rainy day

Today was quite interesting! Our whole neighborhood (well, at least a few blocks of it) woke up to discover that we had no water and were in a midst of a nasty thunderstorm. Catherine and I are working from home, so we had to run off to grab breakfast and use a washroom. My plan was to work from home and keep running off every time we needed a bathroom, but there were too many creepy, winking out of work men hanging around. We came back home soaking wet, from our water logged shoes up to our hips, and decided to make the best of it. We ended up going downtown to Macy's for lunch while we watched the Joffery Ballet practicing across the street. (I also ate tofu for the first time. It was weird.) Then we went to The Art Institute of Chicago where we looked at art and hung out in the members lounge sitting on a plush couch, sipping free coffee, drawing, and listening to a room full of "rich" women discussing everything from world traveling to what they expect out of Heaven. (I love listening in on these private discussions. It's quite entertaining.) A friend met up with us and we saw an exhibit, Kings, Queens, and Courtiers: Art in Early Renaissance France. The highlight of this bad day turned good was standing in front of a Leonardo da Vinci painting soaking it all in. Then when we got home this evening we had water! What a great day!

Karl Dahl and the Golden Cube

It brings me great pleasure to finally be able to share with you what I had been working on for a good chunk of last year. Karl Dahl and the Golden Cube is a thirteen minute animated film that was written, directed, and produced by the extremely talented and versatile Chris Olsen. The short film is about twin brothers who are small, wooden nutcrackers with their own variety act. Karl and Vincent are scheduled to be the opening act for a giant golden cube, and of course hilarity ensues.

We had a small, but super talented cast and crew for the storyboarding and animation. Catherine and I headed up the animation with Caitlin Lehman and Tom Riffel. Caitlin did a superb job at animating the entire intro, an old black and white newsreel! She has a fun style with lots of humor to her drawings. She then moved from animation to taking over all of the remaining background art. Great job, Caitlin! Tom was fun to work with as well and had a great know how to Flash, a program I was still learning. Catherine, Caitlin, Tom, and I also had our hands in storyboarding for a short while before Jeremy Rumas took on the monumentous task of storyboarding about ten more minutes of the film. Most notably, he did a fantastic job on the car chase!

Greg Whalen breathed life into Vile Tom and the goons, giving them strong, memorable voices. Chris Olsen did the voices of Karl and Vincent. Cherise Silvestri recorded the women's voices. The music was composed by the talented Rich Rankin. I'll always remember the first time I watched an edit of the film with the music put in for the first time. It really transformed it and brought it to life! Eric Cauwels and Rich Lenoss, the sound effect department, also did a great job at bringing the film to life.

The photo posted at the end of this post was taken at the cast and crew screening this past week. It was quite rewarding seeing it projected on a big screen! The world premier of Karl Dahl and the Golden Cube will be at The Little Rock Arkansas Film Festival on June 1st.

Please check out the trailer:




Greg Whalen (voice actor), Rich Rankin (composer), Chris Olsen (writer, producer, director, voice), Catherine Satrun (animator), and Sarah Satrun (animator)


also, be sure to check it on Facebook!

Lady in Pearls

This is a quick illustration I did today inspired by this photo.

transported to the 1930s

at a friend's 1930's 30th birthday party

I love old period clothing. The hats, suits, ties, dresses, hair styles, and makeup are so classy!