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Well the first little part of 2020 was promoting and getting very excited about the Ghost Tank.. we had a premiere and everything... like a few weeks before everything shut down for Covid.
Then there was covid... which still continues while I write this post. Global pandemic. No fun. My work was shut down, so we did school from home. I was convinced it wouldn't last past the end of the year. I was mistaken. I had some time alone, so I came up with a few projects I could do. The first was to release a 3rd Nandi Bear Tenants Graphic Novel. Based on the movie, and mostly using stills from it, so it was fairly easy to put together. The thing is I had so much fun making this book I decided I should spend the pandemic making another new double length graphic novel. So as soon as #3 was done I set to work writing #4, The Return of Super Punk.
Then as I started working on that my mum got Covid. She lasted a few weeks but it ended up killing her. It was a very surreal event, and losing a mother isn't fun. I miss her a lot. We still haven't had any sort of memorial service for her. It makes me feel very weird. So the summer was spent thinking about mum and making comics.
During on-line school, one of the things I did was record a bunch of songs for the toddlers and kindergarten kids that go to the school where I work. It was lovely and the parents would send me videos of their kids dancing around and singing while watching me play the songs. I have always sang to the kids at school, but filming it and watching them watch it at home was inspiring. I decided to make a new kid's show. Not space station zero this time.. something new with lots of different segments and things.. more like sesame street with short cartoons and films. Lots of puppets. I taught myself how to make proper puppets and made a bunch.. I really figured we could film in a few months while I made all the puppets and other preparations. But the pandemic kept going and going. I decided that the star of the show would be Beth the Bunny, played by the same Beth who was Beetrice in the Ghost Tank.
Meanwhile I was working on a new album, this time trying to put together a lot of things that had happened over the last year, including my mum's death. That was released in the summer.
I can't even begin to explain how much love and how many hundreds of hours of very hard work have gone into creating rabbit ears over this last year. So many different segments and animations and puppets and sets and I am so very proud of this accomplishment. Next month when the first episode of the new series comes out I hope you and your kids or kids you know or just anyone, really enjoys what I've tried to do. Thank you so much everybody who was there to help me. Especially Elaine and Beth. You guys are absolutely wonderful. Please let your friends know about rabbit ears, I think kids will really like it. ❤️🐰
For more information, please visit the rabbit ears website!2018 was generally a terrible year in my life, and other people's lives.
I was kind of convinced I shouldn't work with other actual humans on projects any more, mostly because I was having an extra bad time with my mental health, so I decided to do a feature length animated film. That way I could sit around by myself and draw and edit and not have to be around anyone... I ended up being around lots of people any way.
I did another film collaboration with Suzie for the follow up to her last movie... this time it was post apocalyptic, and it looked beautiful. We filmed over a period of several months to get different weather.
The cartoon was Nandi Bear Tenants: The Movie. I spent the early part of the year running away to the Devonian gardens and the library and stuff to write the script.
We were asked to screen Night of the Shadow People at this year's Calgary Entertainment Expo. So we were looking forward to that. I had given up on having a table there at this point, but I don't mind screening films!
The day before the screening I got a call telling me my little brother had overdosed and died. It spun my already fragile mental health out of control. I had a pretty nasty year after that point.
The next month I spent hiding in my room making a record about my brother.
I spent the rest of the year basically being very grumpy and anti-social to a unbelievably high degree. Working on the Nandi Bear Tenant Movie and editing the movie I made with Suzie, You can see "The Signal" here: https://youtu.be/Fr-bX6POgek
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmNq3wzZMqA
By the end of the year I had successfully pushed away anyone in my life that cared about me at all. I knew it was time I started to make a change.
So I think one of the first things we did this year was to go out for a drive in Terry's car and shoot the video for daddy's Pants in a secluded parking lot. Probably don't watch the video below.
terry and Johnny Auchie started making some music under the name Art Prostitutes. I was originally asked to join the band, but after I made fun of the name they said I wasn't allowed to make music with them ever again....... https://artprostitute.bandcamp.com/
Then there was a big build up to Imitative Magic being released on the internet, and it was one of the more successful promotions in our history. People seemed to really care about it! 
I think the first thing that happened in 2015 was finishing up a collaboration with SC starlet, Sue Kenyon. It was our first movie together and was very cool... a cyber-punk pre-apocalyptic thing called Rubicon. We even had a premiere at some Art gallery downtown!
Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k74LqbrINdw
Then I started writing one of my very favourite films I ever made... it was so different and strange, and even had a romantic subplot.. but it was a very interesting concept: A Beefart and Cheenkaw movie where it was only about their fans. We didn't start actually shooting until June... in the mean time I ran a funding campaign, wrote the script, made props and all sorts of other pre production fun. I hired two of the people from the previous year's Christmas special to be the leads.. and they were absolutely perfect!
We went to that year's Comic convention with hopes to get people interested in this new film. But I had a really bad time there, and was generally having a really bad time with my mental health, which was only going to get worse over the next few years.. to my delight. I had previously been diagnosed with something called Pure-OCD, as well as PSTD and depression... and it was coming back full force. I was also having problems with my work and home life and was generally a mess.
We entered a 24 hour film festival that was to be presented at the comic convention... our entry didn't even get shown. It was an embarrassment.. It wasn't a bad film though.. here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6BDIT98gww
In the midst of my fun mental health crisis I made what I still consider to be my best album... very dark, and very good. Patterns was an album about how it's impossible to break the patterns set up in your life no matter how hard you try.. A pretty bleak outlook, but as I said I wasn't at my best.
