Interactive Transcript...I see what you did there

YouTube's "Interactive Transcript" function is crazy. Is it trying to inject politics into "A Dog Is Ignoring You"? It's the least political thing, possibly, ever.

It's kind of cool. Mostly creepy.

Go here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JBywuG2RpI&feature=plcp

Click on the button underneath the video that looks like a page. If you roll over it, it says "Interactive Transcript".

It tries to give you a text read out of what the narration is saying.

My favourite lines are:

Just as you think he is Clinton toward team (0:46)
Just as you think you will never Vietnam alleged (1:05)
and i would appreciate some prize (1:21)
idle streak (1:26)
promise me. they'll never leave me. account. mood (1:37-1:44)

A Dog Is Ignoring You from the Passenger Seat of a Parked Car

Written, Narrated, Directed, & Music by Anne-Renée Dumont
Storyboards, Animation, & Designs by Mirco Chen
Supa-Dawg Designed by Scott MacDonald
Backgrounds & Hand Drawn Type by Anne-Renée Dumont

Huge thank you to Mirco and Scott for being awesome and for making it come to life!

A Dog Is Ignoring You is premiering at the Atlantic Film Festival 2012, CBC Atlantic Shorts Gala on Tuesday, September 18 at 7 PM at Park Lane in Halifax.

Watch it bigger here

A Dog Is Ignoring You - Production Notes

I'm no audio engineer but I did try to record some decent audio. I bought one of these semi high quality USB microphones to record the narration and the guitar in my apartment. It just plugs into your USB port. I also got a mic stand and a pop filter. Then I got into multiple fights with the software/hardware until something eventually sounded acceptable.

Unfortunately, I broke the mic stand and now my setup is an advertisement for duct tape. (See after shot).

Working on the watercolour backgrounds and the ink lettering. I had nowhere to sit for quite some time.

The Crew: Scott, me, Mirco.

THANK YOU to anyone coming out to see this at the festival tonight and thanks to the festival for letting it happen.

Mahone Bay (Plein Air)

Did some plein air painting in Mahone Bay. Pen & watercolour on watercolour paper.

Computer Arts Magazine

My latest showreel got featured in the April 2012 issue of Computer Arts Magazine. It's on the cover disk that comes with the magazine in the section "showreels and shorts". You can see the thumbnail of my "purple guys" on the square cover.



Thanks to Computer Arts Magazine for featuring my work!

The paragraph writeup is a little misleading though. I don't currently work at Collideascope (not since 2010) and I think the avatars they are talking about are the Mystery Hunters ones and they weren't actually designed by me (They were designed by Mirco).

As far as the Mystery Hunters work goes, I tried to show the parts I worked on, the screen designs, interactivity, some production art. Together, my boss and I designed all the mini games and the adventures, which was rare and fun, and that part with the avatar that you see in my showreel of the avatar running from ghosts is part of an opening sequence that I put together to entice the user to wanna play the 33 mini games + 13 adventures.

We had a talented group of artists and animators for that Mystery Hunters project that I was fortunate enough to work with, that included Mirco Chen, Matt Jaeschke, Reuben H., Nathaniel Heath, and Paul Sarrazin. Those guys rule.

You can watch my showreel here