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Shawnee Jenkins' pantry

What software do you use to make your movies?

Adobe Flash.

Where do you get your inspiration?

From everything around me. Memories, music, nightmares, things I thought someone said but actually misheard, shapes in the clouds, interesting patterns in half-mixed cake ingredients. There's no one source for creativity. So, if you're hoping to find a magical font of inspiration, all I can say is look around you. It's everywhere!

I have an idea for a cartoon. You could do one about...

No, I couldn't. If you have a story idea, I wholly encourage you to do something with it! Invent your own characters and make your idea come to life. Don't give it away to someone else! I just can't take anyone else's idea, no matter how great it might be. It wouldn't be mine, you see, and that's important. (But thank you for the suggestions, of course!)

Where do you get the music you use in your movies?

Sometimes friends write it for me. I've occasionally found songs in the public domain. Sometimes I purchase a license for royalty-free music, and there are a variety of places to order such tracks. I will not use anything without permission. Unfortunately, this also means you usually can't look up the tracks on iTunes and order them for yourself.

When is your book coming out?

I don't have a definite date on that yet ("that" being what is tentatively titled The Skary Childrin and the Carousel of Sorrow), but possibly some time in 2011.

What's the book about?

It's about a terrible evil that takes up residence in the woods of a small, forgotten town already cursed by dark forces and locked in perpetual autumn. People have vanished! Ghosts shriek desperate warnings! And there are signs of worse to come. It's up to three strange girls and one rather awkward boy to save this town, even though they have been cruelly outcast by it.

There will be more details as the book comes closer to print, but it'll be written and illustrated by myself and edited by Erin Clarke of Knopf. Well, actually, it's already written. I just need to revise and illustrate it at this point.

Will you make a music video for my band?

How much are you willing to pay? ;-) And, well, no. Probably not. It's not that your band isn't great. It's just that animation is an arduous process for me, and I don't know how I'd manage to find the time!

Can my band make music for one of your videos?

I'm extremely selective when it comes to the music that I use, so unless I've posted a call for music submissions, I've probably already got something in mind. Also, I'd feel bad about asking for a lot of changes, and you know I would ask.

I'd like to offer my talents as a voice actor.

Thank you! ...but, just as with music, unless I've made a specific call for voice actors, I'm not really looking for anybody as I already have a list of go-to people. It wouldn't be an easy job, anyway. I'm a mean director. I made Tim Jones cry when he was working on The Little Girl. Um... don't tell him I said that. It's, uh, very upsetting for him. Yes.

How did you come up with the idea for Skary?

The Childrin were mostly inspired by the antics of actual children. I worked with preschoolers a long time ago. Loved it. But I found that kids really do say the darnedest things. The darnedest, creepiest, most disturbing things. And they have no idea how strange the things they're saying are! Yet they say it all with such sweet, cherubic smiles. Parents don't usually allow their little ones to play with sharp objects. You think that's for the kids' protection? THINK AGAIN.

Who does your web design?

I do!

Can I send you my resume?

Er... okay, but it won't do you much good. I'm a one-woman operation.

Will you answer some questions for my school project?

I usually do, but it can take me a while to get to all my email. So, please don't ask if you've got a close deadline, and I recommend having a backup plan!

Have you thought about collaborating with Tim Burton?

Sure. But has he thought about collaborating with me? I don't know! Let me call him up and ask. Hold on. Got another call. Oh, drat, it's Scorsese again. I gotta take this.

Those are all the FAQs I can think up at the moment! As always, if you have other questions, use the form and ask away.

Because True Blood isn't on yet.

Update 2/14/10: Technical problems. I know. Again. The day I can publish a cartoon without issue is the day the Earth stands still. But I'm working on the problem and will post Mockingbird just as soon as I'm able.

Update 2/17/10: This has been one doozie of a technical problem. I've sent the file off to someone who's good at figuring out why things break, and I hope to have a mended animation to show you soon. My apologies!

• I'm narrating it this time.
• It's based on a Sixcast episode I wrote and recorded a few months ago; many of you may already be familiar with it. I've taken the recording down for now so that you'll have some time to forget it!
• As mentioned previously, there are a few slight changes in the story. They are minor, but they're important without drastically changing the one you already liked.
• It's ten minutes long! Whew!
• It's very different from a typical Skary cartoon. Still sad and spooky (I hope), but Shawnee Jenkins is a fairly normal Kansas eight-year-old considering that, well... you'll see what I mean. ;-)
• Those of you with young children who are also fans (yay!), I would hold off on showing them this one until you've seen it first. There's some violence and gore. Granted, it's very stylish gore with a retro look to it and all, but vintage entrails are still entrails.
• Can anyone embroider? I would love a throw pillow that said "Vintage entrails are still entrails."

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

I'm  not posting it today, however, as it's Super Bowl Sunday, and you're probably all at parties and throwing Cheetos at each other or whatever it is that people who take an interest in sports do on important game days.

Mockingbird will be posted next Sunday, Valentine's Day. Then you can tell your date you're crying because you saw a really sad cartoon, not because he smells like raw onions (which, incidentally, he does. You should really talk to him about that, but not on Valentine's Day; that would be rude!). In between now and then, I'll just tease you all by talking about it a lot and making vague references that you won't understand until you've seen it. It's what I do best.

Greetings on this auspicious Hallowe'en! I present to you a short black-and-white cartoon that will hopefully make you feel just a little uncomfortable today.

Story and art: Katy Towell
Narration: Tim Jones

Hopefully that will tide you over until The Mockingbird Song is ready! The words are below.

I am here. I am everywhere
Every place you’ve been I have waited
Every face you’ve seen I have worn
I have not one name but thousands
I come on the wings of an epidemic
Of a massacre
A lone scream in the night
Announced by the distant thunder of a war
or the bleat of the slaughtered calf
I visit the dying in their burning skin
Devour the bodies of the sick
I crush the hearts of the hopeful as I dance on the backs of the weak
Your greatest fears are my delight
With your cries you invite me in
I am the betrayal you could not have seen
The killer you thought you knew
One day I will be your mother or your father or your friend
Another day I will be your neighbour, or perhaps I’ll work through you
There are monsters hiding in your closet
There are ghosts beneath your bed
The dream you feared was real
Was real
These are gifts to you from me
I love you in my little way
With your suffering I am alive!
Can’t you hear the music on the wind?
Don’t you recognize the tune?
Is it you my friend, your struggling?
Your spirit torn limb from limb?
But I am not death
Death is your deliverer
Death looks to me with sorrow in his eyes and asks, “Why must you do this?”
My answer remains unchanged
I do what you cannot
No end is swift under my watch
Mercy is a mistake I correct
I am peace destroyed and eyes forced open
The ragged ring around your neck
I am your secret wish for others
I am their secret wish for you
I have not one name but thousands
But you... you may call me Agony
And I am pleased to make your acquaintance

I'd show you more, but I want some of it to be a surprise! Also, because Shawnee Jenkins isn't quite like the other Skary kids, the animation style on Mockingbird will be different from what you're used to. It's going to be in full color, and I'm giving it a little bit of retro styling, too. I've also taken down the original recording for now. Some slight changes have been made to the first version, and you'll be glad you saw/heard the new one with fresh eyes and ears. Yes, it's a sweet story with a lot of blood. I mean hearts. I mean... oh, you know.

All of the individual video pages have been replaced with these new, much higher quality videos, but the Movies page itself is still YouTubed. It'll probably stay that way until I can find a similar solution for Vimeo. Vimeo's widgets just aren't what I need, I'm afraid. (If anyone knows of a nice video gallery sort of thing that works with WordPress, do let me know!). Not that I won't continue to post to YouTube, of course! Vimeo just works better for skary.net is all.

So, there it is. Off you go. Subscribe away!

http://vimeo.com/channels/skary

The upcoming cartoon is still underway and could take some time even though it's short, as I have other projects to work on. I'm not going to tell you when to expect it, but I guess I can tell you what it's about now that I'm sure I'm not going to change my mind. The working title (likely to be changed) is Masterpieces Explained. Sounds boring, I know, but it's the real story behind a very famous painting. (No, it isn't The Scream, and it's nothing by Dali). You all think you know the story behind this one, but I'm telling you now: you're wrong. Anyway, that's all I'm saying. You'll find out more soon.

Oh, a couple of notes... have you noticed there's a Facebook quiz now? Also, there's an easier way to send fan art.

All righty. Time to answer some emails.

Where did your inspiration come from for the girl. -TH

I guess you could say I wasn't very happy when I wrote that and, while Emmeline's story is not at all autobiographical, it came about because, well, I felt like writing about revenge. And originally, that's how the story ended. Emmeline got fed up, exploded with rage, crash-bang-boom, the end. But that sort of ending isn't how things happen in life. Vengeance is, in reality, a very nasty thing that only makes a bad situation worse. As I thought about this, the story developed further. How the specific details of a small girl with a monster friend came about, I'm not really sure. It just fell into place. But my point with the story is not only that love is more important than toys and things but also that bottling up one's feelings until they explode is just as dangerous to oneself as whatever caused one to bottle them up in the first place.

(Also, I had a fuzzy white dog once. Her name was Tofu. She didn't have red eyes or wings, but she was my best friend. And she liked socks.)

Do you comission the artists/orchestras yourself for your movies? Are you involved with the creativity process with the score? -N

Most of the music from my cartoons is purchased stock music or public domain or otherwise royalty-free. My friends Gwydi and Aisha Elderwyn composed and performed the soundtrack to When Genevieve Ruled the World, however, and I was as involved in that process as I could be without abusing the very generous gift of their talents. Basically, I gave them the script with extremely detailed notes on what was supposed to sound like what and where, and they sent me snippets of music for me to approve along the way. It was a lot of fun (for me, anyway), but also a great deal of work (for them, definitely)!

Is skary something from your own personal time? ... Have you've been approached for commercial items? - N (part 2)

It is most definitely from my own personal time, and a big chunk of it too. Not that I mind, of course! I have, indeed, been approached for commercial items a few times, but it was always either the wrong thing or the wrong time, or I was at risk of losing my control over it. It's wonderful when artists are able to profit from their work in any way. I'd just rather let mass-produced t-shirts wait until people actually know what it's all about.

I noticed that the captions for the skary movies have been mysteriously ran away from the posted movies on this site. I enjoy the captions (being a wee bit stone-deaf) and wondered if you could post the clips with captioning at at least on the skary youtube tags. - N (part 3)

That is an excellent suggestion. I moved everything to YouTube because the burden on my site is immense every time I post something new. It's just so much easier to host them elsewhere! But I hadn't even thought about the subtitles and, as soon as I have the time, I will add those to the YouTube videos, too. Thanks for the reminder!