I Let My Fists Do The Talkin’

If you’re good at be funny, sign up for my class
http://www.ucbtheatre.com/classes/classdetail.php?ClassID=2081

I did these mini-logos for Erika Kern’s craft “company,” showing n’ shilling her wares at the Holiday Craftacular.

I just downloaded Linotype’s FontExplorer X. An amazinglly generic name for a program. It’s free, which is its main selling point for me. It’s really an iTunes for fonts, with a “shop” tag embedded. I only have a hundred or so songs on my iTunes (I don’t have an iPod, so what’s the point of loading my record collection in), but I’ve only run half my font collection into FontExplorer and it’s topping 800.

I had been using an old version of Suitcase, which didn’t make the trip to OSX Tiger. It exists only as buggy pop-up screens telling me that it isn’t working when I start Photoshop. The most immediately irritating thing of Font Explorer is that it doesn’t interface with Photoshop/Illustrator. In fact, it seems to have totally disabled my ability to type in Photoshop.

I also don’t have a working version of Word. That’s like being retarded in computer.

Kirk and I finally committed “The Cake…” to paper after talking about it for maybe four months. Bill read the draft and gave it a thumbs up, so we’re in business. This one has special effects, so we probably have to plan it better than usual.

Our cast is in place (we actually had them on board back when we first started talking about it)—Brian Huskey and Gavin Speiller. Unfortunately/fortunately ace model maker Erika Kern is committed through the holidays making crafts for the Bust Craftacular and can’t help us out until after she finishes her embroidery pomo neofeminist Xmas ornaments, which pushes main filming until January. We also have to cast some kid, which Kirk is handling through his friend who worked at a performing arts summer camp.

They haven’t announced the next screening anyway, so we don’t know when we have to get it together by.

To kill November and December, I decided to take up the animating gauntlet that I fumbled in the months before graduating film school. Keep your expectations low… I have a rough script and I’m working out my character designs in Illustrator. My plan is to make a semi-animated storyboard (a little more than an animatic) first, record the voices, and then do lip-sync and a polish on the animation last. I’m going to be using Flash, probably, since I know it better than After Effects, which I only used to make “credits” in for a school assignment.

I get asked for Flash samples all the time… both in my twin non-careers of graphics and comedy writing. I don’t know why I haven’t pushed myself to do it more since it seems so obvious… it’s a ton of fucking work. It’s the anti-improv—all prep for precious little actual ha ha. I also have never completed a comic, despite the fact I want to… at some point… I think it’s knowing the hours I have to devote to it, I’m waiting for a really awesome idea that I think is worth it but one of my charming personal eccentricities is that I think anything that comes out of my brain is utter shit. The first step is always the hardest.

We “launched” our video project site, mrghost.net. Right now it’s home only to our failed pilot “The First Steps.” I have to move over all the MWTG files and create some sort of layout and main page. We haven’t even figured out what kind of logo to make, which should be a walk in the park considering how many retarded logos I make for other people.

We have around 3 months until the next 102 to figure out what exactly we want to pursue next. The First Steps near-miss, while not really surprising, was disappointing. We’ve been pretty bummed about it, as the only pilot that didn’t get picked up, but since we’ve never been cancelled or rejected we probably were due for something. I suppose being knee-capped at the start of a race is better than having your throat slit mid-stride.

We still don’t have our contract from Comedy Central. Our agent tells us we’re being piggy-backed on another contract that a big-wheel is negotating over there and whatever he gets, we get. Which, in the end, is better since he has more clout that we do; but it also molasseses up our process even more. It’ll be January before anything ever happens.

I’m bugging out lately with nothing to do during the day but watch my meager bank-balance decline daily. I can’t get a new full time job only to leave it a month later. I don’t have a lot of work to do… and it’s getting cold.

Please come cheer on (and vote) “The First Steps” at Channel 102 this coming Tuesday. We’re psyched to see it on the BIG SCREEN of Anthology Film Archives and hear the confused murmurs it inspires.