Student Films
1991-1995
Train of Thought
A head trip on the brain train from darkness into the light, Train of Thought was my first "Poemation™" created in the UCLA Animation Workshop. It screened in many animation festivals, including the prestigious Zagreb festival and was honored with the UCLA Spotlight Award in a gala screening at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Sow N' Till
This entire film was drawn in a 36-hour marathon at the UCLA "Falling Lizard" weekend in January 1994 as an artistic response to the '94 Northridge earthquake. I later recorded myself playing my original piano composition and synchronized the music to the film.
TreeMan
TreeMan was created before computers had the ability to output to digital video, so I had to go through the entire traditional film process to create the illusion of the talking tree. I first recorded the dialogue and then analyzed the soundtrack to determine which mouth positions were required for each frame. I then scanned into the computer a series of photographs to represent every mouth position, manipulated the images in Adobe Photoshop 2.0 (before layers!), and shot them one frame at a time directly off the computer screen with a 16mm film camera. The film took 4 months to create. Today I could do it in one day in After Effects!
Stress Dream
"Stress Dream" was my very first animated film. I created it for my application portfolio to UCLA Film School. I used the inside corner of a picture frame and paper clips to register the drawings and shot the film on my dad's old Super 8 film camera. I created the soundtrack by blasting the music on the stereo in my bedroom and shouting the limerick while dubbing straight to VHS.