hello everyone,
i'm working on an art project during the month of december, as the artist in residence at 309 punk project in pensacola, florida.
this website is a log of what i'm up to in the art studio & around town. thanks for visiting :)
today i moved into the studio space at 309. the benefactors turned on a space heater in my room which caused the breaker to trip, so i had to turn it off. it's a little chilly and i'm bundled up.
i went out to get supplies after i moved in. i picked up some paints & paper & air-dry clay. the clay is not good-- it melts into flat blobs before it has a chance to dry. oops ! i'll get some sculpey instead.
i started on some of the matte paintings for the intro of the short. starry sky paintings. while painting, i listened to: 1. taeko ohnuki - romantique 2. swans - great annihilator 3. bongwater - too much sleep
here are some pictures from the studio tonight :
in the morning i walked to end of the line cafe, where i got a latte and read some pages of shadow ticket by thomas pynchon. i continued painting backgrounds for the project. since my matte paintings from
yesterday had dried, i scanned them into my computer. two layers of painted outer space color, and a field of stars, each individually painted. i color corrected them in photoshop, then bounced them over to
macromedia flash to layer & animate them. they look great, i'm really happy with it :)
for lunch, valerie brought me some spicy potato tacos from taco bell. thanks val
ian confirmed plans to fit him for accessories tonight. major elements of his costume are a helmet & a mask. i'm making the mask out of plaster gauze, so it'll fit well on his face.
but i forgot the vaseline ! so after finishing more background art work, i put on my jacket and decided to walk to walgreens 11 minutes away, to buy some vaseline. on the way there some guy touched my left foot
while i waited to cross the street. in walgreens, i had trouble finding the vaseline but an employee helped me. with this, the plaster won't stick to ian's face. i got back to the studio & cut the plaster gauze
into strips with scissors, while listening to a 1980's mixtape i got from a record store, with a jcard labeled "mix blues." the tape itself is labeled "alice." it's good, lots of things i haven't heard before.
but also common things like "the thrill is gone.
ian came over around 7 and applied vaseline to his face. he didn't shave like i asked but it ended up being okay. after 10 minutes or so of moist plaster gauze
application, i got a good mask made from ian's face. ian asked if we could watch twin peaks, but i've seen that a lot & needed something new, so we decided to watch mechanical violator hakaider, a japanese
robot action film. we set up the projector in the living room to watch it. the plot was hard to follow. it had something to do with a cyborg seeking revenge on a mad scientist who dresses like a feminine angel
man & rules over a city of cyborg servants called jesus town. it's a good japanese robot movie. after ian left i did more work on rendering the introduction.
some pictures from today:
today i woke up in time to chat with a medical professional friend via phone about some plot details. we talked for about an hour. afterwards i went to meet ian for lunch at a burrito place.
it's a chain restaurant, but they decorate with art from locals. like dave's hot chicken and many others, i'm sure. after eating lunch, i went out shopping for a long while. i still
have a lot of stuff to buy for costumes, art, etc. thanks to friend m organ i got the motivation to create a discord server just for myself, where i'll type all my ideas into organized
channels and categories. one of these is a shopping list, which i used in walmart. when i got to wal mart i went to the bathroom. i waited for a stall. the person in there was standing up
and taking a very long time, not going to the bathroom. when they left it smelled like ash and pipe gunk immolated. not like weed, so maybe crack ?
i picked up some proper sculpey clay, a bra for the mermaid outfit, some moisturiser, cheap makeup, and makeup remover. i forgot to pick up flour, which i use for paper mache. next i went
to a couple different thrift stores. i got some vhs tapes & a large piece of fabric (bedsheet) from the first, and a DVD player and more fabric from the second. next i stopped at dollar
general and purchased some sewing accessories + a disgusting canned oreo iced coffee.
arriving back at 309, i got back to work on crafting the physical elements for the project. i painted some backdrops, digitised dry paintings from yesterday, drew a new bit of flier/promo
art, sculpted some models out of foil and clay, and organized a lot of my scattered notes into the discord server. at some point val and the 309 board started setting up for a meeting in
the living room. i went out and said hello for a bit but soon returned to continue working. i took a break and played mortal kombat 2 on the pc. i listened to ingeborg bachmann poems & jpop
mostly today. at night i've been going to sleep to alice coltrane.
things are coming together. i hope i'm not spending too much time on little details. maybe i won't be able to keep up the same level of detail throughout the whole project. that's okay.
it feels good to have all my ideas and information centralized in the discord server. i was feeling really wobbly and uncertain about my organisation but everything is pretty cohesive now.
it's about 10:21 as i write this, and i'm thinking of going somewhere to organise my notes a bit more. maybe betty's ? anyway i'm going to freshen up a bit then drive over there.
pictures:
today was a really good day! but a bit tiring. for the past couple of days i've had to drive around town in the morning & i'd really prefer to just wake up in the studio and start working.
it certainly drains my battery a bit, to be out in the world shopping & running errands. but on to the good stuff ! today's the day i got to fit sable for her mermaid costume.
i woke up pretty early because my stomach was aching, around 8. i worked a bit on my notes, then packed up the necessary mermaid accessories and went to sable & beth's house. today was rainy and very cold,
not pleasant to drive in, especially not knowing the roads well.
at sable's house i chatted with her & her family for a bit, then we went into sable's clubhouse and got her into her prototype mermaid costume. everything fit well ! next step is to customize it.
we had a good time taking care of business, i think i get along with sable and beth very well. after the fitting i picked up some flour for paper mache & free cardboard.
went back to 309 & sable + beth met me there. they dj'd songs on the speaker and kept me company while i painted. sable and i showed each other old computer games we'd made.
i also baked the clay miniatures & did a coat of paint on them.
after they left 309 i went to work scanning in more art & importing it into flash. i got a basic interior scene up and running. it would help if i had access to a media player w/ rca out, so i could
record my test footage to vhs and see how it looks. i'm a bit worried about cropping, color, sharpening, resolution, flicker, & artifacts when i bounce the video to vhs and back. i'll
text 309 tomorrow about getting access to a media player.
didn't take as many pictures today, here's a few:
today i woke up around one pm, didnt open my eyes and get out of bed until around 2. i spent most of the afternoon and evening maintaining hygiene & physical health i'd been neglecting the past few days. i took a bath and a shower because i didnt want to wash my hair in the bath. i was in the bathroom for almost four hours. i listened to taeko ohnuki - sunshower, singles by Valérie Čižmárová, viewfinder by wendy eisenberg, and more while i was in there. i was right about being a bit drained, i couldnt do much today. i coordinated with val about getting a media player at 309 to dub digital video to vhs, and got another wig for a costume. otherwise just selfcare and eating, listening to music.
around 9 i went to bettys for a dance party. i went really hard in the beginning, there werent many people on the dance floor so i was zooming and spinning around the empty space. really good time. the place eventually filled out more an hour later but i was tired by then from the zooming and spinning. plus there wasnt much standing room, and im big & take up a lot of space, so i didnt know where to put my body when not dancing. i talked to ryan and she said she'd be interested in playing a part in the project. yay :)
i went back to 309 a little before midnight. i hope ive got more energy and drive tomorrow. i know i need to rest and take care of myself but im worried i could slip into a task averse state for days. i've spent too much of my life like that, sort of frozen or avoidant in the midst of projects i decided to take on. oh well, i always end up making things happen in the end.
me and ryan from bettys:
hey, things went well today. i woke up late again but still managed to get a lot done. i got out of bed around 3 & went to walgreens to get razors & shaving cream. ate breakfast/lunch at 309 and watched an episode
of house md. i started watching this series to get ideas about how to structure disease mystery stories. it looks like there are also some similarities in season one, to a plot point that comes up in my story,
which i love. cryptomnesia maybe ? i did watch this show as a kid when it started airing.
i got a lot more dialog & story points done, getting closer to a fleshed out script. i also lined up the rest of my actors for motion capture dates this week. i've got owen and ryan on monday, ian on tuesday,
sable and beth on wednesday, and emma on thursday. i consulted with emma a bit over discord about ideas related to her character. she's a big fan of a certain motion picture franchise that has some superficial
plot similarities to what her character does, so we bounced ideas off each other for a bit. "creative consultant" ! :)
this evening i painted clay miniatures some more. some of them have to be green in the finished product, but since i'm using a green screen, i've got to paint them alternate colors & hue-shift them in post.
next, using ian's plaster face cast as a base, i applied painters' tape and cardstock to his mask to create something like the ninjas' masks in ultimate mortal kombat 3. i then ripped up pages from a cheap coloring book
into strips, mixed up some flour and water, and applied the floury paper strips to the mask. it turned out really well ! i think it'll look great painted.
finally i did a similar process to a cheap cat-eat headband i got from a dollar store. i used painters' tape and cardstock to build the armature of some horns for ian's head, then applied flour-dipped coloring book
page strips to it. the horns are a bit uneven but i don't think it'll show too much after being digitized. excited to paint these horns too.
this evening i got the digital scans of some disposable camera photos i took from october to december. lots of good ones in there from our trip to AGACII in rochester, ny and our trip to noise feast in tallahassee.
here's a few pictures of prop/costume progress from today, and the last picture is one ian or owen took of me backstage at AGAC II in rochester, making the candystripe barbershop pole for baby gerald's cosmetology school:
another good day! i woke up pretty early considering my recent schedule, about eleven or so, and took another bath. i'm still not used to baths, i don't know what to do in them besides shave. the tub here is far too small for me,
and my large body displaces so much of the water that i can't have much in there. this has been good bath practice. val ordered a media player with rca-out a few days ago. it came in today, along with my capture card dongle. i still need to get some triple a batteries and a flash drive to make it work. i also need a working vcr so i can dub the edited mermaid surgeon vhs back to a digital file, once the movie is done.
today i went to see the art show that my friend coco curates in mobile, neu dawn, left here around 3. it was enjoyable & i got to see a few friends while i was there. lots of art, models in costumes, and a playlist of music. cool time :)
after the art show i went back to my room in mobile to gather a few things. pete and laurie were there watching star trek enterprise. they made french fries for all of us and i hung out for a while. we talked about penis bones in mammals, a documentary they'd been watching about a corrupt & abusive hiphop artist, and we watched a custom karaoke video a friend of pete made, for an original song by one of their old coworkers. it was nice getting to see them & jetty the dog. while i was there i picked up my pinback button maker, various costume tops and hats, another wig, some shirts to possibly paint to sell, and some chocolate. with that i drove back to pensacola.
back at 309 the folkpunk house show was almost over, just one act remained. i waded through the crowd wearing one of the costume hats i brought & holding an aldi bag full of the rest. one of the people from pigeon pit complemented the hat, said it was "the coolest hat in the world." i think i agree with that. it's a black felt cowboy hat with a little brown ornamental band. i had the hat guy at cavenders flatten it out so it's not all bendy. the hat guy called it "the wyatt earp." i like it but don't wear it at all anymore. maybe somebody will wear it for a part in the short film. anyway, i put my stuff up then made my way through the crowd toward the kitchen where i cooked a cup o noodles with the electric kettle. i had to part the crowd again to get back to my room and eat, this time holding a hot cup o noodles. i felt comical and a little important, like an organelle providing essential nutrients to some other part of a cell. "i'm sorry, cup o noodles coming through. sorry. sorry." in my room i did my shot and ate my noodles while pigeon pit played.
when pigeon pit was done, owen, ryan, and charlie came into my room. charlie got her banjo signed by one of the pigeon pit people. she took it out to show us. some guy came into the room and i asked, "who are you." i maybe should have told him i was the artist in residence, i don't know. i don't think anyone who saw the open door tonight knew what i was doing here. anyway the guy's name was dave i think, and he brought a guitar in and me, him, and charlie played 'gentle on my mind' by glen campbell. i played keyboard and charlie played her banjo. after that it got a little hectic, people kept peeking in. i should've closed the door but i was kinda frozen from all the bustle. anyway, it was a good time. i need to let the culture leak into my life a bit while i'm here even if it's a little uncomfortable. also someone came in holding a pigeon pit shirt, saying the band was trying to deliver it to a tall person with curly brown hair. i was pretty sure they meant me because no one else fit the description. but i didn't pay for a shirt so i said i had been misidentified. maybe pigeon pit was trying to give me a free shirt because they liked my hat.
i had started painting ian's mask and horns during pigeon pit's set, and continued after my friends left. they're looking good. i'm going for a fireblu look, like the doom texture. ian the fireblu umk3 ninja. i also painted some more xzverry poulaki material. at some point i went out and asked scott & lauren with 309 if they needed any help packing up, and they had me lift a table while they put a carpet under it. when i got back to my room i messed around with the media player and tv/vcr combo. i also painted a really nice little computer scene for althea's office. i need to complete a lot more paintings before the week is up.
tomorrow owen and ryan are coming over. i've gotta get up early and set up the green screen, lights, and camera. i got some pictures today of these various things. here they are:
got a lot done today. the show organizers last night turned off the heat after leaving (as they're supposed to), probably not realizing i don't have a space heater in here. so i woke up pretty cold & not wanting to get out of bed. i used a pot to cook some ichiban noodles instead of eating the cup o noodles. it was okay. not as good as the cup. i took a while setting up the greenscreen & lights, and doing some test composite shots to make sure the lighting would work with my chroma key method. everything is looking good.
ryan and owen got here around the same time to film their parts. ryan got her friend adrien to do some makeup on her & it looks great. first owen dj'd some music while ryan and i got her shots done. good dramatic poses that'll do well when composited. next i filmed owen in both outfits. i kept the shoot pretty minimal as their characters don't have a ton of screentime, but i still made sure to do a few shots where they got to goof off and smile. it was fun !
after they left, i went to walgreens to get AAA batteries and some shoelaces to hold ian's mask on tomorrow. i came back to 309 and threw together some composite test shots on my computer using the footage from today. i thought i could use either my camera's memory card or my phone as storage for this rca-out media player, but neither worked. so i didn't get a chance to dub the test shots to VHS yet. that'll be for tomorrow if i can get a proper flash drive.
finally i finished up the paints on ian's fireblu ninja mask & horns. i'm pleased with how they turned out. ian's supposed to come over during his lunch break tomorrow. he said he'll order us some food then we can eat and get to business. at night time jackie said she'll come over and play another patient.
some photos from the green screen session with owen and ryan:
had a good day today, though i lost some energy in the second half and stayed up entirely too late. I woke up way after i set my alarm for. only got up about 30 minutes before ian got here for the motion capture session. he got an extra hour off work at lunch so we could film him in front of the green screen. the shoot went well, we used all two hours and got some good, comprehensive footage.
after ian left i ate lunch, then went to buy a flash drive. now i'm finally able to record my digital video to vhs. i spent a while troubleshooting the media player. i fixed the frame bleeding into overscan but it's still a little off center. unfortunately the media player doesnt have a pan function, so its stuck there until post. it's very exciting seeing my footage on vhs.
i sat around for about an hour then ryan came over to grab the charger she forgot here yesterday. i intended to get right to art next, but ended up doing some reading about an artist that i enjoy for a few hours.
after reading, i put some finishing touches on sable's costume. while i worked, i watched serial experiments lain on the crt val let me borrow, because thats the only 4:3 series i have digital files for on my computer. i fucked around a lot and stayed up way too late. hopefully sable and beth will be fine getting a later start today so i can get some sleep. i still need to pick up some plastic wrap, safety pins, and 1-or-2 other things i'm forgetting, before they arrive. anyway, it's morning. i hear the birds.
i've got to get my sleep schedule back on track. staying up until the birds sing is not only a bad idea when i have work, but also when i'm working on an art project where i need to keep appointments with models. i woke up really late, probably 1230, and sable and beth were getting here around 3. so i got out of bed, didn't get a chance to shower, and went to get breakfast and some materials from walgreens. i had enough time to come back to 309 and set up for the photo session but not much time to do anything else.
sable and beth got here and i immediately started dressing sable as the mermaid. i asked beth to dj some music for us while we worked. she put on carseat headrest, a big career spanning mix. i turned on the crt and put on the hometape of raising arizona. beth fell asleep pretty soon. sable was pretty easy to dress and very good at acting & motion capture. she looks great :) i've attached some pics. it's like meeting a celebrity, finally seeing the mermaid surgeon in the flesh.
sable and i did motion capture for about an hour, probably from about 430-530. after we finished up, beth woke up & we all sat and chatted for a while. we waited until the early metal show at handlebar was over then met up with some people there for karaoke. sable & beth headed out early. i went in and got a non alcoholic heineken and a high rise thc. i signed up for a karaoke song, then sat alone and watched various people sing, waiting for my turn. i sang "wrecking ball" by gillian welch, did a pretty bad job. maybe an ok job. it was fun !
i said my goodbyes to everyone then went back to 309 to get to bed. was still very tired from the lack of sleep so i was out right away, didn't get a chance to type up a diary immediately. only two regrets from today, the 10th: 1) i didn't get sable to do a "chainsmoking" idle animation, and 2) beth was too tired to film a part. oh well, the project continues. emma comes over tomorrow to film dual parts as a pair of twins.
still in the habit of waking up late !!! i'll catch up soon, i hope. woke up in the afternoon, showered, then emma got here. i made emma wait a bit while i uploaded the shots from yesterday to my drive, was having trouble with my phone freezing during uploads. after this, she and i talked and collaborated on a list of shots & motions for her two twin characters, as well as the costume differences between them. we got her in her first costume & set up the green screen.
the shoot with emma went really well! she really took to heart the idea of returning to an idle position between different motion takes, to help the animation as a whole stay fluid. got a bunch of angles, emotions, and actions captured. maybe the most organized & professional shoot yet, as well as the least rushed. this might be the last shoot i can get in with a model before i start animating. i may need to use dolls/action figures/drawings/clay models for the rest of the characters, as i'm kinda out of friends that seem viable as willing models. oh well, i'll figure it out. i've still got myself and my own body to capture.
after we finished capturing emma's second character, emma & i watched some youtube videos for inspiration regarding simple sfx shots for her character. then we went to a card store (emma collects trading cards) so she could look around, and picked up a pizza on the way back. we came back to 309 and ate the pizza, watched a movie. she left here around 9. now it's 10 and i'm going to wind down for bed. it was a really successful couple of days ! :) now i've got to capture myself as kid crusader. then start animating. i'm guessing tomorrow will be another recharge day, like last friday was. i don't really make these decisions unforunately. wish i could give myself a jolt of energy. besides my own motion capture, i need to separate everyone's greenscreen footage into smaller, descriptively labeled clips. here's two photos from my day filming with emma:
today i largely spent on the computer. the couch/futon here is pretty uncomfortable. i should move my workstation to the desk soon, and switch the desk paint station to this coffee table. there's already paint on the coffee table, so i think this would be a fine paint station too. anyway, i started separating sable's animation frames out from the video. i'm using a free video software called hitfilm to key and export frames. it's not the best but i'm used to it. made a few video projects using it already, so i've got a workflow & it doesn't seem to crash. next i imported the individual frames into photoshop as layers, and cropped/edited out weird shadows. since sable's wheelchair has lots of metal and shiny plastic on it, there's some green reflections getting keyed out that i need to reinforce with some background layer painting. not too bad as her chair is stable frame to frame. it's all a lot of work but i do enjoy it. i did get frustrated a few times today but it's paying off. next time will be easier.
after spending way too long exporting single frames and editing them, i threw the frames into flash to see how an animation would do on vhs. it's not bad at all :) the vhs quality seems to smooth out any imperfections, like i was hoping. it's really nice seeing something from the inside of my mind show up on a vhs tape. i decided to use a newer (sealed) tape i got from the thrift store, since the hometape of raising arizona was pretty beat up. i can always dub the film to a worse tape later to get artifacts if i'm really feeling like it.
got a lot of rest today too, ate food. watched a little tv, house md. played about an hour of blue prince for pc, i think. it's been good here :) i hope tomorrow is okay. i'll likely wake up late again. tomorrow is the last thing i'm doing in person the rest of the month, apart from art. i'm going to val and evan's wedding reception in mobile. i hope it's a good time for everyone. i'm pretty timid and don't talk much. here's a picture of some raw chromakey results in a folder on my desktop, plus a picture of the sable test footage dubbed to vhs, and my original concept art of the mermaid surgeon, althea:
today was a saturday. i woke up in time to shower before the wedding, piddle around in the studio, and get made up & dressed. i got to the wedding on time & sat alone for a while. i ended up talking to some people but mostly kept to myself. i made sure to tell val & evan how grateful i am for them, and congratulated them. i waited all day to eat and then ate a bunch of wedding food. i hope i wasn't walking around with food on my face all night. it was really good food. also had a coke & some non alcoholic beers. danced a bit to the wedding band which was very good. i don't go out in mobile much so it was my first time seeing some people in a long while. i had some awkward encounters that i handled the best that i could. i'm really not good with people & behave rather strangely. overall had a good time, happy for evan and valerie. :) here's a couple pictures from the moments when i was sitting and eating alone depicting a bug on the table & a selfie:
today was sunday. my second sunday here. it's now two weeks i've been in the studio. half way through. i've got a lot done but a lot more to go. maybe it's because i did my shot late, but i didn't have a productive day at all. not feeling like i could do anything. maybe just needed a rest. anyway, the only progress i made on the project today was some rgb noise texture i generated-printed-scanned. i then tested out these textures on the walls and celings of the interior scenes to see how it'd look. i'm happy with it. a lot of my painted pictures are lacking in texture after being scanned & dubbed to vhs, so i figured i should have something to make them pop a little more.
but yes, i am worried about running out of time. i was in a task averse state almost all day, and it made me pretty stressed. i still need to put the finishing touches on alex bald knob jr's jcard for the upcoming urglehorse release. just having trouble getting started, like with the first pass of the art. i will do it tomorrow, if my brain allows it. i get very frustrated by my fluctuating functionality. it's been this way my whole life. doing things is difficult sometimes. anyway, i watched a lot of house md & had more ideas for props, settings, and dialog. played a lot of generation one pokemon on fast forward. it's 1:30am now and i'm starting to get tired. i'm going to keep doing nothing until i go to bed. it feels good to know i'm winding down. today has been stressful. i hope i can get things done tomorrow, as i've rested a lot today.
got nothing done. watched tv and played minecraft. couldn't do tasks, couldn't even imagine getting started on them. this specific problem has sabotaged so many of my endeavors. oh well. hopefully i can figure out a way out of this funk. here's a picture of my obscenely overpopulated chicken farm, and an instax picture valerie's friend nicky(sic?) took at the wedding saturday:
had a better day. i could actually focus on things & take action. took too long getting out of bed. need to get better about that, as i have a lot of work ahead. ate at end of the line cafe, got a burger and potato salad. it was really really good. :) talked with alex on the phone about the art for his cassette, made a few drafts in photoshop. he was happy with what i did. i think talking with alex helped a lot. i think my adhd/productivity-problem gets worse when i don't talk about it, or when i'm feeling isolated. and i get isolated during big projects because i push everyone away out of necessity. writing in this journal about it probably helps too. anyway, i was glad to talk to alex and help out with the album art.
after eating & doing some work on the cassette jcard art i finally got back to editing animation frames for sable's mermaid character. i put the anime 'nana' on the crt & worked on the computer. got a lot of frames edited. it's getting easier. i drove to mojo's chicken & vape store around midnight and got lost on the way back, missed a turn. a cop pulled me over for having a tail light out. that's the first time i've been pulled over in about ten years. the cop was nice to me. he was young. he let me go with a verbal warning. i should replace the tail light.
so yeah, today went better. hopefully tomorrow i'll still have some momentum & can knock out the rest of sable's sprite edits. i need to be finished with the sprites by about friday, so i can finally animate. the animating will go quickly, flash is easy and i know what i want to do. plus everything is already drawn out or photographed. things are coming together. i feel better, for now.
another okay day, as far as art progress goes. still having trouble with staying on task. it's hard to get excited about all the busy work i created for myself. still getting through it, nonetheless. just moving slowly & feeling bad about that. the day of the premiere is closing in & that feels a bit pushy. i don't like deadlines. luckily i've got complete creative control of this, so whatever the finished product ends up being, is up to me. watched more anime, nana, while i worked.
around nine i went out to the handlebar. met ryan, sable, and beth there. had a really good time. i sang two songs, rauch haus song by ton steine scherben & ue wo muite arukou by kyu sakamoto. i like singing along to those songs on my own time so i think i did pretty well. a couple people in the audience were complimenting me on my hair and my shirt when i got on stage for the first song. i didn't know what to say so i crouched down and put my hands over my head, like during an elementary school tornado drill. outside the bar by the smokers i had some good conversations. at one point sable carried me around. i'm very tall and heavy so it was a unique experience, i haven't been picked up in decades. i've included a picture of this below.
i walked to and from the handlebar & filmed some b-roll footage along the way. when i got back to the studio i messed around with davinci resolve, trying to use it for image stabilization. it didn't do much. i also used photoshop to process the footage. found some better methods for reducing color pallet & adding dithering. the only problem with photoshop for this purpose is, it will only process 500 frames per project. so at 3 minutes long, a video clip gets reduced to less than 10 frames per second. so i'll need to reduce the length of filmed b-roll footage. also, since i'm forced to squish the footage vertically and horizontally on the media player, i'm getting a noticeable moire pattern on the dithered video. i think i'll need to render any live footage at half resolution to avoid this kind of artifact.
woke up with a bad stomach ache. that's usually a good thing, apart from the bad health omen of it all, as the discomfort helps me wake up earlier than usual. however, upon waking up with the cramp today, i stumbled out of bed half asleep, and while avoiding the cardboard props set up against the wall next to my bed, i stubbed my left big toe very, very hard on one of the legs of the metal bed frame. horrible way to wake up. it took me a few minutes to notice the extent of the injury, as i'm not super sensitive to pain. my toe was bleeding from the nail, the nail had been cracked in half a couple millimeters down the middle, and the nail folded back and bent on the left side of the crack. it felt like i'd been attacked by someone else, but it was me. i did this by not waking up properly before walking. this sucks. friend nemo called me right after it happened & we talked for a while. it's his birthday today, he's 35. it was good to hear from him.
anyway, had another day of nothing. i ate pizza, listened to music, generally rotted around the studio. at one point a facebook noise music acquaintance named patrick from wisconsin messaged me with an idea for a collaboration. i improvised for about a half hour then sent him the best things, an organ improv, a monologue about accidently sending myself to hell, and a description of how i cracked my toenail today. later on he sent me a mix using my contributions. interesting stuff, i'm looking forward to seeing how he uses it.
so yeah, another kind of bummer day, but still okay. i made some stuff & got a lot of rest. i can't help but feel guilty for spending any prolonged amount of time not working on the short film. i sometimes wish it were possible for me to take adhd medication, but i've come to learn that's not the solution for me. i think however this project goes will inform how i proceed with art in the future. i've learned throughout my life that i don't do well with structure, and don't have much capacity to impose it on myself. so maybe tomorrow i'll just do whatever. forget photoshop, forget editing frames & video. just do anything at all related to the project checklist i have. uh oh but "just do anything" is structure too. oh well, i'll see how it goes. before i started this project, someone asked me how i was feeling about it. i said "i imagine it will be a complete disaster, just like everything else in my life right now. i'm going to at least attempt to have fun with it." so yeah, it's been fun. can't let the dread over my neurological shortcomings color the story too much. i'll include a link here to the picture of my bloody toe, but i won't embed it. if you click on this link you will see my bloody, hairy toe. it's not pretty. don't click the link. i'd post something else but there's really nothing new to show from today. cheers !
and just like that, i got a lot done ! i woke up around noon, which is the exact time i set my alarm for. made a can of soup for breakfast. drank some water with caffeine squirt juice (you know the kind i mean) added, then took a shower. i felt great, was clear minded, and knew what i had to do today. i got an additional coffee from end of the line cafe then came back to the studio to work. i spent a couple hours finishing up a draft of the jcard for my friend alex's cassette release. really happy with what i did & he is too. got more adjustments to make & i still have to finish the other side.
i put on the anime nana on the crt again and got to work on cutting out the rest of sable's sprites. went really well, i worked without stopping & enjoyed myself while i did it. it only took a few hours. i could've done this so easily, but i put it off all week like it was some kind of torturous game i was being forced to participate in. oh well. that's just how my mind is sometimes. that's how i deal with work, even if it's work i *should* want to do. so yeah, i met my deadline, roughly. i still need to select frames from other character's capture sessions, but they won't be nearly as laborious to finish as sable's reflective metal wheelchair. so much green on that reflective metal wheelchair, it rendered the greenscreen basically useless. i had more luck plucking out individual frames & using photoshop's "remove background" tool, than i did chroma keying the frames with my video editor. the other characters should go by quickly. i'll do those tomorrow & continue laying out more scenes in flash. i feel very relieved to have had a good day. i needed it.
after i finished up all those frames, i went to betty's and got a single nonalcoholic guinness beer & chilled out there. read things on my phone. i was going to go to the handlebar for one of their thc drinks but there was a show there, and they closed right after the show. so i walked an extra ten minutes to betty's. on the way to betty's i spotted someone lying on the ground & got scared, they were lying in the bushes next to the road. i guess they heard me & said something, or otherwise vocalized. i started walking more quickly. i hope they're okay. i get scared by people very easily, even when i'm not alone on a strange street after midnight. i felt guilty for not having a blanket to give them. they weren't there when i walked back.
when i got back to the studio, i listened to some newly leaked performances by danzig's misfits from 1977 when he played keyboards. the songs were posted to youtube an hour before i saw them. i was a big fan of the misfits' songs as a kid and i've still got some of that love for them left over. it was great getting to hear songs by them i'd never heard before. lots of my interests are leftover from childhood. i tend to put some of those old interests into my art because they make me happy. i don't think there will be any danzig or misfits in the short film.
after listening to the misfits music, ripping it from youtube, and separating the tracks into labeled mp3s, i started work on the custom font for the intertitles (ish) of the short film. earlier today i found an in-browser service for making pixelated fonts called fontstruct. it did exactly what i wanted it to do. i spent a good few hours creating a fascimile of my loopy handwriting style. i'm pretty happy with what i did. still need to revise some letters & add some punctuation marks i missed. now it's 7am. i'm barely tired but i'm going to go to bed now.
today was really good. i'm guessing the reason i did so well was due to the large dose of caffeine. if so, that means my tolerance has gone up as a result of this large dose, and i won't be able to replicate today's success as easily going forward. i have a problem with caffeine. i'll drink a lot of it often, trying to have good days free from my brain problems. sometimes it works. long term it leads to less sleep & more brain problems. i'm happy that it worked today. here's some pictures of what i did on the computer:
today went really well. i woke up super late, about four, because i stayed up all night, til the birds started singing, working on the font. i drank more of the caffeine squirt juice with water when i woke up, and ate a can of soup and a bowl of ramen noodles that i cooked in a bowl with the electric kettle. not as good as the cup o noodles, shin ramen spicy flavor. the vcr came in today so i spent a few hours getting my setup working, dialing in the stretch of the media player, etc. finally got to dub some footage to vhs. it's all looking good. i'm not, though. i stayed up way too late last night. too much caffeine. didn't eat enough. seeing myself in the mirror was rough, i could tell i'd lost weight & got some darker circles under my eyes. i'd been doing so well for so long, gained a bunch of weight. oh well. i'll try to eat more for the rest of the week.
around 8 or so, my friend jackie came over. i met her a few months ago when i went to karaoke at the handlebar. she's really nice & likes some old country music, too. i was going to get her to play a patient for the short film but she was too busy too film a part. we hung out for a while, listened to songs, played music on my guitar. as it got later i got really hungry. she treated me to whataburger. we both got patty melts & fries. when we got back to the studio, we took turns showing each other songs. she showed me some performances by lenny breau, a fingerstyle guitarist, and a more obscure player named rick jones (i think?) doing a really impressive rendition of the entertainer by scott joplin. i showed her a few things too, like 'oh by jingo' by spike jones and the city slickers, and 'arms of mary' by leo kottke. she went home & i continued working on the animation. things are going pretty well. i feel like i'm roughly on time. going to keep working at it tomorrow. less than a week left now until the premiere. here we go.
woke up late again today. about 4 again. went out to get some energy drinks at the circle k. buy 2 get one free monster. 2 blue flavor & 1 classic sugar monster. came back, drank one, and started working on the animation. i messed around a bit too, but found it easier to focus today. i'm getting into a flow, and when i feel like i'm getting distracted or losing momentum, i open minecraft at the same time, and kind of tab back and forth between the animation and the game. it's going pretty smoothly and i'm not wasting too much time. in minecraft i am building a tower to heaven out of cobblestone. a skyscaper. does not take much creativity but helps me feel ok, i think it must be the repeitition of the process. i took a shower at some point. felt really good. i think that helps keep me focused too, maybe the hot water gives my brain endorphins or some such chemical. anyway, i'm making good progress. i've finally got a few sequences done, in a preliminary way. might still adjust the duration of some certain actions, and how long the text stays on the screen. not much else to report. just working on the animation & playing minecraft. things are coming together. i feel like i should probably stop adding so much detail. like, i should sketch out the scenes i have left as i go on, making sure the gist of the dialog & character actions are there, then go back and add finer graphical details & visual flourishes. just in case i crash again and have a bad day. here's a few stills that don't give too much away, from one of the first scenes, dubbed to vhs & ripped back to the computer:
i went to bed this morning around 9. valerie texted me in the morning before i fell asleep, checking to make sure everything is on track. i replied that it is. i confirmed that she'll be playing a drum in the live band for the premiere. that means if everyone can make it, we'll have ten people in the improvising orchestra. i do hope i'm on track to finish this in time. as it stands i've got everything captured & written, i've just got to put it together on the screen. that's been the most stressful part so far. there's no one here to keep me on track so my mind wanders a lot. i do feel more now than in the past 21 days, how soon the premiere is. the scope of my project is pretty large. it's basically a cartoon with live actors, and lots of dialog. and a font i designed on my own. taking into account costumes, props, coordinating actors, filming, and sitting and editing everything myself, it is a lot for one person. i worry i'm getting carpal tunnel or tendonitis from bad posture while using the computer here. my hands are starting to hurt a bit.
after i woke up (around 2, meaning i got about 5 hours of sleep) i went to mojo's and got a burger. it was really good. the seasoned fries were very tasty. i should eat a salad soon. or anything at all that's healthy. i came back and started drawing more backgrounds and digitizing them. i did not take my own advice at all. i'm adding a lot of detail. oh well, i guess i just have to do what i can. just a few days ago i wasn't able to do anything. i'm still spending a lot of time idling, not able to complete tasks. but i'm doing better than i was & things are coming together. i think the joy of finally seeing my art on vhs helped a lot. here's a screenshot of something i made today:
today was good. i'm still having trouble in general but that's nothing new, if you've been reading this you know the deal by now. i woke up a little after four. i drove to get food as quickly as i could while there was still daylight. i don't want to risk driving at night, i still haven't replaced my tail light. i came back and ate. started work on a scene featuring owen. spent a lot of time digitizing & adding little details to the background. also spent a lot of time cleaning up his frames, getting the green removed from around his edges & shadows. it's a lot of work. at some point i'm going to have to stop being so meticulous, so that i finish the film on time. i'm aiming for about 15-25 minutes of runtime, and i've got 3 right now. and it's technically wednesday morning as i write this. christmas eve. i am glad i'm spending it like this, as i don't have any family to celebrate it with.
i find myself getting very frustrated with modern technology, as i finally sit down to put this together. nothing seems to work as it should. firefox keeps logging me out of everything, even though i've never told it to. so i'm forced to look up passwords or reset them. i see irrelevant/ai-generated search results & images when i look up references on google. photoshop has a little context bar that always gets in the way, moving on its own, and i only now figured out how to pin it in place. youtube videos autotranslate their subtitles into russian. searching for files in the windows start bar, it suggests bing search results. computers have more memory and processing power than ever but some of these programs and environments frustrate me a lot. the old technology isn't great either. i'm using an old version of flash. i saved all my keyed animations as gif files with transparency. for some reason, when i import them into the flash timeline, the last frame contains the frame before it stacked below it. i can't figure out why, and duplicating the last frame in photoshop before exporting doesn't seem to solve the issue. i'm also continuously frustrated by the amount of noise in this room. other people in the house are very loud when they so much as walk. it's not their fault. just a loud house. then there's the train that comes by, and people walking by on the street and talking. it's all so overstimulating. i finally charged up my noise cancelling earbuds and put them in. it helped a bit but i also don't like the sound being so close to my head, the earbuds hurting my ears after prolonged use, and the fact that i can't hear with them in.
i dubbed everything i have to far to vhs before writing this. it helps me seeing part of the finished product. it does look really good. these diaries will probably get more boring for the next 5 days. that's all that's left. just me sitting on a computer, listening to music, trying to stay on task, struggling to find time and means to eat, getting frustrated. no more friends popping in to say hello. just cramped up next to a screen. it'll all be worth it i know. making art sucks sometimes. it's a lot of work. i do enjoy it though, i can't seem to do anything else. here's a photo of part of a background i made today:
woke up around 2 again. my waking schedule has been 2pm or 4pm-9am for most of my recent memory. it's okay. i had one of my most productive days in a while, today. christmas eve. i woke up & got some noodles, cheap food, and energy drinks from walgreens. basically just grabbed anything that was easy and on sale. trying to get my weight back up, i've been struggling to find the energy to properly feed myself for a while. i came back to the studio and got right to work. i finished up a scene featuring owen, and made many more assets for the backgrounds & characters. i do worry that i'm behind and won't be able to include everything i had initially planned on including. i'm still including too much detail. i included an original song (lyrics only) for owen's scene. i made a very detailed background for the hospital exterior. i created a claymation octopus character with armature & captured it via stop motion, at like 2am. i had planned on cutting corners, but this seems to be the only way i can work. oh well, that's how it goes.
my hands are starting to hurt from all the mouse usage. i don't wanna use a computer for at least an entire month after this. i'm tired of doing digital art, it's becoming quite a detriment to my posture & joints/tendons. i really need to lock in these last few days, as i don't have much time left. around 5am, after spending a lot of time generating graphics & editing scenes, i finally made an index of everything i need to animate. it shouldn't be too bad going forward, as i've finally digitized most of the backgrounds. but i'm sure i'll get sucked into hours of creating detailed art & lose some of that headway. tomorrow is christmas, but it's just like any other day for me. a couple pictures of things i did today:
had a good day today. i woke up early with a stomach ache again, around one i think. i'll be improving my diet from here on. i couldn't bear to do much. i think it might've been the protein drinks i bought on christmas eve, i checked and theyve got a ton of sugar. oops. had like three of those. after my stomach ache mostly subsided, i started getting ready to go see the christmas show at the handlebar. my friend todd was playing, and they serve thc seltzers there which i thought my help with my extreme nausea. i got there a bit early and talked with jenny and todd for a while. ian met me later. he brought me dinner from his family's christmas, macncheese and fried chicken drumsticks. todd got joe up on stage for a few songs, like "pondscum" and "born again without a brain again." they also covered "there ain't no santa clause on the evening stage" by beefheart. after todd played, i said goodbyes, jenny took an instax selfie with me. ian gave me a ride home. i got home around 10 i think. then i stayed up til 7am editing the short. here's a pic of todd playing, and my last week's lastfm report:
i'm writing this on january 1st, 2026. if you're reading this, thanks, and also, why are you still checking this site ? lmk. so yeah, i had a great few last days. i woke up pretty late on december 26. around 5pm i think. nothing too terribly interesting that day, just kept working on the film. i finally photographed myself for the role of kid crusader. i was really happy with the two costumes i wear as her, the striped dress + umk3 fireblu ninja mask and then the bonnet + black dress. at nighttime sarah + morgan helped me get some food from jordan valley palestinian restaurant. it was really good, i got the chicken schwarma. it's a bunch of rice + chicken with tzatziki sauce on the side. and i didn't know this, but they put their sliced/fried pita bread in the dish too. that's my favorite part of the lentil soup so i was really suprised and happy that it was in the schwarma too.
i'm just going to combine the last five days into one post, as it felt like one big day for me. i didn't sleep between december 26 & 27. i spent the whole time on the computer. i started downloading music documentaries, and watched those while i worked. i watched the judee sill documentary while eating the jordan valley & working on the project through the 26/27. i'd pull up the documentaries on the crt through the media player and mostly listen while i worked. i also watched heartworn highways again. the night of the 27th i watched one called soundtrack to a cout d'etat, about how the usa used jazz music as anti-communist propaganda. this one was harder to listen & absorb because a lot of it was told through soundbites of foreign politicians who spoke in their native languages, and i didn't want to break away from my art programs often enough to read the subtitles. i actually watched it twice, trying to absorb it more, but didn't get very much. that's for another time, then.
on the night of the 27th, i finally exported and edited together the whole film, and found that the resulting mp4 was over my alloted runtime for the project. i wanted 25 minutes maximum, or thereabout, and had quite a few minutes more than that. so, i ended up cutting out dialog wherever i could, stuff that was for flavor or a bit redundant, dialog that didn't contribute to the overall themes. since this is a silent movie, i had to display each bit of text for around 6-10 seconds, depending on the bit's complexity. that adds up quick when telling a story. i also ended up cutting out the minute-long scene of althea rolling on her chair through pensacola, on the way to work. again, a bit redundant & doesn't contribute to the overall plot. i also shortened up the end scene that takes place in great britain. i did want more screentime for lord & kid crusader but also tried to remember that pacing the film was very important. also, i didn't produce one of the last scenes, where emma's character visits the surgeon to blackmail her into healing her sister. it felt a bit redundant to include also, since it didn't fit with the momentum of the plot, which was about to end, as well as the aforementioned runtime limitation. despite it not being resolved, i kept in the first scene from emma's plotline as a glimpse into other things going on in the world of this film. i also reference the fate of her character in a later scene where althea is on the computer. so it still fits thematically for me.
also! will fawcett stopped by the studio on the night of saturday, the 27th. he thought the premiere was that night. he was a whole day early. luckily it was just him, so no one else's time was wasted. i showed him around the studio for a little bit, the green screen & painting area, and the editing area.
i finally dubbed the finished cut of the film to vhs on the morning of the 28th. i was on a lot of caffeine during the 26-29, and didn't get to bed for a long time. i think i finally fell asleep around 8am. so i was up from 5pm december 26 until 8am december 28. a total of 39 hours. that's pretty unhealthy, and i definitely didn't feel 100% the next day. i used to pull allnighters like that more frequently when i was younger. i actually didn't feel horrible after that long, but i did feel guilty for doing that to my body & mind. i did notice some slight paranoia set in during the last day, shadows catching my eye in my periphery, so i'm glad i didn't stay up any longer than that.
i woke up around 3, so that's 7 hours of sleep after 39 of being awake. i went right to the bathroom to shower. val and evan got there, i think that's why i woke up. i showered pretty quickly, didn't mess around. i made some ramen noodles after i got cleaned up & kept trying to eat them as it got closer to showtime, but ended up eating only about half. val didn't want to play the movie off the vhs tape, so i converted it into an mp4 for her media player. at some point i did my shot, with the door to the studio open so people could talk to me. i remember at one point evan asked a question about the live score, and i told him "hold on i have a needle sticking in my bellyfat." ryan got there soonafter and valerie made her sit on the porch. i eventually wrapped up what i was working on & she came to hang out in the studio. i changed into the bonnet + black dress 1859 outfit. i started putting on my lipliner but more people got there. i think owen might've got there first. then parthenogen & ian. morgan and sarah got there too & hung out in the studio. morgan let me play with a tangle fidget toy which was very cool.
i didn't wanna guide the improvised live score too much beforehand, but i still made a list of three things to think of while playing & made sure most of the musicians saw it. i've included a picture of this below. a lot of people showed up to the screening, most were people i knew but a few, i didn't. i said hello to everyone. pete was there, he shaved his head & i didn't recognize him. he looks great but a little more masculine & intimidating, to me. i made sure to tell him he looks hot. me & the other 5 musicians, evan, valerie, ian, owen, & parthenogen, set up right near the screen. i sat on the floor with my melodica and casio. val gave a nice intro where she talked about 309 & what i've been doing, etc, then started the film. the media player she bought has a quirk where, if you've recently watched the video, it'll resume where you left off with a little option to restart or continue. i found it really annoying. that's part of why i wanted to watch it off the vhs tape. but i didn't protest enough, oh well. anyway, it started during the 3rd scene and i immediately & loudly said "nooo valllll! noooo! that's spoilers". she figured it out pretty quickly & the film started.
the live scoring went really well. things seemed to flow naturally & all the musicians played off & responded to each other well. people seemed to enjoy what i made, which was nice. one audience member whom i didn't know told me the work reminded her of suzanne treister, a british artist. i've still not checked her stuff out but will soon. talked to a lot of people after the show ended & they had nice things to say, too. i stuck around for a while talking to people. i think everyone was out of there by about 730. it was nice seeing mandie & charlie, i'm happy they came. coco & jenny & mar came as well, they made nice posts about the event on social media which i appreciated, and coco got a photo of us together on her screenless digital camera. haven't seen that yet. the only regret i have about the show, and project as a whole, is that i didn't test footage on the projector sooner, accounting for all the people in there. the projector was set up projecting from the top to the bottom of the projector screen. the only problem was, there were so many people sitting in rows of chairs, all the way up to the screen almost, so people's heads were getting in the way of my subtitles!!!!!! i could see ian's head and another audience member's head on the bottom of the screen when i'd look up. if i could change anything about the project, i would've played it from vhs to avoid the "continue???" debacle, and also i would've told val to shrink the picture a little and project it higher up, so that everyone could read. thinking back on that really makes me upset, i hate that people in the back couldn't see what was being said.
anyway, sarah and morgan treated me and ryan to steak & shake after the show. our waiter was quite a character. he had all these gags prepared. my thoughts said he was doing this to get better tips but idk. he had a couple props with him, i know one was "the world's smallest violin." got a steakburger with garlic butter there. really tasty
i went back to the studio & stayed up pretty late. i worked on syncing up the vhs with a recordiing of the livescore will sent me. i got on neader/deepcut/turntable later with some online friends. i think it was bbbrooklyntronic, afatalcure, asgromo, based extremist 69, sntrlsn, and myself. maybe one more ? i stayed up doing that until 5am, playing minecraft at the same time.
the next day was the 29th. my last full day there, and i slept through most of it, til around 5 again. i woke up and ordered jordan valley again. right when the delivery driver was getting there, some visitors came to 309. it was scott and lauren with the organization + a lady who used to live in the studio room when it was a punkhouse, and her kids. they asked to see the room. i was wearing my dressing gown with my hair up. i looked a mess. it was fine, i hope they enjoyed the visit.
i ate the jordan valley & started packing up. i also made a few copies of the movie as an mp4 on mini-cd, printed out and cut out artwork for the minicds. i included on these cds the movie, a png copy of the minicd cover artwork, and a pdf of this website up til the 25th. i made three copies. i spent some time making a big "archive envelope" out of hard, thick art paper. used the rest of my tape making this. i put all the painted & drawn art that could fit in this envelope, anything pertaining to mermaid surgeon. i actually left out the computer painting & hid it somewhere in the 309 house. who knows when it'll be found. maybe never. i sealed the homemade envelope up with more tape, wrapped it in seran wrap, and taped one of the minicds to the front. then i wrapped the whole thing in saran wrap & applied the "archive form" to the outside with painter's tape. i've attached a picture of this below.
i stayed up all night again. watched some shows, played more minecraft. watched the movie a few times through, with soundtrack. before i knew it, morning came. i needed to be out by ten, but i took my time loading everything out to the car. i was actually around 20 minutes late moving out, the cleaning people got there right at 10. they waited for me to be done. oops.
so yeah, that's it! i had a great time working on mermaid surgeon, overall. it was super cool having this idea, then seeing it through to the end. and i had a blast involving different friends from the pensacola area, and getting to stay in the area & attend events during my residency. pensacola has a lot going on compared to where i usually live. i'm very proud of the end result & excited to share it online. i also want to make more minicds, or perhaps dvds, and have them available. i don't feel too bad about the days i spent unable to complete things. i expected there to be some hiccups in my productivity. as i mentioned earlier, i've always worked this way. i go through hell for a while after the intial rush of discovery & creation wears off, but i get my motivation back enough days in the second half, to do everything i need. that's the pattern. it helped having the project so public through this blog, not only did it keep me accountable, but a few people were supportive & reached out because i was expressing what i was going through on here. i'm waiting on a friend to master the audio of the livescore, then i'll sync that version up with the film and post it to youtube & this site. i'll update again whenever that it. cheers ! -fp
hey, the movie is here ! i got my friend nemo from delta sound studios in nola to mix, master, and doctor the live soundtrack performance.
here's the soundtrack on the goomer bandcamp.
here's the font i made for the project, tinatype, in ttf format.
and here's the movie:
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