Animated Mike goes for a stroll!
What’s Mike working on now?
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After many weeks of false starts, I finished work on my animated promo film for the “Another Hole In the Head” horror film festival. Some time ago, Eric Ringer contacted me to see if I could do something for the horror arm of the San Fransico Indiefest. Sure, I said I’d love to… but finding the time was a challenge.
In any case, the zombies got done over the weekend, and now you can see the final result. I was working from a specific storyline that Eric had in mind. I made a couple changes to simplify it, but I’m pretty happy with the result.
Stay tuned to http://www.sfindie.com for tickets and more info in the coming months.
Animation by Mike Boas. Music by Alec Jenkyn Williams.
When Aaron Vanek asked me for an animated promo for this year’s H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival event in Los Angeles, I knew I couldn’t resist. I also knew I was in the middle of about 12 other projects and I’d have to carve out the time to do it.
So I spent this past Labor Day weekend hip deep in Flash animation. I reused some cartoon heads from an abandoned Lovecraft short (I may get back to it some day), but all other tentacles, rats, and gravestones are new.
If you’ve been watching my social feeds, you’ll know I’m in love with the work of British animator Cyriak. His use of loops and editing was an influence here.
I also took the opportunity to play with textures and color modes in After Effects. That’s something I’ve been doing in my still work lately, and it’s a fun challenge to apply it to the flat images from Flash.
Music is by Alec Jenkyn Williams.
For tickets and info on the HPLFF in LA September 11, 2010, visit http://bit.ly/hplffla
The last two years, I’ve taken part in the Rochester Movie Makers Summer Shorts Challenge. Two summers ago, I helped with a film called X-Girlfriend, and last year worked on The Wingman and Virgin Fang.
This year will be my first time directing a summer short, one called “The Interrogation” written by yours truly. In the writing phase, I decided to keep my characters and locations to a minimum to make it easier — especially since one of my characters is ANIMATED.
I’ve been wanting to try a live action / animation combo project for a while now. The process will be similar to how films like Who Framed Roger Rabbit or The Phantom Menace were shot. I’ll have an actor on set playing the cartoon character, and we’ll shoot his scenes two ways. One version with the actor, one without. That way I’ll have a performance to mimic in the animation phase, but I’ll also have a clean shot to use when I want to composite the character in. (No, I won’t be doing motion capture. That’s overkill for what I have in mind.)
It was a fun script to read to an audience, which is what went down at the March meeting of Rochester Movie Makers. We read 15 (!) screenplays that night. When everyone voted and the dust cleared, it turned out I was the winner of our script competition. It doesn’t mean the movie itself will be the best, but it’s nice to be loved.
Soon I’ll be finalizing the cast, crew, and picking some dates to shoot this thing. At the same time, I’m working on designing props and the cartoon character known as Mad Monster.
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