The Fantastic Worlds of Jason Heath » General

Wow, where does time go?

Jason — Tue, 04 May 2010 04:27:29 +0000

Working like crazy on Cthulhu Key
Met the lead actress this weekend, she will rock
I definitely need to get out and about more and say hey to old friends

Previously on jaheath.com

Jason — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 02:53:37 +0000

“Get to the chopper!”

Ok, I haven’t updated here in a while.

The chase:

Lewaine is opening an art gallery and photography studio.
I am shooting a horror film with Bianca Barnett and Alix Lakehurst (nsfw!)

Life is fantastic.

If I haven’t seen you in a bit, shoot me an email at jaheath at gmail dot com and say hi.
Or find me on facebook!
Jason Heath | Create Your Badge

A serious list for aspiring artists!

Jason — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 23:35:20 +0000

I found this on H.R. Giger’s website.

I think is says alot in not alot of space!

Dear Aspiring Artist:

Here is my advice. Think of it as a five-year plan:

Take whatever courses you find the most interesting.

Study closely the work of the Old Masters.

Stop making art that originates only from your own imagination.

Stay with one technique until you perfect it.

On any given day, always be in the middle of reading a book. When you finish one, start the next. Fiction, nonfiction, biographies, autobiographies, history, science, psychology, or how to build a kite. Anything but go easy on the comic books.

Buy and read the first 6 pages of newspaper every day and also the editorial commentaries. Skip the entertainment section. Su Doku is fine. Do the crossword puzzle.

Fill up a sketchbook every month with pen or pencil drawings of the world around you, not from your imagination.

Buy a book on figure drawing. It’s the only art book you will ever need.

Until you can draw an accurate portrait of someone, you don’t know how to draw.

Stay away from the airbrush. You’ll never master it, hardly anyone ever has.

Visit every museum in your city. Often, until you have seen everything in it. Every kind of museum. Not only the art museums but, of course, those as well.

Forget about contemporary art by living artists, at least for the next few years.

Stay away from most art galleries. Go to art auctions. That’s where the real action is.

Learn to play chess.

Take a business course.

Talk to you mother or father at least once a week.

Stop going to the movies until you have rented and seen every film on this list. http://www.time.com/time/2005/100movies/the_complete_list.html

Do not watch television unless it’s the news or documentaries.

Do not use an Ipod.

No video games, either.

Learn a foreign language.

Learn to cook.

Spend 8 hours in a hospital emergency room.

Save up money so you can travel to a foreign country within the next five years.

Do not litter.

Avoid politically correct people.

Vote in every election or never dare to utter a political opinion. You are not entitled to one.

Buy a digital camera and take photos every day.
If you see nothing interesting to photograph, you will never be a good artist. Keep only one photo of every ten you take. Delete the rest. It will force you to learn how to edit the garbage from your life, to make choices, to recognize what has real value and what is superficial.

Visit an old age home.

Listen to classical music and jazz. If you are unable to appreciate it at least as much as contemporary music, you lack the sensitivity to develop into an artist of any real depth.

Go to the ballet. Classical or Modern, it doesn’t matter. It will teach you to appreciate physical grace and the relationship between sound and movement.

Wake up every morning no later than 8 AM, regardless of what time you went to sleep.

Learn to play a musical instrument.

Learn to swim.

Keep your word.

Never explain your art. People who ask you to do so are idiots.

Never explain yourself. Better yet, never do anything that will, later, require you to explain yourself or to say you’re sorry.

Always use spell check.

Stop aspiring and start doing.

This will keep you very busy but it can’t be helped.
In my opinion, this is how you might, possibly, have a shot at becoming a good artist.

Hope this helps,

Les Barany

Rumbling, bumbling and stumbling

Jason — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:18:27 +0000

Thats pretty much how I describe my continual trysts with synchronicity.

So I get on facebook and I “friend” a lady named Bianca Barnett,
a perky horror actress that I found via another “friend”, Debbie Rochon.

Well, long story short, I see where she has a contest to help her find her ideal role.

No rules, just be creative. Right up my alley! But oh snap, the contest ends at midnight that day!
Again, right up my alley!

So I work up a quick design of a movie poster, very rough, then write a short little snippet of a story to go with it.
Well, guess who won?

Yep, that little poster did the trick. I won some cool stuff from her, and a coupon over at Horror Movie Empire.

I used the coupon to enter a prize drawing and wound up winning a 10 dvd boxed set of horror flicks!
Even cooler, I got to talking to Demetrios, who runs the site, and found we had alot in common, and when I mentioned I did graphics and web work, one thing leads to a couple of others and now I find myself coming up with new designs for both www.horrormovieempire.com AND www.biancabarnett.com.

I gotta say, this is like a total breath of fresh air. Then new year was just totally sucking for both me and Lewaine. Not on an interpersonal level between us, but that we had alot of negative people in our lives that we just sucking the life out of us.
Too many relationships that were “scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” and we were the only ones scratching.

Lewaine has gotten her modelling consulting and photography picking up steam, and with both Demetrios and Bianca bringing positive energy AND tangible goods and services to the table in exchange for my design skills, I am feeling really good about how things are starting to turn around.

I guess it goes to show that if you just knuckle down during tough times, and keep the people that matter close, you can weather just about any storm…

*by friend, I mean someone that looks like they are pretty cool, but I have never met and they have zero idea who I am…

Man, I really overthink things

Jason — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 04:20:44 +0000

I am going to be doing alot this year. Alot.

I can see where I have have been way over-thinking alot of things when it
comes to the micro-cinema scene. I sat down and started watching what is out there
on the market. And I realized, well, I realized that I have a whole lot to reconsider.

And that is a good thing…

So surreal

Jason — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:45:16 +0000

You ever work on something for so long, toiling and grinding, that you sometimes thing you will never get there?
Well, the time for all that hard work, all the studying, effort and endless nights of learning, learning and learning are finally paying off.

Those of you know who have known me for a while will know exactly what I mean. and I want to thank all of you who believed and supported me in
pursuing my crazy dreams.

I actually shot about 10 minutes of teaser footage for Cthulhu Key, and am working on getting that cut together.
I think you will enjoy it, and want to see more.

Same fun, different channel

Jason — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 08:35:05 +0000

So with a brief lull before we begin filming The Cthulhu Key, I have been working on an animated project.
It’s no big secret that horror and sci-fi are my favorite genres, so with Cthulhu Key covering the horror, I started outlining
a story for a web series set in the future.

AstroNoir.com is the home for this series, and if you care to check it out, you will see some of my initial character designs
and test animations. I am working on streamlining the whole 3D pipeline, and considering this is pretty much a one man show
at this point, that is pretty much my focus.

It’s an ensemble cast, set in a future that while not full on dystopian, is still rather darker than most mainstream sci-fi.
I guess thats the “Noir” in AstroNoir…

Promo art

* resources for filmmaking in the digital age

Jason — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 19:54:56 +0000

So I have found a lot of great sites, forums and businesses that I think have helped me get to the point I can actually make a movie.

I keep up with a few blogs, some updated regularly, others not so much. But one thing they have in common, is that when it comes to digital filmmaking, they are definitely the sites that believe in “teaching a man to fish” so to speak.

So in no particular order, here are some of my favorites:

Prolost and the rebels guide forum
video copilot outstanding After Effects tutorials
dead harvey great micro-cinema horror news
indy mogul
lost in schlock
dvxuser forum
hv20 forum

These are the sites I learn from.
If you are interested in filmmaking, read them, practice what you learn, and you will be well on your way to doing something few people can do.

What’s old is new again

Jason — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 19:23:42 +0000

So I realized that I have been so busy the past 18 months or so, that I haven’t had any real *fun* time.

Now don’t get me wrong, working on music videos and horror film projects is a blast, but sometimes I just need to
get away from the computer and unwind.

I have been carrying around a box of resin cast sculptures that needed finishing, as well as a project I started almost a decade ago but didn’t have the technical skill to finish.
I will post some pics later on.

I have really been enjoying making some props for the Cthulhu Key movie.
The old journals and postcards are looking pretty good, and I think I have some pictures of them from earlier posts.

There are alot of DIY sites out there that you can learn alot from, with Make being one of the better ones.

Really helps you recycle some of that old stuff you have sitting around taking up space.

100 posts and much of nothing!

Jason — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 04:31:11 +0000

Hard to imagine it’s been 100 posts.
Preproduction on The Cthulhu Key: Legacy is moving along great.
Five of the roles have been cast, and we will hold a casting call
for the rest of the roles sometime in the middle of January.

I know I haven’t been updating as often as I should, but frankly, I have been buried in the writing and re-writing the script.
Lewaine is a great help in bouncing ideas off of, and she is providing alot of great energy in streamlining and amping up the
intensity of the story.

So for now, I will leave you with a couple of photos from the work bench.

a hand copied codex infernium and the Lovecraft tarot

some props and tools