Welcome to SecretDoorProductions.com, home of the cartoon series Typical Strange.
We tell stories. Animated stories. Well…kinda animated. And kinda stories.
Starring
Sarah Elmaleh, Sean Gilbert,
Al Gravelle, Karen Throupe, Barbara Winters.
Created by
Sean Gilbert
Enjoy!
Note: This stuff is not intended for the kids!
A long while back Sarah recorded some shorts to pass the time between episodes.
Of course, all this stuff ended up taking me way longer to put together…the shorts
included.
But here’s the first plasticine theater short, at long last!
Penelope’s Beautiful Dress
Penelope’s movie minute #3 is here! It’s called “You Gotta Move”.
I know it appears, all nice and slick, in the vids beside the blog posts.
But I wanted to try posting into the blog post itself.
Just to see.
Y’know. For kicks.
Let’s watch…
I SAID LET’S WATCH!
Bye for now!
Penelope’s Movie Minute – “You Gotta Move”
My love for comedy is matched by my love of SCARY stuff. This Movie Minute has a small element of the SCARY. OOOooOOOooh!
Sarah is really funny in this one, once again, and I’m glad to have finally finished animating it!
I feel the same way as Penelope does when i watch the film she watches…it’s powerful, powerful stuff!
See you again soon!
I gotta post monthly, at least. Since weekly has just not happened yet!
The animation work is going fine, with the roughs for episode 5 (the action packed dramatic thriller called “Abigail’s Birthday” and the lip sync for another Penelope Movie Minute coming along great.
The Movie Minute requires a little background music, which oughtta be finished this weekend. Then, the rest of the lip sync and smaller animation touches, and BOOM! Twelve short years later, another 2 minute short! YES!
These movie minutes, along with the other shorts, have been on the back of the proverbial shelf, with my mind wandering to other things…but MUEY MUEY SOON, another movie minute’ll be done. FINALLY!
Why can I accept “the Muppets” as real, but cannot be engaged by much of the digital wizardry of CGI-fueled blockbusters? No matter how brilliant the artistry?
I don’t know. But 1995 called; it wants its filmmaking article back.
This blogging thing is still not in my bones. Because I haven’t let it happen. However, I HAVE to do more on here. This stuff occupies ALL my waking thoughts.
It’s better than it was a couple years ago…then the stories were occupying me constantly, too, but there was NOTHING to watch.
It takes awhile.
The newest episode, “Abigail’s Birthday”, is being drawn. Piece by piece. Digitally, by the way. Without the artistic brilliance, natch!
It’s a big two-parter, which I wanted to edit down to a tight twenty minutes…but it seemed more fun to keep everything in there and enjoy the journey a little more. (ahhhh, the lack of writing discipline that this format allows! What a glorious thing!)
…and double “ahhhh” for the lack of writing discipline that went into this post.
But I did one!
Huzzah!
Have a great day!
Whoa. It’s been just over a month, once again, since the last blog update.
The next episode, “Abigail’s Birthday”, has been written and is undergoing a quick polish before it goes out to the actors. Rough animation is underway, too…there are some fun new characters guest starring, and I’m wild about the story.
It’s pretty complex, stucture-wise, and the cast separates into separate adventures. We’ll see how well it works in the end, but this is going to be the busiest, fastest paced adventure so far!
Lately I’ve found another great online cartoon. This guy is great. He’s got interesting (and slightly disturbing) characters (the voices are fantastic), and it’s hilariously creepy, both the writing and character design.
It’s called “Welcome to Creepyville”.
As always, to watch the newest episode, go to the right and click on the top picture!
Most of the full length episodes have been squeezed into the archives!
It’s a thrill to be finishing a couple of these shows. I’m finding them to be alot of fun, and faster to finish lately.
Weekend at Bernie’s is one of my favorite movies.
There. I said it.
The whole thing just WORKS. Very likable characters, and a hilarious premise that does exactly what you want it to do. Not a flick that lent itself well to a sequel, unfortunately….but it’s been quite awhile…maybe we can look forward to “Weekend at Bernie’s 3…The Rotting”!
Hmmm….I gotta go. *opening screenwriting program*
New short, “The Last Piece”, has been posted. Enjoy!
….But save a little for the group, okay?
Every episode teaches me something. This one makes me laugh at the end (gives me that elusive automatic reaction of laughter, definitely a good sign), but the script could’ve used some cutting up front…takes too long to get to a point that could have been reached MUCH more quickly.
All good – and yet ANOTHER great reason to do the short episodes between the longer ones. The mechanics of putting a story together (not to mention the visual and auditory aspects!) are somewhat the same.
Gives a chance to woodshed a bit and get better at this!
All the best,
Sean
So finally, the latest episode is in the can! Check out “Big Dreams”. In this one, Abigail finds herself having…disturbing dreams about another character.
Big, big ups, props and ‘kuds to the cast. You guys are great!
Nice to have another episode done! Always exciting.
I meant to talk more about Doraleous and Associates. I don’t watch a ton of stuff online, but this show makes me want to watch more…because it’s enjoyable, but also it can be inspiring. It certainly is in the case of Doraleous…I love the look of it, with the hand-drawn pieces, and the engaging, classic story of “the journey”. The humor is right up my alley, and the actors are funny. Sir Walken? Come on! How can you not love that?
Thy share the style of a lot of modern animation…individual pieces are moved/rotated. It appeals to me. And these guys do a great lookin’ background, too. Lots of shading, too. And highlights. On the characters as well as the backgrounds. That really helps.
What shocks me most is how quickly they do their thing. A 7-8 minute cartoon every week? Amazing! When you have the pieces drawn, it’s certainly speeds things along….but even to edit the audio and keep up with the writing/post audio must be a challenge.
And most importantly, it’s FUNNY! Gotta get me back over there and watch some more…maybe they give a peek behind the production curtain somewhere….
