OG’s BLOG

For those of you who, like I, entertain fantasies of being a writer, and for those of you who just enjoy hearing about writers and their processes, I recommend The Write Environment. This is a nice resource containing interviews with different TV and pop writers including Joss “Firefly” Whedon, Tim “Heroes” Kring and Damon “Lost” Lindloff, talking about their inspirations, their intentions, and their way of working. There are even DVDs for sale.

Who are Lexi and Kiko? You’re looking at ‘em. I’ll tell you more about them soon. Watch this space!

From the time I saw my first bowl of fruit decaying before my eyes in a timelapse movie, I’ve been fascinated with the process of taking these exceedingly slow events and speeding them up for our amazement and study. The accretion and dissipation of clouds in the sky, the buildup of snow during a blizzard, the growing of plants… these are the things that fascinate me when seen in fast motion… nature’s stop-mo.

Wired has posted a bunch of them. If you’re fascinated by this stuff like I am, go have a look!

I’ve added a second case study, including some preproduction sketches and behind-the-scenes info, for the second of the three animated Homegate ads I directed last year.

As the main characters race to the center of Michael Sormann’s Theme Planet, I have to wonder what’s just around the next bend. Watching this film develop is great entertainment.

Sormann is also quite prolific. Details and gobs of geometry just seem to fall out of his fingers onto the computer screen. He updates his Theme Planet website frequently and always has something interesting to show.

Once the lead artist at Rockstar Vienna (a computer game company), he is now freelancing to support himself as necessary, and dedicating the rest of his time to finishing his film. Still no estimate of a finish date, but the fact that he’s moved his film project from a part-time concern to something more approaching full time can only be a good sign for the film.

IN THE DIRECTOR’S WORDS:

Theme Planet is a giant theme park floating through Space, consisting of strange, huge attractions. There is no surface, just gigantic structures like rollercoasters and other attractions.

From the heights of these structures down to the very heart of the planet, in the mysterious planet’s core lies the hidden lair of the “Mad Constructor”. This bizarre madman tinkers in his secret laboratory headquarters deep within the planet’s depths alongside his humble assistant “Igor”.

In the upper regions of the planet, thousands of creatures busy themselves, working on the maintenance and organisation of the whole structure. And this is where we find our two heroes, Pig and Elephant: they work as technicans on the forever-crumbling rollercoasters.

As for me, I’ve been working for several years now in the Computer game industry. Until recently I was Head of the Art Department of Rockstar Vienna. I have always dreamed about creating a feature film and I hope that my short film project “Theme Planet” is a step in this direction.

I like movies a lot and it would be great to buy myself some popcorn in the lobby of a cinema featuring “Theme Planet” one day.

–Michael Sormann

The latest edition of the Steve Ogden Braincast is up online. In this episode, I talk about the release of my new comic short Cubicle Pigs and its first episode Commercial Art. I also talk about where the idea came from, the Super Bowl, Advertising, and EEEEvil Corporations.

Adam Elliot, who won an Oscar in 2004 for the short film Harvie Krumpet, has a brand new feature film called Mary and Max getting ready to hit silver screens across Australia April 9. It’s the story of a pen-pal friendship between two unlikely people – Mary, an Australian girl, and Max, an American man, and it has that trademark stop-motion Adam Elliot look and feel, the economical movement, although his usual minimalist visual aesthetic has been seasoned with some extra detail, which is fitting for a feature film.

Will this film come to the US soon? It’s been to Sundance, where it made a big splash, and the studio tells me so far the film has been sold for release in France, the Middle East, Russia and a few other places around the world. I’m anxious to see it, and if we here at SteveOgden.com need to start an online petition to make it happen, then we will!

Meanwhile, if you want to see the incredible kinds of films Adam makes, check out Harvie Krumpet, Uncle, Brother, and Cousin on the Harvie Krumpet DVD. (NOTE: To our American friends, the US DVD button appears to be broken, but you can still get the film from Amazon – and even at a discount!)

Lots of Robots is one of those films that tortures my brain. How does Andy Murdock get so much done?

He gets asked that all the time, and my favourite quote of his seems to answer the question: “What should we do with all this grey matter? Park it in front of the TV? Hell NO!!”

Armed with his technical acumen, artistic and musical sensibilities and scripting genius, he has marshalled 3D Studio Max’s features into a well-oiled animation machine. His army of mutlilegged robots swarm over his landscape in a satisfyingly realistic way as the film peels back layers of increasing visual complexity and meaning.

Andy’s website is packed with lots of behind the scenes information, and his DVD is brimming over with tips, techniques, sample files and those wonderful animation scripts. Pop over and check out the project, and if you like what you see, and want to see more, buy the DVD. It’s a nice addition to your library, and it financially supports further development of Lots of Robots.

Andy’s first solo short film “Rocket Pants” was seen at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, Santa Monica Film Festival a Moxie finalist, Santa Fe Film Festival and ResFest 2000. Andy also worked on “Gone Bad” which was accepted at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. “LOR” has enjoyed screenings around the world.

IN THE DIRECTOR’S WORDS

I have many goals for this project. One of them is to create an animated story entirely by myself sitting at home using off the shelf software. By using software and equipment that is readily accessible to everyone, I want to prove that anyone with enough spare time and determination can bring their ideas to life without the need for a team of programmers and a big budget.

This is by no means an “Attack of the Clones” scale project, but let’s face it, big flashy technology doesn’t make emotion and good story telling unnecessary. I think you can tell a great story and entertain the pants off of people, with tools that are cheap and easy to use.

After years of working for other folks full time (I like them all by the way), I grew tired of having to ask permission to be creative. If you sit around waiting for permission to follow your dreams then you are just sitting around waiting to die.”

–Andy Murdock

Once upon a time, I ran a website called AnimWatch. I shut it down about a year ago, and am slowly letting the site die. But before I shut out the lights and let the old girl die in peace, I’m going to post a few of my favorite profiles here at the blog. So you can look forward to a bunch of film posts coming here over the next 6 months or so. Those of you who read them the first time, I hope it brings back good memories for you. Those who didn’t – I hope you enjoy reading what you missed.

Did you love Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are” when you were a kid? I sure did.

Many people have attempted to make this book into a film over time. I remember seeing one abandoned attempt by some of the early Pixar pioneers. But I will trust Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich and Adaptation) to do a good job, even if it’s live action. The trailer for this film is up, and it looks beautiful at least.

UPDATE: Friend-of-the-blog COS, who sent me the original link, has sent me the following two links, which are interesting in their way. The first link is a bit about how Warner’s didn’t like the original cut of Jonze’s film, and he had to redo it. Like, all of it. Second, COS sends this link showing the original 2D/3D version of Where the Wild Things Are that I saw a-way back when. John Lasseter was at the helm on this one before he went off to become the King of Pixar.