it's been a while

i've been meaning to update this blog for months but with life, work, teaching 2 classes at nyu and more life just got in the way of me getting back here. that's not to say i haven't been busy.


so please bear with me as i ramble on a bit...

i was in a bit of a rut with the site and decided to go and see a coach, jim arnoff, to help me work out some problems. the great thing about talking to jim was that i was able to flesh out some problem areas, like olifant's origin, which will soon be up on the site, strengthening the character design and, wait for it...wait for it....deciding to create an animation.


i think the problem with the site is that it just doesn't offer the amount of content that kids need to come back. my own kids go to miniclip a lot and that's because it has a ton of games to keep them constantly stimulated. lots of people put their own games on for free and i just can't compete with that. and, really, at it's core i made whereisolifant.com as a showcase for the property so someone would buy the it and make it into a tv show.

well now the design is much better and the backstory is solid. i've written a script and created a storyboard. it takes place in the fall so a few months ago when the leaves where in full color i got my camera and took many, many gigs of background movies. now i have to put together the animatic and then start animating.

it's exciting because i haven't made my own animation since "in transit" over ten years ago. and for all the great animation that i've seen in that decade (remember i've had 2 kids since then so i've seen a tonnnnnnnnnnnnnn of animation) the piece that really spoke to me was the the end credits to ratatouille. i can't begin to say how much i love it's simplicity, textures and movement. just fantastic. someone should make an animated feature in that style.

so i'm off and running. i've got a lot to do because i would like to finish by the end of the year but i have a really good foundation so hopefully things will progress well on consistently.

i'll be updated more often as things happen.

Oiaf

well i went to this year's ottawa international animation festival. originally i was just going to go to the festival to see some films and have a few beers with some animator buddies. but i helped out ace & son with the festival's signal film and i got to go to the television animation conference too!

so i had to hustle to create a brief with new illustrations by dan madia after i redesigned the dinosaurs, email all the delegates who were looking to buy preschool and send them a one sheet and set up meetings, change my flight to an earlier time to be there in time to meet all the people that were interested and then crash hard because i was sick with a head cold this whole time.

in the end the conference was great. had some meetings which might lead somewhere and saw some good films. met lots of old friends and made some new ones. it was, like canada itself, nice.

winner!

congratulations to john c. of new jersey. he found rogero hopping in the site and is now the winner of an olifant tshirt.

maybe this saturday it will be you!

version 2

finally! after months of chipping away at it bobby and i have finally finished version 2. some minor improvements have been to the layout and some wording. i've added some fantastic new activities and there's a weekly contest.

so check it out, have some fun and maybe you'll win a tshirt!

it's been a while

well i have been working, just not updating my blog. reading my last blog post i was trying to get something finished but life/kids/school/work/swimming got in the way.

i've been working on a slight redesign to make the site more coherent, added a contest page and removed the facebook page.

i've also added some new activities, finger puppets, and will be adding 2 new stories. and then it will be back to getting the word out.

so stayed tuned for contests, stories, personal appearances and more.

doing everything at once

tweaks to the site design. a new story to create. trying to get publicity.

i'm a bit all over the place right now and need to focus before i start to screw things up. i'm going to finish the next story because i really want to have it out the first day of spring and suspend the publicity. then suspend the new stories and maybe just do new games or activities, since they take a lot less time, for a month and continue the publicity. then back to the stories.

sounds like a plan. i hope i stick to it.

snow and lingonberries

finally finished!
now i have to spend a week doing nothing but backups, new software install (cs5!), coming up with a new story and publicize, get the word out and plug before i have to start the new story.