Notes From Above Ground.
I am a sick muppet. I am a spiteful muppet.

Notes from Above Ground
Oct 30, 2005 - April 7, 2006
July 22 2005 - October 15 2005
April 3 2005 - July 6 2005
Dec 3 2004 - March 29 2005
Aug 14 2004 - Nov 30 2004

old news

Kleeman and Mike for Africa 2006 is finally here!  I'm hoping to raise $2000 this year.  The campaign will focus on helping the people in Darfur.  It will run from Oct. 9 - Nov. 23, 2006.  Click on the above image for all the details.

Fellowship of the Parakeet Book 1: A Bird Returned to Life is now available for order online!  Click the image on the right for info sorry for the delays on that one.  I'm excited to flesh out the five, yes five, more parts which are coming.

Does anyone have an extra ticket to the Sufjan show in L.A. tomorrow? hook a brother up

2006.10.04
You know what's AMAZING?  That you can talk to someone and that person can understand you and then, after you've talked to them, they talk back to YOU.  I had two tickets at will call for the Mojave 3 show last night.  I had left a message for my friend Nick that I had an extra ticket if he wanted it.  My friend Sean sent me a message saying that if Nick couldn't go to the show that he would use the ticket.  So here's how it played out, and it's amazing.

There's this tiny little spinning rock called "Earth" flying through space.  On this rock there lives this human we call "Nick."  Yesterday, when the side of the spinning rock that Nick was on was facing the yellow star, Nick pushed a series of "buttons" on a little plastic box.  After pushing the buttons, a beeping sound started eminating from another little box several miles away, one that was next to me.  A lot of people would say that this event, almost magically connecting two little boxes, was amazing, and it was, but it wasn't anywhere near as amazing as what happened after the two boxes were connected.  After the two boxes were connected, Nick made a series of sounds using his mouth and lungs.  I heard the sounds, and the sounds actually changed my picture of the future.  

Actually, I need to back up a bit.  Earlier in the day, I had pushed buttons on the little box near me, but I was only able to connect to the little box near Nick, and not to Nick himself.  I wasn't able to make sounds that Nick would hear instantaneously, but it was ok.  I simply waited till the right moment and made the sounds anyway.  When I made the sounds, a computer somewhere created a digital file capable of replicating the sounds with great accuracy.  At some point later in the day, Nick used his little box to hear the digital file.  Again, many people would regard this event as amazing, and it is, but it's nothing compared to what happened when Nick heard the file.  After hearing the file of the sounds that I had made with my mouth, Nick's mind had a new picture of the future.  Previously, Nick's picture of the future was the Casbah with a limited number of tickets available to anyone who arrived.  NOW, Nick had another picture of the future which included the Casbah and a ticket at will call with his name on it.  But the other picture with the limited number of tickets available to anyone was still there, so he pushed a sequence of buttons on the little box and connected to the little box near me.

In my picture of the future, the ticket was there, but it didn't have Nick's name on it.  But after Nick made some sounds which I was able to hear, my picture of the future changed to have Nick  picking up the ticket.  After I heard the sounds from Nick's mouth, I made some sounds which changed Nick's picture of MY present view of the future.  Now Nick's view of MY picture of the future included him picking up the ticket and only after his view of my picture of the future changed did HIS view of the future change to the exclusive one of him picking up the ticket.

Throughout this time, my friend Sean had a picture of the future with the Casbah and the extra ticket.  He was waiting to find out if the ticket was going to be picked up by Nick.  After Nick and I made the sounds, I pushed a sequence of buttons on the little box near me.  Unlike the other sequence of buttons, this sequence made a beeping sound which came out of the little box near SEAN.  Sean listened to the little box and I made a series of sounds with my mouth which changed Sean's picture of the future to include the ticket at the Casbah being picked up by Nick.  Then, I made a series of sounds which put a picture in Sean's mind of him showing up at the Casbah, but not being able to get in to the awesome show because all the tickets were gone.   This picture of the future was different than the other picture in a fundamental way.  It could be changed very easily.  Sean only had to change his picture of the future in terms of what time he arrived at the Casbah.  If he changed the picture of the arrival time to be earlier, the other picture would change to one of him purchasing a ticket at the door and then entering the venue.  

We got there early and Sean purchased a ticket just as we had planned.  We got to talk to Neil Halstead (of Mojave 3) for a while.  Neil lives on the other side of the spinning rock hurling through space so when he makes sounds with his mouth, he does so in a different way than Sean, Nick, and me.  But we understand him just fine.  We took turns making sounds which created and changed pictures in each other's minds.  Many of the pictures involved standing on a foam and fiberglass board and moving on top of the water using speed generated by ocean waves.  I made sounds which put a picture in Neils' mind of the past which included me living in Florida and listening to some of the earliest recordings of Neil's old band Slowdive.  Neil then made sounds which made me understand that he was curious to know how many times the spinning rock had circled the yellow star while I have been alive.  I told him thirty-four times, and he made sounds which indicated that the rock had circled the yellow star thirty-four times for him as well.  In the end, the show was really great and we all made sounds expressing our enjoyment and gratitude.  I've skipped over a lot of the interesting details of this episode, but don't worry.  I will include them all in my 1200 page novel entitled Making Sounds with Your Mouth into a Little Box Which Changes Another Person's Picture of the Future, or, Who Gets the Mojave 3 Ticket?

There's a cool shoegazey band from Indiana called Early Day Miners, and I love this update from a few months back where Dan recounts a dream he had:

In other news, loggerhead shrikes are really cool birds.

2006.10.03
PEOPLE.  I was talking with Andy Davis one time about the experiences he had in starting his own company years back called Free.  A lot of surfers probably remember it.  Andy is one of the most kind-hearted positive thinking guys you'll ever meet.  He'll even tell you about how much he believes there are good people out there.  He ha!  Anyway, he was talking about how much he learned in the process of starting a company.  I asked him what was the main thing he learned, expecting him to say something like you have to really stay organized or you have to really keep track of your expenses or you have to develop a good marketing strategy.  He said without hesitation, "People will screw you."

I did a brutal three weeks of animation work for this big company a couple weeks ago.  When I billed them (the amount they knew it was going to be), they said they weren't going to pay it.  These guys who were super nice to me the whole time started sending me mean, aggressive emails.  The manager sent me an email offering HALF the amount they owed me and said, "I do feel this is more than fair for the poor animation."

What was really depressing was the realization that they were planning to screw me the whole time, that when they were being nice to me, smiling to my face and joking around, they knew they were going to turn on me.

Fortunately for me, my friend Jon is a good copyright lawyer and he was very cool about going to bat for me.   I got my money very fast.  

I recount this story as a warning to you.  Protect yourself.  My gratitude to everyone else who offered to help me with that stupidness.  It's good to have friends.  

2006.07.26

There's really no way to describe this convention that happens every Summer in San Diego.  I can tell you how over 100,000 people attend, about the exhibit hall which stretches out over half a million square feet, or about the thousands of industry pros and celebrities.  But really it comes down to seeing Darth Vader order a ham sandwich at the downtown Ralphs, or watching a guy dressed up as Death get smacked in the face by a kid with an inflatable Conan The Barbarian sword, or seeing Chewbacca take a pedicab to his car.

The Con went well for Kleeman and Mike.  People really liked the new animated stuff and the response for Fellowship of the Parakeet was surprisingly good.  I sold out of the copies I had, but I plan to print more soon.

I didn't get to walk around as much this year.  All my friends were too busy with work to help this year.  It was ok, though.  I was able to see many familiar faces and meet a lot of cool people.  Michel Gagne stopped by one morning before the floor opened and checked out the new cartoons and comics.  He's super nice and his work is really great.  Good to see Daniel and Dawna of Steamcrow again, Jerrell of Revelations, the Hopper Comics guys Carlos and Chris, Tony of Dream On Silly Dreamer, Peter and the atomfilms guys, and a bunch of others I'm probably forgetting.  Cool to meet Louie of Random Anomalies.   Rodolphe and Benedicte at the Flight booth were super nice, as were Jimmy and Joe from Comic News Insider.

Hope to see everyone next year!

Thursday night I went and saw one of my favorite bands of all time, The Church.  Awesome hanging out in a smaller venue and hearing Marty Willson-Piper and Peter Koppes both on 12-string guitars.  They played a huge range of stuff from most recent all the way back to "The Unguarded Moment."  Yes, they played "Under the Milky Way" too. The highlight though was the huge surprise of hearing the song "Providence" off a relatively obscure Steve Kilbey side project from the early '90's called Jack Frost, which I loved.  Kilbey played it as a tribute to the other half of Jack Frost, Grant McLennan of The Go-Betweens who passed away earlier this year.  I told him afterwards how much I appreciated it and how, even though I grew up in a place where everyone listened to Guns n Roses or Madonna, I had that album and I listened to it incessantly.  Steve's really funny.  I gave him a comic book and he totally hammed it up for the photo.

I hope you liked the new trailer.  A big thanks to Steve for helping with the recording and to Brandon and Tyson for help on the voices.

Director commentary: When Mike asks Kleeman about a ramp they're searching for, Kleeman refers to a 1987 skateboarding video called "The Search for Animal Chin."  The video ends with the discovery of what is definitely the most famous ramp in the history of skateboarding and which came to be known as "the Animal Chin ramp."  Mike refers to two of the famous pro skaters in the video, Lance Mountain and Steve Caballero.

Animal Chin ramp

2006.07.24
As promised, the full trailer:

Comic-Con review later this week...

2006.07.10
Trailer for the trailer number 2:

New longer trailer up.  The full trailer will be 1 min. 25 sec.  The actual cartoon ( someday or never) will be around five minutes, so the trailer is actually like a quarter the length of the whole cartoon.  It would be like going to the movies and seeing a trailer that's a half hour long.

Speaking of trailers, did you see the teaser for the Transformers movie?  I can't decide if that's ridiculous or genius.  I mean Transformers.  Semi trucks, cassette players that turn into robots.  It's fun kids fantasy stuff.  But to frame the story with such a real world setting, interacting with NASA's Mars rover is such a wierd decision.  Imagine if they came out with a live action Smurfs movie and framed it as these REAL little blue guys with hats that American scientists in 2006 discover living in the Amazon.

In other news, it's always good to have tech support.  Drew is someone who usually can help me when I have (Conan nerd voice) NNN questions regarding Flash or digital video codecs.  The only problem is he's impossible to get a hold of.  Almost as bad as Andy Davis.  But sometimes it's an emergency, so I had to come up with a good way or reaching him when I'm desperate.
click to enlarge

Speaking of NNNNNNerdiness, only ten days till Comic-Con.  I'll be at table J-8.  Start working on your Gandalf costumes.

2006.06.29
Trailer for the new Kleeman and Mike cartoon is coming out in three weeks.  In anticipation of the epic trailer I'm posting sneak peek.  Behold the trailer for the trailer

Sandra from Tallahassee wrote on her blog about her 3 year-old daughter, Adah:

Thanks to Chris for the link.  The comic she referes to is this one.  Another funny thing was that when I read the story I noticed that her link to KnM went to kleemanandmike.com/comicbook, and I thought that was weird because I don't recall having a /comicbook link.  But when I clicked on it, I saw that it was the page offering a free comic book to anyone who makes a donation to an African aid organization.  Now, when I made that page last Aug. after KnM for Africa, I didn't expect to be mailing out tons of comic books, but I thought for sure I'd be sending a comic book out from time to time.  Well as you can imagine from the fact that I forgot that the page even existed, no one ever took me up.  But I try to be positive and believe that it's not so much that people don't want to help others who are in need, but simply that people don't want a Kleeman and Mike comic book.

But I think I have a new children's book that people will buy.

2006.06.25
How have you been?  I have thought about giving up this Kleeman and Mike thing many times.  It's a difficult and expensive hobby to keep up, but alas, there are a few people out there who would be disappointed if I quit, so I try not to let them down.   My life seems to be about just not letting people down, and I'm sorry to all the people who I've already let down.  So there!

I should be working since I'm totally broke, and yet, on the other hand, the new cartoon is looking really good.  Maybe this is one of those proverbial "defining moments" in the career of an "artist."  The trailer will be online July 24 and it will have Kleeman's and Mike's voices and you might even hear the voice of a spunky little cat who wears a bandana.

The Kleeman and Mike island web cam is back up.  By a show of hands, how many of you noticed that the animation changes from time to time?  Great.  And how many of you noticed that the changes correspond to the time of day and more specifically, Pacific Standard Time?  And how many of you then noticed that scenes even accurately correspond to the TIME OF YEAR?  Here is how I did it.

In case you missed it, here is the tribute to Luke's ramp aka the Little Italy ramp.  The ramp was really fun, but what made it great was the people who skated it.  Everyone was always so friendly, even when beginners showed up, the local rippers would totally encourage them to skate and have fun.  In the post-X-Games world where skateboarding has become such a jock sport, many skaters have become so competitive and aggressive.  The Little Italy ramp was a rare exception.  People were just stoked to skate and to share the ramp with other skaters.  Maybe there's hope.

2006.05.29
New comic book will be available in July.  It will be first installment of the print version of Fellowship of the Parakeet.

Trailer for the new animated short also in July.

Animated short to be completed someday or never whichever comes first.

KnM for Africa 2 in August.

Project Romantic has been pushed back to October.  I did eight pages. Here's a preview (page 1 and 2)

2006.04.13
Update.  I'm currently finishing up my contribution to AdHouse Books' Project: Romantic due out this summer.  Planning on recording voices for the new KnM animated short next Tuesday.  Hoping to do some skateboard filming within the next week, also for the new short.  Other than that, just trying to find time to work on the animation.  I also plan to have some new print stuff for Comic-Con in July.  More on that to come.

Thanks to everyone who came out to APE!  I put a couple photos in the photo section. KnM got some press in the SFist write up.  Special thanks to Jon for putting me up and helping out.  Thanks to Josh for the Pixar tour.   Thanks to Allen.  When you live on a farm you can just walk outside and shoot a gun.  Thanks to the magpies in the central valley for being cool black and white crows with yellow beaks and long tails.

Oct 30, 2005 - April 7, 2006