Nom Nom Nom'd

Congrats to Minkyu and the rest of our fantastic crew! I had the pleasure of working on this beaut, and I told Minkyu the first time he pitched it to me that he'd be taking home the Oscar. An amazing film with a wonderful message. Can't wait to share Adam and Dog with the world!

24 days...

Fantasy Football IX: Niners vs Cardinals

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition....to lose by such a large margin. 24-3, suckas. Good week for the home teams!

1 day...

Lusty Faith

Last Friday, I issued another four-panel story challenge. This time the theme was "lusty faith". An old joke immediately came to mind, and here's what I came up with:

SFX: Abbey bell tolls.

SFX: Birds chirping, gentle breeze blowing.

SFX: Nuns giggle.

Nun: "You two will stop giggling at once, or heaven help me I'll put the seats back on these bicycles!"

1 day...

Adam and Dog

Adam and dog Trailer from Minkyu on Vimeo.

A gorgeous new animated short film from Disney animator, Minkyu Lee. I had the honor of animating a scene on this one! For more updates, check out AdamAndDog.tumblr.com.

47 days...

"What If..." Part III

The final instalment of my "What if Hell froze over" series for the upcoming "What If..." Gallery Nucleus show. I call it "Hell's Angels."

The gallery opens this Saturday. If you're in SoCal, I highly recommend stopping by and perusing these and the humorous musings of other animation industry artists!

17 days...

"What If..." Part II

Part two of my three part series, "What if Hell Froze Over?" I call this one "Ice Laden."

Check out this series, and work from other animation industry artists, at the Gallery Nucleus "What If" Show next Saturday, December 10th.

21 days...

"What If...?" Part I

Gallery Nucleus is hosting a "What If...?" show next Saturday. My take on the theme was "What if Hell froze over?" Here's the first of the three part series, "Faust Bite."

It'll be a cold day in Hell before I paint another theme as fun as this one!

23 days...

WANTED

Sorry for slacking on the Choose Your Own Drawing Adventure challenge last Friday, I'll post at the end of this week. Last week was dedicated to preparing for a weekend filmshoot. I work with my church's film/video ministry, and we just wrapped principle photography on our second project, Wanted. Here are some stills from the shoot. Unfortunately, we neglected to inform the local law enforcement that we had a fake weapon on set, so the fuzz showed up just to make sure we weren't actually causing havok.

You see, I was co-directing the day's shoot, and I find that packing iron helps to keep the actors "motivated"...


My co-director (and founder of our video ministry), Kerwin Kuniyoshi takes a much more laid-back approach to film-making.

Nathan Cooper played our irascible villain, Snake.


Theresa Donahoe as our snarky "good" samaritan, April.


And here I am with our star, Ellie Wheeler, who is portraying Sarah Rive, our version of the prodigal son. Here we are endorsing dental hygiene.

Happy Belated Easter!

I joined a video ministry at my church, and this is our first film. My primary contributions were storyboarding and helping to direct the actors. All of our actors were friends from church, so there are some dramatically inappropriate smiles here and there, but I'm proud that we were able to shoot this entire thing in six hours, and very thankful to everyone who contributed. God definitely blessed us with an enthusiastic crew. We have the film posted at our youtube channel, NCBVid, with more to come.

Enjoy!

The Prisoner, directed by Kerwin Kuniyoshi

MERRY CHRISTMAS
from the Austin Translation!

2008 has definitely been a year of ups and downs. I had the privilege of working alongside some of the most innovative and brilliant artistic minds on the planet and being a part of one of my favorite films of the year, Wall-E. I also lost one of my best friends, Justin Wright, to whom the film was dedicated. Justin would definitely be stoked to see how many people loved his story work on both Wall-E and Presto, and to see that justice had finally been done to one of his favorite superheroes, Ironman. So this year, as I join friends and family to celebrate the birth of Jesus, I'm particularly mindful of all amazing people God's brought into my life, including all of you who check this blog for the most recent dinosaur news or Chades Challenges. Whatever holiday you celebrate this season, I wish you a ridiculous amount of joy and merry-making, and more pie and chocolate than you can shake a stick at! Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year, see you in '09!

"There has been only one Christmas - the rest are anniversaries."
~W.J. Cameron

Coming Soon: Sly Orange: The O-dyssey

My apocryphal rock band, Sly Orange, went on tour through Portland and Seattle last Independence Day. Our hotel-thrashing drummer, Vi, started compiling the video that we shot for our bass-player, Ben, who unfortunately couldn't make the tour. Most of the conversations are out of context, and make little sense. You'll hear me talking about 'future surgeries' which is me talking to the camera as if it is my future-self watching the video like a time capsule. I'm not sure if that makes more or less sense. Anyway, Vi did a great job editing this little teaser, and it features my fantastic singing voice, so I thought I'd share it. Make sure to look for The O-dyssey in record stores and on iTunes this Christmas!




In other music news, President-Elect Obama has officially tapped John Williams to compose/conduct a piece of music for his inauguration. Talk about getting started on the right foot, I can't think of a better person to set the stage for a historical moment. I think there's only one piece suitable for such an occasion. It certainly wouldn't be the first Star Wars/Obama mash-up.



Everyone loves John Williams, but a much more polarizing figure appearing at the inauguration is Pastor Rick Warren. I've read his book, A Purpose Driven Life, twice, once with my late buddy, Justin Wright. Justin and I hardly agreed with each other on every issue, and we certainly didn't agree with everything Pastor Warren had to say in his book, but it definitely challenged us both to think about what it means to live a life of purpose. Before anyone gets angry about Pastor Warren giving the invocation at Obama's inauguration, I'd challenge them to watch his talk at the TED conference. You may not agree with everything the man has to say (if you don't, you may find Dan Dennett's TED talk more to your liking), but Pastor Warren's certainly not a "fear mongerer," and I'm personally not interested in hearing an invocation from anyone who agrees with everybody, anyway.

"Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less."
--Rick Warren

The Walking Whale and the Collapse of Intelligent Design

Did you know whales once walked the earth? Back then, they were called Ambulocetus. Well, we call them that now, but that's what they were, they just didn't know it yet. Ambulocetus is remarkable because it has an internal ear system that could hear just as well underwater as well as land, suggesting the animal was transitioning from a land-locked to more aquatic lifestyle. Fairly solid evidence that whales originally lived on land (though those ancestors had ancestors who lived in the ocean).

This is one of the many cool subjects mentioned in Ken Miller's lecture on evolution, and how it aught to be taught in the classroom. What I love about Mr. Miller is that he is a theist who, like me, goes to church and believes in the Christian concept of God and intelligent design (or ID), but sees that it is different from science. ID cannot yet be tested or proven through observation so it is by definition not a science. All around our country, folks are arguing otherwise, and men like Ben Stein are creating films lambasting the scientific community for keeping perspective, so it is important to take a long look at what we define as science and the importance of keeping education as objective as possible.
Anyway, for those of you who are curious about life, the universe, and everything, check out Ken's lecture (it's entertaining, I promise)!

For those of you interested in religion and science, you may want to check out Duelity, a film that tells the Biblical account of creation through a scientific voice, and evolution through a deistic syntax.