The Many Boring Adventures Of Jab

Season's Greetings

2009-12-20T12:48:03Z

For everyone in Germany who missed it, and also for all others to watch, here is a link to the Christmas production we worked on earlier this year.

Die Hühnerweihnacht (A Chicken Christmas)

It's in German but perhaps you'll be able to get what it is about even without subs. The story is based on a Swedish children's book published by two illustrators who co-created the hugely popular Pettson & Findus story books. The look of our animated short is somewhat similar, largely thanks to our versatile layout designer and background painter, Markus Kunze.
The bulk of the animation work was carried by my colleague Aleksandar Djokic and briefly joining us was Alexander Petreski for whose scenes I made a lot of inbetween drawings. I animated a bit of every character, except the elderly farmer, and my two longest scenes were the one in which the rooster trips into the bowl of porridge and the one in which he opens his present.

So, that's my Christmas Greetings for this year. Hope you enjoy!

Movies! Holidays! (Also, The Princess And The Frog)

2009-12-13T21:41:04Z

The weather has finally turned, it's decently cold outside and I'm in my Christmas mood. In a little over a week I'll conclude my business for the rest of the year. Then it's time for family laziness, food and movies.
I'm quite pleased with this year for various reasons. On the business side, I was employed without interruptions and have made more money during such a time than ever before in my life. My colleague and I finished our work on our animation episode for the last four and a half months and it's looking quite good. I still have a little more to do before I leave for the holidays, next year will see some more work on what we're doing now and hopefully we'll get a new project on the road early to which I can transfer. If not, well, I hear one of my old animation teachers, Michael Dudok DeWitt, will start producing his first feature in England next year. My colleague Len, the Aussie guy, plans to apply for it and told me to consider, too. As far as he's concerned I have the chops for it. Well, maybe not animator right away, but being an assistant on a feature doesn't sound too bad after over two years of TV work.
In any case, I'll take what I can get.

So, The Princess and the Frog, the first real Disney feature I have seen since starting to work as an animator. As I said before, it felt good looking forward to a hand-drawn Disney feature film before Christmas. Did it deliver? Yes, on all fronts. It was cliché and corny and packed enough eye candy for two movies, pretty much everything one would expect.
I saw it first on opening day, and in a much more pleasant fashion than I had planned. Late in the afternoon, my fellow animator Alex told me he and two other guys who used to work at our place were going to see it and if I wanted to join them. Not having to see it alone was already pretty sweet but they were going to see it at the 'Metropolis' which is known for showing most movies in their original languages.
GLEE!!!
I had slight doubts about the German dub ever since I saw the first trailers. They made one casting choice which I thought was rather good, giving the role of Louis the alligator to Bill Ramsey, an American-born jazz player who became famous in Germany during the 60s. (Truth be told, I didn't even know he was still alive.) The rest were mostly professional singers but the thing about most pop singers in Germany is that while they may know how to perform songs, acting characters isn't automatically their strong suit, especially not if they cast them mainly for their names. In the 90s, the idiocy of casting famous pop singer Nena for animated features stuck for a time - she may be able to sing but performance-wise she really can't get a single sentence out convincingly. Torture! German The Princess and the Frog features pop jazz singer Roger Cicero as the prince and as far as I'm concerned he was miscast, a typical case of choosing the name over aptitude.
I digress; we saw the real deal. I'm not going to say much about the story, because frankly, who really cares?
The New Orleans backdrop and (very) slight mystical voodoo elements were a nice touch and the songs, although not memorable, fit the ambience. What everybody disliking animated musicals must know is that Princess and the Frog has a LOT of songs - about two or three too many in my opinion. Also, the pace in general was too fast, something the completely over-the top animation propelled to downright frantic levels. It didn't bother me that much after seeing it a second time today, but maybe that was because by now I'm better used to it.
The characters - well, Disney movies have always gained a lot more form their 'secondary' cast, a tradition their latest upholds. The Prince must be the most racially indeterminate character since Pocahontas - looks like a white guy but with dark-ish skin and has a slightly Brazilian accent. Odd, but they explain that away by making him come from a fictional country. Since he spends most of the movie as a frog anyway it at least doesn't bother the viewer non-stop, even though as an amphibian he sounds and acts like Pépé le Pew. If he were a frog. Meh.
Louis the alligator was animated by my favourite animator Eric Goldberg. The character itself is a far cry from the character Goldberg will always be best known for, the genie in Aladdin, but there's only so much an animator can do with the writing. From an animation standpoint, Louis is a rubbery, bubbling mass of a character, a pure Eric Goldberg creation which only he can possibly twist into a readable performance.
Another sidekick, Ray the Cajun firefly, came as a surprise to me because even though he looks like a complete hick and comic relief he has the most touching sub plot. (I swear I heard grown men and women sniffle around me both times I saw the movie.)
German-born animator Andreas Deja tackled Mama Odie who was delightfully quirky. Although she had her own song, the movie's preachy lesson, aptly delivered in gospel form, I thought we saw too little of her. Very funny English voice (of which not much survived in the German version from what I have heard).
The villain, Doctor Facilier, was one slick item, but also underplayed in terms of screen time. He has the visually most outrageous song, and also one advancing the plot instead of just elaborating on a situation, but more could have been done with him, story-wise. What I definitely liked was that he wasn't an all-powerful sorcerer. In fact, he was limited in his powers by his "friends from the other side", creatures taking the form of animated voodoo dolls and tribal masks in his emporium, and he had to plead with them for magical favours. Guess to what kind of an end he came ... no, he's not the most impressive of the newer Disney villains, but his scenes were nice to look at. (Even though they vomited blacklight colours all over the screen.)

With the help of all the movie clips on youtube I'll have a heck of a time analysing especially the animation timing. The animators tackled the movie with the clear goal in mind of concentrating more on the graphical elements of the designs rather than their three-dimensional qualities, something especially Eric Goldberg is a master of. Even though it is visual overkill quite often, it also shows what CG animation can't do to this day. Even the best CG animation still tends to look mechanical and too even, a direct effect from letting the computer calculate the majority of frames. Hand-drawn animation puts draftspeople in control who, and this is one of the most important aspects of hand-drawn animation, know the value of a single frame and the changes it can bring.
The animation project we're working on at the studio is similar in that it strongly favours the graphical and design qualities, meaning the animation can be outrageous in its expression and timing without being unconvincing. CG animation is stuck deeply in 'Uncanny Valley', being chained to realistic looks and motion of volumes in space that most truly cartoony things tend to look inappropriately out-of-place.
Thanks to my current work and analysing the classic stuff I'm learning more about timing and spacing than ever before, something that is in large parts thanks to Goldberg's book 'Character Animation Crash Course' as well.
The Princess and the Frog is up there with the better 90s Disney features and I hope John Lasseter will send more our way. If a new feature animation renaissance happened in the next couple of years, well, I might just be ready for it.

Animation Update

2009-11-29T01:45:03Z

Marie thinks my inability to compare Doctor Facilier to anyone besides MC Hammer points to the fact that I don't know enough black people. She's right. Now, I say 'black' because I don't know any personally to tell me how politically incorrect that may potentially be.
I am excited about the movie, though, now more than at the time of my last post. I love the fact that Andreas Deja led the animation on Mama Odie. Flexibility always impresses me and after being typecast as a villain specialist, he decided to break the mould by tackling a Greek hero, a slightly disturbed Hawaiian girl and now a 200-year-old bayou priestess. Too bad my favourite animator's character, Eric Goldberg's, is just a standard sidekick.
I wonder how they'll handle voodoo. Of course they'll sanitize the heck out of it (literally), and I'm willing to bet I won't hear the words 'loa', 'mambo' or 'bokor' uttered anywhere in it. Do they even realise Doctor Facilier practically dresses like Baron Samedi or is the get-up just something so cliché anyone thinks of it first when they hear 'voodoo' mentioned? Of course, The Princess and the Frog will be as formula as it gets, and by that I don't even mean the formula established by Walt Disney himself. I mean the formula their features have been following since their second Golden Age, late 80s until the end of the 90s. It's a super-polished kind of corny. Will the movie be poorly received for it? I hope not because if it does what will be blamed won't be the writing, they will blame the medium, hand-drawn.

Come to think of it, a lot of traditionally animated movies get treated very poorly in distribution, especially in Germany. I had been looking forward to Filmax' Nocturna since 2002, and even though it was released in 2007 I don't think it was ever shown here. A dub certainly doesn't exist and apparently they never even bothered to make it a direct-to-DVD release.
Why this chaps my hide? Well, two of Filmax' other features were at least released on DVD, El Cid and Pinocchio Reloaded. El Cid is just a badly written movie, although at least it's hand-drawn. Pinocchio Reloaded, however, is 3D animation so bad it will give you eye cancer. To buy either movie in Germany is easy. Nocturna, although not great, must be imported.
A movie that gets far less publicity than it deserves is 'Brendan and the Secret of Kells', a French-Irish co-production with fantastically designed scenarios. If I'm lucky I might catch an original language showing tomorrow - again there's no dub. What's weird is that they're showing it in Cologne as part of a children's matinee festival. Now, you can't expect children to read subtitles for over an hour so what they did was hire one(!) man to explain the English dialogue! While the movie's running. That is just so friggin' cheap! Anyway, I hope they'll show just the original version. Subtitles I would gladly tolerate - but if they dare show that narrated version I'll demand my money back.
Now, I wonder what they're going to do with Ponyo (which I'm not excited about) and Fantastic Mr Fox. Ponyo is animé and has Miyazaki's name on it and Buena Vista, distributing his movies internationally, knows how to profit from that. My guess is we won't see it here soon because Disney will want the path clear for Princess and the Frog. Fine with me, but they had better release Ponyo here eventually. Coraline was already half a year late, airing in Germany during summer when it was so hot that I didn't want to go see a movie, especially not one like it.
In short, it's The Iron Giant over and over again. Marketing decides they don't like an animated feature because the medium is 'outdated' or the subject matter doesn't relate to 'the target audience' (meaning the audience whose parents will pay money for the movie and merchandise). I might blame this on 3D now but that's getting a tad old. The new enemy is live-action. Yes, Hannah Montana has kicked loose an unholy trend. Cartoon Network will soon launch a new channel called 'Cartoon Network Real', showing new programs like live-action Scooby-Doo (albeit with a 3D dog) - just how fucked up is that?!? They're all just vapid sitcoms with shallow marketing ploys grafted on. Gimme 3D over that anytime!

Work is quite good right now. After finishing my colleague Len's final episode, a not too easy five-second animation loop, I can finally go back to the episode we've been working on for so long, hopefully finishing it for good. It will be a nice little episode but I'm worried our taking over four months on it will reflect badly on my colleague's and my reputation. I don't want to be known as 'the guy who draws well but takes forever'! I know I can work faster, given more favourable circumstances.

Well, it's still November and it's still to warm for this time of year. Hopefully, the temperature drop will come in December. Little frost here, please?

Short Update: Disney Villain

2009-11-14T14:59:32Z

Doctor Facilier, the latest Disney villain. Silly name, stupid hair and an agenda about as hidden as a blond ninja in an orange overall - but he's an energetic schemer with what promises to be a nice musical number.

I wonder why they made him into an emaciated MC Hammer look-alike when he's voiced by voluminous Keith David. Eh, whatever. Honestly, it feels good to be looking forward to a corny, classically aniamted Disney movie at this particular time of the year.
3D has NOT overtaken hand-drawn - it just made it trip and now claims it's faster and better.

Halloween, Halloween! Unca Jab's Lil Horror Show

2009-10-31T12:53:54Z

Even though Halloween in Germany is even cheaper a marketing ploy than it is in countries that have actual tradition as an excuse to celebrate the weakening of the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead - it still is a pretty darn cool holiday. Trivialising and fraternising with death and the demonic once a year is a good outlet to cope with life's existential angst.

So have some scary, funny-scary and funny-bloody short films I dug up!

Let's start with something pretty much everyone can watch. It's by Aardman animation, after all, although some parts have been known to emotionally scar five-year-olds in a more or less mild way:

Not Without My Handbag, Pt. 1

Not Without My Handbag, Pt. 2

Ain't that cute?
Here's something quite different from Israel, then. A scary CG animation short. And they said CG couldn't generate genuine scares ...

Smile

OK, time for #3. We've had funny and scary - time to end this with over-the-top gory!!! (Consider this a warning.)
Since 2000, a short film has been making the rounds in Germany. It's a satire spoofing the dead-serious, dry and somewhat unsophisticated road and work safety films of the 80s. (In fact, this satire has the same guy doing the German voice-over who read the texts of the infamous 'Der 7. Sinn' traffic educational shorts aired during the 80s and 90s.)
What we have here is the same kind of safety education film - only this time the camera doesn't mercifully fade out when the shit hits the fan, quite on the contrary. We accompany Klaus on his first day on the job - as a forklift driver. Everything that could possibly go wrong goes go wrong and like in any good splatter movie situations build until a blood-soaked climax. This short, strange as it may sound, is actually shown to aspiring industrial truck drivers during their apprenticeships and was even shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 2001. "Enjoy" - if you can ...

Forklift Driver Klaus (subtitled)

Happy Halloween, and be safe!

Short Update

2009-10-19T21:19:06Z

There's light at the end of the tunnel of my current animation episode. Still a bit left to do but the majority of my work has been taken care of. I think it will be a good little episode - neither the best-animated, nor the best-written (which I can't help), but also not the worst in a lot of respects. My only grief is it took much too long to get up to this point for which, I think, there are several factors to blame. Well, nobody at the studio pressured us so it was quite OK. For a first episode.
Will there be another for me and/or my colleague? Good question. Originally, they had meant me to work on their next project but that is, momentarily, in concept limbo. The network people they hope will finance it aren't making any decisions at the moment. It shouldn't be too hard a project to sell; after all, it has Christoph Baumgart behind it who collaborated on the rather famous German children's book 'Laura's Star'. A couple of weeks ago he was at our place to discuss the feasibility of artistic technicalities with our boss and some of our computer people. I haven't heard any news ever since and as it will take some months before there is material for episodes animators can work with nothing should happen too soon.
Well, the creator of the 'Rudolf' series we're working on will be at the studio tomorrow, also to speak with us about our work. He finally found time to send us some initial suggestions and corrections for what we've produced until now. Perhaps he can be persuaded to let me/us work on another episode which would be cool. I secretly hope to be working for them until Christmas, maybe even longer. Well, without bigger interruptions anyway.

In the meantime, I set up my PC again, thinking my sound card was acting up. I thought it was because of my headset so I returned it to the shop where I bought it - sans receipt and shortly before closing time on Saturday. They were rather good about it, though, agreeing to keep my supposedly faulty headset there for a check-up and letting me take home a new one - for which I paid, though. Today they told me my headset was actually OK, something I had come to suspect because I had more sound-related troubles with my PC without it. I picked up my old one today and they not only took back the new one (which I wisely hadn't opened), they refunded me without any questions. The most I was hoping for was a voucher which is what I'd have gotten had I returned something to my old 'boss'' shop. He just hated losing the hard cash in his register and also tried everything to tie his first-time customers to him. Figures.
Unfortunately, the sound problems very likely were due to my old headset because it started acting up again tonight, and it definitely has something to do with its cord because moving the plug connecting the cord to the headphones appears to be directly related to the sound glitches. OK, it's back to the store tomorrow. I just hope they won't play the 'no receipt - no refund card' now ...

Going to my mother's on Thursday. She will be away which is good because last time I spoke to her on the phone she was having a killer cold. Which reminds me, will I get a swine flu shot? My gut reaction is, no, not unless someone in my closer vicinity catches it. I still think this got blown way, way out of proportion by the media. Fingers crossed anyway.

PS: Star Wars Clone Wars stinks! It's such unappealing, uncharismatic and bland material.

Celebrity Collage by MyHeritage

2009-09-22T16:11:10Z

MyHeritage: Familienstammbäume - Genealogie - Celebs - Collage - Morph

Short Update: I Like Mozart

2009-09-19T21:21:42Z

Both of them!
The latest find is Mike Mozart, a huge, cuddly beard-face. Now, what Mike Mozart does with his cuddly beard-face is stick it into a camera and tell us why merchandising is a hilariously soulless, evil force that destroys all the good in creativity.

Examples:

Dora The Explorer goes to hell.

I LOL'ed. Hard!

I just love to see people cracking themselves up.

Short Update: PG-13 Is For Siss - I Mean, Pussies

2009-09-17T23:29:55Z

Created by OnePlusYou - Free Dating Site

Short Update: Birthday And Stuff

2009-08-30T12:22:55Z

I am a new man - thirty years of age now, adult, mature, responsible, respectable - NOT!
I am an animator living in a tiny apartment in Cologne, working on kids' cartoons about a door-to-door rabbit salesman getting the shit kicked out of him on a regular basis by gorillas, octopuses, kangaroos and sloths, a hedonist and computer game fanatic who gets tickled to no end by stuff like this:

That's as close to the secret of everlasting youth as it gets as far as I'm concerned!
My birthday party was OK, with coffee and cake with the family in the afternoon and some nice barbecue later at night. I received mostly money, most of which I already spent again on everyday, sensible things, like a new MP3 player, and some animation books to pour over, Eric Goldberg's Animation Crash Course and the whopping The Illusion of Life by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston. The latter is a hugely nostalgic and starry-eyed account of the Disney studio's glory days of animation but interesting nonetheless.

Last week at work it got terribly annoying when the two directors of our project were at the studio - everybody was falling over themselves to have them approve and edit animation, blocking all the hardware and generally generating stress. I hope to finish my part of the current episode's animation this week or at least early next week nonetheless. About time, too, because I have so far taken much too long. Computer post-production will be relaxing after it all, I reckon. Gotta get my ruff animation approved first, though, so I'm not out of the woods yet.

So what I can say about the last couple of years is that, yes, my life has improved, albeit in small increments (with some major improvements scattered throughout). There's still room for more and that's always a good thing.

Short Update: Hawt Rules, Hot Blows

2009-08-19T19:03:23Z

Argh, it's going to be 96°F tomorrow, possibly the hottest day of the year. (Somebody will pay if not!)
Strangely, I don't feel like having sweated all that much this summer. True, it's been months since I last slept under my covers and I'd like to get back to that, but I usually don't wake totally soaked. What really annoys me is that the hot weather makes my PC go as hot as 145°F when playing games. Damned Pentium D processors. While it hasn't shut down yet, no PC I've ever owned has, that's not too good for the hardware. Dammit, just yesterday I went back to Mass Effect and I'd like to finally finish this bitch. BioWare's Dragon Age: Origins is coming out soon and I rather fancy it.

Fall now, kthxbye!

Schreibhemmung

2009-08-03T22:10:15Z

Have you ever found yourself enjoying something you had previously scorned as a cliché? What was it?

View 502 Answers

Anchovies!

Short Update Rant: MMORPGs Suck!

2009-08-02T20:09:52Z

So I got an email from Codemasters inviting me to a week of free Lord of the Rings Online play. Neat, I think, haven't done that in a while. Well, that's exactly the problem: in a while!
As good as the game may be (for an MMORPG), Codemaster's patch policies are an outright insult. On top of the actual installation process, they expect me to download almost ten effin' gigabytes of data to bring the game up to its current version number. That alone wouldn't be so bad, I'm used to that kind of crap from the various times I've installed WoW - but Codemasters aren't even able to host their own patches! They expect their PAYING customers to scour the internet for each and every patch leading up to the Mines of Moria expansion. Ploughing through a plethora of version numbers, following links from the official site which half of the time lead to pay-per-download websites and to sites with 50kB download rates the other half of the time, is a Sunday afternoon WASTED! Updating through their launcher either doesn't work (I quit by the time the progress counter reached 250%) or would take DAYS!

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!?

You expect me to pay €30 for the "full" game and €15 every month but when I decide to take a lengthy break from LotRO you make me hunt for every bit of data on the internet, effectively preventing me from playing any other games all day because my PC's busy downloading content crap I might never see?!? And hey, it's not like I have a lame-ass connection or particularly slow machine. By now it's pretty standard, I'd say.

All I FUCKING WANT is a downloadable client including ALL the current patches hosted on the game's OFFICIAL WEBSITE! I don't care if it's a bloated 15 GB download as long as it doesn't take all night to download it. Four or five hours - OK BY ME! What Codemasters are offering instead is a wild goose chase for the retarded. Well, they can have their 'free week' and shove it up their hobbit holes, I don't have time for that moronic crap!

Short Update

2009-08-01T00:08:43Z

Happy birthday, J.K. Rowling! Which of her seven Harry Potter novels do you think is the most satisfying read?

View 510 Answers

Going with Goblet of Fire here. Long book, nice adventure plot with a decent mystery, dramatic finale and Harry doing something smart to save his hide, using magic. After GoF the series simply dropped a notch or two. (The movies three or four.)

I had thought I would be seeing Coraline this week, but no, it's actually another two weeks. I mean, geez, how seriously are they taking the German market for that movie if whoever really wants to see it could just as well get the English DVD from Amazon instead of going to the movies for it?
Speaking of movies, I saw the first trailer for Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. It looked Burton, although slicker because of all the CG FX. I don't quite understand the decision to cast Matt Lucas as Tweedle-Takeyourpick and then not have him appear onscreen. Johnny Depp apparently is good enough to be given outrageous make-up and a silly wig. At first I groaned when I saw the trailer featuring him prominently (surprise, surprise). I thought it would be the classic story with a butchered plot so as to have Burton's golden boy take the spotlight once again. Nope, it's more like a sequel to, I dunno, either the original story or Through the Looking-Glass. Although I think of Burton continuing Alice as highly as I do of Rowling writing a sequel to Peter Pan or Eoin Colfer continuing Hitchhiker's Guide, I admit the new premise makes the movie more interesting to me than the old material with a new angle.

Work's good, I'm invited to a birthday party tomorrow and, ah geez, do I really have twenty-four measly days left being in my twenties?!?

PS: Haw!

Jab-Approved Fan Fic !!!

2009-07-20T20:25:36Z

Half-Life machinimas.

Prelude: Hero Beggining (sic)

Part 1: Full Life Consequences

Part 2: What has Tobe Done (sic)

Part 3: Free Man

This is teh lulz. Jab demand Harry Potter version with his mouth!

Short Update: Half-Arsed Prince

2009-07-18T11:49:08Z

I don't know any people in Cologne who are into Harry Potter so I wound up watching the movie by myself. It was an evening spent but not well spent. I've already ranted that the books and movies became more and more fan service after, let's say, book four, and HPB is no exception to the rule. As mariebernadette already put it, it's a light movie shot in a dark way.
So yeah, I don't like teenagers and I don't like teenage love stories in particular. What a surprise HPB was yet again full of it, and how could it not be when the book already annoyed me with an overload of it? People, you have a frickin' underground war going, I really, really don't care if Ron eats enchanted love candy sent to Harry by a hormone-laden, infatuated someone. It's also not a good sign if I think it would have been more interesting to see Harry Potter put some moves on a muggle waitress when the alternative was Bonnie Wright. I'd have totally loved it if Dumbledore, while apologizing for whisking Harry away from skinny waitress girl, had said something like, "She's pretty - if you're into that sorta thing ...".
Anyway, this just goes to show this movie was written with one clear goal in mind: let's not let more actual plot elements than necessary get in the way of heart-warming scenes of young love between our main protagonists. Concretely, that meant the Dursleys seem to have been written out of the movie series for good, no clash between Harry and the Ministery, only a modicum of Order of the Phoenix and no Hogwarts battle at the end. Also, hardly any Snape. Usually I don't care too much about Snape because the character is an unglamorous asshole in the books and the movies' scripts have never treated Alan Rickman right - but not even revealing the (admittedly lame) explanation behind why Snape is the Half-Blood Prince or the definite bit of proof he revealed the prophecy to Voldemort tells a lot about Kloves and Yates' messed up priorities when it comes to retelling these stories.
It quite escapes me why the writers insist on omitting decent scenes from the book and then decide to make up for their lack by inventing new, stupider material. The destruction of the Burrow was such a scene. It didn't do anything for the story, quite likely being there only to remind us halfway through the movie that there used to be a sort of danger in the air. Well, not that that would have really been necessary if they hadn't buried the suspense under romantic mush. Also, the Death Eaters got on my nerves, especially Bellatrix. Swapping menacing dignity for being screechy and jumping around a lot - yeah, that's exactly the kind of deals the movies seem to cut.
The movies are all about showing that Dan Radcliffe is a heartthrob, Emma Wattson an aspiring little Chanel model and Rupert Grint a comically lovable klutz. (Do me a personal favour and stop showing him in muscle shirts, by the way. kthxbye.) Thankfully, they omitted the two most horribly constructed romances in the book, Tonks and Lupin and Bill and Fleur - although I think I read somewhere they're building a Shell Cottage set for the next two movies so maybe that will come back to haunt me.
The way Draco's subplot was presented was better than in the book to my mind. Less skulking about and trying to discover what he's doing. Sometimes it pays to not limit the audience's view so rigorously to Harry's perception. Jim Boradbent as Slughorn was surprisingly good. Although miscast in terms of appearance, I actually liked what he made of the character. I thought his little Lily Potter speech in Hagrid's hut was the best-written piece of dialogue. Very heart-warming, and in a genuine way this time. What I didn't like in the book was that Harry's main quest for the best part of the book consisted or procuring a piece of information any idiot could have figured out, considering how lamely it was concealed. The movie did it a little better by not specifying what Slughorn and Voldemort had talked about in the altered memory, although Dumbledore having already begun to destroy the Horcruxes implied he knew about it all along and once again chose not to indulge Harry. This is really Dumbeldore's superpower - of all the characters he thinks most like the author. No need to tell Harry about the prophecy, or that Snape revealed it to Voldemort or what makes his nemesis immortal - until it's dramatic enough to sell seven books. Or eight movies, for that matter. The ending was, well, understated. No Hogwarts battle, no epic funeral - basically just Harry standing by as his mentor gets unconvincingly tortured and later murdered.)
All I can really say in conclusion is that of course I will see the final movies - but it's amazing how the end of the book series has sapped what's left of the franchise of appeal and mystery.

1. What is the color of your toothbrush?
White and green.

2. Name one person who made you smile today.
I haven't had real human interaction today yet.

3. What were you doing at 8am this morning?
Switching on the fan, then going back to dozing.

4. What were you doing 45 minutes ago?
Playing The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition.

5. What is your favorite candy bar?
Snickers. Hmmm, peanutty goodness. Rarely eat it these days.

6. Have you ever been to a strip club?
No.

7. What is the last thing you said aloud?
No human interaction today, remember? I'm not insane enough yet to talk to myself. Much.

8. What is your favorite ice cream?
That whopping cone of cream-vanilla topped with chocolate which Wall's used to sell for their Cornetto brand's anniversary. Luckily, it's still around, although under another name.

9. What was the last thing you had to drink?
Apple soda? Why had to? It's what I drink, see?

10. Do you like your wallet?
It's too tight to get coins out quickly - but at least it doesn't say Harry Potter on it anymore! It was embarrassing having to pay with a piece of WB Harry Potter merchandise!

11. What was the last thing you ate?
Cereal.

12. Have you bought any new clothing items this week?
No. I need at least one new pair of trousers, though.

13. The last sporting event you watched?
Blood Bowl on my PC if that counts.

14. What is your favorite flavour of popcorn?
Sweet.

15. Who is the last person you sent a text message to?
My colleague Carlo.

16. Ever go camping?
I guess so. I don't like sleeping in dank woods, though

17. Do you take vitamins daily?
No, I think my diet has me covered. Bagels, baguette, salad - there are vitamins in the occasional döner, aren't there?

18. Do you go to church every Sunday?
Decidedly not, not even when I was somewhat religulous.

19. Do you have a tan?
My forearms are a bit darker because they're easily the part of my body most exposed to direct sun radiation. I'm glad I don't have tan lines, those suck.

20. Do you prefer Chinese food over pizza?
Yeah, although there's probably less MSG in pizza. If the Chinese take-away where we sometimes order food at work ever made pizza - whoa.

21. Do you drink your soda with a straw?
At Subway or McDonald's.

22. What did your last text message say?
Something 'bout it being Saturday and is anyone up for work at the studio. I'm an animation drone.

23. What are you doing tomorrow?
Nothing much.

25. Look to your left, what do you see?
A stack of CDs I haven't used in well over a year now that I have them all digitized.

26. What color is your watch?
Lost my watch years ago, didn't see fit to replace it yet. I probably should.

27. What do you think of when you hear Australia?
Right now I associate my fellow animator Len with Australia because that's where he's originally from. Pity he prefers working from home and doesn't come to the studio very often anymore.

29.Do you go in a fast food place or just hit the drive thru?
No car. Can you use the drive-thru with a bike?

30. What is your favorite number?
Seven.

31. Who's the last person you talked to on the phone?
My mother.

32. Any plans today?
Maybe some work. Chatting up mariebernadette later.

33. How many states have you lived in?
North Rhein-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein.

34. Biggest annoyance right now?
General lack of money. I have enough to cover my basic lifestyle at the moment but it's not that much of a life.

35. Last song listened to?
Something from Sweeney Todd, probably Epiphany, A Little Priest and Pirelli's Miracle Elixir, my favourites.

36. can you say the alphabet backwards?
I'm not trying now, but yes, with concentration.

37. Do you have a maid service clean your house?
I wish.

38. Favorite pair of shoes you wear all the time?
My new Camel brand shoes. Like walking on clouds.

39. Are you jealous of anyone?
All animators who make more than I do?.

40. Is anyone jealous of you?
Hopefully.

41. Do you love anyone?
Well, yes.

42. Do any of your friends have children?
All of them, according to our yearly class reunion organisation emails.

43. What do you usually do during the day?
Walk. Sit. Draw. Drink. Eat. Draw. Walk. Browse. Sleep. Repeat.

44. Do you hate anyone that you know right now?
I like to keep my friends close and my enemies in a pickle jar.

45. Do you use the word 'hello' daily?
No.

46. What colour is your car?
Transparent.

48. Are you thinking about someone right now?
Sure.

49. Have you ever been to Six Flags?
None in Germany. Perhaps later this year.

50. How did you get your worst scar?
It's above my right ear where as a child at summer camp I tripped while running at a public bath and sliced the side of my head open landing on a metal hook.

Quick Thoughts: Total Drama Island

2009-06-15T22:42:52Z

I just tried, just tried to watch the first two episodes of Total Drama Island. How is such a show possible? It's like someone got the shallowest designers, animators and script writers in Hollywood together to make an animated show based on one of the stupidest reality TV formats in existence. The worst bit, however, is that it's supposed to be comedy. Now, how can you get a bunch of shallow people to make fun of caricatures of shallow people? That's like the blind leading the blind, for god's sake! I couldn't tell whether this was serious, beyond lame or so far beyond lame that it's funny again.
I mean, seriously, what was I laughing at? It sure wasn't what the staff hacks must have meant to be funny - but I effin' can't! Tell!
The first ten minutes was the introduction of the "cast". You can tell any animated show is in deep shit when its principal cast is composed of more than ten characters. Heck, five is too much in most cases! Ten minutes of exposition filled with the most one-dimensionally designed and animated characters I have ever seen! I couldn't bear any more. Honestly, I'd rather watch one of MTV's braindead fratboy/fratgirl "dating" shows, at least with those I only get as many layers of shallowness as I can process.
Total Drama Island is either too subtle for me or a joke so grossly misunderstood by those telling it that it shouldn't even be able to exist on this plane of reality. Logic takes its leave. If I go to hell I won't be going to Total Drama Island - I'll be going to the story meeting that never ends with the iced moccacino-guzzling, fist-bumping water cooler gang that thunk up this undiluted cranial diarrhea!

Short Update: Some Vids

2009-06-03T23:26:48Z

D'aaaw, thassocuuute! Bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch!

Also cute. That badge thing kills me!

Here's a small teaser of that indie adventure game I had a hand in.

Really, for a low-funds production it looks spectacularly good. There will be a demo soon and I more or less designed the look of the five scenarios in it which the game's creator, Heriberto Valle Martinez (awfully nice guy) is rendering in 3D. I'll post a link to the download when it's done.

Short Update: Arrr!

2009-06-02T20:03:53Z

My bathroom is slightly annoying me again. It's always smelled faintly of wet clay in there and now I know why. Apparently Cologne's extremely calcareous water has left a limy residue in the drainpipe which catches all the gunk I flush down there. Yech! OK, a little dirt has never hurt anyone but I'm peculiar about where the dirt is. As long as I don't have to dip my hands in it I'm OK. I guess. It pisses me off, though. My landlord promised to get something to clean the drainpipe and also replace the age-old plugging mechanism. Until he does that, though, I think I'll pour boiling hot water down there every day to loosen the residue. I'm not trying chemicals on my own after what happened with my shower last time! Lousy, lousy plumbing. I want to move!

Curse of Monkey Island was probably the game I have waited most for in my life until now. Somehow back in '98 I even managed to order an English copy which, considering the internet was still some years away, was quite a feat for a bumpkin like myself.
Well, yesterday I learned that LucasArts is remaking the original The Secret of Monkey Island with HD graphics and a full voice-over and orchestra soundtrack. I'm mildly intrigued, even though the game as such looks like something ambitious indie developers programmed in Flash.
What looks more promising is Tales of Monkey Island, five new adventure episodes to be released as monthly downloads, developed by TellTale Games using some of the talents from the first four games. Even though TellTale have a reputation for making only short game episodes with not too challenging puzzles, I do feel some of the excitement of '98 about this all. I haven't played a decent adventure game in a long while, even though the genre is definitely coming back. Piratey nostalgia!

Apart from that, work is still good and fun and I'm looking forward to having Marie here in less than a month. Hooray for her, a week-long vacation and bloody pirates!

Short Update: So, Star Trek

2009-05-11T22:33:33Z

Yeah, I liked it.
I was very pleasantly surprised that my worst fears were unfounded. It was not an action movie full of obnoxious, oversexed supertwens with the Star Trek name grafted onto it. Glee! I didn't even hate Kirk although I was absolutely convinced I'd abhor him after the bar room fight in which I pictured him to be your typical rebellious kid taking on four opponents at a time while wooing the ladies. Fortunately, that wasn't so. Quite on the contrary, dude got his ass kicked! One o' these days, Tiberius - bang, zoom - straight to the moon!
Sure, they were laying it on thick in scenes where three reckless young men jump from a starship right into a planet's atmosphere to battle like martial arts gods on a swaying metal platform, but oh well. It's our time, I guess, and our kind of cinematic language. It really does make me wish, though, that we'd all return to a calmer style of visual entertainment.
Also, what is it with J. J. Abrams apparent delight in having bright flashlights pointed directly into the camera? On a large screen in a dark room? Not cool!
What I totally didn't know was that the whole movie was going to develop into a complete retcon of classic Star Trek. Until the finale I was waiting for something to happen that would reverse everything until then non-canon, but it just didn't come. In a way that's good, time travel still being the number one source of lame plot twists in fiction. You know, like when it's completely legitimate to use a time travel device so an overachieving brat can get to her classes or rescue a dumb beast, but not to, uuuhm, right all the past's wrongs. Or something.
Sure, Star Trek wasn't free of plot holes, either - the odds of Kirk being abandoned on the exact same planet as 'Spock Prime' (that was his title in the credits!) are ridiculous, and what bugged me even more was that he was actually shot from a spaceship for mutiny. Was your brigg overbooked or something? And to top it off, even though Spock Prime knew there was a Starfleet outpost on that planet, apparently he preferred spending his time in an ice cave so he could impart with some exposition instead of, oh, I dunno - going there and warning people?! I could go on about how Spock's life-saving advice consisted of something every Starfleet Academy graduate should know, and that apparently fits of murderous rage make a Vulcan unfit for the captain's post but not that of the first officer, but alright, alright.
Didn't care much for the villain, either. So that's what Romulans now look like, goth punks from outer space with tribal tatts. It was all a little too convenient for me: the catastrophe that turns the villain, a mine worker (!), into the villain also catapults him to the past together with the person he holds responsible for the demise of his wife (oh, sob, sob) and a weapon to unleash his selfish revenge on, well - everyone? Eh.
But back to the good parts. Karl Urban stole the show for me. Great replacement for DeForest Kelly, a slightly bipolar guy who never seems to be entirely comfortable. Simon Pegg was good but not too surprising.
Little things I liked: the cocky parachute ensign who died wore a red space suit. The appearance of Christopher Pike. Scotty mentioning beaming Archer's beagle to who knows where. If they had included the Kobayashi Maru test a little more subtly, that would have been nice. How Kirk beat it always was one of my favourite Trek anecdotes.

So, I guess we're off to a good start with this. It's not the best movie in the franchise, Star Trek IV and VIII being my favourites by far. I'm not a fan of classic Star Trek but I acknowledge its well-deserved legendary status. I'm a Next Gen fan through and through - Deep Space Nine and especially Voyager can suck it. (I have seen too little of Star Trek: Enterprise to comment on it.)
My verdict: a good, fresh start. Little less action, a little more conversation and I'll be interested in seeing an alternate universe classic Trek TV show. Besides, since Spock Prime still exists in the alternate timeline, that kind of must mean his reality also still exists in some sort of parallel universe. Hm, nerdy thoughts. Any Trek movie evoking those can't be bad at all ...

Short Update

2009-05-10T15:14:08Z

Everybody except me appears to be at my mother's today, even my brother. I'll go there next weekend when she isn't home again. Even though she promised to leave the car for me, calling her today to wish her a happy Mother's Day revealed that, surprise, surprise, she is taking the car to transport a bike. I knew it! What's really a bummer is that the week after next there will be a long weekend again. I don't fancy spending that here in Cologne but going back to my mother's for it would mean coming back here for a mere three workdays before spending money on a train ticket again. Meh! Marie told me on Mother's Day in America people give gifts to all mothers they know and care about, not just their own. Is that so? Huh. In that case I get off very cheap this year, not being there to celebrate with all the others. Oh well.
Work's going well. I think I should try the special kind of Flash animation we currently do with one of my own characters. It's really a fast way to get decent to good-looking, fully cleaned up and coloured animation. Still, about half of all the episodes planned will likely be outsourced to the Philippines. Oh, you Asians, you - there's so many of you and your demands are so very low.
Seeing Star Trek tonight. I'm expecting an action movie featuring lots of handsome young people fucking. Young Kirk can be a pretentious asshole if he likes; I hear Shatner is, too. All reviews I've heard and read so far say it has bad and good sides, with the good preponderating. My expectations are low - I have almost no memory anymore of Star Trek: Nemesis. Data 'died', right? Yeah, I guess some scriptwriter eventually figured his emotion chip just turned him into an average crew member.

Here's something nice - Don Bluth drawing the jabberwock!

And this must be the effin' greatest fan vid EVER!

Short Update: He Did What?

2009-02-02T22:24:19Z

Why am I paying €20 church tax every quarter year?
Well, first of all, being a non-believer, it makes no sense. On top of that, though, now I know it's to support an apparently senile octogenarian's decision to lift the excommunication of a vile holocaust denier and homophobic misogynist of the first calibre. This is doing such damage to the dialogue between the Catholic church and the Jewish community here. It is, apparently, also to pay to have an ultraconservative priest appointed bishop of Linz who holds the belief that Harry Potter is the work of Satanists and that the 2004 tsunami in Thailand and 2005 hurricane destroying New Orleans were direct punishments from God to wash away the sinful life.
I can think of a LOT of things I'd rather be doing with €80. Maybe it's time to make my secession official.

Also, Hans Beck, inventor of Playmobil, died age 79. I was never a LEGO kid and Playmobil was one of the defining toy series of my childhood.

Short Update: Since When Am I In Demand?

2009-01-29T23:23:09Z

Animation on the new project is quite a lot more demanding than what we did last. It also pays almost four times as much as the old projects. The scene I'm working on now is twelve seconds long, the longest single scene I have done for the studio so far. If I can pull it off to their satisfaction the pay for that scene alone would feed me for a month. (Granted, I live very, very frugally.) I also have three more scenes to go after that which promise to be easier. While negotiating prices with the production supervisor this week, or rather: listening to what she told me they'll pay, she dropped that after I finish my own scenes and maybe assist the others on some more, I might get to do layouts for a new project on the horizon. Huh. Guess it paid off that I left some background designs for the Mexican video game guy lying around. I still don't consider scenery my forté but I won't get better without trying. Being paid for it is, of course, as good an incentive as I could wish for.
Fresh in is an offer to design some characters and critters for a planned online browser game. The game concept as the fellow approaching me described it sounds promising and apparently they got some other comics and animation people, some of which I know, working on it. I like their idea, I'm in good company, I suppose now it all boils down to how much they're willing to pay.
And of course there's still Mr LaFleur from Sony ...
Huh. Well, it will be interesting to see whether anything comes off all this.

Wine & Dine

2008-12-14T20:15:38Z

The Christmas party was as good as I expected. The boss took us to a rather fancy restaurant. (In case you're passing through Cologne and are interested, it's Rincóns Wine & Dine.) We were watered very well with white wine and sparkling table water. I had a hard time actually emptying either glass because the waiters were so quick about refills. Good service. I like white wine and the one we had was a great dinner wine, not too dry, not too sweet and served cooled. I pondered whether we could have ordered beer, but nah. I like a good bottle of wine and I'm sure I drank close to a whole over the course of the evening.
The food was not overly fancy but very nicely done and in small portions you had to enjoy to get the most out of it. It started with bread and dip and a slice of salmon with dill-mustard sauce as starters. I love dill. After that there was some delicious pumpkin-curry cream soup with pumpkin seeds and apple. My mother told me yesterday on the phone they had had the same thing. She mentioned sherry but I can't remember tasting any in ours. The main courses were pasta with a fruity, very well-seasoned tomato sauce and chicken. For dessert we could choose between vanilla-cinnamon ice-cream parfait and crème brûlée. I had the latter because I had never eaten it before. Delish! One of the best desserts I've had since the tiramisu Sad and I made at her place.
Eating slowly and drinking lots of wine and water filled us all up nicely. We also rolled dice for the crappy presents everybody had to bring. I got rid of a bad direct-to-video animated feature film that way and was briefly in possession of a kitschy balance toy, a Spongebob board game and a baseball glove. In the end I got a Spongebob squirt gun but I gave it to Carlo because he seemed a little unhappy with what he ended up with.
Well, that was a party much more to my liking. I LOVE the smoking ban in restaurants and public places, the atmosphere everywhere is so much more enjoyable when it smells of food rather than dry, cold cigarette smoke.
What I'm currently working on will have to be finished in early January. I'm contemplating taking my drawing board to my mother's place for the holidays to get some work done. I'm sure looking forward to the holidays!

The movie I'm looking forward to now is Neil Gaiman's Coraline.

Ah, stop-motion. Looks very cute. Pity it's not a 2008 Christmas movie.

A Holiday Break Would Be Nice Right About Now

2008-12-11T21:31:29Z

Work's good at the mo. My current assignment is due in early January. I think I can do it - provided my director doesn't give me too many retakes to do. It's the final episode of something the studio's been working on for the last four years and he animates on it. He was also told to keep a sharper eye on model continuity throughout the episode, meaning he's meticulous up to the point where I have to tweak a scene four times before it's OK. We're not even talking animation here, just getting the character models right.
Anyway, after that's done I don't know what will be next. I was told I could assistant animate on a Christmas Special they have planned. It's sort-ish of a step down but it should be a good exercise to concentrate less on animation and more on cleaning up someone else's work. Their next longer project will likely be computer-animated, meaning vector-based. Mustn't miss that train.
Anyway, it's the Christmas party tomorrow night and then to my mother's early on Saturday. No car again, feh. The computer shop got me a new graphics card but it'll cost me extra because it's better than my old model. Warranty, anyone?
I'm playing WoW again for a month and I've got to say they really turned the game system around. My character is in his late twenties and I can level up almost daily during the few hours in the evenings that I sometimes play. Mounts at lvl 30, too; does that render druid travel form obsolete? Oh well. With the new graphics card I should try LotRO again. (The lifetime account to which I didn't win, heh.)
I'm still talking to the guy who said he thinks my work is pitch-able even though as of currently we've only discussed copyright issues that might arise if two guys on two different continents collaborate. I haven't gone through this exercise with Ed Webb but in terms of compensation it was pretty much tit for tat. I also chalked it up as a learning experience. Well, school's over, I'm an animator now. Or at least as long as I can manage. I don't plan on quitting in the near future even though analysts say 2009 will be pretty bad thanks to the economy crisis. Doom, doom, doom, I've heard it all before. If it isn't the Large Hadron Collider it's an ancient Maya calendar expiring soon. Why do people like to be afraid so much?
So there will be another Christmas soon, too. I hope I get some stuff drawn for myself then because I hardly draw non-work related things at all at the moment. And you know what, the sure fire sign it's what I do best and can do forever is that I'm not sick of it. Far from it.