Synopsis:
Two fun loving tourists find themselves entangled in the rampages of the Gulf of Mexico's infamous OCHOMONSTER and ROBOT MAN must come to the rescue in the never-ending quest to keep planet Earth safe from yet another perilous monster!

Key Influences:
Key influences on this film include the original King Kong (1933), Japanese Godzilla movies, old black and white Universal Pictures monster movies, Sam Raimi, Chuck Jones' Looney Tunes cartoons, old 16mm newsreels and home movies of the past and present.

Key Considerations in Making the Film:
My niece and nephew, Raven and Danny, were the inspiration for this film, which is actually home movie footage of them mixed with characters they created and I animated. There was no budget for the film less than $300 was spent creating it, by I paid dearly in regards to time spent to complete the movie!

In the Spring of 2004, the family drove from Ohio to Florida to visit their Great-Grandmother and I flew in from California. I decided to make a film with them incorporating Robot Man, which was originally created by Danny out of construction paper. I used an old 16mm motion picture camera and filmed them home movie style on the beach. At this point there was no real story idea accept that I knew they would be attacked by a monster of some sort and Robot Man would come to the rescue and save them.

It became very apparent on "location" that my stars would take only so much direction before filming itself became very tiresome and tedious to them. We had no script and for the most part the story would unfold in the editing room based off of the footage of them playing at the beach during their vacation.  This was improvisation and guerilla style all the way around, even down to the animation!

I asked both of them to come up with ideas for the kind of monster that Robot Man might battle on the beach and Raven came up with the notion of a giant octopus, Ochomonster. She drew a sketch of the monster from which the final animated rendering was conceived.

For the actual beach battle scene between Robot Man and Ochomonster, I went to Venice Beach in California and took a panorama shot of the setting with a digital still camera and then stitched all of the shots together so I could have a "set" for the animated confrontation.

I expected the whole animation, editing and compositing process would take a couple of weeks of spare time. Over six months later, the film was finally complete.

Director’s Statement:
This six-minute mini-epic is a mix of impromptu home movies and unscripted animation. What was originally meant to be a simple home movie exercise eventually evolved into an ambitious short film that combines the love for my niece and nephew with the absurdity of our collective imaginations. The production itself incorporated footage shot with a fifty year old film camera and was edited and animated using home computer software. Robot Man, a ragtag character made out of construction paper, is as unlikely a super-hero as any, but somehow always manages to beat the odds. I hope you enjoy our little film.