Old Crap

Here is an old album that I put together before I started really paying attention to what I wanted to sound like. I was drawing from a variety of loose influences at the time, most of which being very digital, right-out-of-the-box kinds of sounds, with lots of pretty accessible chord structures (or none at all). I was ecstatic at the time because I was really starting to produce things at a decent rate, some of these being composed within days.

These are by no means bad things, I just started discovering more and more about the process, and seeing some different directions that I wanted to go with music. By the time I was finished with these, I kind of wanted to stuff them away. I found the work I had done to be way too contained to a computer, and they were just overly-digitalized, cold sounds; I stopped enjoying the kind of work I was making. That, and I felt that they weren't very well composed or recorded/edited. I was a complete stranger to even the idea of mastering/mixing.

Anyways, a few years have passed now, and I thought I'd toss together this unfinished album that never really saw the light of day:

Counter Fiction EP (download link)

1. Kindredscape

2. The Childe Thomas

3. Romance of Moths

4. Let's Make Scenery

5. Behind the Blue Wall

6. Sunrise

7. Regressive Property

Thanks for reading/downloading!

I Moved!

The things in my life are becoming very orange. Just a couple shots of new the workspace, slowly making things more functional and comfortable. One of our friends found a free animation rig that can be fitted onto a work table, so that along with some lights I have yet to invest in will turn this into a pretty efficient little room. We also just got our internet set up today, so that is fantastic.

Still just slowly piecing together music, giving animation a rest until I figure out what to work on next. I've been surrounding myself with these really great, old (tacky) nature paintings. I want to make music that sounds the way these paintings feel. That is the simplest way to put it I suppose.. here's a pretty good example of where things are headed with that: http://perch.bandcamp.com/track/do-as-i-do (sorry for the in-progress design of the site).

Anyways, I don't have much to show other than that. During the move, I was making a bunch of little things because I couldn't stand such a long stretch of time between moving/finding a job where I wasn't being personally productive. Here's one of the little by-products of the last couple of weeks:

Hopefully things will pick up again soon! Enjoy your day! Brush your teeth! Be nice to strangers! Not too nice! Actually be real mean and make this face D:< ! Make cool things! Bye!

Some illustration work

Haven't been keeping up to date on this thing very well... here's some old stuff!

This is a poster I made for a friend's music show,

sort of a weird project, but it was fun to work on. 

Also a couple goofy things I made at the tail end of my time at miad..

And lastly, some concept art I was putting together a few years ago for a short story I was working on

Anyways, just a few things I had done not related to animation.. sort of haha. I haven't been posting very much because between trying to sort out life things and get a job, most of what I have been working on has been my sort of body of music I'm finally putting together after about 3 years of legitimate recording. It's been sort of stressful because I'm really going out on a limb to work on something I don't think will see much light, at least as far as an audience is concerned. Though I feel it's something I need to finish now. Hopefully things will start to look up in the next few weeks.

'13 Reel

Here's the new demo reel containing all my thesis work!


Wesley Cathon '13 Reel from Wesley Cathon on Vimeo.

Putting this together definitely feels like putting a bookend on a part of life/education. Sounds cheesy, but it's true. Continuing education in film and animation is going to have to be as self-driven as it ever was, and I suppose like anyone in this position, the hardest point is going to get people to take the work as seriously as I take it. Time to bunch up my eyebrows and karate-chop some fools.

New Music

I've been working almost day and night on this EP. For anyone who follows this blog exclusively, here's a rough cut of one of the main tracks. I don't want to post the full site anywhere until I finish all 5-6 tracks.

Lost Cells (link)

It's a bit more funky than I'm used to, but it has been a lot of fun to put together. Just a bit about this track: The main chords were recorded from playing an old Funmachine organ (my child) that I still have back in Virginia, and the bass was recorded live as well. This track's beat is pretty straight-forward, without as much experimentation. With most of the other music I'm working on, I've done a lot more with field recordings and found noises for percussion. I still tried to keep a static-y aesthetic overall. Anyways, hope it's something worth listening to, lemme know what you think!

MOMZ BURTHDAI

HAPPY BRIHTDAAY MOMM!

Alive, Staying Busy

I went into stasis for a couple of weeks after all that thesis hubbub. Alas! I'm back, posting things to this site that nobody uses anymore ~

anyways, I haven't put up anything about the comic I've been working on for the last few years or so. Mostly that's because I've wanted to make sure I can tell a good story before I go putting stuff out there.

I just finished a model of one of the main characters:

This wasn't for any real reason other than I had wanted to try this for a while. This also kind of got me excited to start working on the comic again. Basically it's about these 3 really cartoony looking robots and how they deal with some serious themes in this really kind of lush, fantasy setting. There are human characters, and I'm still working out the details of how they are introduced to the story.

The initial idea kind of happened when I was thinking of the word "spare" as both a mechanical term and a compassionate term. I had always loved the artwork of stuff like astroboy, cyborg 009, heck I think even sonic. old sonic.. the really cartoony one. But basically, what I was getting at was the ability to use really simple characters to portray and deal with really serious things like violence/nonviolence, death, weird family dysfunctions, all that stuff. Ah, I forgot about Ralph Bakshi's "Wizards". That was a big one too, albeit it has it's setbacks. Necron 99 will always be my favorite robot design.

Anyways, here was one of the first covers I tried to do for it. This was back when I didn't care about type, and all the robots were pretty much the same design but some using ~spare~ parts. (see what i did....?)

While the robots have changed, that villain is actually one I've used for a long time, part of a completely different story (warning: highschool art.....)

anyways, I don't have much else that's very solid to show. I took some quick pictures of the first real in-progress sequence with the characters I had settled on, though these are kind of bare-bones and I'm back into the writing phase for now. I want this to be gooood!

With a bit more time on my hands right now, I want to really hammer something out. Thanks for reading my crap, more updates soon!

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- QUICK ADDITION: I forgot about this one. I had gone as far as animating a scene I wanted to do really early on. This is when I was using the older characters, but I still like it! Enjoy :3 (hopefully?)

"Spare" Test Animation from Wesley Cathon on Vimeo.