M dot Strange's blog

So for the past 5 days or so I've been animating one of the more complex animated sequences in the film which ends up taking a lot of time due to crowd scenes and lots of vfx- I'm just barely making my quota before passing out every day but I'm almost through this part- Its SO easy to storyboard crazy shit without having to consider how difficult and time consuming it will be to animate it- since I've animated a couple thousand shots and completed a fair number of productions I have to keep a balanced view- When I'm storyboarding these days I try to keep things as simple as possible to tell the story/create the emotion BUT I'm also a sucker for crazy actions and characters doing amazing things- I know how much time it takes to animated the crazy stuff so I ration it out- if this whole film was non-stop crazy action it would probably take me 10 years to do instead of 1- my goal is not to create the best action animated film ever- my goal is to tell my st

I started animating the scenes where I will be using the people who have become animated characters in I am Nightmare - Everyone will be on camera- here is an example crowd shot- the characters without the masks will be replaced with you! I can already say that since they were the first two people to donate to become extra's - Tim and Jemilla will end up being the two people up front ^_^ AND they will both be eaten by monsters! As will two or three other lucky people! So I've animated the shots but I haven't made the custom characters yet- I'll do that once the shots are locked then replace these standins with the custom characters There's still time to be an extra in the film so if you want to donate to help support the production and have your 3d self be in the film click here I setup the new render PC that I was able to buy thanks to the donations- it renders SO FAST 0_0 I overclocked it to 4.5ghz so its actually faster than four of my old render compu

Now this is something I learned on my own from my own process- I didn't read this in any book or how to about animating/filmmaking etc BUT its things like this that help you get your films finished- You may hate on what I make BUT I'm more productive than ANY single 3d animated filmmaker in the world today so I know how to get shots and films done- so if you're having problems getting your stuff made this might help ^_^ So I storyboard every frame of everything I do- and this is how I organize and translate my script into animated shots- One thing that is tough to do is to keep track of is what lines are spoken in what shot- this is how I do it- For one person speaking in a shot it looks like this- so here's the line of dialogue And here's the shot So when there's a line of dialogue in a storyboard frame I draw a dialogue bubble on the character and in " " I write the first word of the line and the last word with a squiggly line in the m

I know a lot of people like to believe animating films or doing other creative things is some type of magickal process that you can't run numbers on- well yes and no- coming up with ideas and our creativity in general can seem pretty magickal but the actual making of the film or project is usually pretty mechanical- I don't wait for inspiration- I get to work- I don't sit around and wonder when a film will be done- I run calculations and do projections to figure these things out- I use daily quotas to make sure I'll get a project done when I want it to be done- I constantly re-assess where I am in a project and recalculate my quota if need be- Once the script is locked, storyboards are done and all the assets are made and ready for animation- there's no more dancing around- you just need to get right to it! One shot a day? Five shots a day? Whatever it is GET TO IT! and DO IT EVERY DAY! Do at least one a day! You'll get there eventually! Over the past 80-9

If you download them they should be full size Be the first to start rockin imagery from I am Nightmare before anybody else does! ^_^ http://www.iamnightmarefilm.com

Thanks to everyone who donated to be an extra in the film! It was steadily moving towards the goal and then my awesome sister and brother in law made a big donation today and pushed it over the goal ^_^ So big thanks to them and to Tim, Jemilla, Krystian, Chris, Tristan, ALL THREE Josh's haha, Joseph and Jordan- it means a lot to me that you believe in the film so much, so thank you! I just ordered the parts... So I'm going to be busy making 3d versions of everyone who has or will donate to be an extra ^_^ The extra offer is still open of course - any additional funds will be used for production to pay for power bills and the like. Something I forgot to mention is that I'll be giving you the rigged 3d model of yourself so you can animate yourself or do whatever you'd like haha So to everyone who contributed I'm going to do my best to make an awesome movie and make you proud! So to reiterate the offer is still open AND your characters are more than

I've animated over 75 minutes of my new film I AM NIGHTMARE so far but I've render 0 minutes of it- just when I was going to start rendering on my old render PC it died- So I need to raise about $800 to replace it so I'll be able to release the film by Xmas 2013. Soooooo.... Click here to be an extra now! So you'll be helping me make the film and be a part of it yourself! Please feel free to share the above image on Fbook or Tumblr or where ever. AND if you already pre-ordered the film YOU WILL be getting a coupon code to gift the film to friends for Xmas as well ^_^ So what's the difference between this and the pre-order? They both give you a copy of the film, soundtrack, and a dvd coupon- the "pre-order" gets you a ONE OF A KIND hand drawn postcard drawn by me- the extra deal does NOT. I will be discontinuing the pre-order soon. P.S. I launched this because 17 people replied yes to my previous survey and thats enough money to ge

So this is exactly what I need to get and how much it will cost.... I have $86 in my paypal account right now- so I need $650 so that I can buy the parts I need to render the film- instead of doing a kickstarter/indiegogo right now- as I would want to do a legit one later when I have a trailer and eevrything so we can do DVD's, toys and stuff like that How about I make a special offer to my loyal fans that you can't get anywhere else? How about if you donate $50- I will create a 3d model based on your photo and actually PUT YOU IN THE FILM as an "extra" ^_^ So I'd do my best to create a 3d character in my style to look like you and you'd be in a crowd scene in the film- What do yall think about that? I would only need 13 people as extras to raise the $650 needed? To find out whether this is a viable option please answer the question below honestly so I can know whether to go ahead with this or not- thanks! Create your free onlin

I'd have to let everyone know who has pre-ordered or donated that I really appreciate it and I want to show you the best I can that the funds you donated have gone into the production of the film. There's been 55 pre-orders for a total of $1,125 raised Through the donation widget that's been on the site a total of $757 has been raised for the film So between pre-orders and donations thats about $1900 raised for the film. I've used almost all the funds to pay the main voice actors on the film- here are the sent payments So that's a total of $1725 spent on voice actors- I spent the rest upgrading the video card on my workstation- I wrote about the video card some posts back. So before I start another small kickstarter campaign or something like I just wanted to show you that I'm not wasting the money on bullshit. Yesterday my one PC that was rendering died- the mainboard is kapUT- So my crowdfunding goal will be $700 (or $750 so I get $700

I've animated over 800 shots for the film up to this point which takes me into the seventh of the films nine sequences- but as of this time I've only rendered 6 shots 0_0 I started rendering on one of my PC's- an older 8 core which has Cinebench score of 6.7. I haven't turned the other three old core2quad boxes on as I don't want to destroy the power bill. Here's a look at my available PC's to render on and their cinebench scores So my render farm is a bit old and slow by now- Since I don't have the budget to upgrade ( I used the money raised from pre-orders to pay the voice actors )  I'll have to be patient.  Running older,  less power efficient PC's 24/7 might be MORE expensive in the long run than upgrading their processors/mainboards/ram to newer models now as the new models consume less power. Ideally I'd be able to replace the parts inside of the 3 render nodes and upgrade them to i7-3770's which would make

To pay my way through college I worked as a construction laborer and I delivered furniture for some fancy furniture store- there were a lot of times when those jobs sucked BUT they allowed me to pay for school and save up for my first computer AND now that my "work" has me sitting in a comfortable chair using computers- I'm TOTALLY glad I experienced real work as I know the true value of real work- I know what its like to have aching, swollen hands and a stiff spasming back while you try to dig holes into heavily impacted soil in the summer sun- So when people admire my filmmaking/animation work ethic I have to go "yeh but this isn't REAL work"  There's tons of people who do insane physical labor for 10-18 hours everyday in shitty conditions just so they can have fresh water or eat- so how are we going to say our "work" is hard? First world problems my friends- acknowledge the global society and our problems are not problems at all- so stop

The very first rendered shot from I AM NIGHTMARE So I've animated over 800 shots so far but up until today I hadn't rendered any. I was chatting with my friend and fellow filmmaker Jimmy ScreamerClauz earlier today and we had a sit down serious talk about rendering- he was all "M DOT you really need to start rendering son" and I made a million excuses like a typical wordpress addict as instead of rendering I've been animating and building websites- I'm a wordpress addict now as I made 4 sites in the past 5 days... look at what my addiction has caused! I am Nightmare Heart String Marionette Rakel Musicbox Panthelion Actually I can partially blame this web design addiction on my friend and fellowanimator Krystian Morgan as he was like "hey try wordpress M dot... and check out these themes" and then I got a Themify theme called "BOLD" and I was hooked! Five days of my life disappeared and all I have are those sites to show for i

I've been working on the site for the new film after work the past few days- it's online now and you can go check it out at iamnightmarefilm.com I have to thank my friend and fellow animated filmmaker Krystian for turning me onto using pre-made theme's with wordpress. I had never used any content management systems like wordpress before and its FAR more fun and the result is MUCH better than what I could do on my own with html ^_^ Eventually I'll be redesigning this site and I will be making dedicated sites in the same style as the I am Nightmare site for Heart String Marionette, We Are The Strange, Badassery and Darksided+ if I have time I'll do sites for my music, books, Vladko, and the million other things I work on at the same time haha I'm pretty much going to re-brand all of my stuff online because up till now I've been doing a shitty job of presenting my work online and if I'm going to get where I want to go I need to do that.

M dot be smokin dem shots! I just did some calculations so I can figure out when I'll be done animating the new film - In 10 weeks of production so far spanning March 2013 to June 1st 2013 ( I took a 2 week break at the end of April to get married ^_^)  In that 10 week span I've animated 750 shots which is over an hour of finished film... so that adds up to... 74 shots per week 10.5 shots per day I also did some calculations to figure out how many shots come out of each page of script- this is how its been going so far... Sequence One -  11 pages of script- 215 shots animated - 20 shots per page Sequence Two - 11 pages of script - 147 shots animated - 13 shots per page Sequence Three- 13 pages of script - 175 shots animated - 13 shots per page Sequence Four - 11 pages of script - 119 shots animated - 11 shots per page Sequence Five - 11 pages of script - 106 shots animated - 10 shots per page Sequence Six - 11 pages of script - 124 shots storyboarded - 11 sh