Mike King

Glago’s Guest

Get out while you can!

Read this article from Variety about the increasing pressure VFX studios and artists face as schedules and budgets shrink while expectations rise.

Grit Teaser Poster

I made this teaser poster for an indie feature that my brother is making.

Lucy Daughter of the Devil

My friends over at Fluid got a greenlight for 10 episodes of their Adult Swim show called Lucy Daughter of the Devil. Congrats guys. The pilot episode seems to be available here on youtube.com.

Prey Alone

A digital production with lots of CG visual effects. Check out the more info and the trailer at the Prey Alone Official Website.

Into the black

Some Canadian fans of Firefly are making their own show. Original characters in the same universe as Serenity. Check out their website and follow their progress here.

“This isn’t about buying a studio—it’s about changing a culture that needs to be changed.”

A bunch of articles about Disney buying Pixar. I’m on the edge of my seat to see how this turns out.

MSNBC article

o-meon editorial

Motley Fool article

Madagascar and Episode III

Took the family to see Madagascar yesterday. The film looks very nice, and the complexity of the CG was quite impressive. But the story left me flat. Some nice gags in there, but ultimately it felt very by the numbers and the characters did not engage me at all. A frenzied, disjointed movie. The penguins are the best thing about the whole thing.

One of the thing that’s beginning to annoy me, particularly in animated films, is the way exposition and characterization is handled. There’s usually a scene or two where a character is summed up. I.E. Marty wants to go to the wild, or Alex is self-involved. And then that’s it. That’s the character. I’m not saying an animated character needs a whole lot of depth. But a one-note character may be interesting for a short while, but I’m going to need something more if I’m going to watch them for an hour and a half. The character needs to feel more real.

The exposition problem to me feels like show-don’t-tell problem. They think they’re showing, but they’re really telling. They’re showing us some action that doesn’t leave much room for the audience to fill in the blanks and make things feel richer than they really are. Dialog goes to excruciating lengths to make sure nobody misunderstands. So the pacing and rhythm feel slow, since we get it right away, but the scenes still play everything out and there are no little surprises along the way.

Hmm. Same goes for Episode III. If the only surprises are the little details and the characters act pretty much one-dimensional, it makes for a very bland movie. All the visual spectacle in the world, as cool as it may look, doesn’t help if the characters aren’t engaging. It’s the same problem I think that Matrix Revolutions suffered from.

Coming soon…

…to a film festival near you. Mike Blum finished his short film, The Zit and it’s been accepted into a handfull of film festivals already. Check out his website to see where it’s playing.

I had fun on the film. I came in pretty close to the end but got to art direct a lot of the lighting and even light a few shots myself. I also helped Mike master his DVD’s, which was more time consuming than I thought. But I learned a lot and finally got to make a DVD. Mike handled all the duplication and printing and everything. Hopefully I’ll get to see the final product on Monday.

Now that I’ve wrapped up Gary’s poster and production and ancillary work on Mike’s project… well, I’m hoping for a little downtime. I seem to have trouble saying no to anything, cause it never seems like as much work as it turns out to be. I guess I’m optimistic that way.

My one ongoing project now is running games for the gaming group I belong too. I kind of volunteered and am having fun doing it. Just wish I had a little bit more time to work on the adventures. It’s been busy with commuting between L.A. and the Bay Area and dealing with house stuff. (There’s also another blog set up for the game, because I like blogs so much.)

Anyway, hopefully I’ll take a little rest and recharge and then find some time to finally write or work on something fun of my own. But first rest. Definitely.

Teaser poster

I recently finished a teaser poster for my brother Gary’s next short film. The working title is Hubris. I’m such a hack artist, but it turned out okay. The style is based on artist Marcos Chin’s work for the Lavalife ads. Ok, it’s more like totally ripped off as far as color schemes and stuff. But I’m not a good enough artist to actually duplicate his style. The people turned out looking like my usual sort of comic book stuff. I would have loved to polish it a little more, but it’s not bad for a couple evenings worth of work.

I see all sorts of things that I’d like to do better. But that’s typical for me.