World of Hartz is everywhere!

Aside from this Japanese Amazon page, I have found it ready for launch all over the world!

THIS IS NOT GOOD!!

According to CGNetworks.com, the Korean anime epic Wonderful Days was a box office disaster, taking in only $1.9 million after costing five years and 11 million dollars.

The full article from Reuters goes on to say that despite a huge marketing campaign, the problem was in who they targeted. The film was not suited for children, but the marketing did not properly attack the older audience.

The article contains a few interesting industry observations from Aeon Flux creator Peter Chung.

The amazing trailer for Wonderful Days can be seen here.

I ended up just creating my own sign.

Here is another issue which has arisen. As you know I figured out how to do IFRAMES, which will allow me to put things like long scrolling blogs in a window with its own scroll bar. Well, once this is done, each hyperlink inside that window must now be a targeted link, meaning it will open a new browser when you go to that page. Otherwise the new page will display inside the small window I will have reserved fro the blog.

Doing new links as targeted is no big issue. Going back through my entire blog archive and fixing links is another story...

I am on a quest for traffic signs. Why? I am working on the new webpage. Since it will be much more complex that this one, I will have some sections that simply are not available when I get it online. Still, I want to put it up as soon as I can.

I am quite amazed that I could be gone for a whole day and with few exceptions my mailbox is full of SPAM.

I DON'T NEED ANY VIAGRA!!

THE RESULTS ARE IN!

The research has been done. The answers are in me. After careful study on that wonderful medium known as the web, I have found the answers to the two great questions which plagued me going forward. First I will speak on music. It is going to be quite a process to take it to the next level. The first thing I will need is this:

Now I have used Cakewalk for years. I mean years! I remember running it under Windows 3.1 and making music with a Roland SC-55 Sound Canvas. We thought that sounded incredibly real back then. Now they offer Sonar. This is basically Cakewalk to the max. No big deal here. I can probably get into quickly and be back in business. The next step, however, is this:

This is a software sampler. Now I remember back in the old days at Rainbow Studios (Man, that's like 8 years ago now) we used a hardware sampler called the Roland S-760; The same as Hans Zimmer used. We had 4 of them. He had a wall full. Anyway, with their 32 Megabytes of RAM they could become limiting very quickly. This software sampler, however, can use your entire harddrive for samples.

Can you imagine? You could many gigabytes of samples. And let me tell you that this software is so complex that it can monitor your performance on the keyboard and choose samples based on what you're doing. Totally realistic solos! Of course, in order to get to that level, you have to have a worthy sound sample library. You already know which one I want:

The Vienna Symphonic Library seems to be the one and only when it comes to orchestral. That alone won't do it though. In my searching I found choir sample libraries so complex you could make the sampled choir sing any lyrics you wanted! You of course have to do some major editing by fitting which vowels and consonants are used, but it is possible. What a day and age we live in.

Still, this stuff ain't cheap. Even a simple library of a single item can cost $400.00 or so. Altogether with the software it's really getting up there. Maybe I was a bit hasty in selling off my old equipment with plans to move all digital... NAAAAAAAHHH! :)

The final bit of research is on the subject of this webpage itself. You may remember I wrote earlier that I had to figure out how to add a Windows scroll bar to my table or to "frames". Well this has been done. Someone suggested it could be done via frames. He was pretty much right. It is done using what is called an IFRAME. It's too easy. All of this stuff is actually, speaking of HTML and JAVA etc. If I wanted to study it out a bit, I could probably write my own forum for this page; but, guess what? I'm not going to. :)

This going to be long...

I... am almost in tears... literally near tears! Why you ask? Because of THIS!

THE VIENNA SYMPHONIC LIBRARY

Now you may ask, "How could this be at all bad?" And rightly so as such a thing could only be of great benefit to a world in such great need right? I say, OH how it pains me to think there could be a Vienna Symphonic Library out there with sounds so incredible as to totally think to forever change the face of the electronic music world!

Am I sounding stark raving mad yet? I want you to do me one favor. I want you to go to THIS SITE and I want you to listen the user demos and know that what you are hearing is not a real symphony orchestra, but entirely electronic played using the sound samples from the library!

You don't believe me?! HEAR THIS! Now you can go to the site and hear the rest of the demos.

Now that you're back (because I know you went), you are likely saying how can this be at all bad? Well it's quite simple really. For me to have this amazing library for my very own will pretty much cost me SIX THOUSAND DOLLARS!!! That's $6,000.00 if the first one didn't sink in... :(

A noted Rainbow Studios artist named Kevin Riley always used to say that if something costs that much it better move under its own power. OH, how this library would move if in the right hands! The incredible music that could be created! One artist making anime is what? One artist doing an unbelievably real sounding symphony is magic!

The question that comes to mind is, "How do I go about laying my hands on one?" I guess its time to find out just how well known I really am. After all, as a famous actor once said, "If you have to tell 'em who you are, you ain't!"

For the record: Cayenne pepper in your lungs... not good.

The second attempt at making that much heralded CD for my car has taken place. Next time I drive, I will find out if this one will play!

I HAVE IT!!

The total redesign of this page is now known to me. Unfortunately it does hinge on my learning one thing. I will need to figure out how to add a Windows scroll bar to "frames" or cells of a table.

If so, expect to see the new version of this page one day soon.

It's amazing after being extremely busy for a long time to go and look at my hard drive. When working those incredible hours (which I will never do again I might add) you don't have time to sort through every little thing and keep the place clean.

I found files that I had downloaded that were some of the worst CG I had ever seen. Some I had never even watched. Unfortunately one of them I had deleted. Makes me wonder why I downloaded it in the first place. Of course, you know how it is, you see a nice still image, a link to some animation and you click it.

Now it's time to start putting things in order. Things that I need to start doing: Redesigning this page, concept art for my next anime project, a few updates to the ol' demo reel, finish the remaining projects on my plate... I am sure there's more. It'll come to me.

SOUL CALIBUR II IS OUT!!!

Not that I play games much lately, or have time to. Still, I have a PS2 and an XBox is here as well. I think it interesting that they put a different secret character on each platform. Good way to get the fanatics to buy more than one right?

Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast had some of the best motion capture I had ever seen. Speaking in particular of the forms (or kata) done by the character in the attract mode. It was worth it to me to win different aspects of the game to get the different forms. Beautiful stuff.

Who knows, maybe there will one day come a day when I can sit down and enjoy such things again.

It is done. That great schedule is now written...

It now graces my wall next to the Star Wars calendar that came with my Episode II DVD. I can feel it already... a new age beginning. New projects forming. This very page changing...

This is only the first step in a number of changes soon to come here. Chiefly, all that shall lead to my next anime project. As I may have written before, even if I work on it an hour only each day, that counts. Chaos was done on nights and weekends. I wouldn't be here were it not for those nights and weekends...

It has recently come to my attention that I am going to have to go through my entire sound FX library and convert it all to 48Khz one day. This means thousands of sound samples. Not only that, I will now be forced to copy the entire library to the hard drive first!

I was fully prepared to write a rant about this, but then I remembered the beauty of batch processing. After all, I am performing the same operation on every single file. It is just a resample. Granted I still have to record all fifty-something CDs to my hard drive, but recording a complete CD is just a few minutes these days.

Not saying when I'll get to this. I got a major music problem to solve first!

Word is that Manga Entertainment is up for sale. I was not able to find more official information about this story. Maybe I should stop posting rumors on this site, but this came from an interview with a representative from Manga found on Galaxy Anime.

He said that this is not going to be an end, but will allow them to get a bigger foothold in the game. They will be able to get more titles and do more co-productions, such as was done with Street Fighter Alpha 2.

I am never staying up this late again! I am going to write that schedule and get on it!

Sony Sony Sony has done it again!

So who has failed me this time? Mircosoft and their Windows Media Player technology. I started using it when I realized it used the least amount of CPU recourses. Great for playing music while working. Well now I need something more. I want to record from my sound FX library of thousands of sounds. Mircrosoft only allows you to search from their music database. Needless to say, my sound FX CDs are not included.

To make matters worse, they only allow you record in MP3 or WMA. Now I realize that high quality MP3 is more than good enough for pro video work, but I haven't tried it and don't care to right now since I already have half my library recorded as wave files. Microsoft alone did not fail me here. You see, the other half was recorded via Media Jukebox, during the making of Shadowskin.

Well, I paid for that media Jukebox but apparently the license does have a time limit. I am once again on 30 day trial until I pay again. Not only that, I can't even register for CDDB. One of these sound FX CDs has 50 or so sounds on it. I am not about to label it manually when I know the CDDB has it.

Enter Sonic Stage from Sony. It came with the Vaio. It has the CDDB. It records in wave format. I am happy!

So I guess 44Khz sound is a thing of the past now, huh? I don't even see it as an option in these new sound tools!

Man, today has been rough! And of all things, I find myself doing a flying logo?! Talk about old school!

Actually I am having a lot of fun doing this, though I am more and more finding the need to write the previously mentioned schedule as well. As you know I like to do it all. At least do what I do well. I don't often get a chance to delve into certain aspects of production. Up until recently, I have done a lot of camera work in a long time. Now, beyond that, I actually did some roto work, Lightwave effects and a host of other fun little things.

My day was spent making a cityscape, doing multiple layer particle and fractal rain, the above flying logo and even a bit of sound editing. Everything is leading to one goal, the production of my next anime.

There are rumors floating around about the general demise of Maya. As usual some people are taking this quite seriously.

Now people should know that we have heard this same thing about every 3D software company at one time. Are they not still here? Even when Soft Image was absent from the scene from such a long time, look at how they bounced back. Now they have one of the best packages in the business.

It is true that the 3D market has become saturated. There have been major price cuts by a few of the majors recently. There have been layoffs and rumors of layoffs at a few of the majors recently. Still, are they not all surviving?

I the most impressive news in this arena for us to look forward to is a the arrival of totally new tools. The old guys will stick around.

I neglected to mention that ideas are finally coming to me as to how to change up this page. It may be extremely different.

As usual, though, this being a Sony Vaio, there is always another solution!

Enter Veritas Record Now. This software will not only aid in some very quick backups to DVD, which I dare say I have been neglecting as of late, but it will allow me to record audio CDs with the kind of options I am used to.

Windows media Player just kind of does its thing. It doesn't tell you what its doing, what kind of disc it's writing. You don't know if it is doing track at once, disc at once, or anything. Worse still, you don't have any kind of options page where you can set this information. I will try something else.

--I should now add that the disc does play in my CD walkman, so maybe it's just time for a new car!

That great CD... The one for which I have waited so long... Did not work in my car! Now my first thought was because it was a 80 minute disc. My car is older than CDs almost as it is. (just kidding) Now I realize though that the last Disc I had was also 80 minutes and it worked.

I can only assume it has something to do with either format or the difference in burning a disc from Media Jukebox (the disc that worked) or Windows media Player (the disc that don't work).

I guess I can only try again...

Scheduling can be the most important part of getting nay project done. Today I seek to come up with a schedule that will allow me to balance the many (too many?) things I have going on. Not just the usually task lists of old, but a real hard schedule.

Chief in creating a good schedule is the broad plan. I am thinking in terms of a week. From here I can go into days and then even hours. This way I can set things up and knock them down without any major pressure and everything can get done properly, if the schedule is followed.

There's nothing wrong with enjoying your work, but sometimes I get too caught up in a particular aspect of it, especially when its something new and fun. This is usually at the expense of other aspects of the schedule. Rather than, as an example, splitting a few days into blocks of hours designated for certain things, I spend all my time for a few days on that one new and cool thing. Then even some of the simplest stuff gets behind schedule. Now I will admit this can be hard when you truly love doing something, but in order for things to run smoothly, every aspect of a schedule must be maintained.

In the near future, there are some aspects of this that I plan to stop for good. It will become apparent as this webpage changes and the updates reflect my future path.

It is done.

--This computer is too fast for its own good.

I find myself doing more matte work...

Not that I am complaining. I am actually quite surprised how easy it is to do this kind of work using Mirage. I am normally not one to say or even believe the words, "Fix it in post." but I am glad that I can using this tool.

Oh... I think I am going to actually make that CD now...

It's really interesting to be back in Lightwave after such a long spell away from it. I have spent the past few months doing a manga only. Using Mirage and a Wacom tablet. Not a lot of 3D involved. Now I return, and of course there are new tools and new plugins to learn. Isn't this always the case?

I've had this worry for sometime now. It started fro my experience at Westwood Studios. I would spend so much time doing one specific thing that I would lose speed in another skill at the same time. Imagine, you spend months on textures alone, no major 3D, no modeling etc. Now I find myself in a similar position.

Thus it is high time to really get on with my next anime!

I was amazed!

I decided to copy my Final Fantasy Orchestral Concert CDs to my Windows Media library so that I could include a couple of tracks from it on this alleged CD that I will one day afar off make for my car. So I put it in, and I love how they never tell you that you have to BUY something extra to get MP3 encoding abilities, and I began to rip away. It was FAST!

So in a matter of mere minutes my Final Fantasy Orchestral Concert discs are not a part of my growing music library. Even though they are Japanese CDs the album, artist and track names were all found and actually display correctly!

Pretty surprising, this whole technology thing...

Some of you may remember a post from May 1st of this year called Recollections Part 01. I don't know if I said there would be more, but I certainly meant for there to be. So here is the next.

RECOLLECTIONS PART 02

...from my trip to Japan last year...
"Well I've been in Japan for two days now. When I arrived we went over to Dstorm's office and got to see the whole crew again. To my surprise, what did I see when I passed by Taz' Desk but Makoto Shinkai's Voices of Distant Star on DVD. Apparently it came out last Saturday. A bit late from the February 25th date I remember seeing, but that certainly didn't hurt anything. From what I hear, even before release he had 6000 preorders. Yes 6000 and he is selling it at 6000 Yen which is over $50 US. You can do the math and realize that Mr. Shinkai is probably very happy at the moment.

Anyway, The next day was the day of days. I went to Production I.G. care of Kido-san. We got a tour of studio and got to see all the phases of their animation process in action. Although he wasn't there, we got to see the desk of Mamoru Oshii. (Patlabor, Ghost in the Shell) Don't ask me why but there were guns on and around his desk. Lots of guns. We also got to see the desk of Hiroyuki Okiura. (Jin Roh) The drawings on his desk make realize that I should never pick up a pencil with intent again. He's originally from Osaka (the city in Black Rain) and although he's a really nice guy, they say that when he gets drunk his Osaka speech comes back and he can be very scary. Lightwave is of course in great use, though I saw Maya on one screen. Still the Lightwave stuff we saw was enough to make me seriously consider taking up archeology or some other less artistic profession. That was a great experience.

Today is the big event. In a major convention hall we'll be doing a show where more people have registered than we have seats. Different events will run throughout the day. I head out for it in ten minutes. When I am not on stage for my portion of the show I will be manning my own booth provided by D Strom complete with Chaos posters, where I will be selling Chaos on DVD. (I had a box shipped to their office before I left) Time to go do some good!"

There will be more recollections down the road. Even this page will hopefully be remembered as it slowly changes to the next phase...

Today is a day in the week when I do not post much, for it is a day to study. There is much to study for the understanding of the world, and of course for new subject matter for films. I like films that are grounded in hard research.

I also wanted to say that memories are very cool to have. Not just in your head. I was think photo albums, video and the like. I never did such things... ever.

It is amazing the things which pop up in your dreams if you really start to pay attention to them.

I still have yet to make this much heralded CD for my car that I have been talking about. I found more music options though. I found 3 discs which contained music from Akira, Mononoke Hime, City Hunter, Cowboy Bebop and others. I will now go through these and log that which is suitable for driving, yet not being made reckless. Maybe by the middle of next week, I'll actually have a CD made!

What am I? What do I actually do? If someone were to say to me, "Terrence, what is it exactly that you do?" What is to be my answer?

Well, after thinking about it, I am nothing if not a digital artist. If I take a MIDI controller keyboard, plug it into a sequencer module and play out through a Roland JV100 and record on a sound board like that Yamaha mixer, thus making a composition, is that not digital art? For me it is something I can only do because of the late great advances of digital technology.

I just did a manga, but does that make me a mangaka? That also was digital art. Sure I could possible do that with pens, paper and sheets of screen tones, but I wouldn't even want to. I did it with a Wacom tablet and Mirage from Bauhaus Software.(The software formerly known as Aura)

I have said that I am a filmmaker, but I don't use film. I do it digitally. I have also told people I am an animator, which I am, but I have done a lot more than that in a single project. In Chaos, I wrote music, did the voices, editing, painting, models and everything else along with the animation. Digital art.

So that's the conclusion. From this point, I shall now call myself a digital artist.

Things start to come together... early in the morning. I need to get some sleep!

Now I can certainly see why there are guys who get paid the big bucks to do roto work!

My mattes are pathetic!

They say reference is everything. More and more have I found this to be true as I continue to work on a variety of projects. Particularly when I created the military soldiers for Shadowskin and the city in World of Hartz. But what could the above image possible be reference for?

Also, I should mention that everything I do happens to be somewhat of a learning process. Even though I have two DVD titles and a manga under my belt, aside from over ten years working at a few studios, each new project brings with experimentation and experience. In this case, getting good lighting on the cheap:

I count it interesting just how easy it is for one to find what they are looking for on the web. Information is one thing. In the old days if you need a lot of info on a subject, including photo reference, you were in for a trip to the library and a day of photocopying. Now you just hit Google.com.

Even finding people is not that hard. Especially people connected with the industry in any fashion. Every once in a while A person from the past pops up and I wonder what they are dong now. Sometimes a quick trip to the web and you can find out!

As you might remember I wrote earlier that I was going through my music collection in an attempt to find music suitable for a compilation CD or 2 for listening to in the car. I am now listening to The above CD from Taku Iwasaki.

This is the soundtrack to Ruroni Kenshin OVA series, Memoirs. This has to be one of my all time favorite soundtracks. It is very much in the Media Ventures style with a traditional Japanese flare to it. Impressive stuff. Taku is also known for his moving score to "Now and Then, Here and There", and the very recent "Witch Hunter Robin".

Well, after the ordeal of getting my old mixer and everything unpacked and hooked up properly, the voice recording all got done. Not only that, but NO RECORDING TO DAT!

I have to say I truly love the world of digital technology. Thanks to the increase in quality sound cards the fact that Vaio computers come with cool software, I was able to take this mixer directly into the computer and get recording at least as good as, if not better than, anything I did on Chaos or Shadowskin using DAT. It is clean. As I wrote before, being so busy on my manga I had no time to really see what was up with this computer.

There is a remote that comes with my Vaio. I really should find out what all this stuff does...

Oh man, now this computer of mine is just absolutely cool! Yes you're about to read an over-excited rave.

I woke up this morning with the need to do a little voice recording for Tokyopop. Now you need to know, I didn't salvage every last little tool from the system which died not to long ago. I have been assuming for a long time that I would totally change the way I do audio, getting rid of my DAT recorder and mixer and going for something more like this thing:

Well, I don't have that thing yet, which means no direct to disk recording right on the mixer. This leaves me wishing I had Sound Forge.

Well, when I got this system I got it so that I could jump right into creating my manga, so I was too busy to worry about all the extra software and what not that came with it. Well now I have seen some f it, and THIS is why I buy Sony Vaio systems! This thing comes with the ability to record in a special "voice recording" mode with low noise floor, and to top it all off, it not only has a version of Sound Forge on it, it is a version which, from what I could see, is better than the one I had! Now when I saw the name, I fully expect this would Sound Forge XP or some limited version that basically records, saves and offers two or three reverb modes. No way! This has everything!

It just might be worth my time to start playing with all this extra software on here!

The image on the left is the Eye of Ra. The Chinese character on the right side of the image (shown in the Japanese word 'miru' which being interpreted means 'to watch') is used in many words dealing with sight. Pretty interesting isn't it?

Now I've discussed this stuff with people before, that is my belief in the worldwide spread of certain writing concepts and symbols. I've done a lot of research on my own. Still, people will usually say, "Oh c'mon, that's just speculation. Different cultures around the world could come up with the same way to represent an eye or a fish in writing."

Now the Chinese character for 'eye' is just the box with the double line in it, and it did descend from a drawing of an eye. Now I have no idea why there are little legs on the Eye of Ra, but how do you explain the Chinese character on the right even keeping the little legs on it?! That is but one of many examples. People could come up with the same way to draw a fish, but there are four directions you could face a fish. They all face the same way.

Now what does any of this have to do with CGI? Well, you have just received a small glimpse into my next show.

According to this website called Mouse Planet, Disney has terminated 2D animation for good.

Apparently there were major layoffs just two weeks ago and now, the article says, "The vast majority of Feature Animation's artists have been reassigned to a computer or shown the door."

It goes on to mention that the remaining artists were pitted against each other to compete for the few remaining computer animation spots on one of their features. Can you believe that?! I have to say I am sorry for those who are losing their jobs and having to go through this, but you know what? If Disney can't make money at it then they should quit! (This is not to imply by any means that money cannot be made in 2D)

A film like Wonderful Days is made for a tenth of what your recent Disney epics have been costing, and I am willing to bet it will make more in the Asian market than the last three Disney and Dreamworks 2D flops have made combined in the U.S. 2D is far from dead. Maybe it's time the torch was just passed.

Something interesting happens when you sit down and listen to 6 or 7 Yoko Kanno soundtracks back to back...

I am going through my music library trying to pull out music suitable for compilation CDs. Since most of what I have is hers, it came to pass that I ended up listen to a lot of Kanno in one sitting.

As with any project, there are always little things that end up forgotten. In this case it was character profiles. I got a call from my editor and was told that we needed to write up character profiles for the characters appearing in my manga. Moreover, they need to be written up immediately.

Well, it wasn't too much trouble since I did create the characters and know them well by now. It is done.

On another note, good progress is being made on other projects at the same time. More on that as they develop.

It's a rare thing that I might post something on a forum like CGTalk. Well, actually I hadn't ever posted anything on there that I can remember. You know, the volume and quality of the work that goes through there really says something about the state of our industry.

I see images on there constantly and am, then, amazed to find out that the creators don't have jobs working at the big studios. What this means is that the technology has gotten to the point where the low bar is being constantly raised to what the highbar was not too long ago.

It used to be that the "big guys" at the studios were so far ahead of the "guys in the garage" that there was never a possibility of the home user making anything competitive. That's not the case today! I have seen images from home users that are indistinguishable in quality from the big guys. Why is this? Well a big part of this, I think, is the major price drops in the tools. Software like Maya or Lightwave 3D can be had by nearly any artist due to the current pricing. This is not the only reason.

The software is getting better and better everyday. I remember when I worked at Rainbow Studios and we would see work done in Poser and we would laugh that somebody thought they could get by using such a tool. Lately I have seen Poser stuff that is just amazing! The other thing is that there are other tools out there, coming up fast that offer incredible power. Cinema 4D is making a name for itself and there are a couple of other, the names of which escape me, that offer powerful tools at low prices. The industry is changing. The big boys should sleep with one eye open.

There were two brothers, both professional race car drivers and competing in the same race. The younger, for reason of a vision, knew that if the older was in that race, he would, of a certainty, die. Still, nothing he could say would convince the older to bow out. As expected, the two raced. The younger took the cup, and as predicted, the older was cut short in a fatal crash.

This was the dream from which I awoke this morning, vivid as the most colorful masterpiece of cinema. Who can tell me the interpretation thereof?

Later in that same dream, I let someone borrow my Geo Metro and they were hit by a police car. It was the police officer's fault, so I would get some money, but I was still on a bicycle from that day on.

I neglected to mention that this page, now that I have ideas in my head, will be on the list of things to redo very soon. Not that I intend to totally wipe it and make something entirely new. I just want to finally get rid of some of the things I never really liked and start moving the page toward my new direction in work.

Over the long period, though, it may very well change considerable. First I will simply be laying the foundation.

Sometimes it's good to have a day to yourself to be busy on your own work. Today I was able to do quite a bit of drawing. I also came up with many ideas for the future of my webpage and the projects that shall go with them, and I even had time for a new favorite pastime of mine... Cooking!

I woke up this morning to remembrance of a dream which seemed of some importance. Unfortunately, I now realize I should have written it down even then.

While my memories are now scarce, I can say that it had to do with CG animation and video games. I remember watching some amazing CG work and a group of people playing video games and wanting to start what seemed like a big net game. I and a few others, though, had something more important to do.

This is the way life seems most of the time.

Today was a day of much studying. You could say research into the topics of my next anime. Only now did I finally flip this machine on. I found about 15 SPAM in my mailbox and one was a virus that even Norton couldn't fix.

Things are getting evil out there...

Well, I completed my first pass on my outline/treatment for my next indie anime project. I usually tend to do three passes on an outline like this. Generally it is recommended that three pass such mean breaking it up into thirds and working on a a third each day. I tend to work out the whole and revise each day until three passes are done.

I also wrote a short document on the process by which such a project should be approached. I have learned a lot since my beginnings on how to best promote a new product, or more importantly when to promote. Unfortunate as it may be, a lot of promotional type work has to be done up front. There is little way around it. That's fine with me though. It just means having stuff to show sooner is greater self motivation.

I can see why Makoto Shinkai did such a long trailer before even starting his actual production.

Once again I spent probably more time than necessary running around the world of blogs. Then again, why not? This is a day for me right?

There are some interesting characters out there in blog land. It gives you a really good idea of how small the world has become. There are those out there making their living on their sites alone. They may be scraping by, but they are doing something they really want to do.

Bauhaus Software, a San Antonio based software company, has officially announced Mirage, a revolutionary new software package for media content creation.

Their site states, "Mirage centralizes the workflow for visual effects production in film, video, broadcast, and cartoon/2D animation. Designed for projects of any resolution, ranging from HDTV and Film to web video, Mirage provides a simple, powerful alternative to expensive proprietary solutions and complex software workflows. "

For those of you who know well my work, this software is the descendent of the 2D software I have been using for years in my production, called Aura. It has come a very long way since those days and has developed into a true powerhouse of an animation tool. It is largely because of these developments that more and more my work is being done traditionally in 2D.

When you're out of the heat of things, sometimes you just have to work your schedule to be what you want. Not what somebody else wants or wants for you, but what you want.

For the last month or so I was cramming to get my manga done. Hey, we all had a lot to learn and it was a growing process. It should be that way in the future. I know what I am doing and have learned a large part of the process and the patterns. This means no more 6 or 7 days a week, all hours of the day.

What does this mean for me now? It means that I am going to take a day or two each week for me and my show, regardless of whatever else I may be working on. Now granted, I hope to at some future point go into working full time on my next project and really crank it out, but in the event that I can't do that, even one or two days a week will see that project come together and actually happen.

No more will I spend my every waking hour on other projects, forsaking my own. Otherwise, I could have stayed in the studios.

Just a little bit a day on your dream project can make all the difference. Even just one hour! I am starting to see my ideas come together.

You might remember that I once said I needed to start working on my next indie anime, even if just a little bit every day. To that end I will try to write a little bit even now.

I think it better to work on your dream project under any circumstances. If you work a day job and only have an hour here or there to work on it, don't put it off until some "great future time" when things will be easier for your project. That time may never come. When two or three years have passed that hour here or there could add up to a completed project. Otherwise there is only the consideration of what could have been.

Christopher Nolan, the director of Memento, made his first film called Following by going out on weekends with his buddies and shooting. It took over a year of weekends but they got it done. That's how you have to think if you want to see the dream happen.

So in thinking thusly, I write...

I had a myriad of corrections to do on my comic. I may have mentioned this before. No art fixes, only minor punctuation issues like adding commas or "..." and the like. Well, that is all done and out of the way now. Unless they come up with more...

Very little remains. The final cover... some preview text for the next book... Things are going along nicely.

I find it extremely odd that the word "blog" is not in the spellchecker on "blogger"...

So I ran around looking at a number of other blogs today (after all, it's not like I have a lot of work to do or anything) and I realize that most blogs post religiously! Man time a day!

Now I will grant that I was extremely busy for the past month having to really crank out those comic pages, a situation I plan to never land myself in again. Still I could certainly stand to post a lot more and from this point will do so. Well... or at least will try.

According to Animation magazine:

"DreamWorks SKG may not have any more 2D animated films in production, but they haven't abandoned traditional animation alltogether. The studio has just launched Go Fish Pictures, a specialized distribution arm that will make its bow with the Sept. 12 release of director Satoshi Kon's anime feature Millennium Actress. The film will open in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Toronto and Boston.

Tharp tells Animation Magazine Online, "The whole idea of Go Fish is just to give a movie like [Millennium Actress] time and try different marketing ideas to get the word out about it."

Go Fish's next release will be director Mamoru Oshi's much-anticipated sequel Ghost in the Shell II, slated to hit theaters during the first quarter of 2004. Like Actress, it will be released in both subtitled and dubbed versions. "One of the problems with subtitles in animation is if you have kids there under six years old, they can't read so you do need to dub them," Tharp explains, indicating that the films won't be marketed strictly to the young adult crowd that typically gravitates to anime."

...Ummm somehow I don't think kids under six should be watching Ghost in the Shell or Millenium Actress....

Slowly but surely, things fall into place. I have finally done a tiny bit of writing for my next independent anime. So far just the opening steps of an outline. There is plenty to go, but I want to start on it anyway, even if it is just a little bit a day. I see no reason to wait until September or until every little thing falls into place, because it may never fall into place and a year fro now I may be saying as I do now that I could have done something over the last year.

So it begins now with just a little outline, soon to become more of a treatment, followed by drawings and designs and then boards. A process that will eventually lead to a show.

For the first time, I am experimenting with a technique which I only mentioned a few times before in this blog. The idea of doing storyboards at video resolution, timed and ready to drop in the editor.

The plan is that the storyboard becomes the beginning of a layered composite. Since it is properly timed and already edited, more final elements simply get dropped in as they are completed and I can watch the overall show build piece by piece.

I think I may have something here...

I just had this thought: One of the lines I remember the narrator speaking in the Innocence: Ghost in the Shell trailer is that it was four years in the making. This leads me to want to speculate.

I consider what I was able to do with Understanding Chaos in one month. That was part time! Imagine if I spent four whole years working full time on a single film. It does make me wonder...

Now that "Finding Nemo" is the most successful animated film ever released in America, Animation magazine reports that Jobs has some strong negotiating power with Disney:

Jobs said. "If we can’t reach a deal with Disney, (we have) several other viable options." The current deal has Pixar and Disney splitting production costs, ownership and profits. Jobs wants a new deal that mirrors the one George Lucas has with Fox, where the studio receives a flat distribution fee for all Lucas product and no share of the profits.

Many sites are now carrying links to the new Innocence: Ghost in the Shell partial trailer. It is the first seconds of an upcoming six minute trailer soon to be released. You can find a link to that trailer from the Anime News Network.

Now as many of you know, Production I.G. has been a long time favorite studio of mine. This film brings together many of the names involved in Jin-Roh, a film which is very high on my list, and of course, the first Ghost in the Shell feature.

This one seems to incorporate some very heavy CG work. To my liking, they incorporate it well. I got a special preview treat when I was at Production I.G. about a year ago. Things were blowing me away then. The work has come incredibly far since that time. Aside from the beautiful blend of 2D and 3D (hand painted works mapped into 3D realms, and I mean hand painted on canvas by the original background artists) notice how thin and sharp the line work is. YOU SEE THAT, ROCK?! THIN AND SHARP!!!

There used to be a program called "Wordpad" on my computer. I wonder what in the world happened to it...

Well, I am keeping quite busy, though I am not on the hectic schedule associated with getting the book out. I met with Tokyopop on Monday and was happy to find that there were no art fixes required on my book, only minor type and punctuation issues. That's a relief!

I still have a lot to do! I need to really work on my schedule. I am going to commit it to paper. (or at least a notepad file) I have to organize my time better and start knocking things down. After all, I have not only have a couple of other projects in the works, I still want to get to my next indie anime project! I have had a chance to do some research on possible subject matter and it could be deep. I am excited. Still, it looks like it may not be until next month before it is actually started.

Until then, I'll be getting heavily back into Lightwave 3D (I have been doing only the manga for quite some time) to crank out these other projects. They are under NDA so I may not be able to post much of them until much later. Still, it won't be too long.

Time for me to make a list and check it twice!

Really... you gotta love Disney:

"where two years' intense work on Don Quixote was consigned to the archives because, as Tom Schumacher, their boss at the time, looked them in the eyes and told them: "What you did was too smart.""