Steve Ogden has wanted to make a film for years. But like most would-be film makers, he has found demands of job and family (not to mention running AnimWatch) left him little time to work on his own films. Fortune smiled on him, however, in late 2006, when friends who were starting their own company had gotten wind of one of Ogden's projects called Flakes, a series of animated comic strips starring a snowman and a penguin.

The fledgeling company wanted to use one of the shorts as a Holiday greeting to be sent out to friends and potential clients, if Ogden could get the film done in time. For someone who'd wanted to make an animated film for quite sometime, the challenge was irresistable.

"I was walking around a craft fair with my wife a couple of summers ago when we came upon this table full of Christmas decorations. On that table were a bunch of Snowmen made of some chunky material, either rough-hewn wood, or lumpy clay or something like that. Though they didn't look much like the snowman I wound up designing for Flakes, something about them inspired me to design him. Maybe it was the juxtaposition of Christmas decorations on a particularly hot Maryland day, or maybe the heat baked my brain, but I began coming up with all these ideas for a character I began calling Melting Milton.

One idea that came to me was a demented computer game involving evil snowmen and penguins chasing each other around. One idea was a feature film based on the backstory for that game. Still another idea was a novel involving a little kid who goes on an epic adventure in the arctic, and faces among other things a gang of evil living snowmen. (Most of my free time, in fact, is currently consumed by that project, and has been for the past couple of years).

And one idea was for a series of little stories, little animated comic strips really, involving a living snowman. One of the first strip ideas was the one that became "Fighting the Slide", wherein Milton sees his round body in the mirror and feels fat, and embarks on a fitness regimen.

I was having lunch with some friends of mine in the early fall of 2006 and told them about the idea, and they thought it sounded really fun. Friends being friends, they encouraged me to finish it. In fact, they informed me, they were starting a new company, and if I could finish the short in time for the Holidays, they'd like to use it as a sort of animated greeting card.

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"Maybe it was the juxtaposition of Christmas decorations on a particularly hot Maryland day, or maybe the heat baked my brain, but I began coming up with all these ideas for a character I began calling Melting Milton."      - Steve Ogden

Over the next couple of months, I designed and built the assets for the film in my limited spare time, but became too busy toward the end of the year to actually get it animated. When it became clear the short would never be done in time for the Holidays, I asked for help. Luckily, my friends came through. Their new animation company, Bully Entertainment, had some work time available to help me finish the film.

I batted back and forth a series of storyboards with Mike Gibson, and Carlson Bull set up some initial render passes based on the boards. A friend of his, Stephen Karp, animated most of the film with some assistance from another friend, Waymon Harrold, on things like the snow effects and the jump rope animation. The first pass was very strong, but there were a few small things I wanted to see changed.

I gave the guys some animation hints and direction based on my early experience as a cel animator once upon a time. My direction went to things like squash and stretch, movement on arcs, overlapping action, preserving weight and volume, cascading motion, pose-to-pose animation, strong silhouettes. They graciously took my old-school advice and handed in a performance with a lot of fun motion and character that turned out to be a drastic improvement on the original.

Meanwhile, with the year winding down, I had a bit more free time and took a lighting and color pass on all the shots, in an attempt to get the final look of the film in line with the color and contrast I saw in my head. I had done some pre-production sketches getting the basic idea, but it wasn't until I actually got my hands into the renderer that I got what I was after.

Then it was time for sound. There was a piece of music I had always heard in my head for this short, and we tried to get the rights to use it. Unfortunately, we never were able to line that up. But luckily, one of my contacts through AnimWatch pointed me at the super-talented composer Herman Witkam, who whipped up a great little score that had just the right feel - similar to the piece I had wanted, but all original and all Herman's.

I got my kids to sing the cha-cha-chas on that piece, and with a little foley work (snow sound courtesy of swatting pillows and shaking a huge container of salt), the short was done. It was a tad too late for a Christmas 2006 greeting, but just in time for a New Year's 2007 greeting. As a happy accident, the theme of fitness seemed a better fit for New Years anyway, what with the Resolutions and all. The response to the short has been very positive, but no one has been happier with it than I have.

The funnest part of running AnimWatch is finding all these great little films and talking to the directors. It's a constant source of inspiration, but it's an irritant as well; nothing gives me a case of the I-gotta-do-thats more than talking to other people who are actually doing it.

I'm glad I finally finished a short film of my own, and I'm proud of the result. And I think it's much better than it would have been had I done it all myself, which was my original idea. The most important part was knowing when to ask for help, and I'm glad I did."