Uncle Paul's Story Time Part 1

Shitty Bedford, one of my favorite artists alive today, has recently begun posting on YouTube. I wasn't involved with this particular video- in fact it was shot by Sirius Bee- but I find it most amusing:

Hannah video from Xiamen

Cameron and Brett jam

Thanks to my lovely and amazing teacher Nirvana, I'm able to barely play some very basic viola.

Thanks to Bradley for having Cameron and myself over, we were able to jam, which felt wonderful. I loved playing music with my close friends so much!

Thanks to Catherine, there's a video of us jamming.

I felt so encouraged after this that I hauled my viola on my trip to Cinanima in Portugal, though I didn't actually practice at all (bad!).

Anyway, here is Cameron and me jamming:



My pinky is not proper (it should be bent, not stiff and straight) and my posture isn't so good either, but I love how Cameron and I sound together.

Xiamen 2009

As an ASIFA international board member, I was invited to the second annual Xiamen animation festival, where I gave a talk on early American animation.

Here's a photo:



I have some footage as well.



Lots more pictures from Xiamen

Thanks to Anni and Jonchill of ASIFA-China for inviting us!

International Animation Day 2009

International Animation Day

Wednesday, October 28th, 8pm, FREE

High Museum of Art Rich Auditorium

Click here to reserve a free ticket!

Also, thanks to Linda Dubler at the High Museum of Art and Jay Blodgett, our ever-reliable and amazing secretary of ASIFA-Atlanta, we have a lovely article about the event:

International Animation Day article

Animation Draw 5 (silent)

Once a month at WonderRoot, we bring light tables, paper, and markers and animate on paper- our monthly "Animation Draw" event!

Animation Draw 6 was today; here is Animation Draw 5, just shot and uploaded:



When it's ready, I'll post the version with the soundtrack.

Post by Harvey Deneroff about "Georgia Animation on My Mind"

Yay!! Harvey posted about "Georgia Animation on My Mind", which was a great event- a collaboration between ASIFA-Atlanta and Society for Animation Studies:

http://deneroff.com/blog/2009/09/25/georgia-animation-on-my-mind-qa/

Thanks Harvey!!

Atlanta Flood Pictures

I saw some of the flooding as I drove home from work- I truly wish I'd gotten some more pictures, but perhaps it was safer to avoid my compulsion to document. Anyway, here are the few I did snap while driving.

This was Moreland Ave:







I turned around when I saw this one:



But I drove through this one:



The wave from a car going the opposite direction hit my front bumper with a thump!

Many more pictures from other people at the Atlanta Flood 2009 Flickr Pool.

VAMMOPHONE FRANK SAX ONE

Beautiful video directed by Shitty Bedford, who also invented the VAMMOPHONE FRANK SAX ONE, available for only $200

Professor Spitwash played by yours truly, Brett W. Thompson

Society for Animation Studies / ASIFA-Atlanta "Georiga Animation on my Mind", Q&A part 1

Thanks to Ian Nathanson for filming!

ASIFA-Atlanta Animation Draw 4, with sound

Bowling!

I love bowling!

We went recently as a fun day for work, and Walter took this video:

ASIFA-Atlanta Animation Draw 4 (silent!)

Version with soundtrack coming soon!

Society for Animation Studies / ASIFA-Atlanta "Georiga Animation on my Mind", July 10th, 2009: Introduction

Ian Nathanson was kind enough to film my introduction to the Society for Animation Studies Conference 2009 / ASIFA-Atlanta screening "Georiga Animation on my Mind", which was at the High Museum of Art on July 10th, 2009.

Here it is; many thanks to Harvey Deneroff who asked me to curate this show!

Animation Draw lengths on a graph

I just finished shooting Animation Draw 4 (it just needs some music!), and I wondered how much longer it was in comparison to the previous ones.

So I put the lengths (in seconds) into Google Spreadsheets and made this little graph!

It'll be interesting to see how Animation Draw 5 goes, which is August 22nd at WonderRoot, 2pm-7pm (that's this Saturday).

Animation Attack! 2009

Animation Attack! 2009 schedule available now!

Article Mentioning "Sita Sings the Blues" in Montezuma

Last November, I helped out with the Montezuma International Film Festival. Montezuma, Costa Rica is incredibly beautiful and relaxing, although if you're running a festival you have to keep in mind where you are and take time to enjoy yourself- my tendency was to worry and work too much! I did fall asleep on the beach once, though, and had a blast hula-hooping...

Anyway, one way I contributed was getting ahold of Sita Sings the Blues for the festival, and it was quite popular! Consequently, we ended up showing it a few extra times. The lady who owns and runs a health-food restaurant there, Organico, particularly loved the film.

At the time, Nina Paley hadn't given the film away yet- she only had festival rights, so it was even more special to see. Explaining the copyright situation after one of the screenings, an older lady immediately offered to donate to Nina's cause!

A very sweet writer named Brit interviewed Eric and me and wrote this lovely article about "Sita Sings the Blues" and the Montezuma International Film Festival:

Montezuma Alights, Curtain Calls and All.

Brit said "see you next year!" as we parted, but I'm already using all my vacation time on animation festivals (Annecy and Xiamen), so I don't know if I'll make it...

But it was fun to unearth that article, I'd forgotten about it!

Mail Trends

This is my email volume over the years, generated by mail-trends.

ASIFA-Atlanta "Gather Atlanta" video

ASIFA-Atlanta "Roll Yer Own" 2009 Program