WOW! It's been a while... how do you like the new digs? The website is almost finished and a lot of cool things have been happening in the RubberOnion realm these past many months -- but I'll get to that in a later blog. Right now I'd like to introduce the new format of the RubberOnion Viewing Parties: LIVE video commentary with guests & webchat for viewers!Needless to say I'm pretty excited about how things are developing. If you're not on twitter and don't know what #ROVP stands for it means "Rubber Onion Viewing Party." Every Sunday or so I would pick a movie and send the message out on twitter. People (mostly animators) would gather at 6pm ET and all press play together and we would "tweet" about it. This left out people who weren't on twitter and people in difficult timezones to participate.

EFF IT! WE'LL DO IT LIVE!

That's right! I set up a live page (or click the "live" button at the bottom right of the page) with an open chatroom that anyone can participate in, a countdown to the start of the show and the super new feature... a live UStream feed.

Just about every other Sunday (events will be listed in the blog) I'm going to host animators and other artists to my apartment in NYC to watch a movie and discuss it live. You all are welcome and encouraged to join us in the chat which we'll be interacting with during the show. All you need is a copy of the movie that we're watching that week... that's it! Seriously, that's it. We all press play at the same time and watch together while interacting in the chat and you get featured with the slightly intelligible ramblings of myself and a guest(s)... like a commentary track.

I picked lucky number 10 to move to the new format and couldn't have done it with better guests or a better movie!

MOVIE:

"Spirited Away" (2001)

GUESTS:

ROB YULFO is an indie animator from Brooklyn, NY. You'd know his short "Wile E. Coyote 127 Hours" which hit it BIG a couple months ago when it came out getting a couple hundred thousand views right off the bat --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c74ULv2qKXs

CARESSE SINGH, also based in Brooklyn, NY, is an animator currently doing motion graphics for an ad company.

So without further ado, get your copy of "Spirited Away" ready and follow along with the video! See you next time!!

(NOTE: Someone passed this Vimeo link to me with the full "Spirited Away" movie and I embedded it below. I don't know how long it will stay up and it doesn't have English dub or subtitles, it's all in Japanese... but if you've seen it already and/or are more concerned with the visuals and our commentary than enjoy the Vimeo embed to its fullest extent while it lasts!)