alchemist

The secrets of the Alchemist, part 3

Espektro — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 14:57:29 +0000

Hey people, has been a while since the last blog entry.

Bad news for the fans of the Homunculus: today the SECREA Coinvertion program published on their website the selected projects to support. The Homunculus is not there. Here's the complete list, you don't need to know spanish to see my name is not there

http://www.cultura.michoacan.gob.mx/Primerallamada/AvisoOportuno/Resultados_COINVERSIONES-SECREA_Junio2007.htm

am I sad? upset? well, yes, but not burning in flames for it. 61 projects were presented, 36 were selected; thats more than 50% of chance to get in. What I feel a bit sad is, that this guy named Dominique Jornard once again steped in my way.

Who is Dominique Jornard? Well, in my town, Morelia city, he is known as the GOD OF ANIMATION. Yup, that is, people here use to call him that way. I think you can check his profile at IMBD, he is a veteran of goverment supported projects, and HE ALWAYS WINS on every contest. Why? I don't know, I don't even know how his work looks like, he has nothing in youtube. Hell, and that bothers me a lot. How can you be so popular and show nothing of your work in the public media? Anyway, I can't do nothing about it, maybe he won because his project was cheaper, $1000 dollars, mine was $15000... or maybe because he was better, who knows.

And I said I wasn't burning in flames... jeje. Sorry.

Nah, Im not mad really. I feel suported by you guys, and by many other people who really want to see this story on screen. There's a good way to help the production of the homunculus: INVEST on your film projects, that is, hire me and my team of artist to help you with your films to make your storyboards, posters, publicity and all that graphic stuff that, believe it or not, plays a high roll in the way you sell a project.

Right now Im helping a couple of critters on their projects for free because they're in the same situation, maybe you don't have money either but maybe you know someone who can pay a bit for our services, and I'll be more than glad to help you if you can recomend me with those persons.

You can check my portfolio here

http://s21.photobucket.com/albums/b262/HectorBustamante/?

soon you will see it on www.espektro.com

The production of the Homunculus will continue, until God wants. Sometimes I don't explain myself why He puts tons of rock on your way... but sometimes I think because he wants you to get stronger. Don't fucking know...

Tougharcade, Dan, Marco, karmacritters... all of you, I REALLY REALLY thank you to be here with me. Who needs goverment support wen you have powerfull and willing spirits like yours?

In the search of the philosopher's stone, the alchemist have the last word. See you on my next post.

FADE OUT

The secrets of the Alchemist, part 2

Espektro — Wed, 30 May 2007 13:24:04 +0000

It's been almost 15? 20? days since the first post of this production bitacore and they'd been crazy as hell. If you're new into this series, please check out The secrets of the Alchemist part 1 and the Alchemist Spinoff posts before reading this one.

Okey, whats new?

Finally, after doing some crazy malabarism with the project in the Program of Coinvertions for the Artistic Production managed by the local goverment, they accepeted it and now is in the process of revision. They'll publish the final selection of projects on their website by June 29th. I have high hopes on this, but Im trying to be realistic too: there are tons of projects submitted here, most of them are supported by local artistic figures with known careers. Im Mr. Nobody because this would be my first grand project.

But by the oposite, nobody is going to show a project like mine. Animation is a labor of alchemists in Mexico, very obscure and apart from the mainstream...you're seen like a freak for trying to develop projects in this format. Unlike the USA, Europe and Asia, there's no an identified animation industry in my country. Why? I don't know why, but I know many talented people here asking for an oportunity to show their craft and there's zero areas of exposure for animators. Well, except for one, this young festival called CREANIMAX wich specialices only in animation. You can check their site here www.creanimax.com. So... I think this can be punch for the Homunculus above other audiovisual projects. Crossing my fingers.

But I'd been asking myself what would happen if they just say NO to the homunculus. Should I quit? should I just leave the project inside my "coming-soon" vault? Definitly, having no money makes this 50 times more difficult to produce, but I have to consider it because... after all... this is what I want to do with my life. Whats my plan B then? I have the hardware, I have the workplace, I have this free record studio at my wish and I have the exhibition promise from the UMSNH so it's a huge base to at least give it a try. I have no crew to pay them to fill the workflow, but I have all this cool software that can plenty cover most of the animation basics and at least a year of production to take it all over by myself. But I still have no money, and even if I try, I'll need some to cover my basic needings and pay some things related to the production. Felipe, my coproducer, is very entusiasthic about this but I can't guarantee he could still at my side if there's no financial support. Damn.

Then the only thing I have is to optimize the animation process to save money and time.

You know? this is why anime rules the world of animation. They produce good series and movies in relatively short periods of times and short budgets compared with Hollywood standars. Many critics says that anime barelly animates their draws and they use cheap tricks to give you the illusion of motion and life on them. Close ups to the eyes and voice over, wide shots to the characters and voice over, panoramic shots and voice over... voice over, voicer over and more voice over. My answer is: Isn't that bad? Their series are even more popular than the american productions, even they show cheap techniques. The whole point is creating an enviroment, an illusion, and if you can connect with your public doing all this then man, you're a wizard!

So how to optimize the animation process? the most important thing is to identify those points were you can save animation time by doing simple pans, zooms and little frame moves. For quality sake you can't exclude those sequences were you want to enphatize the action and the emotion, like a chase, a fight or a huge action sequence. BUT, if you save time doing all the tie ins betwen this large sequences the whole production will get bursted up and you'll obtain a most intense, quicker and capturing motion film. At least thats my teory, I have to put it on the screen.

The other thing I can do is looking for sponsorships, wich I'll anyway but Im talking in the case the Coinvertion doesn't chooses the Homunculus. You just can't go with an sponsor and extend your hand asking for money. You must think on an strategy, they'll ask "what do I win giving you money to put my logo on your film credits?"... well, thats the first thing they'll win: publicy. The second thing they can win is reputation, many people think doing movies is something like a godsend and no mortal can ever dare to try such a sacred labor because they'll be risking to suffer Prometheus' fate. Bullshit, all the people with little imagination can give a try on movie making. BUT... thats what most people thinks, and you can play a bit with that. I don't like it at all, but we're talking about harsh times and maquiavelic solutions. You can say " your bussines will be seen in festivals all over the world, moviemaking is a beautiful artcraft blah blah blah...you will be exposed at the internet trough youtube, karmacritic and all those cool sites..." BUT THIS WILL NOT BE ENOUGH. Even if you throw a great speech most of them will say no because it's not on their plans after all, so I can't fully trust on getting sponsorships.

Or should I? maybe, if I do this: I can finish at least a half of the shortfilm and then give a try arround. It's easier to sell Dodo eggs if you show at least one to the client. You like it? I can give you more from were I got this, but I need to see money, pal! This implies to work under heavy economic restrictions at least for half a year, and the sponsorship should cover retroactively all the expenses done until that moment... but it's more factible. The sponsor can see what he is putting his money over, an d even if they're not interested in the first moment, you'll definitly hook them and try a second chance after the short is finished.

In all the aspects it's a hard way to take, Im crossing my fingers for the coinvertion but I have to write a plan B if this doesn't comes.

I'll upload the script once I translate it to english! Take care critters!

FADE OUT

Alchemist spinoff 3: The amazing Mr. Espektro v.s. the burocracy terror!

Espektro — Tue, 22 May 2007 23:05:14 +0000

Okey, this is a spinoff with a long subtitle... because Im just so pissed off! It was a bad day.

I recieved a package this morning, it was the female wrestler suit I designed for a photoshoot Im planning to use in my website, but like a premonition it came wrong. I designed the suit to be all in red, instead of that it came in black. It doesn't looks so bad, but is not what I designed. The wrestler mask Im using in my avatar is actually the logo of my little studio, and seems I now have to change it to black. That was the smallest of my problems.

Today I present myself into the Secretary of Culture of my state/region to bring my project THE INVENTION OF THE HOMUNCULUS into the Coinvertion program I'd been talking to you all this posts along. A coinvertion program is about the Goverment and the Particulars making a coinvertion on an artistis project, and mine is a shortfilm production. In the coinvertion, the particulars try to afford as much they can in work, equipment and services... and the goverment trows some money, arround 15 000 dollars. I'd spent the last two months trying to get as much coinvestors I could so papa goverment would not say NO to my offer. What I got is:

-A free use of a record studio. Woah! Im still amazed of that, record studios are really, really expensives and Felipe (my coproducer) got it for free.

-An exhibition guarantee in our local college, the Universidad Michoacana, to show our short during all their festivals and cultural events arround the next year. Besides that, Im going to pay myself all the envys to local film festivals, INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVALS like the one my city organices each year. The last year we got Guillermo del Toro, Tommy Lee Jones and Gus Van Sant, so we're going big each year.

- A free rent local I can use each day of the year at anytime of the day, to work on the animation short. It's something like saving $3600 bucks a year.

-My own computers, buyed with my work for a year. They're very powerfull machines and ready for hard work.

So, wen I came to the Secretary of Culture they took my project, noding like if they had a pain in the ass and guess what? They say "Your coinvertion can't be your computers". I said "what? why is that? in your contest bases you NEVER mentioned I couldn't mark my equipment as part of the coinvertion".

Because we say NO. Type it again.

That's the most stupid answer I ever heard in my life. Really. I'd deal with mexican burocrats each day, and they're hatefull people most of the time who's inferiority complex makes them treath you like shit because they're in a power position and you need their authorization in order to obtain a benefit. But this ma'm was the worst, she was like my second grade teacher pulling my ears off. Im 25, I studied Laws and Social Sciences and she speaks to me like a school boy? fuck! Only in Mexico, baby!

I'd been thinking what should I do in case the Coinvertion program rejects my project forever. Should I do it for free? sacrificing more time and resources? Dunno... but at least that would be the honorable way to take. Im going to take the "corrected" project tomorrow (and notice my sarcasm) and hope this time they just nod okey.

Many americans ask themselves why mexicans keep coming and coming from down the border :) ... this is one of thousand reasons. I love Mexico, but sometimes I just wish things could be more easier arround here, geez. Less autodestructivity, that is.

FADE OUT

Alchemist spinoff 2

Espektro — Thu, 10 May 2007 14:06:45 +0000

Yesterday Felipe Ochoa(my coproducer) and I reached the director of periodism career at a local college, the UDEM (University of Morelia) to ask for an sponsorship/ coproducing favor. The UDEM has a very cool record studio they use for educational purpouses, and this guy knows Felipe since a long time ago (beer partners, that is ;) ) and he said: GO AHEAD!

This is very encouraging! he said there's no problem since their goal is CREATE, CREATE, CREATE. It's nice to know people out of the bussines with the resources and the attitude to break inside without all that crap you have to deal to make your vision come true.

Anyway, maybe we'll be having problems to get an sponsorship because this is a long project and there's no way they can see their ads as sooner than a year. We need to find the right people, not only looking for the brute money. It's gonna be difficult. The deadline to apply in the goverment production program is may 24th and we still need get some documents. I hate paperwork.

I decided to take off the 35 mm filmprint from the original budget, it was consuming at least the half of the total and they only can give us 15000 dollars for a year of production. 7 minutes in 35 mm costs arround 8000 dollars in Mexico, no way. I'll invest more money in men/hour than materials, since we'll do it all digitally and we already have the hardware and software to do it, I'll make my bet for a filmprint sponsorship once the short is finished. We'll manage only DVDs by moment.

Why we need a filmprint? many festivals only accept exhibition copies on 35 mm, wich I think is very stupid since most of the people who goes into festivals are short in money; we live in the digital era and DVD, VCD or HDV are more affordable formats, and many festivals already give you a free filmprint if your work is selected. Maybe I'll just skip those festivals.

Well, let's see what happens. Espektro out.

Alchemist spinoff 1

Espektro — Sun, 06 May 2007 18:04:34 +0000

Okey, this is the first spinoff post from the "Secrets of the Alchemist" post series... yay!

This spinoffs intend to be quicker notes about the steps taken in the production of my short film. This one here is for talking about the technology I will try to acomplish my goals.

Animation is well known to be long time absorbing and really expensive compared with other film productions. Some feature films takes at least 2 or 3 years to be completed, instead less than 1 year a normal live action movie does. Im not Dysney, Dreamworks or Toei, but Im mexican and we are world famosos as well known masters of improvisation. This can be a good thing or a bad thing depending of the focus you take, because you can take very bad decitions trying to avoid an amount of huge problems but I think technology can put the things in the right place and avoiding us to spend a lot of money.

Alfredo Salazar, one of the animators Im working with, suggested to save time and money using the wacom tablets. I had my doubts until he showed me some of his work done with this technology and my mind blowed up! Old fashion animation takes a lot of time and people doing different things: one guy drawing the skelleton of the animation, another guy inking, another guy coloring, another guy cleaning... and tons of other labors. With a wacom tablet, one person can draw, ink, color and animate a full character sequence in one day or two, and the results? well, as good as you are already in photoshop! :)

Alfredo also found this cool sample on youtube, from an speed painter called Nexx using a wacom intuos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoxypapNwoU

It's really impressive, we don't need a lightable and tons of paper and ink, just a good PC and a wacom. Im negotiating with an advertiser if he can provide me at least 3 of this tablets for my studio, in exchange he will get his ad at the end credits of the short. Crossing my fingers, I want to have one of this toys in my table right now.

As you can see the wacom price is very affordable and cheaper than a classic lightable

http://www.wacom.com/intuos/6x11.cfm

In the personal notes: Im going to see Spiderman 3 today with my girl, she loves the series and we hope to have a good afternoon. We're a bit dissapointed because we planned to go to a Lucha Libre show next tuesday, and the main attraction is injuried. Mistico, the lucha libre rockstar of the moment, was scheduled to be in the main event but he got injuried on his last fight and we really wanted to see his performance. Sigh, anyway, we'll try to have a good time.

The secrets of the Alchemist, part 1

Espektro — Sat, 05 May 2007 16:03:50 +0000

Hello Karmacritic!

While I still don't have any finished film to show up at the site, I decided to start making somekind of production bitacore right here. Yeah, Im posing Robert Rodriguez because I just readed "Rebel Without a Crew" but what the hell :) this is a good excuse to write in my blog.

Maybe I should put somethings I didn't on My Profile because I was too lazy that time. I born in Morelia, a little mexican capital betwen the road of Mexico city and Guadalajara, the 2 most important towns here. I met Marco aka Fableforge here too, we shared common interests like sci fi movies, videogames, anime, comics and all that geekie stuff. We had been good friends since then, passed trough both difficult and nice experiences, and even wen he is not living here anymore I consider him my best friend.

I studied in the local Laws and Social Sciences school, thinking of me becoming a lawyer, but I felt sick of the system once I saw it with my own eyes. Mexico is a very corrupt country, not the most corrupt in the world but wen you ask people, they're more afraid of the police than the mob itself. Lawyers, politicians and judges are alienated with crimelords against other crimelords, is something like bad guys vs bad guys, very bizarre, only in Mexico. The good thing is that you can get a cool movie plot from this :) ... sigh. Why Laws? well, Morelia doesn't offers you too much educational options, and going to Mexico city to study something else was just out my dad's budget.

But before that, just after I finished highschool I got a job in a local software development company called vermic.com, they do somekind of low budget educational games to sell in schools. I was on the artwork department, I always loved to draw and kinda good at it so it was a great first job. I was 17 at that time, so my priorities wasn't clear then and I never considered to study something a doc to my skills, like graphic design, sciences of comunication or film making. I don't consider this part of my life as a waste of time, because I earned some experience and meet very talented people here.

Anyway Vermic fired me wen I go into laws school, but wen I was on the 6th semester of my career I met a bunch of guys and old vermic partners with the intemption to start a videogame project to jump into the international industry. They wanted to do a 3d graphics game, something never done before in our country, and I was more than excited to be in.

The main problem you can get wen you go into this kind of team projects is if the rest of the gang is not sintonizing the same frecuence you do. We all started excited and entusiastic, but the project turned into a bunch of endless discussion meetings at my friends houses, getting you to nowhere. We talked a lot about if the game should be really cool and if we could earn a lot of money with it.

At the end, I was the only one giving real work to the project: a story, characters, game design... and the rest were only there just blurbing vague ideas. The videogame project died wen most of the guys saw this kind of workflow was useless but never tried to fix it (10 people started and only 3 stayed to the end), but surged a new one. With the story and the characters so long developed one guy from the team, Armando Ortiz, who actually works in the mexican television, suggested it can work for an animation movie project. We called it "Tiempos de Furia", "Age of Fury" in english. So we were only Me, Armando and his brother Roberto trying to pull this thing into the road. Roberto was doing the admin stuff.

So we tried to make a movie project and sell it to the mexican producers using the people Armando knew. The story was about a mexican bountyhunter at the times of the revolution war in the early XX century, and how he was hired to stop a plot to kill the president. The story and the characters conquered many hearts in the media, but my inexperience made me an easy blank for their natural bussines killer instincts.

We contacted a TV producer named Melina Paz, her previous works were tv shows for JETIX, she seemed a nice person the time I met here. Also we had the chance to show the project to Cinepolis, the most important exhibition company in latinamerica wich happens to have his main offices in Morelia and recently trown into some movie production projects. Many people from the USA get blown up wen they come to Mexico and go into a Cinepolis multiplex! :) Im proud to say this guys are in the top of movie exhibition arround the world.

Well...back to the main theme... things never got into place. Because I didn't have previous experience on screenwritting or directing, Melina and her team just took my 30 page story and turned it into a movie script but turned a lot of crap out of it, never asking my opinion. Isn't my ego talking, really... that script was really crappy. Lack of continuity, flat characters, lack of emotion... non of the things I pictured for the original videogame story were there. Geez! they wanted to kill a character just to go into a formula Melina used in past productions!

Also, they wanted to hire another guy to direct the movie. Again, my lack of experience was their best argument. Melina proposed Carlos Carrera, a Cannes award winner director for an animated short film called "El Heroe", to direct the movie. But the problem was that's the only animated project Carrera has done in his career, the rest of his movies are live action dramas with a very different focus of what an action/pack -anime/drama like Furia needed. He didn't looks the comic book kind of guy like Guillermo del Toro or Alfonso Cuarón (Hellboy and Harry Potter), you know what I mean?. I love "El Heroe" and I admire Carrera's work, but I think FURIA was not the kind of story for him.

If you want to start a project, be sure your partners are talking the same language you do. It's like if you were giving Pedro Almodovar the LOTR trilogy... Carrera wasn't the right guy for it, nothing else. So as Melina.

As the main author, I tried to put my word on it. I just downloaded a script from the internet and tried to adapt my original story to the format. The result wasn't too professional, but at least gave me experience about screenwritting. Melina just blowed up wen I send her a new script, she told us we were too unprofessional to be in the bussines and never heard from her again. I don't know what got her more mad: the fact I didn't liked her script, or if she felt accepting it was crappy would make her loose creative control of the project. I think this is a common error of many producers, wen they think they must have ALL the creative managment in order to preserve the administrative. Im not saying Im a fucking genius, Im really not... but if she liked my story from the beginging, why change it so hard? Control, control, control.

(A curious note: wen Rodriguez was selling El Mariachi to the big lots, Disney wanted him to change the story to texas, and the hero to learn karate from an apache master... no words. )

Besides, the guy who was managing our project inside Cinepolis got fired before we knew if he actually showed something to the executives. Fortunatelly, all the material is copyrighted to my name, but the original team finally dissasembled. I know Armando and his brother Roberto blame me for loosing this oportunity to hit in the industry. We have a good relation nowadays, but I know we can't go into a new project anymore. We have different ways to work, different perceptions of what storytelling must be.

The next thing I did was finishing laws school. Fiu, I feel kinda liberated for typing all this. Now I have the objective to produce and direct Furia myself, it's been a hard way until now and will get harder in the future, but Im open to faith and possibilities. I got tons of positive feedback about the story and the characters from inside and outside the media, that I really think I can come in to the battle again.

Today, 2 years later, I started my own bussines called ESPEKTRO. My dream is to upgrade from a simple graphic design bussines to a multimedia production company, and I need to finish some projects to do it. One of them, is a short animated film called THE INVENTION OF THE HOMUNCULUS.

The plot: An old alchemist is trying to create artificial life, an homunculus, to be the ultimate wizard of all times. But his obsession for the project has made him forget about Ozymandias, his pet cat, who's always starving because his master never feeds him. The alchemist is about to reach his goal, and not even the loud mews of his cat will trow him appart of it, but this little problem will get him ENOURMOUS consequences to deal with in the near future.

Im assembling a group of 4 animators in order to produce this short, and we're aplying into a goverment coinvertion program to get the resources for whole year. If everything goes well, we can get about 15 000 dollars to produce HOMUNCULUS. This is a great chance to learn more about directing and producing animation, and most important of all, gaining a name inside this ungratefull bussines.

I'll try to blog all the important points surging during this process. Maybe we can't get into the coinvertion program, but i'll try to solve the problems as creative as possible. That's the fucking job of a producer anyway, solve big problems with creativity, not just trying to blast off other guy's creativity.

So... the secrets of the alchemist are about to be revealed. Stay tuned!