Terran Boylan
Terran Boylan is more interesting than you'll ever be.
Technically a baby boomer but metacontextually less well-defined, Terran began his illustrious life in Omaha, Nebraska. He then meandered his way through New York City, Los Angeles, and several academic disciplines, collecting a bachelor’s in computer engineering, a master’s in art, a research assistantship in mechanical engineering, and a creative writing certificate from UCLA. He holds (but regrettably does not own) two patents in computer character animation, produced a national-award-winning graduate thesis TV show, and created a commercial animation system once dubbed by a major industry magazine the “Swiss Army knife of computer animation software.” He has presented multiple times at prestigious professional conferences, self-published ten books in eight different genres (including a colouring book), sung onstage in a community theatre musical, and remains among the ever-dwindling number of souls who have seen Elvis Presley perform in concert.
Terran's professional career has been equal parts triumph and chaos. His films have collectively grossed over $8 billion, an impressive accomplishment, and yet he still somehow managed to lose a major visual effects award to beloved television icon Ed Asner - who had once appeared on Terran's aforementioned national-award-winning college TV show. One early-career film project went so spectacularly sideways he was deposed by opposing counsel for four days. A midlife-crisis obsession led him to produce a line of subversive custom action figures, more than a thousand of which have sold on eBay, some for the princely sum of “more than $20.” He has had awkward encounters with his childhood heroes Stan Lee, Steve Allen, and Michael Nesmith, and he holds an unpopular opinion about Tom Hanks. Despite this, Terran celebrated his 50th birthday at Madame Tussaud’s, showcasing his surprising comfort among celebrities made of wax.
In his personal life, he married and divorced the same woman twice, but then got it right on the third try. Terran - recently retired - and Belinda, his wife of nearly twenty years, currently live near an historic lighthouse in a sleepy harbour town on California’s rugged coast, along with their dog, Eleanor Wigglesbottom.
Most recently (as of this writing), Terran, along with his creative partner Dan DeGeest, co-produced a new 2025 music video for Peter Gabriel's 1992 song, “Digging in the Dirt.”
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ARTIST: Peter Gabriel
CREATOR: Dan DeGeest & Terran Boylan
SONG: Digging in the Dirt FROM Us
ARTIST: Peter Gabriel
CREATOR: Dan DeGeest & Terran Boylan
SONG: Digging in the Dirt FROM Us
Video info:
Digging in the Dirt from Us (1992) has been with me for more than three decades, beginning with my early adoption and obsession with XPLORA1. Decades later the song returned to me as my marriage collapsed, and now again in this 50:50.dev collaboration that evokes my memories of the original MTV-era video while reimagining the song through the exploratory, remix-oriented ethos of XPLORA1 and the creative vocabulary of evolving generative AI tools.
Naturally, Peter’s award-winning music video became an aesthetic jumping-off point, weaving fragments of stop motion and claymation into our own generative AI workflow and an innovative technique for creating continuous, single-shot tunnel sequences. Part homage, part interpretive remix, the result explores the ways our minds and emotions can run off the rails when experiencing and processing pain and loss.
Simultaneously literal and abstract, present and remembered, this “TunnelVision” journey elicits the experience of being caught in one’s own feedback loops, endlessly replaying painful memories, overthinking, spiraling through disbelief, anger, confusion, longing.
Through its shifting passageways, the piece mirrors the process of healing, moving layer by layer toward a place that feels more open, breathable, and alive.
-DD
Special Thanks
Rick Clifton
Paul Wang
Matthew Gordy
Rick Lozier
Belinda Arge
Britt Prater
Song info:
Digging in the Dirt is a track taken from Peter Gabriel's album Us, released in September 1992.
Words and music by Peter Gabriel. Produced by Daniel Lanois and Peter Gabriel.
Published by Real World Music Ltd. / Sony Music Publishing.