switching gears (not really)

While i may continue animating on the side, i remain more focused on "live-action" film production overall. So, instead of never updating this page, the production side will hostile-takeover this site instead.

here's the info dump on the salients - hyperlinks go to the imdb page for all the crew & cast info:




The Ninth Level (2013)
Music: Two Star Symphony

This Neighborhood (2013)
Music: Two Star Symphony
 NSFW

Touch (2014)
Music: Glass the Sky

Whole Other World (2015)
Music: The Wheel Workers 

And first, but not least, the trailer for the full length feature that was my first co-production with director Jerry Ochoa. It will be on HULU soon, in all it's ridiculous glory. Or, for the collectors, hit me up for a DVD, complete with outtakes, (drunken) Director's Commentary, and for a few pennies more, I'll even throw in 3 variant-cover postcards! (the 90s will be hip again by 2019 - get ahead of the hipster herd and buy my dvds! ....Please?)

Hardball: All Balls Don't Bounce (2008)
NSFW

It's a COMbination of things that each needs a seperate POST - it's COMPOST!

We entered the "Ninth Level" video into film festivals, and it screened at the RIP Film fest over the Nov.8th weekend in LA.

We had so much fun making Ninth Level, that Jerry (Ochoa, director) wrote and was awarded grant funds through Houston's SouthWest Alternative Media Project (SWAMP) to produce another film featuring a brand new Two Star Symphony score - it was our first project using a RedCam, but we had a fantastic cast and crew and it turned out beautifully. Not only did This Neighborhood get a great response when it premiered at the 2013 Houston CinemaArts Festival presentation of the Short Filmmakers' showcase, it was also accepted to and screened at:

2014 Action On Film Festival  in Monrovia, California
2014 Unreal Film Festival  in Memphis, Tennessee
2014 New York City Independent Film Festival in NYC 
2014 Molins de Rei in Barcelona, Catalonia, where it was nominated for 6 awards in the short films competition, and received a Judges' Special Selection!

We will release This Neighborhood online soon - but while you wait impatiently for its release, another local Houston band - Glass the Sky - liked Jerry's previous directorial efforts so much they asked him to make them a video.  So we produced and Jerry directed Touch, which. is. GORGEOUS. thanks to the heroic efforts of our talented cast and crew. You can peruse pictures of said crew and talent looking like epic set deities behind the scenes here. Or not. But you have the choice.

Holy Flaming @%$#*^!!!! An update!

The incredible Two Star Symphony finally has a full fledged music video for their fantastic arrangements!   Not only did I get to PA on an amazing set with a great group of talented professionals (and a psychotic insomniac donkey), but I got to animate the haunted illustration that appears in The Book In the Library.

As you will see from the whopping 3.5 second run time, all four members of the quartet writhe in flaming agony. Considering they are really cool people, it was a little odd and disconcerting planning and enacting their gruesome pain and suffering. (Well.... except for Jerry, the director. It was kind of disappointing not being able to push his gruesome demise further).

 In addition to animating all four members of the quartet, this was my first attempt at animating fire;  I would have liked to tinker with the flame animation looping a bit more, but deadlines.....

Here is the full 4 frames of animation as I submitted it (I think they had to trim about 12 frames from the beginning).    It needs to be viewed in HD mode, or it looks like fuzzy cubism. The full video for The 9th Level can be found on the Two Star Symphony site - it is gorgeous (I did mention that the entire cast and crew are BAD-ASS, right?)

the 9th Level Animation from Sophia Vassilakidis on Vimeo.