Monday, December 19, 2005

Gerry O'Kane

I've been trying to track down Gerry O'Kane. He's the wonderful voice you can hear on the soundtrack if you click the play button in my banner.

He used to perform at the Wellington in Kingston, Ontario -- but I have lost track of him. Many Google searches and directory queries have turned up nothing.

If anyone knows his whereabouts, please drop me a line.

I'd like to fill him in on the progress of the film.

*** UPDATE *** I have an MP3 of Gerry singing live at the Welli' -- not very good quality, but you can check it out here.

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

DISNEY RARITIES


Just got the new DVD "Disney Rarities" with a nice gem of stop motion on it. Here's a quote I got from another site.

"Noah's Ark" - Disney's first attempt at stop-motion animation (and last until some guy named Tim Burton made "Vincent" in 1982), this re-telling of the famous Bible story bustles with energy and creativity (as everything is made from mundane household products).

Sunday, December 04, 2005

CorpseBride Premiere




Back in September I attended the North American premiere of Tim Burton's CorpseBride.

You can see photos of the whole event here. To be honest, I don't remember much about the film. The spectacle of the night took over and I was more jazzed about meeting Burton and Depp than anything else.

I totally understand the press junket screenings now. It must be tough to give a bad review when you're loaded with free booze and swag.

Designs






Oner the past 13 years the designs have gone through many changes. I'm revisiting them now to see what will translate well to stop-motion.

Stop-Motion Magic


Hoping to get "The Irish Ballad" completed in time for next year's festival circuit I've been doing some research into the world of stop motion's costs and production details.

Through a series of very fortunate events, connections and cosmic allignments, I was lucky enough to get a tour of a stop-motion studio in Toronto known as "the Orphanage". They are currently producing Brad Peyton's soon-to-be seen series, "What It's Like being Alone". It will be on the CBC next year.


I have never been as inspired or as excited about animation as I was when I walked through their building.

We started the hour-long tour in storage rooms filled with sets and characters. There were façades as far as the eye could see, and shelf after shelf of minature props.

The workshops were busy with artists crafting all sorts of buildings and fine tuning characters. In one section, two guys were putting the finishing touches on a large forced-perspective sculpture of the Great Wall of China that we were told was built for one 10-second gag.

From the workshop we went to the stages where the filming was taking place. In order to produce the amount of animation need for the series, 10 stages are working simultaneously. This means that multiple versions of each character and set are needed. We wandered around from set to set, each one seperated from the other with huge black drapes. Tacked on the walls were hundreds of storyboard panels and page after page of shot lists.

Every stage had a different facet of the process to show us -- and each one was surprising and enlightening. If it wasn't the huge infinity wall with projected clouds -- it was the green-screen and wires that amazed us. We saw how cigars were lit, water was faked, and buckets of blood ran down walls. It was terrific.

We got a quick peek at the filming process and the computers used to composite the shots, then got a brief tour of editing.

The whole visit was incredibly inspiring. I can't wait to get "The Irish Ballad" into production -- and hopefully with these folks.

Santa Found


Long believed lost or tossed out, some original Rankin-Bass puppets have been found. Read all about it here.

These guys are the reason the Irish Ballad is going to be stop-motion.