Sketchbook
13. The Lawyer and the Dead Man
(click to play)
Here’s a taste of a new technique, animating cutouts in front of lights in Maya…going to be the basis for a whole new short not too long from now. The characters in this test are the Dead Man and the Lawyer, from Jen Tsuei’s play Fantasias for the Immoderate.
format: DV video
software: Maya
San Francisco, 2006.
12. Sloth
(click to play)
What’s a goat doing on the phone? He’s illustrating one of the seven deadly sins, of course.
format: 16mm film
software: n/a
Los Angeles, 2003.
11. The Judge
(click to play)
This video was my first try at rotoscoping, created as a projection for a dance performance. The character here is a corrupt judge receiving his karmic punishment–which I imagine here as getting flushed down into some kind of supernatural plumbing.
format: DV video
software: Commotion, AfterEffects, Final Cut
Pittsburgh, 2001.
10. Battletank
(click to play)
This is a bit of found footage from an old video game, slowed way down. Turn up the sound and take a look….there’s something going on here that I can’t quite explain.
format: DV video
software: AfterEffects
Los Angeles, 2003.
9. The Pilot
(click to play)
This is one of two attempts I made to turn the text of a curious 1960s children’s book into a cartoon. Stay tuned…
format: DV video
software: Director, AfterEffects
Los Angeles, 2002.
8. Six Premonitions
(click to play)
Here are six very short films made in the six months leading up to the Second Iraq War.
format: DV video
software: AfterEffects, Final Cut, Audition
Los Angeles, 2003.
7. Some People Never Learn
(click to play)
Here’s a kinda-creepy collage of pictures and sounds assembled automatically by a Lingo script, all at least tangentially related to my childhood in Huntington, West Virginia. I’m really not sure quite what to make of it.
format: DV video
software: Director, AfterEffects, Final Cut, Audition
Los Angeles, 2004.
6. Fickle
(click to play)
A curious little fragment. I rarely work with real film; the results always surprise me.
format: 16mm film
software: n/a
Los Angeles, 2002.
5. The Mouth and the Vitamin
(click to play)
This is one of a series of realtime animations we created for Jen Tsuei’s play Fantasias for the Immoderate. Two actors in microphones used the volume of their voices to control the video “puppets” in a program called Isadora.
format: DV video
software: Isadora
Los Angeles, 2004.
4. Art of News
(click to play)
I love this little opener I created for the Pittsburgh public-access show Art of News. The jack-in-the-box was puppeteered with wire rods that I painted out in Commotion, which worked out so well I’ve been looking for an excuse to do it again ever since.
format: DV video
software: Commotion, Premiere, Audition, Acid
Pittsburgh, 2001.
3. The Thief
(click to play)
The middle episode of an epic Super 8 trilogy; the other two parts are lost.
format: Super 8mm film
software: Premiere
Pittsburgh, 1997.
2. Jam
(click to play)
This was my first, never-finished stab at 3D animation; I’ve got something a bit more modern coming up soon. In the meantime, while visually this thing wouldn’t pass muster as a turn-of-the-century game cutscene, I do like how the music turned out.
format: DV video
software: Maya
Pittsburgh, 1999.
1. One, Two, Three
(click to play)
This was an early compositing test, multiplying myself with hand-painted mattes. For me, the magical feeling was probably pretty close to what the first photo pioneers must’ve felt…
format: DV video
software: Premiere, Photoshop
Pittsburgh, 1998.
