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Previous News
05.27.06
* Uncle Ray
& his agent going for CGI 'pitch' ? I assume you heard .... Harryhausen Presents Mindfire
Productions. Mark A. Altman is "CEO" of Mindfire Entertainment (website). I am all for B-movie
genre, retro, nostalgia, etc., but IMO, at first glance, Mindfire
does not seem the right venue for the caliber &
legendary status of "the" Ray
Harryhausen.  The press releases say Mindfire
will be using all CGI but in the
"spirit" of Stop Motion? I do not know
Altman; only hearsay. Obviously, you and I know
that, only the aesthetics
& style of real
Stop Motion would do justice to
the Harryhausen legacy. I can tell you
though, with the impatient "suits",
who mostly reject Stop Mo; one of the
reasons might be that it takes time
to get a talented
Stop Motion crew together and especially
one that is "Harryhausenesque capable".
With CGI, it is somewhat of a "Plug'n
Play" crew. The skillsets
for Stop Motion much more difficult
to locate the talented artists that
still do it or are familiar with the Stop Mo production
workflow. I can understand the economics & fast
turnaround of using CGI, but it is soooo
antithetical to the true art/craft
of Stop Motion. IMO, if
one is going to honor & pay
homage to Stop Motion,
just use the fricken real
Stop Motion technique. Seems
like a no-brainer to me. We "Luv Ya"
Uncle Ray, but Caveat Emptor. P.S. Also read Nick
Hilligoss' insightful comments Edit 05.27.06
* Celebrity
Deathmatch Reborn .... premieres June 10th, MTV2 network. I just saw teaser clip of new version; Paris Hilton vs. Nicole Richie (QuickTime). Much more clean &
polished look. I wonder if that will "add to"
or "take away" from it. Not sure. Some may have
liked the rougher quality of the older CDM.
Cuppa Coffee in Canada did this re-incarnation. If you
have any spare time, here is the story of CDM. Includes clips
of some older CDM shows (scroll down
that page & click on the 'numbers' on left of show
titles).
* What
Happened to 'Stop Motion Centennial Celebration
2007' ? You noticed, I deleted my
previous blog about it. I just found
out, that letter about the celebration,
which was anonymously sent to me, seems to be a special
invitation only for certain
participants. The letter
not intended for public
viewing. Of course, I did not know that. I was
attempting to get people buzzed about
it. I wrote to the people behind the event, "to
explain" but they did not reply. In hindsight, with
all the big names listed in that letter,
it seems to good to be true if this Stop
Motion Shindig will ever happen. You
would assume that they might also invite or notify some online
animation mags or 'key' stop motion
websites? Well, they did contact Anthony
Scott (SMA.com). Remember, especially the Internet,
do not believe everything. Perhaps I sound skeptical.
We will have to just wait &
see  Edit 05.27.06
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05.20.06
* Clash
remake, Coraline-Focus, Aardman-Distribution, Mike
Johnson-CGI, Flushed Away Trailer, WDRE Director Dies
....
Good ol' Uncle Ray a hard core
Stop Motionist to the bone. He's polite but does
not always endorse CGI Harryhausen Disses Clash Remake .... Laika has distributor for Coraline, division of Universal Pictures, Focus Features .... Maybe Aardman sees Dreamworks'
USA, weak support of Stop Mo?
The UK studio doing it themselves now Aardman Ventures Into Distribution .... Hmmmm, going over to the
dark side? I guess, one has to pay the rent Mike Johnson to direct CGI feature .... Dreamworks/Aardman sterile
looking CGI Flushed Away Trailer online .... Just past away When Dinos Ruled Earth, Director
Val Guest.Edit 05.23.06
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05.13.06
* The Return
of LIO (producing Stop Mo) .... Ongoing and inbetween my real
life and that can be mundane. To all of you who
transmitting this silent energy pressure upon me (why
don't you start doing Stop Mo,
or blog, or post at SMA.com, instead of you just lurking &
reading?), I am sort-of buying time, and
putting online, some of the old stuff I
did. Unfortunately, it seems much of the early
Super 8 is lost and only some of it was home
brewed/poor man's transferred years ago,
to video. Last few months in the SF
Bay Area, we were swamped with
almost non-stop rain. Some of my garage
basement fell victim from gutter pipe leak that goes into
garage and out an underground drain, close to where I
store bunch of stuff. The Super 8 Aftermath Devastation. I opened up the plastic reel cans
and moisture ruined the film resulting in the emulsion
being all mushy-syrupy and sm eary. I just kept pulling the film
off these few reels and nothing salvagable. I do not know
how water got "inside" the can or maybe it was
humidity. I am not that disappointed
and do not have emotional attachment. It
was all early stuff and rough (like the
UFO saucer & alien clips); just more practice
animation tests of bare armatures and some early puppets,
front projection compositing tests, etc.. I look
forward to the "present" and new
stuff and to now fulfill all those nostalgic
retro, Harryhausenesque-like scenes lurking in
my mind and finally bring them to reality
with hella better and cost effective technological
'puter tools, and my more advanced creative
sensibilities and technical skills  .
I know .... you probably were curious at looking
at old stuff. Whatever is left or I can find, I
will see if I can post here. Nothing too exciting and
pretty primitive.
* RAY
HARRYHAUSEN: Gods & Monsters ..... Nice little recent write-up
on Uncle Ray and still doing the tours
and getting all the recognition he deserves.
He was B-movie Creature-Monster-Fantasy Cool
(while mainstream Hollywood mostly rejected him) ....
BEFORE any of this CGI creature supposed
photoreal & excess hyper smooth blur stuff,
which Tinsel Town now, cannot get enough of. However,
they do not know how to be moderate and no originality
and they may run this current CGI flavor
into the ground with their oversaturation &
homongenized stuff (micro-rant). Read about the Stop Mo Godfather and know
your roots.
* Batman:
Revenge ..... A Lego Stop Mo parody-epic (12 minute
short)
.... It has been out since 2003 but someone just
reminded me about it again. There is a "Stop
Mo Lego" subculture, subspecialty, which I
am not much into, but whatever forms of Stop Mo, explore
your creative outlet! IMO, to watch this short, is kind
of strange and contradiction
with the Hollywood-slick production values mostly "borrowing"
the original soundtrack from the actual movie but with
the very simplistic Lego toy aesthetics. Check-out this short. If you are curious about Lego
Stop Motion, here is a sampler .... Brickfilms website. A whole cult
really "into it".
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05.06.06
* Mayday, Mayday ....
Human's on destructive rampage .... I have evidence
.... Alien first
encounter with your government agencies.
Your billions of tax $$ spent on high tech heat beam
laser weapons. Okay .... just merely playing
with your emotions. Found another Old Super
8mm experiment. Check it out. I do not have time right now to
EXPLAIN in detail. I would rather h ave photos to show but no behind
the scenes for this old stuff. Can you
give me a break? All of you, just quiet &
lurking and all this undercurrent pressure
on me to "entertain" you. I DO NOT get
paid for this. Geeez  . Just briefly .... this done
similar to Harryhausen Dynamation but
using Front Projection method (not rear projection), with
the Scotchlite retro-reflective screen
and using glass beamsplitter to project background image onto the FP
screen. I used old movie projector and poor man's
attempt to project the single frame
background images. Absolutely no pin
registration and hence, the Shake-O-Rama
raw grainy retro ambiance to it  .
Also, I am not sure if I violated the 180 degree rule for camera lines
(do not tell anyone  ). Again, all this done IN-CAMERA
..... no computers, no software.The weaponry ray
beams done separately using cel
animation and inserted on a second pass
(backwinding film).
* "The
Art of Stop Motion Animation" by Ken A. Priebe ..... Coming out
soon. Ken posts at the message board once in awhile. Speaking to beginners
or those that want everything for free, or
who claim they a re "poor"?
I do not get it ... but you can $afford$
your convenient little cell phones, ipods, music cds,
interactive gaming, etc.? Just shut your
mouth  and buy this book for your reference
library. If you are seasoned Stop Motionists
.... get the book just to have in your
collection. The general public does not know the
rarity of printed
hardcopy how-to Stop Motion
publications. Worldwide, I can count on one
hand, these hardcore how to Stop Mo books. Look
at Computer CGI Digital-Schmigital .... hundreds
& hundreds of those books (yawn). Again ....
do not whine to me that you
cannot afford it. Just get the fricken
book. Available for Pre-orders
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