Spatula Madness Production Blog

Heyyyy everyone! I’ve been meaning to make a big status-update post for a while now, but I’ve just kept putting it off… and off… and off…

Weelllll here it is!

Obviously Spatula Madness has taken me waaay more time to complete then I originally anticipated. Most of the delay has been me simply underestimating the amount of work that was involved in making a movie like this. And the longer I work on it the more bored I get animating spatulas all day, and the less work I actually get done.

That hasn’t been the only delay though, I’ve also been sidetracked by a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff with Charlie the Unicorn. I have been contacted by no less than 20 different companies wanting to do something with Charlie. I wanted to keep this all private in case it fell through, and now that is all HAS fallen through I feel okay posting about it

First up was merchandising companies. A few different groups wanted to turn Charlie into a “brand” and market the characters on thermoses, pens, balloons, fire hydrants etc etc. I was offered all sorts of money for this, but of course when the contracts came they were totally different than what was originally described to me. So, alas, you won’t be able to buy a Charlie the Unicorn Fun Thermos at Wal-Mart anytime soon. A great loss for the world.

Then there were the mobile phone companies wanting to charge people to download Charlie the Unicorn onto their phones. These were easy to turn down, as I would rather people be able to download the cartoon for free to any phone / media player / spy watch / virtual reality headset they own.

Then there were the people who wanted me to make a second Charlie cartoon to advertise their site / new show / fabulous kitchenware set. Have you seen the web series “Quarterlife“? Yeah. Someone wanted Charlie to advertise that.

Then there was Nickelodeon, who said they wanted to set up a phone interview with me and then never wrote back, and National Lampoon, who were interested in my ideas until I actually sent them, at which point they realized that all of my ideas are monumentally lame and retarded and stopped writing back. Dear Nickelodeon and National Lampoon: I have a great idea for a TV series that involves talking dolphin math professors. They do math… AND they’re dolphins! Two for the price of one! ISN’T THAT HILARIOUS?! Lets do lunch!

Then I got a call from the awesome Matt Harrigan over at Adult Swim, who was interested in hearing my show ideas. I sent him four or five small treatments for shows based on The Cloak, Bino the Elephant and other pilot ideas I’ve been working on, and the response was “So tell me about Charlie the Unicorn.” He had seen the short and thought it would make a funny TV show. Great! I have to be honest, I was so caught up in the fact that I was talking to Adult Swim about turning Charlie the Unicorn into a show that I temporarily forgot what a terrible idea a Charlie the Unicorn show would be. I mean don’t get me wrong, I think Charlie is funny, but if it got picked up we’re talking about 143 minutes of Charlie here. How the heck would that work?

Well that’s what I set off to find out. I called my friend Matt Books and over the next few days we tried to figure out how in the hell to take a 3 minute, 1 joke cartoon and flesh it out into an entire series. Eventually we got a basic feel for what we wanted to do with the show and I put together a 4 minute video pitch detailing what the show would be about. The video included Charlie talking about what a terrible idea the show was, and then a minute-long sequence of my dog running around with a paper cone on his head.

I uploaded it to my site and then sent it off to Adult Swim. Woo! So, the next day I hadn’t heard back and was kind of worried. Maybe I would have been better off explaining all the reasons they should pick up the show instead of the reasons they shouldn’t. Another day goes by, nothing. Then a week. Then another week. And then 3 months. Obviously my video pitch failed to impress.

Or not, almost exactly 3 months after I sent it I get a call out of the blue from Matt Harrigan. “Hey Jason, loved the video pitch, we want to go ahead and put this show through, can you get me a pilot script by Tuesday?” It was Friday, by the way.

Soooo Matt Books drives down and we spend the next couple days watching “Final Destination 2″ and eating at Denny’s at 3 in the morning because we couldn’t figure out what the hell to write about. I KNOW! The Blue unicorn and the Pink unicorn can say “tomato” because it sounds funny when they say “tomato”! GENIUS! Well okay that one was my idea, Matt Books wanted all of the characters to be murdered and dismembered, their bodies hung from trees in the jungle as a warning to other unicorns.

Eventually we settled on a sort of middle ground between “tomatoes” and “dismemberment”, and sent Adult Swim the finished script early Tuesday morning. We tried to make it “Adult Swimy,” by which I mean we had organs falling out of bodies, a flower that wanted to be urinated on, you know. Mature stuff. I thought we had gone a little far… not because I thought we had actually gone too far, but because this was Charlie the Unicorn, a cartoon whose main fan base was 12 year old girls.

Adult Swim thought differently - we hadn’t gone nearly far enough. The script was, as they put it, “too kid-like” and needed to be made more R-rated. Also, they wanted each 11 minute episode to be multiple short Charlie cartoons instead of one long 11 minute one.

So at this point I’m working on developing a “mature audiences only” Charlie the Unicorn show for Adult Swim… and to be honest I didn’t think it was incredibly funny. A super-violent The Cloak, that would be awesome and hilarious. Charlie though? I wasn’t sure if it fit.

Regardless of all that, they wanted to go ahead and officially sign me on and get the production started. They asked what I would need to produce the show. Hmm. This is the list I sent them:

————————————————–
We’ll require the following items:

Dance Dance Revolution Arcade System (1)
Boa constrictor (1)
5 Gallons of Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream (5)
Half a kilo of cocaine (1)
Abe Lincoln’s skull (2)
Horse and Buggy with driver (must be Amish) (1)
125 pound rottweiler (1)
The hope diamond (1)
One fully grown redwood tree (1)
Timecop on DVD (1)
The full Van Damme collection (1)
A lock of Alyson Hannigan’s hair (1)
A lock of Andy Kaufman’s hair (1)
A dirigible, painted black (1)
Smokey the Bear costumes (2)
The gold spike driven into the ground by Leland Stanford that joined the east / west railroads (1)
————————————————–

The response:

“Awesome, I’ll get to work on your requests. The cocaine might be hard because we’re out of baggies.”

Hah, alright so I’ll be working on a show I’m not totally behind, but at least these guys are cool.

The contract for the show finally came in. It was 14 pages long. I have no idea if that’s standard in the industry or not. Here’s a few specifics:

I wouldn’t have final creative say (I assume very few people do in TV land.) I would be getting $2,500 for signing over the rights to the Charlie series. That’s less than I made in my CafePress t-shirt store that month. The real money would come from the actual production of the series, but of course there’s absolutely no guarantee the series itself would be picked up - all they wanted right then was a pilot. You see, they order pilots and then air them for executives and advertisers, and try to see which ones are likely to do well and make them money. It’s likely I wouldn’t know if the show itself had been picked up for at least half a year, and in the meantime I’d have to take down my CafePress store because they wanted full merchandising rights. This is, I assume, fairly standard in the TV industry.

Eh. I sent them back an e-mail with a few term changes. There were a couple legal things I wanted to be made clear in the contract, and I wanted the purchase price to be raised higher, so that my risk was less. They agreed to my terms, and sent me a new contract. A new contract that had 9 additional pages - masterful legal judo that removed all of my rights to everything, and then some. I’m not a lawyer, but to my untrained eye most of the contract seemed “not exactly in my favor.”

It was around this time that sales in my Charlie the Unicorn t-shirt store were getting higher and higher every month. I had e-mails coming in every two weeks from online companies offering me money to do cartoons for them. I even had a cool guy from Columbia Records wanting me to do a music video for a new band they had signed. I was getting less and less excited about the idea of doing a Charlie show. On the one hand, it was freaking Adult Swim, home of most of my favorite shows ever. On the other hand, I’d be making a show I wasn’t thrilled with for less money than I was making doing nothing, and not only that but I’d have to put the “Spatula Madness” feature on hold for another year while I worked full time on Charlie crap.

So, in a choice between “making a show I wasn’t excited about, in a way I didn’t think was the best way to make it, for less money than I could make independently” or “work independently and make whatever I want to make” I picked the latter. Had it been a Cloak show, or something I though had the potential to be great, I would have done it for almost nothing. But it wasn’t worth working so long and hard on a project I didn’t believe in, especially if I was going to take a pay cut.

Maybe in a year or two I’ll get the chance to make a show that I actually think could be great, but for now I’m staying independent.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not still selling out! You should see Charlie shirts at Hot Topic soon. No, really. Hot Topic contacted me and wants to carry Charlie merchandise. Want to know something that will blow your mind? Hot Topic is the most reasonable of all of the companies I’ve dealt with over the last year. The contract they sent me was short, to the point, and exactly how they said it would be. They respond to my questions within a day, and have been a friendly and professional group to deal with. It figures that the store with the “Welcome to Hell” entrance would be the nicest most reasonable company out there.

In other news: I’ve taken some of my favorite bits from the Charlie pilot script and turned it into “Charlie the Unicorn 2″, which will be released soon on the web. I think it’s better than the first Charlie, and it’s totally kid-friendly too! I can save the dismemberment for my other cartoons. And there will be many more cartoons. In April I’m moving back to Orlando, and I plan to start releasing at least two cartoons a month on FilmCow. I’ll also be working to finally finish Spatula Madness and get THAT released. After that? Who knows! If any TV executives out there are interested in my hilarious idea for a math-dolphin show give me a call!

Sorry about not keeping this blog updated.  A lot has happened in the last couple of months that I’ll post about soon, but rest assured production is still chugging along.

I haven’t made many posts recently about the actual process of making Spatula Madness, so I thought I’d give you a quick view of how I animate the characters in this movie.

I am using a program called Adobe After Effects to do all of the animation work in the film. It’s a powerful video composition program not usually used for animation, however because of the ease in which it handles many layers of images it’s the perfect tool for making a movie in the sort of “cut-out” style Spatula Madness is done in.

Here is what the interface looks like:

http://www.spatulamadness.com/blog/images/anim1.jpg

To the left I have my files and documents for a scene, up top are my controls. To the right is some scene information and additional tools, and on the bottom is my “timeline” where most of the work takes place.

Here is a document with Crazy Homeless Guy added:

http://www.spatulamadness.com/blog/images/anim2.jpg

As you can see he is now on both the scene viewer window and the timeline window.

If I Command+Double Click him, it opens up his document I am able to animate each of his individual parts:

http://www.spatulamadness.com/blog/images/anim3.jpg

If you look at the timeline you can see many, many different new items. Each character is composed of a variety of different images, and each image can be moved by itself. In addition, certain images are “linked” to each other and move when the other items move. For instance, his right hand will move when I move his right forearm (so that when I move his forearm his hand isn’t left behind hanging in the air.)

I animate the characters in this movie as if I were animating a stop-motion figure. Meaning, every frame I move his various parts slightly more, and over time you get motion. The most important thing After Effects does that really speeds this process up is called “hold keyframes.” When I move a part of him, After Effects automatically sets that as a “keyframe” in the timeline - and this is where hold keyframes come in - it’ll only count that as a move for one frame and won’t effect anything that came before it (as opposed to “tween” keyframes, where if you set two keyframes 10 frames apart it’ll fill in the movement between those 10 frames.)

You can see two of those hold keyframes here:

http://www.spatulamadness.com/blog/images/anim4.jpg

Here’s a better explanation of the difference between hold and tween. If I have his arm by his side on frame 1, and then set a “tween” keyframe on frame 10 with his arm in the air, the computer will automatically fill in frames 2-9 with animation of his arm moving from his side to the air. If frame 10 was a hold keyframe instead of a tween, it wouldn’t do that. Frames 1-9 would be his arm by his side, and then frame 10 would have his arm instantly jump to the air. I then go back and manually animate frames 2-9 myself instead of having the computer do it automatically. Why? Because when the computer does it, well, it looks like a computer did it. It’s too “smooth” and doesn’t have that sort of organic “stop motion” feel. It takes a lot more time, but it makes the animation look less like some idiot on a computer did it and more like it was done professionally.

Well that’s all for now!

I thought I’d bump the crazy Charlie anti-liberal stuff with something Charlie-inspired that doesn’t suck.

Here’s an amazing song I was just sent by “Jaycatt.”
http://spatulamadness.com/blog/sounds/charliesong.mp3

It was created by these guys, be sure to check out their other stuff:

http://www.jaycattnico.com/

http://www.froggmarlowe.com/

More Spatula Madness news in a few days!

Check this out:

Charlie the Unicorn Warns Against Liberalism

“Originator Jason Steele may not have intended to demonstrate the destructive methods and force of liberalism/communism but that is exactly what he did.”

There you have it, folks. A 3,639 word essay on why “Charlie the Unicorn” perfectly describes how liberals are destroying the world.

“The main character, Charlie the Unicorn, is continuously harassed by two other unicorns (pink and blue unicorns) to go with them to Candy Mountain, since they “found a map”. In other words, liberals have a plan that we should follow and all will be well as a result. We should go with them as Charlie reluctantly does join them on their “adventure”.”

See, this guy just gets me.

“Follow the unicorns down the road to the magical Leopluridon, a wonderful analogy to the loud celebrity voices of the world.”

Yes, I was wondering when someone was going to make that connection… now if only people would understand that the forrest represents global warming, the sky represents Chinese radicals, and the bridge represents Pizza Hut’s delicious lunch-time buffet.

“Charlie desperately wants to get off the bridge and says so but the others assuage his fear. They do finally lead him off but he has nearly been brainwashed by that point by fear and repetitive moaning.”

LIBERALS ARE GOING TO DESTROY THE WORLD, WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE AHHHHHH. LIBERALS CONTROL BY FEAR, FEAR THE LIBERALS FEAR FEAR LIBERALS LIBERALS LIBERALS.

I hope to write up a 4,000 word response detailing why the movie “Good Burger” is a perfect analogy to the dangers of globalization and the secret shadow people government.

Since I don’t have a whole lot to post about right now, I thought I’d share with you all a few audio clips from the Spatula Madness dialogue recording sessions we did a while back. This is from the session with my friend Matt Books, who voices a couple characters in the movie. He has an awesome and varied voice.

This is mostly out-take stuff that isn’t actually used in the movie:

http://www.spatulamadness.com/blog/sounds/mattbookslinesfile.mp3

Well since I’ve got nothing better to post about, here’s an enthralling look at MY DESK!

First, my ridiculously big wide-screen CRT monitor. That’s right folks, I haven’t switched to LCD yet. This baby weighs about 90 pounds.

And my G5, riddled with wires:

My microphone and keyboard. This is where da music happens. Bop de bop:

My mouse, on top of my tablet:

Next to that is my iControl, which I use to control either GarageBand or Logic:

And next to that is my various flutes and whistles:

ALL GLORY TO GREECE!

RUN, SPATULAS, RUN!!!

http://www.spatulamadness.com/blog/images/uhoh.jpg

GET AWAY WHILE YOU CAAAAN!!!

http://www.spatulamadness.com/blog/images/uhoh2.jpg

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while, I’ll try to go back to at least a post every week or two!

In non-spatula news, I’ve made another jazz song, this time using the african talking drum as a solo instrument.

Check it out:

http://www.filmcow.com/stuff/talkingdrummadness.mp3

“Talking Drum Madness.”

Ha ha ha ha, well hey look at this… anyone here read the “Over the Hedge” comic strip? My Uncle Lou sent over this one…

(Click for big)

One of the wonderful things After Effects allows me to do is operate a 3D virtual camera in my 2D scenes. I just set the distance between layers, and ta-da! 3D camera control!

So what exactly does that… mean? Well it means I can create some pretty awesome looking “hand held” style shots in the movie, for action scenes and the like. Of course it’s important not to over-use the feature because most scenes in Spatula Madness do better with a more “simplistic” visual style.

Here’s a quick example of 3D camera movement so you understand what I’m actually talking about:

http://www.spatulamadness.com/blog/images/3dcam.mov

It’s Edward running to the corner of a building with some light smoke flowing around.

This technique has given me the chance to create a lot of really cool shots, and bump up the visual impact of the action scenes.

IN OTHER NEWS…

Fellow Florida indie filmmaker Katharine Leis has released her latest short film “Foobie Jesus” onto the internet! It’s about a woman who believes that her cat is Jesus. The movie is awesome, so go check it out and be sure to spread it around!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObTnl10KRJE

And if you just can’t get enough Foobie, you can buy a super sexy I BELIEVE IN FOOBIE JESUS or W. W. F. J. D? shirt:
http://www.foobiejesus.com/Merchandise.html

IN OTHER OTHER NEWS…

I just shaved my head.

Well, no, but I cut it pretty short. I hate combs, you see.
COOOOMMBBBBSSS