(Here’s the updated version, with the sound finished!) This is an adaptation of a poem by Jeffrey McDaniel, who has some ideas for a few appropriately modern gods.

format: HD video
software: Flash, AfterEffects, Final Cut, Audition
The Hague, 2007.

Here’s It’s Like Spiders‘ first guest artist, Montreal-based animator Malcolm Sutherland. This is an elaborate meditation on–well, you’ll find out.

format: DV video
software: ToonBoom
Montreal, 2004.

Here’s a brand spankin’ new one, from a song by Jessica Delfino. She’s discovered a guaranteed shortcut to everlasting fame–watch and learn!

format: HD video
software: Flash, AfterEffects, Final Cut, Audacity
San Francisco, 2006.

My cousins used to play this odd little game; they were about five and three years old at the time. The older one would pick up the remote control to the TV, point it at her sister, and say “Turn you off”–she’d obligingly fall to the ground and play dead. Then the remote changed hands, they’d change places, and the game would begin all over again. It was carried out with the solemn gravity of an execution by firing squad.

This short is a grown-up version of the same game, played with a grown-up weapon…

format: DV video
software: Commotion, AfterEffects, Painter, Final Cut, Audition
Pittsburgh, 2002.

Broadcast on CBC TV 2002.

Enoch receives a premonition of disaster, so he sets out to collect as many books as he can find, to preserve the knowledge of the world. But, lacking reliable divine guidance, all his careful preparations come down to a straight-ahead, all-or-nothing gamble….

format: DV video
software: Final Cut, Audition, Photoshop
Los Angeles, 2003.

Broadcast on CBC TV 2005.

This is a story about a little bird who claims to be able to predict the future. Don’t trust him.

The Little Bird of Disaster was developed at The Kitchen’s 2003 summer workshop. The speaking characters are real-time “video puppets,” controlled with Mark Coniglio’s Isadora software. The piece was actually performed, like they say, in front of a live studio audience (you can hear them in the background).

format: DV video
software: Flash, AfterEffects, Painter, Isadora, Final Cut, Audition
Los Angeles, 2004.

Screened at Rotterdam Film Festival 2005.

This short is based on an old joke, a perennial in compilations of Jewish humor. Although the details differ between versions, the scene remains the same: a priest challenges a rabbi to a debate on the spiritual condition of Jewish people. But neither speaks the other’s language, and…well, I won’t spoil the punch line.

format: HD video
software: Flash, AfterEffects, Final Cut, Audition
San Francisco, 2005.

Screened at Ottawa Animation Festival 2006.

I’d seen pictures of it before, but an especially dramatic photograph caught my eye on a magazine cover in the grocery store. It almost looked like another vegetable: a brilliant marigold-orange “fuel-air” bomb, the most powerful non-nuclear weapon on the market.

format: DV video
software: Commotion, AfterEffects, Painter, Final Cut, Audition
Los Angeles, 2003.

In this adaptation of an early Kafka story, a soldier is taken prisoner in the night by a pack of jackals. Offering a pair of scissors, they demand that he use the makeshift weapon to kill his sleeping friends. They overwhelm his initial, shocked refusal. Slowly, incredibly, he begins to see their point of view. He takes the scissors, and…

format: HD video
software: Flash, AfterEffects, Painter, Final Cut, Audition
Montreal, 2005.

Screened at Ottawa Animation Festival 2005.

The painter in this short may think she’s only painting circles on the ground. But from our privileged vantage point, we can see well enough where it’s all going to lead….

format: DV video
software: Commotion, AfterEffects, Painter, Final Cut, Audition
Los Angeles, 2003.