The Chronosynclastic Infundibulum

Tour of Wild Brain in 2000

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Sat, 17 May 2008 02:23:00 +0000

In the year 2000, I wandered Wild Brain with my camcorder, recording people in the midst of the production of the Poochini animated TV show.

Here is the resulting video:

Spock's Brain: Condensed

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Mon, 12 May 2008 06:08:00 +0000

Inspired by an episode of the Look at His Butt podcast (in which JK and LT mention how often "Spock's Brain" is uttered), I edited everyone's least favorite Star Trek episode down to an enjoyable four minutes.

Scarebot 2007

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 21:07:00 +0000

I'm the "Safety Sean" they're all chanting about. This was in my backyard.

Yo Gabba Gabba!

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 17:22:00 +0000

I haven't mentioned this on the blog before, but Gooby and I did some work on this Nick Jr. show called Yo Gabba Gabba! We did two cartoon shorts and five "Super Martian Robot Girl" segments. Pigbat has been posting bits of the show on YouTube, including Super Martian Robot Girl. Here's the first one that we created:

The art direction on these was by Sarah Dyer and Evan Dorkin (check out this interview), and they were directed by Christian Jacobs (each of them heroes of mine). Each 1:15 segment had to be created in about 6 days to keep up with the schedule.

Paris Apartment Tour

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 17:00:00 +0000

Here is a video tour of the apartment on Rue Keller where I stayed while living in Paris for three months at the end of last year- the little sounds, like the door opening and the floorboards creaking, give me goosebumps!

Please forgive the messy apartment in the video. I wanted to capture it just as it was lived in instead of trying to gussy up the place for posterity.

(I'm going to try and recompress the video later so it doesn't look so compressy, but enjoy this one for now).

Kirk Smackdown

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 20:30:00 +0000

This video made my day. Captain Kirk kicking ass:

Jazz Ukulele and Accordion Battle

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 18:05:00 +0000

I spotted this vid over on my friend Anna's accordion-centric blog, Let's Polka, and was overwhelmed by it's coolness that I just couldn't not share it here too

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 09:37:00 +0000

If you haven't seen it yet, go over to my other blog, The Gargon Terror, and check out my Virtual Vertigo Tour!

Every now and then, my friend Mike and I like to drive around San Francisco and find the locations used in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. Well, I located a bunch of locations from the movie on the new StreetView feature in Google Maps so that you folks out there, that aren't in San Francisco, can play along and take the Vertigo tour at home!

Hey, the 50th Anniversary of Vertigo is coming up next May 9th! Does anyone have anything planned?

Denny Crane!

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 06:37:00 +0000

Only $20 for a talking Denny Crane (William Shatner) Bobblehead? That purchase is a no brainer. I can't wait for mine to arrive!

Maker's Faire

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Sun, 27 May 2007 20:49:00 +0000

My friend Bryan and I went to the Maker's Fair last weekend. We stopped by the Flickr booth and got our pictures taken...

Beyond the Flickr booth, there's some pretty cool stuff going on in the Maker universe...

Higglytown Heroes

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Fri, 25 May 2007 21:30:00 +0000

Some Lance Bass fan posted this episode of Higglytown Heroes on YouTube a while back:

If you stick around until the end, you'll catch my name in the credits!

Tex-Mex Quinoa "Tacos"

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Wed, 23 May 2007 22:20:00 +0000

Prep time: ~5 minutes
Cooking time: ~30 minutes
Servings: ~4 good sized portions (2-3 tacos per person)

This is something that I threw together at lunch today with stuff I had in the kitchen. I enjoyed it so much that I thought I'd share the recipe with you fine folks out there in Internetland.

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon of your preferred oil (I used ghee, but any oil will do)
1/2 of a small onion, diced
1/2 tablespoon Cumin
1 teaspoon Chili Powder
3/4 Cup quinoa
1-1/2 Cup water
1 medium sized tomato, cubed
1/2 Cup frozen corn kernels
1 15oz can of black beans, rinsed and drained
1/4 Cup chopped fresh cilantro
salt
1 avocado
a few leaves of lettuce per person
taco sauce condiment of your choice (I used Tapatio Salsa Picante)

Directions:
Saute the onion in your oil in a medium-sized pot over medium heat until the onion is soft. Mix in the cumin and the chili powder and cook for an additional minute or so.

Add the water and quinoa to the onions. Turn up the heat and stir until the water starts to boil. Cover and simmer on low for 15-20 minutes (as per the instructions on the quinoa package) until the quinoa has absorbed all the water.

After the quinoa is ready, mix in the Corn, cubed tomato, and black beans. Stir it up and replace cover. Heat until the corn is warm (I left it on the stove for about 10 minutes).

Add the cilantro, and salt to taste. I ended up mixing in a little more cumin and chili pepper at this stage too.

Lay out a couple of your lettuce leaves on a plate and scoop generous portions of the quinoa mixture onto them. Add sliced avocado, a few drops of taco sauce, and garnish with fresh cilantro. Fold up the lettuce leaf and eat it like a taco!

This made a nice, refreshing meal- Perfect for a warm day! I ended up with a lot left over, but it seems like it'll be good cold too.

Enjoy!

So it goes.

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 06:46:00 +0000

I just found out that Kurt Vonnegut passed away last night.

This blog owes it's name to the spacial phenomenon that was introduced in Vonnegut's book, The Sirens of Titan. I haven't read much of his work yet, and I don't know much about who Kurt Vonnegut was, but every one of the five books of his that I've read has definitely changed my life a little bit.

The first Vonnegut novel that I read was Breakfast of Champions, a gift from my friend Jeff, who was avidly reading all of Vonnegut's work at the time. That book was so different from anything else I'd read before- social commentary mixed in with what seemed to be the biography of a very real character called Kilgore Trout. It was so easy to read and so captivating, but ended up being very different from his other books.

Cat's Cradle bent my mind in ways I didn't know a book could bend it- making me think about how government and religion are codependent, and how people need the constant struggle to stay scared (and therefor, controllable). Not something that I'd ever considered before, but much of how I view the world today is through a lens put in place by that book (more accurately, the lens that I formerly had in place was removed). Words (and concepts) like karass, granfalloon, foma, and duprass have invaded my everyday vocabulary. If I could go out and buy a Book of Bokonon, I surely would. (Until that unlikely day, we've got this awesome reference)

Thank you, Mr. Vonnegut, for the little bit of enlightenment you cast my way, for helping me to see how goddamn ridiculous this world actually is.

R.I.P.

The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.

- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five

Man Gets Lost in the Paris Catacombs

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 05:59:00 +0000

This is a documentary that was on ABC Family's "The Scariest Places on Earth" - about unraveling the mystery of a miniDV camcorder that was found in the catacombs under Paris. I must say that it was creepy enough following the small path that the city laid out for you- I can't even imagine getting lost down there among the 400 or so miles of tunnels!

Part 1

Part 2

Alanis's "My Humps"

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 17:37:00 +0000

Pure genius:

It seems that Alanis actually does understand irony. She takes capitalist and misogynistic themes of the Black Eyed Peas' version, and turns the song into a social commentary about how lame, and socially poisonous, hiphop lyrics are.

And the video is funny too.

Glue Episode #22

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 03:08:00 +0000

It's J.J.Munro! That wacky albino frog makes his debut appearance in this, episode #22 of illustrator Dave Fremont's Glue. This is the only episode of Glue that I animated and, coincidently, one of the most popular web cartoons that Wildbrain ever produced.

Uncle Squirly

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 07:43:00 +0000

I know that a lot of the animation links on my demo reel don't work anymore (sorry 'em'- see last post's comments). They used to be linked to external sites that were hosting them. I'm far too lazy to update my website at all, but I just started spending some time encoding some of my old work to upload to YouTube. One of these days I'll get my demo reel page fixed. Until then, check out these blasts from the past...

The first one I had nothing to do with:

Uncle Squirly

But the 2nd one, I took over the job of "Flash Animator" which basically was everything from creating any original artwork in Flash (not reused from the first episode) to the final deliverable product. It was a hectic schedule, but I had a lot of fun:

Uncle Squirly 2: Squirrel Interrupted

Fun facts: Uncle Squirly is played by animation director Denis Morella, who went on to direct two-and-a-half seasons of Playhouse Disney's Higglytown Heroes. The other voice is that of producer Holly Edwards, who went to Dreamworks Animation to work on Shrek 2.

The Day After Tomorrow

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 23:17:00 +0000

I just clicked on the 'Friends' tab in Netflix, and I couldn't stop laughing once I saw this:

"You two are certainly far from average." I'll take that as a compliment for sure, but what I find shocking is that the average user's average rating is 3.5... meaning that a lot of people thought that The Day After Tomorrow was worthy of more than 3 stars. It was simply awful formulaic Hollywood tripe and yet 'the average user' keeps it in the Netflix Top-100.

Curious, I dug through the user reviews and pulled this quote from OceanBluePearl, the first 5-star rating I could find (most of the reviewers gave it 1-star):

If you are concerned about greenhouse gases and global warming I encourage you to see this film, and to read the best-selling book on which it is based: "The Coming Global Superstorm" by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber. This may be the most important film ever produced.

Gimme a break. The most important film ever produced? Has he actually seen the movie? Hah! He also gave Star Trek: Insurrection and Independence Day 5-stars, so he's got no credibility whatsoever.

Another 5-star review comes from GF from State College, PA who writes:

Fantastic, spectacular entertainment. The "science" is risible, but the pace and energy of the plot compensates. At least these people don't deny global warming, even if they hype it beyond even the worst of the worst case scenarios. Great stuff for a slow Saturday night.

Great stuff for a slow Saturday night? Wouldn't drinking yourself to sleep be more fun AND more productive?

I'm sorry for the rant, but I truly believe that The Day After Tomorrow is one of the worst films I've ever seen- right up there with Independence Day, Star Trek: Insurrection, Highlander 2: The Quickening, Signs, and The Core.

Space Academy

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 21:51:00 +0000

I just came across this group photo taken of my class at the Space Academy in Huntsville, Alabama in the Winter of 1987... I still have the jumpsuit, and often wear it on Halloween (at least on years that I'm completely uninspired to do anything else). Enjoy.

Booty Booty!

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 05:08:00 +0000

And to think that I loved Buck Rogers when it originally aired...

A Shiny New Toy!

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 16:36:00 +0000

I ran over to Target in the East Bay to pick up a brand new Nintendo DS Lite, released today. A small crowd gathered around the counter in the electronics department right after the store opened at 8am, anxiously waiting for an employee to find the small box of DS Lites in "the back." There were about 15 people waiting, and only 20 DS Lites allotted to this store, so I'm glad I decided to run down there early.

Here it is, my first Nintendo DS, dutifully performing its initial 3-hour battery charge before I can experience the goodness:

Update: 1:50pm. It's all charged up! I tried out Brain Age which is very cool, and I've been playing Wi-Fi Tetris DS for the past hour-and-a-half. I've got to get some actual work done today, but I can't wait to play New Super Mario Brothers tonight!

Update #2: 11:20am, the next day. This thing is gorram amazing! I love it. Now I just need to get more games for it. :P

Timmy the Tooth

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 00:10:00 +0000

Check out this rediculous video that my friends found at a Wallgreen's, dubbed, and uploaded to the internet. I've never laughed so hard in my life.

Kitty and Chicken?!

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 05:01:00 +0000

My internet connection at home was disconnected for almost four weeks and I just got it back last night. So of course, I'm binging on web browsing now.

Tonight, I was doing some reasearch for a personal project; did a Google image search for "Cow" and one of the things I found is just about the cutest thing I've ever seen (and has nothing to do with a cow at all):

The Marvel Superheroes Theme

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Thu, 25 May 2006 23:00:00 +0000

This theme song from 1966's The Marvel Superheroes Show pretty much takes all cred away from these characters, don't you think?

Sing along:

Meet the bulky, kinda sulky, kinda hulky super hero.
Altruistic and electrically transistored super hero.
An exotically neurotic and aquatic super hero.
The Marvel superheroes have arrived!

Superpowered from their foreheads to their toes,
Watch them change their very shape before your nose.
See a cane-striking super hero change to Viking super hero.
A humdingin', real swingin', shield-flingin' super hero.
They're the latest, they're the greatest, ultimatest super heroes.
The Marvel superheroes have arrived!

Lyrics from Wikipedia

Suicidal Cannibal Peanuts!

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Thu, 25 May 2006 22:37:00 +0000

More Bod Squad goodness posted! This one still has the Bod Squad theme in tact at the end of it too!