PeaceTime - Episode 3: A Whale

My meditation videos are now a trilogy.  Presenting my brand new short "A Whale".  It's an undersea guided meditation for guppies of all ages.  

 

The team from the first two shorts is back, with Jess Lakin's gentle voice leading the journey.  Jess actually sat in the Easy Pose yoga position while recording.   After a few slow, deep breaths,  she began extemporizing on the journey of a whale traveling through the sea.  There was no script.  I gave no direction.  She just went with the flow, pun intended.   

My job was then to provide visuals to the audio.  I designed it for simplicity, knowing I would be animating it completely on my own, and not wanting to spent ten years doing so.  It was all done in Adobe Animate.  I don't build rigs, just approach it like old school limited animation.  The biggest challenge for me was in design and color, which I don't get involved with too much in my studio work.  This was largely improvised as well.  

Composer Ian Rees squeezed me in between feature films he was scoring.   As with Jess, I let him surprise me.  The only rule we've had with these shorts was that sound effects must be done musically.  No foley.   He used instruments ranging from a cello to a Brazilian cuica drum.  He created a musical undersea world that completely elevated my visuals.  The results left me grinning ear to ear.

In nearly 42 years in animation, it's still a thrill when all the elements come together and a film becomes a thing of its own.  Like a cartoon Dr Frankenstein - it's alive!  IT'S ALIVE!!!

Enjoy and please share.  Namaste!  NAMASTE!!!

-Steve 

Animatic Theater presents "The Dutch Green"

 Wow, it's been a year since I posted something here.   So what have I been up to? 

Something I call "Animatic Theater".  

 

About 15 years ago, I had an idea for a series based on my life in South Jersey - an odd place full of quirky, blue collar Americans.  I put together a pitch, tweaking it in subsequent years when I had time.  A few years ago, I decided to make an animatic as a proof of concept piece.  It's a  simple set up: the main character, "Old Dude", goes into his favorite deli to order the usual, but now the place has become automated.  It's one more piece of his comfortable world leaving him behind and at the mercy of an apathetic young "Deli Gal", who would rather text her boyfriend than help some geezer.  

This was based on real events.

I wrote a script, redesigned the characters, then reached out to voice actress Sirena Irwin, whom I had met while working at Nickelodeon.  I didn't know her personally, and thought it was a long shot getting her to do it, as she is THE REAL DEAL.   But after a Zoom call, she agreed to play the part of the Deli Gal.  I would play the Old Dude (typecasting).

I booked time at Outloud Audio in Burbank, having the room set up so we could record our lines together.  I can't fully articulate how much fun it was working with Sirena.  After a couple of takes, she wandered off-script, improvising.  I followed her lead the best I could without cracking up (we both failed terribly at this, giggling like an SNL cast).   Her quick wit and whimsicality worked perfectly for this piece.   We would go down some crazy rabbit holes and somehow wind our way back to the script.  It was a wild ride and I had an absolute blast.  A lot of our banter made it into the final cut - the lines where we're talking over each other is the giveaway.  I love how natural it feels.  I credit Sirena for making that happen.  She's also a voice director, and guided me through some of my lines.

Now came the big task - story boarding it.  This happened in fits and starts, between gigs, over a period of about 18 months using Storyboard Pro software.   When I finished and cut it all together, I wanted a few music cues.  I was originally going with needle drops from the 1970 rock classic "Mississippi Queen" by the band Mountain.  But getting the rights was much more involved and much less gratifying than getting something original from my favorite composer Ian Rees.  I sent him the animatic on a Sunday.  On Tuesday, he returned it with something perfectly "Mountain-esque".   Seriously, he is a genius.  

I really wanted to animate the short, but after a computer disaster deleted the original SB Pro file, I was left with just an animatic.  Not wanting to start over, I leaned into the limitation and created "Animatic Theater", a place where I can present short ideas without spending five years or more making them.  And at age 62, time has become a factor.  There will be more animatic shorts to come!

I hope you enjoy "The Dutch Green".  There's some salty language in it, so not something to watch around the wee little ones.  HR might not approve either - you've been warned! 

-Steve

PeaceTime: A Soaring Eagle

 

 I am quite pleased to present my new short, "PeaceTime: A Soaring Eagle".  It's the second of what I hope to be a series of such guided meditations for children.  I collaborated once again with Jess Lakin, who improvised the meditation in Ian Rees' recording studio.  From her recording, I came up with visuals and animated it using Adobe Animate.  Being a spare time project, this took two years for me to complete.  Ian then brought it all together with another charming and inventive score.  

As I said, I'm quite pleased.  And I hope you'll be too.   And check out my other PeaceTime video "A Royal Frog".

Steve

 

Fun with Kidneys!

How does one make the subject of kidney disease entertaining?  That was the challenge when Lori Hartwell approached me about making a short educational film for her non-profit Renal Support Network (RSN), an organization she founded in 1993 to help those with kidney disease manage their care. 

Lori wanted to make an animated version of their illustrated booklet "Share Your Spare", where two kidneys, Neff and Nuff,  explain how they function, etc.   Using the booklet and Suzette Maffi's main character designs as a springboard,  I altered the relationship between Neff and Nuff to be comically tempestuous, then added cutaway segments to illustrate some of the informational bits.  

The cutaway segments were influenced by a Bell and Howell educational film I saw in Mr. Carll's 6th grade science class when I was 12, called Hemo the Magnificent.  Produced by Frank Capra in 1957,  it features live action Richard Carlson (Creature from the Black Lagoon) and briefly,  Sterling Holloway (Winnie the Pooh!).  The animated segments, directed by Bill Hurtz and animated by Seamus Culhane, are a funny and charming precursor to Osmosis Jones and Inside Out.

Introducing....PeaceTime

After two years of working in fits and starts, I am very pleased to present "PeaceTime: A Royal Frog". 

I got this idea a while back (2017-ish?) as an answer to the loud and obnoxious programming that is fed to kids, ad nauseum, through 24-hour cable and streaming video - yes, the stuff that pays my mortgage.  I wrote the idea down in a sketchbook and let it ferment.   

At some point, I talked about it with my old friend Winter Reign, a far-out progressive gal with two small kids and no TV.  She loved it, somewhat surprised it came from such a Three Stooges loving, blue collar guy.  She invited me to a Kundalini yoga class deep in the heart of Topanga Canyon.  It seemed like a dare, and so I went.