Welcome... to GIGOEWORLD!!! I'm GIGOE! Seems like you've drifted onto my planet... or crash landed, or found some way onto my exosphere... Either way, I welcome you to where I'll be posting about my art, music, & film projects for the next little while.
You're welcome to stay as long as you want, but just don't get too clingy. I'm not great with roommates, so you can find shelter under a rock or in a cave somewhere.

LE FUMOIR

With formal introductions out of the way...
My film LE FUMOIR is OUT NOW!!! It was just screened for the first time at my friend's Film Friend Screening presented by ROMNKIK tonight, October 7th. Huge thanks to everyone who made this project possible... I'm very grateful. You can watch now on the GIGOE STUDIOS YouTube channel:

Along with the film's release, I've also relaunched this website today... with new UI and all sorts of changes!!! Can you spot them all? (Probably not)

LE FUMOIR CLOTHING?

ON TOP OF ALL THAT, I've also prepared some items you can buy and put on your body or wall...

Immerse your closet in the world of LE FUMOIR, with the commemorative SINGLES collection. Within, several shirts of varying price -- donning the short's LOGO, slightly homoerotically posed CHARACTERS, and a STILL from the film itself. Additionally, we've got some stickers and a poster, too. If ya nasty.
Click here to check it out :)

INSPIRATION

Inspiration is a silly thing bro. Anything can inspire the next Mozart or Van Gogh to make something great. You might find something inspiring in the way an old man hums to himself or the way his little dog jumps up and down. On the other hand, I feel more like a bum on the street making drawings in the mud with a stick than a Modern Day Mozart... If you've read this far, I'm gonna assume you've watched my film and I can share spoilers now. SPOILERS BELOW!!! You might be asking yourself: "Man, I wonder why this guy decided to make a film with a talking fish in it that shit was weird.🙄"

And to that, I honestly agree with you. But I would feel like the biggest scam artist in GIGOEWORLD if I didn't mention some of my inspiration...

Firstly, last semester (Spring 2025) my Editing professor showed me a film called Birds by Katherine Propper. It's a short film full of authentic, fly-on-the-wall style filmmaking which I fell in love with.
Immediately after my Editing class, I went to a quiet place, bought a brownie, and started to write a fly-on-the-wall script of my own. I wanted a scene observing two people in an awkward conversation, where one of them wants the other to open up more than they're willing to.

Somehow, within the writing process, it came about that one of them would be a talking, animated cartoon fish. Immediately, I had Bob Beathard in mind. He has this great deep voice that I knew would be perfect for the character, and I knew he had been interested in voice acting (even if this approach was a little strange.)

Katherine Propper went on to direct a feature-film called Lost Soulz, with a similar premise to Birds, where the characters in the film are based extremely closely on real people. Following SoundCloud rappers touring America trying to make it big, each actor plays caricatures of themselves. To be frank, me and my girlfriend got about 2/3rds of the way through before remembering we had some homework to do, so I actually haven't seen the ending yet. BUT that first two-thirds was very good and I loved it. Now that LE FUMOIR is out, I should probably get around to finishing it...

MUSIC & SOUND DESIGN

For this film, I wanted to depict an off-screen environment which the audience could fill the blanks with in their head.

Just perfectly off-screen, a bustling ___ full of people ___ing before an important ___ event... (You have to fill-in-the-blanks.)
The only thing that's given to you is the fact that it takes place outside a Restaurant and Art Gallery, though easy to miss if you don't catch it in the beginning.
After much careful thought of what a fancy art gallery would sound like, I settled on kitchen sounds, light murmured talking, and two jazz tracks I produced. And since they're outside, I also added some car sounds panned to the right. I'm hoping to get the two songs I made for this short on Spotify soon, but it might take a while before it does. SORRY!

For now, I can tell you the names of the two tracks:
01. ANGELFISH
02. MAYBE IN A VAN

ANIMATION

Obviously, you can't just press a button and have a cartoon fish in your short film. (Unless you want it to look like shit)
This film was actually my submission for the Film Program at TXST, so I only had about a month of post-production after filming before it was due. Luckily, I had been doodling the little fish guy for a couple weeks at this point, training me to be able to draw him quickly and efficiently. Noticeably, he kind of changes slightly from the beginning to the end. (That's what a month of drawing the same guy hundreds of times does to a character.)

Something I wanted to achieve with this film was intractability you just can't get in a recording booth. The last thing I wanted to do was have one character's lines recorded on-set, and the other's done a week later in a different room. There's certain characteristics to recording in different rooms that just don't feel right. For instance, the sound quality of different microphones, or the space of the room... An alleyway outside has a different spatial quality than a soundproof recording booth.

So, I decided early on that we'd film the short with Bob to the right of me, and record clean plates to cover him up in post. (Thank you to my crew for trusting the process.)

For about 4 weeks, I woke up at 8am, made a shitty instant coffee on my stove, then sluggishly made my way to my computer. I tried to complete one shot every 2-3 days. Certain days, I'd focus on animating the head, and other days I'd focus on the body. And, for the days where I didn't want to do anything... I went on long walks and animated in my head.

I remember being extremely discouraged the day after a certain event and not wanting to work at all... only to go on a walk and be met with hazardous winds and heavy rainfall... as well as a thunderstorm warning. Part of the reason I went on the walk was because we were out of milk, so I ran and yelled my way to the gas station and got some. Weirdly, I felt better after that??? So, I stuck with it, and I'm glad I didn't give up! :)

The hardest shot was definitely the long ass continuous take about half-way through. Below is an incredibly low quality gif of what I'm talking about...

Once I got into the flow of things, the days started blending together and before I knew it the entire short was animated...!? The only thing left was compositing the animation over the footage in After Effects which wasn't too bad. The most technical thing about the process was his shadow, which I did by tinting the wide-shot layer black and blurring it a little.

UNTIL NEXT TIME...

Wrapping up my first post here in GIGOEWORLD, I'd like to tease a couple things coming up...
It's very likely that my next blog post will show off some more behind-the-scenes photos and videos taken on the day of LE FUMOIR's filming... Maybe a look at some concept art as well? Yes... maybe...
Also, over the summer I produced a dozen or so tracks that were planned to come out in late August or early September. Obviously, that didn't happen, and this website stayed hidden and everything I made for it is currently unreleased. I'm doing everything I can to release it either late October or early November. Wish me luck bro... Some legal hurdles to jump first... Music Distribution is difficult...
Either way, you're gonna wanna stay up to date with my socials because I've got some cool shit on the way...
IG: @gigoestudios
YT: gigoe studios

And make sure to hit that bell...?