It Came from the Radio

On October 30th, 1938, burgeoning media star Orson Welles made quite a stir when he and his Mercury Theatre repertory broadcast an all-too-real take on H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. The now-infamous radio play sent citizens fearing for their lives, and even compelled a few of them to take aim---with rifles---at telephone poles and watertowers, which vaguely resembled Martians in the moonlight.

As a final project for a film studies class, I've begun the process of setting Welles' masterful broadcast to an animated storyboard. Rather than tell the same story that Welles does, I want to tell the story of those he spooked. Following one Manhattan worker bee's personal odyssey home to his neglected family, I hope to trace the hallucinatory effects of the broadcast in an almost Kubrickian journey down the rabbit hole. You can view the current progress above. Enjoy!

You'll Burn Your Wings Off

Lately, I've been working on an animatic featuring everybody's favorite mythical birdman: Icarus. Inspired by the lyrics and tune of Cat Stevens' "The Wind"--which seem vaguely reminiscent of the high-flying hero--I've put together what you might call a "free adaptation" of the classic Icarus myth. You can check out both the original/thumbnail animatic and the shiny new finalized animatic below.

And remember children, if your parents give you a set of wax wings this Christmas, stay far far away from any giant balls of fire that may torch the wings in mid-flight. If you hate the present that much, just ask for the receipt.

Losing Your Work...Through the Ages

I recently endured one of the more harrowing experiences that an artist can face: the sad, irreversible tragedy of losing one's work. Fortunately for me, it was only a week's worth of paintings--iPad paintings, lost in a freak iCloud glitch--but the blow was still swift and merciless. Feeling helpless and defeated, I found myself a part of the great tradition of artists who have lost their work to any number of tragedies: fires, robberies, hurricanes, what have you. 

And so we add a new tragedy to that list of potential art-destroying torments: the iCloud (or iStormCloud, as I have re-dubbed it).

Anyway, I took my frustration and turned it into the shiny new animatic that you can watch below. Enjoy!