The next phases of this project will allow me to post more samples and pieces. Animations, backgrounds, design… very exciting! So hopefully this blog will start feeling alive again. Stay tuned.

I have finally come to grips with the fact that the ending isn’t right and I need to find a way to stick the landing. It’ll probably entail some major rewriting and restructuring the story once I figure out what I want to do. I’ll (eventully) keep you posted.

So what research have been doing, and what inspiration have I sought? Well, I got to see Wall-E, Pixar’s lovely tiny shy robot movie. To be  honest, I was fairly anxious about seeing this film. Clearly there is a lot of cross over with my beloved property: a tiny, shy robot, exploring a strange world… the early trailers really had my mind buzzing. Friends were emailing me, wondering if I was feeling violated.   So it was with a fair amount of trepidation that I went to see the film. I mean, it’s freaking Pixar, the best animation studio in the world right now. I love these guys.

Thankfully the two stories go in very different directions. Of course, there are some themes that cross over, but other than that, the two films are not that similar. Sure, the characters of Rover and Wall-E have similarities, but none that bother me that much. In fact, I enjoyed the film very much, and I am glad to see Pixar taking these kinds of creative chances. It’s an unusual feature film from an American company, and I am glad it has enjoyed commercial success.

Other than watching movies, I am continuing to work with Mike Sinterniklaas on sound design and language development. The ideas we have discussed regarding the role of language in the film have influenced the characters to the point that I am reboarding many sequences and slightly reworking my story. So story refinement goes on as well. I’ll try to post more frequent updates on our progress.

I hope that within a the month I can start posting some cool development stuff. I’m itching to get things moving forward again and put up some work in progress. Getting Mike and Nisa on board is huge and I am super jazzed to get things moving again.

This a very important part of the development of the film, actually. I have an animatic well fleshed out and in pretty good shape, but, by and large, it doesn’t take into account the language of the characters. This wasn’t such a big deal in the comic version of the story, since it doesn’t have any language, but it plays a much larger part in the animated version.  Michael has already presented me with some great ideas and I am excited to be working with him again.

I hope to have some other announcements soon. And once we get into animation this blog will become a lot more interesting. Stay tuned.

Thanks to everyone who has given me comments so far. You know who you are.

Here’s a couple pix from the animatic. Any of these may not be included in the final piece, of course.

He is putting the finishing touches on a very funny film of his own. It’s called “Tickle Me Silly” and I can’t wait until it’s finished. Check out his development blog!