"The Hidden Life of the Burrowing Owl" T-Shirts

For a limited time only, get your own OWL t-shirts. These are available only online through zazzle, and will not be sold anywhere else. Come support the film you my not have even seen yet! Click here to get one!




~mike

The world looks good for Sierra!

A while back I was contacted by a woman named Wendy. Her sister Becky, has a daughter named Sarah. Sarah was going to have a baby around May. I was given the requirements of "they LOVE sock monkeys!". Well what else was I going to paint? So I did some sock monkey research and came across some very interesting and bizarre ones, but I got the general idea. So I plunkered down and came up with this. Hope you enjoy the painting Sarah and Gabe! Congratulations!

Annecy International festival of Animation 2008

So I'm back from my week in Annecy, Fr for the Animation festival. I had a blast! It is true what everyones says about Annecy. The Food,the Festival, the films, the f-scenery, and the friends are all top notch.

Mari and I got there on Saturday and went straight to our hotel after picking up our badges and the 500 lbs. of programs and advertisements. Our Hotel was paid for by the festival and was right on the Lake(such a beautiful view).

We met up with Dikki and a group of the most talented and super cool locals. Shout out to Bannister, Flo, Mathilde, Corentin, Ben, and Jean-Phillip. You guys rock. Ok so now Mari and I had a crew and we were ready to start the festival.

I hadn't really thought about it until I got there but there is waaaaay too much animation for you to see. A week is not enough to cram it all in so we dicided to narrow our schdule a bit. This is what we saw...


Short films in Competition #1:Our favorite were...

"KJFG no5",super simple but probably the funniest short of the whole festival.

"La Maison en Petits Cubes", this one won the Annecy Crystal for best short. It was so good it made Mari tear up a little.


Short films in Competition #2:I was in this one...

"Let Them Grow!", I met the director, Christelle Soutif, who was super nice. She had a really cool Clay/Affect effects technique she used.

"Keith Reynolds Can't Make it Tonight", Also met the director, Felix Massie, who is one of four directors who had shorts at Annecy this year all from a studio ,ArthurCox,in Bristol. He also used Flash and I think we were the only two in the whole competition who did.

"Chepogi", Super cool Russian folk tail with a happy ending. Beautiful with a neat cutout animation style.

"Styri", I met the director and producer to this film too. Ivana Sebestova and Ivana Zajacova from Slovakia. We ended up bumping into each other a couple times during the festival and went to the closing ceremonies together. Their short was also awesome about four womens lives that cross paths and interconnect in different ways.

"The Hidden Life of the Burrowing Owl", my film was here.

The Other directors and I before the show.

Short films in Competition #3:

"Portraits Rates a Sainte-Helene", A film about Napolean and his portait.

"John and Karen" by Matthew walker, another director from ArthurCox.

"My Little Angel", Funny short with violence toward puppies, But in a funny way.


Short films in Competition #4 :

"Kuygorozh" another amazingly good looking short from a Russian director.

"Operator" This was Matthew Walkers second film in competition. I thought this one was really funny. Good dry humor in animation hits me on the funny bone.

"Paradise" I love the way this one looked. Well done. Oh and I think Dave Foley from "kids in the Hall" did a voice on this one.

"Skhizein", This one was a french film that everyone liked. Good concept, done well, and not to long. Really good.

We also got to see a super sweet presentation of two Disney shorts and the new Pixar short. Awwwwwwesome! All three were really good. The goofy one was super funny and worked totally well in 2D. That was good to see again. "Glago's Guest", which I had never heard of before, was great! And of course Pixar knocks another one far out of the park with "Presto". What was really nice is Doug Sweetland had a really interesting presentation after about how he had to pitch and re-pitch and re-pitch the boards to the Pixar brain trust, until he got it right. I really related to his story cause I went through a really similar thing with Chris and Shannon when I was pitching "Owl". I love how those Pixar guys really open their shirts and let you see how hairy their chests are. Most companies try and keep their mistakes and process secret, but it is a totally helpful to hear how they go through making this stuff.


After that we saw a whole grip of features
"Nocturna" Good 2D!
"Appleseed: Ex Machina" CG Anime.
"Go West, A Lucky Luke Adventure" It was like a super good Animaniacs feature length episode. Funny.
"Dragon Hunters" Mari said she liked it and can't wait for it to come out in english.
"Idiots & Angels" Another weird one from Plymton. I'm glad he is back to the colored pencils.

And like a genius I missed "Sita Sings the Blues" a feature by an american who uses Flash and won the Crystal for best feature.



So on Wednesday I had my premiere in the Grande Salle(a huge 1000 seat plus theater). The theater was packed to the gills and the crowd was throwing tons of paper airplanes before the show(an Annecy tradition). I can't tell you how cool it was to sit in an audience of that many people and watch something you did on a super huge screen. It felt really good, and to top it off they cheered at the end. Aaahhh I was in heaven. After each film they brought up the lights and if the director was there he/she ran up on stage and took a bow. I ran up with Mari's camera and took this blurry shot.

Earlier that day Dik, Bannister, and Corentin, all had a comic book signing out front of the local comic book store. (french comics....drool) They seemed to have a good time. You'll have to ask Dik for more details on that since I took the opportunity to ditch them and go eat more French food with Mari.

On Thursday we all took part in the Sketch Crawl. Bannister and Dik lead about 60 artist through the old town drawing the whole way. It was a blast and I got to meet a whole bunch of artists from all over England. (really nice all of them)


All in all it was a great week. My favorite part was probably the people. It was awesome being in a place with so many people all jazzed about seeing good animation. Can't wait to finish my next film so I can try and convince Annecy to let me come back again.

Les Ces Type al a Francais

That is right, Mike and Dik are on their way to Annecy France this weekend. Mike's film is having it's world premiere on Tuesday the 10th at La Turbine theater at 2:00 pm. And Dik is helping host an international SKECTHCRAWL on Thursday at 2:00pm this Flight friend Bannister.