hello... eating chilled cookies and drawing. happy to say thumbnails are going well although there's just this one hurdle i still can't get out of. might enlist some writing help? though that's always kind of scary. but perhaps after eating these cookies and maybe taking a shower i will gain the startling boost of intelligence required to overcome this story issue. orill just sit at my desk and draw around it as ive been doing.

i went to my dentist yesterday because one of my teeth have been sensitive (pretend you didn't read the first sentence and act like this is a shocker) and i found myself infatuated with that little button that shoots jets of water. you know, the one the dental assistant uses to fill a cup for you to rinse and what not. well in a stroke of curiosity i reached over and pressed it and the water came out like violently fast and i got scared. one of the assistants like peered into the room i was sitting in and i had to look away. it is a miracle you are still reading this

hope you have been well? ~tom

writing to you from my bed. my sleep schedule is the envy of all who cross me. tomorrow i think i will draw out the plan of a very complex scene so it can stop living in my head. okay night

uhh, not much to tell you about today. an exciting start, eh? though i did draw some thumbs! no not the ones you're thinking of. for those who've never animated before, thumbs are the crappy drawings that precede storyboards. to quickly get the idea out and all. if i showed you mine you'd dry heave so consider yourself lucky today. im eating one of those frozen edwards pies from the convenience store and its whatever. do people still even eat pie? i never hear anyone talk about it and its sad because pie is really good. i could eat those savory type pies for the rest of my life. doesnt it just enthrall you how exciting my blog is?

more soon, hugs

~tom

so as you can see the main site is down... stupid optical's designs have always been a royal pain in the ass to edit. truth be told i still use a WYSIWYG editor to write the site most of the time. i can't be bothered to learn new fangled HTML5. i've got a damn MOVIE to make. CAN'T YOU SEE THAT I AM BUSY??? anyways on that note i'm happy to announce that this current project has lasted longer than five minutes, so it may just see the light of day yet. believe it or not, ive secured some talent behind this one. oh yes. hold your applause. this is a rather ambitious first-out-of-high-school short film but i think with these smart cookies on board it'll be a little less like plugging holes on a boat and...uh...more like plugging holes on a smaller boat. maybe i'll reveal the team later, lest they stage a coup and kill me before production. 

so in the wake of this new picture, and having now finished my first year of college, i think it's time this blog lives up to its name and gets updated semi-frequently. that's right, you heard me. again, people, with the applause. this is only because i need to break my habit of knocking holes into the coffee table when i'm bored... people have been telling me that this isn't a good way to decompress... but i digress. 

now let's talk turkey. i think that's the wrong phrase, but i need to sound important or else i'll doubt myself. this picture, upon review, is going to involve some... ridiculously tough techniques. we want it looking sort-of real but not really. it's hard to describe. i find myself tinkering with 3D software although the picture isn't really 3D...? everything's all hand-drawn. fuck, i don't really know how to describe this to you. maybe now's not the right time. the script isn't even locked yet and won't be for a bit. i just want you to be as pumped as i am. PLEASE BE EXCITED.

im too tired to write much right now but maybe i write you tomorrow. hugs. kisses. joy abound

~tom

well its been a long time hasn't it. oops... uh. sorry. to the two of you (and 154 burner IPs of mine) that read this page, it's been an interesting year so far for me. for the first time in awhile i quit my job, which is a strange, cathartic and scary thing to do most of the time. this has encouraged me to get off my ass and get something done. i began to really dig into my own personal experience, and on may 2 had this crazy burst of inspiration. i stayed up until about 5 in the AM writing a first draft of this story, and i ended up with something really, really out there when i took a look the next day. i don't really want to make any promises, or say what it's about yet, but if i stick with it (and i'd really, genuinely like to) i'm aiming to get it out there by the end of next may. if we're lucky it may even play @ festivals. long shot, but i retain hope as always. almost as well as i retain water. this is kind of a scary undertaking when you don't have much money.......i was going to fill out a silver lining to that but i couldn't come up with anything. we continue on!

~tom

in between writing this thing i have been reading a lot and especially reading brakhage said, an unconfirmed account of stan brakhage's musings during a colorado lecture. i hope he said these things because i like them a lot. here are a few interesting ones:

“The brain does not think through in full story fragments.”

“It is not enough to take a picture of something and present it as evidence so that one doesn’t need to reflect on where this came from.”

“The strength of documentary is to tell the facts in an artistic way.”

he also apparently had some choice words for truffaut,

“I think Fahrenheit 451 is one of his best films because so much of the rest was a bunch of French bullshit.”

and said this too apparently:

“…the male penis…is there any other?”

which i hope is true

hi i didn't really do anything today, but i did recently see the 400 blows and i thought the camerawork was pretty nifty. my friend told my other friend that he only ever has bad ideas and it is quite upsetting. okay bye 

tom

HAHA WOW hello. it’s been quite a busy week.
i was recently tasked with bringing a big website back online (hyunsdojo.com) so i did that. the first 14 hours were a complete slog because the CDN constantly spat errors at me but after that it was just lots and lots of tweaking. she’s back up now altho there’s plans to put her on a new server. so that’s good!

altho that leaves me with nothing to report in the animation department : (

THANKS FOR EVERYBODY WHO WATCHED THE AMAZING THINGS THAT PREMIERED ON 4DAY + CRASHING THE HYUN’S DOJO WEBSITE WITH YOUR IMMENSE TRAFFIC!!!!

~

my friend Lunsar’s “Freefall Collab 3“, a project 2 years in production, premieres SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2025, 4:00 P.M. EST after my other friend Shabani’s “To Catch A Butterfly” at 3:00 P.M.. PLUS another talented animator, Sopple’s, “G-Stick Collab” at 5:00 PM EST… tune in to watch three collaborations larger than life.

LINKS BELOW:

     -> Sopple's Trailer

     -> Lunsar's Youtube

     -> Shabani's TCAB Livestream

i did a little bit of minor work on ffc3, but i’ll talk about that after the fact…

here’s an additional drawing i did for lunsar, strutting his stuff on his birthday:

he’s one of my best friends and i’m really proud of all the work he + shabani did on their collabs. i’m also excited for sopple’s considering how little i’ve seen. it’s like going in cold!!! please go check these out… it’s gonna be some really great stuff.

this fellow is just for you. click him! he dances! whee!
what a lazy piece

i did a lot of drawing today (or tuesday… it’s around 12am) and not much animation… go over to the “doodles”
page. it’s all there! tom’s stuff -> doodles. yes! now! GO!!!!

STORY TIME:

the other day the sink in my laundry room overflowed because somebody put the cork in the drain (fuck!). i left a lot of animation artwork on the bottom shelf of my storage contraption and all of it got wet and ruined and i did a lot of light screaming. it was a long walk cycle. i really don’t want to do it again. but i will because it looked awesome.

on my gravestone i want it to read:
tom
“often described as jagged, watery & preposterous”

~tom