Shak Budisen Episode 1 is here!

And it's really short and the timing's not that good! But still, its got its good points. My favorite part is the drawing of Danny when Shak smacks the cigarette out of his mouth. I've got a script for another episode which is more than twice as long as this obligatory episode. In the mean time, kick back and enjoy...if you feel like it.

Maturity, religeon, and control.

I am a control freak, non-religeous, and insanely immature. What do these things have to do with each other? Well, if you want control over your life, how can you believe that everything you know is under the control of a supreme diety, and that you have no say in the matter of who you are. Man, that's depressing. Now maturity goes back to our mothers, and our manners. I'm sure we've all had parents tell us to clean our rooms, say "excuse me" when you burp, and not swear. This is why, as a control freak, I am immature: if our entire social code is based on an arbitrary, pre-determined set of inconvenient conditions that have gradually been ground into our collective conscience, than you are constantly in combat with a code of etiquitte ( I think I misspelled that, but who cares) which limits your social possibilities to be in control of your life with a constant need to conform to a basic code. (whew, that was a long sentence) Which brings me back to religeon. Religeon has its own code of manners and obligations, like going to Church on Sundays, and not saying the lord's name in vain, which in turn is forced upon us due to our social conscience of respecting other's religeons, thereby meaning that the people who run the religeons have control over who we respect. However, some of these religeous laws are so uptight that even the people who practice the religeon don't follow them. It goes on and on in a never-ending cycle. One that I'm trying to break, which is why I love cartoons, and movies like "Big Trouble in Little China" "Tremors" and so on. This cycle of maturity is also one of the reasons I don't want to get married. First of all, there's the obvious part: when you are married, everything you own you share with your spouse. As a control freak, how am I supposed to handle forking over my hard-earned crap for such a petty inconsistant thing such as love. Also, when a man marries a woman, one of the terms is to "make an honest woman out of her" nowadays, it seems more like the woman makes an honest man out of her husband, making him into, hopefully for their kids, a responsible father. If the man has kids, and he wants to treat them well, he has very little choice but to comply. And from there on, both him and his wife, who once enjoyed a free, young life, are locked into an endless cycle of ever increasing responsibilities that niether of them have any control over. I understand that there must be some magic in getting married and raising a family, otherwise people wouldn't do it. But as a control freak, I don't see how I could.

Man... this ranting business is fun.

Something will happen soon enough.

I've started animation on the first Shak Budisen cartoon, although if it's anywhere near as lame as the opening "song" than I'm totally screwed. Anyways, don't expect anything good too soon. God I'm just talking to myself because I am just trying to assure myself that I'll finish something.

Samurai Jack Episode XX Review

Season:2
Storyboarded and Written by: Charlie Bean, Paul Rudish, and someone else, I think Erik Weise
Plot: Jack climbs a mountain.
Score:7.7
Review: This is a solid episode, and the mountain monks are funny. It is well done, if not extrordinary. However, there is one thing, visually, that annoys me at the end of this episode. When Jack is at the top of the mountain, and he collapses into the snow with his hair down, he looks extremely white and Disney, like one of those "Indians" from Brother Bear. And believe me Samurai, being mentioned in the same sentence as Brother Bear is not a good thing.

Shak Budisen Opening Theme

Here's the deal. I've been away from this blog for a while, so I decided to make a Shak Budisen opening song. Note that Shak has a nose now. I forgot to draw that in the first movie I posted. I originally wanted to have Shak just standing there while his name was sang by a children's chorus, and eventually become interested in the program, but I did a really lousy little kid impersonation, and I didn't want to invite a bunch of kids over to my house and sing into my computer. So here is the theme compromise with Shak singing his own name. Enjoy...if you feel like it.

P.S
I'm not just doing animation, I've got plans for a new movie. I was away camping for a night, and I stayed near this cool building with saloon style doors by the bathrooms. Needless to say, it's a great set piece. I'll start working on it once I have time and energy to make something more than ten or eleven minutes long.

P.S (no I'm not going to pull that P.S.S crap) More Samurai Jack reviews coming up.

Mornings: I Know What I'm Missing

On weekdays, five days a week, I hate getting up. I wake up and go back to sleep. On weekends, I wake up, and I go back to sleep, only I don't eventually have to haul myself out of the comforts of my bed and go face the day. Which is one of the reasons I love traveling. I don't sleep well, I'm too wired to want to sleep, and so I get out of bed before everyone else wakes up, and see the city just before rush hour. The air is cold and energising, and when I'm in a different place, the morning air makes it feel and taste just that more different. Its definately cool. The other thing I enjoy about trip mornings goes back to when I stayed at my Aunt Peggy's house. I was on a family trip with my parents and grandparents, and, while at home I was used to either waking up and having everyone be ready to leave, or waking up and nobody being awake, my entire family suffered Jetlag and was on the same clock. So I'd wake up and everyone would just be arriving for breakfast. I didn't even have to get out my own cereal.

This is an uncharacteristic and totally non-angry rant courtesy of the still DAILY and still CYNICAL Daily Cynic.

P.S, I'm going traveling for the next two days, so no updates.

Meet Shak Budisen

This is Shak Budisen, the future star of: Shak Budisen: America's rolemodel. His first episode isn't done yet, so I put together this video conveying the many moods of Shak: Stupid, Normal, Angry/Constipated, happy, and smoking. Enjoy and stay tuned for more from Shak.