Good day, everyone!

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My goodness. It's been a long time since a new journal entry has been posted here, hasn't it? In my defense, Tumblr is addicting. Ever since I entered into the Once-ler/"Lorax" fandom, my time has been invested into that website more than anything. It's the funniest, kindest, and most entertaining fandom I've ever been in, and I've made several good friends and have had more fun there than I can possibly say. That said, don't think that I've abandoned any of you folks here or elsewhere! I'm still drawing and I still love you all. Don't worry. Ha-ha.

For those of you who converse with me on Skype, I must offer up my sincere apologies if you've been trying to reach me... yet have been unsuccessful. Our good ol' PC computer of seven years, Eddie, finally died about a week or so ago. The Geek Squad might be able to fix it, but, if not, we'll have to get a new computer. Although my mom has a small laptop that she's borrowed, and although my dad has a Mac, neither of them have Skype installed on them (I tried to install it on the latter, but it wouldn't cooperate, for some odd reason, and I'm not sure I want to put it on the little laptop). For now, I've been using those two computers (when I can get at them, as they're constantly being used by the rest of the family) and the Macs in the computer room at the apartment complex we're in to access the internet. I have absolutely no idea when I'll be able to get on Skype again, so my sincere apologies for all of this mess. (It's actually my fault that our old computer, Eddie, is dead, so.... *hangs head in shame*)

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In other news, I've been working on a little... side project, just for the fun of it. Those of who you follow me on Twitter are probably sick of me talking about this. I'll try not to mention it too much anymore. Eheh....

Those of you who have seen Ferngully, raise your hands. All hands up? Okay. Any of you remember that "Batty Rap" song? Yes, that catchy, slightly disturbing one. Well, apparently, what you see in the film is the cut version. I didn't even know that there was a longer version until just recently, but after listening to it, I can see why it was edited. Here's the whole thing, if you're curious:

[link]

Poor guy went through some major crap. Heh. That said, I started to wonder.... If they had animated the whole sequence, what would the omitted parts have looked like? How would you suggestively convey all of what the doctors, nurses, and graduate students say without actually showing much of anything? Story construction intrigues me -- I love trying to figure out how to tell a tale in the most effective way possible. And while this is a rather disturbing subject to select to experiment on (no pun intended), it posed to be a very interesting challenge. What I did was I tried to visualize exactly how just the portion of the song with the doctors/nurses/students conversing would go, and as I visualized it I wrote everything down, working and reworking things over a period of several days (I think it took about... 2+ hours total to figure out exactly how I wanted it to go). Here is the (very messy) result:

[link]

It may not make much sense to y'all, but I know (almost) exactly how I want this thing to go. I've already started storyboarding it. Who knows if I'll ever animate it, but if I do... it's gonna be creepy.

As much as I dislike Ferngully, I kinda wish that they'd kept the entirety of that song in there, just because it's actually pretty powerful (albeit quite disturbing, even if it is rather humorous in parts; they might have gotten letters, though; heh). I just love how they did that dialogue portion of the song, using simple effects to drive home the tense atmosphere and feel of the situation (e.g., the sharp contrast of the tune of the child's crib mobile against the reality of what's really happening; vocal sounds which could be interpreted as the beat of a heart monitor [I don't think Robin Williams was mimicking that sound exactly, but it could be heard as such]). It's all very effective and makes for a pretty intense song for a children's film.

In any case, who knows how far I'll get in fleshing out this project, but figuring out the whole thing in my head was, at least, a great challenge, and should I ever get it off the ground and high into the air I hope that the result will leave an impression in the mind of the viewers.

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That's all for now, folks. Take care!!

-- Mitch