Marsmicro model 775 mechanical pencil with .3mm opening. HB lead stick.
I overate on the roasted chicken and french bread tonight.
Look around a bit. Flex that big toe on the left foot. Slow like.
{FLEX}
Ooh shit. That was nice.
Staedtler Marsmicro. 2000 Model, with rubber molded control grip option. .3mm opening. 2H lead stick.
Sanford Col-Erase Model 20028 Non-Photo Blue.
Kneaded Eraser, gumdrop sized.
E company stainless steel mini sharpener. Imported from Germany.
Germany.
Jeremy.
Jeremy has all the sharp pointed pencils.
3am.
Three A.M.
Three say m.
Free.
Free day pen.
Free day pen.
{shh}
Got the time?
{answer yourself. shh)
Free day pen.
Ha.
Free day, pen.
Haa.
{Oh shit. I got it, I got it}
HEY?
Wha?
Free.
Free?
Yeah. Free day.
Free day pen?
Fuck yeah, free day pen.
Sleep deprivation is another way of saying hard work.
It's also the fastest way to turn yourself into a thought garbled spoodge puddle of word urine.
Four hours ago, I was deeply immersed with Fred Moore. Fred, you creative bastard.
{Noone knows him. Give a heads up.}
Fred Moore is the person who designed the second concept of Mickey Mouse. The version that we"ve all seen on the TV growing up.
{Fun fact. hit them with the fun-fucking-fact}
Before Fred, they used to draw the outline for Mickey"s head with a dime. And for close up shots, a quarter. Noone in that entire building could render Mickey"s head without the aid of a dime or quarter.
(That's not true.}
Ok, it's not. More or less, it was a continuity thing. So that Mickey's head would still look like Mickey's head after the drawings passed from one animator to another animator, and so on.
On a whim, I decided to import my divx of Blood:The Last Vampire into Premiere and output every sword scene of Saya"s as an .flm file. .flm files are frame by frame sequence outputs of videos. I have no idea why people use flms. Maybe for rotoscoping? It's a way to do that light sabre effect all the kids seem to enjoy so much.
Mebbe.
In my grey underwear while eating breadsticks, I printed the flms out. Full color, on my 11x17 double thick matte white paper stock.
I have a stack of them {----------------------this------------------------------} big.
Fred Moore would have liked Blood:The Last Vampire. Blood did a lot of timing tricks Disney invented. Double ups. Triple ups. Similar frame sequencing during the drama parts. Squeeze and pulls with the monsters. The curly dog tail movement trick with Saya"s hair.
{noone cares}
I made a circle on my floor with the printouts. There were so many printouts I had to layer one circle over another. Um, this was around 11pm. Before I sat in the middle of the circle, I put on pajamas and a black dragonball Z shirt and replaced all the lightbulbs in my room with red bulbs.
Dizang, it's all Snow-Crashey in here.
Under red lights, and with thoughts about Hiro standing guard on top of my roof, I sit within the circle and stretch out my legs and throw my head back. Yawn and stretch. Flex and sigh.
I try to wake up somewhat. The voice. Where is my very special inner voice?
{psst.}
right.
Anyway, I open my eyes and confront this circle of printouts leveled upon other circles of printouts.
Each printout contains approx. 720 sequenced frames of animation. Maybe at 320x240 resolution. Each frame has a grey information box underneath it, with the timecode and frame count number labeled within the box.
I think I'm surrounded by 35 seconds of animation, total. I forget at this early hour how they photograph animation for cinema. 24 FPS or um, what is it, 16? 14? Bah. Only 35 peasly seconds of movie, yet there are just dozens and dozens of printouts here. All this hard work. All this..output.
And what for?
All for 35 seconds of moving cinema for a movie that bombed because it was too short. Critics ate you alive, didn't they? DVD distro didn"t help much either.
I look around some more.
When I'm doing this. When I'm finally, completely out of the web design field and meeking out a life as an animator…
Is this gonna make me crazy?
{well, everyone you know who loves you says that you"ll do fine. Just stop drawing boobs on women so big. It was cool in high school, but now it's just gross, especially if Pixar hires your lousy ass.)
Right.
All my stagings. All my drawings. All my digitally colored master shots. All those weeks and years of 2 hour naps and 12 hour work cycle schedules. All that..concentrated effort. Is all that gonna equate to only 2 seconds of a shitty direct to DVD animae flop? With my luck, months and years and working weekends and missed Friday night social events will all work out to be like, some shitty-ass flying computer console sequence in like, I dunno, the opening DVD special edition limited press release of Final Fantasy XVI, The Spirits Are Within, And Yeah, This One Sucks As Bad As the First One.
{that was a very long title for a DVD you made up.}
I flex out my foot some more and touch the circle of printouts lightly with my big toe.
I'm tired and sleepy now. I drew for five hours just now. Stupid boring stuff, like renders of my hand in every possible angle and office supplies.
{why the hell were you drawing office supplies?}
Because whenever I see office supplies drawn in cartoons, it never looks right. Except maybe the stuff on the Mayor's desk in Powerpuff Girls. It bothered me so much that I drew things like compressed air cans and plastic pencil trays all evening.
{Powerpuff is hyper-stylized. you can't count that for realistic animation of office supplies in an animated cartoon}
Whatever. My point is that when I'm older I'm gonna have a demo reel of nothing but office supplies moving around. This, I imagine, will get me in good with Digital Domain, ILM, Digital Muse, etcetera etcetera etcetera.
{You're an idiot. Seriously. And you cannot blame this on the 4am waking-dead state your body and mind seems to be now neck-deep in.}
Maybe it is time to go to sleep.
{Finally}