Comments If you have any comments or wish to contact me click the link above. There are also comment links after each entry in the blog. I will add selected comments to the blog. Links: StopMotionAnimation.com StopMoShorts Stop Motion Works Trikfx Stopmotion- studios and independents: Nick Hilligoss Mind Over Pixels Animateclay.com Zombie Pirates Angry Puppet films Juergen Kling Tatu Pohjavirta Kuvastin (Reflector) Carrot Kid Ron Dexter Screen Novelties Tennessee Reid Norton Private Dick plog Notes from the Box- Misha Klein Downtime films- Tom Gibbons Webfilm sites: Atomfilms IFILM Slamdance Anarchy Archive.org Undergroundfilm.org ZeD-Stopmotion The New Venue Suppliers- lighting/grip: Setshop Stage Lighting Store Theaterfx-Par Cans Star light and magic Musician's Friend-stage lights Suppliers-tools/materials: McMaster-Carr Smallparts Harbor Freight Northern Tool National Balsa Mister Art Tutorials/resources: Kathi Zung-foam latex 101 video/DVD Atmosphere in stopmotion Animated cartoon factory Quicktiming.org Flicktips

News and Updates: or ...Welcome to my Blog! Click here for archived blog pages April 21, 2005 More Noodlin' Around Lost of tinkering with pages and colors.... I noticed the bright yellow font was a bit painful on the eyes, so I tried a few variations. Not entirely sure about this, especially still having the bright yellow links, but it does look nicer than before. If anyone happened to check in at the right time, you might have seen one of the alternate background images i tried. They're all the same picture, just reworked a bit. I tried a sort of pale brown one for a while, then wondered what the heck was wrong with me... it was awful! This one is definitely my favorite yet.... I killed off some of that solid black (it's actually a very dark purple) and in the process figured out how to create "Kirbyspace" in photoshop. Fans of ol' Marvel will know what I'm talking about. ; ) I'm also really improving my photoshop skills, and other related computer skills. I've heard that learning photoshop is a great start toward understanding the other Adobe products, including After Effects, which is something I might need. But I'll tell you what... just from doing the background image here on the site, I'm getting loads of ideas for things I need in the film. *** I cast up a new resin head for one of my puppets... it was going to be Perth, the blacksmith, but he just might become the carpenter instead. No pictures right now... it's really late and I'm about to crash, but tomorrow, I promise. Man, I really need to get some solid white resin! I was using this clear stuff I've got, and even when I put some white pigment in it, it was so translucent that a light behind it made the whole thing glow. Even 2 coats of gesso didn't completely stop it, but now another one with some acrylic paint in it has almost got it opaque. I ordered two of Jurgen Kling's plug-in style wire armature systems last night from Marc Spess' site that I plan to use for these guys. The nice thing about these armatures is, when a wire breaks, you just loosen a set screw and pop a new one in. Also, they can reincarnate into other puppets in other films, unlike a home-made twisted wire armature. *** Hey, I just checked my counter, and I'm now past the 1000 mark! It's funny... I was averaging around 100 hits a day up until I posted the Cup-O-Noodle Cinema, and now it seems to have at least doubled. I need to check my stats though and see what everybody is looking at. Last time I checked, which was a few days ago, it was still the Video Clips page. Ok, more tomorrow... gotta catch some Z's Comments April 20, 2005 More Noodlin' Around Mark Fullerton sent me this great picure of the dissected remains of the wooly mammoth from the Cup-O-Noodle commercials. Click on the image to see a bigger, less compressed version along with some commentary and explanation. Thanks Mark! Comments April 19, 2005 ...And then there were 8 I added the Spicy Curry Noodles clip Jason posted to the Cup-O-Noodles Cinema. Click the picture above to see the new revamped layout. The first time you go in, it will take a little while for the pages to refresh, but once they all do, then it will work smooth as silk again. Comments April 18, 2005 Goin' Graphic A little more helpful input from LIO made me realize my background image was just too bandwidth-hungry, so I photoshopped it and tried to optimize it not only for faster page loading, but to make my text easier to read at the same time. For a few crazy minutes, I actually experimented with not having an image at all.... I shudder to think of that now! I just can't imagine this site without Ahab's smilin' mug looming behind everything. So I reduced it to duotone and posterized it into a more graphic image, and took it a few notches darker. Maybe it's a bit too dark right now? This yellow text almost glows! Anyway, I was able to shave it from 80KB down to 28, so that should speed things up. *** I swiped a post by Jason Gottlieb from the SMA message board and put it under the first Kim Blanchette entry as a comment, because it answers a direct question asked there by Shelley. He was also kind enough to upload a Cup-O-Noodles commercial that I didn't have onto his site. I'll post it here too for those who don't read the comments on older topics: Spicy Curry Noodles *** I created some animted Gifs and set them as buttons for my main links. Messing around with them some more afterwards, I'm not happy with the way they work. I'm going to re-work them so they behave better, but for now it's good enough. I also fixed up a few problems with the layout on some of the pages that got messed up with all the recent changes. Comments April 17, 2005 More Blanchette I tinkered around with the Cup-O-Noodle Cinema a bit, made it more interactive. Also uploaded the Kim Blanchette Movie Magic segments, split into 3 parts to keep download size manageable. Use the picture links above to see the individual clips or just go to the Video Clips page to access them all. Also, at the urging of Lionel Orozco, that champion of the broadband-challenged, I finally split my blog in half (been meaning to do that, just was afraid to mess with it). I hope it loads a lot faster now. Comments April 16, 2005 Kim Blanchette Cup-O-Noodle Cinema! Well my friends, the moment has at last arrived. Yes, it's what you've been waiting for, without even knowing. The Kim Blanchette Cup-O-Noodle Cinema has arrived, and taken up residence on my site! I've put together a nifty little cinema where you can watch some of the coolest giant creature type stopmo since Uncle Ray hung up his surface gauge. Click on any of the pliestocene-type creatures above to be whisked there in a jiffy. Once there, click on any of the images to watch that clip. The clips are about 30 seconds long, and will take a second or two to load the first time you watch it. After that they'll be stored on your hard drive and you can click away and watch them over and over in Cup-O-Noodle Stopmo bliss and drool all over yourself! This stuff is really a blast. I've also added a link to it at the bottom of my Video Clips page. Comments These ARE fantastic!! Are you sure the whole thing is stop mo? I'm hoping it is stop mo with digital layers and finesse in order for me to cope with how good it is. Who's Kim? How'd you find? Shelley Noble I think the little people are either real actors comped in or more likely CGI, but aside from that and possibly some computer generated dust or smoke, it's all the stopmo wizardry of Kim Blanchette and the Chiodo Brothers studio, who fabricated puppets and sets and worked closely with Kim on animation. As for my sources... I'll keep that confidential. I have agents "in the field" all over the world... ; ) And to answer "who's Kim"-- I'll be posting a segment of Movie magic at the bottom of my Video Clips page later tonight that will explain that, and shows him animating one of these spots. Stay tuned. Mike Mike, those people have to be real and composited in. There's not way that they could do all those people in CG in 1993. Plus thats what it looks like to me. Also, here is another spot that you don't have. It's not the sloth, but pretty damn good. I wish they hadn't put the cup over the mammoth though: Spicy Curry Noodles - Jason mindoverpixels.com April 15, 2005 After being introduced to the writings of Bruno Schulz through the Schulzian.net site I decided to order his book Street of Crocodiles, which is the english version of Cinnamon Shops. It came in yesterday from Abebooks.com. I had already read the first half online, but before diving right into Nimrod, I read through the introduction by Jerzy Ficowski, Schulz scholar and translator. And there I found this quote written by Schulz in response to questions raised by his friend the famous Polish writer, philosopher, painter and playwright Witkiewicz; "I do not know just how in childhood we arrive at certain images, images of crucial significance to us. They are like filaments in a solution around which the sense of our world crystalizes for us. They are meanings that seem predestined for us, ready and waiting at the very entrance of our life.... such images constitute a program, establish our soul's fixed fund of capitol, which is allotted to us very early in the form of inklings and half- conscious feelings. It seems to me that the rest of our life passes in the interpretation of those insights, in the attempt to master them with all the wisdom we acquire, to draw them through all the range of intellect we have in our possession. These early images mark the boundaries of an artist's creativity. His creativity is a deduction from assumptions already made. He cannot now discover anything new; he learns only to understand more and more the secret entrusted to him at the beginning, and his art is a constant exegisis, a commentary on that single verse assigned him. But art will never unravel that secret completely. The secret remains insoluble. The knot in which the soul was bound is no trick knot, coming apart with a tug at its end. On the contrary, it grows tighter and tighter. We work at it, untying, tracing the path of the string, seeking the end, and out of this manipulating comes art..." Comments April 14, 2005 Whoah... I'm flabbergasted here! This is one of the coolest things I've ever seen in my life! Kelly Mazurowski just forwarded this to me, and I swear I sat here giggling like a maniac messing with it! Click on the picture to start an awesome journey. Hint... only the HTML version worked for me (on my Mac). Ooops! Not sure what I did wrong there, but I had that all messed up for a while... sorry to those of you who tried it before I got it fixed! The image didn't show up at all until you moused over it, and the link led to my Webcam tutorial page! Heh... that was leftover from my tests for the mouseover thing and somehow I forgot to switch it to the Nikki.net page. Oh, and I also got the Flash version to work... you just need to give it a few minutes to fully load. And with that I return you to your regularly programmed scheduling. Comments April 12, 2005 By way of an explanation Well, I've been blogging for a while now, and some of you may be scratching your heads wondering just what the heck is going on... what is all this weird stuff I keep rambling about, and what does it have to do with stopmotion? I guess it's about time for me to explain what I'm trying to accomplish here. While the main focus of the site is indeed on stopmotion, I intend to use the blog to relate whatever stray ideas I feel like sharing. It's not really a production log for my film project, but from time to time, as I make progress, I will post about it here. But there's all this other stuff knocking around inside my head that I feel sure other people will like as much as I do... and you know, I've tried talking about the psychology and philosophy on Anthony's message board before, and it just doesn't go over well. That's not really the place for it, which is a large part of my reason for creating this blog. But there's a bit more to it than that. Lately it seems most of the action at the SMA message board is newbies asking the same questions over and over, and that gets to be like walking knee-deep in mud after a while... you just can't get anywhere. Anthony has now created the Stopmotion Newbie Guide, which is a great idea, and as it gets filled in little by little, it should begin to alleviate the redundant questions... at least the simple ones. I've posted a few articles for it, with some help from my buddy Eric, and I feel like that's a lasting legacy and some payback for all the incredible knowledge and help I've recieved on that site over the years. I'm scaling back my normal posting activity there and going into semi-seclusion here in order to get going on my Ahab film without all the distractions. Don't despair... I'm not going to completely stop posting on the message board, just slow down a bit and be more selective about it. There's also this weird feeling that I just can't shake... on those hallowed black pages I always feel like a wide-eyed student in the temple of the masters. I suppose that's why most people don't post there much while they're working on their films. So basically, what I'm saying is that I feel it's time to lock myself away in my sanctum sanctorum, where I can work with complete focus. I've been doing a lot of work on this site, getting it all zoned in and ready for habitiation, and now I feel it's there. I'll be spending a good deal of my time sequestered away in the subterrainean chambers where my secret work takes place, hidden away from the eyes of humanity, but here in the upper levels the rooms are always open... feel free to wander about and look in at the various exhibits. Think of this blog as my antechamber, where I will occasionally emerge and blink from the unaccustomed brilliance of the surface world, and hold conference with the populace. So far I've been posting to my blog almost daily, but I won't be able to keep that up for long. It takes a lot of time, and once I'm able to really get rolling on my film that's going to take up most of my free time. I'll probably scale back to weekly posting soon. I've added a comments link at the suggestion of Shelley Noble, so feel free to contact me and share your thoughts. *** I just finally learned how to check the stats on my site, to see where visitors are being referred from and such. As expected, the largest number are coming from StopMotionAnimation.com, but there were a few surprizes... First off, big thanks to Lionel Ivan Orozco for linking to my newly christened blog on his Stop Motion works site! Making it onto his news page is a validation. The only other surprize for me was a large number of hits from a site called Singing Fish. Wha??!! Never heard of it! So I investigated, and it turns out to be an "audio/video" search engine, for locating video clips and sound files online. Pretty cool... especially since they bring me visitors. *** Found on the 'net... I ran across what appeared to be a link to my site on a Spanish site called La Butaca.net, which included this rather squashed image from my site: Here's a twist... heh, I took his link to my site, and linked it to his instead! Here's a translation of the paragraph he posted about my site: "European Animotion I know that you are going away to pass the rest of your insignificant lives being thankful to me this recommendation, but as she starts off interested I it would like to indicate that it would feel to me much more corresponded if you made me arrive a nominal check by value from a-amount-nothing-despicable. Darkstrider is the personal Web of Mike Brent, an entertainer amateur of Illinois, declared mythical Harryhausen and follower of films made fan of the Ray largometrajes of in the east of Europe by means of animation stop motion with dolls. Its wonderful page Web offers the opportunity to know the teachers of this technique, as well as to see tens of fragments of video of its magnificent films. The contents are completed with a gallery in which Brent shows to its own figures and projects , in addition to a didactic section that gathers materials, tricks and techniques." ...It's a bit strange, seeing myself referred to as "it", but I realize that's just a linguistic convention. All in all, I think it's quite a flattering write-up, and am glad to have encountered someone who is obviously a brother in stopmo appreciation! Um... I'm not entirely sure, but that first sentence... did he ask his readers to send him a blank check??!! Here's one from Japan I encountered, which is linked to the Golem trailer clips on my Video Clips page. Here's the Google translation. I'm completely mystified here... no clue what this page is about, but some of the links look interesting. I'd say it's another brother. He has a link to this interesting site featuring pictures of Bedrich Glaser's paintings and various films he's animated on... Glaser was the animator on Svankmajer's feature films Alice, Faust, and Little Otik, and apparently did some pixellation of some naked girls. Ahh, the life of a stopmotion superstar! Comments Mike, I couldn't be more proud to know you. You are indeed a stop mo force to be reckoned with. You explained yourself so clearly as usual. You have a gift for it. I support what you are doing here completely, except for the not posting so much part! The days you don't say something I feel life is missing something, like apple pie without a slice of cheese or something. Anyway, looking forward to the art that will be forthcoming from you after all this incubation/chrysalis/infusion of new thought and the coming together of your most dimensional and diverse interests. And it is appropriate that brothers around the globe find and appreciate what you have crafted here with your site. Shelley Noble "like apple pie without a slice of cheese..." So... are you sayin' I'm cheesy then? ; ) Mike Comments Next page Ψ