#tobiasandthehalf-pariah

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Some more finalized stills from "Arcane Merchant," featuring one of my favorite shots in the whole film with Daisy and Henrietta!

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Some finalized stills from "Arcane Merchant," featuring color grading and VFX and the proper 2.39:1 aspect ration!

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Early this morning, before I go to bed, I'm gonna post what is my most widely known project and my first feature-length film that I ever made: "Tobias and the Half-Pariah"!

A widely known, prolific work amongst the older, adult fandom of Thomas the Tank Engine, this was my first truly huge project that I ever undertook. It took 2 years to make this movie, from August 2012 to its eventual release date on August 24, 2014, my move-in day for my freshman year of college.

It is wild, it is crazy, it is edgy, dark, and ridiculous - a very big departure from Thomas the Tank Engine's normal vibe, both in the official show and in most fan content at the time this was released, and even today.

Toby the Tram Engine is a steam-diesel hybrid in this film. His eyes glow blue like in sci-fi anime when he activates the diesel half of his body, and he gets into actual fights with other engines with very heavy, hard-hitting physicality. The story starts out like a slice-of-life storybook, as the original stories did, and then morphs quickly into an action-thriller-drama. The villain is a fan favorite character, Duck the Great Western Engine, here reimagined as a wrathful, deeply insecure weakling. He's a steam engine who used to be a diesel - until he got into an accident with Toby 18 years ago, and his diesel engine was used to make Toby into a hybrid while his consciousness was transferred into a tank engine body. There's even a Lord of the Rings-esque final battle with steam engine and diesel armies squaring off against one another with epic music blaring and a giant fight breaking out! There's even swearing and violent, shocking deaths! Very much within PG-13/12A standards, but still! Everything about this film was, as one reviewer put it, GO BIG OR GO HOME, and that's a pretty apt summary of my mindset making this movie.

So, a very far cry from "normal" Thomas's gentle, quiet storytelling, storybook world that you can get lost in, and dry, biting British wit. I made this on a then-8 year old computer which could barely handle all the work I was making it do. This is a machinima film, and my computer could barely run the program I used, Trainz Railroad Simulator 2009, even at its lowest graphics settings. I often was forced to film footage at sub-10 fps levels and then speed it up in post, often having to account for this while I was filming in terms of blocking, how fast characters moved, how fast the camera moved, and how I would coordinate multiple characters moving on screen at once, interacting with each other, etc. - often all at the same time. That old computer, may she rest well, nearly died on me 4 times during the production of this movie and nearly cost me the entire film, so, yes, this is a real film and I'll hear nothing to the contrary.

Despite all this, though, despite the film's age and all the technical limitations, and my own limitations, I still think the film holds up pretty well. There are definitely some things I would do differently now, but I'm still happy with what I was able to do with this movie, my first ever feature-length film, and if not happy, then at least - content. Satisfied.

Thank you to all who’ve stuck around for the last 9 years! “Arcane Merchant” is finally in post-production, but it’s turning out to be a lot more work than I expected, especially as I don’t have the energy I had when I was a wee 19 year old. I hope I can still make the December 2023 release date, but the good news is, if I can’t release the film for this year, then it will absolutely be released next year. We’ll see.

In the meantime, have a good one folks, and I hope you enjoyed the movie!

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The most recent teaser trailer for "Tobias and the Arcane Merchant", featuring Caitlin "Kayak/Caiac" Hill (ButterflyCoffee) as the voice of Henrietta! My personal favorite trailer thus far, as I've been waiting since 2015 to be able to use this particular Florence + The Machine song for a trailer for this film, and it finally happened!

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Teaser Trailer 2 for "Tobias and the Arcane Merchant", featuring John Robledo as the voice of Oliver! Currently the best performing trailer for both this film and that I've ever released on my channel.

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Gonna be slowly migrating stuff over from the Bird App, starting with all the trailers for "Tobias and the Arcane Merchant" that I've released thus far, starting with this first teaser trailer I released on Christmas Day 2020! Enjoy, folks! Expect to see me use this platform more often.