February QnA (Patreon)

Hi everybody! I'm gonna start doing these more often. 

For anyone wondering, it seems like some people are worried- I recently got rid of most of my social medias except for like, Instagram and YouTube. Been having a lot of mental clarity lately and felt like they were doing me more harm than good. 

I'm gonna refrain from answering anything I feel like constitutes as a spoiler for what I want to do in the future- Sorry in advance! 

I'm working on a bunch of different stuff right now! I'm really excited about it. I'll start talking more about what I'm working on when I think it's time. But one thing- I'm writing SALIATOS season 2 right now. I want to try and schedule a period of time where I can crank out all the episodes, similar to how I did season 1, week-by-week, but this time I'm trying to put more work into the writing up front. I'm playing it by ear right now but I'm really excited.

Stilton's in Charge 2 is on the way as well- Victoria and I have been working on it since August, and most of the cutouts are done. We still have some work to do for it, so I'm not totally sure when it'll be ready yet, but it's definitely on the way. We're also working on some other stuff together that I'm really excited about.

Yeah! I think pretty much every character in the other previous iterations of the idea is present in some way or another. 

For me, it was really rewarding and satisfying in a lot of ways, but stressful in a lot of others. 

Managing it was both kind of easy for me but also incredibly difficult. I don't think I'd ever recommend trying to do something like it. I'm definitely surprised I'm still alive! I actually mostly had fun making it, but it was more the exterior circumstances that stressed me out. 

Artistically- It was super fulfilling to make it, but since the story was primarily sourced from my unconscious mind, it means that the final product was initially horrifying to me, because of what it told me about myself. A lot of the movie is my Self talking to my conscious self. At first I was really scared by what I saw, but I've come to accept it and it's actually helping me recover from a lot of stuff now.

I usually start with an outline! I have to give myself a place to start, or else I can't move forward. For all of my projects, I start by blocking out all the story beats, and start slowly fleshing them out, piece by piece, until I have a general map of what the film will look like. From there, I usually start moving pieces around and trying different combinations of scenes and trying to feel out what makes the most sense.

From there, I'll usually start making concept art and draw out the scenes I can see clearly in my mind's eye. I usually try to draw at least one drawing for each scene I have in the outline. 

At this point, I always ask my friends for feedback and try to get as many reactions as I can, so that I can know what's resonating and what isn't. I usually make revisions and change stuff based on how my friends react. 

After that - I start storyboarding. My boarding process is deeply emotional and specific. Based on the suggestions for the scene I have in the outline, I start trying to explore the scene and watch it play out in my mind's eye- and documenting what happens via the boards. 

Because watching the scene play out in my mind's eye happens so quickly, I don't overwork my boards at all. I tend to only put down the amount of lines needed to communicate the necessary information. 

Every time I finish a scene, I immediately put it into animatic form and put temp music under it and start carving it out time-wise. Before I even start the boarding process, actually, I make a project in Premiere and start feeling out how long the movie would be based on my outline- Using the concept art and other things to figure it out. 

This process continues even after I finish the initial boarding animatic process. I try to make sure I'm listening to what the movie needs to be the whole time. 

If you're interested, here's the super early outline I made for Barber Westchester: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JStGofsndv70DvY16aEzWMYK1c64PoiKqUgwMYRQ7po/edit?usp=sharing Keep in mind- This was super early in the process! I didn't continue working on the outline as I progressed on the film, it was just a jumping off point. 

I always want to just list my friends, but I'll challenge myself this time and only talk about people I have no affiliation with LOL 

Bretislav Pojar https://youtu.be/txxhuOZxowI

Manabu Himeda https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9SCl40jgvw

Whoever this is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DW6TXDNXXXo

Brian Wood: https://youtu.be/U-iEPmrjeM0

Definitely, it's terrifying. I have to pretend like it's not deeply scary, but it actually really is. I don't know why I do it. Or, I know why I do it, but I kinda wish I didn't do it? LOL But also I love it. So I don't know. I don't really have a way to overcome it, except to just accept that it's what I'm doing, and let it happen. If anyone asks me, I try to be honest about it, but it's definitely hard, especially when it's people close to me who are picking up on stuff. When I was younger, and making Wasteland, I was a lot more cowardly to admit what things were about, to the people close to me, and even to myself! With hindsight I can see what it all was a lot more clearly. That's what strangest about this to me- The most terrifying part has been admitting what it's about to myself. 

I really want to direct live action! I think about it a lot. All of my filmmaking heroes and influences are live action directors, with the exception of Isao Takahata. I'm definitely going to try it at some point. 

But yeah, with my films, since I'm working with animation, I've developed a process that's very specific to working in the medium, and try to execute my ideas in a way that could only work in animation. 

The ambition/time/effort ratio is kind of deranged on my part- Sometimes my most ambitious ideas are the easiest to execute, and my more subdued ideas are the hardest. LOL 

So that means, when working primarily on my own, I've had to develop a really specific way of working to allow for push and flow with everything- I work really hard and fast, but my energy levels vary day-to-day, so I've had to develop ways of working that allow me to work at different speeds and intensities while still making progress. I can talk more about this another time, it's just super complicated and hard to simplify on the spot LOL 

Thanks for all the questions! Sorry if yours went unanswered. I'll do more of these. I'm limiting the amount of stuff I say publicly on social media and want to start keeping stuff like this to Patreon. 

Hope you are all well!