much of me and my friends making home movies at that age. Check out my review for a few things I had to say about it.

...and also, I FINALLY got to check out The Dark Knight in IMAX, upon invitation by brother Mike & friends. HOLY CRAP!!! This was probably one of the best movies I have ever seen. I can totally see why there was so much hype over Heath Ledger's Joker...what an absolutely amazing performance! He was 110% pure EVIL! The film was so exciting and had me on the edge of my seat. It's loaded with spiritual and philosophical underpinnings as well, and crafted together masterfully. So many others at Hollywood Jesus have already hit exactly upon the same themes I found in it, related to our capacity for evil and our need for a savior. Excellent, excellent, excellent!

Vancouver Spark Animation Festival

2008-08-27T12:39:00.000-07:00

Hot off the presses, check out the new upcoming Animation Festival in Vancouver!

http://siggraph.ca/events/20080910_spark.html

Watch for a report here on the events I'm able to attend, followed by Disneyland!

Rock-afire Explosion Movie

2008-08-23T21:06:00.000-07:00

...and speaking of the Rock-afire Explosion (see previous post below), this looks like an interesting film coming soon.

Yellowstone....the Rest of the Story.

2008-08-21T21:55:00.000-07:00

We're all back home now from our big Yellowstone and American Road Trip Odyssey, so it's time to play catch-up with a bunch of other amazing stuff that happened and cool stuff we saw. One rule with this trip was we weren't allowed to eat at any chain restaurants or establishments. All meals (except for one dinner "off the road" that didn't count and a Starbucks coffee) were researched before-hand by searching for mom-&-pop places and 50s-style diners. Of course, every attempt was also made to capture the beautiful wonders of nature, family moments and strange cartoon culture along the way. Jay's blog goes into more minute-by-minute detail of the experience, but here is the Boundaries Bytes of Ken stuff...

Pink Flamingos and a Scary Hot Dog from Big Al's Diner in Blaine WA...

A pretty picture of Jay contemplating the open road...

Everytime we drive through the States, we see this damn freaky cow.

Something poetic about a lonely barn...

...and Mexican frogs.

I don't know what the hell this is.

Really awesome food and service in Spokane WA! If you can find it, you won't regret it. Good home southern cookin'!

Kind of a Preston Blair-ish drawing with a Cubby Bear cartoon title...

Ariel and I ended the day watching the new Transformers movie on HBO and trying to figure out exactly what happened in it, due to the serious lack of long shots.

Cute Jay at the Uptown Diner in Missoula, MT enjoying her chocolate milkshake.

Classic American lunch with a cherry coke and a Yellow Submarine t-shirt...life is good.

Little Rizzo at the counter...

...and enjoying The Muppet Show on the road.

A fantastic family reunion upon arriving in Gardiner MT!

...and a lovely moonlit night.

In the park we saw a plethora of swallows...

...and a Mountain Bluebird...

...while Ariel pondered the beauty of Superman's ice cave.

This day was also Ariel's 2nd birthday, so a nice little family portrait topped it off...

...and a freaky elk.

Beautiful things like this don't happen randomly...

...but things like this do.

...and a family portrait before we head home!

...and now, a God story. Our car breaks down on the Montana highway, chugging along like a wet sponge. Luckily we aren't completely in the middle of nowhere, and we manage to get it as far as a small town (Clinton MT) with a lonely gas station/food mart. It's 100 degrees and both of our cel phones are dead, so I borrow the cashier's phone and call a random towing place in the Yellow Pages. It's also Sunday, so no place is open. I get a cast member from Deliverance on the phone who "just happens to be there" and can't help me, but he suggests I call Red's Towing. He doesn't have their number and tells me it should be in the phone book. It is not in the phone book officially, but somebody has written their number there IN PEN (!) so I call them. I explain that we have a car full of stuff and a 2-year-old...at first the girl answering doesn't think she can help us, until after putting me on hold she tells me one of their drivers is coming out anyway. While we wait, I try driving the car around the building a few times and it does run, just a little choppy. The towing guy arrives and agrees to follow us into Missoula (which is only about 9 miles away) in case we break down again. He leads us to what he calls 'the best place in town' for auto repair named Crawford's, and there is a nice affordable hotel down the street. Since no place is open, we check into the hotel for the night (and order Pizza Hut for dinner...the one meal that didn't count towards our no-chain rule) and try to relax before we find out the verdict first thing in the morning. At this point, we don't know if we'll be staying a whole extra day or just a few hours, or how much we'll be paying to get our car healthy.

Next morning it turns out all we need is a new fuel filter for under $100 and we are on our way. And out of all the auto places we could have been led to, it turns out the shop owner Ken Crawford has this image painted on his store window...

Again, this didn't occur randomly and we were guided back onto the road by angels and the power of prayer. We were blessed.

So taking it easy the rest of the way, we decided to just make it as far as Spokane and continue as planned the next day, only adding an extra half-day of driving to the whole journey. This circumstance allowed us to stop at both places in Spokane we were considering for food stuffs...

Frank's Diner, which is an old historic train car turned into a restaurant. Quite the amazing find and good food too, complete with a creepy baggage man behind the glass.

...and Wonderland USA Family Fun Center, where I knew they had a Rock-afire Explosion installed so I really wanted to check it out, since I hadn't seen one in the flesh since 1984. Unfortunately, the songs played fine and the lights worked, but the characters didn't. I asked the "manager" and the teen girls behind the pizza counter if they ever saw them move...they said some of the songs make them move and some of them don't. It's obvious they had no idea what these characters were supposed to be like, or what the nostalgic history behind them was. With the song selector buttons we tried many times, but each time the characters didn't move a muscle, frozen in dead poses. It was like seeing a beloved childhood memory (which I wanted to share with my own child) crumble and die. My grandparents used to take me to see these characters at Showbiz Pizza Place when I was 9-years-old, and with them now being gone, I took it rather personally. Oh well, I know there are working shows out there...it's too bad this one in Spokane couldn't be treated with more respect.

But after one more classic American romp of nostalgia at the XXX Root Beer Drive-Inn outside Seattle, it was home again home again, and an absolutely fantastic holiday. There is so much more to share, but that's another story which shall be told another time.

Yellowstone

2008-08-16T07:13:00.000-07:00

Hangin' with the locals...

Can you see the sleeping giant in this picture? (his face is on the right)

Can you see Jay in this picture? (No it's not a Pink Floyd concert, it's a hot spring.)

Fun things to pose with...

Hitchin' a ride...

Rock Band with my brother Dan...a good way to unwind at the end of the day.

Roads to Madness

2008-08-13T22:37:00.000-07:00

We're currently enjoying a family vacation to Yellowstone by car from Ladner to Spokane to Gardiner, Montana. Here is the wonderful culture along the way.

Let's go!

About to enjoy breakfast at Big Al's Diner in Blaine, WA

Lots of fun cartoon artifacts...

A 'Sitting Ducks' shower curtain works well when you don't have a door.

Apparently a refugee from the Toddle Tale "Grandfather Train", the banned sequel to "Grandfather Clock" which was even more disturbing...(but is that even possible?)

The classic Twin Peaks diner in North Bend, WA!

"A three-quarter view of a father and child sharing a tender moment."

For some reason the diner is now been invaded by an army of Tweeties...

...but still has cherry pie and damn fine coffee!

A disturbing pig.

Aww, happy cakes!

Come hang out and have a ball!

More to come...

Birthday Party Fun

2008-08-11T21:46:00.000-07:00

This weekend was Ariel's 2nd Birthday Party with friends and family, and a great time was had by all. Here's a little highlight where the Muppets made a little performance, we had our annual storytime (a new book written and illustrated by me & Jay), and Ariel's birthday cake. My little Puppetoon is growing up!

Here is a link to view our childrens' book for Ariel in online format.

Stay tuned...we hit the road for Yellowstone tomorrow!

Life is short....but God is tall

2008-08-07T22:41:00.000-07:00

This is my new life slogan that just popped into my head tonight while sitting quietly in Ariel's room waiting for her to fall asleep. It's been an interesting week, coming down off the adrenalin rush of finishing my course and enjoying some mellow evenings after coming home from work. But at the same time, we're still processing the shock of losing a dear friend from our church to cancer the other night, rather suddenly. Irene was one of the kindest people I've ever met, and it's strange & sad to realize every now and then that I won't be running into her at the store, on the street, or in the congregation anymore. If you're on Facebook, I invite you to visit the group that's been created in her memory. It's a rough road ahead for her family and friends who will miss her.

But amidst this sad turn of events, life does go on. I remember when we went through this same thing with Janet's mom several years ago, I said to Janet, "You know, it's strange, we're in the middle of one of the tragic things we may ever have to deal with in our lives, but at the same time, I've never felt more alive." So indeed there are many exciting things coming up on The Boundaries of Fantasia: friends adopting babies, Ariel's 2nd birthday, a trip to Yellowstone, animation festivals, Disneyland, teaching, and a few other events that shall remain a secret for now! So I say stay tuned and prepare for watching us live life to the fullest.

In other random news, my good friend Mario Pochat has recently started a website for animation in Vancouver, and posted a little interview with me here.

New Demo Reel!

2008-08-04T18:12:00.000-07:00

Check out my new demo reel, with clips from the productions I've worked on with BigFott Studios: I'm Dirty!, Do Unto Otters, & The Librarian from the Black Lagoon, plus a little clip from Storytime with Nigel.

Preston Blair Swipe

2008-08-03T18:08:00.000-07:00

I recently discovered a Preston Blair swipe drawing on the back of our local Delta, BC phone book. (I wasn't sure at first, but then I found the actual drawing they ripped it off from...not perfect, but close enough.)

New Stop Motion Dialogue!

2008-08-02T23:22:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time coming, but here we finally have a brand new compilation of improvised "Creature Comforts-style" dialogue from my last batch of talented part-time students! Great job you guys!

"The YuYu" and other inspirations

2008-08-02T10:52:00.000-07:00

I've recently found some time to finally peruse through the animated shorts on AWNtv, and have discovered some gems. This one in particular excites & inspires me a great deal...

http://www.awntv.com/videos/yuyu

I absolutely LOVE this film and how it ties together with the awesome music. Further investigation led me to the animator's website Bitey Castle and more episodes of this unraveling story.

Normally I haven't had much desire to continue working in Flash, outside of my brief experimentation with it, but seeing stuff like this makes me re-consider. Not to mention this little clip, all drawn straight-ahead in Flash (and synced to Monty Python's "Book Shop" sketch):

Both of these animators (Adam Phillips and Rune Bennicke respectively) have worked for Disney. Great stuff!

A Random Post...just because I can.

2008-07-28T20:35:00.000-07:00

WHAT DOES THE GIFT OF LIFE HOLD INSIDE???

So I'm finally getting back into the swing of things as I come down off one project and get in touch with life before moving on to the next one. Yes, I finally finished my online Stop Motion Animation 1 course for the Academy of Art! Now the final touches are in my editors' hands and we all await some students possibly for the Fall. I'm already thinking ahead a bit for a "Level 2" course, which I'll also be writing before too long.

Until then, it's all about work, work and more work until our upcoming birthday party for Ariel and family vacation to Yellowstone! But all work and no play makes Ken a dull boy, so...

(image H.Jessup/W.Jenkins)

...one of my part-time students graciously gave me a copy of one of the rarest animation treasures out there, the UnCut version of Twice Upon a Time (with the naughty words intact). Apparently I also have his mom to thank as well, as they had taped it off HBO during of the 12 mysterious airings from the 80s and kept the tape. Pretty good transfer too! I haven't decided if the profanity makes this a better film or not...in most cases it doesn't, but I do chuckle when Scuzzbopper says "a***ole" off-screen.

My brother sent me this and I love it...

...this weekend we got to celebrate the wedding of our fellow VanArts comrades Blake & Nicole, who met at the school years ago through a series of personal connections & circumstances that ultimately led to this momentous day for them. I was so proud to have a little part of that! We had a great time. It's amazing how many lives have changed as a result of that place, and how all of our lives weave and connect together.

Mischevous Me creates a little 'Jack & Sally' drawing for the happy couple.

We got a little goofy leaving creative gifts at the table.

Awwww....

The VanArts American/Canadian Marriage Club claims another Victory!

...and this weekend we got to see SPAMALOT on its final day here in Vancouver. It was AWESOME to finally see it LIVE on a stage; the cast was great and threw in lots of Canadian touches too. Such a fun show!

...and now, HOLY CRAP!!! Coraline Puppets!!!!!!

Ken's iPod Shuffle

2008-07-14T23:06:00.000-07:00

In response to my friend Meeka's recent post, I thought I would see what my iTunes Shuffle came up with while plundering away at course-writing this evening, for no other reason than to reveal my musical tastes and prove how either cool or dorky I am.

Step 1: Open your iTunes or other lesser MP3 player.
Step 2: Put all of your music on random.
Step 3: Write down the first 30 songs it plays, no matter how embarrassing

Honey Pie - The Beatles
Standing - Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Once More with Feeling
Call Me When You're Sober - Evanescence
Ob-la-Di Ob-la-Da - The Beatles
Where Are You? - Spamalot Soundtrack
What You Own - Rent
Fat Albert Plays Dead - Bill Cosby
Kodachrome/Maybelline - Simon & Garfunkel
I'll See You in My Dreams - Giant
Synchronicity II - The Police
Violin - They Might Be Giants
Laker Girls Cheer - Spamalot Soundtrack
Screaming in Digital - Queensryche
Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) - Eurythmics
The Intermission - Spamalot Soundtrack
Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me - Elton John
Wings for Marie Part 1 - Tool
Lucifer Sam - Pink Floyd
Maze - Phish
Making Christmas - Danny Elfman
Is There Anybody Out There? - Pink Floyd
Always Look on the Bright Side of Life - Spamalot Soundtrack
Mary - Oingo Boingo
When Are You Coming Home? - Makkafroi (my friend Brandon's old band)
The Invention of Basketball - Bill Cosby
Ben's Death - Star Wars Soundtrack
Prophecy - Queensryche
Beside You - Queensryche
Bridge Over Troubled Water - Simon & Garfunkel

Whattya got on YER pod?

WALL*E Little Golden Book

2008-07-05T21:56:00.001-07:00

I picked up the WALL*E Little Golden Book at London Drugs today, and as with the other recent film adaptations, really enjoy the illustrations. This page in particular made me laugh, due to the random cameo appearance by Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

Kinex Images and more...

2008-07-01T18:21:00.000-07:00

As I've been working on a puppet-building module for my course, it's caused me to collect some screen-grabs for the history of stop-motion puppets.

This is one frame of the Kinex Short Crossing the Alps, where the animator’s arm was accidentally captured on film! Who is this mystery person? Perhaps it could be Orville Goldner, who worked at the studio and years later worked on King Kong. The world may never know for sure, as there is little known documentation on the mysterious Kinex Films.

I've uploaded a bunch more stop-motion history stills here.

Walking on Water

2008-06-30T15:31:00.000-07:00

WALL*E

2008-06-30T09:03:00.000-07:00

Click here for my latest Hollywood Jesus review for WALL*E.

Happy 7 Years!

2008-06-30T00:12:00.000-07:00

Today marks 7 wonderful years being married to my best friend and creative companion Janet (Jay)! I'm so proud of everything we've accomplished together, especially the birth of Ariel and the love and friendships with others that we have nurtured and welcomed into our marriage. I'm so grateful that God brought us together.

To celebrate the occasion, we present the online debut of the little "music video" that I secretly edited together as part of my marriage proposal to her, partially updated and re-mastered from the original version. I woke her up from her sleep by sticking a post-it note on her head telling her to follow a trail of candles to the TV where this video was ready to play...and the Jack & Sally serenade at the end was literally my little song to her.

Happy Anniversary Sweetie! I sure love you!