Comrades in Arms

I had another good writing session today with Douglas.

I dropped out of college five years ago. And I met Doug in Februrary of 2000. When I left school I only focused on one thing -- Improv comedy. I did 40-50 hours of improv every week.

My big idea was to get on Saturday Night Live. I knew that LA had a great training ground called the Groundlings Theater and I knew that I had the ability to make people laugh.

As I was doing all of this comedy, I looked around and realized it wasn't about the techniques of joke telling, or writing craft, it was about the people and the relationships I was forming. I knew that these were the people I would be working with for the next 30 years.

So here I was five years later writing with a guy that I've known and worked with for the last five years. And our relationship has just gotten deeper and our shorthand has gotten quicker.

It's a comfort and a blessing.

Fresh Start

I'm beginning a new project. I can't be specific right now, but I'm going to start blogging this now as a record of its progress.

So I'm looking for animators to help do make this movie. Animation is such a broad landscape. It covers the gamut of crappy Powerpoint presentations to crappy flash animations. There's also some beautiful hand drawn stuff and 3D and machinima of course, etc. etc. etc.

Which is all wonderful, until you have to draw a line in the sand and say that this is how I'm going to animate this. I don't think any one style has inherent merit over another. But we can all tell good animation from bad -- primarily bad animation isn't entertaining.

So right now I'm looking at dozens of people that want to bring my words, my *ahem* "vision" to life.

Hopefully we'll find the right people.