Pigeon-man

I made a pigeon head this week.
It was intended for my video art final project, but now I think it was just an excuse to make a gigantic bird head. Looks good when you wear it though. Here are stills from the project.
The project I originally had in mind was gonna be this epic part live-action part animation thing, with nightmare sequences and dead pigeons dropping all over the place. There was gonna be this part where this pigeon gets pierced to death by seeds. Alas, I think my vision was just too grandiose. Oh well.

When I was a kid, my grandfather used to raise pigeons in our backyard. Every few weeks or so, my grandma would wrangle a pigeon from the coop, kill it, and cook it for dinner. I used to stand there and watch pigeons dangling from the doorknob for years. I guess blatant animal cruelty wasn't a big issue in my family.

Twilight and funny people

I love Twilight. It's sickening. So much staring and sexual tension!!
*13 hour edit later: Oh yeah, I just checked out Blake's blog and his little bit about this ridiculous movie. That's him down below.
I think the main reason why I enjoyed it as much as I did (besides the vampire thing and the hot dudes thing) is it reminded me so much of when I was 14 years old and I wanted so badly to have an out-of-this-world experience. Reality was pretty insufferable when my imagination was so easily catered to with young adult fantasy novels.

On another note, I came upon these two doodles on my computer. One is of this funny-looking redhead I saw at Wawa Canteen and the other is my redhead video art teacher. I like drawing random people but it's kind of hit and miss for me . Sometimes they end up looking silly and nothing like the person at all, but other times I happen to get down the right lines and it's a good resemblance. Does anybody want to ride the trains with me and draw people?

I'm going to China next week for Christmas break. I think I'll buy like 20 Twilight bootlegs and give everyone a copy.

Friday night egg drop competition

Middle school science class was the shit. So on Friday night, Blake Larue, Harry Teitelman, Stephen Neary, JD Amato, Ben Oviatt, and I decided to relive those good ol' days and hold an egg drop competition. The rules? You can use anything from my apartment. The objective? Construct whatever you can to save your egg from cracking when you toss it off a six-story building.

PART I: CONSTRUCTIONHarry's egg already lost.

This may be considered cheating, but under the stipulations of the aforementioned rules, there's nothing that can be done.

SS JD in mid-construction.


PART II: BON VOYAGE The view from the roof. Esteemed judge M. Porcello awaits down below.

PART II.5: MONEY SHOTS The infamous parachute that struck a sleeping bum down below.

PART III: AFTERMATH The SS JD took a hit that rivals the RMS Titanic. But Captain Egg and First Mate Craig Johnson survived with no serious injuries.

All competing eggs survived. 20+ years of living on this earth just for this moment!

EPILOGUE:
We could have been arrested.

I'm ready for Thanksgiving

Haven't been drawing too much lately due to working on the films. I've managed to doodle some during subway rides and class time.

I saw Don Hertzfeldt at IFC on Wednesday, which was awesome. He's quite the interesting guy. I started drawing this bear on his shirt which I liked.

A comic. A colorful week...not so colorful on paper.

The weather's been nice these days

I'm kind of glad it's not too cold just yet. I need to prepare myself before having to deal with trekking about in sub-zero temperatures. Best part though about winter coming is the snow. The beauty of newly fallen snow! I always wanted a snow day like this:

It was nice out on Halloween, too. Here's a recap of that night.

Random doodle during my video art class. I don't know.
That class is pretty fun. I get to make fun videos which are a refreshing break from all the hardcore animating I've been doing, and I get to be exposed to a ton of weird shit. Here's this one video I've been showing people that I've been particularly entranced with:

Some nice places I went to

Last week, I went to some new places and some familiar places. My brain sort of imploded from everything my senses were taking in. The colors and smells of fall, the agonizing yet satisfying allure of the lab...New England graveyards. It was pretty awesome.

If you haven't been, go to the Dream House on 275 Church St. It's like being inside a giant womb. I had the best nap there ever. I won't say more than that.
On the highway, coming back from New Hampshire.

So now my days are really "routine-y", minus a distractive outing here and there. Get up, lab, go home. The best thing about going home is knowing that SCHOOL and THE FILM are over for the day and COZY HOME time begins. I turn on the tube, chat with my roommate, and eat and paint and watch Splash or whatever until I pass out. I dig it.

Nothing compares 2 U

Final animatic done for Ice Cream Man...time to animate!

Here's some background stuff and color studies.

And now...as many of you know, my love for Sinead O'Connor will never cease.

More ice cream man

Boy, I've been spending a lot of time at the lab...

I'm playing around with the houses and cacti for my film. I can't seem to break away from that same old boxy look for the houses. I want to try approaching the design from a different direction. Maybe next post.

Sketches of Isabella, one of the kids.

And now off-topic...the mice in my apartment are such ballsy little bastards. I would be sitting in the living room and they'd come right out in the middle of kitchen and stare me down. It's a never-ending battle.

The drawing game

My pals and I have been playing The Drawing Game. Not too creative a name, but good to keep it simple.

Rules:

1) Each person gets a piece of paper and writes a sentence on it. Pass it to the next person.

2) Read the sentence and draw a picture to it. Fold over the sentence and pass it on.

3) Look at the picture and write a sentence to it. Fold over the picture and pass it on.

4) And so on and so forth.

It's fun to see what comes out of the game when the sentences and drawings get more complex or abstract with each passing. We've been playing four people at a time. I like to compare the two sets of drawings and sentences and see what was each person's thought process. Hilarity ensues. Here were some I liked:

Two almost identical setups. Different explanations.

This one was great! Funny how both drawers depicted the same action of a woman pointing as the plant shoots. This one started from bottom to top.

The drawings are basically the same, but different attitudes are conveyed due to what sentence was given.

This was a good one. Translation went way off but it made for a strange but beautiful drawing at the end. Oh, that ghost!

One where it all went to shit.