Hey everyone, Cloverman Joe Carlson here, head of 8-Leafer Sudios in Duluth, MN. We’ve been pretty busy this year, but also not, and I’ll explain why. As you may be aware, 8-Leafer Studios is my baby, I’m basically a crazy hermit of an artist, and although I try to keep focus on our whole team, I do 95% of the editing, writing, scoring, filming and planning, and I’ve been kindof overloaded this year. I’m basically just a guy who’s really driven to create stuff, I have my crazy stories and none of it would be possible without the help of my friends acting out the parts for me, but this year my production has been significantly slowed down over some family stuff, along with seasonal preparations, but the work hasn’t come to a complete stop, as we’re still working on the “Solomon” short, and last night I finally filmed the last shot involving the monster puppets. To give you a quick update, we’ve done a couple reshoots with Jack Schmidt in the costume, and we needed to lock in which takes we would be using before we could do a majority of our puppeteering, and unfortunately there’s still 1 more little shot we need to get of schmidty in the actual costume, and then it’s smooth sailing editing it from that point on.

In the meantime, last year we completed our holiday special, “Son of a Snow Man,” starring Jack Schmidt, basically as himself, and myself as the voice of “Franky, the Snowman,” and when it was finished, I just kind of quietly put it out there with no special blog announcement or anything. I try not to be a pompous ass but in retrospect, some fanfare with the release would have probably done us some good, even though we only have 1 anonymous fan that I know of lol. Like I said, I’m a bit of a hermit and don’t really know a lot of people, but expansion is still the plan. I basically use these projects to understand anything I might be asking any future team members to do. I want to see first-hand exactly how difficult and complicated the processes are, so I don’t abuse or overextend anyone under the 8-Leafer Studios banner in the future. Maybe someday people will see our stuff and we’ll have some real money to throw at the local talents, so I can do my part in putting Minnesota on the filmmaking map, but for now I’m comfortable doing these low-pressure goofy shorts, as my priority in this stage is the comfort of my actors, because in my case, they’re doing me a favor, so I don’t pressure them with too many takes or by giving them too much to remember. Not only that, if I made the rest of the videos around them perfect, not only would it put more pressure on my volunteer actors, but the videos would never get done, because again, I’m just one guy doing the planning, filming, scoring, editing, sets, costumes, sound, etc.

Anyways, it snowed here in Duluth today, and I figured it would be fitting to share our holiday special with you now. I’m particularly proud of this one, the experiment here being the animation behind our snowman, named “Franky.” I’ve always wanted to do a winter holiday special. Franky has a mouth on him you won’t forget lol. It definitely shows some improvements, but working with small sets like we do, it also showcases the shortcomings of working with small sets, as there’s a shot where we just can’t zoom in enough while staying in focus, so we need to get ourselves a new Lense for focusing on smaller things. I’m not made of money, but I’m still super proud of how “Son of a Snow-Man” came out. It’s a slightly different take on the “Frosty the Snowman” fable, and hopefully we can give you a smile this holiday season. Below, you can watch “Son of a Snow-Man” in both its censored and uncensored forms.

So there you have it, our winter holiday special, from us to you!
Fun fact: This project happened mainly because I wanted an excuse to own a top-hat :3


Check out our 8-Leafer Studios website here: www.josephcarlson77.com

Random 8LS Fact: Hey fan, you may have noticed the video “Space Trololol” has no uncensored versions available. That’s because its star character, “Nixie”, is voiced by a Duluthian named Erika Lynn Adams, known for her radio show “The Tale Collector,” and the books she has authored, like “Allie’s Adventure on the Wonder,” and her children’s book, “New Moons Family.” She was kind enough to help me out by playing the part, and since she’s the author of a well-known children’s book, we aren’t releasing uncensored videos with her character. I don’t even think I rendered any to be honest, so if you’ve been waiting for that to come out, sorry but it’s probably not happening :3