Iris Out on Michigan for now

Back to BC! The whole trip has been amazing...quite likely the best we've had. Ariel was a good girl and everybody loved her. It's sad needing to leave, but we'll be back. We're headed back with so much stuff, we needed to borrow an extra suitcase.

On Monday I got to visit College for Creative Studies and present my work and my students' work, and hang out with Steve and his students. It was a great time...several students there were incredibly talented. It was also re-assuring to know that the same politics and inane management decisions go on even at large schools like this one, based on the conversations I heard around the campfire. Makes my job seem more normal, I guess you could say. It was a shame that Larry Larson couldn't make it in, but there will be other times for that. I was glad to see Frank Beaver make the effort to come by and visit, and especially the chance meeting with Jim Pinard as well. My second presentation had been cancelled due to all the students coming to the first one instead, so instead we hung out in the classroom and then went up to the office so Steve could tie up some loose ends getting ready for his history class. Jim just happened to catch me as I was going out the door! A rather divine moment of excellent God-timing...I guess He really wanted us to meet....glad too, as we had an amazing chat over coffee. This mysterious "maker of the egg film" I felt was very much on the same page as myself, so we had great talks about our lives, film, God, CS Lewis, and all those other things that matter.

Looky, a triangle of babies! This was one of the events of the trip I was most looking forward to...seeing Jeff & Marie and getting our girls together for playtime. The twins, Kasia and Moira, are beautiful babies and it's nice to know that Ariel will have some friends to bond with over the years when we visit.

Here's some more pictures of various family ties...Ohana, Part II...

Ariel with my 2nd cousin Lisa's kids (Brett, Megan, & Trent) and 1st cousin Sara's little Aeron. So this is 3rd, 4th cousins, or something...ehh, just cousins, all of 'em. Brett reminds me of Daniel at that age; very quirky and creative.

Angels and Demons: Ariel with Uncle Dan

Here's me, Ariel and my brothers with an R2D2 mailbox we found in Greektown! Rather appropriate, since Detroit is typically the Mos Eisley of the USA...'You may never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.' I have to admit though, compared to what I saw growing up, it appears to be under-going a Special Edition digital update.

And other random image-ness...

Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

I like any bottle label with a chicken on it.

Ohana

Ariel, her new singing teddy bear, and her Great-Grammy Ambrose.

4 generations of Ambrose blood!

Me with my Uncle Bill...no, wait, that's my cousin Ryan.

Ariel and her 'Great-Aunt' Nancy, in every sense of the word.

My Own Little Garden State

I'm here in my ol' home town and having a blast. Jay has many more details on her blog as usual, so I figure I'll give my Kennish commentary and post some awesome pictures.

Hey Fozzie, I want you to turn left at the fork in the road.

Everybody suck on a spoon and see how awesome my brother is.

We've learned on this trip that Ariel LOVES dogs, even fake ones.

I would love to create an entire book of photos with me standing next to every giant mouse with a piece of cheese throughout the country. I now have two pages, since I found another one in Wisconsin almost 10 years ago. The search continues...

My two favorite frau-lines wander through und village de Deutchland...or Frankenmuth.

Tonight I entertained a random decision to see the newly-released Aqua Teen Hunger Force Movie with Brother Dan and Good Friend Brandon. Holy crap, was that twisted and somehow brilliantly funny. Not sure what it means for the future of animation, but who cares? It's not Pinocchio but it's not supposed to be. College stoners need art too. A good time was had by all...been a long time since I saw a film like that with that kind of crowd.

Being here at home to catch up with Michigan familiars with my BC family is so much the best of both worlds. I feel alive, and the best is yet to come.

Michigan Trip

The big visit is coming soon!

Mon 9- bussing to Seattle, flying out 10pm.
Tues 10- arriving in Detroit at 5am...ugh (red eye flight!)
Wed 11- goin' to Frankenmuth with the family
Thur 12- returning sometime evening-ish.
Fri 13- chillin' at home
Sat 14- chillin' at home, plus family gathering for dinner
Sun 15- chillin' at home
Mon 16- Me going to College of Creative Studies as a 'guest artist!'
Tues 17- Ann Arbor to see friends and another family gathering
Wed 18- chillin' at home mostly, visiting Mom's classroom
Thur 19- flying back

ASIFA Book Review

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

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

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

Stop-Motion Dialogue #5

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

Cow Town

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

-They Might Be Giants

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

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

Bring Me to Life / Lord of the Rings

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

Film Production Diary

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

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

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

Adventures in Babysitting

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

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

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

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

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

And now a word from Ariel: "DADADADADADADADADA"

Apparently she has a thing for modern art.

And cooking with nothing in the pan.

On the floor.

Oh boy, animation!

Been out of the blog loop for awhile, either too tired or chipping away at my film again. As you can see, Ariel likes it.

My brother Jonathan

This is a video about my brother Jonathan, and his job. I'm very proud of him.

Animation 101

Watch and learn, young Jedi...

A Joyful Yuletide

So we had a very Merry Christmas, as our 7th together, 6th married, and 1st with Ariel. She got a hippopatomus for Christmas, and in this picture it's eating her head.

Christmas Day in the afternoon, while Jay relaxed upstairs, I had a lovely time camped out on the couch watching some episodes from the first season of Saturday Night Live, which I got on DVD, including some awesome Simon & Garfunkel performances, Andy Kaufman bits, and the Land of Gorch Muppet sketches I've been wanting to see for years...so far most of them have been worth the wait. What struck me as pretty neat about watching them while Ariel slept on my stomach was that the show had its debut when I was a baby, and I know my parents were pretty big fans of the show, so it made think that these shows might have been watched under similar circumstances with me and them. Also fascinating pieces of history.

This week has been spent with a few various outings, working on the film (it's my goal to finish in 2007), and playing with Ariel so Jay can get some rest too. Thanks to lovely Santa Jay, I now have the complete DVD set of Monty Python's Flying Circus so there's been much viewing of that while animating. Life doesn't get much better than this.

Today we went birdwatching at the Reifel Sanctuary, which I haven't done in a very long time so it was nice to get back into it. I'd like to make it a more regular occurance if possible. Here's a list of what we saw, and a few pictures: Trumpeter Swan, Wood Duck, Pintail, Green-Winged Teal, Widgeon, Bufflehead, Fox Sparrow, White-Crowned Sparrow, Rufous-Sided Towhee, Black-Capped Chickadee, American Coot, Black-Crowned Night Heron, Bald Eagle, Gray-Headed Junco, Red-Winged Blackbird, and a few others I wasn't sure of.

Christmas Vacation

It is SO nice to officially be on vacation for awhile! Yesterday, after hitting the shops for foodstuffs early enough to beat most of the heavy traffic, I resolved to spend the rest of the day doing absolutely NOTHING...that is, until it was time to go out for dinner. Dinner is important, especially Christmas dinner.

So anyway, the afternoon was spent with a variety of cartoon-watching and exposing Ariel to higher culture. Here we are enjoying one of Daddy's favorites from 1950s Disney, A Cowboy Needs a Horse.

And now it's Christmas Eve and we've had a double-dose of church services, so now it's time for more food and cartoons in our jammies. What a truly magical feeling with Christmas as a little family this year, and each year shall be more amazing.

To top it all off, after a wonderfully spiritually engaging and uplifting service tonight with incredible music and a powerful message, and driving around Ladner to see the festive light displays adorning the houses of families awaiting Santa and his magic, we arrive home and approach our humble abode while a sweet smell permeates from a neighbor's deck giving a new meaning to Angels we Have Heard on High...

...or perhaps the old Dr. Demento standard Frosty the Dopeman would be more appropriate.

To all a good night!

More videos

For a very cute video of Ariel getting a serenade from a special green friend, visit Jay's blog, where it's already posted:

http://thisisthegreatadventure.blogspot.com/2006/12/ariel-and-kermit_20.html

...and after wiping your tears away, you can marvel at the latest dialogue exercise from my talented students.

Monkeys!

History in the making! The creepiest puppet film ever made makes its internet debut, thanks to YouTube and a certain obsessive animation fan who calls himself "Scuzzbopper"...

Spread the evil far and wide!



...and speaking of cute but creepy monkeys (...actually one of them is more cute than creepy)...

Look Out! They Might Be Giants!

What's This? What's This?

Our neighborhood looks like Halloween Town invading Christmas Town this week, as there is a feature film called Trick or Treat being shot here, and everything is all decked out like it's Halloween, but with snow. Pretty funny to see.




'Happy Halloween!' 'Merry Christmas!'

An Evening for Stop-Motion

This past Wednesday was the SIGGRAPH Event for Stop-Motion in Vancouver, featuring myself, Anthony Scott, Larry Bafia and Peter Muyzers. We had an amazing turn-out despite the nasty snow warnings, and the whole evening went really well.

I presented some of my animation from Snot Living and my various indie projects, plus some of my students' work, followed by a short 15-minute history of stop-motion creature effects. Anthony and Larry presented retrospectives on their stop-motion careers, along with some amazing behind-the-scenes footage from Nightmare, Corpse Bride and Vinton Studios. A panel discussion with all of us followed. Also sold and autographed at least a dozen copies of my book! It was a great night, and nice to see Larry again and meet Anthony and Peter in person.

There's been talk of doing more events like this in the future, so stay tuned!