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.

Un Sketch Français

Recently we made a skit that (surprise) didn't have anything to do with the current story-line taking place in Lazy Eyes. French Tea Party was posted on our channel over a month ago, we just didn't get around to making a blog post about it. The only element of The Artifact Chronicles in this skit is the Particle Communicator the character Shannon acquires. 

Emo is Short for Emotional (We know, so shocking!)

"Soooo I don't think I have the desire to go on anymore, I'm officially at my breaking point. I lost all that loved me ever since... he left. The world is so cold."

This, ladies and gentlemen, is our newest skit. Emos, preps that think they're emo (scene,) homosexuals, KISS, sassy gay friend, douche-bags who play guitar, any type of MTV show, no stone has been left unturned with our latest skit Emo Preps From Hell. Starring our good friend Manda, EPFH is the story of Emo Gurl, who is distressed after breaking up with her boyfriend Emo Boi for the 23rd time (the same one from the Councilor Joe 2 skit!)

The vlogging part took forever to do, because we kept bursting out laughing. Most of our blunders can be seen in the newest bloopers reel (#4!)

"Oh yes Father, I would like some church points."

Meet Father Faithly: our newest character (of many hopefully) who was recently featured in the skit Ally or Foe? He's smooth, mellow, and just happens to be British Jonah's brother (he even sounds more British than British Jonah!) He's also a bit of a trouble-maker. He dates women, says the occasional "damn," and as it turns out, is Mr. Sassafrass's superior. Priests have (almost) always been cast as the good guy, but can you really trust this one?
This entire skit was filmed in only 2 hours believe it or not. Like the previous two skits this one was shot with a borrowed camera (which explains the crappy quality.)

Season 5 is Finally Here!! WhOooOoo!!!

Yes ladies and gentlemen, the time has come. Season 5 has finally arrived, and in double-episode format too. Yes, we realize that the premiere episode isn't as exiting, but that was to only set everyone up for the new season. And wouldn't you agree that we made up for the lack of excitement in the premiere episode with the abundance is hilarity in the return of Councilor Joe? That's right we did! But now our characters are in some sticky situations, Julian and Manda have discovered the meaning of life via Artifact (yes, we gave it away in the first episode, this is how much we love you, our viewers) British Jonah has been arrested (for his actions in the previous pre-season episode Social Situations (see below)) and Goteshe' (who is not actually dead, we lied!) is lost in the woods... again. Plus, what was that strange monster that came through that strange-looking portal in Freak or A-Hole? (Hint: it may or may not have been featured in a certain episode about ancient Greek myths.) And those aren't the only problems we've already created for ourselves: what the hell was that pink smiling jellyfish thing doing following Goteshe'? Is King Frogorah dead or not? Will Julian and Manda ever share their findings with the world? Where's Donkey Boy?! What was in that crate Agent LD had that was labeled "TO JONAH"?! Hopefully all these questions (and probably more if we keep at this rate) will be answered sometime before Season Five ends (which, don't worry. It's only just begun!)

But it's not Season 5 yet!!

Season Five of Lazy Eyes hasn't officially started yet, but unofficially we've been coming out with a new skit every so often (The Crush, Why People Hate PDA, etc.) Our latest two: Social Situations and How to Bend Them and An Emotional Scene with Madison. Social Situations is about Julian being assigned an extra credit assignment by British Jonah. If he does not complete the assignment, he fails British Jonah's class (of which the skit is named after.) However, the assignment is a difficult one: Julian has to ask someone out on a date. We're not gonna spoil the rest, although you will hear the phrase "check-mate" every so often. An Emotional Scene with Madison is a skit Madison (a.k.a. the secretary from The Artifact) directed herself. It's only a minute, but it has the promise of future episodes.

The Artifact: did it confuse you?

The season four finale of Lazy Eyes aired last November (so this blog post is entirely overdue.) The majority of this 3-part episode was quickly written in only one night, yet the editing process took about four days (still, very quick for a 20-minute long episode.) The Artifact blended and combined almost all the characters from Lazy Eyes into one giant story. But to the average newcomer, it might seem a little confusing. And the explanation from the British Jonah app was a little bit fast/deux-ex-machina(ish.) So, here's a (somewhat) simple breakdown of the whole thing+backstory: (When I read it all back I realized how complicated it all is and how I don't blame you if you think I might take drugs (I don't by the way.))

The Artifact is the ancient diary of an Atlantian philosopher who wrote down the meaning of life in it. Atlantis was an ancient city/empire that was more technologically advanced than we are today, controlling the entire ancient world.

Meanwhile, in the present, Donkey Boy (evil mutant villain w/ Donkey Ears) had previously found a dying F.R.O.G. (the same one from an old WWWTs episode where it battles an allosaurus) and revived it, and later mutated it into a giant 3-headed King Ghidorah rip-off/parody: King Frogorah. With the help of his time-traveling portal-technology Donkey Boy sent the King Frogorah back in time to Atlantis to retrieve the Artifact. (The Artifact contains the meaning of life, which Donkey Boy could use to rule the entire world.) King Frogorah terrorized Atlantis and began to burn it to the ground. In order to save Atlantis from burning to the ground (and

the vast sum of knowledge they collected over the years) the Atlantians plunged their city underwater. They also hid the Artifact in a disclosed location.

However, King Frogorah returned to the present with the Artifact (how'd King Frogorah find the Artifact? That's another story, to be told in the near future perhaps...) But before the Artifact could be given to Donkey Boy, Mr. Sassafrass, Manda's religious high-school teacher, stole it and hid the Artifact in a building called the Baptist Biological Dome (BapBio Dome for short.)

The BapBio Dome is actually a pyramid made from a material that allows it to use a cloaking shield, it's an experiment by Sassafrass's Christian scientists to recreate the garden of Eden to disprove evolution. Mr. Sassafrass im

prisons Manda in the BapBio Dome in order to teach her a lesson (since he's deemed her unholy and gothic.) Thinking that it will help her "see the light," Mr. Sassafrass tells her to find the Artifact on a "Christian spirit-quest," using it as a metaphorical forbidden fruit, like the real garden of Eden. Julian, having been tricked by Mr. Sassafrass to help him kidnap Manda, runs off in order to save her as soon as he realizes his mistake. Meanwhile, Donkey Boy has managed to find out where the Artifact is due to the BapBio Dome's cloaking device failing for an unknown reason. Unfortunately (for him) his assistant Agent LD (a talking umbrella with the soul of a dog Jonah previously owned trapped inside it) tells Donkey Boy that he can't send King Frogorah into the BapBio Dome because it's too big and would destroy the BapBio Dome and the Artifact in the process. Donkey Boy instead sends another agent, Agent Goteshe'

(Jonah's narcissistic uncle) into the BapBio Dome instead via portal. Inside, Goteshe' runs into Manda. The two instantly remember each other from when they both were assistants to a T.V. personality who hunts paranormal creatures named Tosh Bates (during that time they had deserted him, but Goteshe' managed to capture the creature they were looking for, a cat-eating chupacabra, and give it to Agent LD for some other evil future plan (foreshadowing!)) By this time Julian finds Donkey Boy's hideout (thanks to a tip given to him by Mr. Sassafrass's mother) and uses one of Donkey Boy's portals to get into the BapBio Dome. Donkey Boy is outraged by this and decides to send King Frogorah to the BapBio Dome despite the consequences. He finds Manda and asks for forgiveness. She forgives him just as Donkey Boy also comes into the BapBio Dome via portal to retrieve the Artifact before it and the BapBio Dome are destroyed by King Frogorah. Goteshe' reveals that he has been working for Donkey Boy the entire time.

Donkey Boy demands for the Artifact, and Julian asks what the Artifact even is. Donkey Boy refuses to tell him, and Manda decides to use an app on her iPod touch called the British Jonah App. The British Jonah App explains everything in about 30 seconds (basically everything written above this sentence. I know, A LOT to take in in such short time!) Meanwhile King Frogorah finally arrives and begins to destroy the BapBio Dome, resulting in the entire building to self destruct in a few minutes. Donkey Boy tells the others they can't leave until they find the Artifact, which Julian holds up and presents to him (he says he found it on the ground.) Manda tells Julian not to hand it over since it would help Donkey Boy take over the world. King Frogorah hits the BapBio Dome with one of its wings which causes the whole building to jolt. The jolt knocks over both Donkey Boy and Goteshe'.

Manda and Julian take this chance to escape using the same portal Julian used to get into the BapBio Dome. Donkey Boy, realizing he's lost, calls Agent LD and tells him to initiate a plan known as "Alpha-D Magenta." The BapBio Dome finally self-destructs, and explodes, supposedly killing King Frogorah, Donkey Boy, and Goteshe'. Manda and Julian step outside the portal elsewhere, and Manda praises Julian for saving the day. They decide to open up the Artifact and read it, and are shown gasping at what they read. Meanwhile, Agent LD plays back Donkey Boy's final call to carry out "Alpha-D Magenta." And the episode ends with showing an evil red clawed hand attacking the camera, supposedly "Alpha-D Magenta."

So, too much for one sitting? I agree. But what's done is done I suppose. If you were to be a person who's never heard of Lazy Eyes you'd probably be crying in the first 10 minutes. If you do happen to watch Lazy Eyes you'd probably be crying in the last five minutes. Hopefully this explanation/summary helped. If not, maybe the actual video will. (I dunno why it isn't centered and I don;t know how to undo it, so you should watch it full screen.)

Here's to season five!