Why Merchandising is Important pt. II

If you don't exercise a modicum of control over the conversation you practically forfeit your claim to the intellectual property (note: I said "practically" not "legally".) It's not necessary to bring down the iron fist of copyright lawsuits to "protect" your claim, although a fertile fanbase can still grow up around tightly controlled properties (Star Wars for instance. Lucas protects his property like a backwoods Southerner with a shotgun, yet Star Wars fanfilms set the standard for all other fanfilms.) What's necessary is giving the fans something to have, and letting them contribute back.

Sometimes it's as simple as selling the t-shirt.

A friend of mine, a guitarist for a punk band, once told me that his band would never sell t-shirts, because they didn't believe in profiteering off of their fans. I told him it's not profiteering if you sell a good product at a fair price. I told him "maybe your fans want to buy the t-shirt. Maybe they want to give something back to you in the form of money for the shirt and free advertising around town." They eventually started selling shirts for a very modest price. Around the same time they released their first cd , a 42 track disc that sold for $8.49. How's that for a marriage of capitalism and punk?!

The point is merchandising doesn't have to be crass and opportunistic. It can be a part of the greater conversation artists should be having with their audiences. It is a chance for fans to own a piece of what they love.

Why Merchandising is Important pt. I

If you don't exercise creative control over your own intellectual property, someone else will.

That someone else may delight in seeing your intellectual property pissing on everything from Fords to . . . well, "everything".

I could blast Bill Watterson for being a punk-ass, whiney bitch who couldn't handle success (the poor guy) and took more delight in jousting with his management and syndicator than he did in his fans. I could. Actually, I kind of just did.

Watterson has all kinds of great reasons why he never saw round to licensing official Calvin and Hobbes merchandise. All kinds of great reasons. For some reason, he never seemed to understand the best reason to merchandise a property such as Calvin and Hobbes: The Fans.

Fans want to contribute back to the artists they love. Buying the merchandise is one way to do that. Look at sports fans. I rest my case.

Since Watterson didn't set the tone of the merchandising conversation, we will forever be cursed with Calvin pissing on all sorts of stuff. Hey, maybe he'll piss on Susie Derkins! That'd be cool!

Calvin also prays, in case you haven't noticed. To be honest, I'm not sure which version of Calvin is more insulting to the nature of the character. Calvin never really struck me as the prayerful type.

The last straw for me on this issue was a new version of the old pissing favorite:

Yep. That crazy tiger is pissing on the word "America". Charming.

The problem is a whole generation of people are growing up right now who will never know Calvin and Hobbes as the stars of a beautifully rendered, side-splittingly funny, and occasionally very moving comic strip. To them Calvin and Hobbes will be a couple of exhibitionistic urinators.
Mr. Watterson, if for some reason you're reading this blog, please give that some thought.

Low-Tech Solution to a High-Tech Problem

Remember last April when I was blog-whining (or "blining") about my comic strip "Up to Bat" not being seen at the coffee shop where I post it? I received and applied sage advice received from friends (for instance, someone suggested taking the strip down mid-week so that it's a little more obvious that a new strip has been put up on Sunday) and I kept the strips consistently weekly. Soon I had people asking me on Saturdays "where is the strip?" Cool beans!

I uploaded all the strips to www.uptobat.blogspot.com, and I've been uploading new strips on Monday mornings -- fairly consistently. I've also been promoting the weblog at the coffee house. I was getting around 10 hits a week. So I registered the strip with www.onlinecomics.net and the numbers doubled. I registered with www.thewebcomiclist.com and got another little boost in traffic.

I got cocky. I announced a t-shirt design contest. My wife entered her suggestion into the contest. She won by default.

Well, the latest development is I quit the part-time coffee house job. (I've been meaning to for about a year now, but it never seemed to be the right time. Yeah, it got to be the right time this past week.) I think it's safe to say the owner won't be open to me coming in on Sunday mornings and taping my strip next to the register anymore. So what now?

See the picture at the top of this entry. I thumbtacked it to the bulletin board at the coffee shop. I'm not selling a bicycle or house-sitting, I'm selling a comic strip. No one remembers URLs (let alone what "URL" stands for) so I put the web address on the little tear-tags. I'll check back next Monday and see how many have been torn off. How exciting! A project!

More Hilarity on The 5 Minute Show, with part 2 of Tex's appearance!

Go there now!

Tex on The 5 Minute Show!

As mentioned in an earlier post, Tex recently took the company limo down to participate in an episode of the lovingly acronymed t5MS! Tex is interviewed by ThePete, and develops a sort of giggly rapport with opera-diva sock-puppet Beverly Socks!

t5MS is very funny. I could probably do a whole "Tuesday's Artists I Love" featuring ThePete and SiSi, the married couple behind this gem of cyberspace.

Check it out here. My favorite episodes are 3 (ThePete on the deck of the Enterprise) 19 (Sister Mary Ignacious O'Bleary on God and politics -- sort of) 24 (Meet Gary TheIntern) and 28 (Gary TheIntern strikes back -- with R2D2!)

There have been some goings-on at www.daht.blogspot.com. Just cause the show's on hiatus doesn't mean nothings happening! Check it out.

The Felties: Set Design part three and a half

(See also part one, part two, and part three.)

I sat down to draft the set for The Felties, and it occurred to me: I have no idea what scale these puppets are in. I've designed sets for people, but I've never designed sets for 18-inch-tall "people". Yikes! When I first started looking for a studio, I figured the set would be about 20 feet wide by about 10 to 15 feet deep. Just a guess, you know. Not really based so much in reality or upon actual observation.

So I did a little sketch to help sort this stuff out:

Hmm. These puppets are small! I mean, I know they are, but until you really put it down on paper and start attaching measurements to it, it's just an abstract notion. Okay. So I finally really observed the scale of the "people" for whom I was designing a space. I started drafting . . . and realized that I still had only a vague notion of scale. Great, so the puppets are 18 inches tall. What does that mean, really? I needed a better standard in order to wrap my head around it.

So I figured out the scale of a Felties-sized door, compared to a human-sized door:

This involved math, and you can see part of my chicken-scratch cross-multiplication in the upper lefthand portion of the above scan.

Eye opening sketch, huh? Wow. So I used the same little ratio-math equation thingy to figure out the size of the couch and chairs for the living room set. I cocked my head and made a face like the one my dog makes when she can't figure out what's going on, and roughed in a floorplan. As it turns out, the set will be 6 feet wide and 3 1/2 feet deep, or well less than half what I guessed it would be.

So what did I learn? Pay attention to scale and proportion. I've never wanted to just shoot this in my own living room; I want to create an environment that can only exist in episodes of The Felties. By keeping everything scaled down to "Felties-size" I think I will be well on my way to accomplishing that goal.

UPDATE -- The Felties and DAHT

Whew!

Those last few posts took a lot out of me. Seriously. My wife had an overnight shoot over the weekend, and I had "lack of spouse insomnia". It happens. So I kept busy through the night, burning the ol' midnight grindstone and churned out the three videos below.

I'm very happy with the camera tests. Originally, I had shot them for my own edification without any intent to share online (I recall writing here earlier that you'd all have to wait for the pilot premiere before you could see the finished puppets. Oh well. I also can't wait for Christmas before opening gifts.)

I'm very pleased with the pre-viz (that's short for "pre-visualization"). Like I've said a few times, I'm really trying to think this thing out and do it right.

So let's see. I need to wrap up the set design, blog about the interesting thing I discovered regarding proportion, and shoot camera tests of Pupsumoto, Cuzumoto and Kabuki. (If I can arrange a meeting with the ever busy, multi-talented, puppet builder extraordinaire Russ Walko.) I updated www.thefelties.com! (By pointing it to a lens over at Squidoo.) I think it's kind of neat. It's like a one-stop shop for all your Felties needs!

I uploaded all current episodes of Disembodied Animal Head Theatre to Google video, which means you can now download your favorites to your video iPod! Just click here. The other earlier OurMedia hosted episodes are now on YouTube, so I'll be embedding those videos on the DAHT blog sometime this week.

On Sunday, Tex took a trip down to ThePete Studios in beautiful Westwood, California to make an appearance on the long-running and very funny "The Five Minute Show" ("t5MS" for short). There's some very funny business between Tex and a sock puppet named Beverly Socks. Afterwards, we shot a "hiatus" episode of DAHT, featuring a scene from Romeo and Juliet with Tex and Ms. Socks. These two episodes will debut in the coming weeks - watch this spot for updates!

That's all for this rambling update!

Camera Test 2, Mimey and Stan:



Let me know what you think about all this!

Camera Test 1, Clownie and Dully:



Thoughts? Opinions?

Here's a little video I threw together:



I'd really like to know what you think.

Amo l'Italia!

I was looking at the latest Site Meter stats for www.daht.blogspot.com, and noticed someone browsing from Italy spent enough time on the site to watch an episode! Whoever the mystery Italian is, he or she clicked in from Google.it, from the search phrase "Cesare Piazza".

Cesare Piazza is the name of the Giraffe. (He's actually named "Cheese Pizza", but the story behind that is too esoteric to bother explaining. DAHT is a crappy webseries starring $3 animal snappers and a rubber chicken. I have enough stacked against me to begin with, so I figured I'd just change his name to a more respectable Cesare Piazza.) Apparently, there is also a Caeser's Plaza somewhere in Italy. I hope my mystery guest found it!

How wonderfully random is that?

(Good luck to Italy on Sunday!)

Projects Update -

Today I'm using the old blog as a way to organize my life. Enjoy.

www.daht.blogspot.com

I've put DAHT on hiatus until the fall. It's been a great learning experience, but I need to make some space in my day-planner. I'll still post over there from time to time, to keep up the fiction of where the ensemble is and what Tex is up to. When I bring the series back, it will be more than just a crappy makeshift rubber chicken rod-puppet in front of a sheet of black foamcore. (I may switch to white foamcore.)

www.uptobat.blogspot.com

I'm updating on Monday mornings. I back date the posts to Sunday, because that's when the strip is actually "released" to the public (at Jennifer's Coffee Connection. If you're in the North Hollywood area, and can't wait for Monday morning, drop on by! The strip is posted at the cash register sometime before noon.)

I registered with www.onlinecomics.net and doubled my traffic in one day! Sounds impressive, huh? Yeah. Doubled from approximately 10-12 unique hits a week to 22 hits at last count. Woo hoo.

I'm going to do custom made t-shirt art for Up to Bat. I'll post more about this over the weekend, but the idea is to get those 10-12 hardcore Up to Bat fans to submit ideas for t-shirts, and then I'll create the art and slap it on CafePress. (BTW . . . I'm always trying to keep my ear to the ground on this sort of thing. If anyone knows of a cool on-demand service similar to CafePress [only better], let me know!)

I'm also planning a limited run, self-published compilation, sort of like what Joe Sayers does with his strips.

Timmy Tubesock

Remember Timmy? He's actually Pamela's brainchild. He has the dubious distinction of being our first stab at online content production. We're taking Timmy to Chinatown before summer's end and then he's off! We've received requests for Timmy from as far away as Australia and Israel. I'm pretty sure that we can also send him to Houston, Texas and Boston, Massachusetts and Tustin, California if we ask nicely enough.

Punch and Judy

This is in limbo! Weird, huh? I haven't heard back from the producer in a couple of weeks. Harumph! That's not the way you do it! I'm going ahead with building the puppets (I need to fool around with Sculpey anyway) so we'll see what happens.

Mad Theatrics

I'm finishing up a third draft of my new play "Sonny" and I'm looking at putting the thing on its feet at the end of August. Unless it becomes a multi-media extravaganza, then it may not happen until later this year.

Beanman

I'm about halfway to having the artwork completed, and need to reestablish a good, solid communication line to Jimmy's family so that the book sees print by Thanksgiving. Along those lines, I need to contact the couple of people I know in the publishing industry, and see if they're interested in publishing a quirky little book of coffee house comic strips.

Last but not least, the reason for this blog, The Felties

I fooled around with Google SketchUp to see if that would be an easy way to render the set design. (Mad props as usual to "Buck Beaver" Andrew for being about 50 paces ahead of me and far more tech savvy than I can ever hope for; he recently pointed out Google SketchUp on his Bear Town Production blog.) It's a neat program, but it would take me longer to learn to use than it would to grab a piece of paper and draw out the finished plan. On a related note, I made an interesting discovery regarding puppet scale that I'll blog about in the coming days.

Still without a production home. I think I'll just set up in the middle of a public park and shoot. Actually, I should blog about what it's like trying to book a studio in Los Angeles when you have no money and few industry contacts.

I did video tests of the puppets I have, and they look just beautiful. I need to meet with Russ Walko and pick up Pupsumoto and Kabuki. I need to meet with my puppeteers and do a rehearsal/read-thru. And finally, I need to shoot the damn thing!

That's that for now.

Tuesday's Artists I Love

A Eulogy for Rintrah

"Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burden'd air; Hungry clouds swag on the deep."

- William Blake,

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Magnus Johnson was one of the first non-theatre majors I met at college. He worked in the bookstore and helped me find what I was looking for. I introduced myself as Andrew and he said "Ah, Andy. You're mentioned in the Bible." I politely smiled, thinking he meant the Apostle Andrew. "'Andy walks with me, Andy talks with me'" he punfully quoted, a huge smile spilling across his lined face. Chuckling, he walked back to the counter.

Magnus told me that same joke no fewer than three times.

Magnus was, I believe, an English major. I seem to recall he had plans to pursue graduate studies in Divinity or Philosophy. At any rate, he was a staple of the English department, and highly regarded by the young Beat influenced poets. Here, after all, was a Vietnam Veteran, a man who had truly done much and seen more. He possessed the wealth of worldly experience that we all desired in the Humanities Department.

He was a nice guy to boot; dependable, trustworthy, and always good for an interesting conversation. I worked with him over the summer doing maintenance at the college. We talked about poetry, theatre, politics . . . you name it. I recall his explanation of the power of words -- the mystical power of words. He held that a word like "THOR" had more inherent power than a word like "carrot". If said with enough conviction, one could bring down the thunder.

We talked about plays and dramatic literature, and he expressed an active interest in writing a play for us crazy misfits in the theatre department to produce guerilla style. It never happened (I wish it had) but Magnus went on to write a couple of dramatic literature-style prose poems that were published in the school's literature magazine the following year.

Here's one of them:

The Northern Powers

for Sigurd and Freya

Heart Dragon

[a spirit of war appearing, wearing Northern battle attire in the

Master's chamber of a forgotten Northern Lord.]

To have been born a pupa;

yet to have gone on-

to become a butterfly!

ah, to have lived to fight

like the ancient Dragons

once did in the skies at night,

Yes, if only as a butterfly-

is to have become a dragon of the heart.

Here spirit force waxes strong

still in the collective will

here character encourages word, deed, and

song.

[disappearing:]

Match after match have I been in

it is the humble who truly win;

time after time,

again and again.

--Magnus Johnson

Magnus died July 9th, 2004 at the age of 50. I like to think that he is in Valhalla right now, shouting down Thor, and preparing to stage a gallant last stand at Ragnarok.

(I'm interested in starting some kind of Yahoo Group to bring together copies of his extant work, and post rememberances of him, etc. If you're a fan and friend of Magnus, drop me a line!)

The Felties vs. Music Videos

I'm proudly a member of the MTV Generation. And they said all those music videos would rot our brains. Ha! If anything, the efforts of so many talented short-short feature moviemakers has given a boost to our visual vocabulary.

Okay, okay, there's a lot of crapola out there. Quite often jump cuts, meaningless flash and bootylicious babes make up for a lack of true visual panache. But the gems, when you find them, can excite and entertain like no other media form can. The old show Night Flight excavated those gems and put them on display. I like what the Wikipedia has to say about the show:

Night Flight was also one of the first American television shows to display the music
video as an art form, rather than purely as a promotional tool for the artists.

And an artform it trulcomparableprable to microfiction.

I've described The Felties as a web-comic and a live action cartoon on this blog. Today, I want to reflect upon The Felties as music video.

Here is "Human Behavior", song by Bjork, video by Michel Gondry (about a decade before Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind):



Bjork lends herself well to music videos; she and her music are vibrant and fun. Gondry capturmischievousnessousness at the core of this quirky little song and delivers up a dreamscape of shifting proportions and location shots that feel like studio shots -- or is that the other way around?

I really admire Gondry's command of on-camera space. Everything is right where it needs to be, and every shot is composed like an individual painting. Mise en scene = w00+! In storyboarding The Felties, I've pushed myself to tell as much of the story as possible with each frame, to not just go for the obvious set-up.

Another example of Gondry's virtuosity in this medium is his video for "Lucas with the Lid Off", song by the mononymic Lucas:



I've seen this video so many times, I've lost count. It blew my socks off the first time I saw it, and it still does! Obviously, I'm not going to pack as much detail into episodes of The Felties as Gondry packs into this video, but there is a kinetic energy here that I want to explore.

Kinetic energy and well controlled mise en scene -- these are the things I like to see in a music video. These are the things I see in The Felties. I want each five minute episode to sweep past the viewer like a song, fascinate and entertain the viewer, and cause the viewer to reach for the mouse and click "replay". Fifteen years after the episode has been viewed, I want the viewer to search YouTube (or whatevequivalentivilent is by then) trying to find that really cool puppet video they saw back in high school. Yeah. That'd be neat!

Self-indulgent Blog Post Time!

My lovely wife did a new round of headshots yesterday, and it gets me thinking . . . I need new headshots.

I'm coming up on the one year anniversary of my last acting audition. I know, I know, it's not like I've been slacking off or anything. But I feel that surge in my solar plexus whenever I pass copies of Backstage West on the magazine rack that says "get your ass out there."

During the run of the last show I was in (Director's Cut), I was so ashamed of my headshot that I actually removed it from the foyer display when no one was looking. (Yes, Gabrielle, that was me.) I hate the thing. It makes me look about fifteen years older, and the shoot was such a pain in the ass -- you can see it on my face.

I was cast directly off the headshot once. Some indie film was shooting a horror flick in the desert, and their bad guy dropped out at the last minute. The director called me in a fluster and asked me if I was free for a week. He said "We'd like to use you ... I mean, you look just like Willem Dafoe!"


No offence to Mr. Dafoe, I think he's a great actor, but no one wants to be told they look like Willem Dafoe. And it must have had some truth to it, because I hadn't auditioned for these people, I just sent them my headshot and resume.

In person, people typically tell me I look like another celebrity:

I don't know ... he has a much stronger chin. But I hear it all the time. Back when he was dating J-Lo and making such well-received films as Jersey Girl, Daredevil and Surviving Christmas, it was a pain in the ass. Now it's just mildly annoying. I usually retort with "Yeah? And you look like Carol Channing!" but most folks don't remember who she is anymore.

What was my point? I don't know. I need new headshots.

Wow - what a difference a shotgun mic makes!

I did a test run yesterday. The on-camera mic picks up so much camera noise. The shotgun mic on the other heand seems to actually cancel out the poor acoustics of my home office! All you hear is the subject you're pointed at. Stellar!

It's an incredible difference, and one you'll hera once the new DAHT episode is posted (hopefully over the weekend. Don't hold your breath.)

Punch update -

I found a couple of great online resources:

www.punchandjudy.com

and

www.punchandjudy.org

Punch show puppeteers, or "Professors" as they're called, seem to be very open and giving with helpful tips and info. Everything from free Punch scripts to where to buy a swazzle is covered. Punch is hardcore, open-source folk art. I dig this kind of thing!

I'm thinking of sculpting Punch and Co. out of Sculpey brand polymer clay. I was first exposed to Sculpey as a puppet building tool on a pilot I performed in. The puppet builder used Sculpey to create the eyes and nose for a cat character. Incredible stuff, very versatile.

I received my shotgun mic today. I'm looking forward to playing with it!

During my recent educational excursion, it was pressed home to me just how important good sound is. I started to panic. If you haven't noticed, my "video sketchbook" DAHT has pretty crappy sound. The on-camera mic just won't do.

Ideally, I'd put my puppeteers in headset mics. That's what the pros use (and by "pros" I mean "Henson"). Well, the rig I'd need for that kind of a set up is a bit out of my budget. On "Uncle Grizly", Adam Brody used an overhead boom. The sound turned out great, even when Russ and I were on our backs and partially obscured by set pieces. We didn't ADR anything. So I started shopping for a mic.

The "cheap-o" solution I found was the Audio-Technica ATR-55, as pictured above from the Audio-Technica website. The retail price is $100 but I found a new one on eBay for about $50. My camera doesn't have a headphone socket (!) so I may need to finagle some kind of pre-amp/splitter deal. I have a great set of Sony Studio Monitor headphones, so at least my ears are covered!

The more pressing issue now is where to shoot! I've looked around, and the cheapest soundstage I can find is about $300 for a full day. Plus insurance! Yikes! I know that somewhere in North Hollywood there's an empty (or semi-empty) warehouse that I could "borrow" for a Saturday. I just need to find it!

Words of Wisdom from the Creator of Ren & Stimpy

I've been following John Kricfalousi's blog ever since Andrew from Canada pointed to it in his blog. John K said something in the comments section that I feel is equally applicable to puppet shows, web-based or otherwise:

"Cartoons are like music to me. Regardless of whether the story is great or not, the whole experience should be pleasurable to the senses.

"It should earn the right to have you pay enough attention to see if there is a story worth thinking about."

This is what the Muppets got right from the start. It's actually kind of fun to pop in the Ed Sullivan dvd, and reflect on just how crappy some of the "stories" are. Where there is an actual story and not just an abstract idea. But who could argue with how visually arresting those gags are? Even something like "Mahna Mahna" is short on story, but a "pleasure for the senses".

Well, I certainly don't want The Felties to be visually boring or painful to the senses!

[MSN Spaces logo]


WTF?

Huh? Can MSN do that? Come on ... it's the same logo!

(MSN Spaces is Microsoft's MySpace rip-off. Ubuntu is a Linux-based free operating system. Ubuntu was unvieled in October 2004, MSN Spaces in December 2004.)

UPDATE: On 11/27/07 I noticed that MSN Spaces has changed their logo:



The idea is basically the same, but at least the rip-off isn't as glaringly obvoius.