A little bit of drama

Hey, tonight I spoke to Peter Williams, a stop motion cameraman at Cinderbiter. It was awesome. So awesome, in fact, that I uploaded this stop motion film immediately after I hung up. (It's something I made in 2008 for John Edmark's Intro to Animation class--fun times).



Time to start my Computer Science homework!


Good Night,
Tam

It's that time of year again!

... Time for me to make another blog post, haha.

Well, senior year is well underway. I have almost exactly three months of school left before it's time to go be an honest-to-goodness grownup. I am going to be... an Artist.


(That's not my drawing, but I sure wish I knew what comic it came from!)

In preparation for that grand exploit, I've been calling up studios in LA to request informational interviews. I've also been running around, meeting up with all the animators I know to ask about their experiences in the industry.

In a couple of weeks, I will be flying to LA to tour studios. This will be the most grownup thing I have done in a very long time. (Whether or not anything comes of it, I'm grateful to God just for a opportunity to go out there and meet a lot of cool people).



In other news, I recently finished animating the opening and closing credits for "Wonder Women: The Untold Story of American Super Heroines," a film directed by Bay Area filmmaker Kristy Guevara-Flanagan. It's a fantastic film, and if you get a chance to see it, you should! It's premiering at South By Southwest International Film Festival, and it covers the history of Wonder Woman and other heroines in popular culture.

Check out the trailer! Some of my work comes in at about 0:36, and they used my graphics for the website. Best wishes to Ms. Flanagan and the crew, and thanks for giving me an opportunity to help with such a cool film :)



For more info, visit the website: http://wonderwomendoc.com/

So much more has happened in the past year, but heck, I can't write all that in a single blog post.


More soon (I'm not kidding),
Tam

I stayed up all night looking at facebook...

... because I wanted to draw my entire facebook feed on a brown paper towel roll. Of course, that thing is pretty dang long, and I didn't make it nearly as far as I wanted. It took several hours--and if I had several hours more, I'd continue until I reached the end of my feed. (What does the end of your facebook feed look like, anyway?) Here are the pics of my progress so far!













The project was satisfying in three ways. First of all--most of us don't really read our facebook feed--we just skim it for the parts that catch our eye. This project made me have to read every single word, and it's amazing how much detail I've missed when just skimming casually.

Second, I like the analogy of our facebook feeds being disposable, kind of like a paper towel roll. We only usually read a friend's status update once before letting it pass into obscurity. Friendships on facebook can be equally disposable, especially if the facebook relationship has no real one to back it up.

Thirdly, I thought it was interesting to take something that is pretty impersonal (its a quick typed message to everyone you know) and convert it to something painstakingly handmade (more like a handwritten letter).

A side note: I discovered that there are many tendencies in informal typed language (such as no uppercase at beginnings of sentences, emoticons, and excessive punctuation) which are far more rare in handwritten language. I found out that when people use several exclamation points or word repetitions, they often use five. I don't know why, but five just seems to be the number people gravitate to.

Of course my sample pool is hardly representative--mostly social dancers and college students :P


Best,
Tam

...and PAY THEY WILL.

So during one of my first visits to San Francisco I saw something really crazy. High up in a third story apartment, someone was projecting a prizefight through a covered window into the night. It was so cool--I could see it from the street. The setup was super homemade, and really startling.

Anyway, I decided to try it myself, only a lot bigger. The dorm I live in has an upstairs lounge with patio and glass sliding doors. The patio overlooks the bike racks where everyone parks. So I thought it would be neat to project sound and image out of the huge window so people would see it as they passed by. This was partially out of artistic impulse, and partially because I'd been wanting to see a classic Kung Fu movie for a long time :)

So, I covered the window with newspaper, checked out a projector, and set up my speakers on the balcony. Very simple setup, but again, super startling at night. I played a Godzilla trailer (Godzilla vs. Megalodon), and the watched Bruce Lee in Fists of Fury. My friends, it was better than a birthday.

Here's some footage!



And Bruce Lee, tragically abridged:



Isn't he impossibly fast and beautiful? Isn't he just impossible period?


Ah, my heart!
T. King

There's a face... on my face

More mayhem from art class! This was a project I worked on for Jarek Kapunscinski and Elaine Buckholtz's Intermedia Workshop 2010. It was really awesome--they let us do whatever we wanted! Plus we got to work in the super-secret lab-mansion up on the hill, like mad scientists. (If you're ever on Stanford Campus, visit the Knoll!)

Special thanks to Alex Pounds for spending an hour in that chair. Here's the documentation footage. That's Professor Jarek's voice telling people to take programs :)



I really wanted to do this ever since I'd seen the video for Burning Down the House by Talking Heads. I discovered Talking Heads in high school, and literally spent an entire night watching the video over and over. David Byrne! Is! A! Friggin'! Genius!!!




Good! Night!
T. King

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! I was fortunate enough to have spent Christmas Vacation back in New Mexico with my folks, getting a much-needed break from dorm life. Earlier this fall I'd been thinking about home a lot, and was missing my family. Here's one of the videos that resulted. I made it with my brother in mind. I hope you enjoy it--I got stranded on the train (twice!) and missed an important meeting with a professor making it. It was worth it though.



I'm catching a plane for Cali in half an hour! Time to dive back in.


Best wishes for the new year!
T. King

It's Time for Anarchy! (Strange films from High School)

Hooray for Winter Break! It means I can devote all my time to art and other creative craziness. It also means I have time to update the blog! So without further ado, let's get on with the updating.

Update No. 1


The Yeti book is coming along. We're aiming to be done with the color mockups by the end of the break. If we ever get published, I'll post pictures. Until then, the images will stay locked away in our secret swiss fort--the one with the dying billionaire and snowmobiles.

Update No. 2


Paul Glickman and I made it into the Heartland Film Festival with our short film El Salon Mexico! I got to stay in a fancy hotel--the kind you see on British TV, with all the wallpaper and fancy door handles! We didn't win anything, but it was absolutely worth the trip, if only to see my good friend Paul and meet so many cool people.


Update No. 3

In an effort to get that coveted summer internship with some animation studio, I'm finally uploading my short films to YouTube!

So. Let's watch some short films.

Did you take high school biology? I hated it... but also found it pretty hilarious. Nature is such a free-for-all. Death and life can be explained with very long words. If nothing else, high school biology caused me to make some very strange short-films.

Cells with McGreggor and Montey: Phagocytosis



Another strange one from high school--having nothing to do with biology, but just as anarchic.

Head, Hands and Feet:



Hopefully the next post will make more sense. I make no promises, hah!


Happy Holidays!
T. King