Cape Cod

I made this little piece inspired by the Edward Gorey drawing from The Glorious Nosebleed.

Edward Gorey's caption reads: "The creature regarded them balefully"

This is some haggard green screen work composited with a model of a Cape Cod beach that I built in my apartment and some footage of the ocean that I shot here in LA.

Somehow, over the past few months, I ended up making a trilogy of projects centered on a similar moment. Part one was The Nest, part two is Cape Cod, and... soon to come... part three is Meats.

Time Piece

Jim Henson...

Two of a Kind

A sitcom.

Also, who knew that this was also a sitcom with the Olsen Twins?? Anyway, this was dug up from the mid 80's, before they were even born.

Corn Flakes

mmm

The Nest

Here is a single static shot that I put together. I added a little bit of ambient sound for the posting but it was created as a silent short.

Benny

This morning's doodle:

Ezra's Epitaph

Here's a clip from a project I wrote, directed and animated a few years ago.

The Nest

Here's a still from my new project.

Cave Monster

I've been working on a cave monster puppet for a short project I'll be shooting next week so I thought I'd post my progress. This charming guy is still in the works but he's almost ready for his close-up.

First, I sculpted him in a slow air drying modeling clay. I'm keeping it up in my apartment because it reminds me of one of Catherine O'Hara's sculptures in Beetlejuice.



Then I cast him in latex, painted him, and added some teeth and eye accessories. You can see part of the cave texture I've been working on behind the latex puppet. It's a giant nest of chicken wire, paper maché, plaster and dribbling, watery paint riddles.







I'll be working on some details next and then I hope to get some thick oozy cave monster goo on him for my shoot. More to come...

Death Becomes Her Mansion

Speaking of mansions... here are some images of a model that was used for one of the Death Becomes Her mansions from an old Cinefex.

The Art of the Haunted Mansion

I just ordered a copy of the Art of the Haunted Mansion, which has some great concept art, wardrobe, makeup and visual effects images from the bomber movie. (Which, in its defense, had some great visuals... and the ride had so much potential...)

Only a handfull of these books were ever printed and distributed, I think, to those affiliated with the project. So I thought I'd post some of my favorite images from the book. My scanner is pretty primitive and small and a lot of these images are quite big (the book is large) so don't make any composition judgments... Overall, I love the tone of these pictures. I just wish they carried through the entire movie. There are plenty more images that I'd like to post some day, including the great changing portraits that were redesigned just for the movie. In Jason Surrell's text, he notes that Rob Minkoff keyed "haunted elegance" to describe the look of the film: "a prase that perfectly captured the unique blend of Gothic horror, romance, fantasy and refinement that he was seeking... The result [of the reimagined house] was an architectural marvel and a masterpiece of interior design, the central character in Rob Minkoff's 'haunted fairy tale.'"




I love the ghostly detail of the body in the lake in the bottom of the black and white illustration.



This image is much larger, but I was mostly interested in the twisting Underwold that warps from a horizontal plane in the foreground to a vertical plane in the background.





Just a couple great '80's fantasy movie-ish' practical makeup corpse faces





Notice the hidden ghost faces in the shadows

Princess Aurora is Autistic

I had the pleasure of seeing Sleeping Beauty last night at a screening at the El Capitan theater - which was gorgeous. But I do have one note regarding the story. Princess Aurora has a stilted personality and ambles through most of the movie completely emotionally detached. So, here is the theory: the third fairy was supposed to bestow the gift of personality after her life partners offered beauty and song. But, when the evil Maleficent cast her own gift, Meriwether was forced to forgo her spell in order to quell the curse of death. Subsequently, Princess Aurora lives a life of beauty and song but is tragically left autistic.

The Graveyard Shift Librarian

The librarian down the street from me is evil. "I just tell it like it is," I heard her say once. When I went up to her to check out a book she yelled at a grown man, "WALK!" and then began muttering to me under her breath: "I hope what happened to that little girl the other day happens to him." I looked down. "It's a terrible thing to say," she continued. "She didn't listen to me and then she fell and her head starting bleeding and she cried. She learned her lesson."
This librarian makes me feel like I'm 5 years old again, in trouble, panicky. My heart is always pounding when I approach her. She works the graveyard afternoon shift at the library. And then she goes to the cemetery to bury all the kids she's collected throughout the day. She's a witch.

Birthtaint Trailer

It's a joke. This is the movie trailer for a play that's coming up in Williamsburg at the Brick Theater Festival in June.

GERMS!

A little movie I made called Germs.

My favorite thing of the week and 15 years ago.

Cloud Tank

I've been wanting to shoot a cloud tank for some time and I finally got around to it this weekend and got some nice shots. I look forward to trying it again and working with liquids at different densities... and then making something out of it.

Model Cliff

I built and animated this model cliff for a play that went up in New York last month. There's already a revival show scheduled in a couple months so there will be more work to come on this...