journal page 12

december 15, 2000
"your life is like a kaleidoscope"
4:21pm and 6:48pm
everybody out there have been such big bags of nice these past few weeks, what with the charity auction going so well and the multitude of happy gifts arriving at the studio door. i wish i could give every one of you a big hug if it weren't for the distance and the time required to perform such hugging and that whole fear-of-touching thing. big thanks to everyone who has been sending us things and we are doing our best to send in return as fast as we can. as much as i appreciate them, i have in just the last week received ten boxes of sharpie pens, which ought to tide me over for the next many months, so please no more pens. but thank you. and etc.

i am feeling better today. i just now realized i have swallowed a half gallon of orange juice in the past few hours. i think i have cleared away the junk and errands i had to run and can finally settle back into animating. jes is trying to convince me to get this internet chat thing and join the 20th century but i am sort of afraid of all the scary talking people out there. i digress. i am going to eat a big bowl of cereal and watch the simpsons and then it's back to work with me. i will be out of town for the holidays so i may not be able to write again until the new year so if so, everyone be good and shiny and i will talk to you soon..
december 14, 2000
6:53pm
have filled up on bad tacos and am ready for more work tonight. my animating hand has had phantom aches all day long so i'm not sure what's going on in there. and to round out my complaining, i have had a sore throat for a few days and i am getting a cold. ok then. so there. i'm going to have to write more tomorrow, but here is something for ya real quick..

november 21, 2000
left eye has been really itchy and i'm about to claw it from my head.
11:49pm
finished more dialogue editing with tim tonight. for the uninitiated, once it's edited and reformatted it gets sent to brian, who breaks it all down, the end result of which allows me to officially begin animating. have been toying with the idea of subtly having a computer perform a handful of lines with text-to-speech programs. could work out very well, may happen. meanwhile, the endless pencil tests continue.

this afternoon i dug up the old box in the closet that's filled with temporary anesthetics comics that have not yet been 'published' since i quit icebox. they made me smile. got re-energized to keep playing with them, do the book, etc. too many plans. it's becoming increasingly odd to dig up these old things or even watch animation tests shot just a day or two ago because i honestly have no memory of doing them. more and more over the years, this sort of work has become a bit like the old shoemaker and the elves who'd make shoes for him as he slept. you wake up in the morning to find a big pile of work that you vaguely remember working on but mostly surprises you. it's entirely another part of my brain that takes over and becomes hypnotized when i animate, write, whatever. it can get so detached that sometimes i feel a little awkward for taking credit for the films, and i have to catch myself and remember that i actually made them. i seem to just piece together the end result. it's sort of like embarking on a 12 hour drive... you remember leaving and you remember getting there, but those 12 hours of driving time are really just a big amnesia daze of road. i have almost no memories of production from the past 5 years. i remember other things in my life in there, but all those many months while animating, which are a major chunk of it, are a big blank dreamy mess. which is probably not a good thing.

anyways, here's the latest report from rob, who is often more of an observer of these production happenings...

(don)

Well only a few pegs of sound work left to hammer before this new little monster is freed to run around naked in Don's apartment. Lucky with Brian on board all of our words will match all of our teeth. God bless you Brian. For all of you out there playing along at home the sound work on this new little ditty will break exciting ground for bitter films. I believe the captain would like to finish under the enormous window of recording time spent on REJECTED. Buuuuuuuuuut.....Well I have my pinky toes crossed. I traveled this last weekend to the captains lair to see the first little snippets on his ultra high tech animation pencil testy flip book-a-ma-jigger. Everythings looking sharp. A little pink but very sharp. The captain and I enjoyed marvelous chicken blobs with fine malt liqour before he sent me on my way with a tootsie pop and a smile. So, so far so good. His hand may fall off. It's a possibility but that's what the neighbor kids are there for. Sweat shop! sweat shop! sweat shop! ok. talk soon.

rob.

november 10, 2000
they're not supposed to mean a thing
pm

my apartment is COLD. it has been very windy and stormy and gray lately. i am wearing a sweater and a little hat.

wrapped up more sound editing with tim last night on what is constantly dubbed 'the next film' but will be soon announcing itself as its own puppy. i think we're now somewhere between 60 and 70 voice actors logged for this project. hopefully that will be it, but there's still some lines that concern me coverage-wise. pencil tests from this morning looked really super and more animating continues... i have comfortably reached the point where i'm looking back at the production already and am pleasantly surprised at all the things we've already done... i either have a really lousy memory or am simply glazing through productions these days, so used to the routines. brian reports that the first big chunk of dialogue editing will soon be completed. rob reports that there is something wrong with his eye (eyes?). tim says hello. mostly we have been glued to watching the election mess.

i read this in passing somewhere in the AP this morning and thought it was a really nice paragraph:

"The quicker this gets resolved the better off it is for the nation," said Bush, who was sporting a Band-aid on his right cheek to protect what his spokeswoman said was "some sort of boil."

well we're all geared up for the charity art auction, which ought to now be fully online and ready for preview. it officially opens up on sunday. i'm sure you can read plenty about it already all over the web site. please have a look and make a bid if something catches your eye, or spread the news to animation folks who may be interested. for a good cause. did everyone have a good halloween?

don

november 8, 2000
smack, crack, bush-whacked
tie another one to the racks..
5:03pm

i saw a bumper sticker the other day that read, "if you're not outraged, you're not paying very close attention."