Chris P. O'Connell

Once upon a time, well over 30 years ago, I was a primary school student at Holy Cross, a Catholic parish and grade school in Western Massachusetts. On one random day, I got into a schoolyard brawl with some goofy smart-mouth kid named Tommy. To this day, I don't recall what that particular fight was about, just that it was the first of several knock-down, drag-out, schoolyard scuffles that would repeatedly land both of our asses in the principal's office.        Whenever Tommy and I were sent to the principal, we would sit side-by-side outside the office, on a tacky green office couch, waiting to be scolded by the top nun in the joint. Thankfully, this was in the years shortly after nuns had permanently holstered their rulers. Each time Tommy and I were sent to the principal's office, we would just sit petulantly, semi-supervised with no choice but to be civil towards each other while we waited for our scolding and were forced to make up. Over the course of

I doubt my name got into the screen credits of this one, but I did indeed do work on it, and it is probably the last Marvel movie I'll ever work on. So, when you get a chance, be sure to go see it in 3D.   EDIT:  So, I guess I was wrong... In the Summer of 2016, I was briefly brought on to Doctor Strange as a compositing supervisor.  Never say never. :)

Today, I officially find video game rating systems both adorable and ridiculous. If you've read this blog before, you might recognize the video below. It shows footage from an Android game that I created and published on both Google Play and the Amazon App Store last year. As of today, it has international age-related content ratings. I don't know why the game needs content ratings all of the sudden, but in any event, it has them now.  The "adorable" and "rediculous" I mentioned above come from the regional/cultural differences between the international content ratings. For example, in Korea and Europe, the game is designated as suitable for children 7 and up, while in the US its rated T for Teen, and in Australia it is considered unsuitable for kids under 15... but, at the end of the day folks, just judge for yourself. JetPack Kitty Attack on Google Play

A while back, the 'Blue Shift' campaign came to an end and did not meet its goal. As I've already stated on Facebook, in the foreseeable future, I will be rigorously redesigning my strategies in regard to getting the animated film done. However, once again, I'd like to thank everyone who donated to, or otherwise supported, the project. Crowdfunding is definitely not as easy as it looks, and in attempting a campaign, I learned several things the hard way, that I may or may not blog about at length, at some point in the future. However, in the meantime, not coming close to the funding goal for 'Blue Shift' is only a setback for The Starfall Chronicles, not a defeat! ' Blue Shift: The Animated Film ', as well as other related projects, are still in production. So, keep your eyes on Twitter ,  Facebook ,  Instagram ,  Youtube , and of course  starfallchronicles.com   to see more games, cool videos, and other interesting things related to  Blue Shift   down

If you live in California, Oaklahoma, Florida or various other places throughout the USA, you might have seen this ad for  Blue Shift  running randomly on certain local and public access television channels, as well as a few streaming ones, over the past few weeks.  The book (both paperback and Kindle) can be found here:  http://goo.gl/HhuPJb     ...And you can still support the Indiegogo campaign  for the animation project by giving here: http://igg.me/at/blueshift    

Over the past few years, even before deciding to release my story ' Blue Shift: A Starfall Chronicle ' as a book on Amazon  ( see previous post ), I was already working on telling the story as an animated film. Over the past two years, on and off, whenever I had the drive and free time, I put little pieces of work into telling the 'Blue Shift' story visually. Now my visual work is at a point where I am not only comfortable sharing it, but this weekend I have started a crowd-funding campaign on Indiegogo, so that anyone who is interested in Blue Shift: The Animated Film can help me finish it.  If you would like to share or support this project, click here . https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/blue-shift-the-animated-film/x/2920041   

Like many creative people, for most of my adult life, I've considered taking a stab at writing. However, of all creative endeavors widely divided by the barrier that separates thinking and doing, in my mind, the top to one the list are the acts of (1) committing to putting a story to paper (or screen), and (2) summoning the guts to put your story out there.  However, I recently and finally, followed through on doing just that. A few years ago, I started writing a screenplay for an animated short film and potential television pilot, at one point titled ' Starfall '. For a very long time I worked on this screenplay on and off, until I eventually had a WGA-registered script that I was satisfied with. Then, at some point, I decided to create a novelized version the Starfall script. After several months of struggling with the differences of screenplay storytelling versus the written form of a novel, I eventually created the book pictured below, which is now available for p