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!

Conversations with Ariel

There have been times recently when the most intelligent things I hear all day sound like this...'Hooooooooooooohhhh..... errrERRRerrrrr.... aaaaaeeeehhhhhhhhh.... eeehh... eehhhh..... ppfffffftttttt!'

Thank goodness for little girls.

My dearest friend...

So today Toby & I drove down to the Seattle area, in Monroe, to witness the highly-anticipated Nightmare Before Christmas in 3D. It was great...looked so crisp and beautiful on the big screen again. You could see all the wrinkles in the foam latex and even some tie-down holes in the sets, all the while getting sucked into the characters and Jack's passionate life. That character still resonates with me alot. I felt really good at the end scene, as it reminded me of proposing to my wife, since I used the scene to do so. Jay is my Sally! Hopefully now that my cinematic fanboy indulgence is satisfied, I can see her more often, and Ariel too...I miss my girls.

Anyway, it's weird, I go to see movies in the theater so rarely these days that whenever I do, it invokes a sense of nostalgia, especially when it's films that I discovered long ago. The strangest thing about this theater, however, was the stock footage they had interspersed with the standard advertisements before the movie started. Just a very bizarre montage of water, 1930s New York, baby chickens, a cat losing interest in a fish, time-lapse city films, and a giant American flag with a completely unnecessary dissolve into itself. All that was missing was applause from the Women's Institute.

Jay tells me a big storm is hitting us tonight. After the weather we've had all day, I believe it. Hopefully Ariel won't freak out...knowing her she'll probably sleep through it, if she's anything like her Daddy. If there's thunder, hopefully she'll enjoy it, also like her Daddy. Maybe the freeway will be flooded and I can stay home tomorrow! Well, like I said, prayer works! Better get on my knees...

Prayer Works

Mellow evening at home blogging stream-of-conscious with the Winamp shuffle...current music: 'Fire' by the Rock-afire Explosion.

Been a long hard week, and rather exhausting, current music: 'Waiting for the World to Fall' , Jars of Clay. Indeed. However the best thing about recent situations has been a rejuvenation of my prayer life, particularly *had to go rescue Jay from baby barf* current music: 'Will I' from Rent on the bus when I have nothing else to do. Enrollment at work is slowing down a bit so lots of prayer is needed on a daily basis to keep the momentum going, and so far it's working, slowly but divinely. More needed due to people in our lives dealing with hard scary challenges like cancer and more miraculous-but-tiring challenges like twins. current music: 'Good Enough', Evanescence.

Last night we carved our Halloween punkin and watched Charlie Brown, a wonderful new annual tradition. Jack will keep her safe from the Oogie Boogie Man this year!

Planning to see Nightmare in 3D in a couple weeks. Current music: 'Shine', Martin Ansell, Better Off Dead Soundtrack. Was hoping to pick up the new Nightmare soundtrack today, but it's not officially released until Halloween Day, which is sucky. Ariel is here being all smily.

On November 29, I will have a book signing event hosted by Vancouver SIGGRAPH, including a stop-motion history lecture, presentation by Anthony Scott and I get to moderate a panel discussion with other stop-motion vets (Larry Bafia, maybe David Bowes). Current music: 'Liquid', Jars of Clay again. Really looking forward to it. Register here!

Found out this week that Ahmet Zappa is directing the music for the upcoming Fraggle Rock feature film. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. I can just imagine, the Fraggles sing 'Watch out where the Doozers go, don't you eat that yellow snow' and 'Let's make the water turn black' while the Gorgs do a polka rendition of 'Take your clothes off when you dance' and the Trash Heap does 'Cosmic Debris.' That would rock, literally, with Fraggles.

Current music: 'Barque in the Harbor', Great Big Sea while Ariel sings along. My family is wonderful.

Ariel's First Disney Movie

Ariel ended up watching her first Disney movie, The Little Mermaid, by default recently, due to the fortunate timing of the DVD release. She liked it!