Check out The Alaska Short Forum, it’s a new television show we’ve been working on and episode three just hit the web today!

You can catch episodes online or on KTOO/360North which broadcasts statewide.

We’re still in the experimental stages so any advice or feedback would be greatly appreciated. Also, we’re looking for Alaskan short films to feature on the show so if you know any animators or filmmakers who might want to share their work, please help get the word out. Thanks!

I died this morning. The weather was somewhere around 12° F and I had to get up early which I thought would make for an unpleasant death but I actually rather enjoyed it.

I’m not sure the movie has a title yet but Mike Partlow and Paul Disdier are working on a short WWII film and I was recruited to play the part of a dead American soldier.

I got to spend about an hour and a half covered in cold, sticky fake blood. It tasted pretty good but we had some problems with it freezing and I thought it might have been just a touch too red but that part will probably get fixed in post. Here’s a pre-photoshop version of the image above.

I forgot how much I like being covered in fake blood and I now wonder if everyone gets as much joy out of being covered in red corn syrup. I remember when Aaron and I filmed our “Concentration” short film and I had a drill go through my head. It was ten in the morning on a Tuesday and I walked past the coffee shop window. I couldn’t figure out why people were looking at me. Was I dripping on the carpet? How embarrassing.

I can’t wait to see what my gurgling and coughing look like on the big screen. I have great faith in Paul’s abilities after seeing his edits and color balancing on his “Freakin’ Fungus” trailer.

Here’s a preview of my latest work, “Catching the Crosstown Night Whale.” It was inspired by Kazu Kibuishi’s illustrations for the Flight comics anthologies.

The crosstown night-whale is like a bus driver. He’s not necessarily grumpy but there’s a bit of monotony to his job. He’s glad the war is over but secretly wishes he were still serving on the flying whale brigade instead of spending his autumn years working for public transportation.

Long live the queen.

If you’re in Juneau this Friday, stop by the Ruby Room for Gallery Walk and say hello!

NPR’s “On the Media” has issued a writing challenge for National Novel Writing Month. Here’s what I wrote (I didn’t include the title in the word count).

Flight

The armored angel plunges through clouds, whistling playfully.
Her impact destroys us.

We made it out to the cabin a few times this summer and I just got around to uploading the images to our Flickr account.

Hoot N Holler July 2007 - (Bob, Tyra, Masen, Cameron, Pat)

Hoot N Holler August 2007 - (Pat, Big Mike, Aaron, Erik, Alice, Dani, Lou, Sarah)

Here’s some of the clumsy footage I managed to scrag together from the lunar eclipse last night. Lou took some cool photos that aren’t included here, this series just comes off my little point and shoot camera. I should have duct taped it to a telescope and upped the resolution but it was total amateur night for me up on the rooftop.

At least I didn’t fall off into the alley.

We’ve changed the front page design around a bit on the Alaska Robotics site to help out the humans and web crawling bots who stumble across our site and aren’t sure what they’re dealing with.

The new design includes a side bar for new blurbs and a short, keyword-laden description of the project. The news blurbs will be included in the RSS feed and major events will be cross posted on Orphan Army so we can keep all of our important news logged in one central location.

My design for the Miro 1-click competition placed third, thanks to everyone who voted for me!