zoink

a drawing from the 3rd episode of the county ghost...
only problem with working on a web series in my spare time, is that it doesnt really leave any time to be drawing too much of anything else.

a little bit of "insight"

so youtube has this new feature for people who upload movies called "insight".
itll give you a graph of when during the length of your video, you are either "retaining more viewers than the average", or "viewers are leaving the video faster than the average" as they put it.
so needless to say, here is the exact spot in cuddle sticks, where it seems viewers were "dropping out faster than the average".
cant imagine why...

(you can click on the image for a larger view)

county ghost - episode deux...

im pretty sure this guy works for a cell phone company

ok, im sorry about this

but i have more festival news...

cuddle sticks is a finalist in the HAFF internet contest.
if your interested in checking out the rest of the contenders, you can do so on their youtube channel here:
hafftube

also,


encounters has released their program schedule and cuddle sticks will be in competition with their late lounge program which is screening nov 21 and 22nd in bristol, U.K.

cuddle sticks X giraf

i know these festival posts probably get old,
but giraf will be only the second canadian screening of cuddle sticks since its been finished, so im stoked.
nov 5 - 9th in calgary, alberta, canada.

episode 2

episode 2 is on its way...

cow

ive been in vancouver for the past 11 days, so now that im back home, here is a quick cow drawing until i get on something a little more fancy.
mooo.

the week in news...sort of

county ghost was featured on cold hard flash this week. you can check it here if you havent already. episode 2 is midway through and im feeling a bit better about it than i was about the first, so we will see if i still share that sentiment once its completed.

i was in ottawa for the animation festival this weekend. i think the standouts for me were the aardman shorts, and a really nice film by kyle marshall that was part of the canadian showcase.

and lastly, i noticed that a site called "i am bored" has been somehow streaming cuddle sticks to 3200 people without me knowing about it. lord i wish i could understand how they got a hold of my file considering its only been uploaded to youtube and 4mations from my computer, and not available for download anywhere else that i know of. in any case, its a weird feeling. i guess i should just be happy that it is 3200 more people that might not of watched it otherwise...but still...

county ghost

alrighty, i figure now is as good a time as any to introduce a new web series that ive been working on called "county ghost". seeing as how its a solo project, im doubting that the episodes will come out on any sort of schedule other than when i finish making them, but the prospect of keeping 12 episodes so that i could release them weekly just didnt seem to make all that much sense to me right now.
in any case, here is the first one. its actually been done for a few weeks, so there are a lot of things i really dislike about it (especially that the new youtube encoder doesnt hand pans very well so the animation looks really choppy in there during the movements), but i decided to just leave em in and spend that time moving forward on the next episode rather than going back to sugar coat the first.

alright, enough yapping...

episode 1...

this weeks update...minus any sort of drawings or artwork

ill be at the ottawa animation festival this weekend if anyone is interested in hooking up for a beer or beavertail or anything like that. it will actually be the first year that i dont have an itinerary to follow, so im looking forward to some relaxing evenings of animation screenings and some supposedly 27 degree weather!
in other animation festival news, cuddle sticks is showing this weekend in denver at the frame damage animation festival if anyone is anywhere near there and wants to help cheer on the madness.

ohoh, also, before i forget, since youtube wont let you replace videos, i stopped using my old youtube account and started a new one at http://www.youtube.com/user/MikeGeigerAnimation so that i could upload my stuff in youtube high quality! wowzers does it ever make a whopping difference. so if you have a chance, please feel free to check out the high defness, it is like night and day compared to their old compression...still drops frames during pans or other heavy movements, but at least it looks good doing so.

branding

as i begin to produce more independent work, i find myself with the urge to start branding myself and my work in an attempt to keep it all somewhat organized. its been an oddly hard struggle because the last thing i want to do is start saying that "mike geiger" is a brand, just seems really cheesy for me to do, but low and behold...here we are.
although it seems like a good idea to use a "cartoony" name for myself and my work, my first concern was that a lot of names that sound good now, may not be good in a few years. how many times have you had a brainchild that you looked back at only a few weeks later and said "what was i thinking".
on that same note, coming up with a name that i was happy with that also happens to be available with a .com beside it is next to impossible. unless you want 10 or more letters in your name, chances are whatever you come up with plus .com is already taken.
on top of that all, considering i am already registered as mike geiger and i already own mikegeiger.com, seems logical to avoid the complications of being called "some sorta funny but not really original" cartoon name and just stick with what my parents gave me.
so, there ya have it. mike geiger. i guess i should at least be happy my name is not something way worse...