Dry Erase turns 100

Though I've done more than that many, tomorrow will mark my 98th, 99th, and 100th postings of dry erase comics. This felt like a good time to say that as flexible as making the comics are, coming up with 3 ideas a day / 15 a week is a bit difficult considering nobody is paying me for them yet. I like doing them and it's been so very nice to receive all of the comments on Facebook over the last few months! Thanks everyone!!!

I still plan to make the comics, but I have to slow down on the rate of postings. After tomorrow, on the morning of June 3rd I will be posting one comic per day instead of three. I have to slow down the idea factory a bit and focus on other things. I hope the people that have checked them out understand. Sorry:(

The comic seen above is neither on Facebook or my Dry Erase site. The format of this panel is a bit of a black sheep to the others I've done, so I thought this would be as good a place as any to post it.

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20 years of the Dusty Animation Festival part 2.5

On Monday, I posted a short bit about the SVA Dusty Animation screening. Over this week, the animators hooked me up with links to their films, sites, and other stuff.
Check out the following post of this blog. Pictures, filmmaker site/blog links, and (most awesome of all) links to the films they made! Thanks for sharing this stuff! Good luck, God's speed, and all that jazz:)

20 years of the Dusty Animation Festival part 2

Following up to last Thursday's Dusty animation festival, I reached out to a bunch of the filmmakers to let everyone know what a great job they all did...and they did:) Every one of the 45 deserves EXTREME credit for their films either complete or incomplete as they were. An audience that doesn't know animation won't understand an incomplete production as easily as someone like me; an animator that practically lived in the animation wing of SVA and slept on the radiator next to the computer lab. Believe me when I say that even if your film wasn't complete, don't be too hard on yourself....but for the love of crumb-cake, FINISH YOUR FILMS or I'll find you, cook you, and eat you! The list below is my top 10 by title order in the dusty guide:

The Grape and the Carrot (2:00) by Kee Yeon Lee
Clovered (4:00) by Nicole So
Durian Season (3:30) by Shelley Low
Fantastic Plastic (10:00!) by Lev Polyakov
Juxtaposed (5:30) by Alexander Wager
Metromorphosis (3:00) by Mikhail Shraga
Metal Boot (4:00) by Paul Villeco
The Mouse Reaper (3:00) by Eunkyu Kim
Singles (3:00) by Rebecca Sugar
The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9! (5:00) by Jake Armstrong

Each one of these films had extraordinary offerings that went above and beyond in my opinion. I felt these deserved a little extra congrats not only for having them completed, but also because they had things to offer the larger picture of ANIMATION.
Great stories, design, and execution are examples of the merit, but more importantly they did things in their projects that I feel would potentially get a non-believer interested in the medium, and that's a wonderful thing! Animation needs visionaries and this list of mine is not exclusive to only these 10 though it looks that way.

I wanted to include close friends of mine, but the larger issue with this list (which I considered limiting to 5 people) is that there is more to animation than a 10 minute film (Lev you are a maniac!). I would have been just as happy with a tight 30 second project if the rules of SVA allowed such a short duration. As a whole, these are my top picks and when you see what they did, you may understand why. Hopefully you do and if anyone disagrees, tough titty. I've been rejected plenty of times in many a place, but it doesn't discourage me from continuance. Now that everybody is out of school, I'll be curious to see how many have the time, strength, and ambition to continue with personal work which I know all too well is a challenge that deserves credit. Everybody is going to have different objectives with their education and I hope that every animator uses their skills for the greater good. Good luck animators! You remind me why I love this stuff and that's what I love about you!

Singles by Rebecca Sugar The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9 by Jake Armstrong Juxtaposed by Alexander Wager Metromorphosis by Mikhail Shraga The Mouse Reaper by Eunkyu Kim The Carrot and the Purple Ball by Kee Yeon Lee Fantastic Plastic by Lev Polyakov Clovered by Nicole So Durian Season by Shelley Low Metal Boot by Paul Villeco

20 years of the Dusty Animation Festival

Since last Wednesday, 4.29, I've seen 63 films from the BeFilm Underground Film Festival, 27 from the ASIFA-East's 40th Awards night, and tonight came back from The School of Visual Arts' 20th Dusty Film & Animation Festival having seen 45 animations. That's 135. I'm a tad blind, but all good times:)

At the NEW SVA Theater located between 8th & 9th Ave on 23rd Street,
Reeves Leehman, Chairman of the SVA Film & Animation department declared that this was the largest number of films for an SVA animation screening ever. I may have misheard that, but I would believe it. 45 animated films in a row with only a 10 minute break after the first 2 hours. The show started around 715pm and went on until around 1045pm. Sooooo many films. So many of them so good! Some of the filmmakers I've known for years and it feels so good to have seen their work on the big screen! I need to see some of these films again and soon, so I hope that I can get some links to post to the world in the next post I do here so you too can see them.

Some of the films were sadly incomplete (animatic boards, uncolored animation, unfinished post production). As a thesis advisor, I can see myself getting a tad miffed if one of my students didn't finish their production on time. It reflects on the advisor and I can understand the frustration that comes with that. That said, because I've been there.....making a film in and of itself is not easy when you've got a world of hell and academics all around you. While I would very much like to see every film 100% complete, I give huge amounts of credit to every animator who had a film tonight. The crack of a deadline with an advisor's whip can be deadly and I know that I had more than a few panic attacks at the zero hour when the Dusty deadline was upon me.

If there's any one lesson I learned from the pressure of the festival deadline is that it's not a terrible idea to get helpers, slaves, interns, and (heaven forbid) pay some people to get the job done if you can afford it. This is a student screening, so I expect lots of different approaches to everything and the class of 2009 delivered big time!

I am genuinely a bit blind from the last week of films in combination with tonight at the Dustys. I'll need the weekend to recover, I will continue with some good highlights if I can. Lots and lots of talent was evident in almost everything I saw tonight. Seeing a show like this makes me feel good that so many people care so much about animation. I hope wherever the animators go, they take that love with them into everything they do:)

See the complete list for Thursday 5.7 at the bottom of the page