A New Year

Time has flown, as it is want to do. I’ve been intending to draft an update for months, but things have gotten away from me. New projects, new ideas, a new city, they all tend to distract. But with the new year it is finally time to drop in and tell of what I’ve been up to. It is hard to believe it has been months now since the final episode was released to the world. In many ways, it feels like ancient history, a period of my life long dead and buried. In other ways, I know that I am only just beginning. But one indisputable fact remains:

Forlorn the series is complete.

It’s an odd feeling, being here. I never doubted this day would come, and yet it still hits with surprise. It’s finished, the final episode released, the arc concluded. Not a day has passed in almost four years without my thoughts uttering the word “Forlorn”. Thousands of hours worked, and thousands more spent in planning, all leading to this - eleven and a half minutes of animation, done by hand, by myself.

Do I feel satisfied? I suppose you could say as much, but quite honestly I don’t feel much of anything. A lot of that has to do with my current circumstances, though. I’ve only just now finished my transition from sunny Los Angeles to (honestly quite preferable) rainy Vancouver, and it’s had a bit of a harder impact on me than expected. Switching to full time remote work in a new city has been a real challenge, and I’ve found that weeks can go by without me having any kind of meaningful human interactions with anyone other than my wife and the sandwich artists at the nearby subway. It’s been a bit draining, to say the least, and the fact that the final episode came out in the middle of this all has meant that I haven’t really had a chance to let it sink in. That said, I’m sure this whole thing will hit me one day.

The final episode released on Tuesday, September 20th. As is customary I posed the short to a few social media sites. The response was extremely heartening. A flood of warm messages and well wishes, and a handful of solid, constructive criticisms. As with every episode, I get a bevy of questions regarding the creative process, and I always try to help as many people as I can with their questions. But among the people who know me personally, I got the same question, over and over: How does it feel to be done?

In many ways, it feels great. This project represents, more or less, the best film I was able to make at this moment, with the skillset and tools available. I absolutely know that there’s boundless room for improvement, and I have a great many ideas on how to push my work further going forward, but I never phoned it in or did anything less than the best I was able at the time. And that means something, I’d like to think. But now that I’m here, and the film is done, the question remains: what comes next?

Well, let me tell you! The immediate goal for Forlorn is to edit it together as one unbroken short. This was always the intended format, and as such that’s the big next step. The edit is already done, more or less, actually. The real question I have is whether or not I want to do a fresh pass on the sound mix, just to really plus some things up. But honestly, I haven’t concerned myself with it much. I’m just taking a break for a moment, to catch my breath, and once I feel rested I’ll get that all figured out. But with the heralding of 2023 it is time to dust myself off and get that sorted. Once the complete edit is all wrapped, I hope to throw it at some film festivals, see what happens, and then afterwards I’ll put the whole film on YouTube for all to enjoy. And then it’s on to the next thing.

In terms of animation, I have some vague ideas for a follow up. I previously professed an interest in doing something unrelated to Forlorn to dive into UE5 some more, but my actual day job has shifted to something along those lines, and as such I don’t feel as driven to that any longer. So, I’m currently gathering ideas for the next Forlorn piece, and I have a couple of ideas in the tank. What I know for sure, though, is that my next thing will definitely be short, maybe even more of a mood piece. As much as I enjoy animation, I think a nice, breezy thing that focuses more on environmental storytelling would provide for a nice reprieve after four years of intense character animation.

Quite honestly, though, my biggest focus for the immediate future is going to be writing. I always feel a bit a embarrassment saying something like that, but I’m started to finally warm up to the idea of using writing as something I might want to pursue more of. All my life I loved to write, but as a very visual person, I always thought of myself a filmmaker and a visual artist first and foremost, with writing being something that I viewed as a side interest, so to speak. But over the past year or so that all changed.

Around a year ago now I thought it would be fun to write a screenplay - a first chapter of the larger Forlorn story. A pilot for a series, just to have in my back pocket. And so I did, and I had good fun doing it. Then the damndest thing happened. Through complete coincided, a few weeks after I had finished writing this script a number of people in Hollywood approached me with the interest of exploring the possibility of turning Forlorn into an actual series. When they asked if I had anything to show them, I was able to give them my pilot. When these people, prior strangers to me, professional artists and writers among them, read my screenplay, to my shock and delight they all really enjoyed it. And not only that, but they also had very nice things to say about the other pieces of more traditional prose I had to provide. And so, at the explicit encouragement of many people, professional and personal alike, I have decided to make writing my primary focus for the time being, gathering and coalescing a lifetime of ideas into a finished, self contained format. Therefore, I suppose this is the time to announce that I am turning Forlorn into a novel! I have been working on it now for some time, and the first draft is very nearly done. It has been an absolute blast thus far, and I can’t wait to share more details about it in the future.

I don’t expect I’ll update this blog as frequently as I used to. As you can see, this post is well outside of the bounds of my monthly updates. But once I have news, you can bet that I’ll share it. Until then, thank you all so much for joining me on this journey. I truly appreciate your support, and I hope you’ll come along for the next one, which, if all goes to plan, will happen sooner than you think.

Until then,

Alex