Cravenomena

One of my goals for this blog was to create a space where I can display some of my work as a filmmaker and animator, as well as discuss techniques and reminisce about past projects. In upcoming weeks, I will be writing about the making of SHOCK! SHOCK! SHOCK!, the strange, low-budget feature I co-wrote and -directed with Todd Rutt about 20 years ago, as well as “Fun For Men!” the live-action/animated short I created a decade later.

For the past eight years, my output has been constrained to lowly commercials produced for the Grand Junction, Colorado television market… but I remain proud of some of this work, and intend to post it as well. This is my first attempt in that regard, and I am still figuring out the best ways to present the spots, so bear with me — this will be a work-in-progress.

This first spot is a fully animated commercial I wrote and produced for the Cabaret Dinner Theatre’s 2004 children’s production of THE FROG PRINCE. It features the voices of Lee Borden (narrator) and myself (various “ribets”). The frog was rigged and animated in pmg messiah studio and rendered in Newtek Lightwave. The text, backgrounds and compositing were performed in Adobe AfterEffects.

Rather than use YouTube or one of the other video hosting services, I am currently playing this animation from my server. If that proves problematic, I’ll pull this post down and re-post in some other fashion later. Anyway, please feel free to comment.