The Ultimate Showdown...

...of Ultimate Destiny (via metafilter)

a brief flash animation, definately worth watching.

of kind reviews and happily dreary swedish vocals

Ding Dong, good morning.
Here are a couple of things that caught our eye on this crisp January monday:

The short play festival 8.5 X 11, in which our latest animation robotLOVE appears, got reviewed in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution. It's a pretty short review, but we get a nice mention right out of the gate.

Next up, our new favorite Swedish recording artist, Jens Lekman, has a webpage full of free mp3's to download. If you like those songs, swing by iTunes, or another non-DRM crippled music service, and buy one of his albums. He's an acquired taste, but grows on you quickly. I particularly recommend picking this track up, you won't be disappointed.

as promised

more scooter posts.

@ 1440 pixels wide (15inch widescreen powerbook version)

@1600 pixels wide

Here's a concept

Maybe we're dumb...
C-dub just figured out today that the Okkervil River album Black Sheep Boy is a "story album," or whatever you might call it. It was a good album before, it's a great one now.

Well, guess what, the story doesn't end with track 11, because there's an appendix to Black Sheep Boy!

The cover art for those two albums is top notch.

escape pod

Behold:

There it is, in all it's repainted glory. This represents three weeks of hard work involving sanding, scraping, cleaning, priming, painting, more sanding, more painting, and of course the infamous wet sanding, then a little more painting.

This is not to mention the 2 1/2 weeks Kirk spent working on it.

Kirk at Scooter Parts Direct, along with dañell, stripped the old bad wiring out of this scooter, and put in a fresh central nervous system. Kirk also tuned the engine, and replaced a cracked oil pan. They also installed a modified horn that runs at about twice the voltage of a standard p200 horn.
It's LOUD.

final systems check.

The Short Play Festival 8.5 X 11 opened this past friday to a sold out crowd at Dad's Garage Theatre. Our animation begins the second half of the festival just after intermission.

The animation was well received, and people were eager to be complimentary. Which we appreciate, but I've always been of the opinion that...
"If you can't get compliments on opening night, you're in deep shit."

I'd like to hear what people think after it's been up for a while. If you live in or near ATL, I encourage you to see the show. Not just for our animation, but to see the new commissioned work from several exciting young playwrights.

Otherwise, take a swing by this "official" robotLOVE webpage and watch the animation for yourself. We've provided the video in several different formats to accommodate your viewing pleasure:
robotLOVE.avi (110.7mb)
robotLOVE.mov (136.9mb)
robotLOVE.m4v (18.7mb iPod Video)

Take 7 minutes and be transported to a dream world of magic.

life in a plastic cube

a photo taken by my buddy ablebody during the scooter re-painting project. I spent the better part of 3 weeks practically living in that plastic cube.

brimm brim

I just got the word from dañell at SPD, she thinks Kirk will be done with my beloved scooter on sunday. Prepare for a new barrage of scooter posts.

Knowledge is Power... For Real!

A few years ago a rejected pilot for FOX was being circulated around the internet. It was called Heat Vision and Jack, it starred a then unknown to most funny man named Jack Black as well as the voice talents of Owen Wilson. The pilot was about a NASA astronaut who flew too close to the sun, and his best friend who happened to be a talking motorcycle. The sun partially cooked his brain, and as a result whenever the sun was out, he was the smartest person on Earth, but when the sun went down, he was dumb. He would even go through an Incredible Hulk style transformation. "I KNOW EVERYTHING!" he would yell. Jack's arch-nemesis was Ron Silver. The actor, he played himself.

We found out that that pilot was written and created by a fellow named Rob Schrab. Previously Rob Schrab had written one of our favorite comic books Scud the Disposable Assasin. A comic book about a robot assassin you buy out of a vending machine, who would self-desctruct after he completed his mission... only... the robot figured that out, so instead of killing his target, he maimed it and kept it alive in an expensive hospital.

Rob Schrab is also one of the founding members of Channel 101, a sort of internet film festival where regular people like you and me film pilots for fake television shows, and then people on the internet vote on the ones they like, if the pilot gets "picked up" by gaining enough votes, a second episode is produced, and a third, and so on as long as they keep getting votes.

Don't even get me started on his independent film Robot Bastard, or his comedy puppet show Ringwald and Molly. I could talk about how great those are for weeks.

Rob Schrab's latest is an animated music video for one of our favorite, and apparently now everybody's favorite bands, Deathcab for Cutie. It's a mix of puppetry, animation and digital effects, it's for the song Crooked Teeth, and the word is, it's not for linking just yet... I hope you caught it when it was.

Valis

In 1974 science fiction writer Phillip K. Dick had what he later would describe as "A vision of the apocalypse." He would then spend the rest of his life trying to understand what he had experienced. Whether this experience was the result of becoming enlightened, crazy on drugs, or both, is still up for debate.

What isn't up for debate is the most interesting nature in which Phillip K. Dick described his experience. And even more interesting than that? R. Crumb's artistic interpretation of that religious experience.

The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick by R. Crumb
made possible by:
R. Crumb, Weirdo magazine and philipKdick.com

[desktop] robotLOVE launch

We finished up the animation for the short play festival at Dad's Garage. It opens this Friday the 20th. We're gonna go see it.

C-dub and I have been working every night at the 70-30 Productions office. Mack and Neal from 70-30 helped us out with a lot of the animation. If it wasn't for those guys C-dub and I would be sweating this animation right up to opening night.

I'll post a link to a web version of the animation after the show opens. Until then, here is a desktop to celebrate the completion of the animation. An image from the "Launch Scene."

@ 1440 pixels wide (widescreen 15inch powerbook version)

@ 1600 pixels wide

Live action Punch-Out

Everybody knows that Nintendo originated in Japan. Only over there, they called it The Famicom, or Family Computer. But it was basically a Nintendo, or to be fair, the Nintendo was basically a Famicom.

Well in the style of The Minibosses, there is a Japanese band called, well... Famicom Band. They perform faithful versions of Nintendo, or Famicom, game soundtracks live in concert. And sometimes...

Sometimes they even perform scenes from the games live:
(warning, it's super cute!)

(alternate video link)

**bonus**
Zombie Sitcom points us towards this:
8 Bit Trilogy by The Hill Valley Preservation Society
(nice Back to the Future reference)
OH! Fraggle Rock!
OH OH! The Action Set! (feat. Magnum P.I. and Simon and Simon!)

This is No Game by Jack Handy

This is no game. You might think this is a game, but, trust me, this is no game.

You go skipping and prancing through life, skipping through a field of dandelions. But what you don’t see is that on each dandelion is a bee, and on each bee is an ant, and the ant is biting the bee and the bee is biting the flower, and if that shocks you then I’m sorry.

robotLOVE

Well, things have been seemingly quiet around here lately. However, behind the scenes the Space Station Sagittarius Kaleidoscope is a flurry with activity.

Hot on the heals of semi-completing the scooter re-painting project (it still needs to be rewired... what does that have to do with painting you ask?... yeah nothing, also... don't ask any more questions) we have embarked on our very next project. A clunkyrobot animation for the upcoming short play festival at Dad's Garage, 8.5 X 11: The Birds and the Bees. 8.5 X 11 is a play festival that consists of 8.5 short plays all performed in under 11 minutes. ".5?" yeah one of the plays is a half, meaning it's only 5.5 minutes long... that's ours, only... it's not a play, it's an animation. Simple yes?

The animation is titled: robotLOVE and it stars this little fellow:

You might remember back to two years ago when we made our first animation for that same short play festival. This animation is a lot more ambitious, and it is also co-produced with the help of my good buddy C-Dub. I've also enlisted the help of a few co-workers here at 70-30 Productions, without whom we probably could never finish this thing. It almost feels like a real cartoon... almost.

Anyway, things will be a little quiet around here for a few more days while we work on this latest animation. I'll post it here in it's entirety when it's finished, and after I've had time to sleep.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention, 8.5 X 11 opens at Dad's Garage Friday Jan 20th.

The return of Tek Jansen

Whoa, I caught this comment in a post I made about Stephen Colbert's semi-fake novel, Alpha Squad 7: Lady Nocturne: A Tek Jansen Adventure

Apparently author Stephen Colbert has released sample chapters from the book on a new website: Tek Jansen, like this one from Chapter 6 - Dreadscape Unleashed:

"Diving to my right, I activated my holo-shield. The Dark Rider lowered his plasmiator rifle. "Of course!" I thought. "The plasmiator rifle takes 6.3 seconds to recharge. Now is my chance!"

"You have killed him," she breathed, her full, elvish lips opening slightly as they met my own.

iPod Carrying Case

As I mentioned before, I was lucky enough to get a 5th Gen Video Ipod for Christmas. The carrying case it came with is at best Sub-Par, and at worst a scratch inducing nightmare. So as inspired by this boingboing post, I made a carrying case out of a book I bought from Target:

The carrying case book has room for the ipod, the earbuds, and the USB connection cable. I made it so you could listen to the iPod while carrying the closed book. The earphone connection comes out of the top of the book.

Cost: $20 (not including iPod)
Build Time: 3 hours

The book i used? Dark Lord: The rise of Darth Vader. The official Sequel to Episode III Revenge of the Sith. (I thought Episode IV was the official sequel?) Is it a good book? Beats me, I never read it. I got it at Target for $12.

Oh, and P.S. I heard that ReadyMade magazine had a similar DIY iPod carrying case/book like this in one of their magazines, but I wouldn't know that, because we cancelled our ReadyMade subscription after we rarely, if ever, recieved the magazine we paid the subscription for.

clunky.apple.nerd Pt.2

Ever since my special lady friend totally surprised me with a second generation iPod with a click wheel, I have been a fan of the mp3 player. A fan of both the inspired design, but also the viral-like consumer base they generated, and continue to generate.

FIG. 1:
(old timey iPod)

We still have this iPod, it is scratch free and clean. Though it does have an attractive OBEY The Giant sticker on it's posterior. Yeah it's that cool.

Then I was lucky enough to get a third generation iPod, the one with the little round buttons above the scroll wheel. This one was paid with money that came out of my pocket. It hurt, but it was worth it.

FIG. 2:
(cool younger brother iPod)

This iPod, sadly, was stolen out of my locker at the local YMCA here in Decatur. And YES I had a lock on the locker. It was apparently cut, they stole this beloved ipod as well as my underwear that I had in my gym bag. These thieves got a Second Gen iPod in mint condition, as again, I took great pains to keep this thing perfect. You're Welcome Assholes.

So I went back to the old timey iPod, which had been grandfathered to my special lady friend. Until this Christmas...

Yeah, you guessed it:
FIG. 3:
(Welcome to the Future iPod)

Again, my special lady friend had a hand in this, only it was her Mom who kindly included me with the other children in her family who got iPods. They are always very generous to me, even so, this was a total and welcome shock.

So I've had this one for a couple of weeks, and I've noticed that the "iPod case" that apple includes with this new generation of iPods is considerably... crappy. A thin piece of synthetic material folded over and sewn together. That simply won't do.

So I was inspired by this boingboing post about someone who is making iPod cases out of trashy novels. As well as being inspired by the fear of damaging such a pretty piece of hardware, I'm going to endeavor to create my own ipod carrying and protection case from an old book. Hopefully I'll be able to find a hardcover Carl Sagan book to use...
Look for photos of the progress tomorrow.

Now that I've gushed about this present, I would feel remiss if I didn't mention that the father of this robot gave me the other great present I got this Christmas. In my childhood stocking hanging above our fireplace in Delaware was a small envelope. Inside were a few printed pages of the website Scooter Parts Direct. And a hand written note that said my father would be taking care of the wiring repairs to be done to my scooter. Again this was another gift that was completely unexpected and very generous.

The Ultimate Showdown...

...of Ultimate Destiny (via metafilter)

a brief flash animation, definately worth watching.

of kind reviews and happily dreary swedish vocals

Ding Dong, good morning.
Here are a couple of things that caught our eye on this crisp January monday:

The short play festival 8.5 X 11, in which our latest animation robotLOVE appears, got reviewed in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution. It's a pretty short review, but we get a nice mention right out of the gate.

Next up, our new favorite Swedish recording artist, Jens Lekman, has a webpage full of free mp3's to download. If you like those songs, swing by iTunes, or another non-DRM crippled music service, and buy one of his albums. He's an acquired taste, but grows on you quickly. I particularly recommend picking this track up, you won't be disappointed.

as promised

more scooter posts.

@ 1440 pixels wide (15inch widescreen powerbook version)

@1600 pixels wide

Here's a concept

Maybe we're dumb...
C-dub just figured out today that the Okkervil River album Black Sheep Boy is a "story album," or whatever you might call it. It was a good album before, it's a great one now.

Well, guess what, the story doesn't end with track 11, because there's an appendix to Black Sheep Boy!

The cover art for those two albums is top notch.

escape pod

Behold:

There it is, in all it's repainted glory. This represents three weeks of hard work involving sanding, scraping, cleaning, priming, painting, more sanding, more painting, and of course the infamous wet sanding, then a little more painting.

This is not to mention the 2 1/2 weeks Kirk spent working on it.

Kirk at Scooter Parts Direct, along with dañell, stripped the old bad wiring out of this scooter, and put in a fresh central nervous system. Kirk also tuned the engine, and replaced a cracked oil pan. They also installed a modified horn that runs at about twice the voltage of a standard p200 horn.
It's LOUD.

final systems check.

The Short Play Festival 8.5 X 11 opened this past friday to a sold out crowd at Dad's Garage Theatre. Our animation begins the second half of the festival just after intermission.

The animation was well received, and people were eager to be complimentary. Which we appreciate, but I've always been of the opinion that...
"If you can't get compliments on opening night, you're in deep shit."

I'd like to hear what people think after it's been up for a while. If you live in or near ATL, I encourage you to see the show. Not just for our animation, but to see the new commissioned work from several exciting young playwrights.

Otherwise, take a swing by this "official" robotLOVE webpage and watch the animation for yourself. We've provided the video in several different formats to accommodate your viewing pleasure:
robotLOVE.avi (110.7mb)
robotLOVE.mov (136.9mb)
robotLOVE.m4v (18.7mb iPod Video)

Take 7 minutes and be transported to a dream world of magic.

life in a plastic cube

a photo taken by my buddy ablebody during the scooter re-painting project. I spent the better part of 3 weeks practically living in that plastic cube.

brimm brim

I just got the word from dañell at SPD, she thinks Kirk will be done with my beloved scooter on sunday. Prepare for a new barrage of scooter posts.

Knowledge is Power... For Real!

A few years ago a rejected pilot for FOX was being circulated around the internet. It was called Heat Vision and Jack, it starred a then unknown to most funny man named Jack Black as well as the voice talents of Owen Wilson. The pilot was about a NASA astronaut who flew too close to the sun, and his best friend who happened to be a talking motorcycle. The sun partially cooked his brain, and as a result whenever the sun was out, he was the smartest person on Earth, but when the sun went down, he was dumb. He would even go through an Incredible Hulk style transformation. "I KNOW EVERYTHING!" he would yell. Jack's arch-nemesis was Ron Silver. The actor, he played himself.

We found out that that pilot was written and created by a fellow named Rob Schrab. Previously Rob Schrab had written one of our favorite comic books Scud the Disposable Assasin. A comic book about a robot assassin you buy out of a vending machine, who would self-desctruct after he completed his mission... only... the robot figured that out, so instead of killing his target, he maimed it and kept it alive in an expensive hospital.

Rob Schrab is also one of the founding members of Channel 101, a sort of internet film festival where regular people like you and me film pilots for fake television shows, and then people on the internet vote on the ones they like, if the pilot gets "picked up" by gaining enough votes, a second episode is produced, and a third, and so on as long as they keep getting votes.

Don't even get me started on his independent film Robot Bastard, or his comedy puppet show Ringwald and Molly. I could talk about how great those are for weeks.

Rob Schrab's latest is an animated music video for one of our favorite, and apparently now everybody's favorite bands, Deathcab for Cutie. It's a mix of puppetry, animation and digital effects, it's for the song Crooked Teeth, and the word is, it's not for linking just yet... I hope you caught it when it was.

Valis

In 1974 science fiction writer Phillip K. Dick had what he later would describe as "A vision of the apocalypse." He would then spend the rest of his life trying to understand what he had experienced. Whether this experience was the result of becoming enlightened, crazy on drugs, or both, is still up for debate.

What isn't up for debate is the most interesting nature in which Phillip K. Dick described his experience. And even more interesting than that? R. Crumb's artistic interpretation of that religious experience.

The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick by R. Crumb
made possible by:
R. Crumb, Weirdo magazine and philipKdick.com

[desktop] robotLOVE launch

We finished up the animation for the short play festival at Dad's Garage. It opens this Friday the 20th. We're gonna go see it.

C-dub and I have been working every night at the 70-30 Productions office. Mack and Neal from 70-30 helped us out with a lot of the animation. If it wasn't for those guys C-dub and I would be sweating this animation right up to opening night.

I'll post a link to a web version of the animation after the show opens. Until then, here is a desktop to celebrate the completion of the animation. An image from the "Launch Scene."

@ 1440 pixels wide (widescreen 15inch powerbook version)

@ 1600 pixels wide

Live action Punch-Out

Everybody knows that Nintendo originated in Japan. Only over there, they called it The Famicom, or Family Computer. But it was basically a Nintendo, or to be fair, the Nintendo was basically a Famicom.

Well in the style of The Minibosses, there is a Japanese band called, well... Famicom Band. They perform faithful versions of Nintendo, or Famicom, game soundtracks live in concert. And sometimes...

Sometimes they even perform scenes from the games live:
(warning, it's super cute!)

(alternate video link)

**bonus**
Zombie Sitcom points us towards this:
8 Bit Trilogy by The Hill Valley Preservation Society
(nice Back to the Future reference)
OH! Fraggle Rock!
OH OH! The Action Set! (feat. Magnum P.I. and Simon and Simon!)

This is No Game by Jack Handy

This is no game. You might think this is a game, but, trust me, this is no game.

You go skipping and prancing through life, skipping through a field of dandelions. But what you don’t see is that on each dandelion is a bee, and on each bee is an ant, and the ant is biting the bee and the bee is biting the flower, and if that shocks you then I’m sorry.

robotLOVE

Well, things have been seemingly quiet around here lately. However, behind the scenes the Space Station Sagittarius Kaleidoscope is a flurry with activity.

Hot on the heals of semi-completing the scooter re-painting project (it still needs to be rewired... what does that have to do with painting you ask?... yeah nothing, also... don't ask any more questions) we have embarked on our very next project. A clunkyrobot animation for the upcoming short play festival at Dad's Garage, 8.5 X 11: The Birds and the Bees. 8.5 X 11 is a play festival that consists of 8.5 short plays all performed in under 11 minutes. ".5?" yeah one of the plays is a half, meaning it's only 5.5 minutes long... that's ours, only... it's not a play, it's an animation. Simple yes?

The animation is titled: robotLOVE and it stars this little fellow:

You might remember back to two years ago when we made our first animation for that same short play festival. This animation is a lot more ambitious, and it is also co-produced with the help of my good buddy C-Dub. I've also enlisted the help of a few co-workers here at 70-30 Productions, without whom we probably could never finish this thing. It almost feels like a real cartoon... almost.

Anyway, things will be a little quiet around here for a few more days while we work on this latest animation. I'll post it here in it's entirety when it's finished, and after I've had time to sleep.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention, 8.5 X 11 opens at Dad's Garage Friday Jan 20th.

The return of Tek Jansen

Whoa, I caught this comment in a post I made about Stephen Colbert's semi-fake novel, Alpha Squad 7: Lady Nocturne: A Tek Jansen Adventure

Apparently author Stephen Colbert has released sample chapters from the book on a new website: Tek Jansen, like this one from Chapter 6 - Dreadscape Unleashed:

"Diving to my right, I activated my holo-shield. The Dark Rider lowered his plasmiator rifle. "Of course!" I thought. "The plasmiator rifle takes 6.3 seconds to recharge. Now is my chance!"

"You have killed him," she breathed, her full, elvish lips opening slightly as they met my own.

iPod Carrying Case

As I mentioned before, I was lucky enough to get a 5th Gen Video Ipod for Christmas. The carrying case it came with is at best Sub-Par, and at worst a scratch inducing nightmare. So as inspired by this boingboing post, I made a carrying case out of a book I bought from Target:

The carrying case book has room for the ipod, the earbuds, and the USB connection cable. I made it so you could listen to the iPod while carrying the closed book. The earphone connection comes out of the top of the book.

Cost: $20 (not including iPod)
Build Time: 3 hours

The book i used? Dark Lord: The rise of Darth Vader. The official Sequel to Episode III Revenge of the Sith. (I thought Episode IV was the official sequel?) Is it a good book? Beats me, I never read it. I got it at Target for $12.

Oh, and P.S. I heard that ReadyMade magazine had a similar DIY iPod carrying case/book like this in one of their magazines, but I wouldn't know that, because we cancelled our ReadyMade subscription after we rarely, if ever, recieved the magazine we paid the subscription for.

clunky.apple.nerd Pt.2

Ever since my special lady friend totally surprised me with a second generation iPod with a click wheel, I have been a fan of the mp3 player. A fan of both the inspired design, but also the viral-like consumer base they generated, and continue to generate.

FIG. 1:
(old timey iPod)

We still have this iPod, it is scratch free and clean. Though it does have an attractive OBEY The Giant sticker on it's posterior. Yeah it's that cool.

Then I was lucky enough to get a third generation iPod, the one with the little round buttons above the scroll wheel. This one was paid with money that came out of my pocket. It hurt, but it was worth it.

FIG. 2:
(cool younger brother iPod)

This iPod, sadly, was stolen out of my locker at the local YMCA here in Decatur. And YES I had a lock on the locker. It was apparently cut, they stole this beloved ipod as well as my underwear that I had in my gym bag. These thieves got a Second Gen iPod in mint condition, as again, I took great pains to keep this thing perfect. You're Welcome Assholes.

So I went back to the old timey iPod, which had been grandfathered to my special lady friend. Until this Christmas...

Yeah, you guessed it:
FIG. 3:
(Welcome to the Future iPod)

Again, my special lady friend had a hand in this, only it was her Mom who kindly included me with the other children in her family who got iPods. They are always very generous to me, even so, this was a total and welcome shock.

So I've had this one for a couple of weeks, and I've noticed that the "iPod case" that apple includes with this new generation of iPods is considerably... crappy. A thin piece of synthetic material folded over and sewn together. That simply won't do.

So I was inspired by this boingboing post about someone who is making iPod cases out of trashy novels. As well as being inspired by the fear of damaging such a pretty piece of hardware, I'm going to endeavor to create my own ipod carrying and protection case from an old book. Hopefully I'll be able to find a hardcover Carl Sagan book to use...
Look for photos of the progress tomorrow.

Now that I've gushed about this present, I would feel remiss if I didn't mention that the father of this robot gave me the other great present I got this Christmas. In my childhood stocking hanging above our fireplace in Delaware was a small envelope. Inside were a few printed pages of the website Scooter Parts Direct. And a hand written note that said my father would be taking care of the wiring repairs to be done to my scooter. Again this was another gift that was completely unexpected and very generous.

The Ultimate Showdown...

...of Ultimate Destiny (via metafilter)

a brief flash animation, definately worth watching.

of kind reviews and happily dreary swedish vocals

Ding Dong, good morning.
Here are a couple of things that caught our eye on this crisp January monday:

The short play festival 8.5 X 11, in which our latest animation robotLOVE appears, got reviewed in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution. It's a pretty short review, but we get a nice mention right out of the gate.

Next up, our new favorite Swedish recording artist, Jens Lekman, has a webpage full of free mp3's to download. If you like those songs, swing by iTunes, or another non-DRM crippled music service, and buy one of his albums. He's an acquired taste, but grows on you quickly. I particularly recommend picking this track up, you won't be disappointed.

as promised

more scooter posts.

@ 1440 pixels wide (15inch widescreen powerbook version)

@1600 pixels wide

Here's a concept

Maybe we're dumb...
C-dub just figured out today that the Okkervil River album Black Sheep Boy is a "story album," or whatever you might call it. It was a good album before, it's a great one now.

Well, guess what, the story doesn't end with track 11, because there's an appendix to Black Sheep Boy!

The cover art for those two albums is top notch.

escape pod

Behold:

There it is, in all it's repainted glory. This represents three weeks of hard work involving sanding, scraping, cleaning, priming, painting, more sanding, more painting, and of course the infamous wet sanding, then a little more painting.

This is not to mention the 2 1/2 weeks Kirk spent working on it.

Kirk at Scooter Parts Direct, along with dañell, stripped the old bad wiring out of this scooter, and put in a fresh central nervous system. Kirk also tuned the engine, and replaced a cracked oil pan. They also installed a modified horn that runs at about twice the voltage of a standard p200 horn.
It's LOUD.

final systems check.

The Short Play Festival 8.5 X 11 opened this past friday to a sold out crowd at Dad's Garage Theatre. Our animation begins the second half of the festival just after intermission.

The animation was well received, and people were eager to be complimentary. Which we appreciate, but I've always been of the opinion that...
"If you can't get compliments on opening night, you're in deep shit."

I'd like to hear what people think after it's been up for a while. If you live in or near ATL, I encourage you to see the show. Not just for our animation, but to see the new commissioned work from several exciting young playwrights.

Otherwise, take a swing by this "official" robotLOVE webpage and watch the animation for yourself. We've provided the video in several different formats to accommodate your viewing pleasure:
robotLOVE.avi (110.7mb)
robotLOVE.mov (136.9mb)
robotLOVE.m4v (18.7mb iPod Video)

Take 7 minutes and be transported to a dream world of magic.

life in a plastic cube

a photo taken by my buddy ablebody during the scooter re-painting project. I spent the better part of 3 weeks practically living in that plastic cube.

brimm brim

I just got the word from dañell at SPD, she thinks Kirk will be done with my beloved scooter on sunday. Prepare for a new barrage of scooter posts.

Knowledge is Power... For Real!

A few years ago a rejected pilot for FOX was being circulated around the internet. It was called Heat Vision and Jack, it starred a then unknown to most funny man named Jack Black as well as the voice talents of Owen Wilson. The pilot was about a NASA astronaut who flew too close to the sun, and his best friend who happened to be a talking motorcycle. The sun partially cooked his brain, and as a result whenever the sun was out, he was the smartest person on Earth, but when the sun went down, he was dumb. He would even go through an Incredible Hulk style transformation. "I KNOW EVERYTHING!" he would yell. Jack's arch-nemesis was Ron Silver. The actor, he played himself.

We found out that that pilot was written and created by a fellow named Rob Schrab. Previously Rob Schrab had written one of our favorite comic books Scud the Disposable Assasin. A comic book about a robot assassin you buy out of a vending machine, who would self-desctruct after he completed his mission... only... the robot figured that out, so instead of killing his target, he maimed it and kept it alive in an expensive hospital.

Rob Schrab is also one of the founding members of Channel 101, a sort of internet film festival where regular people like you and me film pilots for fake television shows, and then people on the internet vote on the ones they like, if the pilot gets "picked up" by gaining enough votes, a second episode is produced, and a third, and so on as long as they keep getting votes.

Don't even get me started on his independent film Robot Bastard, or his comedy puppet show Ringwald and Molly. I could talk about how great those are for weeks.

Rob Schrab's latest is an animated music video for one of our favorite, and apparently now everybody's favorite bands, Deathcab for Cutie. It's a mix of puppetry, animation and digital effects, it's for the song Crooked Teeth, and the word is, it's not for linking just yet... I hope you caught it when it was.

Valis

In 1974 science fiction writer Phillip K. Dick had what he later would describe as "A vision of the apocalypse." He would then spend the rest of his life trying to understand what he had experienced. Whether this experience was the result of becoming enlightened, crazy on drugs, or both, is still up for debate.

What isn't up for debate is the most interesting nature in which Phillip K. Dick described his experience. And even more interesting than that? R. Crumb's artistic interpretation of that religious experience.

The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick by R. Crumb
made possible by:
R. Crumb, Weirdo magazine and philipKdick.com

[desktop] robotLOVE launch

We finished up the animation for the short play festival at Dad's Garage. It opens this Friday the 20th. We're gonna go see it.

C-dub and I have been working every night at the 70-30 Productions office. Mack and Neal from 70-30 helped us out with a lot of the animation. If it wasn't for those guys C-dub and I would be sweating this animation right up to opening night.

I'll post a link to a web version of the animation after the show opens. Until then, here is a desktop to celebrate the completion of the animation. An image from the "Launch Scene."

@ 1440 pixels wide (widescreen 15inch powerbook version)

@ 1600 pixels wide

Live action Punch-Out

Everybody knows that Nintendo originated in Japan. Only over there, they called it The Famicom, or Family Computer. But it was basically a Nintendo, or to be fair, the Nintendo was basically a Famicom.

Well in the style of The Minibosses, there is a Japanese band called, well... Famicom Band. They perform faithful versions of Nintendo, or Famicom, game soundtracks live in concert. And sometimes...

Sometimes they even perform scenes from the games live:
(warning, it's super cute!)

(alternate video link)

**bonus**
Zombie Sitcom points us towards this:
8 Bit Trilogy by The Hill Valley Preservation Society
(nice Back to the Future reference)
OH! Fraggle Rock!
OH OH! The Action Set! (feat. Magnum P.I. and Simon and Simon!)

This is No Game by Jack Handy

This is no game. You might think this is a game, but, trust me, this is no game.

You go skipping and prancing through life, skipping through a field of dandelions. But what you don’t see is that on each dandelion is a bee, and on each bee is an ant, and the ant is biting the bee and the bee is biting the flower, and if that shocks you then I’m sorry.

robotLOVE

Well, things have been seemingly quiet around here lately. However, behind the scenes the Space Station Sagittarius Kaleidoscope is a flurry with activity.

Hot on the heals of semi-completing the scooter re-painting project (it still needs to be rewired... what does that have to do with painting you ask?... yeah nothing, also... don't ask any more questions) we have embarked on our very next project. A clunkyrobot animation for the upcoming short play festival at Dad's Garage, 8.5 X 11: The Birds and the Bees. 8.5 X 11 is a play festival that consists of 8.5 short plays all performed in under 11 minutes. ".5?" yeah one of the plays is a half, meaning it's only 5.5 minutes long... that's ours, only... it's not a play, it's an animation. Simple yes?

The animation is titled: robotLOVE and it stars this little fellow:

You might remember back to two years ago when we made our first animation for that same short play festival. This animation is a lot more ambitious, and it is also co-produced with the help of my good buddy C-Dub. I've also enlisted the help of a few co-workers here at 70-30 Productions, without whom we probably could never finish this thing. It almost feels like a real cartoon... almost.

Anyway, things will be a little quiet around here for a few more days while we work on this latest animation. I'll post it here in it's entirety when it's finished, and after I've had time to sleep.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention, 8.5 X 11 opens at Dad's Garage Friday Jan 20th.

The return of Tek Jansen

Whoa, I caught this comment in a post I made about Stephen Colbert's semi-fake novel, Alpha Squad 7: Lady Nocturne: A Tek Jansen Adventure

Apparently author Stephen Colbert has released sample chapters from the book on a new website: Tek Jansen, like this one from Chapter 6 - Dreadscape Unleashed:

"Diving to my right, I activated my holo-shield. The Dark Rider lowered his plasmiator rifle. "Of course!" I thought. "The plasmiator rifle takes 6.3 seconds to recharge. Now is my chance!"

"You have killed him," she breathed, her full, elvish lips opening slightly as they met my own.

iPod Carrying Case

As I mentioned before, I was lucky enough to get a 5th Gen Video Ipod for Christmas. The carrying case it came with is at best Sub-Par, and at worst a scratch inducing nightmare. So as inspired by this boingboing post, I made a carrying case out of a book I bought from Target:

The carrying case book has room for the ipod, the earbuds, and the USB connection cable. I made it so you could listen to the iPod while carrying the closed book. The earphone connection comes out of the top of the book.

Cost: $20 (not including iPod)
Build Time: 3 hours

The book i used? Dark Lord: The rise of Darth Vader. The official Sequel to Episode III Revenge of the Sith. (I thought Episode IV was the official sequel?) Is it a good book? Beats me, I never read it. I got it at Target for $12.

Oh, and P.S. I heard that ReadyMade magazine had a similar DIY iPod carrying case/book like this in one of their magazines, but I wouldn't know that, because we cancelled our ReadyMade subscription after we rarely, if ever, recieved the magazine we paid the subscription for.

clunky.apple.nerd Pt.2

Ever since my special lady friend totally surprised me with a second generation iPod with a click wheel, I have been a fan of the mp3 player. A fan of both the inspired design, but also the viral-like consumer base they generated, and continue to generate.

FIG. 1:
(old timey iPod)

We still have this iPod, it is scratch free and clean. Though it does have an attractive OBEY The Giant sticker on it's posterior. Yeah it's that cool.

Then I was lucky enough to get a third generation iPod, the one with the little round buttons above the scroll wheel. This one was paid with money that came out of my pocket. It hurt, but it was worth it.

FIG. 2:
(cool younger brother iPod)

This iPod, sadly, was stolen out of my locker at the local YMCA here in Decatur. And YES I had a lock on the locker. It was apparently cut, they stole this beloved ipod as well as my underwear that I had in my gym bag. These thieves got a Second Gen iPod in mint condition, as again, I took great pains to keep this thing perfect. You're Welcome Assholes.

So I went back to the old timey iPod, which had been grandfathered to my special lady friend. Until this Christmas...

Yeah, you guessed it:
FIG. 3:
(Welcome to the Future iPod)

Again, my special lady friend had a hand in this, only it was her Mom who kindly included me with the other children in her family who got iPods. They are always very generous to me, even so, this was a total and welcome shock.

So I've had this one for a couple of weeks, and I've noticed that the "iPod case" that apple includes with this new generation of iPods is considerably... crappy. A thin piece of synthetic material folded over and sewn together. That simply won't do.

So I was inspired by this boingboing post about someone who is making iPod cases out of trashy novels. As well as being inspired by the fear of damaging such a pretty piece of hardware, I'm going to endeavor to create my own ipod carrying and protection case from an old book. Hopefully I'll be able to find a hardcover Carl Sagan book to use...
Look for photos of the progress tomorrow.

Now that I've gushed about this present, I would feel remiss if I didn't mention that the father of this robot gave me the other great present I got this Christmas. In my childhood stocking hanging above our fireplace in Delaware was a small envelope. Inside were a few printed pages of the website Scooter Parts Direct. And a hand written note that said my father would be taking care of the wiring repairs to be done to my scooter. Again this was another gift that was completely unexpected and very generous.

The Ultimate Showdown...

...of Ultimate Destiny (via metafilter)

a brief flash animation, definately worth watching.

of kind reviews and happily dreary swedish vocals

Ding Dong, good morning.
Here are a couple of things that caught our eye on this crisp January monday:

The short play festival 8.5 X 11, in which our latest animation robotLOVE appears, got reviewed in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution. It's a pretty short review, but we get a nice mention right out of the gate.

Next up, our new favorite Swedish recording artist, Jens Lekman, has a webpage full of free mp3's to download. If you like those songs, swing by iTunes, or another non-DRM crippled music service, and buy one of his albums. He's an acquired taste, but grows on you quickly. I particularly recommend picking this track up, you won't be disappointed.

as promised

more scooter posts.

@ 1440 pixels wide (15inch widescreen powerbook version)

@1600 pixels wide

Here's a concept

Maybe we're dumb...
C-dub just figured out today that the Okkervil River album Black Sheep Boy is a "story album," or whatever you might call it. It was a good album before, it's a great one now.

Well, guess what, the story doesn't end with track 11, because there's an appendix to Black Sheep Boy!

The cover art for those two albums is top notch.

escape pod

Behold:

There it is, in all it's repainted glory. This represents three weeks of hard work involving sanding, scraping, cleaning, priming, painting, more sanding, more painting, and of course the infamous wet sanding, then a little more painting.

This is not to mention the 2 1/2 weeks Kirk spent working on it.

Kirk at Scooter Parts Direct, along with dañell, stripped the old bad wiring out of this scooter, and put in a fresh central nervous system. Kirk also tuned the engine, and replaced a cracked oil pan. They also installed a modified horn that runs at about twice the voltage of a standard p200 horn.
It's LOUD.

final systems check.

The Short Play Festival 8.5 X 11 opened this past friday to a sold out crowd at Dad's Garage Theatre. Our animation begins the second half of the festival just after intermission.

The animation was well received, and people were eager to be complimentary. Which we appreciate, but I've always been of the opinion that...
"If you can't get compliments on opening night, you're in deep shit."

I'd like to hear what people think after it's been up for a while. If you live in or near ATL, I encourage you to see the show. Not just for our animation, but to see the new commissioned work from several exciting young playwrights.

Otherwise, take a swing by this "official" robotLOVE webpage and watch the animation for yourself. We've provided the video in several different formats to accommodate your viewing pleasure:
robotLOVE.avi (110.7mb)
robotLOVE.mov (136.9mb)
robotLOVE.m4v (18.7mb iPod Video)

Take 7 minutes and be transported to a dream world of magic.

life in a plastic cube

a photo taken by my buddy ablebody during the scooter re-painting project. I spent the better part of 3 weeks practically living in that plastic cube.

brimm brim

I just got the word from dañell at SPD, she thinks Kirk will be done with my beloved scooter on sunday. Prepare for a new barrage of scooter posts.

Knowledge is Power... For Real!

A few years ago a rejected pilot for FOX was being circulated around the internet. It was called Heat Vision and Jack, it starred a then unknown to most funny man named Jack Black as well as the voice talents of Owen Wilson. The pilot was about a NASA astronaut who flew too close to the sun, and his best friend who happened to be a talking motorcycle. The sun partially cooked his brain, and as a result whenever the sun was out, he was the smartest person on Earth, but when the sun went down, he was dumb. He would even go through an Incredible Hulk style transformation. "I KNOW EVERYTHING!" he would yell. Jack's arch-nemesis was Ron Silver. The actor, he played himself.

We found out that that pilot was written and created by a fellow named Rob Schrab. Previously Rob Schrab had written one of our favorite comic books Scud the Disposable Assasin. A comic book about a robot assassin you buy out of a vending machine, who would self-desctruct after he completed his mission... only... the robot figured that out, so instead of killing his target, he maimed it and kept it alive in an expensive hospital.

Rob Schrab is also one of the founding members of Channel 101, a sort of internet film festival where regular people like you and me film pilots for fake television shows, and then people on the internet vote on the ones they like, if the pilot gets "picked up" by gaining enough votes, a second episode is produced, and a third, and so on as long as they keep getting votes.

Don't even get me started on his independent film Robot Bastard, or his comedy puppet show Ringwald and Molly. I could talk about how great those are for weeks.

Rob Schrab's latest is an animated music video for one of our favorite, and apparently now everybody's favorite bands, Deathcab for Cutie. It's a mix of puppetry, animation and digital effects, it's for the song Crooked Teeth, and the word is, it's not for linking just yet... I hope you caught it when it was.

Valis

In 1974 science fiction writer Phillip K. Dick had what he later would describe as "A vision of the apocalypse." He would then spend the rest of his life trying to understand what he had experienced. Whether this experience was the result of becoming enlightened, crazy on drugs, or both, is still up for debate.

What isn't up for debate is the most interesting nature in which Phillip K. Dick described his experience. And even more interesting than that? R. Crumb's artistic interpretation of that religious experience.

The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick by R. Crumb
made possible by:
R. Crumb, Weirdo magazine and philipKdick.com

[desktop] robotLOVE launch

We finished up the animation for the short play festival at Dad's Garage. It opens this Friday the 20th. We're gonna go see it.

C-dub and I have been working every night at the 70-30 Productions office. Mack and Neal from 70-30 helped us out with a lot of the animation. If it wasn't for those guys C-dub and I would be sweating this animation right up to opening night.

I'll post a link to a web version of the animation after the show opens. Until then, here is a desktop to celebrate the completion of the animation. An image from the "Launch Scene."

@ 1440 pixels wide (widescreen 15inch powerbook version)

@ 1600 pixels wide

Live action Punch-Out

Everybody knows that Nintendo originated in Japan. Only over there, they called it The Famicom, or Family Computer. But it was basically a Nintendo, or to be fair, the Nintendo was basically a Famicom.

Well in the style of The Minibosses, there is a Japanese band called, well... Famicom Band. They perform faithful versions of Nintendo, or Famicom, game soundtracks live in concert. And sometimes...

Sometimes they even perform scenes from the games live:
(warning, it's super cute!)

(alternate video link)

**bonus**
Zombie Sitcom points us towards this:
8 Bit Trilogy by The Hill Valley Preservation Society
(nice Back to the Future reference)
OH! Fraggle Rock!
OH OH! The Action Set! (feat. Magnum P.I. and Simon and Simon!)

This is No Game by Jack Handy

This is no game. You might think this is a game, but, trust me, this is no game.

You go skipping and prancing through life, skipping through a field of dandelions. But what you don’t see is that on each dandelion is a bee, and on each bee is an ant, and the ant is biting the bee and the bee is biting the flower, and if that shocks you then I’m sorry.

robotLOVE

Well, things have been seemingly quiet around here lately. However, behind the scenes the Space Station Sagittarius Kaleidoscope is a flurry with activity.

Hot on the heals of semi-completing the scooter re-painting project (it still needs to be rewired... what does that have to do with painting you ask?... yeah nothing, also... don't ask any more questions) we have embarked on our very next project. A clunkyrobot animation for the upcoming short play festival at Dad's Garage, 8.5 X 11: The Birds and the Bees. 8.5 X 11 is a play festival that consists of 8.5 short plays all performed in under 11 minutes. ".5?" yeah one of the plays is a half, meaning it's only 5.5 minutes long... that's ours, only... it's not a play, it's an animation. Simple yes?

The animation is titled: robotLOVE and it stars this little fellow:

You might remember back to two years ago when we made our first animation for that same short play festival. This animation is a lot more ambitious, and it is also co-produced with the help of my good buddy C-Dub. I've also enlisted the help of a few co-workers here at 70-30 Productions, without whom we probably could never finish this thing. It almost feels like a real cartoon... almost.

Anyway, things will be a little quiet around here for a few more days while we work on this latest animation. I'll post it here in it's entirety when it's finished, and after I've had time to sleep.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention, 8.5 X 11 opens at Dad's Garage Friday Jan 20th.

The return of Tek Jansen

Whoa, I caught this comment in a post I made about Stephen Colbert's semi-fake novel, Alpha Squad 7: Lady Nocturne: A Tek Jansen Adventure

Apparently author Stephen Colbert has released sample chapters from the book on a new website: Tek Jansen, like this one from Chapter 6 - Dreadscape Unleashed:

"Diving to my right, I activated my holo-shield. The Dark Rider lowered his plasmiator rifle. "Of course!" I thought. "The plasmiator rifle takes 6.3 seconds to recharge. Now is my chance!"

"You have killed him," she breathed, her full, elvish lips opening slightly as they met my own.

iPod Carrying Case

As I mentioned before, I was lucky enough to get a 5th Gen Video Ipod for Christmas. The carrying case it came with is at best Sub-Par, and at worst a scratch inducing nightmare. So as inspired by this boingboing post, I made a carrying case out of a book I bought from Target:

The carrying case book has room for the ipod, the earbuds, and the USB connection cable. I made it so you could listen to the iPod while carrying the closed book. The earphone connection comes out of the top of the book.

Cost: $20 (not including iPod)
Build Time: 3 hours

The book i used? Dark Lord: The rise of Darth Vader. The official Sequel to Episode III Revenge of the Sith. (I thought Episode IV was the official sequel?) Is it a good book? Beats me, I never read it. I got it at Target for $12.

Oh, and P.S. I heard that ReadyMade magazine had a similar DIY iPod carrying case/book like this in one of their magazines, but I wouldn't know that, because we cancelled our ReadyMade subscription after we rarely, if ever, recieved the magazine we paid the subscription for.

clunky.apple.nerd Pt.2

Ever since my special lady friend totally surprised me with a second generation iPod with a click wheel, I have been a fan of the mp3 player. A fan of both the inspired design, but also the viral-like consumer base they generated, and continue to generate.

FIG. 1:
(old timey iPod)

We still have this iPod, it is scratch free and clean. Though it does have an attractive OBEY The Giant sticker on it's posterior. Yeah it's that cool.

Then I was lucky enough to get a third generation iPod, the one with the little round buttons above the scroll wheel. This one was paid with money that came out of my pocket. It hurt, but it was worth it.

FIG. 2:
(cool younger brother iPod)

This iPod, sadly, was stolen out of my locker at the local YMCA here in Decatur. And YES I had a lock on the locker. It was apparently cut, they stole this beloved ipod as well as my underwear that I had in my gym bag. These thieves got a Second Gen iPod in mint condition, as again, I took great pains to keep this thing perfect. You're Welcome Assholes.

So I went back to the old timey iPod, which had been grandfathered to my special lady friend. Until this Christmas...

Yeah, you guessed it:
FIG. 3:
(Welcome to the Future iPod)

Again, my special lady friend had a hand in this, only it was her Mom who kindly included me with the other children in her family who got iPods. They are always very generous to me, even so, this was a total and welcome shock.

So I've had this one for a couple of weeks, and I've noticed that the "iPod case" that apple includes with this new generation of iPods is considerably... crappy. A thin piece of synthetic material folded over and sewn together. That simply won't do.

So I was inspired by this boingboing post about someone who is making iPod cases out of trashy novels. As well as being inspired by the fear of damaging such a pretty piece of hardware, I'm going to endeavor to create my own ipod carrying and protection case from an old book. Hopefully I'll be able to find a hardcover Carl Sagan book to use...
Look for photos of the progress tomorrow.

Now that I've gushed about this present, I would feel remiss if I didn't mention that the father of this robot gave me the other great present I got this Christmas. In my childhood stocking hanging above our fireplace in Delaware was a small envelope. Inside were a few printed pages of the website Scooter Parts Direct. And a hand written note that said my father would be taking care of the wiring repairs to be done to my scooter. Again this was another gift that was completely unexpected and very generous.

The Ultimate Showdown...

...of Ultimate Destiny (via metafilter)

a brief flash animation, definately worth watching.

of kind reviews and happily dreary swedish vocals

Ding Dong, good morning.
Here are a couple of things that caught our eye on this crisp January monday:

The short play festival 8.5 X 11, in which our latest animation robotLOVE appears, got reviewed in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution. It's a pretty short review, but we get a nice mention right out of the gate.

Next up, our new favorite Swedish recording artist, Jens Lekman, has a webpage full of free mp3's to download. If you like those songs, swing by iTunes, or another non-DRM crippled music service, and buy one of his albums. He's an acquired taste, but grows on you quickly. I particularly recommend picking this track up, you won't be disappointed.

as promised

more scooter posts.

@ 1440 pixels wide (15inch widescreen powerbook version)

@1600 pixels wide

Here's a concept

Maybe we're dumb...
C-dub just figured out today that the Okkervil River album Black Sheep Boy is a "story album," or whatever you might call it. It was a good album before, it's a great one now.

Well, guess what, the story doesn't end with track 11, because there's an appendix to Black Sheep Boy!

The cover art for those two albums is top notch.

escape pod

Behold:

There it is, in all it's repainted glory. This represents three weeks of hard work involving sanding, scraping, cleaning, priming, painting, more sanding, more painting, and of course the infamous wet sanding, then a little more painting.

This is not to mention the 2 1/2 weeks Kirk spent working on it.

Kirk at Scooter Parts Direct, along with dañell, stripped the old bad wiring out of this scooter, and put in a fresh central nervous system. Kirk also tuned the engine, and replaced a cracked oil pan. They also installed a modified horn that runs at about twice the voltage of a standard p200 horn.
It's LOUD.

final systems check.

The Short Play Festival 8.5 X 11 opened this past friday to a sold out crowd at Dad's Garage Theatre. Our animation begins the second half of the festival just after intermission.

The animation was well received, and people were eager to be complimentary. Which we appreciate, but I've always been of the opinion that...
"If you can't get compliments on opening night, you're in deep shit."

I'd like to hear what people think after it's been up for a while. If you live in or near ATL, I encourage you to see the show. Not just for our animation, but to see the new commissioned work from several exciting young playwrights.

Otherwise, take a swing by this "official" robotLOVE webpage and watch the animation for yourself. We've provided the video in several different formats to accommodate your viewing pleasure:
robotLOVE.avi (110.7mb)
robotLOVE.mov (136.9mb)
robotLOVE.m4v (18.7mb iPod Video)

Take 7 minutes and be transported to a dream world of magic.

life in a plastic cube

a photo taken by my buddy ablebody during the scooter re-painting project. I spent the better part of 3 weeks practically living in that plastic cube.

brimm brim

I just got the word from dañell at SPD, she thinks Kirk will be done with my beloved scooter on sunday. Prepare for a new barrage of scooter posts.

Knowledge is Power... For Real!

A few years ago a rejected pilot for FOX was being circulated around the internet. It was called Heat Vision and Jack, it starred a then unknown to most funny man named Jack Black as well as the voice talents of Owen Wilson. The pilot was about a NASA astronaut who flew too close to the sun, and his best friend who happened to be a talking motorcycle. The sun partially cooked his brain, and as a result whenever the sun was out, he was the smartest person on Earth, but when the sun went down, he was dumb. He would even go through an Incredible Hulk style transformation. "I KNOW EVERYTHING!" he would yell. Jack's arch-nemesis was Ron Silver. The actor, he played himself.

We found out that that pilot was written and created by a fellow named Rob Schrab. Previously Rob Schrab had written one of our favorite comic books Scud the Disposable Assasin. A comic book about a robot assassin you buy out of a vending machine, who would self-desctruct after he completed his mission... only... the robot figured that out, so instead of killing his target, he maimed it and kept it alive in an expensive hospital.

Rob Schrab is also one of the founding members of Channel 101, a sort of internet film festival where regular people like you and me film pilots for fake television shows, and then people on the internet vote on the ones they like, if the pilot gets "picked up" by gaining enough votes, a second episode is produced, and a third, and so on as long as they keep getting votes.

Don't even get me started on his independent film Robot Bastard, or his comedy puppet show Ringwald and Molly. I could talk about how great those are for weeks.

Rob Schrab's latest is an animated music video for one of our favorite, and apparently now everybody's favorite bands, Deathcab for Cutie. It's a mix of puppetry, animation and digital effects, it's for the song Crooked Teeth, and the word is, it's not for linking just yet... I hope you caught it when it was.

Valis

In 1974 science fiction writer Phillip K. Dick had what he later would describe as "A vision of the apocalypse." He would then spend the rest of his life trying to understand what he had experienced. Whether this experience was the result of becoming enlightened, crazy on drugs, or both, is still up for debate.

What isn't up for debate is the most interesting nature in which Phillip K. Dick described his experience. And even more interesting than that? R. Crumb's artistic interpretation of that religious experience.

The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick by R. Crumb
made possible by:
R. Crumb, Weirdo magazine and philipKdick.com

[desktop] robotLOVE launch

We finished up the animation for the short play festival at Dad's Garage. It opens this Friday the 20th. We're gonna go see it.

C-dub and I have been working every night at the 70-30 Productions office. Mack and Neal from 70-30 helped us out with a lot of the animation. If it wasn't for those guys C-dub and I would be sweating this animation right up to opening night.

I'll post a link to a web version of the animation after the show opens. Until then, here is a desktop to celebrate the completion of the animation. An image from the "Launch Scene."

@ 1440 pixels wide (widescreen 15inch powerbook version)

@ 1600 pixels wide