I'm Back!

Okay I'm back!  Sorry i haven't been around.  so much happening and I haven't found the time to be able to write.  Today i got out early from The Gingerman (the bar where I work).  A rarity for sure.  I got home and saw the laptop and here i am. So where are we....

The Short film that I was in pre-production on has been postponed.  Just a couple of months, until the winter passes.  We had some great momentum but the location proved to be very difficult and towards the end there, I felt like we were reaching.  the truth of it is that I didn't want to make the movie like that.  I was going to be asking people for money and I felt a responsibility to make it right.  


I am taking a couple weeks off to relax, I felt like I was really pushing myself towards last three weeks of the project.   I really wanted this movie to come out right and really worked hard but that's that and now I'm off to relax a little bit.  


I have been doing a lot of thinking and I've decided that I'm going to go back to my prior plan which was to buy a camera.  On the three projects that worked on, the one guy that always makes money is the guy that owns the camera if I am going to be able to segway my way out of the bar and work in film somehow I am going to have to get out there and work on stuff.  I figure I can learn what i need to and film stuff and that will feed my portfolio and resume.  i am going to pick up any kind of work and be around filmmakers.  


So for the last couple of weeks I have been looking into cameras and saving as much as i can.  It's hard to save when you have kids. there is always something that comes up.  I'm trying though.  i haven't gone out to spend a dime.  Hopefully I can get a good price on some gear.  


Today, Thomas came over to the studio and we spent all day just working on the structure and arch types of a story.  something we hope to make into a screenplay.  It was great.  We just spitball all day.  We worked on Curio on my Mac.  Its a great program to get your thoughts in order.  You should try it.  Check it out here


The Housesitter is in post as i write this.  I got to see a very rough cut a few days ago and I has happy to see its progress.  Still needs a lot of work but its coming along.  


That's it for now.  I will try to be more consistent on the posts.

On the train and into the city.

Well im off on a 7 am train to do auditions for my short film "Gas Mask". I figured you could park at the train station and pay there for an all day pass but of course with my luck you need a permit, so instead of driving to the next stop and seeing if I could park there I have left it at a 2 hour parking. Hopefully at worst I'll get a $20 parking ticket. But with again my luck, I'll come back and it will be towed. But who cares right, Im auditioning actors for my movie, which by the way is really taking off.

The last three months has been great. Marianella graduated and got a job. So with a little more money coming in, I am concentrating on my film stuff. I worked on the 48 film race, then right after that had the opportunity to produce "The Housesitter" and now I am concentrating on my project. One that has taken me quite sometime to get going although there was breaks for opportunities that were just too good to pass up. But now it's full force on it and we are really moving along.

I have posted up ads on the Internet for various positions on the film and the response has been tremendous. So I'm happy with that. I'm hoping that its not the economy that has people answering the ad rather than artist looking collaborate. after the auditions I am meeting up with a director of photography, that will hopefully shoot this movie. His work is really awesome and I think it would great to collaborate with someone that has real knowledge of the medium. He seems excited about the project and that is what we need, excitement to create something extraordinary.

The last couple of weeks I've had people coming to the studio to work. It's great because olive having that energy there. It is contagious. I think they feel it too and believe there is something special with this group of hungry filmmakers. Wo knows, it might just be the right combination of determination and passion for the medium that can make things happen.

I've been plugging away at the social media and it's coming into it's own. I checked this morning and we were almost at 500 followers. There has been a big spike since may. If you work at it long enough it starts to generate faster. Make sure you check us out @humungoidfilms

I'm hitting the ground running just like I have been planning all along. Nothing is going to stop me. I am determined to accomplish this.
Okay the train is stopping so I'll be off and running. I'll post more later.

- Pabs

From The Vault: Magee

 

Again I was looking through the vault at some of the files and I came across this one.  Rod, my friend and great artist, always passes me drawing  when we work together of people at the bar.  Connor is one of my customers and a regular character over at the satchel of life blog.  if you haven't visited that blog, go and check out some of the drawing they are hilarious.  I warn you though some of it is NSFW.

Here is the original drawing, small part of a larger one.  I just had to throw on some color and up the ante.

From The Vault: Li'l Jose

I was looking through some of my files today and I came across this one.  My friend and great artist Rod always hands off a drawing across the bar at work and just cracks me up.  you can see some of his drawings on his blog The satchel of life.  Check it out when you get a chance.  

Anyway Jose is a food runner at our restaurant and Rod just makes and awesome rendition of him.  I had to import it onto my mac and mess vectorize it in Adobe Illustrator and color it in Adobe Photoshop.  

I just love this, he reminds me of a chicano Pikachu doll or something....

BBQ Invite

I was looking in the vault and found an invite I made for my kids birthday BBQ party.  It's been about a year and I have to design another one.  We had a great time, the wife and I rented out this park and invited all the kids friends.  We had volley ball, softball and a bocce tournament as well all the food you eat.  I brought the ipod and ran it through some speakers it was a blast.

Samurai Champloo

I have been looking through some of my old files, to try and post them up on the net.  i have never really been good about keeping up with that sort of stuff, so I am making an effort about it.  Anyway I figure it will make for at the very least content for the blog and will keep my posts regular.  

I found this little pic.  I had just gotten my cintiq and wanted to test it out by coloring in some line art.  At he time I was watching the entire Samurai Champloo run.  An awesome mix of animation, hip-hop and Japanese samurai culture.  Three things that fascinate me on a constant basis.  (I have a idea that I keep tying to outline called Codename: Hip-Hop Samurai) something I will eventually write and direct but not until I have access to the type of funding on the scale of a summer block buster (so who knows when that will be).  Anyway you should check out that series.  It rocks!


So back to the pic, right.  I was just testing out color on the line art.  I thought it came out decent.  What do you guys think?

From The Vault: Vita is Video Games

 

I was digging through the vault again and I came across this logo that I created a couple of years ago.  It was part of an idea I had for producing a podcast on video games.  My good friend Pete Vita is a master when it comes to knowing the inside scoop on the industry.  I was looking for something to make that would hone my skills at all around production of content.   

I remember taking this picture at my job one night as I hung out with Pete.  I was talking about the idea of creating this podcast based on him and his knowledge of video games.  of course he said Yes. I literally snapped this pic when he agreed. 

I sent the pic over to my good friend Rod, a great artist, he runs his own blog The satchel of life, go check out out if you haven't yet, it is hysterical. 

On the left you'll see the illustration he made.  I brought it into Adobe illustrator and made a vector drawing out of it.  There I made the titles and imported all of that into Photoshop for color purposes. 




From there it was pretty easy to import all of that into either Motion or After Effects.  I used them both on a regular basis but recently I have proffered After Effect.  I was able to keep everything on it's own layer.  I made the music up in Garageband, they offer of array of sounds that you can throw on a timeline and just try different  stuff.  it was a fun little program to mess with.  I have no musical inclination and it helped me out a lot.  

I figured why not use all the characters from video games we played as kids, so it was just googling the names of them and bringing them into Photoshop and basically creating a green screen around them and then keying it out in After Effects where you can move everything around.

I would have liked to see this take off.  I thought it had a lot of potential, especially with how popular video games are and how powerful a marketing tool social media is.  Oh well.  I can say I did learn a lot from this project.