When Does Twenty Four Hours Equal Six Seconds?

When you're an animator, that's when. I just finished a six second shot for The Girl and the Ghost that took twenty-four and a half hours of work over four days. I'm relieved it's done, but wow, talk about tedious.

Funny thing is, it's not a terribly complex shot as you watch it, it'll most likely blow right by and nobody will even suspect it took so long. I suppose that's what should happen if I'm doing my job right.

There's the challenge. Once this thing's finished and online, watch it and enjoy it. Then watch it again and enjoy it more. Upon the third viewing, if you're the first one to correctly guess which shot I'm referring to in this blog entry, you win...something. I don't know. My praise? Fame? Fortune? We'll figure something out.

Doubled Up

Another hundred plus hours have flown by already. Last night, I surpassed the total amount of time I spent on Batman's Gonna Get Shot in the Face. No turning back now, eh? I really need to post an image or a trailer soon.

Aaron's recording his part today out in North Carolina. He seems really pumped to do it and I'm excited to hear how it turns out. The first actual voice work for this short, it's taking shape.

Short blog. No rest for the animator, baby.

It's Blabberin' Time

My life has consisted mostly of frames, keyframes, and tweening for these last few weeks. The Girl and the Ghost has been eating up a ton of my time lately (I've even put in a couple 10 hour days) and honestly, I'm really happy about it. It's still pretty far from finished, but I get more and more excited as it continues to take shape. I really feel like I'm accomplishing something special, even if it's only on a personal level.

I normally tend to shy away from watching animated films while I'm animating, to avoid intimidation, but that seems to have changed this time around. I re-watched Princess Mononoke a couple weeks ago and actually energized rather than inferior. Sure, my designs aren't as intricate and I don't have the dynamic action scenes, but they had hundreds of people working on that film. I'm just one and I feel my project is already looking pretty impressive. I'm excited.

Okay, enough blowing smoke.

I visited my old high school again a couple weeks ago to say hello to the remaining people there. So many people have retired since I graduated seven years ago. It's strange going in there and not recognizing most of the faculty. It's also strange to think I've been out of school for seven years.

I'm old.

Everyone there seems to be doing well. It was great seeing familiar friendly faces. It felt amazing to tell them what I've been doing with myself these last couple years.

Before leaving, I had to head down and visit my old spot under the stairs.

2000/2007

Mom and I went and saw Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer on Friday. I had such high hopes for the first Fantastic Four movie and felt so let down when I finally saw it. So, naturally when I started seeing trailers and clips for Rise of the Silver Surfer and thought it looked cool, I couldn't help but be a bit wary. I was looking forward to it, but didn't want to feel that same disappointment again.

I didn't.

I know the movie isn't Oscar material (though the Silver Surfer effects may be), but I had such a blast watching it. Sitting in that theater, I felt relaxed, entertained, and totally de-stressed for the first time in I don't know how long. It was a fun ride of a movie.
The only real remaining annoyance from the first movie was the lame interpretation of Dr Doom, who didn't really need to be there at all. And that voice...if you're using a villain who wears a mask, at least use an actor with a somewhat intimidating voice.

Yesterday was Jeff's high school graduation party. It was a good time just chilling outside in the perfect weather while eating good food and visiting.
I can't believe Jeff is out of high school.

I'm old.

Back to animating for me. Happy Father's Day, y'all.

The Hundredth Hour

After finishing OldSchool Revolution, one question I seemed to get frequently was "How long did that take you?" The best info I had to offer was that I started in September and finished in December. So, beginning with Batman, I started to clock my hours on my projects, just for reference and out of curiosity.

Last night I hit the hundredth hour of work on The Girl and the Ghost. It seems really strange to have a hundred hours of work in before any voicework is even recorded. With that much time and energy put into it already, it freaks me out a bit how incredibly far from finished it is. It's already taken longer than the Sex Love and Honey music video did and it's approaching the halfway mark for how long Batman took to animate.

The main reason this one's taking so much longer is that the style is much more complex than my previous projects, both design-wise and animation-wise. The process can be (and usually is) mind-numbingly slow, but judging by the clips I have finished, it'll absolutely be worth it, so stay tuned.

In related news, I just saw that iFilm featured Sex Love and Honey again this past Friday. That gave me a nice little motivational boost.

Okay, back to work now.

Four

Today marks four years.

Miss you.

Animation and Amigos

I've been putting my nose to the grindstone and getting some great stuff done on the animated films this week.

Larry sent over a ton of dialogue for The Greatest Fan Film Ever and it sounds incredible. I've been cranking out designs and working on animation, I love what I've got so far. This thing's going to be awesome.

When I'm not working on that, I've been plugging away at The Girl and the Ghost. I lost some steam on the project for a little while there, but it's recently been revitalized in a big way. While going through some unread MySpace messages, I saw one about the Los Angeles Animation Festival. I read on to find out that their theme this year is "Ghost Story." Talk about a happy coincidence, eh? That's added some major fuel to the fire. The entry deadline is September 3rd, so now I have a date to shoot for, which helps.

To add some tasty whipped cream to this delicious sundae, it's looking as though the cast of voices is finally rounded out. I'll make an announcement here as soon as things are a little more official. For now I'll just say the cast consists of friends, old, new, and in between and I'm ecstatic about this lineup.

Speaking of friends, I just heard Chantal Kreviazuk is performing on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson this Monday night. Tune in and check it out!

"If You're Looking for Wonderful..."

Chantal swung through town on Tuesday night as she's opening for Five for Fighting on their tour. I got my tickets a while ago and was really happy when the night finally arrived to offer up some relief from the daily repetition.

It was a nice (though slightly chilly) evening as Mom, Kris, Jessi, and I headed up to the House of Blues. The upstairs wheelchair seating there doesn't allow for much of a view at all, luckily we were able to talk the usher-type guy into putting us right down by the stage. That worked out great, I had a perfect view of the stage.


Chantal sounded fantastic, even though she said her voice is bugging her so close to the end of the tour. Another familiar face joined her on stage: Kevin Fox, who I had the pleasure of meeting back in St Catharines and Windsor. Along with drummer Randy Cooke, they played Time, Spoke in Tongues, Surrounded, Feels Like Home, Wonderful, Ghosts of You, and All I Can Do, though the order may have been a little different. They all seemed to be having a blast, as was I.

Chantal told everyone she'd be signing autographs in the lobby after her set, so we went out when she finished. I got in line with everyone else and couldn't help but crack up when I got to the front and Chantal just looked at me and said "...What are you doing waiting in line?"

We chatted briefly and I headed over to the couches and waited for her signing to be over so I could give her some little early birthday gifts (her actual birthday is today). Before too long, all CDs were signed, all pictures were taken, and she came over and joined us. I gave her the gifts and we chatted for a little while. It was excellent to see her again, she's such a sweetheart and always so kind to my family and me. Eventually, she left to go rest her voice and get ready for a hectic day of traveling the next day. As she left, she stopped, grabbed something off the floor, and set it on my lap. It was a dime, she gave it to me and called it my "lucky dime". Simple and small, but it made me smile.

By the time we got back into the concert hall, Five for Fighting was already a few songs into their set and all the good vantage points were taken. I like the band, but I'm just a casual fan, so we only hung around for a couple songs and took off. It was a relatively short night, but a wonderful one.

The drive home was rainy and crazy due to the aftermath of a several-car accident caused by someone who stole a car. The freeway was closed down in both directions and our detour ended up aiming us back toward Cleveland at one point.

Once we got back on track, we all stopped for a quick bite at Denny's and headed home.

I Need a Neckwarmer

I got my hair cut on Monday. Aside from a couple little tidy-up trims, it's my first haircut in about two years. I like how I look with long hair, but it was getting to be a pain and I've been wanting to donate to Locks of Love again for a while.

Wanting to get it over with, I decided Monday was the day and headed up to Imagine Salon & Spa. I'm always nervous when it comes to haircuts, dreading a ridiculous looking do on my fat Irish head.

Before

Before long, the snipping began.

During

I'll admit, I was a little unsure of the result at the time, but it's definitely grown on me.

After

The only downside is that the back of my neck's been freezing cold. Is this how a poodle feels?

Dirty Birdies

Nope, haven't fallen of the face of the Earth, I've just been really busy lately. I've been doing double duty, working on both The Girl and the Ghost and The Greatest Fan Film of All Time (the sequel to Batman's Gonna Get Shot in the Face) at the same time. They're both looking great, but coming along slowly. I really need to buckle down soon and push forward on these, it's great stuff and I'm loaded with ideas for them, just running a bit low on the creative energy.

Spring's definitely hit Ohio. It's been sunny (though a bit chilly), the trees are getting their leaves, and everywhere you look, birds are doing it like rabbits. Frantic, feathered, winged rabbits.

I saw Spider-Man 3 on Friday, which was fun. It had a few parts that bothered me, but the rest sat so well with me that I didn't even care, I had a blast watching it and I thought it wrapped up the trilogy nicely.

I've been on a pretty steady diet of British entertainment lately. I saw Hot Fuzz with Jeff last weekend, which was hilarious, I watched the first season of Extras, and I finished The Office last night, which ened up blowing me away. I enjoyed watching the whole series, but as it ended and I saw how things wrapped up, it suddenly hit me how great the whole thing really was and I was sad to see it end. The bit when the microphone gets turned off was absolutely brilliant, if you've seen it, you know what I mean.

It left me really wanting to make something of that amazing quality. It's a tall, tall order, but it's something to work for.

I'm going to try to blog at least once a week, even if only to update how the projects are shaping up.

I leave you with a photo of my encounter with a giant strawberry.

Power of the Pop (Follow Up)

In its 24 hours of being featured on MySpace, Tootsie Blow Pop brought in a combined total of roughly 430,000 hits among all of our videos. That's the number of times Nintendo: OldSchool Revolution has had over the past year at iFilm. In one day.

Color me flabbergasted.

I love Tootsie Blow Pop, but it was really just an in-between-projects project, I don't think any of us ever expected it to trigger a surge anywhere near this size.

Wow. What a day.

In other news, my sinuses still hate me.

Power of the Pop

Looks like weird dreams aren't the only thing that can perk up a guy whose sinuses have declared war on him.

I was signing in on MySpace a little bit ago and found myself unexpectedly face to face with Mr Owl. Apparently one of the mighty Tom's many friends decided to feature Tootsie Blow Pop on the main page. This is a biggie, all of our videos are seeing a huge surge in views and it's only been a couple hours.


This definitely makes the uprising behind my face a bit more bearable.

Sinus Dreams

I've been fighting off some kind of sinus bug for the last few days, it finally got a hold of me last night. Needless to say, I hate being sick, but there's one rare aspect that does amuse me. I've found that when I'm sick, I have a tendency to have some pretty weird dreams. I woke up today feeling sick, but chuckling, as I had one of those dreams last night.

I was in a hotel somewhere with palm trees, possibly California. I was in a meeting there with two business type folks. One was a guy around thirty, he had blond hair and looked like he spent too much time in the sun. The other was a blond middle-aged woman who was trying her hardest to look twenty.

The meeting was all about them trying to get me on board to direct a documentary for them, though I don't recall the subject matter. I sat in disbelief as they insisted the documentary be fully scripted. I argued that it defeated the purpose of a documentary to script the whole thing, but my arguments were met with creepy fake smiles and further attempts to make me see their point of view.

I continued to decline and things eventually got heated. I kicked them out and said "Do you know what you call a scripted documentary? 'The Office.' When you decide to do it right, give me a call."

As I escorted them to the door, the dream's setting changed from a meeting room in the hotel to my hotel room. While closing the door behind them, I saw Tom Selleck in the hallway, walking past the elevator. I turned to Mom, who was packing our things, and calmly said "I think Tom Selleck just walked by", as if it was a completely normal thing to see.

Next thing I knew, I was waiting for Mom in the hotel lobby while she was getting the van. The lobby was enormous and looked more like an airport than a hotel. There was a group of about a half dozen girls in their late teens to early twenties sitting in a row of seats near me.

In the distance, a guy walks by and I hear a hushed commotion among the girls as they notice him. He looks vaguely familiar, with hair like Hurley from Lost, but less wild. I recognize he's an actor in movies and I overhear the girls call him Jason something. His last name had two syllables, the first syllable having a hard "A" sound.

A few minutes after walking by, he returns, this time just a few feet away. He looks around and starts calling out my name. Unsure of what's going on, I quietly say "that's me." To my surprise, he extends both hands, a newspaper in one, a pen in the other, and asks for my autograph.
Laughing to myself and unsure what to think, I bluntly ask "Are you bullshitting me?" He then tells me he's seen all my plays and is a big fan. Still caught a bit off guard, I assume he means the cartoons and I sign his paper.

"My first autograph,
thanks for this!
Jacob Drake"

Jacob in Print, Batman in Jersey, Frylock in My Yard

I did an email interview last Monday for a small Spotlight piece that runs in a bunch of newspapers around the area. April Helms did the interviewing (I did the answering, of course) and not being a fan of talking on the phone, I quite liked the email-based method. I met April last year as she did a story on the premier of Batman and Losers. None of the papers are available in my neck of the woods, but April was kind enough to send a copy my way, I'm looking forward to checking it out. It actually ran on April Fool's Day. Oddly fitting for this goofball, no?

I got an email back in January from Jay Wulff. He told me he's hosting the Kevin Smith Fan Fest and asked for a DVD so they could screen Batman, so I sent him the nearest handy DVD with the cartoons on it. He sent me a note tonight to remind me that the fest is next Saturday, April 14th. Looking at the lineup, I was surprised to see that not only are they showing Batman's Gonna Get Shot in the Face, but also Nintendo: OldSchool Revolution and Tootsie Blow Pop.
Unfortunately, I won't be able to make it out for the fest, but if you're in the Franklin, New Jersey area, swing by, support the event, and have some fun!

In similar news, Larry was contacted a couple weeks ago and told that they want a screener of Batman for the 16th Annual St. Louis International Film Festival (November 8th-18th). How awesome is that?

I'm working hard on The Girl and the Ghost these days. We haven't even recorded voice work yet, but there's still plenty for me to do before that. It's coming along slowly, but I'm loving the look more and more.

Once again, the weather's going from 70s to snow this weekend, but it was enjoyable while it lasted. One odd thing happened during the warm spell. While outside, I noticed our rake bears an uncanny resemblance to Frylock from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. What do you think?

A Day of Many Returns

It was considerably chillier than it was supposed to be today, so I had to bundle up a bit more than I wanted to while running errands with Mom.

As I was getting out of the van at WalMart, I heard a voice say "Jacob?" It turned out to be my old friend, Jackie, who I haven't seen in probably about 7 years. We caught up with each other a little in the parking lot. She seems to be doing quite well for herself, working a good job downtown and recently engaged. It was a nice surprise bumping into her.

I'm wondering if a bus full of people I haven't seen in ages recently pulled into town and unloaded, as that's the second random bump-into this week.

After there, Mom and I had a quick bite at Schlotzsky's and headed to the movie theater to behold the anticipated return of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or, as they're now more hiply called, TMNT.

When I first heard the movie was going to be completely CGI, I was honestly a bit miffed.
When I saw the first trailer, I was a bit more optimistic.
When more clips were revealed over the last few weeks, I got excited.
When I saw the movie tonight, I felt a childhood enthusiasm return.

It was just excellent. Though the villain plot was lacking a bit, the theme of family was outstanding, the action scenes were truly impressive, and the CGI was done nicely and surprisingly beautiful at times. The best (spoiler free) scene in the movie is when tensions reach a boiling point and two brothers battle it out, it was executed perfectly.

I really loved the movie and look forward to seeing it again.

Almost as fun as watching the movie, was watching the audience arrive. It seemed funny seeing so many people over twenty showing up for a PG animated film, but it was the original Turtles Generation reuniting after all these years. Even cooler was seeing members of that generation bringing their kids with them.

After the movie, I kicked back and visited with Corey, who's back in town for the weekend. We just chit chatted a bit and talked about his new dog, Wizard. It was nice.

Tomorrow night? Game night.

Music! Merchandise! Mystery! And Me Without a Brown Trenchcoat. And a Fedora.

It's been a little while since I've been excited about upcoming music, probably since the release of Chantal's Ghost Stories back in August, which, incidentally, is finally being released here in the States in May. Moving on to music I don't already have, Andrea Corr's solo debut, Ten Feet High, is coming out in June.
There's a musician out of New Jersey I've been following on MySpace for a while now, her name is Jenny Owen Youngs. She just signed with Nettwerk Records and her debut release, Batten the Hatches, is set for April 10th. I have her EP's and love her sound, I'm really looking forward to picking that album up.

After Corey recommended it, I signed up and created an account for myself on Virb.com. It's basically a new networking site like MySpace, but not. I uploaded the animated shorts and Sex Love and Honey there yesterday and they've actually already featured the latter on their video page. How cool is that? It's a huge kick having people enjoy something you worked on like that. It's a cool site though, very music-centric, check it out.

The weather was nice again today, hovering around 60, though a bit overcast. I did some running around with Mom and did a bit of shopping to satisfy my nerdy tendencies. I got the Justice League Unlimited: Season 2 DVD set, a bunch of geekily magnificent DC Comics figures (including the excellent new Darkseid figure), and, on a less geeky note, Joshua Radin's CD, We Were Here.

As we left Best Buy, I spotted something that struck me as odd. Canada geese aren't foreign to me by any means, but they've always either been on the ground, flying through the air, or floating on the water when I've seen them. Not today. As Mom and I drove past Bakers Square, I saw a lone goose perched up on top of the building, just looking out over everything below him like the king of all geese. I wish I would have thought to snap a picture before we were too far away.

After shopping was done, Mom and I set out on a rescue mission. Dad's been having trouble with his truck these past few days, today he called from the lot when he noticed he was leaking transmission fluid. We picked some up and delivered it to him, before following him home to make sure he made it all the way.

We were all hungry, so the three of us went to Denny's for the first time in months. It was a bit iffy last time, everything just tasted...off, but it was much better this time. As we were getting ready to leave, we bumped into our old neighbor from across the street, Elise. I hadn't seen her in years, so it was cool to chit chat and catch up a little.

While there, I realized I may have watched too much Veronica Mars when I had my own little Mars moment. As we ate, a man came in and seemed quite perturbed when he was seated at the front of the restaurant. He asked for a table in the back room, but was told they couldn't do that, as they only had one server working. His frustration caught my attention.
Wow. Guess I'm an eavesdropper.
Anyway, he held off on ordering as he was waiting for someone. "Ooh, this guy's having an affair!" I joked to myself. Sure enough, a woman showed up a few minutes later. They seemed familiar with each other, but there was still a sort of awkwardness between them.
Is Denny's an acceptable dating destination for a pair of middle-aged folks? It seems like more of an under-the-radar meeting place, especially with the persistence to be in the back room. Now that I think about it, they did both seem a bit overdressed for Denny's.
Yeah, it's mostly speculation and none of my business whatsoever, but that little rendez-vous intrigued me.

Ahh. To be a Private Eye.