May/ June Update

Hello patrons!  Just giving you an update as to what’s happening around here.     

Firstly, my dog of 14 years Worf was put to sleep yesterday morning.  He was blind, toothless, obese, had dementia and for the past couple days couldn’t walk, so clearly the signs were there that it was time.  Alina aka Thumbelina really helped by putting out an art sale call that really helped offset the expense of euthanizing and cremating our family member.       

Outside of Worf,   

I opened up a new Etsy shop,   

did my first freelance work in a long time shooting a band,   got a new teaching job for the fall,  

apparently licensed one of my old Mesoamerican animated videos to a British ad agency for a Mexican whiskey ad   

undertook a massive landscaping project for our backyard (tons of gravel, ripping out trees etc.)  

...but mainly, I’ve spent most of May getting video and animation projects advanced.       

Normally I work on things at a slow pace, like writing the music or script, or designing characters, or learning a tool, or filming a new segment, and it accumulates over months until they feel like they are ready to crawl out of their digital wombs.  At this point, most things are in their half-way stages, which is boring and not really ready to share.  There's stills attached to this from 2 video projects that should come out this week:

#1 a new 18+ fashion video with Hailey J dropping this Sunday for $20+ Patrons

#2 is from an animated short about radical folk singer Phil Ochs.  Phil had an incredibly interesting life, with co-founding a political party (the “Yippies”) and being deeply involved in civil rights/ anti-war protests, to getting strangled in Africa, jailed in Chile, tapped by the FBI and ultimately hanging himself after a bout of alcoholism and depression.       

He’s been a hero of mine for a long time, and even though there are multiple documentaries about him out there, I wanted to take some of the more unusual audio available on YouTube and craft a cartoon around it.  Because the audio already exists the script is basically written and it’s just a matter of editing it to a narrative.  There’s frankly disturbing audio of Ochs, in an assumed personality of ‘Luke Train’, describing how he murdered Phil (himself) because even though he had a few good ideas and wrote a few good songs, he was a boring old fart who drank too much and was no fun at parties.  

I also found a private recording of him and John Lennon goofing around with Phil’s song “Chords of Fame.”  For whatever reason- I guess because I’ve thought about it and lived with the idea for so long- that project has legs and will get done before May is over.     

In June, well there’s more to look forward to.  On June 1st I see my childhood heroes The Monkees play in Chandler Arts Center, which I can walk to from my house- then my family goes to Hawaii for 5 days.  I wanted to shoot Maggie amongst the volcanic wasteland in Kona, not realizing that it would have literal lava flowing during our time.

Instax being sent out to those $20 Patron this weekend! 

As always, thank your all your support and have a great Memorial Day weekend!