'Lil Cartoon

Hey all! Check out a neat (very short) cartoon I made for our sketch comedy group:

Well We Got Through March

By the skin of our teeth. I don't think I need to point out that this is the death-month of Caesar, and also one that has a Friday the 13th. But have you considered that March is also the mirror month of October- the hauntedest month on the calendar? It's also in that triumvirate of creepy single-syllable months, and the one whose (awkward) abbreviation shortens it from a military command to a word meaning "to damage." I don't trust March, but now it's gone and we can all welcome Spring Proper.

I don't have a photo for this post, but I do have a crazy-intense quote from a book I'm reading. A couple stanzas of "The Ballad of Persse O'Reilly" from Finnegan's Wake. To give you some context: This is a song sung by a man about himself, though the singer and subject seem unaware (or perhaps just unconcerned) of their shared identity. The subject has committed some unnamed sexual sin- whether rape, incest, or the use of contraceptives is unclear, though each is suggested- and the song expresses his guilt about it. Also, he fell off a wall and is now dead.

The Ballad of Perse O'Reilly (select stanzas)

(1) Have you heard of one Humpty Dumpty
How he fell with a roll and a rumble
And Curled up like Lord Olafa Crumple
By the butt of the Magazine Wall
of the Magazine Wall
Hump, helmet and all?

(14) That our heavyweight heathen Humpharey
Made bold a maid to woo
Woohoo, what'll she doo!
The general lost her maidenloo!

(17) 'Tis sore pity for his innocent poor children
But look out for his missus legitimate!
When that frew gets a grip of old Earwicker
Won't there be earwigs on the green?
Big earwigs on the green,
The largest ever you seen

(19) Then we'll have a free trade Gael's' band and mass meeting
For to sod the brave son of Scandiknavery.
And we'll bury him down in Oxmanstown
Along with the devil and Danes
With the deaf and dumb Danes,
And all their remains.

(20) And not all the king's men nor his horses
Will resurrect his corpus
For there's no true spell in Connacht or hell
That's able to raise a Cain.

That ballad is so intense it leaves me not knowin' what to do. If you want to read the whole thing you can do so here. Gabe noted the amusing union of the words "frau" and "shrew" in stanza 17.

I like the color in this picture. Today I got a decent amount done: 13 pages on the screenplay, and a walk cycle on an animation. Gabe and I also had a painting night. It was neat, Gabe was doing this cool blue and red fire thing, and I painted a beer bottle in brown and red. Then we both drew a space slug together, out of the remnants of my first attempt at the bottle.

10th Street House

I want to own a house in Brooklyn. I need to find a million bucks.



p.s. I think the way that blogger spaced that made it look like a poem, but it's not.

Come On, Fool Porterfull

Gabe and I were at local bar, Harry Boland's (from which this picture was taken) reading Finnegan's Wake (from which this title was taken) tonight. As we were reading about a drunken caveman, we were approached by Tim. Tim is a fan of Finnegan's Wake, and rendered a dramatic reading of the first/last sentence from memory. The next thirty minutes were a whirlwind of Tim opening the book to pages which were roughly near pages he thought he remembered enjoying, Tim confusing Finnegan's Wake for other books, and Tim accidentally confusing Gabe's beer for Tim's shot. It was utterly delightful, and we're hoping to see him there on our next excursion this Saturday.

P.S. I blame my lack of posts recently on this being my dear brother's birth-weekend (and if you forgot to wish him a happy one, shame on you) and the fact that the weekend, in which I full expected 72 hours for picture taking, doctoring, and the writing of posts only lasted 71 hours. Blame the farmers, folks. They've screwed everything up. Again.

Sunset

It was a nice sunset, but now it's dead.

I went into the city today with the intention of maybe getting a small art piece. It turns out that if you walk into a store to buy art, that means it's 10,000 dollars. Now back home that number is explicitly reserved for hyperboles. None of that here though. Jeez a loo, ten thousand bucks. Where am I gonna get that kinda money? I really want the picture, but... ah, oh well. In related news, I'm thinking of becoming a day trader as my day job.

Yesterday and Today

Well, I almost gave up on putting up a photo today. But then I said no! It must happen! So here's a picture of the burrito I had for lunch. It was, as you might expect from the picture, delicious.

I want to blame yesterday on the low battery my camera had, but that's really no excuse. There's a local bookstore here called "The Strand", which claims to have 18 miles of books. They have a "photograph the strand" contest going on right now which I think I might enter. You'll see my pictures at least, even if no one else does. I bet it'll be hard getting a unique shot in a place with so many obviously cool ones. We'll see.

More Simple Shapes

I think I want to try to start finding more human subjects. The abstracts are good practice, but they don't really matter. If I could start using what I'm learning about shapes and composition to actually comment on people and create characters that would be a much more valuable contribution.

Gabe and I had these fancy super-Guinesses at a pub today. They were super. The bartender poured them such that a clover appeared in the foam. Now that's class.

We also got a little acrylic paint, and I've been playing with that for the last hour or two. That stuff is fun. I hope I can get good at it.

It's a Blizzard!

Well, not really, but it's the closest that I've ever seen. This finally gave me an opportunity to bust out the macro lens and see what was what. I had a dream last night in which someone told me that I should put the picture at the bottom of my blog post today, so that's what I'm doing.

This was a Crazy Cheese Shop

I thought these things only happened in super classy places, like Paris or London. Turns out New York makes the cut (never before has cutting the cheese been a signifier of classiness.)

Well, Gabe and I are loaded up with three pounds of cheese, so we'll see where that takes us. Actually none of them are the ones you see advertised here, which is strange because almost all our selections were from their sales.

Work continues on the writing front, and the drawing. I'm trying to get into the habit of drawing at least one detailed picture every day, but it's tough. It definitely helps with the writing: lets me alternate.

Update Dictated by Immediate Sensory Input: CHASE BANK has an amazing new commercial, which makes me hate them more. It's not the one linked, but it's in the same campaign.

Well, Yesterday Didn't Happen

I think we all were surprised and appalled about that. But, as James Joyce says, Bisons is Bisons. Here's a new picture.
I think the yellow is our neighbor across the way. The red might be a reflection. The black is certainly the night, and the white is the camera's flash. I'm usually opposed to flash, but I think I might be coming around to it. This is the first heavily manipulated photo I've done. It's not all that bad, just the curves looked pretty loopy. I'm getting more of a feel for how to work with photoshop to bring out the qualities I like in the pictures.

Anyhow, cheers from Brooklyn.
-Nick

p.s. This one looks a little better in full resolution.

Photo a Day #9

That was crazy! None of you will ever know, but the browser kept typing in mysterious blue underlined text. I wasn't bold enough to click that mysterious link to nowhere, and well I'm glad I avoided it. There are some things man was not meant to know, and with those things I'll not tamper. I've read too many a cautionary tale.

Still, the curiosity lingers.

You know how after you take a personality test for an organization, you spend the next few days thinking "Why would I ever ever have put that, that was a ridiculous answer and they're bound to see me for the neurotic, confused mess that I secretly am?" They told me to fill it out as fast as possible. I really don't think I should be held accountable for putting "curiosity" as my greatest strength.

So this picture follows in the tradition of yesterday's picture of being a phony. Yesterday's picture was secretly taken two days ago, and in this one the rope which seems to be hanging naturally by the force of gravity, or perhaps being in a swing governed by the laws of kinetics, is actually being purposefully posed by laws so unnatural as the human will. Yes, this shot was staged, and to so little effect. Honestly though I really am fond of it, so don't go around agreeing with me.

Photo a Day #8

Billie Holiday is absolutely the best singer that could possibly come out of my speakers. It's remarkable how some voices just elevate you out of absolutely everything in a way that's quite impossible to categorize. It's not a voice for questions, nor should it be. It's something that cuts quite to the core of a person, and that's fine by me. There's nothing by which I'd rather be cut.

I saw last night a triple feature of films from the depression. The depression, of course, was before the Hayes Code, and films could be unfettered wonderful. There was sass out the wazoo, and they weren't hearing two ways about it. The three films were Woman, Gods of the Steel Mill, and oh some thing that was Bette Davis first appearance. Gods of the Steel Mill had a really wonderful performance by Fay Wray (who will later be appearing in a double feature at the same theatre of King Kong and 42nd Street: a delightful Busby Berkeley Musical.) Anyhow, it's late and time for me to be getting on.

Good luck world, and I'll take your good luck on credit.
-Nick

Photo a Day #7

The sign says drinks, but there aren't any drinks in there. At least, I don't think so. From the look of that window they sell drapes. Just because you got the first and last letters right doesn't mean you're done, signmakers.

Photo a Day #6

It turns out- and this was very surprising to me- but it turns out that New York is actually the coldest city in the world. I would've thought the North Pole, Somewhere in Iceland, Scandanavia, anywhere really, might be colder. But no. It's the sort of coldness that turns an innocent and sane "No Parking" sign to the meaningless and panicked "N = Ark!"

Today is the first day Gabe's had work since I got here, so I'm feeling very independent. The house is empty and quiet, and has been for most of the day. I went out for coffee and scribbling earlier, and I'm happy with what came of it. Mostly character work on the screenplay. I need to start working on production design a bit more, it's integral to the script.

Well wishes, all. I'll have more interesting things to say tomorrow.

Photo a Day #5

Back down to one photo today. It's raining outside and I don't want to take the camera, so this one was from Gabe's window. I think it's got a nice kind of abstract quality to it. If you invert it it looks like a space ship going through a starry sky, or an obelisk of light on Saturn.

The Oscars are tonight, and I'm still mad that Synecdoche, New York didn't get nominated for best screenplay. Alas. As a side note, Blogger.com does not recognize synecdoche as a word. I'm going to try to make it to a toy store/art store later today, and hope to pick up a little sketchbook. I'm not too trained at art, but I think it'd be fun to get some practice in.

Photo a Day #4

Well, day four of photo-a-day is going strong. Technically, I could refrain from uploading a photo 'till Tuesday and be okay. This is the first day I actually ventured out of Gabe's apartment, by myself, with my camera. There's an overwhelming feeling of conspicuousness skulking all around an object trying to frame it. Particularly when that object is on someone else's private property. Oh well, they can deal with it and so can I. I think my composition is coming along nicely. I went out today thinking that I wanted to get something with a more unified color palette, and this one hits that pretty well. I want to eventually move into more surreal stuff, but now I think I ought to just focus on the basics: framing, color, movement, genre. I find myself desaturating a bit in Photoshop. I don't know if that's just to do something different than the "auto color" option or not, but I think I like how it looks.

This second picture looks to me like a wizard's entourage that was ambushed by another wizard who turned them all into plants, that all whithered come winter. It's actually the plants outside a brownstone near Gabe's house. I might come back to this one later and try to put in some old people's faces on the plants, as a venture into surreal. But for now I like it how it is.

The test earlier today went well. We never find out our scores, which is upsetting, but I'm confident. We hear back in mid-March about whether or not we got in. Which, for me, means nothing but more photography practice for the next month or so. Hopefully I'll be able to get some writing done as well.

Photo a Day #3

Today I actually managed to get around to my picture before the sunset. Well, I call it sunset. The sun doesn't actually set around here, the clouds just stop being bright. It was freezing and windy all day, and I have a cold coming. I need to be rested for tomorrow, so today was much less stimulating than yesterday. We went grocery shopping, visited a coffee house, and I blew my nose about a thousand times. It's all good though. I'd rather have a cold in New York than a heat stroke in Texas.


We found a cool video store today. Rentals are only 2.25, which is cheaper than Austin. The catch is that you can only keep them for one day, and late fees are steep. The first video store I walked into had a Bergman section though, which is pretty cool. I also found out that Film Forum is doing a retrospective of... '30s comedies? As far as I can tell. It looks delightful. They have a double feature coming up which includes Bette Davis' first appearance. I don't know too much about her, but the radio makes much of her eyes.

Tomorrow's the test. I'm stoked. I'm terrified that I won't make it on time. It's all mapped out, but I can't repress a million manic what ifs.

Photo a Day #2

Today we went out to New Museum (not to be confused with the Nueue Museum,) which was mostly video installations. They had a strange 16mm Short there called The Minotaur. It had three characters- an old woman, an old man and a young woman. The old man was the minotaur, the young woman was a sex object who eventually gained independence, and the old woman was the narrator in whose mind their interaction took place. Also interspersed were images of nature- trees and forest scenes.

The sexualization of the Minotaur is a strange thing to me. It makes sense to an extent: the Minotaur was a product of transgression on both Minos' part- a curse for breaking an oath to Poseidon- and Pasiphae's part- the product of bestiality. However, the Minotaur himself is a guilt symbol, and aggressively destructive. Sexualizing him gives him an agency which I think is foreign to guilt.

We also had some delicious Indian food, and (I re-, he initially) saw Synechdoche, New York. I was reaffirmed in my opinion that it was possibly the best American movie I've seen. It doesn't need to straddle the line between comedy and drama- it subsumes both. It has an interesting commentary on human relations I think. It both acknowledges lack of true communcation and affirms human connectivity. Language is given up as a intersection of coincidences, and people relate to each other by inherent codes, which none is really able to confirm in another, but which none of them ultimately need to.

The photo is Gabe, with me, glasses, and curtain in the foreground. I swear I'll learn how to focus one of these days. Maybe the day I learn how to tell the autofocus to stop focusing on the wrong thing.

Photo a Day #1

I made it up to New York yesterday. The plane was delayed an hour but aside from that it was pretty uneventful. Coming in, the city was cloudy. This was spectacularly cool as we dipped down beneath the cloud, and points of light swam in and out of the mist before all suddenly lighting up into the cityscape.

Unfortunately, my first photo a day was not that. It was a sleepy image taken from under Gabe's tin awning while waiting for him to arrive. There was a very cool pitter going on over my head at the time, and the blue Christmas tree in the lower right hand corner caught my eye. I'm not crazy about the photo, but I'm even less crazy about missing the first day of photo-a-day.