L: Eddie Mort directing Lux; R: From the sound booth looking out

So
we have accomplished something quite amazingly ambitious this week. We
have just recorded over one thousand lines of dialog for an entire
feature movie in the space of two days. It was an incredibly tight
schedule because we naively assumed that we could fit everything in
and that it would be a breeze… Instead, there were times when we were
almost pulling our hair out, stressed, disorganized, wondering if we
were going to get through it all, and well, we did!

Thank you to the entire team and cast for a magnificent effort. Thanks also to Jim Cherry (Prod. Coordinator), Phofo (Music Director) and Chris (Sound Engineer) for their patience and for putting up with my snoring flatulent dog in a small airless room for so many hours.

We had a great cast too, and it was fun hearing the characters come to life. We present to you the main cast of Los Campeones de La Lucha Libre:

And thank you also to the very entertaining gang who provided additional/crowd/monster voices: Keith Rainville(writer of Los Campeones), Rafael Navarro (Storyboard artist), Linda Gamboa, Loretta P., Tilly Duran, Wes Massey, Jim Cherry, Phofo and Dave Buscemi.

The
next two weeks are going to be intense as Eddie and I will be putting
together the 70-minute animatic (storyboards + dialog tracks combined)
in preparation for the Animation stage of production.

• The Ray Harryhausen Creature List. This is very cool. Click on the Creature names for video clips.
• Marcos Vilarinyo – The history of photography using LEGO characters.
• Full Moon Clay Co. ceramic sculptures
• Stylehive - Designy-shopping inspiration; this site is constantly updated by members.
• Vera Brosgol’s illustrations  Especially love the sideshow characters.
  
• Gipi: Comics and Illustrations.  I love these Storie Verticali .
• The 20-2-40 Style Syndicate. 1920s-’40s Culture, music and fashion
• The Woman Who Thinks Like A Cow (Google Video). I am reading a book by Dr Temple Grandin right now… Fascinating!
  

I know you are all wondering if we have abandoned this blog. No, we
haven’t! This month has been extra crazy as we are all working to a supertight schedule. Eddie is currently revising and adding final touches to the Los Campeones storyboards in the same time that characters, props and BGs are being designed and refined. Next week is the Voice Recording session, which means we can then proceed to “Animatic” stage the following week… and then, “Animation!”

We wish we could share more with you and how cool everything looks, but you know how it is…

At the Shark Reef exhibition (Mandalay Bay), I saw piranhas, crocodiles, jellyfish, a ton of sharks, and petted a stingray in a very impressive temperature-controlled faux Aztec-ruins environment. I also visited the Bodies exhibition (Tropicana) and later learnt that I could’ve gotten in for FREE if I had signed up with the “Artist’s Program” beforehand<— Sketch something from the exhibition, submit it to their contest. Anyway, this was another very impressive display, some of it highly quirky/disturbing, like the conjoined twins, the jars of fetuses, the stringy and fluffy day-glo (but real!) human nervous systems suspended in glass cases….

Mondo Atomic… Let’s hope we can make it…