Friday, February 24, 2006
CASTING CALL
I'm casting voice artists for my animated feature-in-progress, Sita Sings the Blues,
TUESDAY MARCH 14th, 6:30 pm - 9:30 pm, at a sound studio in Manhattan (Chelsea). I need lively character voices with authentic Indian accents for the following roles:
Female:
Sita - heroine, devoted wife, pure, loving, chaste, yet oddly sexy
Kaikeyi - Dasharatha's second wife, scheming materialist wench
Surphanaka - Ravana's sister, demoness, smart and vengeful (this character may get axed, stay tuned)
Male:
Rama - hero, prince, god, warrior, stud, jerk
Ravana - ten-headed villain, demon king - the Snidely Whiplash of Lanka
Hanuman - monkey warrior, big, strong, powerful, devoted servant of Rama and Sita
Dasharatha - Rama's father, aged king of Ayodhya
Mareecha - a beleaguered demon wizard reluctantly pressed into Ravana's service
Luv & Kush - Sita's twin sons, about 13 years old, rambunctious adolescents
Valmiki - wise old rishi, ashram founder, poet and author of the Ramayana
Launderer - low-class misogynist
Please email me to schedule and get the exact location.
This is an independent, self-(a.k.a. un-)funded project. No big bucks here, but I'll gladly offer a token amount of cash, and we can negotiate "back-end" for if/when the finished film ever makes money. Thanks!
Sprocket Ensemble Farewell Performance, March 2 in San Francisco
Nik Phelps and the Sprocket Ensemble perform live music to projected animation. When I made my first animated short in 1998 on super-8, Nik composed an original score to play live. At that performance I went from being a humble cartoonist to being an animator. Nik continued to write brilliant scores for films I made in San Francisco, including I Heart My Cat (perhaps my favorite ever), Cancer (which I used as a score for a later film, Lexi), and the now-famous Fetch!. Now this venerable San Francisco institution is bidding adieu to the City by the Bay and moving to Belgium. I just learned Nik and the Sprockets are giving a farewell performance at the Balboa Theater on Thursday March 2 at 7 and 9 pm. Wish I could be there!
Ganeshamation
Bangalore Animator Prashant Kadkol pointed me to this cute short about the life of clay Ganesha statues he made at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Cartoon Skeletons
Discovered the amazing Cabinet Magazine, which linked to "A character study of 22 present and past cartoon characters" by Michael Paulus.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Information Esthetics
You'd think there'd be more web space devoted to this topic, wouldn't you? Still, my reasearch (read: procrastination, f***ing around on the web, wasting time) yielded a few very cool sites, including 300 images from 1800 sites, css zen garden, and the Information Esthetics blog.
Of the few pages I found, most discussed "visual design" in text, utilizing no other visual information. Perhaps that's because Graphic design plays a minor role on the web. But information esthetics shouldn't.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
I'm still here
but I've been busy, finishing up a 4-month freelance job that ended up taking more than 5 months. Now, at last, I'm emptying my brain of that and making room for more Sita.Meanwhile, I've been reading Questioning Ramayanas, plus an excellent article about Telugu and Tamil Ramayana variations by editor Paula Richman; download document file here. Alert reader Divya pointed me to a new URL for one of my favorite Manushi articles about Sita that's been missing for ages. Discovered digital/intereaction design/"new media" work by surprising namesake Brad Paley, including TextArc, which I want to see analyze various Ramayanas for comparison and contrast (how would Book 3 look compared to Book 5? Or Valmiki vs. Tulsidas? Or the short abridged translations required in classic lit classes, vs. longer translations with flowery passages intact?). Once again teaching Flash for Film and Video at Parsons. Was pleasantly amazed by the Pixar show at MOMA and even shelled out 30 bucks for the catalog. Walked, ate, slept, and did laundry. Always laundry.
