FurBabies Presentation

Cast thy bread upon the waters, and it will be eaten by ducks

I attended the Toronto Animated Image Society conference on the 11th and 12th of April. The writer and independent creator panels were what I wanted to see, although some of them were scheduled against each other.

My friend Michel Gagne screened the work picture of THE SAGA OF REX, a hand drawn feature that he has been working on for 12 years.

It’s impressive, and this trailer doesn’t do justice to it. (click on the link to see it) I also met up with Aaron Blaise, who won three awards at the festival, but didn’t have a chance to see SNOW BEAR.

I was happy to see that there were some well animated projects being made in Toronto. More are needed.

Some presenters admitted that animation was ‘dire’ right now. Indie productions survive because they have miniscule or nonexistent budgets. Some of them get traction through fanart sites. It’s a completely different way of publicizing and financing films.

I thought that most of the indie projects were firmly in the ‘student’ mindset and aimed at a specific audience. Some are set in schools or have art students as lead characters. If you are not in the demographic (and are not familiar with older shows that are allegedly ‘parodied’ by the new ones) some presentations might mystify you.

Animation has become the snake eating its own tail. How sad.

I liked Homework Studio’s reel the best (disclaimer: Noam Sussman and Ali Kellner were two of my students at Sheridan). Click here to see their reel.

I made a little pitch package for the FurBabies in the ‘why not’ mode and put it online with a QR code linking to it. This was novel enough to interest a few people. I did not push too hard. This was the ‘secret’ project I was working on. Here is a page from it. You can contact me through my website if you want to see the rest.

I didn’t think I could think less of A.I. but it seems to be everywhere now.

Pratt-L’s page in the pitch package was actually written by AI. The program added a supremely arrogant comment at the end that I did not provide a cue for. I added a few malaprops but left the rest as it was.

I make fun of AI but it is lethal, and it will not go away unless you turn the devices off. That may be what it comes down to.

New FurBabies strips are being finished in Clip Studio Paint because it does NOT have any annoying AI ‘helpers’ AND does not claim the right to use the material created with it.

FurBabies characters and backgrounds continue to be drawn on paper. I don’t have to provide creator credit to General Pencil or Pentel brush pens or paper companies.

Pratt-L will be back in the comic (unfortunately). I realized sometime in late 2023 that the conflict in FurBabies was between natural and artificial intelligence.

Shawm says it out loud, in the panel.

I have some funny Easter strips coming up that don’t go as expected. Enjoy.