Petey Boy dot com

One time while I was walking around the park an old man came up to me and asked if I liked grilled tuna sandwiches. I replied that I do indeed love grilled tuna sandwiches, but that I recently became a vegetarian. He smirked a little and pulled out a banana from his fanny pack. He handed it to me and told me to keep up the good work. Then he spread his wings and flew to the nearest tree branch.

“I’ll always love you.” he said as I put my shoes back on. That’s about the time I realized I was a song writer.

When Robert’s best friend goes missing, he tends to get passionate.

Written, shot, and edited in 48 hours during the Madison 48 Hour Film Project by Backflip Films.
backflipfilms.com

Written by Ryan Trattles
Directed by Ryan Freng
Cinematography by John Shoemaker
Produced by Peter Simon

Actors: Petey Boy, Ryan Trattles, Ryan Freng, Amanda Shoemaker, John Shoemaker, Clint Freund, Scott Rawson, Aiden Hackl, Grace Hackl, and Treadmark the Cat

Music written and performed by Paul Otteson
In conjunction with the 50/90 songwriters challenge
5090.fawm.org/fawmers/paulotteson/

View the movie in HD here: http://vimeo.com/5700859

Street View

My wife and I bought a house. It is a fixer-upper. Who would have thought. I have big plans for the house… and I can already tell that most of them aren’t going to see the light of day. Being able to talk to a house and have it audibly respond is maybe a bit over-board anyway. Let’s take a walk-through:

First up is the porch:

Wide-Open Porch

Porch Ceiling: Ready for a Swing

Porch Floor: someone barfed stripes

The porch is enclosed and awesome. Notice the puke-toned carpet.

The door leads into the living room:

View from the living room

Living Room

From Living Room into Dining

The Dining Room is right off the main living area:

Ugly Dining Chandelier

Dining Room

Awesome/Ugly Dining Room Wallpaper

Dining Room to Kitchen

The Kitchen:

Kitchen

Check out that kitchen paneling

Let’s go upstairs to the hallway:

Beautiful Modern Rug

The Hallway

First stop on our right is the bathroom:

Blue Porcelain

Even the shower is blue

Now to the three bedrooms:

The Master bedroom

The Guest Room

Other Guest Room Complete with Creepy Water Bed

We (and when I say “we”, I really mean Abby) have started to do work on the kitchen. Check out this paint:

Blueish-Gray with White Pop

Rip those Cabinets off!

A short behind-the-scenes for a film called “Birthday Girl”. I was only on set for a morning… so I only shot this background footage for a few hours.

Birthday Girl:
Director – Troy Perkins
Producer – Francis Perkins
DP – Mike Hartzel

The team behind Northtown Productions: northtownproductions.com

Music by Kaki King
http://vimeo.com/5368711

This past weekend, I produced a movie during the 48 hour film project in Milwaukee. This is what our team threw together. Go to Vimeo to see it in HD.

Starring:
Laura Klein as Rose Lanvin
Petey Boy as Roger Lanvin
Ryan Trattles as Jake

The concept for the story was brainstormed by the whole team.
Writer: Ryan Trattles
Director: Mark Röethke
Director of Photography: Michael G Buck
Assistant Director: Greg Ritter
Assistant Camera: Jess Ader
Whole Sound Deparment: Max Grill
2nd Camera, Location Manager, all-around best boy: Ryan Erdmann
Production Assistant: Kelsey Abernethy

So, I got a “real”  job at the end of March… and because of this, I was allowed to reward myself with a new HD video camera; the HV30. This camera is awesome. Anyway, I’ve used it to document my life as of late. Here are three videos I made in the past month. Click on the title to take you to the HD version of the video.

This first video is of the time spent with my family in California. A fire on the Beach.

This video is from a short film I got to act in.

This last video is from a play that I stage managed for the past month.

Autumn Hoover

This was one the paintings my wife got me for Christmas 09. I wasn’t exactly sure what to do with it. Part of re-painting for me is using the environment that is already established in the picture. I mean, that IS re-painting…. not just part. For me I want the new paint to interact with the old paint. I could add anything to any picture and that’d be well and good, but it is when the new meets the old that something magical tingles one’s innards.

Anyway, I was having trouble finding the magic, so I put the painting below my projector screen from January to March. That way, I was sure to look at it everyday.

Finally, I found it. I noticed that the trees were tilted kind of funny. They were pulled to one side as if an invisible force were acting upon it. After I saw that, it took little time to make the invisible visible. Originally, I thought of having a human hand to hold the hand-vacuum; giving it a celestial feel like giants or gods are cleaning. Ultimately, I decided to stay stay with the monster/robot/alien theme all my paintings have had.

Click on the image for a closer look.

If you like any of the art or designs you see on the site and would like more information, an original for yourself, or to commision a piece, please contact me and I’ll help make your dreams come true.

Ada Lovelace

Today is Ada Lovelace Day; a celebration of women and technology. I have to say the first person I thought of when I heard about this day is LadyAda. Maybe it is because of the namesake, but probably because LadyAda is featured a bunch on my favorite blog, Make:

Lady Ada is a tinkerer, inventor, and all around creator. I discovered hear reading a post about a miniPOV kit that looked super cool (I even asked my mom to get me one for christmas that year [she said she could find them anywhere]). The idea is that you program a message into the Persistance of Vision toy and then when you wave it, it displays the message via LEDs. I went to her website and found a bunch of awesome gadgets and kits. Of particular interest to me back then were, the gamegrrl; a gameboy sized NES emulator and the Mini MintyMP3; an mp3 player that fit into a mint tin.

Since then, LadyAda has started a website to sell her and other kits (today they are giving 10% off in order celebrate). I don’t know for sure, but I think she may work for (at least contributes to) Make: magazine and blog. She is definitely an inspiration to me. I wish I could put the right parts together to make sweet gizmos.

Enjoy the day and checkout other Ada Lovelace Day blog posts and articles.

Bob modeling Splitting Bears

So, I was on a making shirt kick and I wanted to do a big animal stencil. My power animal is obviously a large brown bear, so I found a picture that made a good silhouette and turned into a large stencil. So large in fact that it took up two pages of standard letter sized card stock. While I was deciding exactly where to position the stencil, I thought, “what if I split up the stencil and put them on different parts of the shirt?” I ran it by Abby (she’s my creative adviser) and she thought it would be cool, so I gave it a go.

I am immensely pleased with the way this shirt turned out. It was an instant favorite. It also was a favorite among everyone that saw it. One day an acquaintance of mine commented on how much he enjoyed the shirt. I asked him right there if he’d like to own it. He was apprehensive about taking such a great shirt from my collection. I insisted. I would give all my shirt away for other people to enjoy, but not a lot of people are close to the right size. After some persuading he accepted and now a bunch people I don’t even know get to enjoy seeing the shirt… and Bob gets the joy of wearing it.

If you like any of the art or designs you see on the site and would like an original for yourself, please contact me and I’ll help make your dreams come true.