Donkey Boy: A Summary

This is Donkey Boy. He's been the main antagonist of Lazy Eyes ever since early 2009, although the concept of the character has been around since 2006. "Donkey Boy" is actually just a nickname. His real name is Edward Kal vahn II. His nickname is a reference to the ears and tail he exhibits, although most people would agree that his ears look more like that of a rabbit's. No one exactly knows where Donkey Boy comes from, when asked about his past he gets very defensive and shouts "I didn't ask to be a mutant freak of nature!" and then proceeds to tear up. While portraying clear signs of a high I.Q., Donkey Boy can be a bit of an idiot sometimes. He seems to lack common sense, and is usually aided in this area by his assistant, Agent LD. Donkey Boy has a high knowledge of gadgetry. He's the inventor of several weapons, and he even invented a type of transportation known as P.T., short for Portal Technology. He also appears to have control over a sort of space technology, which can be seen in him being able to fit his entire headquarters inside a tree. He enjoys flying around in what he calls the "Truffle Ship." In reality, the Truffle Ship is only a large black trunk with mechanical legs that has the ability to fly. Donkey Boy seems to only have two goals in life: kill Jonah, and take over the world. Why he wants to kill Jonah is still unclear to this day. He recently made an attempt at his second goal by trying to obtain an ancient 7,000 year old book known as The Artifact.  Legend said that the book had the meaning of life written in it, and Donkey Boy planned to use this knowledge to take over the world. How he would do this exactly is still also unclear. Donkey Boy is the leader of an evil organization known as W.A.F.L., (We Aren't Freaking Losers.) WAFL only consists of him, Agent LD, Agent Goteshé, Agent Deborah, and a host of mutated animals at Donkey Boy's disposal, known as Kalibaine Mutants. Until recently, Donkey Boy had gone missing, and was rumored to be dead. However, in September 2010 he made a return to his headquarters. There, he learned that he was being tracked down by several enemies. In order to throw them off, he initiated a command known as "Project Beta-3 Indigo." Beta-3 Indigo is mostly unknown. However, it may have something to do with DNA alteration, allowing Donkey Boy to go under complete disguise as another person.

Donkey Boy going through DNA changes under Project Beta-3 Indigo.

How Atlantis Came to Be

So, who sucks at updating this thing regularly? Oh, that's right, me. But I have an excuse: I've been busy planning season six. 

But this post isn't about the beginning of season six, this is about the end of season five. 

I first thought up about the concept of 5010 BCE before The Artifact was even finished. The final script for The Artifact was actually finished at 1:00 am the day before we shot it. Before that it had been a completely different story. It went something like:

Manda wakes up in a strange room, Julian serves her food as Mr. Sassafrass's brain-washed man-servant. Sassafrass has a meeting with Brain-washed Jules and Rudy, and he sends Rudy to go door-to-door to preach about the church. Rudy door-preaches at Donkey Boy's lair, and Donkey Boy takes him inside and brainwashes him to be a super killing machine. Meanwhile Manda is revealed to be a secret agent who's working for The Questioner, and she un-brainwashes Julian by kissing him. The Questioner sends Manda to Donkey Boy's headquarters to try and stop Donkey Boy from creating a killing-machine out of Rudy. Donkey Boy sends Rudy back to Atlantis via portal, and Manda and Julian -who has followed her, now smitten- follow after Rudy through the portal, and that's the end of season four. 

I know, you're probably thinking "what the fuck, that made no sense ...and it was boring. " Well I hated it as well, so I rewrote it completely (with the exception that Manda was still kidnapped and Jules was still brain-washed) to make it more exciting. If the original script would have stayed, the season five premiere would have been about Manda and Julian running through the city trying to track down Rudy as he searches for the artifact. Actually, now that I think about it, I knew I had to make a skit where characters would go to Atlantis right after I made the Story Time episode of Life Lessons with Jonah, where British Jonah first explained about Atlantis.

Anyway, in April 2010 I began the pre-production process for 5010 BCE. I didn't even start with an outline of the story. The first thing I did was recreate the city that was seen in Story Time. 

The first version of Atlantis had more mist and was a bit darker. The remake was a brighter, more gritty version. (Note the absence of awesome flying cars in version one.)

Next were the flying cars. I don't really remember how they came into existence. I just remember figuring one day "This is a futuristic city, it needs flying cars."

And BAM! Flying cars came into existence.

Soon afterwords I began making animations, with only a some-what formed idea of what the story would be like in my head.

"I have no idea how this is gonna work into the story ...but doesn't it look cool?"

Finally, I began to make out a basic plotline and work from there. What happened though was me constantly revising the story. I'd write out the entire script, and then realize that I had made errors in the story-telling. Characters would be motivated by unclear goals, logic would only some what make sense. It was all really difficult to figure out. 5010 BCE is essentially a rare hybrid when it comes to story-telling: half of the current story, and half a prequel to that story. Decisions characters were making now affected what already had happened in the past. I think that's why I enjoy stories with time-travel so much. There's so much opportunity. Anyway, by late October, I had finally constructed the final script, and I had a crapton of notes.

Yes, notes can include pictures.

 Finally, in early November the scenes that took place in Atlantis were filmed. Scenes that with Manda and Julian and scenes that required greenscreen were filmed in late November. And scenes with Donkey Boy were filmed early December. 

So will we see more of the city of Atlantis? I dunno. All I know for sure is that we'll see it for a few minutes at the beginning of season six, but beyond that it's foggy. Unlike season five however, I have season six already completely planned out. The Artifact took Lazy Eyes into a new direction, and 5010 BCE took Lazy Eyes deeper into that same direction by showing how The Artifact came to be. Season Six will be different, taking Lazy Eyes into a completely new direction. We're done going back in time and seeing what-caused-what. If anything, we'll be heading forward...

Film Festivals and (Obnoxious Parentheses)

So in a few weeks I believe, there's this film festival going on. “What festival?” you may be asking yourself. Oh, nothing much. Only the freakin' Olympia Film Festival, hosted by the Olympia Film Society!! (Yes, those bold italics are necessary. They are just that awesome.) 

These guys are pretty cool, if I do say so myself. I [sorta] got to work with [a few of] them for the most of every Tuesday afternoon from June-September for planning out the What You Got? Festival (although I like to spell it out WatUGot Fest.) 

The What You Got? Fest was pretty amazing, it's basically a mini-film festival with bands and workshops for kids 21 and under. They even let me show one of my skits, Chupa, (I think that's like, the 4th link I've put to that thing up on this now. And now I just realized that I should have totally written about what it was like to have my short-film up on the bigscreen on this blog. Oh well, just know that it feels like you're the center of attention – even though everybody's actually looking at the screen... all 15 of them (two of them being my parents. Gaaah I'm pathetic!))

I even got written about in a little-known online newspaper I never had heard of before then. Look! My name is featured in the third little tiny paragraph! I'm practically famous now!

But anyway, enough about the WatUGot Fest, I'm here to talk about the Olympia Film Festival, WatUGot's bigger and buffer cousin. I'm not gonna lie, I've never actually been to it. I've lived here all my life and just about two years ago I actually began to go out and experience Olympia for what it is (my first Procession of the Species was freshman year.) So I'm determined to soon check off the little box next to Olympia Film Festival on my “List of Things to See in Olympia.”

 With the awesome success of WatUGot (like I mentioned before. 15 whole people saw my film, at once! Woooaaah!) I was actually going to try my luck at submitting something else to the OlyFilmFest (look! I've already come up with a snappy abbreviation for this one too!) but I missed the deadline. Oh well, maybe next year. I wonder if my films are even good enough to show at the OlyFilmFest... 

Maybe if I got myself a new camera (did I mention my camcorder died on me last week? Damn thing. I'll have to take it in again.)


They're also having this fantastic giveaway for free tickets. Here are the rules! 

If you wanna know any more about the OlyFilmFest check out these awesome links:

http://www.olympiafilmsociety.org/
http://www.facebook.com/OlympiaFilmFestival
http://www.facebook.com/olympiafilmsociety
http://twitter.com/olyfilmsociety

Oh! And here's some snazzy contact info if you're interested:

206 Fifth Ave. SE
Olympia, WA 98501
Tel: 360-754-6670

Well, I'm rather excited!

Quest for Fire

So if you ask around the beginning animator's world, supposedly fire is a total bitch to animate. If you're striving to achieve the most realistic fire as possible you might as well give up and die now while you're ahead or suffer a horribly slow death of frustration and many numbers and nodes and halo textures.

Luckily, I am an idiot, and realism has never been my number one priority.
...yet (possibly in the far-off future.)

Now, I don't actually know if other people find fire hard to animate, I just made that part up (but it's what I would tell myself whenever I wondered what it'd be like to animate things like fire.) For years I imagined that fire, smoke, explosions, and water were all things incredibly complex and difficult to animate, and complex and difficult are words I usually try to stay away from. They require work. And I loathe work. So for the most of Lazy Eyes I'd tried to stay away from creating my own fire or smoke or explosions or splashes, and when I did need these things I'd just use a pre-made template off of motion or somewhere else. The first example of this would be Grizzly Man vs. Bear Grylls.

He's getting burned alive, how can you not see this?

On a side-note I should just say I totally hate that skit and pray that maybe someday I'll redeem myself for making such a waste of screen-time. Believe it or not I'm not the only one who hates this skit.

I don't take criticism well.

In my defense, who the hell writes mean comments on a skit made by small children?! (We were 12 at the time, but we looked 9.)

Back to fire and other particle-esque things, I steered clear from making my own stuff for quite awhile out of sheer laziness. But recently I got the chance to create fire once more, and this time I decided to say "Fuck it! I'm totally gonna make my own fire, and it's going to be awesome!" 

What a fool I was. 

Now I could've just gone down the lazy path once again and used a nice pre-made template. 

A perfectly fine iMovie plugin.

A perfectly fine Motion template.

But no, pre-made things aren't cool these days. They aren't creative, or natural. We live in the age of organic crap. If our food can be organic, why can't our media? (If I actually followed this way of thinking I'd also be having to create my own soundtracks to my skits, which'll never happen as I do not have access to a proper orchestra
...the school symphony orchestra does not count.)

So, in search of my own organic fire, I went looking for a program to create my soon-to-be-born (sparked?) flames in. Soon enough I rediscovered a copy of Blender in my applications folder (off of dock, off of mind,) opened it up, and came face-to-face with.... 

THIS!!

...So many freaking buttons.
Shit.

You can see how intimidating such a complex program was to me right (look! "Complex," one of my "steer clear from" words.) But, I figured I could manage. But I'd need a tutorial. A quick google search brought me this:

Hooray! A free realistic fire tutorial! It's totally free! And totally realistic! Totally! The catch: it's for Blender 2.5. I had Blender 2.49 (just .1 versions away from beautiful fire.) No worries though, Blender's free. 2.5 would take about a minute to download an install. So after 10 minutes of downloading (oh, what a speedy connection I have) I proceeded to click the install button. Lo-and-behold... "ERROR. THIS APPLICATION CANNOT RUN ON THIS SYSTEM'S ARCHITECTURE" (it said something like that, but you got the gist.) Why? Turns out my trusty lil' mac runs on 32-bit (whatever that is, that kind of talk has the same value as French for me... which is a shame because I'm in French 2 starting next week.) Blender 2.5 runs on 64-bit, and the only 32-bit versions for mac were in German and Dutch. But luckily, there was another computer in my household that could run on 64-bit. My Windows Vista. Ta-daa!!!.... shit. I hate Vista, and PCs in general. They never work for me, so I guess they must hate me too. But this wasn't a set-back, this was a solution. It'd just take about a minute to download and install Blender 2.5 onto my crappy Vista. So after 20 minutes of downloading (crappy internet + crappy computer = me sitting by the stupid PC catching up on my reading) and 5 minutes of installing ("ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO INSTALL BLENDER 2.5 ONTO YOUR PC? IT MAY CONTAIN MALICIOUS VIRUS SOFTWARE." "Yes! I'm sure!" "ARE YOU SURE SURE?" "Yes dammit you stupid Vista I'm sure sure!" "ARE YOU SURE SURE SURE?" "Gaaah!") I had opened up Blender 2.5, which I had read had been re-designed to be more user-friendly, and came face-to-face with this:

Pro: Buttons are slightly bigger
Con: There are 30% more buttons
Shit.

Lovely! So then I began my long process of following all the complex steps of my free realistic fire tutorial. After about 30 minutes of working with my free realistic fire tutorial, Blender 2.5 quit on me. So instead of following step 29 of the free realistic fire tutorial, I followed my own step 29: swear and scream and cry. After my own step 29 was finished and done, I decided to give Blender 2.5 another go. Once again, 30 minutes into the free realistic fire tutorial, Blender 2.5 quit. 

So basically, Blender 2.5 wasn't an option. I'd have to learn the complex user-mean Blender 2.49. 

It was a bit tough. After a 1/2 dozen tutorials all my efforts turned out to be something like this:

It didn't even do a cool explosion,
it just kinda flowed out in all directions. 

But I kept at it, and a few dozen tries later, my hard-work of sitting down and staring at a screen for hours watching video tutorials on Youtube (mostly this tutorial) had finally paid off.

Whoo! It looks like absolute crap!

I was so happy with the final result I even made smoke to go along with it. After a lot of rendering, I imported my footage into Final Cut to make the illusion that there was an actual forest-fire. The result was this:

Oh no! Fire!
...sort of.

Okay, so it didn't look anywhere near as good as the pre-made templates, let alone any actual cgi fire made in Hollywood. But I didn't care, this was my fire, my own organic home-made fire. For the first time in awhile, I felt content with the final product, knowing that I was the one that made what I was watching all by myself with no templates what-so-ever.
:)

...On second thought, it looks like shit, I'm using a template next time.

Oh, did I mention that after exporting the final product any everything I decided to download the German 32-bit Blender 2.5? And guess what? It's not even in German. It's English.
How I hate myself..

At least I now have time to start on my free realistic fire tutorial.
Totally!

How Chupacabras are Made

Oh my God! Just look at her! Isn't she just about the scariest monster you've ever seen?!?!
No? Well shut up, it took 2 hours to make her and another 12 to animate life into the damn thing, and I don't see you creating any monsters on the computer!

Anyway, this is the latest creation of Lazy Eyes: the dog-eating chupacabra, recently featured in the BRAND NEW LAZY EYES SPECIAL: Tosh Bates & the Baffling Box Beast (catchy name eh?)

But alas, I can't take total credit for this creature. Well, I can for THIS version. But the chupacabras of Lazy Eyes have gone through some dramatic changes in the past few years. 

First off, I wasn't even the one that did come up with the concept of the chupacabra. I know! Shocking! It's an actual legendary cryptid that's said to be seen by actual witnesses! 

But seriously, you should know this already. That'd be like me showing you one of the dinosaurs on Lazy Eyes and then asking "Did you know these things actually existed?!"

Notice how the crappy 3D model in the picture is 100 times better than the ones in Lazy Eyes.
(click for larger pic)

Although, it is true that I wasn't the one who had the idea of a cat-eating chupacabra for Lazy Eyes. That credit has to go to Matt, Kevin, the other Kevin, and William. They just went out with a camera in the woods one time way back in 2007 and came back the next day with all this footage of them aimlessly walking about in the woods being followed by William following them around while holding a large stick, screaming things. I'm not sure which of the four actually came up with it, but I'm guessing it was Kevin. He made a lot of freaky weird things up back in those days, a few that have actually lived to this day in Lazy Eyes. 

They laughed and told me that William was being a "cat-eating chupacabra! Ha ha! It's so stupid it's hilarious!" (Middle-school humor. None of us have it anymore.) The resulting footage got edited into a little-known skit called LOST. It's pretty lame, but it was hilarious at the time. 

This was funny three years ago, I swear!

Fast-forward a couple of months, where I'm totally bored during a rainy day during winter-break, and for some reason I decided to draw (on the computer) what a cat-eating chupacabra would actually look like if it were a real animal.  This was the result:

Such talent, at such a young age too.

I know, it's God-awful and hideous. But I loved him anyway. A few weeks later, I decided to bring the new cat-eating chupacabra to life. I still hadn't shown the others my original computer-doodle, so I had no idea if this would be a total hit or flop. Putting giving a crap about what the others thought aside, I boldly plunged into my 3D-modeling+animation program and preceded to throw and bash random shapes together until I got a 3D digital version of the doodle above. I was originally going to feature him in a 1-time skit known as Walking with Weird Things, which was going to be a sequel to the very early skit to Walking with Idiots (no youtube link I'm afraid, as I'm never going to upload it.) But after filming the one scene with the 3D chupa, I decided to stretch out Walking with Weird Things (abbreviated as WWWTs) into it's own series. 

This clunky balloon animal is really a savage killer in disguise... I'm serious! Stop laughing!

The others were not happy with this new digital chupa, mostly I replaced the old awesome one with a clunky balloon animal. I don't blame them, now that I look back on it. It wasn't even my idea to take and mold into something else. I did that a couple more times with Kevin's ideas, and I said before a few are still alive in Lazy Eyes to this day (Councilor Joe and the Oompa Loompa were both Kevin's ideas.) I dunno, maybe without me putting some of Kevin's creation into Lazy Eyes they would've just been forgotten and died. I still feel a slight pang of guilt whenever I think about it though. (Although old creations that are mine are Donkey Boy, all the dinosaurs in WWWTs, and I co-created the F.R.O.G. with the other Kevin.) Maybe I'll bring back some old creations to Lazy Eyes in the future, and if they aren't mine I'll ask permission first. I just really like bringing back old things in new exiting ways I guess.

Speaking of which, this brings us to the (current) final stage of the chupacabra: the dog-eating chupacabra!

rawr

So! I wanted to recreate the chupacabra, seeing as everybody laughed at my disgusting balloon animal. As I was writing the skit King Frogorah and the Second Clue, I originally had the idea to move Frogorah into the city and have him fight against a Godzilla-like monster. Seeing as I revamped one old Lazy Eyes creature, the F.R.O.G, I figured why not do another? The cat-eating chupacabra seemed to be the right choice. Buuuut then I thought about how much work I'd have to do to make it a realistic kaiju-battle (I am a total japanese monster-nerd by the way,) so I decided to scrap the idea. But the thought of revamping the chupacabra as well still stayed in my mind for a long time. I got my chance again while writing the finale The Artifact way later in November. I had no idea what it would look like, so I just wrote the following:

In Donkey Boy's lair, Agent LD reviews his messages

Message Machine: "Agent LD! Initiate Plan Alpha D! Code Magenta! I repeat! Code Magenta!"

Agent LD begins to plug in some numbers into his computer

the camera pans over to a secret chamber that's dark inside

going inside the chamber, the audience sees a mutated, evil, cat-eating chupacabra roaring

the end

Yep, quality stage-directions there. And while filming I just rushed over to the tiny storage-room in the garage and filmed total darkness for about 20 seconds. Being even lazier, while editing I just took snapshots of the cat-eating chupa's right arm and spines and added a new croc-skin texture and animated those to make the illusion that there was something lurking in the darkness. I just told myself I'd make the actual model of the new redone chupa later. 

When February came, I knew it was time to stop procrastinating. So, doing what I did before with the right arm and spines, I took snapshots of every body-part of the cat-eating chupa model and added new textures. I drew in a new mouth, and gave the new chupa some new eyes (they're cat's eyes.) Being totally creative, I named the new chupa the only possible name left: dog-eating chupacabra. Totally different from cat-eating chupacabra!

So I guess that's the full history, so far, of the chupacabras in Lazy Eyes. An idea that wasn't originally mine to take that has now progressed into a sort-of-a icon to the show. 

you should click for a larger image, it's prettier close up

Skits that chupacabras are featured in:

     -LOST

     -WWWTs: Eater of the Eater of the Sock

     -WWWTs: The Pond

     -Destination Spoof

     -The Artifact (Part 3)

     -Tosh Bates & the Baffling Box Beast (Parts 1-3)

Do You "Feel" Better?

The series' first crossover with another, Lazy Eyes and Dr Feel (a mini-series created by Lazy Eyes cast-member Kevin Tmacaroni) combine into one skit known as Blue Lines. Blue Lines attempts to explain how some of the new characters of Season 5 are connected with one another. Emo Kid's girlfriend Scene Gurl (formerly Emo Gurl) is also a patient of Councilor Joe's. Counciler Joe happens to be a t.v. personality, performing on a self-help talk show under the stage name Doctor Feel. During the skit, Councilor Joe brings in special guest Julian to talk about his recent adventures. As foreshadowed in Ally or Foe?, Julian has turned his discovery of the Artifact into a full-blown movement known as The Blue Lines Movement (BLM.) BLM is a spoof of The Secret, as Julian has written a book about the meaning of life (which he mistakenly perceives as the blue lines of the blank pages of the Artifact,) and how it can improve people's ordinary lives is they apply it to themselves. The skit Blue Lines also reveals another secret: Councilor Joe's last name is "Hinder."

Emo Preps Return... as Scene Preps!

Scene Gurl (formerly Emo Gurl) and Billy are back in their latest skit Scene Gurl and Billy Vlog 233. This skit shows Scene Gurl and Billy in Scene Gurl's new girlfriend's house on a couch, coughing due to mono they both received from the same guy (via making out with him.) The original skit was originally six minutes long, but was edited down to four minutes. The entire skit is presented in Vlog format.