The New Blather

I’m not sure how many drawings the typical cartoon show pitch has, but I have 4 done and 23 more planned, most of them pretty simple character poses. So far, it’s taken me between 1 and 2 hours to draw each one. That’s mostly because I’m just not a very good drawer and am just [...]

I’ve only seen the first two episodes of this year’s new sci-fi show, Terra Nova, and they were awful. There are more episodes waiting on the DVR; I was going to give it a chance, but I think I’ll just delete them. I’ve heard it doesn’t improve, and I have better things to do with [...]

The full article was in our paper this morning, but here’s a snippet: The 17-year-old senior is the drum major of the school’s Lightning Regiment Marching Band. For a Governor’s School project, he took the complicated music based on Dante’s Divine Comedy and rearranged it for a marching band. … He took a 30-minute piece [...]

I got the Jurassic Park Trilogy on blu-ray yesterday, and couldn’t resist watching it last night. I have not yet watched the two sequels or the new special features. The Bad I really hate how Universal structures their blu-rays; I’m forced to sit through their annoying logo three times before the movie starts, I hate [...]

In addition to staying busy with Animation Mentor (we’re starting on our most complex animation assignment yet: a multi-shot two-character scene… it’s the jackpot!), I’ve been continuing to work on my cartoon show pitch; more specifically, I’m drawing character sketches and really trying to finalize their designs. The experience of drawing is strange. I don’t [...]

Here’s a little story I wrote today called “Balen and the Factory”: —– BALEN AND THE FACTORY by Sean Patrick Hannifin Balen stood before the door, just one among a crowd. He was only fourteen, but it was never too soon to try, was it? Balen knocked and waited patiently. He didn’t know exactly what [...]

Creating Animated Cartoons with Character: A Guide to Developing and Producing Your Own Series for TV, the Web, and Short Film by Joe Murray. I’m not sure how I stumbled upon this book, but I came across it on my web-surfing journeys last week, went to see if they had it at the local bookstore, [...]

Not from me, unfortunately, but from Paramount. This is kind of old news, really, but I never blogged about it. I think they were distributing another studio’s CGI movies (Dreamworks?), but I guess the current CGI animation renessaince is too attractively lucrative for a studio like Paramount not to try joining in the fun. Though [...]

This blog post asks: Is blog fatigue on the rise? For some it’s the negativity that comes with putting yourself out there. Some people have run out of ideas. Some people have taken a look at the cost/benefit and decided it wasn’t worth it. And some just forget to post. For me, one of the [...]

If you ever need a short little break from animating, browsing through Disney’s or Pixar’s graphic publications may provide some “edutainment” for your intellectual hunger. OK, they are mostly completely over my head and I have no way in which to apply the material they contain, but they provide some interesting hints about how the [...]