Feelin' a little juvenile today

This is why I lose my shit sometimes over things like the amount of humans on the planet or people not turning off the damn heat and putting on a sweater. It's why the past few days of unseasonably warm weather scare the living crap out of me. I know nobody wants to hear it, but man it's real.

Who's a big boy now?

Last night I ordered my first ever batch of business cards from these characters. Man, I won't deny that I've pretty much been eating, sleeping and (painfully) crapping Handful for the past week. As I said to a friend on the phone last night, I think the greatest challenge won't be making it profitable...it'll be not driving everyone I know insane by talking about it non-stop!

Addendum
Well sometimes I think about other shows, which I'm tripping over far more than usual in all this webshow werrrrrk. You might like this one, I did.

Manageable Portions

Something that is looking to be my own personal motto for the first few months of this year is "Work smaller, that way things get done". I'm trying to do less projects (sadly, I've had to at least temporarily remove myself from that musical project I mentioned) and then within those projects I'm trying to do shorter things (with some success - i.e. the newest Handful episodes are around 3:30-4:00 long instead of the swollen 5:30-6:45 they were becoming. Now I say SOME because next weekends will be about 6:00...).Well, that goes for painting as well.
For whatever reason, I find it very easy to imitate the artistic style of Phil Hester & Ande Park...
So we get this triple-set of Oliver Queen!

There is not even any mixed media in this post

what

ANYWAYS I have a spare moment so I thought I'd use it to mention a few things here.

1) The Handful buttons should be in my greasy little hands soon, perhaps by the end of this week. Now I just need to figure out the shipping side of things and the inevitable extra step in the process for putting a Paypal thingy in a Wordpress page.

2) I've been asked to be one of two presenters at a monthly Toronto Internet TV and Web Video Group meeting in the last week of this month. Basically I'm going to talk about my experiences with Handful, how it got rolling and give some advice - I also want to try and draw a few parallels between where Webcomics were five years ago and where Webshows are now, then extend that into a possible future for the latter. This should all be going down in front of several dozen people at U of T.

A friend pointed out that this will be the first time that A) I'll see my work blown up on a screen far, far larger then I make it for and B) I'll get to see a "studio audience" reaction past my plopping a pal in front of my laptop. Scary, maybe?

Also it seems I lied about the lack of media in this post. Tom Milsom (AKA the British fan who kindly lit a fire under my arse a couple of months ago) has done something interesting with Englands recent freakish (for them) weather.

Sets and Framing

Two items!
1) A favorite t-shirt was on it's last legs, but luckily the design was still intact. So with liberal help from my roommate Christina, I cut and stretched part of it to wrap around a length of cardboard from one of those terrible Wal-Mart Art things. The result is pretty damn nice and I hope I can get another five years out of the $20 it cost me in the first place.2) For the first time ever, I filmed an episode of Handful in my home. The lighting wasn't what I'd like, but the sound was decent and the final product is one I'm rather proud of - particularly since it includes footage from In The Field. The set up was pretty ad-hoc, to say the least, and I thought you all might be amused to see it. The tall fella is my pal (and cameraman for that episode) Rob.

Les Boo-Tonnes

So I'm looking at a cheap way to wiggle my toes in the merchandise pool - one inch buttons. Here are the four first designs I'm looking at. Thoughts and opinions are always appreciated. Unless they are racist, I mean Jesus Christ.These first two are pretty firm in my mind, but the next two...not so much? I love the idea of this fella...
...but am open to fiddling with it's design, I feel like I could do more with it. This next one would be cut so that the button would be entirely the face (and frame) of the pocketwatch. I think the image is sharp, but is the idea?

My friggin' Dad

Has been sort of ramping up his kite related stuff for the past decade and now....now he wants to do this.

wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.

IN THE FIELD, STILL

IN THE FIELD

ON-LINE

So I finally made use of a couple of photos from this great series.

For the record, "Sound-Dust" is the name of what I will always consider to be one of the most beautiful records ever made.

Two Thousand and Feelin' Fine?

Russian Dolls from Made in Mundo on Vimeo.
This...this is just here.

Moving on!

I hate to trot this old trick, but if Present Oliver turned around and told Oliver Circa Dec 31st 2007 that in a years time he'd be where he'd be....he'd be pretty pleased!

Good or bad, 2008 has been nothing if not busy and eventful for me. Despite becoming a "victim of the economy" a couple of weeks ago, I feel really optimistic about the coming year. I have crazy fun plans for more Handful episodes, which oughta come out more regularly when I'm not getting let go just before the holiday season and then moving into a new place right after. Urban Exploration! Nostalgia! Pillow Fight League! Burlesque (finally)! and more? Yes! Why, there is even an episode where I might just get to bully a lot of my friends into wearing one of my shirts.

Oh and uh yeah I am moving into a new place, basically ten feet from my current place. I am greatly looking forward to it, if only because it is a three bedroom that was plainly intended for a family as there are two kids bedrooms and one, huge mummy/daddy room. Guess which room I'm taking? I did some measurements and I will be able to set aside enough space to fudge my own lil' studio for filming Handful - another tick in the "Things Which Will Help More Shows Get Made, More Often" column. I've also recently found my damn tablet again, which will be helpful for when I want to doodle up images either for a regular show or one of these terrifying things.

I also enjoy how Handful is making me get out and not only look for new things but try them. Maybe I would have tried UE regardless of Handful....but I can't say that for sure. I certainly wouldn't have gone out of my way to learn about terrifying lakes or done a fun interview with Ryan North. So hopefully this is a preview of when I will be a Big Scriptwriting Man who gets sent around the world on adventures by studios.

Also, it's incredibly tenative at this point buuuut, I might be writing a musical? And getting the wheels turning to make the feature film of Tonight We Fall In Love? There are other things too, but it's absurd to mention them at this stage. The point is that the fire has some irons in it.

With moving into the new place I am committing to Toronto for at least another year and...honestly, at least another two. Why at least two? This is because I have moved an ungodly amount of times since I first left ma and pa's porch, manfully steeling myself against the sound of my mother sobbing as I strode out into a world which could produce something like this. I'd like not to be thinking about moving or the possibility of moving for a while, so valuable time and energy can be freed up for the important things.

So yes, the results are in: Between London and Ottawa, I find Toronto to be the middle bowl of porridge. Good size, enough interesting stuff and a good group of people to get up to shenanigans with. Let's hope I'm piping the same tune in 356 days time.

To close, here is a great sign that my pal Victor spotted (and nabbed) while we were walking along the street.
I can only hope the person who wrote this will eventually learn the error of their "racism" or at least figure out how " " should be used.

We need more ads like this one, I feel. Also...do you think the wretched bastards who are trying to get people to think coal is cotton candy...well, what would their reaction be to Santa dropping coal in their stocking?

Better than a stickman?

Here's hopin'

More words later, Oliver busy

These are from my first Urban Exploration, over at The Brickworks - a location suitable for a beginner.


I cannot explain this canoe, can you?
Oh look, Hipster detrius....

I cannot get this style of architecture out of my head...

...ever since seeing a big hardcover on the stuff at the AGO when I went.
Yes, I do believe I have to paint this. I've done a pair from that IBM series, which I'll post pictures of when I get a chance, so I reckon it's fair to set a new target.

Special super not so secret mock-up...

...for the new Handful site design, which I did up with my CSS enabled pal last night.The pocketwatch will be cleaned up a good deal, possibly with the chain re-attached to trail off into infinity and the cartoon version of yours truly on the right just MIGHT be of a higher quality. It will likely be faceless, primary coloured dealie with no facial features. I want it to be more of an icon than a false idol of one Mr. O T C B. It occured to me last night that I basically don't need newsposts much longer than the little blurbs Christ Onstad puts up sometimes over at Achewood, since I'm already sharing links on the left-hand side and as for talking with my audience....I'm kind of doing that in the video!

Kind of.

I'm not sure how big of a deal this is, BUT

I just got invited and then approved to become a Motionmaker over at Dailymotion, one of the several sites I upload Handful to using Tubemogul. Apparently "Several creative users and talents have been discovered thanks to the MotionMaker program.", but we shall see!

MEANWHILE

I didn't do a write-up here on Sunday as I usually do, because I'd thrown myself into a deep well marked "Hedonism" as a way of reconstituting myself. The previous weekend was spent entirely doing errands and filming, the latter of which is fun but still technically a form of work!

More interesting news to report is that the disappointment of not hearing back from my prospective editor when I actually called upon him to back up his positive noises with positive work...was lightened by my discovering that a good friend of mine a) knows CSS like the back of her hand and b)is willing/excited to help me redesign my website so it doesn't scream "AD-HOC BLOG-SITE".

It just screams and screams!

So, that's pretty okay. I reckon I'm going to see if we can't get something which sits in the same neighborhood as www.qwantz.com and www.octopuspie.com as I find they have the most appealing and usuable websites of anything I regularly browse.

ADDENDUM: Here is my new, customized Dailymotion profile. I'll pipe up if this has any result past letting me wank around in Photopaint for five minutes!

I discover the saddest things....

...while cobbling together these fucking Rube Goldberg designed videos I call "Handful".

Horse Dogg Maniac

Today will consist of filming a new episode, finishing editing the previous one I filmed and then putting it online? In case I don't find the time to write a proper update here I just thought I'd share the following, which I couldn't help thinking of while writing a line for what I'm filming today.