Press Kit!

The full press-kit can be downloaded here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/x4rtks

Artist Bio

Born and raised in California’s laid back Bay Area, David moved to Vancouver to study at Emily Carr. He has since then fallen in love with the city and plans to settle down there. Despite having lived in Canada for years now, he still doesn’t understand the metric system and continues to say “soda” instead of “pop”. It is unknown if this is due to an inability to adapt, or a brazen example of American arrogance.

Artist's Statement

“Insert Credit” is an autobiography told through the style and format of an older, side-scrolling video game. It's the story of how my dad's death has affected me and how it continues to be an issue in my life.

Level 1 is my childhood, which is when my dad died. I never dealt with it when I was younger and so I never 'completed' the level. I wasn’t the ideal son my dad had in mind. He always wanted a son that was much more masculine, one that would play sports with him. Do “man” things. Our relationship was strained because of this. Even as he died, I struggled with how I felt and couldn’t bring myself to talk to him about it as he was in the hospital.

Level two is my teen years. I fell into bouts of depression and drinking, and struggled immensely with school. My cousin Catherine helped me out of it. She filled the 'older guidance' figure in my life and helped raise me. She ended up wanting to start her own life and moved away. I had that void all over again.

Level three, I moved to Vancouver out of bitterness. I felt alone and didn’t have the support I felt I needed. I fell in love, but ended up trying to fill the void of my dad with an older male lover. It didn't work because of all my pressures and expectations of him and he couldn't take it. I was too much of an emotional toll on him. Dear friends helped me recover from the situation.

Level four. It's a dream sequence where I try to get to my dad one last time. I stumble and falter trying to reach him, but each time I do, my loved ones from my past help me up and encourage me to keep going. Eventually I fail to reach him and the character dies. The continue screen pops up and a countdown plays. Before it reaches zero, the sound that plays when you put in a coin in an arcade machine plays, and then it cuts to black.

The ending is... I have tried and failed to get over my dad's death many times up until now. It's affected me all my life, and I hadn’t even realized it. But even if I fail, I can't just give up and let it take over my life. I have to try again, hence "Insert Credit". I have to continue putting quarters in the machine until I beat the game.

Artist Review: Kylen Tombs

Kylen has a very surreal aesthetic that is immediately apparent upon viewing her concept art and leica reel for her film. She is comfortable working in this style, as any look inside of her sketchbook could tell you. The beginning of her film sets up an introduction to herself. This aesthetic opens you up to how she likes to view things. Objects transform fluidly, move smoothly and are colored brightly. Her animation style sets up the tone for the rest of the film.

The animation style is completely fluid. Characters move like breezes, like water, flowing from one pose to the next. It reminded me a lot of Ryan Woodward's "Thought of You" (http://vimeo.com/14803194). In fact, Kylen and I had talked about this together, and she told me how eerily close this was to what she envisioned in her head. I think, knowing this, I understood her film's style and conception much better.

I remember talking to Kylen about her main character. She wanted to depict a male with a masculine grace. A balance of delicate beauty, while still retaining all of his masculinity. I think this stems from Kylen growing up in an area where she describes all the men as aggressive meatheads. There is no subtlety or grace in how they act and how they live. I imagine that Kylen idealizes a male that doesn't have to give up his masculinity in order to be beautiful.

In terms of the characters, we have Clarence, Panama and Cordy. When I read about them I immediately thought about the id, ego and super-ego. I was sure that this trio was represented by them.

The id is the part of the psyche that simply desires pleasure and avoiding anything unpleasant. It is the primal nature of us all. Some view it as chaos, but considering that all babies are born functioning purely thought the id, I think there's some sort of purity in it. It isn't good or evil. It simply wants to exist. This seems to fit her character Cordy, a naive young 18 year old acting on her primal natures and simply desiring to be a free spirit.

The super-ego strives for greatness. It prohibits fantasies and masturbatory acts. The super-ego will act in socially appropriate manner, unlike the primal way the id acts, simply seeking out instant gratification. Clarence's girlfriend, Panama, is the super-ego. She is a pop star, striving for greatness, but doing it in the limelight and through the approval of society.

And then there is the ego. The ego is the realist. Common sense. Attempted balance. The balance between the id and the super-ego. The ego is in between the two, attempting to create peace. The ego attempts to try to help control the id, helping it quell its chaotic nature. The super-ego on the other hand, will constantly watch what the ego does and upon failing or making a mistake, the super-ego will put the ego on a guilt trip. Because of this, the ego has a slight favor to the id in that the ego can look over problems the id has since the id doesn't mean any harm. The nagging, guilt and feelings of inferiority from the super-ego wear down the ego, but the ego learns to cope.

Having the characters reflected like so in my head, I can already see where the story would be headed.

I think Kylen is working through this greatly. While I'm not sure that her 3 characters were meant to be representations of the 3 parts of the psyche, it is actually working well in that way and was the first thing that popped into my head. I should tell her about all of this!

(Kylen's Production Blog: http://kylendraws.webs.com/apps/blog/)

Production Schedule

December

Week of 19-25

Complete additional cut-ins

Enjoy holiday

Week of 26-31

Finish all cut-ins by the end of December

Continue working on battle sprites

Toni comes back from holiday, continue to work with her on BGs

January

Week of 1-8

Begin work with Stephanie Blakey on colors for the film

Continue working on battle sprites

Week of 9-15

Continue working on battle sprites

Keep up with Stephanie and Toni

Week 16-22

Continue working on battle sprites

Keep up with Stephanie and Toni

Week 23-29

Continue work on battle sprites

Get completed BGs from Toni

Talk with TJ about composer

February

Week 1-5

Work on monster sprites & battle sprites

Take a break for my birthday (go see Avenue Q!)

Week 6-12

Work on monster sprites

Go over sound design with TJ

Go over BG colors with Stephanie

Week 13-19

Finish battle sprites

Go over user interface

Work on monster sprites

Week 20-28

Finish monster sprites

Look over everything completed and make sure there is cohesion in the look

March

Week 1-5

Go over the look with Stephanie, give her things to color

See if there is additional work for Toni to help with

Compile everything and test what I have so far

Week 6-12

Give TJ what I have so he can begin working on sound

Talks with composer

Test test test everything

Week 13-19

Piece things together, render it

Make sure there are no problems

Put it together with the sound

Week 20-26

GO OVER EVERYTHING

Go over it with Toni, Stephanie and TJ

Make changes if needed

Week 27-31

COMPLETE THE FILM BY THE END OF MARCH. Goal set.

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What a lofty goal, eh?

A huge wrench might be thrown into my whole plan this Friday anyway. This will need to be revised if that is the case. I might be getting an internship, which I'll be doing 3 days a week. Let's see what the future has in store for me.

Production stills & tension chart

Inspirations...

I have quite a list of inspirations for my film. Generally, it's aesthetic inspirations.

Paul Robertson

His work is a huge inspiration of mine. Visually, he creates life out of such few pixels. The personality he brings into their animations are always a treat to see too.

Paul Robertson's animated video for the song, Devil Eyes.

Devil Eyes is an extremely depressing music video to me. But what stands out about it to me, is not that it's sad. But that the general aesthetic masks such a sad story. I love this. Something that goes much deeper than what appears on the surface. I want my film to be something like that.

Souleye

Souleye's compositions and chiptune-style of music energizes me. I listen to his music while I work and I don't realize how much time passes by because I'm just so into his melodies. I know chiptunes aren't everyone's cup of tea, but the ability to create something so amazing out of such limited technology astounds me.

Souleye's "Positive Force"

The Super Nintendo era

The 16-bit gaming era had a huge impact on me. This was when I learned that games could tell me a story. That they could get me attached to fictional, pixelated characters. That it could give me memories that would last for the rest of my life. One of the most shocking gaming moments I had was when a heroine completely gave up. The world had collapsed. Her loved ones were dead. She was stuck somewhere by herself. She didn't know what to do. And in an act of depression and desperation, she decided to commit suicide. Nobody had talked to me about suicide as a child, and no stories that read or watched had included something so serious. Sometimes, heroes give up too. This changed my view of gaming forever. I won't forget the stories that I played, and the aesthetics of the games are something I refer back to in my film.

An introduction...

So to start this off... I'll give a little background as to why I want to create this film.

This story is my story. I’ve had a lot of time to reflect upon my life these passed few years, and I’ve recently come to a depressing realization. I came to Canada, from the United States to escape my life there. I know this part, and I was happy to leave my old life. However, I didn’t expect one my issues back home would bring so much baggage with me to Canada. I tried to forget about it and move on with my life. I thought that I had gotten over it. My father died when I was about 13 years old. I never talked about this with my friends back home. I don’t discuss this with my new friends here. And through the 3 and a half years that I’ve been with my former partner, I’ve talked about my father twice with him. This is an issue that is still eating away at my insides and I know it’s quietly killing me. I’ve got to get it out of me. Out of my system. This film, Insert Credit, summarizes the more monumental moments of my short lifetime. I’ve decided to theme the story of my life to look like a video game. The knowledge that “David likes video games” is easy to deduce and is something visible on the surface of who I am. So I want to combine this theme with something so deeply personal to me as to cushion the blow of just how emotionally damaging this story is to me to work with. I think this will help me get through this without hurting myself too much. I also want it to look like a cartoon or a game at first, and take people by surprise by having it actually be about something personal. To disarm the viewer somewhat. The film will be done with pixilated sprites, akin to video games of previous generations. It will purposely look like ‘retro’ technology. Health bars of each player in my life will be displayed at the bottom, and players will come and go accordingly in the story.

The kind of research that I thought about doing were to look into more old video games of a certain era, to look into the works of other pixel artists, and to look up technical limitations of the era as well. I want the animation to look genuine, so I need to do a lot of research into the kind of games that I want to emulate. The 80's era of games had a much simpler, different look than the 90's era. I want a more modern interpretation of the sprite art aesthetic. A pixel artist that I look up to is Paul Robertson. His characters have so much personality and the art and animation looks so smooth. His website and community blog 'Mecha Fetus' features much of his work, and I will be perusing it constantly, trying to get a feel for his work process.

The online community 'Pixel Joint' is another huge source of information and inspiration for my film as well. There are many established pixel artists as well as several up and comers that look for tutorials and beginning tips. Many tips that I'd need as well, and since everyone in the community seems so open and friendly, I look forward to talking amongst them.

My dad's death has had an effect on me that cuts deeper than I care to admit. Only upon reflection do I see how I've let this eat away at me, and even then, I tend to remove the thoughts from my mind shortly after.

This film will either be extremely therapeutic, or my emotional downfall this semester.

Either way, I'm ready to take the chance. Finally.