I’m a bit slow in getting word out about this, as it’s happening today, but both my puppet films: Dudley and the Toy Keeper’s Chest and Pupsock & Wendell in The Gallery of Doom are showing tonight at the event mentioned in the title.  Here’s a Green Room Orlando article about it:

http://www.greenroomorlando.com/Article.aspx?ID=1298

I’m very honored, as  my films make up 30 of the 180 minute schedule.  In additon, my puppet stars will be on display in the 1st Thursday gallery.  The whole event runs 6-9pm, with my films showing @ 7:30.  I know it’s short notice, but I hope you can make it!

The reason for my recent lack of updates is the recent birth of my second daughter, Daciana Guinevere Algermissen.  She’s been taking up most of my attention lately, one way or another.  Much to my delight

Work on the Pitch Reel is proceeding slowly but surely.  I’ve hit a period of winter inspiration, and suddenly have a half dozen different projects I want to work on, and so am having trouble focusing on just one.  I’ve whittled it down to 2 main ones, the Pitch Reel being the most important, followed closely by writing a game engine.  I also have a couple of things I want to write, and I promised a friend I’d do some motion graphics for him.

I actually have 3 games I want to write, one of which is a Pupsock & Wendell adventure game that would flow well with the brand.  Another is fairly original while still fitting precisely into a well-established genre that I think I could make some money with.  The last is a remake of a game I did in college, and I would only do that because it would be fairly simple to do and would provide a nice framework to test out my engine, and it would allow me to see how far I’ve come as a programmer since 2001.  Looking back through my old code while developing this new engine has shown me that I’ve come a very long way.

So, with all this going on, I’ve had to schedule my time pretty precisely as far as what project I’m allowed to work on on what day.  This rotation of projects allows me to actually get things done on each project, and prevents me from getting burned out on any one thing.  Tonight is tie-up-loose-ends night, where I can work on whicever project has a step that’s really close to getting finished that I just couldn’t wrap up in the allotted time slot.  So, I’m working on Pitch Reel.

This first shot (yes, I’m still on the first shot) has so many subtle things going on in it.  I’ve had to model a CG door, sandwich it between two live-action layers who’s timing has to match up, and have Pupsock open the door.  On the other side of the door is a bunch of crazy action, and some of the puppeteers and puppet equipment ended up being visible for a few frames, so I’ve been doing a lot of painting frame-by-frame, and playing with timing, and working on making the door look right, and getting the door animation right, and adding shadows, and hand rotoing Pupsock’s white hat against the green screen, and adding lens distortion to the door, and color correcting, and so on.

Looks like the latest door render has finished, so I better get back to it.

Here are the photos from Day 2 and Day 3 of shooting the Pitch Reel.

After a few days off to celebrate the new year (and storyboard), we took back to the camera and filmed the remainder of the LITTLE DREAM ENGINE Pitch Reel on January 3rd & 4th.  It was probably the most ambitious thing I could have written, given that it would have to be in front of the cameras within 10 days of my having written it, but my team pulled it off.

Tom, the Producer, started making calls and secured the three locations we needed very quickly.  He got us a movie theatre (thank you, Premiere Oaks 10 in Melbourne, FL), an old-timey Sam Spade-style office (thank you Spectre3D, Inc.) and a green screen stage (thank you, Tight Line Productions, Inc.) to stand in for the Air Ship.  This is in addition to getting craft services, DP’ing the film, getting extra crew in, and the million other things a Producer does that I don’t realize.

John Kennedy came through with all of the villain puppets, including a group of Air Pirates and a 12-foot tall Goliath to serve as the main villain (you can see him in the pictures from my previous post).  John is a very talented puppeteer, who has performed almost all of the Muppets at various times, such as Sam the Eagle in A VERY MUPPET CHRISTMAS, and Fozzie Bear in MUPPETS FROM SPACE, and has performed Elmo’s Right Hand for many years on SESAME STREET.  We became friends last year, and I got to work on a couple of his shows, and he agreed to help me out with this Pitch Reel, even performing Pupsock during the theatre shoot.

Jamie Donmoyer, who built Pupsock and performed most of his scenes on GALLERY OF DOOM, came back for the weekend shoot to lend her brilliance to the character once more.  She only had a limited time off for the holidays, and I’m honored that she spent some of it with us.

Kevin McGuire  was a big help, and a presence whom I’ve sorely missed on previous shoots.  We did so many films together in college, and then life got in the way and he wasn’t around much.  Finally he rejoined us for this shoot, having been reminded how much fun it is after having done a day on GALLERY OF DOOM and assisting me on THE SURE SHEEP.  He was there every day, took on any task we gave him, and always did a great job with a positive attitude.

One of Tom’s friends whom I hadn’t met before, Josh Malyn, swiped his fiancee’s brand new DSLR camera and was there for the whole shoot taking stills for us, and taking videos when the battery left the land of the living.  We posted the pics from the first night, as linked to in my last post, but haven’t gotten the others ones up yet, as we’re still recovering from the shoot.  I’ll let you know as soon as they’re up.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Things are slowing up on GALLERY OF DOOM, and now my company is focusing on our first feature, THE LITTLE DREAM ENGINE, and couple of other projects, most  involving the Pupsock & Wendell brand.  Right now, we’re shooting a Pitch Reel for THE LITTLE DREAM ENGINE.  This is basically Pupsock using the downtime on his latest adventure to tell investors about the movie, about me and the team, and to show them GALLERY OF DOOM and DUDLEY.  It’s a 3 day shoot, with Day 1 already behind us, Day 2 rising with tomorrow’s sun, and Day 3 soon after.  This one has a bunch of Wendell animation, and another virtual set (this one probably done with a miniature).

Here’s a link to some pictures from the first day of the shoot, where Pupsock battled a 12-foot puppet to rescue the Princess.