Editorial: Getting the Project Done

Originally Published: March 23, 2005

I came across a truly inspiring story in the March issue of Markee Magazine. It was about an animator named Timothy Albee, who was a successful Los Angeles based animator when he pitched an idea to film studio executives for a micro-budget production. Needless to say, like many other pitches, his was rejected. The studios apparently didn’t believe it was possible on such a small budget.

Albee soon re-examined his life and decided to leave Hollywood and pursue a dream he had all of his life – to mush dogs and live in a cabin in Alaska! It’s true.

Living in Alaska, with the new pace and lifestyle, gave him time to pursue his professional dream project on his own. Using two consumer-grade personal computers, his expertise in LightWave animation software, his own script, and $5,000 of his own money, six months later Albee produced a 22 minute 3D animated film entitled Kaze, Ghost Warrior, working from his one room cabin in Fairbanks.

Ghost Warrior is a tale of a distant world’s feudal past where Kaze is a legendary warrior on a quest to track down the murderers of the imperial family.

Ghost Warrior drew huge crowds to Newtek’s SIGGRAPH booth and sold out screenings at Germany’s EFX.

Among other things, Kaze was an Official Selection at the Annecy Film Festival 2005, in France. Now the project is on DVD and has an ambitious production schedule – a second DVD episode, a full length prequel animation, with a $9 million dollar budget and a possible television series.

Albee is also a painter, author and seminar speaker who encourages those who have dreams to pursue them. “When you choose to have all the bits and pieces of this process be what you do for fun, the project takes cares of itself, and the product is a wonderful coincidence of spending your days and hours doing what you love doing,” the magazine quoted Albee as saying during an interview.

The message is simple. Get your project done. Period.