A CLIP FROM THE PILOT

Yes!...just when you were least expecting it, right?...well Steve Ogden's correct!, you think a persons working on somthing, and they're actually working on somthing else.

Well, things are a bit all over the place at the moment here!...I just wander across all the projects diving into bits and pieces here and there...this actually started off on the Korg, because I'd not had a tinkle on the Korg in ages, and so activated the beast, and that was a lot of fun, then I wanted to put animation to the music...which was even more fun. ive be redoing other stuff too...i re did the first shot for Rocket-man 2: part 1 and I also worked on the space fighter for While They Slept and rendered out a shot for that too.

But here is The Pilot clip.

The Pilot - Intro - Work In Progress from Michael J. Dowswell on Vimeo.

HOW CAN YOU SPEED UP YOUR ANIMATION MAKING PROCESS / IS IT POSSIBLE? - PART 1 OF 2

As a no budget film director who makes himself ill from working on these short films I think about how to make life easier on myself with regards to getting films completed quicker.

I speak to Cos about this and also was writing to James Wadsworth the other day there, and he raised the exact same topic too...its something that becomes quite apparent when your making these animations...and plagues us all.

I still cant remember the name of the guy who made the Cinema 4D animation that was all set in one room...his basic statement was along the lines of this “all I have to do is model one room...I can make that one room really, really detailed...and not have to worry about anything else...if I set the entire story inside this one room”

I went on to write a list of things that could reduce the time.


1) Make your film extremely short.

2) Have everything happen in one room.

3) Go for minimalist approach where the sets and characters are very basic...we’re talking extra very basic here...it increases the speed you get things done in a big way.

Arguments against all of this:

1) You cant rush art.

2) Detail for many directors / artists (including myself) is a really important thing for us.

3) To restrict yourself into one room means that there’s going to have to be very good character animation...

I always find myself back at looking at a film like Alien and think to myself “this film has got everything right...it's going to live on and on as a classic until the end of time!”

The cold harsh realitiy of things:

1) I will tell you something here which is a fact, the truth here...my short film The Rescue was made in three months, and I worked flat out every single day of that three months...really very hard work, and that was with the firm intention and concentrated effort to make things minimalist with a view to speed increase.

2) Projects for me have always started off small, and then gone on to grow and grow...this I think varies from director to director...I myself always want to have those long shots in there.

3) In the animation world, there really is no such thing as “I’ll just make a quick animation here”

WATCHING SPACE SHUTTLE ATLANTIS LAUNCH YESTERDAY LIVE

I seemed to tear up a bit when watching the shuttle launch live on our TV yesterday...I was NOT expecting that.

It must be something to do with the danger involved every time they launch one...I wonder how dangerous it is exactly though?...but then, that is an awful lot of fuel...and they do go into SPACE. There was something very beautiful about the launch...and of course epic...combined with the danger element (which you can actually feel in the voices of the people doing it...and there’s bound to be because of what happened to Challenger in 1986 and Columbiain 2003)

I was very impressed by the highly organised-ness of it...and the precision involved is incredible for such huge objects? I don’t know anything about these things really, but it definitely feels very impressive when you see it live...the Nasa TV channel was great, I’d never been to that before.

What’s odd in all of this is that the first shuttle launch was in the year I was born (1981)...and I’ve just read here that the shuttle is scheduled to be retired from service in 2010 (that’s pretty darn soon!)...so we wont see many more of these launches if that’s true. Watch them while you can!

VISITS TO THE PHYSIOTHERAPIST / SPINE EXPERT

This was one of those things that I was so against doing...but after quite a few months of my dad going on and on about it (and my headaches worsening)...I finally said “ok then” I truly felt that there was nothing that she could do to help me. I was completely 100% wrong...spectacularly wrong.

She has been incredible...she knows EXACTLY what she’s doing and I am very, very lucky and fortunate to be going there. She’s also extremely intelligent and is literally the only other person I see to talk to in my life that isn’t my parents. This has been incredibly self reflecting and the poor women has to put up with all my stories of disaster...and I think this isn’t entirely fair on her...I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I think in retrospect it's been a bit like a psychiatrist / physio appointment each week...and I don’t think this is fair on her.

Perhaps ive been away from people too much.

THE HOLLYWOOD SALOON IS BACK

They're back!...they're talking cinema again!...Andy Siems and John Jansen make a very, very welcome return to podcasting. You can find it all here. I dont think they realise how much I love their show, but then, it's a bit like people who like my films, I don't understand why people like my films.

SEVERE INTERNET PROBLEMS

It seems that everyday it gets worse...twitter wont load now, and hotmail's still not letting me in at all. I’m wondering if this is the start of the big prediction, that, the internet is going to come to a grinding halt, or if it's just our internet going wrong.

Bizarrely blogger.com seems to be unaffected through all this and also deviantart.com

So does that maybe mean that things that have a .com are ok...could be, could be.

MESSAGE TO COS

Dude my internet is playing up something terrible at the moment, for over forty eight hours now I cant seem to get into my hotmail or activate messenger and even facebook seems to have gone very weird. The only thing working-ish seems to be twitter and this blog.

About The Greebble teaser trailer...Haha!...that was very funny!...Steve’s voices are incredible. Seeing it with all the voice audio on it made a huge, huge difference. I think the way Steve has delivered the lines is priceless.

I've been meaning to give this one a propper mention. The idea is that Robert Llewellyn drives a famous person around and talks to them. You can see them all here. very interesting stuff, from the viewpoint of me being a artist who doesn;t often meet other artists. Llewellyn is extreamly good at adapting to all the various different people.

This is also wonderfully important from a documenting history point of view...think about, when these people die, this will be a slice of them talking.

NOTE: Beware there's often quite a lot of swearing and somtimes some very open crude talk...so i would say if easyly upset by that, then maybe its not for you...but I feel it is incredible to see people talk about sex.

Also, I love the music.

TWITTER = ?
TWEET = a message of 140 characters and no more
TWIBE = a group of people

So what is Twitter?...It's almost like a big massive social experiment in peoples behaviour, but then, isn’t everything?

Some people tweet what their eating or what they are about to do, some people keep it very much to just plugging their work...a sort of a constant advertising. I myself entered into it by ways of internet friends and liked to see / get news on when the radio people at simply syndicated were going to go live for a show.

Twitter is very dual purpose. It can be used to instant message each other (which some people do a lot of, and some people don’t do much of at all)

I have been so surprised about three or four times now by how it can be used to direct people to something, it can get very interesting very fast. Here’s a list, they are listed below with numbers next to them.

1) I happened to see a three hour live (very low budget) chat show that was absolutely great...just by seeing a tweet and clicking on a link. It was a Levar Burton tweet. He was a guest on the show and was tweeting about it at the time.

2) It led me to Robert Llewellyn’s Carpool show, now this thing really does have no budget and I have to add is extremely good.

3) I joined a Twibe for Cinema 4D (a Twibe is a group) (also while we’re at it, a Tweet, is a message) and then I was presumably kicked out / thrown out of the Twibe...now I don’t know why this happened, but I think it was something to do with my silly tweets on my own personal main page...nothing really to do with the group...I suspect, I was checked out by the admin and he thought I was a fool. So all of this was very self reflecting...I felt very stupid...but the thing is why shouldn't I talk freely and honestly on my personal twitter page...it's just who I am.

4) It’s led to communication with some interesting people / continues to surprise me with the people who use it.

5) If your very isolated like I am, Twitter has kind of helped to deal with the isolation. Well that’s not strictly true, I'm not what I would call truly isolated...I have interaction with my mother and father every day, I live with those two people and so that’s not true isolation. I also go to a physiotherapist / spine expert once a week for a hour, and so that again is interaction (that’s a recent thing mind you)

APOLOGIES HERE FROM ME ON WHAT IS A COMPLETE FAILING TO GET ANYTHING DONE RECENTLY

I don’t know but I think I’ve hit burn out again. And just cant seem to get into anything...the thing is I don’t ever really have holidays and so maybe I need to do that?...I know there was quite a few people annoyed that I stopped working on While They Slept to go off and start a children's picture book, but really I get so fatigued and just simply non functional (eventually) when I’m working on a animation. I did do the making of thingy though (and there is another version of that coming too).

So recently I’ve just been trying hard to do nothing, watch some films in the evening (which ridiculously I hardly ever seem to do...its ridiculous cause I really love seeing films, I love the medium to pieces)...so I’ve been enjoying that...but been getting a lot of headaches recently.

As for the future?...well who knows?...its all so stop and starty...it was looking like I might go back onto While They Slept, cause maybe that should be completed, but if I’m feeling ill maybe I shouldn’t do anything for a bit. I get really restless not doing anything though.

DRASTICALLY DIFFERENT LOOK TO THE DRAWING – THE CONFLICTED MIND CONTINUES

Have done a bit more to this drawing now. also photographed this one at night time with the angle poise lamp shining on it...which brings out the lead.

3D VS DRAWING

The craziness continues...as I explained last night to somebody, I have this terrible habit of doing multiple versions of things and then agonising over it all.

The thing is that I’m fighting a war with myself these days...the war is about me doing 3D and if I should be doing 3d or not...i have major issues with it, for reasons stated before that I feel there needs to be somthing less perfect about things.

In this case here, I actually created the 3D version first, because setting up the scene and looking through the camera is now something that’s such a big part of my entire creative process. I seem now depend on using the 3d cameras to get the compositions I want. This was drawn as I looked at the 3D one...giving me something to look at as I draw…was done pretty fast, because I seem to draw fast, and I couldn’t see the monitor very well because it was daylight...its come out very different as you can see.

I don’t think people are going to believe this, but there we go!

MOON DIRECTED BY DUNCAN JONES

The trailer can be found here. And I have to say, it's a corker!

You have to get excited when you see something that’s so well made, using miniatures, a thing that I keep going on about...but I think with good cause, because if they are well done miniatures then you will have the best special effects that will last forever (look at something like 2001...mind you, thats 70mm)

But not only this...it has one of my favourite actors too!...Mr Sam Rockwell. It's a Sci-Fi persons time to get officially excited.

I don’t know but it’s a odd thing really, I cant think of any other film that has been set on the moon...which is totally ludicrous when you think about it...oh wait no, there was Moon 44 made in 1990 by Roland Emmerich (I don’t think I’ve seen that one actually, wonder what that’s like). But yes, I find it odd that it's not something that’s been done until now.

MULITPLE VERSIONS OF THE FOREST APPROACHING THE CRASH SITE PICTURE

That whole multiple versions thing has happened again here with this!...man i get frustrated when that happens. Some mistakes here with these, but thought I'd show. I reckon the top one is the best one. That's all for today.

SAUCER CRASH SITE

Gonna have to go to bed now...I dont think this ones quite as good, i think i might have to rework the lighting. Thats all for today though.

FOREST AT NIGHT

being very much inspired by Oliver Jeffers and Marc Craste here.

MY WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE STORY

This was a odd one.

I being me...ever since the year 2000, when I discovered the apple trailers page at college (bit of a nostalgic thought there) I was instantly hooked at viewing movie trailers (it’s a wonderful place)...and so anything that looks like animation or science fiction live action...or fantasy live action...or documentary, and I'll be wanting to see the trailer straight away...anyway...I sit there watching the Where The Wild Things Are trailer...and the final thought with me is this.

“Ok, that was odd”

So a couple of weeks go past (or days) and discover through a friend of mine that it was a short story (or a kids picture book, or maybe not?) and he sends me the link to somebody reading the story with illustrations on youtube. I then bookmark it (but don’t watch it until today)

here it is...



I then, also discover that the big film discovered at apple...is, directed by Spike Jonze (bizarrely here) who directed one of my all time top two favourite films (and I’m completely serious here about that, I freaking love Adaptation)

So I’m sitting there watching this thing (the narrated illustration thing above) thinking this...

“hehe, this is pretty funny stuff...the illustrations are pretty amusing...hey, this thing is great, isn't it!”

THEN - I go back to see the trailer...because I now know what the thing is about (which makes the trailer for the feature film (if it’s a feature film?)far more interesting because I know what’s going on!...And I’m then left thinking this...

“If this is a feature film, how on earth are they going to pan this all out?...and surely this could flip either way...it could be a disaster...what amused me so much in the illustrations I think was the boys expression as he’s grinning his entire way through the story...and that’s not really here in this trailer”

Now for obvious reasons here we have to wait and see...and the movie does look nice. I hope it’s great, I really do.

THE MORE DETAILED CAR IN THE SCENE

There's still nobody in the car yet, but I couldn't resist a render anyway.

UPDATE ON THE CAR

Here we go...but is it just me or does it start to lose somthing when you start to add more detail to it?...iether that or I've just looked at it for too long.

MY PORTFOLIO SITE BEING RE DONE

Starting to re-do my portfolio web site with much emphasis on a more basic subtle and straight to the point layout.

So you can pop over and have a look there at that by clicking your mouse here.

I'm findind it very interesting placing my drawings next to my 3d work...well, interesting nad very frustrating.

BATTLE OF THE MIND

It seems that there’s three things that torture a artist (or at least a artist like me)

1) What to do with your damned web site.
2) Not being happy with any of the work you’ve done because you know its not good enough.
3) Not where you want to be

1) The web site one seems to be this reoccurring thing that surfaces from time to time...you think to yourself “yep...my web site is dull, and it has about a thousand html pages on it...surely that’s not good???”

2) The work never seems to go how you think or want it to go...sometimes your happy for a little while...but it always resurfaces in your mind that you strayed from the path...you strayed and have gone off in a different direction from what you were initially trying to do.

3) You look around at what’s going on elsewhere and it hits you.

So where do you go with all of this? You come up with a new list to combat the old list.

1) the web site really isn’t all that important, it’s the WORK BEING DISPLAYED on the web site, that’s the most important thing!...However, I do think its best to keep things simple, and I feel I’ve got too many Html pages...it may be the answer to reduce it down to THREE html pages, or even one.

2) Shut up…you gonna whinge all you life?...nobody likes a whinger Dowswell!...what you gonna do about that?...you either accept what’s been done and try and put some sort of positive-ness on it...or go crazy. Find a way to do what your after via new techniques and experimentation. And [erhaps you are simply somebody who just wont be happy with anything...perhaps its just not possible...perhaps you have to come to terms with that...and accept it.

3) Cant help you on that one...but try to understand that your making life tough on yourself...you;ve always like it tough though, haven't you?

KIDS PICTURE BOOK - SOME IDEAS

I starting thinking, that I really wanted to do a children's picture book...and so (with ideas in my head that have span ten years now) I started to move into a second stage of thinking about it. I did some drawings first, and then got frustrated and moved into 3d...I think (well I’m not sure at the moment if the final thing will be 3D or drawings...but I quite fancy maybe drawing the 3d compositions) its quite a interesting way to go about it...this being said I really quite like how the 3d stuff has turned out. I’m deliberately going for a very basic stylised look.

SOMETHING THAT GOT THE OLD BRAIN THINKING

Just listened to Episode 18 of Tom Racine’s Tall Tale Radio Podcast featuring Tom Dell’Aringa and Steve Ogden (which I highly recommend) (very interesting) Mr Ogden talks more about how studios could (and are now) looking at a graphic novels and saying “yeah we like this, this could make a great movie”

You see if you think about it, he’s absolutely correct...take something like Lost and Found...it’s a children's book that eventually got made into a film (loved that one) and now we’re seeing this Where the Wild Things Are has also been made into a big film and was also a childrens book I think.

It certainly gets the old brain thinking. I just would really like to do a story with dialogue in it.

Listening to these three talk was a real pleasure.

What’s odd is there was a stage in my life where I was heavily into comic book / novel type of things...the two big ones in my life were Tintin and Asterix (I read quite a lot of those and loved them to pieces) and I even did my own comic in about 1996 or 1997 (a guy who was into comics and was doing his own comic at art college somehow saw it and really liked it) (strange how these memories come back to you)

THESE WILL CHEER YOU UP!

I found these today, I cant stop smiling as I watch them.

NEGATIVITY OR ZERO PERCENT CONFIDENCE AND HOW ITS NOT GOOD

I recently started to bump into a very famous (or well he was very famous in seventies Britain) actor Ian McCulloch, who (very bizarrely) is one of the main characters in one of my favourite things in the universe

the post apocalyptic TV series survivors.He would visit our house quite a lot to do recordings of his songs (demo tape sort of things)

Each and every time I met him and went away from the conversation I thought to myself “oh fuck!...Michael, your so negative aren’t you!!!”...he seemed to evoke that reaction in my mind...he seems to have quite a confidence about him, or certainly a directness and a belief that what he’s doing must be sent out once its been recorded...and then he sets fourth and DOES it.

Now I really admire how direct he is too, and admire somebody who sends their work away off in the post.

And this is the part where I feel really stupid, because when you think about it...if you don’t have that belief in you that what your doing is good, then why not give up altogether?...so its really very stupid to go around saying “oh I don’t really like what I’ve done, and I don’t really want to send it anywhere” and yet...THAT, that is exactly what’s been going on for nine years now.

He genuinely wanted to see one of my films (something's that I’ve never come across before) (I've never actually met a actor now that I come to think of it) and so (my dad who isn’t shy about going on about how he did the score for Errans Alba) insists that Mr McCulloch sees that one. He sees it and seems to really like it. And then asks if its been sent anywhere, to which the answer in my head at this point is “well, I don’t really like the film and don’t really want to send it anywhere”

Eventually he seems to want to send it off to a producer he knows, and with a awkward moment in the corridor I agree to let him do this...and he’s right you know, what’s the point in it not going out there to be seen.

I think what one of my problems is, that I don’t look to what is good about the film (because there are things about it that I like a lot) and that this really means, that there is something of worth there (even if its just a couple of sequences your happy with)