I think I really mastered that on this project. I worked with two other artists who I’ve gotten to know over the last 2-3 years and their performances really put extra unique native Chicago energy into it. Visual artist Candace Hunter performed the voice over. We recorded it one day at Faie African Art Gallery in the historic Bronzeville neighborhood on the south side of town. And Samuel Savoirfaire Williams, Jazz Violinist, gave me permission to use one of his band’s songs, Counter Poise from their Ran Out of Time CD.

Hardware and software wise, I used a variety of tools. I recorded Candace’s voice over on a H4n recorder. The animated parts of the film are hand drawn in Flash, the voice over and music clip were edited in Audition and all visual and audio files were edited together in After Effects to produce the film.

It all began last year during the fall quarter and this is culmination of our efforts.

On campus, I and my classmates spent the fall quarter in pre-production, giving pitches to each other about three ideas we had in mind for a final animated short. We voted for our favorites of everyone’s three pitches and most of us went with the preference of the room. Then we proceeded with weeks of developing a coherent story then storyboarding it with a series of weekly class critiques and revisions.

Since mine was an adaptation of a part of a poem my challenge was to create what my professor called a “visual language” just for this piece. She didn’t want me to simply animate the words but to illustrate some of the deeper meaning. Well one of my pitch ideas was an abstract animation so I was able to fit some of that style in after all. Developing a visual language for someone else’s writing is no easy task though. In fact it was actually the toughest and longest part of the project. My storyboards changed significantly and I was still modifying them into this quarter before I was able to get started on animating it but the extra time and effort was worth it.

From that point critiques of my storyboard panels were easy to adapt into my evolving sequence of images. Once I got into the activity of creating animated key frames, weekly animation critiques accelerated my process even more. This project gave me the opportunity to experiment with elemental animation in the form of water, clouds and smoke and that part of the creative process was most enjoyable for me.

Thanks to my final project professor Jo Dery for guiding us through the process of pre-production last quarter and full on animation in Animated Short Film Parts I and II over the last two quarters.

Be sure to catch up on episodes of Hartlife’s Our Fair City, save the site and drop the guys a line to tell them how much you enjoyed it.
 

Still can’t figure out how I pursued engineering first before science later in life (engineers don’t have cool T.V. shows, scientists do!) but I have my act together now – LOL. Really enjoyed putting this together. It affirmed my combined scientific and artistic pursuits in my current life.

One of the goals of the fab lab is to have kids make something that they can take home with them. I had an activity where they created an atom out of pipe cleaners and wagon wheel pasta that took home as there personally made souvenir. I had a good time with it. Most importantly, I got the job

You’ll notice from the screen shot below that all the real work happens on layers 1 and 2, the left and right half mentioned earlier. This image blending technique is easy to employ by simply keeping both layers open and working along the intersecting border to create cool transitions.

I’ve decided to continue improving my Photoshop composition skills by regularly updating my Facebook Cover with original digital work. You’ll be seeing those here as I create them.

I’ve used this as a head shot on some of my social media profiles. It’s not me but I do favor a cool beret in cool weather. What do you think of it?

We talked further on other points including how cool it was to me as a father that his sons were the inspiration for getting the Jaycen Wise series of the ground. He mentioned how we sometimes have to create the images that we want our children to take in. I could definitely relate to that. he took it as an obligation to do it himself instead of waiting for other entities to provide something appropriate and acceptable. And as we artists know, there’s no barrier to doing that with the current state of individual access to advanced technology.

As for current and upcoming Jaycen Wise adventures, check out Ureaus’ first motion comic Jacycen Wise and the Eye of the Storm, a modern day not-just-your-average jewel heist produced in 2010. He’s working on motion co mic number two, Jaycen Wise on the Road to Infinity, due to be released in the next couple of months. It’s set in the cowboy era and he’s taking the opportunity to teach how the black cowboys helped settle the wild west.

Ureaus says he has about twenty Jaycen Wise stories in various stages of production, some of which are dropping later this years and others in 2013 so stay tuned for the next adventure. Not only that but friend the Jaycen Wise Facebook Page and keep up with all of the series updates.

Joe McFee tells us how he and Joe Currie recruited La’Drissa Bonivel to model as a super-shero for each of their comic universes.

So the next time you’re at a comic convention or similar event strike up a conversation with that other creative you’ve always wanted to meet and get your juices flowing together for the next great collaboration.
 

 
Joe has been amassing a cadre of comic artists in his sphere of influence, most notably Kim Moseberry and Joe Currie. Kim is the interior page artist for the AWF comic series beginning at Issue #2 and Joe Currie of Strictly Underground Comics, hangs out with him with assorted comic conventions and events. And as he mentioned in the vid that’s Adrian Adams making an appearance behind Joe. He has done promo and poster work for the Amazonia Title.

Joe and Xigency have been producing books at a consistent clip so keep an eye out for their latest projects.