Captain's Blog

2012-01-29T19:10:00.001-08:00

The brilliant Eric Doggett asked if he could take some pictures of our car. Eric is a friend and an amazing photographer.

I didn't quite know what to expect. Eric rented a big giant flag and I went and met him up at the airport.

The results were amazing and we captured the sort of over the top, tongue-in-cheek, stuff that I love. Eric's dedication to his craft is something to behold and he has an amazing eye.

Despite his subject matter, (well the car is cool), he managed to get some amazing photos in just a few hours.

On top of that, it was a blast. I cant recommend Eric enough.

You can read more about it on Eric's blog:
http://www.doggettstudios.com/blog/captain-america-and-his-car/

2012-01-08T21:47:00.001-08:00

Thought I would post some things, see if I will actually keep up with the blogs this yearFigure drawing of a pregnant model for a Powerhouse Animation, Luck of the Draw.

Rough sketch of a design of Iron Fist. I am going get some 3d models on and then do some fight choreography...I think.

Some drawings from Naked Lunch May 14, 2011

2011-05-15T07:35:00.000-07:00

sketchbook posts on 3 blogs

2011-05-11T21:36:00.000-07:00

I got a new sketchbook. It has brown paper. I use white out to make white things. Got that idea from the Drink and Draw guy books. It is fun.

Paris Trip

2011-04-22T14:41:00.000-07:00

Mandy, Powerhouse Animation Art Director: Sam Deats, and Powerhouse Animator and Sam's brother: Adam; went to Paris to see Stephen Silver's show at the Gallery Arludik.

I had visited the Arludik in 2008 and helped connect Stephen and Dianne to get the ball rolling. If you don't know Stephen's work, we connected while working with Kevin Smith's Clerks property but he is also known for his work on Kim Possible, Danny Phantom and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. He is a super guy and his work is fantastic. He also helped me with a Captain Capitalism redesign a while back.

Stephen ended up sketching caricatures of visitors to gallery.

We got to hang out with Stephen's family including is wife Heidi.

Stephen had some really cool pieces in the show including this boxing painting that I coveted.

We ended up getting this piece which was featured on the poster for the show.

The gallery opening included work by artist Scott Campbell, with Adam, Sam and I. His work is really genius and you should check it out.

Here is Stephen with the Gallery director Diane and a gentleman who purchased one of Stephen's pieces.

We also got to explore Paris with the Deats brothers and I hope they came home inspired by the trip. This is Sam with a store that bears his name.

Mandy, Adam and Sam at the Louvre.

Mandy standing in front of one of the massive paintings at the Louvre.

Hopefully everyone had a good time and isn't too jet-lagged. See you soon.

New website

2011-03-16T09:42:00.000-07:00

I finally bit the bullet and re-did the Captain Capitalism website. Despite being a Flash cartoon, it was time to make the site an HTML based site so that it was visible on smart phones and tablets. Thanks to Jackie over at Webii for helping out on everything. I highly recommend Webii, they have been hosting the Powerhouse and Captain Capitalism sites for years, and Jackie did the HTML on the new version.

The site now features links to the other projects I have been working on, and makes it easier to find me on the social networking sites.

I just got back from a trip to San Francisco which you can learn all about on the Powerhouse blog. In April I will be going to Paris to see Stephen Silver's gallery opening at the Arludik, and will definitely be sharing lots of things from that trip.

I spoke at SXSW last week about Powerhouse's involvement with a Hobo with a Shotgun iphone game...

Check out the new site, and see ya soon.

Powerhouse Animation World Tour

2011-02-10T20:05:00.000-08:00

My favorite project from this year.

The idea behind it is to send it to ad agencies with their names and cities in the song, in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way.

Like so:
http://www.powerhouseanimation.com/world-tour/index.html?city=san-francisco&company=ddb

Captain Capitalism sightings.

2011-02-06T18:10:00.000-08:00

Hey Folks,

Captain Capitlaism cartoons on running on Michael Moore's site "Highschool Newspaper."

He is also making appearances in the DC Universe Online game that Powerhouse did the cinematic motion-comics for:

In a couple of days I am going to share an animation that I wrote lyics for at Powerhouse, and did initial character designs for it.

Really pleased with the way it is turning out. Looking forward to showing it.

Good riddance 2010...2011, let's be besties.

2011-01-09T11:49:00.000-08:00

I doubt many people hit this blog, due to the infrequency of posts, especially in 2010. Plus I am pretty sure Twitter and Facebook have killed or mortally wounded the blog as concept.

Why write long diary like posts when you can tell people how you feel about current politics, your family or favorite footbal team on a regular basis in less than 120 words?

For that matter, who wants to hear more than 120 words at time from friends and family period?

If I had a pre-requisite for friendship it might be "speaks only in 120 word statements." I could have personally saved a lot of time and phone bills if I had known that it would have been not just socially acceptable but popular to the tune of billions of dollars to ask friends and family to please keep all phone calls and conversations to 120 words.

Personally, I dont really like Facebook or Twitter. I get it, but I am not really a fan. I tend to use them only for business promotion purposes. I'm not big on opinions or thinking that what I am thinking at any given moment is profound or even correct. I tend to be wrong a lot. I don't really want to post my thoughts to EVERYONE I even tangentially know.

I always liked the blog concept. People have to seek it out. I have probably always used my blog more as a personal journal, that I am not afraid for others to see. You can ask my wife, I am a notorious and unapologetic diary or journal finder and reader. As an English major in college I think the diary as motif of novel killed my reverance for its privacy. In my mind if someone wrote it down, they must be putting it out there for someone to find and submit it to a Caldecott award committee. Blogs are like diaries I dont have to look under beds for, or get in trouble for or feel guilty about reading.

Plus, I really do enjoy going back and looking at the posts, photos, and drawings. It helps a guy like me remember things I was thinking about or was obsessed with long after the addictive parts of those obsesseions have passed through my blood stream.

Since I am probably more or less posting in a vaccuum, I am going to try to use this blog a little more often...more as a motivating journal type thing and less as a Captain Capitalism the project site (there will probably be no Captain Capitalism in 2011), but more as a personal blog..especially in 2011. I am not a fan of 2010.

Great things happened at my company, Powerhouse Animation. You can read more about that on the company blog. I split things off for Powerhouse onto its own blog late last year.

But one of the great loves in my life is outside of work personal projects, and I did not get much of that done in 2010. I had to analyze the causes for getting almost nothing done n 2010. The problem is, I volunteered to help others with projects way too much and spent a lot of time working on other people's projects. So many of them that I actually didnt get far on others projects and then was wracked with guilt about it. I became obsessed with working out and often over-worked to the point of exhaustion which prevented me from getting work done at night. I also finally wanted to make money on some personal projects or at least get them funded so I spent a lot of time writing grant proposal and trying to find other ways to fund it instead of just doing the work. I think I spent 3 weeks writing one proposal. Looking back on it, it was such a waste of time.

I miss working on projects terribly and plan to really make some ground in 2011.

I am not a complicated person. In fact summing me up in 120 words is pretty accurate and easy: "likes:Mandy, comic-books, fights, patriotic propaganda. has: kent glasses, bum-neck, yellow office. does: powerhouse, list maker/sometimes list doer, mantis-fu"

I am a resolution maker. Every year I make 100 resolutions. And for the rest of that year I read them every day. I put them in my planner and make calendars about them.

The biggy, non-personal, ones this year are the following:
1. get second-degree black belt
2. finish Krampus cartoon
3. finish 2 mins of fight choreography animation

I have made two other blogs to follow the progresses on 2 & 3.

Here they are:
http://krampuscartoon.blogspot.com/
http://godsfilm.blogspot.com/

I am going to work on them both today, go check them out. I will try to post something on both of them, and here weekly.

Happy New Year.

SXSW panel

2010-08-20T11:52:00.000-07:00

I have submitted a panel idea for the event. The panel is about animation budget history, based on the project I did a couple years back that adjusts old animation budgets and salaries for inflation so that you can compare budgets on various animation projects throughout history.

If you have not heard about this, here is some more information:
http://www.cartoonbrew.com/business/incredible-animation-budgets-interactive-graph.html

http://captcaptialism.blogspot.com/2008/11/animation-budget-history.html

It will require you to register, but if you would take a couple of minutes I would greatly appreciate you putting in a vote for the panel: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/5506?return=%2Fideas%2Findex%2F8%2Fpage%3A6

Thanks,

Brad

Comic-con 2010

2010-07-27T13:22:00.000-07:00

Man, things have been busy. I keep meaning to update the blog, but we have been out of town quite alot lately, with several trips to Louisiana, California, and elsewhere. We have been home very few weekends this summer. That, combined with a full load at the studio, has made for a very busy summer. And though it has been fun, I am ready for this summer to be over.

Speaking of which, I just got back from Comic Con in San Diego. You can read more about that at the Powerhouse Animation blog.

Here are just a few images and stories from the surreal experience that is comic-con.

If any one is looking, here is a great Christmas present suggestion for me:

Got some great schwag for my friend Carla, from Axe Cop creator Ethan Nicolle.

The hotel I stayed at was on the harbor, so I took a kayak out and had seals swimming up to, around, and under the kayak. Which is a little different for a guy from Texas. One seal followed me around the whole time I was out. Felt like aqualad.

Also met some interesting people like Mick Foley and Brandon Vera

Got to see friends like Stephen Silver, and Frank Cho as well. It was a fun but exhausting trip. Hopefully I will be back with more soon. Until then, courage.

Social media crazy

2010-06-23T16:48:00.000-07:00

So, even though I have not posted here in a while... I have been trying to keep up with the social media lately. To see check out the following:

http://twitter.com/powerhouseanim
http://www.powerhouseanimation.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/CaptainCapitalism

Office and Krampus

2010-03-17T22:09:00.000-07:00

I did a re-design of my office and wanted to share some pics. As I transition more into a new role at Powerhouse, we decided that passing my desk on to someone would be drawing more and on the phone less and writing budgets less, a better use of resources. I wanted to embrace the change and fancy things up.

I had the poster of Powerhouse characters at Ginny's Printing here in town.

Frank had the pillows made at Cafe Press.

I always wanted a boomerang coffee table. The table is a prop from Sin City, which was filmed here in Austin. I bought it at local shop that sells props. Its the table they hung Bruce Willis from in the Yellow bastard scene:

Even has the green screen trick leg to prevent John McClane from hanging himself:

I made a Powerhouse Zen Garden by ordering yellow sand and making a sculpey version of our logo:

They tried to make the film adaptation of Sin City match the Frank Miller comic, almost frame by frame...so I printed some panels that feature the table.

I got a bar at Pride and Joy in Houston. So now I can get all "Madmen" at work.

All of my Captain America stuff got moved off of rickety shelves and into a display case.

I ordered a more "real" Captain America shield...should be in to take the place of this one in the next few weeks. Also ordered a custom made katana. It will be predominantly yellow and have a mantis theme. I know. I am a dork. But I am a very happy dork.

Though I have not been drawing much at work, I have been at home at night. I have been working both on my G.O.D project and my Krampus project and having a lot of fun:

Take care.

This blog has moved

2010-03-16T13:25:00.001-07:00

This blog is now located at http://captcaptialism.blogspot.com/.
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Blog Van Blogahan McBloggerton

2010-02-22T20:16:00.000-08:00

Wow, have not blogged since November of last year. Doesn't seem right. Going to try and keep up better with it. But instead of dwelling on that, let me share some of the things that have been keeping me from typing descriptions.

Powerhouse:
Things have been going real well at the animation studio Frank, Bruce and I started 9 years ago. Hard to believe it has been that long.

We have a ton of great projects, including some new cinemas for Hasbro's latest videogame version of Risk for the Xbox: http://www.joystiq.com/2010/01/21/risk-factions-sets-the-stage-for-war-with-two-trailers/

Also, we have reorganized the company a bit. I am now a CEO. Things are feeling really good. We have 30+ employees now and the jobs are nice and diverse. I think it will be a great year.

New niece:
I have a new niece, Rebecca, named after my mom.

My little brother is daddy. I know I am getting older but it is a bit of a mind trip. Mandy and I have been to visit a couple times in Houston on the weekends.

Here is the photo of me holding the newest family member, trying to drink a cocktail at the same time.

I guess I am going to be that uncle.

Robert Schiffhauer:
Around Christmas time, I went back to the alma mater with my co-alum Scotty Sharp who was visiting from NYC. Scotty, Mandy and I paid a visit to Bob Schiffhauer who I used to TA for in grad school. Bob is a Cooper Union and Yale Alum and a fantastic figure artist. He is also an inspiration. He has done over 100+ paintings in the past year, and done them while having major hip and leg surgery and being 80 years old. All of this while coming out of retirement to teach a full course load.

Makes me feel like a lazy bastard for belly-aching about how busy I am.

Mandy and I bought a couple of his pieces, but his work is phenomenal. Proves you are never too old to improve.

Resolutions:
As I do every year, I made 100 resolutions for 2010. I spent a lot of Jan and Feb trying to plan out how to make these resolutions work, and now I am starting to get into the meat of some of the work. Speaking of resolutions, I plan on doing a lot of animation in my spare time, especially as in my new role at the company, I don't really have the time to animate.

This year my goal is to do 1 Captain Capitalism cartoon, a trailer for my Hamlet based piece, a trailer for the martial arts piece, and a short based on the Austrian anti-Claus, Krampus.

I'll try to post these projects soon.

Naked Lunch:
We are still doing the Naked Lunch sessions. If you don't know about those, and want to do some figure drawing in Central Texas...check out the Naked Lunch blog:
http://www.nakedlunchaustin.blogspot.com/

Martial Arts stuff:
I got a lot of cool martial arts toys for Christmas, one of them is this nice little Mook Jong made specifically for Mantis practitioners. It has little fists so you can practice wrist grabs. It is a lot of fun, but loud so I have not been able to use it a lot as my daily routine puts Kung Fu practice in the morning before work.

So lately I have been training at CTC (MMA), Bruce's KO Boxing (Boxing), and Del Sol Martial Arts(7 star Mantis). Jason Williams and I just re-did Bruce's website, check it out: http://www.bruceskoboxing.com/

I eat bugs:
Finally, one of my nephews favorite insults when he was little was "you eat bugs, Uncle Brad." This would be followed by furious giggling. This past weekend it turned out the little dork was precognitive. While at the Chinatown market I found "ground cucumbers." Which is a euphemism for silk worm pupae. We fried some up on Saturday night to try before a UFC. Wish I could say they were good and worth the trouble. But this is something that definitely goes on the "can say I tried it" list and not on the "would try again" list.

Excelsior,

Brad

Start spreading the news...

2009-11-11T20:39:00.000-08:00

It has been a long time since I have blogged. It has been a long time since I have done a lot of Captain Capitalism work also.

I have been working on a cartoon but between Powerhouse and other extra curriculars I have not gotten very far...I need to change that.

But I do like vacation blogging because I get a chance to put the pictures all in one place and come back and look at them myself.

We have not been home for several weekends now, having various family functions and work obligations. Mandy has been very busy with a trial and has been in and out of New Orleans. We did get to participate in Halloween though, Jason Williams had a last minute party, so we made a last minute shopping trip trip this Halloween. Mandy was a really good sport with the costumes.

This past week, I flew into New York for a conference and to hit some meetings, then enjoy the weekend for a little vacation. I took a red-eye on Tuesday morning. I got the hotel and checked in. Mandy got me a room at the Hudson which is a fancy hotel near Columbus circle. I took a short nap, worked for a little bit then decided to explore. On the way out the door I ran into a group from the opera doing a impromptu rehearsal.

Good bless, New York. Dont see that every day.

I took the subway to Chinatown, and got thoroughly lost, here are some pics from my meandering. Here are some of the things I saw.

Frogs in a garbage can.

I got some Dim Sum including some chicken feet, which were mediocre.

Go in the park.

On the way back to the apartment, I stopped by the Time Warner center on the way back to the hotel, and the cast of Glee was doing an appearance, and there was mass teenage pandemonium. Then I went to Kennedy's, a local Irish pub, had a late dinner, enjoyed the ambiance and went back to the hotel to get ready for the next days meetings.

- Wed 4
I went to meet Mike Mendelsohn, our Powerhouse New York agent in Chelsea near the New York Times building. I got to hit mid-town comics while I was there, which is always nice.

I know it is a cliched song title, but Autumn in New York is incredible. Trees change colors.
Mike and I at at Five Napkin Burger, and then walked as many of the calories as we could on the long walk to the Jatvis center and attended the ad:tech convention. It was supposed to be a "internet advertising" convention, and since Powerhouse is doing some advergaming and other buzzword work, we thought it might be a good opportunity. Honestly, though we made a few good connections, it was more of a spamming convention and acronym convention. CPA, ROI, CPA, TGIF...I really didnt know what most of the people did after talking to them.

I walked Mike back to Grand Central and we had a drink before his train. I went back to the hotel and crashed for a couple hours, then went to eat a lonely dinner at Thomas Keller's Bouchon bakery. Luckily, Mandy's trial got continued and she ended up getting on a plane and was on her way to NY. I went back to Kennedy's to watch what turned out to be the final game of the World Series, Mandy made it in time to watch the bartender firing up Sinatra on the loud speaker. Mandy and I headed to Times Square to watch the celebration.

Thurs 5-
The next morning Mandy and I went to Balthazaar for Brunch before I had to catch some meetings. We ordered Le Grand. The waiters face did not fully notify me when I asked him "if it was enough for two"

After some meetings I met Mandy back in Soho and we shopped around, then made our way to the village where we stopped at Mc Sorely's:

and the Cooper Union, which apparently has a Frank Gehry building now.

We met my cousin Sarah for dinner, then walked around town, and took one of those rides around Central Park, just because we had never done that in the many times we have been to NY.

Friday 6

I had meetings most of Friday and got off around 6, just in time to meet Mandy to make it to see Hamlet with Jude Law (the original reason we were going to New York). The play was amazing.
This picture won''t mean much to any one else but we were in the front row. Jude Law spat on us for 3 hours. I could write a lot about how great the play was, but I will leave that for the dream journal.

Sat 7
The next morning we met Scotty Sharp, former Viz lab cohort now Blue Sky-er, at the Met to check out a Samurai exhibit that was quite good (unfortunately no pics allowed). But I did get a pick of Mandy and Scotty in front of the Frick, which is what Stan Lee based the Avengers mansion on, according to a book I got when we were in New York.

We ate at the Brooklyn Diner (the finer diner) where we apparently werent the first rappers to make an appearance.

We then went to Lee's Art Supply which has a curious tagline

Scotty was going to see Patton Oswald, so we decided to see if they still had some tickets...luckily we got some great seats and had a good time at the show. Afterwards we walked Scotty to Grand Central had a Hoho Dingdong and went back to our hotel.

-Sun 8

The next morning Mandy and I went to brunch with my cousin, her husband and daughter. After brunch we had a great kids day. We went to FAO Schwartz:

We looked at puppies, and the Central Park Zoo. It was a really good time.

Afterwards we walked around time square waiting for a Louis CK show. Some of the artists doing the portraits in the square are truly amazing.

The Louis CK show was great, though the venue was not.

-Monday 9

We woke up, I worked for a couple of hours, we packed a lot of baggage and went out into the city for the last day. We ate at Daniel Boulud's restaurant, which specializes in charcuterie...which makes me happy.

We walked around Times Square for the 100th time, and then went to Macy's for a bit. By this time our legs and feet were blown out from days and days of walking and we decided to go to the airport early.

I love New York, but I am very happy to be back home.

Powerhouse: Luck of the Draw

2009-09-21T15:34:00.001-07:00

I was the subject of Powerhouse's "Luck of the Draw," last week. For fun and in order for people to get some good drawing practice in every week, we spin a wheel that has everyone who works at the studio's name on it. Then everybody does a caricature, comic, or animation of the person the wheel lands on. Then we put them up on the Phetchblog, Powerhouse's sketchbook blog.

Inside jokes abound in this, but I think most of them are better left unexplained.

Here are some other victims:
Doug: http://phetch.blogspot.com/2009/09/luck-of-draw-doug-beck.html
Frank: http://phetch.blogspot.com/2009/08/luck-of-draw-frank-gabriel.html
Sam Lotfi: http://phetch.blogspot.com/2009/08/luck-of-draw-09-sam-lotfi.html
Shane Minshew: http://phetch.blogspot.com/2009/08/luck-of-draw-08-shane-minshew.html
Megan: http://phetch.blogspot.com/2009/08/luck-of-draw-08-megan-kluck.html
Bruce: http://phetch.blogspot.com/2009/07/luck-of-draw-06-bruce-tinnin.html
Sam: http://phetch.blogspot.com/2009/07/luck-of-draw-05-sam-deats.html

Sorry it has been a while... work has been busy, lots of family and guests coming in on the weekends. I have been working on a new Captain Capitalism cartoon, hopefully will post more soon.

Vegas

2009-07-14T20:28:00.000-07:00

Mandy and I went to Vegas for 3 days right after releasing the cartoon. One of the best parts of having a blog is being able to go back and look at what I have done over the course of the past few years, so I usually make these "travelblogues" so I can remember what all we did. The main theme of this trip was "fighting and food," two of my favorite things.

We went to Vegas during a UFC fan event for UFC 100, so I took advantage of that and did some training sessions with Wanerlei "The Axe-Murderer" Silva and Kru Mark Dellagrotte. The sessions were great, I learned a ton and got to "roll" and train with a few professional fighters and did not end up with any black-eyes or broken bones...so, bonus.

Mandy got to sit in the Wanderlei session, so I got some pics.

You should have seen Mr. Silva's arms and legs. The best way I can describe it is rebar wrapped in veins.
Mr. Silva overlooks Jesse Garcia and myself doing some ground drills...

I even got to do some drills directly with Wanderlei.

That night Wanderlei invited us to his gym.

This is my sad attempt at a staredown. I cannot hide the fear well. Better stick to the cartoons.

We ate at two Hubert Keller restaurants in Vegas, Fleur De Lys and Burger Bar. Fleur de Lys might be the best restuarant I have ever had the pleasure to visit. It ranks up there with Les Halles and Craft. I had a tasting menu, and was nearly in a food coma by the end of the night. We also ate at Shabuya, which has a great sake selection, our waiter made some really good recommendations.

We also went to a great bar in the Mandalay called Red Square, which was like if Captain Capitalism's enemies had a bar:
Outside was a headless statue of Lenin. The head was inside the "vodka vault," where patrons can take a shot off the frozen head. Unfortunately, the price was too steep, so Mandy and I just hung out at the frozen bar for bit.

Mandy's brother Sean, came into Vegas from San Francisco, on Friday evening. It was nice to see him again, it has been a while.

Another cool bar we went to was called Minus 5, in this bar, everything is made from ice...the tables, chairs, even glasses. You have to wear a parka and booties. Frozen bars are big in Vegas, I guess.

We watched the UFC event from a beach on closed circuit TV.

We had a really good time, but Vegas wears on me. The noises and smells they pump start to make me claustrophobic after a couple of days. The wife and I arent much for gambling either, though she did hit this:

Culture Clubbing

2009-07-07T10:24:00.000-07:00

I give you, Culture Clubbing:

Please check it out at the following links. Each one of them. Several times a day. Tell your friends and family to do the same:
Youtube

Newgrounds.

Flash version.

Actually, I can't say I give it to you. I had a lot of help. The guys at Powerhouse devoted time to it, and I would not have gotten close to getting it done without the help. So thanks to everyone.

Speaking of help, if you are wondering why the opening scene kicks so much butt, that is because Sam Deats animated it.

Also, just for clarification, the red thing says Freakachoo and Kaneda, in case you could not understand it. The first a reference to Pokemon, the second to Akira.

That middle portion is a parody of School House Rocks' "Great American Melting Pot." Please check it out here. Schoolhouse Rock was a very important part of my education. Explains a lot, eh? I remember as a child wondering why the Statue of Liberty was cooking all the immigrants. That is really where the gag comes from...it is intended to be pretty tongue-in-cheek satire...let's see if it actually come off that way.

Every time I release one of these cartoons, there is a recurring comment that upsets me. On Nightmare of a Red Christmas, it was the 100+ people asking why Karl Marx had a German accent.

This time I think it will be people who see this section as more than a Schoolhouse Rock satire and actually think I am commenting on culture in America.

For whatever reason, my cartoons seem to attract actual debate in comments. That doesn't bother me, as much as it confuses me. To me, the cartoons are so ludicrous, that I cant imagine any of them being taken seriously enough to inspire actual conversations about governments and economics.

I am a little afraid of that tendency on this one. Keep in mind, I grew up in a large extended family. I had 12 cousins. I was taught at an early age that the way you show love is to ridicule something mercilessly.

So for the record, unless you believe I actually am saying that Menudo was a plot by Puerto Rican dissident leftists...you should not believe that I am also actually saying that in America you don't have to respect other cultures, or that anime doesn't make sense.

...actually I am saying that last part. Anime does not make sense. Hehe.

Speaking of Puerto Rican leftists...see if you can spot the famous Puerto Rican's in that scene. I'll give you a couple, at the chalk board is Freddie Prinze and Jose Ferrer - here is a better view of their boy band calculations in case it goes by too fast for you.

The cartoon could still use a couple of tweaks, but I find that I work best with setting deadlines. I gave myself to July 4th on this one, I told myself wherever it was on the 4th was how it was going to be online for all the world to see. And now I am going to take a break from this sort of thing for a week and go to Vegas.

In other news, I should be getting the casts from the bank sculpts next week. If you are interesting in reserving one, e-mail me at captain_capitalism@hotmail.com this edition will probably be limited to about 20 tops. They are probably going to be $75-$100 depending upon materials costs and how long it take me to hand paint the durn things. I am still trying to figure out how to mass produce them...but it is pretty cost prohibitive.

Freedom is My Muse 2: Electric Boogaloo

2009-07-07T09:29:00.000-07:00

It is darn near impossible for me not to say Electric Boogaloo after putting the numeral 2 at the end of a title. If I don't type it or say it, I am thinking it. Those amazing marketers behind the Breakin' franchise...we hardly knew ye.

Things have been very busy. I have been working hard at trying to finish the Culture Club cartoon in almost all of my spare time. June is generally a very busy month. Lots of birthdays and holidays falling one weekend after another, but I have done my best to keep at it and get something done.

I pretty much had the cartoon complete on July 3rd and Stephen Parker and his girlfriend Carey came down from Los Angeles. Stephen and I went to graduate school together at the Vizlab, and he works on fancy films out in Hollywood; but as a veteran and true patriot, he knows it would be down right communist to celebrate the birth of America in California. So he came to Texas, where we are so patriotic that we threaten to secede, and we tried to best last years' "Most American July 4th Celebration."

Most of the following photos were taken by Brandon Bollom, another member of the "4th gang".

First thing, we woke up and got Dunkin Donuts with stars and stripes sprinkles on the way to the shooting range.

After celebrating our 2nd amendment rights, we headed to Austin Books where I picked up a US agent statue to participate in capitalism. Post-comics we had some barbecue. With our bellies full of brisket and sausage, we headed to the lake.

Mandy and I recently "inherited" a boat. The first weekend we had said boat, it sank a little, (what a strange phrase). This was the second weekend we had the boat. We made it about 15 feet into the busy lake, and the boat died. We narrowly got it back to the dock going about 1 mph. Later we found out they did not drain the gas tank after the sinking, and that the gas had water in it.

In the true American spirit, we made lemonade out of lemons and swam at the boat dock.

Afterwards we headed up to see the fireworks show downtown. Now, despite the Ruskie "1812 Overture" introducing the show, it was a fairly nice exhibition. We sat next to a group of people who were sure that the fireworks were getting "too close" and that they were going to hit the planes flying far above.
I hope everyonce else had a good 4th. We will try again next year.

Going to Mold...that does not sound as cool as it should

2009-06-14T15:10:00.000-07:00

First off, click on this picture to see the Captain Capitalism sculpt right before it went to mold making this weekend.
I cannot wait to see these guys in person. Still trying to figure out how to make them into banks, paint them, and figure out how much to charge for them. Much thanks to Mike Petryszak for helping bring this childhood dream to life.

Been making headway on the next cartoon, "Culture Clubbing."

Until it is ready here are a few teaser images, first some Mary Blair inspired representatives of various cultural stereotypes:

I re-did the two kids that Captain Capitalism talks to in the cartoon the past few weeks. Now they are roughly based on two brother who work at Powerhouse Animation: Sam and Adam Deats. Sam and Adam are two very talented guys who also happen to love anime, almost as much as the kids in the cartoon...

I'm with the help

2009-04-27T20:18:00.000-07:00

Mandy and I went to the Richard Garriot estate for William Shakespeare's birthday last Thursday. Austin Shakespeare was having a "gala" for the occasion and showing a sneak peak of Romeo and Juliet.

According to the internet, which should never be trusted, galas tend to be black tie occasions:

But this is Austin, TX. We should have known better. We did. We talked about it on the way there.

When we arrived, I was asked if I was there to help serve. Ah, gotta love Austin. I'm in a tux; guy in the car next to me, wearing shorts and t-shirt. I felt a little out of place.

Mr. Garriot's place includes a nice little Elizabethan style theater. The play was fantastic, and I highly recommend checking it out in its full glory, May 7-June 7.

Friday night, I saw Mr. Garriot again, at a Fundraiser for Brewster McKracken.

Then on Saturday night, one of our coaches from CTC defended his title at a local show. Kamal (the fella in the middle) is a former olympic wrestler and did well in a really tough fight.

Things have been so incredibly busy, doing all these extra-curricular activities has not gotten cartoons done.

Cool Naked Lunches

2009-04-21T19:45:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, Mandy and I went to the Birth of Cool exhibit at the Blanton Museum. If you live in Central Texas, or the exhibit tour comes to your town, I highly recommend it. But that may just be because, as my wife said "It's like an everything Brad loves exhibit." There was no fighting sports, praying mantids or Hamlet performances, but it was close...

The exhibit focuses on the retro-modern movement, especially as it relates to the west coast. The exhibit features furniture protoypes from Eames, Miller and more

It also had lots of great images from West Coast Jazz, and stations to listen to pivotal works. When we went, (it was an event for museum members) they had a combo playing Dave Brubeck. I love Brubeck, especially Time Out. I have a record player at the office and have worn down that album, probably much to the chagrin of my office neighbor, Frank.

The greatest part of the exhibit though was a wall where 3 TVs played 3 cartoons; "Beep Beep", by Chuck Jones, "Gerald McBoing Boing", and "Toot, Whistle, Plunk, and Boom" directed by Ward Kimball. It was so great to be in a museum, watching people watch these cartoons, especially seeing folks laugh out loud still to the Chuck Jones cartoon.

When I was at the museum shop I came across a postcard of William Burroughs, which was kind of synchronicity. Not because I am big Burroughs fan, (though I have a great recording of him reading that is pretty fun), but as I started to say in my last post, I have been working on trying to start a figure drawing class for animators in Austin.

I used to love figure drawing, and have not gotten enough of it in the past 8 years.

So I have been trying to find a place to hold classes for the past 4 months. It has been surprisingly hard. I followed many dead ends, and had some very bizarre encounters. I wont name names, but there was someone who wanted to charge each student $50 per student, per class...just to hold the class in their space.

Details will follow soon, but we have a date. I am very excited.

The first class will be May 30th. I wanted to have the class around lunch time on Saturdays. So I thought we would call it "Naked Lunch." Thus the Burroughs reference. Ironically the models will not be fully "undraped," as Prof. Schiffhauer would say, because folks will be able to get drinks (coffee and beer) from the coffeehouse next door and there are apparently laws about nudity and liquor proximity, even if it is for the purpose of learning how to draw.

On another topic, I recently customized my laptop. I bought a Toshiba Satellite R-15. It is a tablet PC, (you can draw directly on the screen) and has a larger monitor than most tablets (14"). Rich Simms at Powerhouse, let me try one out, and I was tired of being chained to my Cintiq at night. Unfortunately, they dont make them anymore, so I had to get one used and take it to a shop to fix up, but the outside was still very scratched up. I asked the gentleman at the repair shop how I could paint the laptop. He told me I was crazy. So I decided I definately had to paint it. Here is how it looked:

Here is what it looks like now:

And it runs like a champ. Hehe. I know, I could have been working on cartoons. Speaking of which, this week is pretty crazy...hope to share more soon.

Easter Bunny brings Captain Capitalism sculpt

2009-04-12T21:38:00.000-07:00

We went to La Grange for an Easter celebration on Saturday. A cousin of mine has some land out there. It was nice to get away from work for a couple days. The trip reminded me a lot of the days my 12 cousins and I spent on our grandfather's farm when we were growing up.

No Easter celebration is complete without a calf-scramble, right? Right?!? Anyone?

And as promised, here are some photos from the most recent sculpt of the Captain Capitalism resin bank. It is still rough, but I am very please with the product. Mike Petryszak and I met ay Toy Joy here in Austin. I thought that would be appropriate. It was great to meet Mike in person, see the latest piece, and talk things through. We drew a little bit of a crowd, and it seemed like people were impressed with the sculpt. I know I was. Maybe I can talk them into putting a few of them into the shop...

Hope Mike does not mind me putting the photo up. It was great to finally meet him in person and his lovely wife also. Thanks Mike!

Good Friday

2009-04-10T10:37:00.000-07:00

Good Friday...

I have not posted in a while. It has been an hectic month. I had oral surgery to remove some heavily impacted wisdom teeth that put me out of "evening work" condition for a couple weeks. Also, Powerhouse is working on a very large project with some tight deadlines that has required a lot of overtime. When I have time outside of work I usually hit the gym or a Jiu-Jitsu, Kickboxing, Boxing or other class to release some steam. Since this blog is mainly about projects that I work on outside of the day job, and there has not been a lot of "outside of the day job"...there has not been a lot to say.

It looks like things are winding down though, and there are some exciting things in the works for Captain Capitalism and other projects too...

- Naked Lunch
One of my resolutions this year was to try to start a figure drawing class just for animators, here in Austin. I have been talking with the folks at Artseen Alliance, next to Spider House Coffee and trying to work it all out, and I think it is about to become a reality. Figure drawing in Austin has been difficult to come by. There are a lot of artists so classes fill up fast, and then concentrate on long-poses for rendered drawing and paintings. Animators need gestures and short poses. It looks like the class will start up at the end of May. If you are in the Austin area and interested in animation, coffe, and drawing the human form... shoot me an e-mail. To give credit, I learned about the venue at the last Dr. Sketchy...which if you like figure drawing you should definately check out. I had a lot of fun, but was suprised how incredibly rusty I have become. You can never get enough figure drawing.

-Captain Capitalism sculptures
Tomorrow night I am meeting with Mike Petryszak, live and in person. Mike is the artist currently working on my Captain Capitalism bank/resin/vinyl figurine that I hope to sell through an ad on the end of the next cartoon. He is supposed to bring the lastest sculpt. I will post some pictures.

-Culture Clubbing
I need to bite the bullet and get back to work on this short. I write things that are too long. Maybe it is the unrequited undergraduate English major in me, or that I want to make 7 minute shorts like my heroes. I would like to release this one by the end of May. There has not been a lot of movement on this, this month, so I have a lot of work to do. I need to start writing 1-2 minute pieces.

-Political Cartoonists, (who do also do animation), Super Friends
I have been talking to another animator who does editorial cartoon type animation, and great work. We are discussing finding a few other animators who do politically based work and starting a youtube channel through a larger distributor. I think this would be a blast, and we started talking as a recommendation from all around mensch, Aaron Simpson, guru of Cold-Hard Flash.

-G.O.D. and Hamlet
I continue to dabble with a 7-minute version of Hamlet short and a short that is VERY loosely based on Bruce Lee's Game of Death. These projects let me be a little more arty. Like a stinkin hippie. I will post some developmental work from them some day soon.

Hope everyone has a good Easter.

Go see Coraline

2009-02-17T16:00:00.000-08:00

Ok, first things first. If you have not seen Coraline in 3d. Please shut your computer down and go see this film. It is very inspirational, and much better than anything you will glean from this blog.

Ok, are you back? Pretty wicked, huh? I know.

Here are some links to good blogs from the fine folks who designed that film:
http://shannontindle.blogspot.com/
http://shaneprigmore.blogspot.com/
http://dankrall.blogspot.com/

I have kind of been spinning my wheels with the cartoon lately. I don't know why. I have been looking at time spent on the cartoon, and I probably get about an hour and a half of work into it...about 5 days per week, inbetween everything else. That does not sound like a lot, but I am not as far as I thought I would be by now.

Another strange Graeber story: The wife and I went to Bess for Valentine's day. We waited to make reservations, so we could only get a 10:00. We got there early, and they seated us early. While looking at the menus, I heard a laugh I knew I had heard before somewhere. A snorty kind of laugh. I looked over and in the booth next to us was Sandra Bullock, Jesse James, Ryan Reynolds and Scarlett Johansson. Ms. Bullock owns the place, so I guess it is not that strange.

Thats about all I have folks. Sad. Maybe I'll post some pics from the cartoon soon.

New York 2009: Final Weekend

2009-02-02T20:39:00.000-08:00

On Friday I went to Boston for some meetings. It was a pretty long trip, but succesful. I didn't get back to New York until about 11pm.

The next morning, I got up and went straight to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to meet up with fellow former Vizlab colleague, and current Blue Sky employee, Scotty Sharp. There was a great drawing exhibit with lots of figure drawings and sketches for paintings from the 1400s-1800s that was really interesting. Scotty and I waxed nostaligic about figure drawing and college. I have not seen Scotty in a while, and it was good to see him again.

It was a good day for art on Saturday, and quite humbling. For dinner that night we went to Cafe des Artistes. Mandy had made the reservations, and I was not aware that this was the restaurant that featured several murals by Howard Chandler Christy. I have always wanted to see these paintings, ever since my father brought me an illustration book when I was a teenager that had several of these paintings in it. They are amazing. The food was pretty good too.

This is Mandy, her uncle Glenn, her aunt Nancy and myself tucked away in a corner that had a portait of Christy done by James Montgomery Flagg.

Sunday morning, we drove around the city for and unknowingly bumped straight into the lunar New Year celebrations in Chinatown. There were several lion dance processions going into the various shops.

It seemed like many of the lion dance groups were from praying mantis based kung-fu schools similar to the school that I went to.

There was also a giant dragon, that probably had 50 people underneath it that came through the parade.

We wandered around Chinatown the rest of the day. We had a contest to see who could find the best deal in the markets. I also stumbled across a woman digging through a tub of frogs. She was being very particular, and I think I angered her a little taking this picture.

We had a really good trip. New York feels like the center of the universe and always recharges my batteries and gets me excited for work and projects...that being said, it definately feels good to get back home to Austin. You could almost feel things slow down as the plane landed on the runway in Texas.

Nikita seemed happy that we are home, too...

New York 09: Part 2

2009-01-29T08:31:00.000-08:00

Mandy and I had planned on spending most of our days working in New York, so we tried to figure out a way to pack in as much as possible in the evenings.

My older brother, Jason found out that they were doing open rehearsals of Othello on Monday nights. We got tickets last week and this was a really interesting thing to see. Alan Cumming was reading for Iago and Michael Potts was reading for Othello. They would read through the Act, then the director would talk about motivation, ask the actors questions, and then they would go through it again. It was a really neat thing to be able to watch and both of the actors were amazing. We had seen a good production of Othello at the Alley in Houston last year. This was a very different take. I really wish they would put on the play somewhere we can watch it. I did not know much about Alan Cumming, but he was terrific. Michael Potts had played Othello at Yale, and was just a wealth of knowledge on the play. He obviously had done a lot of research into Venetian military structures, and spoke on the subject with authority. This was a really fascinating and unique experience.

On Tuesday we were walking to the subway to make a dinner reservation and I stopped to buy a souvenir for one of the guys at the office at the NBC Experience Store. A woman walked up and asked if we wanted to be in the audience for the Conan O'Brien show. We took the tickets, canceled our dinner reservations and went to the show. This was interesting to see. It is a very very tiny set. They speed through these tapings. We were there for less than an hour and a lot of the time was spent with them pumping up the crowd. The guests were Matt Lauer and Steve Harvey.

Since we canceled our dinner reservations, we got a quick bite to eat at Sardi's (the restaurant with all of the caricatures) before going to see the Ibsen play Hedda Gabbler.

The play was not really my cup of tea. The Times had given it a blisteringly bad review in the paper that day, and it seemed to have affected the actors.

On Tuesday night a lot of snow fell on Manhattan, as a “Noreaster” blew in. This canceled my Wednesday meetings in Boston, and caused Powerhouse's New York agent to stick to his Long Island office in the morning, so Mandy and I walked through Central Park for a bit, trying to figure out what all this white frozen stuff was.

Since I thought I was going to be driving home from Boston on Wednesday night, we had not made plans, so we headed to the Soho area just to explore. We saw that Mike Birbiglia was doing a one man show, so we popped in and got tickets. The show was basically a themed stand-up performance about Birbiglia's issues with sleepwalking. It was really well written, and hilarious. As we were walking out, an older woman put an autographed poster on the chair she had sat in and walked off. I went to catch her, and when I told her she had left it behind, she said, “Oh, yes. I did not want that. Please take it if you do.” I wonder what happened in the play that made her go from buying a poster that was signed on her way in, to deciding that she did not want to have anything to do with it. It was very fitting to Birbiglia's self-deprecating sense of humor.

When we got back to the apartment, the cat's were having a party in the bathtub:

Today I have a lunch meeting with someone from another animation studio. Tomorrow I have to get up at 5 to be able to make the train to make my ride to the postponed meeting in Boston. Not looking forward to that.

One other thing I saw out there yesterday, apparently Matt Murdock's one man war against the Kingpin has not totally shut down his criminal empire:

Hehe. I am a geek.

New York 09: Part 1

2009-01-27T10:26:00.000-08:00

Thought I would take the time to write a quick blog entry between meetings. It is Tuesday in New York, and it is getting pretty cold. I have a few meetings today and am taking a break from walking around outside as we wait for someone to confirm a time at one of the ad agencies. They are predicting a lot of snow up here tonight. Yesterday, they were claiming it could be 12 inches of snow. My little Texas brain does not really even parse that information. We were supposed to drive to Boston in the morning for a meeting but are trying to figure back up plans.

On Sunday, when we came into New York we got settled at the apartment, checked on our roomates...two cats named Tarzan and Sheba.

After being reminded why I do not like cats, we then went out in to the cold and headed to the Cooper Union area. This is one of my favorite areas of New York. There is a great store, Toy Tokyo, where I picked up this:

And around the corner from Toy Tokyo is our favorite New York bar McSorely's, which we try to hit every time we come to town.

We ate at Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill, which was kind of meh.

Afterwards we walked around the city, trying to acclimate to the weather. In Times Square I saw a gigantic poster that I think is from the show that fellow “Powerhouser” Shane Minshew's brother is on.

Monday morning, our agent had some meetings with other clients so I got up early and went to Times Square to go to Colony, a giant sheet music store.

I needed the piano theme from “The Incredible Hulk,” (which is apparently called “The Lonely Man”) and “Living La Vida Loca” for the next Captain Capitalism cartoon. It was interesting to watch the nice man who was helping me resist the urge to ask what the hell someone would need that combination for. It was causing facial ticks.

However, he was so helpful that I still had some time before lunch, so I went down to Kid Robot. It is a very cool store and the Mecca for what they call “Designer Vinyl Toys.” I grabbed a cheap little adult swim “surprise pack” and was delighted to find Dr. Girlfriend inside.

Later that day I passed a TD Bank and took a quick shot of the new Penny Arcade coin counter that Powerhouse animated. I say quick shot because I imagine they don't take kindly to people taking photos of banks. While I have been putting this together, I found out my meeting in Boston on Wednesday, has been pushed to Friday due to the weather...which means I now need to get on the phone and pull my Friday meetings to Wednesday...juggle, juggle, juggle...

New Year, 2009

2009-01-24T23:04:00.000-08:00

I realized that I have not made a post in 2009. It has been a crazy year so far. Things have been very busy. Powerhouse Animation now employs 40 people. Hard to imagine that an office that was once four guys in a small office that reeked of bat guano would come this far. Here's to hoping that the economic meltdown continues to stay away from our doorstep.

New Years is probably my favorite holiday. I think I have said this before, but I am a bit of a list making addict. So I enjoy doing resolutions and making goals every New Year. The past several years I have made 100 resolutions, and then I see how many I can cross off before the next year.

This years goals include doing 3 Captain Capitalism cartoons by the end of the year. I have been working on a new cartoon, "Culture Clubbing." I have not gotten as much done as my resolution schedule allowed, but am trying to catch up. I don't want to get into details but it has been a tough few months.

Another goal is to finally make a good sculpt of Captain Capitalism and get a vinyl/resin toy made to try to sell with one of the cartoons. I decided to try to make it a bank to make it fit the theme. In order to actually accomplish this goal, I decided to quit trying to do it myself, and hired Mike Petryszak to make the sculpt. Check out Mike's work here. I am extremely exicted about Mike working on this.

I did some rough turnarounds for him to work from, here are a couple of 'em:

I asked Sam Deats to do a painting of one of the angles of the turnaround so that we could see what the statue might look like, and I thought I would share it:

In other news, Ralph Baskhi was in town. I gotta be honest, based on stories I have heard, I was expecting a raging mad man, but he was a downright nice. He is a fascinating and well spoken man. He talked at the Austin School of Film. One of the more interesting things that he talked about as how animators should live in the present, and make cartoons about things that are going on now. He said that too much attention is paid to the past in animation, and that too much time is wasted pining for the way things used to be, and analyzing cartoons from 40 years ago. It was very interesting to hear one of animation's elder statesman talk about this.

This year I have some non-cartoon related goals, too. Brandon and I have started a Kendo class at the University of Texas. Now I have a different kind of class almost everyday of the week now. Each week I take boxing, wrestling, Kickboxing, and jiu-jitsu, and now Kendo. I also still kung-fu every once in a while, though not as much as I did in the past.

Mandy and I are headed to New York in the morning. I have some meetings and we are going to take advantage of being in town by catching some plays in the evening. Hopefully, for my own memories, I will have a chance to do a "travel blog" for the trip.

I need to figure out what I have done to my blog here, some of the old links no longer work and it is no longer posting the images at the sizes that I set it up for... it does not appear you can click on these images to see them larger. I'll try to fix this later.

Anyway thanks for stopping by...

Christmas sketchbooks

2008-12-22T15:22:00.000-08:00

For Christmas this year at Powerhouse, I got most of the folks sketchbooks and did a drawing in them. I always hate brand spanking new sketchbooks. I am afraid to soil them with a bad drawing and get all timid. Therefore, I felt like I would prevent this agony for our employees, and I soiled there sketchbooks for them with a crappy drawing before they even got them.

Megan Kluck is a fan of the office, and got Dwight Schrute(sp), Intergalatic Assitant to the Regional Manager.

Lou got a Walter from the Big Lebowski

Dominic got a Captain America, after a Romita pose, that was after a Kirby pose.

Jason and I take boxing classes...this is our coach.

and finally Shane M. is a Heman fan and sports several tattoos of the Masters of the Universe, so he got this.

I still have 12 books to go, and probably wont finish them until New Years...sorry guys.

Germany: The Muzzerland

2008-12-15T09:49:00.001-08:00

Day 1:

In the morning, Mandy and I went to cafe and people watched and found people to draw while eating crossaints and drinking coffee. There really is something nice about the local morning cafe run that it seems Parisiens take. It is like the inverse of hitting the pub on the way home.

After we checked out of our hotel, Mandy and I took the train to meet Isabel in Frankfurt. Isabel is an old friend and one of my favorite people in the world. She spent a year abroad as a foreign-exchange student at my high-school in Texas. We have corresponded in some form or another since high-school, but have have not seen each other in person in 14 years. But when we met, it was just like old times and extremely comfortable...other than the German on the TV it was like we were visiting friends next door. Arndt and Izzy were the best hosts, and we had a great time staying with them.

We way overpacked for the trip. My suitcase was probably 65 lbs+. Isabel and Arndt live at the top of a very nice building, so we had a nice workout bringing our luggage up to their place.

That night we walked to the grocery and Isabel and Arndt cooked us a nice German meal, we had bratwurst and some of Arndt's families homemade Schnapps.

DAY 2:

Our first morning there was St. Nicolaus day, and Isabel made little Nicolaus' for breakfast, that were quite pretty and tasty.

After breakfast we walked into town and went to the market to pick up some things for dinner that night. Frankfurt is an interesting city, it seems so much bigger than Austin, but according to Isabel the population is smaller. It think it is because the city is so compact and much older and built up than Austin. We had some nice champagne, and saw this fellow who was a walking hot dog stand. We also went to a comic store where I picked up a Captain America in German.

Me, Mandy, and Isabel in Frankfurt.

Afterwards we went exploring in the Frankfurt Christmas markets, these are really something to see with all manner of treats and crafts.

I think these guys were celebrating a soccer victory by singing and ingesting lots of Gluhwein.

That night Isabel and Arndt treated us again to some home cooking making Spaetzle, and we ended the evening making another attempt to kill the bottle of Arndt's family Schnapps.

The next morning, after taking a leisurely stroll through historic parts of the city and hitting a cafe, Mandy and I caught a train to Heidelberg. Here is a view of the "Philospher's Walk" from our hotel window. We never made the trek, because we are not philospher's and because it was really cold.

Heidelberg has a big Christmas market that my mother always wanted to go to, so we went by proxy.

We ate a lot of foods that I will now kill the spelling thereof: Flammkuchen, Kartoffelpuffer, bratwurst, curry fries, mandeln, and much more. I wanted to try one of everything.

The giant pyramid in Heidelberg

The wife imbibing.

The next day we explored the city some more and found industry standard souvenirs for some of the crew at Powerhouse. We had a great lunch, I had a grilled pan of meats (below) and ate the whole thing.

After lunch we took the train back to Frankfurt and lugged our luggage back to Isabel and Arndt's. We caught up with Isabel for some drinks and went to the market for some Raclette supplies.

Raclette is this tremendous melted cheese on pickles and meats that you melt yourself through this little device. I wish I would have taken pictures, so instead Mandy is getting a Raclette grill for Christmas, and we will have to have a party and take pictures then. Afterwards, we finally killed the bottle of Schnapps, and packed for the trip back home.

The flight home was miserable. I sketched people on the plane, watched 4 movies, and finished season 3 of the Venture Bros. and still was going stir crazy. When we got back to Texas we hit Hoovers for some southern comfort food and went to bed after not sleeping for 24+ hours.

All in all, it was a fabulous trip. I will miss Arndt and Isabel, and the cafes and art in France, but I think they make those return flights so bad to get you to be happy to be back home.

France- Day 3

2008-12-15T09:43:00.000-08:00

Our last full day in Paris, we walked through the Lourve and went to the Musee D'Orsay.

On a recommendation from our friend Carla, we went to Angelina for Chocolat Chaud. We did some Christmas shopping near the Galeries Lafayette. They had these incredible window designs that featured mechanical marionettes. They were quite incredible.

After this, we went to Montmartre and saw Sacre Couer, rode the funicular and saw the Moulin Rouge.

After exploring this area of the city, we hit Album an amazing comic store on the recommendation of the gallery Arludik's owner. I picked up "Le Morte de Captain America" which made me chuckle. We spent a couple hours looking for the mystical "Cafe Des Beaux Arts" which is like Xanadu and only materializes in the moonlight on a vernal equinox. We took a walk by the Seine back to our hotel.

France- Day 2

2008-12-15T09:36:00.000-08:00

It was cold and wet most of the time that we were in Paris. On our second day we to the Bon Marche. The department stores in France are like giant malls all in one store. Mandy looked at a lot of clothes but didn't find anything she could not live without. We picked some Rillettes du Porc for Isabel and Arndt at the food stalls at the Bon Marche.

After we went to the Bon Marche, we went to St. Sulpice and also went by the Arludick
which is the animation gallery I mentioned. They had a great exhibit and I picked up some Bill Presing books I did not have as well as the Rendezvous (the current exhibit)book and poster. It was a really nice exhibit and it made me think about some folks who could actually show pieces there and how much fun that would be.

After that we went by the Pompidou, the modern art gallery. We took some photos at the nearby fountain. This fountain was featured in the "French in Action" lessons that they used in the French classes Mandy and I took together in college. We reminisced about the exploits of Mireille and Robert.

The Pompidou.

We went to another large store, BHV. While we were there, a large group of protestors marched in bullhorns blaring, chanting something I could not quite understand. I asked a sales person what was going on, she informed me that the protestors were employees of the store. That the store decided to stay open later and these were the employees protesting having to work overtime. They marched onto the escaltors and sat down, making them break down and stop. They all cheered.

This was a lot of fun to watch. Only the French would put so much work into not working.

Speaking of political caricature, Barrack Obama images and parodies thereof abounded.

Afterwards, we went to Les Deux Magots and had coffee and sketched people. After this we walked through Les Halles, and ended up eating at Au Pied du Couchon, another Bourdain recommendation.

I had "St. Anthony's Temptation" which included pork snout, tail, ear, and the full "trotter" or leg with hoof.

After dinner we made our way to the Lourve. I dont know what I can say about this experience. It was 5 hours of wonder, inspiration, mixed with a little disgust and confusion. Everwhere you look is history and the greatest works of art in history. It is overwhelming. You start to wonder the value held in this property that has been home to kings, queens, and emperors. It was awe inspiring.

Hammurabi's code.

I love marble sculpture. It is like a weird magic to me. I tried it once and failed miserably.

As everyone says the Mona Lisa is underwhelming.

My poor wife was quite pooped after I drug her around for hours, "oh, look at this....wait look over there....oh my gosh that's the..." She was a great sport though.

The Venus de Milo. Supposed sculpted between 100 and 130 BC. Simply incredible.

After the Lourve we walked to a local cafe for dinner. Two French gentlemen were watching a soccer match, I think there names were Stadler and Waldorf.

Watching them was a blast and a great way to end the evening.

France- Day 1

2008-12-15T09:30:00.000-08:00

After not sleeping on the flight over except for maybe a couple of the 9 hour flight, we hit the ground in gay Paris. We walked our over packed luggage to our hotel on the Isle of St. Louis. Our hotel was in a great location. An accordian player on the bridge gave us the proper auditory introduction to the city:

Our hotel was close to Notre Dame. Which is a stunning and breathtaking building. Those papists sure can erect a structure. Just kidding. We went through the building and lit a candle for a cousin of mine who just recently passed away in an accident.

After touring the hunchback's pad, we walked to the Tavern of Henry IV, which is near the halls of justice. We say many officers of the court in traditional robes and tried to imagine my attorney wife in such garb:

At the Tavern of Henry IV we had some proper French cuisine. The French can do some amazing things with pork and I wanted to try a little of everything after watching too much Anthony Bourdain in the states.

After lunch we went to St. Chapel and also to the Concierge, where Marie Antoinette was imprisoned before going to the guillotine. Mandy and I have been enjoying a book on the French Revolution so this was especially an interesting part of the trip:

After the Concierge we went and toured Les Bouquinistes, the small shops along the river, and then stopped at the Academy des Beaux Arts, where they were having a great exhibit on anatomy. Unfortunately I could not take photos, but being a big fan of figure drawing this was a great and very inspirational visit.

It was getting dark so we made our way to the Eiffel Tower. Mandy was not quite brave enough to go to the top, but the views were still amazing from the second tier of the structure:

After spending some time walking around the Latin Quarter, we took a metro back to the Isle St. Louis where we discovered a shop that was selling original Mucha prints. My good friend Brandon is a big Mucha fan so we took a look.

We discovered that an animation exhibit was showing down the street from our hotel, so we went to check it out but it was closed. We grabbed a snack from a patisserie and went to get some very jet-lagged rest.

Les Visages du France.

2008-12-07T12:05:00.000-08:00

I am currently at the train station in Paris waiting for a train to go to Frankfurt, so I thought I would take the time to write a little blog.

Les Français obtiennent un mauvais coup sec et dur. Si vous essayez de parler au moins français, ils sont les plus gentils et politest des peuples. J'ai eu un grand temps et Paris et moi suis tristes de partir. Il stupéfie combien les personnes d'une manière éblouissante belles là sont à Paris. Chacun a le caractère. Une sorte de "je ne sais quois", si vous plait. Chaque où vous regardez vous voyez un femme magnifique, ou quelqu'un qui ont ressemblé au marché hors d'un dessin animé.

Et oui, je comprends qu'il peut y avoir des erreurs dans cette traduction ici. Mais je suis essai, oui?

All of this character makes Paris an ideal place for people watching, and sketching. The streets are lined with little cafes where you can sit, drink coffee and just sit and watch. Unfortunately, the French have a 6th sense about being watched. It is very hard to take their photos or draw them without being discovered, so I had to work fast. That being said, the subject material is everywhere. It was made for sketching from life, and memory sketching. Here are some visages du Paris:

Frank got a inexpensive tablet PC from a local used computer place, so Bruce and I picked one up to. I have been using Alias Sketchbook to draw, and don't quite have the hang of it. I am so used to drawing in Flash, that it feels very strange. Plus I bear down on my stylus so hard with a vice-grip that my lines end up wobbly and I press too hard on the monitor. I'm working on it.
When I get back to the states I will do a little “travelblogue” like I have done in that past. Until then au revoir.

Silver, Cartoon Brew and Comedy Central

2008-11-25T20:22:00.000-08:00

Comedy Central ran Piggybank Pinko the other night. I missed it. I only heard about it because someone at work saw it. Hopefully they will send me a DVD of the program it ran on.

The budget piece I did and wrote the blog about ran on Cartoon Brew, here. It sparked some interesting and funny comments. I have been talking to a few folks about it including the extremely nice Mr. David Nethery who sent me some info I need to add to the graph. If anybody out there has anything for me to add, please send it my way.

Mr. Stephen Silver came down to Austin to give a character design workshop to Powerhouse Animation. Stephen is a super guy, and excels as much at teaching as he excels at character design. It was very inspiring. Our guys have been drawing at lunch since he left, which is a good sign. Stephen beat me to posting a few of these, but here are some photos:

Mr. Silver teaching.

Stephen and the Powerhouse Crew

Frank Gabriel, Me, Stephen Silver, Bruce Tinnin

I am off to Europe for a couple weeks, after Thanksgiving. I will try to post some photos from the trip.

Animation Budget History

2008-11-17T11:12:00.000-08:00

Like most people involved in animation these days, I read a lot of blogs. Sometimes I think if animators spent less time reading and writing blogs, or gathering old art jpegs, and actually made cartoons we would all be better off...the hypocrite typed into his blog editor.

Awhile back, in one of these blogs, I got interested in the quasi-debate about the state of animation. I think these sorts of arguments are as much a part of our industry as inbetweens. There were probably very similar arguments with every step of the industry's development/devolvement, since Gertie the Dinosaur. The internet has just made them easier to have over long distances without worrying about catching a fist or a paperclip in the eye. Animators are an opinionated lot.

Most of the conversation revolved around a comparison of Flash production vs. classic feature films, such as Disney Classics. To me comparing those two things is kind of akin to comparing what it feels like to drive a Ferrari, to riding a bicycle. I didn't realize that anybody was confused about one being better than the other.

Some of the arguments, made me feel the same way I do when folks compare 3d and 2d animation in a Highlander “there can be only one,” fashion. I never understood this argument. Sculpture and painting have existed side-by-side for centuries. Isn't the relationship between 2d and 3d animation similar. The real difference between the two have more to do to how capitalism has affected the artform in the past two decades.

Nonetheless, I got interested in the capitalism of it all, (see blog's name), and thought it might be interesting to look into budget variations and the quality of animation, so I started reading.

While I was reading, I decided to make a spreadsheet that took inflation into consideration, and compared the budgets of great works of animation, and standard bearers of trends, and figure out how much it cost per minute to make various animation pieces throughout the past several decades. I also tried to figure out what it cost per foot, just to confuse younger people with antiquated terms.

I have been working on this for about a year, and since the year is about to come to a close, and the economy is going to hell, I need to put this up before the current inflation calculations become irrelevant...

Don't read too much into this. I wasn't really trying to prove a point, but I thought it might shed some light on the state of the industry.

The life blood of the animation business, (and it is a business), is money. When an “art” takes long amounts of time, and generally more than one person with specialized skill; the dollar and the "art" are intrinsically interwoven.

Salaries and budgets drive the industry. In our dollar driven world; the buck stops at the buck. If you don’t believe me, read the autobiographies. Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with it, but there were times in reading their books that one might feel that Shamus Culhane, Joe Barbera, and Chuck Jones could tell more about what they made per week, year by year, than they could tell you about some of the work they created. I am glad they did, because it made it surprisingly easy to do research.

Before you click on the comments button, I admit I got some of my information from the internet, and everyone knows Wikipedia is a communist driven pack of lies...so take anything here with a grain of salt. If I got something wrong, please feel free to correct me, and I will attempt to keep things updated. Better yet, if you know what the budget was for something that you feel should be added, I would love to get as much information as possible.

I also know that sometimes what a show is budgeted does not necessarily correlate to what is spent on animation. Trust me, I know this very well. While doing some of this research I noticed some major discrepancies between what a show was "budgeted" and what I know some folks were getting paid to animate scenes on said shows. But these are the numbers that are available, and since I am using them for all examples, I feel it is fair for a poor man's overview.

Here is what I came up with (click in image below to open application):

What did I learn? Honestly, not much. Except that 2d animators these days have gotten the short end of the stick. Younger animators listen to older animators talk about the glory days, but can't really relate. Older animators lived through an apex in the industry pine for the good old days, and if you worked in animation when a movie like Treasure Planet was getting $1.7 million per minute of animation, who can blame you. But I think that same example can show why our industry became unsustainable in terms of the actual global market place. This graph does show where things started getting out of hand. Bad scripts exascerbated the downfall.

At the end of the day, I imagine most studios could make animation as good as Pinocchio, if not better, if they got the equivalent of almost $400,000 per minute of animation.

I think the results shown in this graph are what people would expect, and most people knew this without spending hours on spreadsheets or asking their wife to help look up old TV budgets on the Internet.

Animation budgets are at an all time low, and it can possibly be argued that the level of work in our industry correlates to that. That is kind of how one expects things to work, isn't it? I’m definitely not saying it is a good thing, just seems to be the case.

Here is some of the salary information I found: (click on the image below)

I should probably cite my sources, which I will hopefully will get around to soon. Also, I need to thank Krishna Jain for programming the Actionscript and XML that makes the graph work, and also thank him for being patient. I paid him to do this forever ago, and only am only now posting it. I also wanted to thank the great Amid Amidi of Cartoon Brew, and the always nice Aaron Simpson of Cold Hard Flash for sending me more examples of budgets and fill in some gaps.

Dress like Brad day

2008-11-04T10:46:00.000-08:00

The day before Halloween, was ostensibly "Dress Like Brad" day at the Powerhouse Animation Studios offices. I didn’t get the memo, but luckily I am Brad. So I was, (apparently predictably so), dressed appropriately for the day. Some of you may remember "Dress Like Frank" day
from last year.

If you like, you can play where is Waldo, trying to find the real Brad in the crowd.

So, allegedly, here is the formula for being me:
1. black rimmed glasses
2. sports coat
3. super hero print t-shirt that does not match said sports coat, preferably with Captain America.
4. jeans
5. black shoes
6. A microwavable Lean Cuisine. (I do eat one for lunch almost everyday)
7. And for the purist, a band-aid on the chin (signifying the number of times I have had to leave work to get stitches this year. Keep in mind these injuries are not the results of my boxing or MMA classes but from really stupid accidents)
8. There was also a laugh that some were attempting to replicate. Kind of like a combination of inhaling, choking, and snorting. It sounded like a geek mating call. Which I guess, in a way it is.

We all went to lunch, the Brad’s and I. At one point, at the end of the table everyone was calling each other by my name, in effect sounding chirping baby birds peeping "Brad" to one another. It was darned funny.

There are days when animation production issues can be grueling, clients can test your will-power to not punch people, and co-owning a small business can be stressful. But there is never a day that I don’t just thank God that I work at a place with such a great and fun group of people.

We have truly been blessed in the folks that we have found at Powerhouse. Thanks for a fun day.

The big day.

2008-11-04T10:09:00.000-08:00

So, it’s the big day. The day America picks a new head of state and our little game and my little cartoon loose some of their value. Give those links one last poke for me:

The cartoon.
The game.

In other news, I have been doing a sculpt of Captain Capitalism. I would love to be able to one day make a series of Vinyl toys. Making a talking Captain Capitalism bank to sell in the comic shops and "hip" toy stores is kind of a geek dream for me. But I am admittedly not a great sculptor. If I ever wanted to really to do this, I think I would need to hire someone to do it. I have priced it out, but can’t really afford it. That being said, working with Sculpey is a blast. I find playing with this stuff just a lot of fun and oddly relaxing. Here are some photos:

One of the greatest things that happened with the cartoon was it getting put up on Daryl Cagle’s Editorial Cartoon website on MSNBC:

This was a real thrill. I am a fan of Mr. Cagle, both for his editorial cartoon and his efforts to keep alive what, unfortunately, appeared to be a dying artform. Newspapers are in trouble. The price of paper keeps going up. Circulations numbers keep dropping. The editorial cartoonist is equivalent of the polar bear in our ecosystem. Their disappearance happens first and is a harbinger of things to come. Editorial cartoons have shaped history. Is their anything more American than over simplying an issue into a panel andmaking fun of the most powerful among us in the form of a simple cartoon?

Daryl, through his syndication efforts, and his website has helped resuscitate and reinvigorate the art form by bringing it into the modern age.

In the same vein, I want to thank Mr. Tom Fulp for helping me get the cartoon up on Newgrounds and helping to sponsor it. I have only met Tom a couple of times, but he is a genuinely good guy. He is deeply involved with a still burgeoning online world of animated and interactive content and how to help grow. Newgrounds may seem like a crazy anarchist’s paradise where everybody craps all over everybody else’s work with bizarre reviews and a cruel voting system, and it absolutely is. I think he is making an army of tough young Flash artists who can take several hits to the chin. Tom loves Flash games and Flash content, and has done a lot more to bring some things forward in the medium than he gets credit for.

Want some numbers on views of the cartoon and game?

I am going by individual sessions/views not "hits" for you internet purists out there. As of Nov 4, 2008 around 7:00 am, this is what I know.

The cartoon got 64,832 views on Newgrounds, XXXXX on the MSNBC Editorial cartoons page, 1,500 on Captain Capitalism, 300+ on Youtube…for a total of roughly: 67,000 views. - I will edit this once I find out the MSNBC number.

The game got about 125,000 plays on Kongregate, about 20,000 plays on the Hothead site…for a total of roughly 140,000 plays.

And just to stay with the Captain Capitalism theme; did either of these shed any light on a way to generate money with creator-drive games or interactive Flash games? Well, no. Some money was made on both, but as far as profit that would pay for production is concerned, both were a lot of work and at the end of the day, money losers. Of course, that is not what it is always about. They both were a lot of fun to make. We tried some different things with spreading the game and I think we learned a lot.

Happy election, guys. Make some popcorn and kickback and enjoy the circus. I think I am going to watch thing using the picture-in-picture feature on my TV; one with Fox and one with MSNBC. I want to make sure I get to see Sean Hannity’s or Keith Olbermann’s heads explode.

270: Political Tower Defense

2008-10-22T15:24:00.000-07:00

The fine folks at Powerhouse Animation have made a game to help us all relieve our end of the presidential season stress

Click on the pic below to play:
The game is a tower defense style game. We have done a few of these for different clients. This one is very different though, and I hope it will give those of us, who are sick of all the partisan bickering, a chance to take out our aggression out on the imaginary political party of your choice.
I got to do the caricatures in the game. Here they are a little larger than you will see them in the game. I had a lot of fun doing these(click on the images to enlarge):

We are trying to see how viral we can make this go...so please, if you like the game, send it around the world to your family, friends, and co-workers; and help us, help those that are having the political season blahs.

New Cartoon: "Cup o' Democracy"

2008-10-21T19:52:00.000-07:00

So I finally finished another Captain Capitalism cartoon. It has been over a year, and it does not pick up where we last left our hero…but it does have a timely theme, and new designs:

Click here to check it out:

For those of you who have watched the Captain Capitalism cartoon and were confused about the beginning, I made a key, for a non-geeks, to tell you what all of the stuff that is.

The idea is that this is Captain Capitalism’s secret lair. It is kind of a cross between the Bat Cave and Superman’s Fortress of Solitude.

1. The Bat Cave always had other Batman suits in it. These are (L to R) the regular Captain Capitalism suit, a take of Lex Luthors Kryponite Powered Super Suit, a parody of Captain America as USAgent, and a riff on the new Alex Ross Captain America suit.

2. These are some designs stolen straight from a Jim Flora cover(see below) I am a big fan of Flora’s work

3.One of the items always depicted in Bat Cave is a giant penny, It had something to do with the villain, Two Face. In Captain Capitalism’s case, it is a giant Ruble.

4.The Supreme Weed from the story I mentioned yesterday

5.Another item always pictured in the Batcave is a giant Joker card. In Captain Capitalism’s case it is a giant Karl Marx card.

6.Batman has the Batmobile, Captain Capitalism has a Chevelle.

7.This is a robot based on H.E.R.B.I.E, a horrible character from an old Fantastic Four animated series(see below). In this case it is a Commiebot that I had in one of the old scripts, and Captain Capitalism has reprogrammed it to serve him. I picture him saying things like “Da, comrade” in a computery voice.

8.Another thing in both the Fortress of Solitude and the Batcave is big stuffed aliens. I think it might have been a dinosaur in Batman…whatever, this is a stuffed Martian Kossak. If that seems odd...it is.

9.Superman had a city from Krypton, in a bottle. The Bottled City of Kandor. This is the bottled city of St. Petersberg.

10.I don’t know exactly what this is, except that it is a Jack Kirby design that was badass of a communist robot that takes over the world that sounded straight out of Captain Capitalism so I swiped it and hid it in the background.

11.I seem to have skipped eleven in my key…

12.Batman and Superman both have fancy computer systems. Captain Capitalism is having problems in the current economy. Unfortunately you don’t see it in the cartoon, because it is behind him, but there is a Commodore 64, and several Apple IIe computers that make up his system. On the screen marked 12, is the open screen from a Commodore 64.

13.This is an old IBM open screen from the 80s

14.These are all Windows 95 “Blue Screens of Death”

15.This is part of the classic game Oregon trail…I am that old.

16.Where in the World is Carmen San Diego

17.Space Invaders

18.Castle Wolfenstein

19.Kings Quest

20.Oregon Trail, again

21.Pong

22.More Jim Flora swipes

23.This is a machine I saw in a Jack Kirby sketch of Reed Richards, Jack Kirby was not just the king of comics, but the king of fantastical machinery. I would buy more tech gear if they would start designing it like Kirby drawings.

This cartoon is not exactly what I originally invented. I had to change the dialogue up a lot to make it work. The original script made references to candidates that by the time I was working on the cartoon were out of the picture. There were Clinton gags. The bench press thing was expanded and had the multiple candidates of both parties vs. older presidents.

I got a little behind on making it, and had to take all of that out in an attempt to make it feel more “timeless” in case something else changes. I kind of felt like I rushed it, but I am pretty pleased with how it turned out.

And for those of you who have been on previous cartoons of mine's message boards, who are looking for an actual statement about Capitalism, Socialism, or find some hidden message…I promise you there is nothing there. There is no serious statement, endorsement, or message.

One thing I do worry about it people misinterpreting the line, “What they will look like on currency.” While working on the cartoon, I heard that Barrack Obama said something to the effect of “I don’t look like the people on currency,” but I was already halfway into making the cartoon at that point. And I think either Senator Obama or Senator McCain will look just fine on currency. So don’t read into too much into that.

There is nothing hidden in the cartoon, except hopefully my love for Jack Kirby and Jim Flora’s designs and that I read too many comics for somone over 30.

I want to give a “shout out” to Sam Deats and Megan Kluck who animated dialogue, made some backgrounds and helped me put the cartoon together. They really helped me out a ton. They are great people, who gave me some of their free time, which I know is really valuable. I could not have gotten this even close to done in time for the election without their help.

Hope you enjoy the cartoon.

I should be putting out a link for a game that Powerhouse made tomorrow.

Oldies but... something...

2008-10-20T18:47:00.000-07:00

Hopefully I will be putting up a new cartoon tomorrow. So, while I have frames exporting and things rendering, I thought I would write a blog entry.

First off, while making this cartoon, I found some old images from the year 2000. In the new cartoon I tried to revise the look of the character, and the cartoon. I also sprinkled the background of the cartoon with items and characters from cartoons I wrote, but have not, nor probably ever will, have the opportunity to make. Here are a few old parts from the 2000 Captain Capitalism website:

The Supreme Weed is a parody of the Kree's "Supreme Intelligence" in Marvel comics. In a 6 part cartoon, a plant-like-alien-race tries to take over the world and get rid of Earth's mammals by making them lazy stoners. This was years before, and much funnier (though I guess that is a matter of opinion) than "The Happening." The Supreme Weed makes an appearance in the BG of the new cartoon.

One Captain Capitalism script had Captain Capitalism attending the annual "Captain's" meeting, where the Captains from every nation on earth and others (Captain and Tenille, Captain Crunch etc) meet for a convention. Some of the smaller time Captains get jealous and use the convention for revenge...

Commiectus is the main villan on the Nightmare of a Red Christmas series of 6 cartoons. I made the first one (see here), but quit. Hopefully, I can revisit one day. Anway the cartoon reveals that communists are actually Martians ("Red Menace from the Red Planet", get it?). In Captain Capitalism, everything that is not American tends to be a threat from an Intergalactic race hell bent on conquering Earth. Martians use communism to make society dependent on government, then come and then reveal themselves as an alien race when it is all too late. There are many things in the new cartoon that were parts I made for these cartoons so long ago.

I don't want to sound unhappy with the cartoon, but I wish I had more time. There are a lot of things I would like to fix and change, but this cartoon is about presidential politics...so I really need to release it tomorrow. I guess you could polish something forever.

This is not the funniest cartoon I have ever created, but I really enjoyed working on the designs on this one. This is the first cartoon I have done since redesigning Captain Capitalism (with a little help from Stephen Silver). I probably spent too much time playing with fun design, and color, and making lines straight for HD (yes this cartoon is in HD) then had to rush through the animation etc. Oh, well. Next time.

Look forward to showing it all to you tomorrow!

San Diego Comic Con 2008

2008-07-28T21:24:00.000-07:00

I just got back from the San Diego comic con. I have been to a few comic cons to show some animation before, but never to the big daddy of them all. It was quite an experience.

I took lots of photos of folks of the nerd herds (I am including myself in those numbers), but my buddy Brandon was there. So you should check out his photos from the event. By the by, a lot these photos are his. Used without permission. Send me a cease-and-desist, sir.

On the flight to San Diego I met other pilgrims making the sojourn. I befriended an Austin police officer, who was pal of the Stan Lee "Who Wants to be a Superhero," winner The Defuser. The Defuser is also an Austin cop. Before we even left the ground, I was already in the presence of superheroes.

The aforementioned police officer was kind enough to give me a ride to my hotel. I got my "office away from the office" setup at the hotel, then went to the con, met up with Brandon, and walked around. It was extremely packed, an estimated 150,000 attended over the weekend. Lines I was standing in played a bizarre version of Red-Rover, as people tried to "come over" to booths on the other side of you. It was very similar to the childhood game you might remember from your playground days. It smelled a bit different though.

Comic Con is a great reminder of the good folks in our industry. I met the guys from Penny Arcade. Powerhouse does the 2d animatic cinematics for the PC/MAC/XBOX videogame based on their web comic. I found Steve Silver's booth to say hello, and also bumped into Tom Fulp who runs Newgrounds. After talking a bit with William Vaughan about his new Tofu the Vegan Zombie toy for a bit, I went out for some drinks with the great folks from Hothead Games. We talked about what was being done on the next installment of the Penny Arcade game. Due to the time change it felt like 3am when I finally got back to my hotel.

The next morning I bumped into Thom Zahler, the creator of Love and Capes that we did some animation work with earlier this year. I also stopped back by Stephen Silver's booth and got a caricature while chatting.

Over my stay at the con, I tried several times to catch up with buddy Mike Daubert who was always busy pimping the video game that he and the crew at Sony having been working hard on: DC Universe Online.

I can't blame him for being so proud and trying to spread the word. It looks pretty nice. We were not able to talk until late on Friday night.

Other exciting parts of Thursday included meeting:

Mr. Frank Cho, who is a lot of fun.

Mr. Randy Couture, who by his mere prescence made me as nervous as I look above.

Mr. Sean "Cheeks" Galloway, the brilliant character designer behind the new Spiderman series.

I also finally got to meet Art Balthazaar and Franco, the guys behind Patrick the Wolfboy. We made a Patrick mini-pilot earlier this year and it was nice to meet in person.

I also bumped into someone, who might resemble someone in a cartoon I made.

After a long day at the con, Brandon and I made it back to the hotel and I caught up on some work, writing e-mails and working on a 8-bit Flash game that we are producing. I have to admit, being able to keep the sliding door open at night is a pretty cool thing. Though I will take the hot Texas weather over earthquakes.

On Friday, I skipped the con for the morning and went and met with Sony Online, who we are working with. I had a lot of fun with these guys, and we went to have sushi rolls at a place that plays Reggae. Sounds strange, but "rolls and Reggae" go well together.

I went back to the con, then went and had dinner with some producers and a creator on a pilot the studio is starting on. It went really well, and I wish I could share my enthusiam for this project, but it is being kept tightly under wraps for now. After dinner I went to the Sony Online party which had various celebrities around the event. I saw Zac Efron from High School musical, I think. Wish my niece was there.

I came back late on Saturday, after some flight delays, in time to catch a late dinner for my wife's birthday. We spent the rest of the weekend helping Mandy's mom move from Houston to Austin.

"The con" is a wonderful thing. It is complete sensory overload and drains you. You become a stumbling zombie bathed in the light of giant screen projectors and comic creators turned carnival barkers. At the same time it is pure inspiration. It is invigorating, but it can make you feel lazy. It certainly made me want to get to work on some side-projects. Hopefully I will get more chances in the next few months to do that. Stay tuned for the Animation Budget research project this week.

Freedom is my muse

2008-07-07T15:19:00.000-07:00

This picture is quite possibly the best picture that my buddy, Brandon Bollom, has ever taken. Which is saying something, because Brandon is currently getting his "takin' picktures" doctorate at the University of Texas. The photo is the inside of a Dunkin Donuts bag that I passed to him when I picked him up on July 4th.

The picture is so American, full of hidden potential, fat, patriotism and deliciousness. I want to make it my desktop. By the way all the photos in this blog entry, besides the desk shot are taken by Brandon.

Sorry for the blog silence. I have spent several weekends out of town for various family functions.

Also, recently, I was setting up some of our groovy new Cintiq/traditional animation discs at the studio...

The arms that hold the monitors have joints that you can adjust with a hex key. These joints have a plastic cover that you snap off to get to the hex bolt. I could'nt get the plastic part of, so I tried to pry it open with a knife. Long story short: me not coordinated, knife too sharp, me slip and open thumb instead of hex bolt, me raise the number of stitches I have gotten in the past 3 weeks to 12.

The thumb injury kind of set me back a couple of weeks from both my classes and side projects.

Steve Parker, former Vizlab alumn, and former Powerhouser came to visit this last weekend. Steve works for Mr. George Lucas in San Francisco these days, as a technical director on the Clone Wars. Though I miss Steve being in Texas, I am really happy with all that he has accomplished.

It was good to hang out with him again, especially on the July 4th weekend.

We had an uber-American 4th. Complete with fireworks, firearms, firing up the grill, video games, and cowboy hats, (pictured respectively below.)

It was topped off with "Cop Stop" ice-cream at Amy's. This is a coffee and donut ice-cream that would make Captain Capitalism proud.

The picture below is what happens when 3 former AV club types get together with their wives to watch fireworks. Brandon had a mini tripod (gorilla-pod?), and a time delay on his aperture, so we tried a long shot to let more light in, and also shot flashes off from our other camera to light the scene. Looks like a really bad album cover.

One thing that has come up that has me a little worried is this story about Alabama . Apparently the country super-group that I have been making a cartoon about, (though the cartoon is parody and a labor of love), might be a tad litigious.

Yikes.

In other news, Krishna Jain finished the flash work of the Animation Budget History project I have been working on for a while. He actually finished it several weeks ago. I hope to put that up on the blog this week with a more detailed explanation, so stay tuned.

Captain Capitalism on Comedy Central

2008-05-12T11:46:00.000-07:00

Things have been crazy busy lately. I took that from the chapter on "6 approved opening sentences to a blog," in my blogging book. It is very helpful.

I am way behind on the cartoons I wanted to make at home this year, but I am back to plodding along on the animatic this week.

I was out of town the last couple weekends for Mother's Day et al, and then last week I was getting "Piggybank Pinko" ready for TV. Atomfilms, who originally hosted the cartoon its first week out is making a "collection of shorts" show on Comedy Central sometime in the near future, and wanted to use the cartoon in the show. I had to do a lot of work just to export the piece for TV. For you Flash folks, I had all the audio buried in movieclips, as opposed to being on the main timeline. Ah, youth. It is hard for me to watch these older cartoons sometimes, I have done so much work on the design since then, and don't really have animation to show for it. I will let folks know here when that is going to run.

You can still watch the cartoon here.
The cartoon kind of has a new life thanks to the Tax rebate:

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/14407
http://www.neatorama.com/2008/04/25/captain-capitalism-on-why-saving-is-bad-for-america/#comments

Now, while I wasnt trying to prognosticate the current recesssion and relief plan when I wrote the cartoon in 2005; I have to say, my silly little cartoon works better now. So, thank you housing bubble.

Now go spend your tax rebate on some Captain Capitalism merchandise. I am promise not to save any of the profits.

Alabama costumes and choco-bacon

2008-04-28T11:00:00.001-07:00

Here are some sketches of the Alabama boys, the sketches are rough, and just to get ideas for the clothes. The outfits are loosely based on a combo of S.H.I.E.L.D agents and Starwars.

This week I am hoping to start animating some scenes of this exercise in sillyness.

This weekend Mandy and I went to see Carmen at the Austin Lyric Opera. I have always really liked the music in Carmen, but as I was watching the story unfold it suddenly hit me that Opera is very much like Anime cartoons. In its storytelling, it tends to focus on the "pretty things" and accentuating interesting minor details, it does not focus or even really concern itself much with plot. I would say that does not work well for me, but since I am working on a cartoon about 80's country music stars in space... I can't say too much.

Mandy and I also went to Austin's Dragon Boat races on Saturday with our friends, Brandon and his wife Becky. If you live in the area you should check it out. Freescale and Motorola and various other companies with Asian roots race Dragon Boats on LadyBird Lake, and they have various other cultural exhibits.

Also, in our travels this weekend we hit a candy store that had Chocolate Covered Bacon. Normally, I am open to all kinds of strange cuisine, but this sounded nasty. But Brandon dared me, and I have low self-esteem apparently. I would like to say it was not what you would expect, but it was. Brandon tried some too...

Stupid Hippies

2008-04-21T13:14:00.000-07:00

This picture was taken at a rally in San Francisco protesting the Beijing Olympics:

It makes me laugh and cry at the same time.

Oak Ridge Boys designs

2008-04-18T11:02:00.000-07:00

Wherever I go, people ask me the same question... I'll be at the Sanrio store, looking at the latest Hello Kitty colored pencils or trying to enjoy a nice quiet meal at Chick-Fil-A, and sure enough some member of the "public" will come up to me an ask:

"Brad, if the Oak Ridge Boys were animated intergalatic pirates, with costumes lightly based on obscure Marvel comics characters and 80's films...what would they look like?"

Well, you can all finally leave me alone now.

Their baby is American Made. Born and bred in the USA. From her silky long hair, to her sexy long legs. Their baby is American Made.

I have a dream...

2008-04-03T10:18:00.000-07:00

This is something I have been thinking about recently.

There needs to be a non-Youtube/Atomfilms etc. place for animators to post Flash and FLV versions of cartoon and also Flash games that uses the "micro-payment" method that many online games are using now, and that Itunes uses.

The way it would work is like this; You sign up, enter your credit card/paypal info when you join, and each time you watch a full cartoon you put in your log-in and pay 25-50cents...like a little ticket to see the film.

You could watch some Flash games and cartoons for free, and watch snippets of them all for "style research." This might keep people coming around. Animation companies can put their commercials and reels up for free, if they have client permission also. Animators could link to their blogs and show the production process, and through their blogs link to merchandising etc.

Contests/Battles could be hosted by the site, like "create an animation about X," and the site needs to be owned/managed/figure-headed by someone with a name in animation so they could use their name and wiles to try to get more popular cartoonists to participate, attracting a larger audience.

Most of the time sites like this have not worked because of a lack of content or exploitation of the creator and their intellectual property rights, or not having enough of a community to keep new and quality content to attract folks to pay for it.

It needs to be run by a group that loves, will nuture, and look out for the creator.

I know there are many animators who are yearning to be free from the barrage of unfair online contests. I know artists who are distraught by sites that host their hardwork, and seem to only have the goal of generating overly harsh comments while the artist makes no profit. And I know artists who outside of their jobs only have so much time, so they are failing at generating content, simply because you have to do so much more than just create cartoons- to put cartoons up and to generate interest; let alone profit.

I think the keys would be:
-Artists keep their rights, 100%. The site just gets the right to display it for a certain term and generate the revenue. That way if the artist is smart he wont put the cartoon up anywhere else for free...but keeps the rights, and maybe be able to sell it later.
-The site can reject content and will have quality and content standards.
-revenue is split 50-50 on every cent, from the first one that is made
-people can rate, and leave comments- but that will not be the focus of the site. The cartoons will be the focus, not the "community"
-the page will put ads up on the site, but not in the cartoons, or before the cartoons...more like banners etc. Owners of site get all revenue from ads except in the below:
-owners of site will try to find folks to sponsor contests and cartoons, to make John K's dream of sponsored shows come true.

This might sound like Newgrounds to some, but it is different. First of all Newgrounds is all free, and while I love Tom and the fine folks at Newgrounds, it focuses on the community, and the rating, and the average content is not at the level I am thinking here. I am thinking that the owners of this site would look at submissions first, and try to keep things less than X rated, and at a certain quality level.

The dream would be that after a a term in which money is generated, the directors of the site could use capital to see certain creators to make a cartoon for the site, which since they helped sponsor would be viewable at a reduced rate. Companies like Adobe could sponsor contests, where the prize could be a full copy of Flash...and everybody uses a 30-day trial to make the animations. etc.

At one point I thought Cartoon Retro, with Lily and Finch, Bob Gomp, Rufus and Horny, and Forestland might be the Moses to lead us to the promised land...but although I still pay my $5 per month, I have not seen any animation. I don't know what happened there. Not dissing on anyone, just saying I thought it was a good idea...and this kind of expands on that.

Any talented people or venture capitalists out there that want to help me make this happen?

Deat's Feats

2008-04-01T20:39:00.000-07:00

Sam Deats , Powerhouse's resident Photoshop ninja and all around happy fella did this nifty drawing of Captain Capitalism. Pretty awesome, huh?

7 years

2008-03-26T11:40:00.000-07:00

In other news, on April Fool's Day, Powerhouse will celebrate it’s 7th Anniversary. Pretty hard to imagine it has been that long since Bruce, Frank and I signed the "doing business as" papers at the courthouse.

Here are the 3 of us, back in 2001 at our first office:
Hehe…tools.

Here we are now...

And here is the new 2008 crew. We have come a long way.

Happy Anniversary everybody! Thanks to everyone for making it a great 7 years! Here's to 7 more!

Animaticizing

2008-03-26T11:28:00.000-07:00

I don’t have a lot of cartoon stuff to post still. I have been working hard on the Alabama in Space storyboards/animatic, but don’t have a lot of “post-able” images. I am kind of going overboard on the animatic. This is because I know the final cartoon won’t have a ton of animation. Making animated cartoons, in your spare time, by yourself does not really allow for a lot of animation; that is if you want to have any kind of life, or don’t want your wife to leave you. Also, I would rather make a few quick cartoons per year than some magnum opus of animation. I probably only get an hour-or-so per day to work on these silly cartoons, if I am lucky. If I am going to accomplish I have to cut some corners.

Since the cartoons won’t have awesome animation, I am concentrating on layouts and beats in the animatic. I am doing boards really rough, and trying to apply a lot of thought to the layout. I am using the Spumco layout notes and Brad Bird’s King of the Hill notes a lot. I have also been looking at Will Eisner’s books on comics, and have been looking at a lot of comic cover art to get really over the top dynamic layouts. This cartoon’s concept is so silly that I think it makes it even funnier to put this much thought into such a stupid concept. Considering the subject manner making dynamic layouts is pretty ludicrous.

Since I have no images, here are some photos:

Here’s me in the boxing class that I did the caricatures of the teacher for:

This photo was taken by the very talented Ms. Licarone:

Here are some pics of a trip I made with Mandy to a petting zoo recently in Johnson City.

Business Busy-ness

2008-03-03T20:42:00.000-08:00

Hello folks,

Things have been extremely busy. Work is hopping. I have spent the past several weekends setting up computers for new hires at Powerhouse. I also have had to work a bit at nights on some things that have kept me from Captain Capitalism and Alabama in Space. At the New Year, I made a schedule to complete 4 cartoons this year. I am way behind on that schedule. Don't get me wrong though, all of this is a good thing, but my personal stuff had to be put on hold a little, but I think I can get back on track.

Some other things the Graeber's that we have been up to, in the meantime:

My wife has been working for the Obama campaign, so we went to one of his rallies the other day.

The business busy-ness has cut into my excercise program. I will be going back to boxing for the first time in the past month this week. But I have had time to do a few sketches of Bruce Acuna, the proprietor of "Bruce's KO Boxing." Bruce hosted a boxing event in Austin we went to a few weeks ago, he is a fantastic boxing coach and trainer. He is also a living breathing caricature, very reminiscent of a cross between George Liquor and Burgess Meredith in Rocky:

I hope to keep working on getting a better likeness, and then clean-up some sketches and making a nice color caricature of Bruce. I will probably drop it anonymously at his gym, and run like hell...

I also got a chance to meet one of my best friend's daughter for the first time. My friend Garland's wife, Jenny, was down from Minnesota with their daughter Tate.

She is a beautiful little girl, and was great seeing Jenny and her mom, and meeting Tate.

I am working on a project at work that has givien me the chance to do some caricatures of Obama and McCain:

When the piece is done, I'll post a link.

That is all for now folks...see ya soon

Trip to New York

2008-02-05T20:03:00.000-08:00

You'll have to excuse this posting. One of the great things about having a blog is being able to write about trips, so that you can come back and look at them later and not forget what happened.

But before I get to that, there is some Captain Capitalism news. I have been talking to some folks about a show that features web shorts for Comedy Central. They are interested in running "Piggybank Pinko" on the show. So stay tuned...

This past weekend, Mandy and I went to New York. I had some meetings, and we had some family up there that we had a chance to visit over the weekend.

We flew in on Thursday. We were running late, and to add to the frustration, I was a suspected terrorist. My license was accidentally left in my pants and went through the wash. The slight warp in the license had me sequestered into a plexiglass cube, and patted down. But my frustration went away when we made our way into Jamaica Station to the sweet sounds of someone Hava Nagila on a steel drum. After checking into our hotel we went and saw The Seafarer , a really great play with some fantastic performances. After that we took a cab and had an amazing meal at Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles.

On Friday, I went and had some meetings and spent some time working on a bid with Powerhouse's New York agent, Mike Mendelsohn. I met a cousin who recently moved to the city for lunch and then returned to do some work. That night we went to "Il Cortile" which was probably the best meal I have had in little Italy. We had read about it in an article about the Sopranos, where the restaurant was said to be where the cast would have a party for cast members when they were "whacked" from the show.

On Saturday morning, we went for a run in Central Park. I over did it a bit and suffered shin splints the rest of the weekend. After running we limped arount the Met. I bumped into Washington Crossing the Delaware, while I was there...which was suprisingly huge.

That afternoon we went and saw David Pinter's The Homecoming, which starred TV's Swearengen and Lenny. It was a bizarre play, but a lot of fun with some really great acting.

On Sunday, we went to the gym and ran while watching Meet the Press and the other Sunday talk shows. Afterwards, we headed into Brooklyn and had some great soul food at Mitchell's.

We came back to the city to watch the Super Bowl at Time Out. This was probably the highlight of the trip. Sitting in a room of crazed Giant's fans in one of the best football games I have seen. When the game was over the city erupted.

We took the subway into Times Square to watch to be a part of any riots, but I did not get a chance to overturn any cars. The po-po was out in force.

On Monday, I had some more meetings. We had lunch at Nobu where we saw Kathleen Turner and George Stephanopolus. It was a decent area for celebrity watching types. While I worked, Mandy got to go to the MOMA and got some great photos for me to be jealous of:

Beat obessesion and Chuck Jones' brilliant longterm salespeople

2008-01-27T19:21:00.000-08:00

I am a little behind on the cartoons I am making. I was supposed to finish one of the four animatics this weekend. I was going to try edit all the sound and draw all the layouts and boards too. I still have not finished all the sound.

One day earlier in the week, I was blog surfing and made a stop at Gabe Swarr's blog. Mr. Swarr is a great Flash director and had posted a short, and the animatic for the short. In the animatic he had a neat little graphic symbol that apparently was being used to keep track of the beat. I had never thought of doing that, and so I made one to use in the animatics I was making. It was a brilliant idea. But I might have become over obsessed with it.

I used to play drums. Recently I have fallen back into playing, not real drums, but the wife and I have been playing Rock Band. When I first saw the game, I kind of scoffed at it. But just like the genius of the Chuck Jones sales people, in the second part of this blog, the folks behind Rock Band knew the Achilles heel of former drummers/consumers my age. Rock band has Rush songs. Tom Sawyer, sir. All drummers in my day tried to talk their bands into playing Tom Sawyer. Not because it was a great song, but because it was all drums.

I might be over doing it, but it has been really fun trying to make the cartoon have a genuine rhythm to it, without making it obvious. I have even gone so far to do time compression on the sound effects and music to make everything land on the beats.

Also this weekend, I got my Chucks Jones figure drawing back from the framer.

10 years ago, on our honeymoon, Mandy and I went to the Chuck Jones gallery in Sante Fe. I spent a good long time in the gallery looking throught drawings, wearing little gloves going through stacks of paper, trying to find something I could afford. I really wanted to purchase this print of figure drawing of Chuck Jones' wife, but being a newly married graduate student, I could only afford a signed copy of Chuck Amuck.

A few days after we got back from the honeymoon, I got a letter from the gallery. Inside the envelope was a note from my childhood hero that congratulated us on our wedding.

There was also a picture of Mr. Jones and his wife, and in what I assumed was a brilliant sales tactic; the picture was taken in front of the figure drawing the sale person knew I wanted so badly.

It took 10 years, but apparently it worked. Mandy got the drawing for me for our anniversary. And it now hangs downstairs.

Orignality and the superabundance of content.

2008-01-12T09:14:00.001-08:00

This week I wrote a new Captain Capitalism script about shaving. I was shaving in the shower, and had the idea. My goal this year is to make 4 internet cartoons, and this idea is only about a page, written out, and only about 10 layouts. It should be pretty quick to make and I think it is kind of funny.

When I was telling my focus group, (the four fine folks who work in the same room at Powerhouse), one of them said that though my take was different that it reminded her of an SNL skit.

I am not one of those people who think that everything under the sun has been done. But the superabundance of media and the saturation of quickly passing, quickly produced, pieces has made a bit harder to come up with something completely new. Don't get me wrong, I believe there are wonderful unique and innovative ideas out there to be found. I don't always have them.

For example, a while back I wrote a script about a kid who could see dead people for a cartoon. Not terribly original I know. But unlike in "Sixth Sense" the kid who could see dead people, used his abilities to solve mysteries and help ghosts that haunted places move into the light. Futhermore, in this cartoon the two ghosts who were in every episode helping the kid were Martin Van Buren and Freddie Mercury.

When I was telling one of the guys at work about the cartoon, I was trying to the gags with the ghost of Freddie Mercury. And he was laughing and said, "Oh like Cromartie High School."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeOm-YvU9iM

I couldn't believe it. There was another cartoon that had been produced, with an irreverant take on Freddie Mercury.

What really was strange is that I had written the piece because I was frustrated, because I had just abandoned a Captain Capitalism cartoon. One night I was working on the CC cartoon and watching South Park. My cartoon was kind of a response to the Danish editorial cartoons fiasco. They used a punch line similar to the one that ended my piece. And that was that.

Now I know Captain Capitalism himself, is not necessarily unique. There are over-the-top over musculized characters in many places. From Mad Magazine's Super-Duperman, The Tick, Megaton Man, etc etc. And there are also several tongue-in-cheek uber-right wing characters.

But I stopped doing more current topic cartoons with the character because shows like South Park, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report will almost always beat you to a topic with their teams of writers, daily productions, and needs to fill shows. Come to think of it, I should have plowed out several cartoons during the writer's strike.

Out of the 30 or so Captain Capitalism scripts I have probably started working on 5 of the those cartoons, then stopped working on because of similar situations. Working in my spare time, it is difficult to get the ideas out in time to either beat someone to the punch or keep it truly topical.

In fact, the "To bleep or not to bleep cartoon" was done when Dick Cheney cussed on the Senate Floor. He had told Patrick Leahey to do something that is not anatomically possible. By the time I finished the cartoon, that story was long gone from the media cycle...luckily for me, Cheney was still very much a part of the news. But I think most people never realized that that cartoon was directly referencing that incident.

But even with that cartoon, I caught some slack from people who post critiques on sites like Atomfilms, Newgrounds, and Youtube about that cartoon being a rip of a George Carlin routine. I didn't hear the routine, until after the cartoon was out. To be honest, other than them both listing cuss words, I don't see it.

Anyway, I guess the point to this rambling overly-defensive post is I am going to do the shaving cartoon anyway. I have not seen the skit. I am not ripping it off. I am not going to look it up to see the similarities. I am just going to do it, and see what happens.

Here are some images from what I have been doing lately. Here is a kayout sketch from the shaving cartoon. The fella is kind of based on my brother-in-law, Sean, who is currently staying with us for a few weeks:

and another sketch of the smirky shaving models in your standard shaving commercials:

I also went to a figure drawing class for the first time in a couple years. Man am I rusty as hell. Here are a couple gesture sketches:

The wife and I took a break from working to go kayaking on Ladybird Lake. The wife snapped these shots. The turtle was huge, though you can't tell by the lack of context clues. The water was very choppy and cold, but it was nice to be outside.

2008 Resolutions

2008-01-06T12:03:00.000-08:00

In the spirit of the New Year, I am going to skip the obligatory apologies for not posting in a while...It is a 2008, and I am full of vim and vigor. I am going to do my best to actual create a few Captain Capitalism cartoons this year, as well as finish my first episode of "Alabama in Space."

I have already started on some storyboards and animatic and should have some new drawings to share for the few folks who visit this site.

I got one of those Franklin-Covey goal oriented planners for Christmas. Normally, I would be the first to dismiss such a cheesy thing. I am not necessarily a "7 Habits of Colored Parachutes and Moved Cheese," kind of guy. But I went through the exercises in the book with Internet cartoons in mind, and I guess we will see if it works out.

Another project that I have been working on recently is a spreadsheet that tracks the amount of money spent per foot on various animation projects throughout time, adjusted for inflation. I must say it is a Captain Capitalism way to look at the state of our industry. The sheet include lots of projects, from early Fleischer shorts to current Flash based TV programs. I have also gone through a lot of salaries of various animators and directors throughout their careers. In a weird way, it has been inspiring. I have had some great help from folks like Cold Hard Flash's Aaron Simpson and and Cartoon Brew's Amid Amidi. I have just about finished the research and am just trying to figure out the best way to organize the information for people to view online, and organize some thoughts about it.

As I write this I am little blog "taking a break" from an online defensive driving course. On Christmas, while driving back from Houston, two hours from my 32nd birthday, I got a speeding ticket. It was my first ticket in many years. I elected to do defensive driving to dismiss the ticket. The course I am doing was produced in Flash. I think it is actually a program that our studio made a bid on at one point. Apparently, they went with an overseas studio. One clue to this is they have an road-killed armadillo character that looks like a warthog.

Apparently, I skipped some chapter of Inferno back in undergraduate school because I was not aware of this part of the concentric circles of hell. In this portion of the dark realm, Flash animators who travel 11 mph above posted speeds are condemned to watch 300+ minutes of the worst Flash animation ever produced.

The punishment does not fit the crime. I don't think I will ever speed again. I am actually considering never driving again.

In order for this not to be a purely textual post, here are some cakes.

The guys at the office got me for my birthday:

And another cake that the fine folks at Bakerman's made for a Powerhouse party:

I am going to try my best to post weekly in 2008, so stay tuned.

Dress like Frank Day and Flight of the Conchords sketch

2007-11-05T20:53:00.001-08:00

At Powerhouse Animation Studios, instead of celebrating Halloween, we celebrate "Dress Like Frank Day."

Here is the animation director and his dopplegangers. See if you can spot the original:

I have been working (some) on the latest idiotic cartoon idea more recently. Trying to make it in HD, just because of how incredibly silly that would be. It has been a bit difficult. After Flash crashed for the 100th time tonight, I just did a quick Cintiq sketch of a couple of Kiwis...

Conway Twiki

2007-10-10T20:29:00.000-07:00

Click to enlarge. Jeremy came up with this. Thanks Mr. Sternberg.

sketches

2007-10-01T21:26:00.000-07:00

Yep. Sketches.

California trip

2007-09-09T20:15:00.000-07:00

Apparently, this has become more a travelogue-blog and less of a blog about Captain Capitalism or any other projects. I have put Captain Capitalism on the shelf for a little while. Not permanently, but I am taking a bit of a break. I got frustrated with certain things, mainly trying to find some sort of revenue stream to make working on the cartoons worthwhile. I took some time to just write some new scripts. I got some interest, but nothing really panned out the way I wanted it to. I realized I was spending more time fooling with that stuff than actually making the cartoons, which was the fun part. Since, Captain Capitalism was something I was for fun, I decided it was time to take a rest before all of the fun was sucked out of it.

Web cartoons never really took off. At least not like I thought they would. Very few have found the key to doing ongoing series that are produced regularly, with good quality that generate enough revenue to not work yourself to death.

I am also still taking going to kung-fu 3-4 times per week, and started a boxing class about 12 weeks ago. I go to the classes with Jason Williams, a fellow animator at Powerhouse. I am getting older, and these classes wipe me out most nights.

I did start another project though recently. As I develop it more, I will post about it. But until then…

The wife and I just took a week-long vacation to California. It was a blast, though I am very glad to be back home in Austin.

SAN FRANCISCO
Our first stop was San Francisco. We stayed with former Vizlab classmate, fellow Zippity employee, and former-fellow Powerhouser, Stephen Parker and his girlfriend Carrie. Stephen lived with Mandy and I for a while in Austin. He is one of my favorite people on the planet. That being said, I have not seen the bastard in about 3 years.

Our first morning in town, Mandy and I went and explored Chinatown.

After that we crossed the Golden Gate to meet Steve.

Steve works for this guy named George Lucas who must be the biggest dork ever. He named his place Skywalker Ranch and has things like Yoda statues everywhere.

Skywalker Ranch was pretty amazing. We couldn't actually go up to Steve’s office, because they are all secret squirrel about the project he is working on, but it was a pretty breath taking place to work.

There was a Klimt in a break room, just like the two we have in the Powerhouse breakroom. Great minds, y'know.

And other things I could not take pictures of…

The next day we walked through Golden Gate park and the Haight-Ashbury area. There was a carnivorous plant exhibit at the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park.
We took a quick tour of the DeYoung art museum.We also got to see Mandy’s brother, Sean, who lives in San Francisco while he attends graduate school at Berkeley. That night Sean and his girlfriend Seemay met us all for Tapas at Picaro.

We had a lot of fun in San Francisco, it was great seeing Steve, Carrie, Sean and Seemay. On Sunday morning we all went to go have Dim Sum around the corner from Steve’s and then Mandy and I left to go spend a couple nights in Carmel.

CARMEL
In Carmel, Mandy and I stayed at the Quail Lodge, which was quite nice. Mandy found an amazing deal on the Internet that made it affordable.

While in Carmel we went to beach. Mandy attempted to put her feet in the water, but rushed out because the water was ice cold.
The animals at the beach put on a show for us one night, Dolphins were jumping in the ocean doing flips while some sea otters banged open clams on their chest.

There are some neat shops in Carmel, including a shop that had original Gil Elvgren paintings and both of Clint Eastwood’s restaurants.

Probably the most interesting establishment we went into was Sade’s, a small bar in Carmel. We stopped by to get a quick drink but ended up staying to hear the proprietor, an 84 year old gentleman named Frank, hold court. Frank told stories and picked on the patrons, including Mandy and I, all while drinking water and smoking. Frank thought I was in the service, because of the amount of times I say, sir. When I told him I made cartoons he told a story about how he used to draw cartoons of his superiors while he was in the service, nicely tying everything together. He kept telling Mandy how pretty she was, until he found out she was an attorney, then he told everyone in the bar to stop talking or she would sue everybody. I mentioned that he was smoking because seeing someone smoke in a bar in California is very rare these days. When he left we asked the night bar maid why he was allowed to smoke and she said that he had a special deal with the local police, and that they actually had a last call for cigarettes one hour after Frank leaves the bar every night.

It is possible that Mandy and I were the youngest couple to visit Carmel over the labor day weekend. It is a pretty cool place though, it is neat to be able to take a hike and see a deer and seals within 3 mins of each other.

After a couple relaxing days we had seen about all that I needed and we headed down the PCH to Santa Barbara.

SANTA BARBARA
The drive from Carmel from Santa Barbara was beautiful, but also a bit scary. There are many hair-pin turns and thousand foot drop offs into the ocean with no guard rails. I don’t think Mandy would willingly do it again.

Along the way we stopped in Big Sur and took a hike at the Julia Pfieffer Burns State park. We also stopped at Nepenthe, which had an amazing view, and is on the sight of a cabin that Orson Welles bought for Rita Hayworth.
We also took a driving break at a Seal Elephant preserve.
We also stopped in Solvang, a cute little Dutch town, and bought some trinkets for our parents. It was a pretty busy day.
Santa Barbara was nice. There was a giant farmer’s market taking place when we arrived. We walked around the area and ended up eating at a Seafood restaurant at the end of a pier. Mandy and I wrote a song to our dinner.
(to the tune of Elton John’s "Yellow Brick Road")
So Goodbye Barnacle Joe,
My friend that’s a rough way to go
You sure tasted great
Sitting there on my plate
Boiled alive in a pot,
I really liked you a lot
But we finally found a good restaurant
So goodbye to barnacle Joe- oe oe oe
Boo hoo hoo hoo hoo
Boo hoo hooooo Joe!
(interpretive dance must be included, with raising arms, into weeping, ending in clenched fist with dying flower move)

LOS ANGELES
We drove straight from our hotel in Santa Barbara to the Secret Stash in Westwood. The Stash is one of Kevin Smith’s comic book stores, it houses one of the Arcade machines that we built back in 2001. The unimpressed clerk pointed me to the machine, which is apparently not functioning right now.

I bought some souvenirs for friends, then we drove around a bit more, trying to kill time before our check-in time at the hotel.

We hit another comic book store, while out and about, Golden Apple. Mos Def was in the store buying his kid some comics and action figures.

We walked from Golden Apple to Pink’s Hotdogs. Mandy asked if I thought a certain hotdog would be too big, I told her it would not be. I was wrong.

After eating and doing a little more shopping, we checked into Maison 140 in Beverly Hills. I was disappointed that Brenda, Brandon and Dylan were not around but I guess they were hanging at the Peach Pit.

After Mandy and I relaxed for a bit, we headed to Hollywood Blvd. to eat at Geisha House. Despite having stayed across the street at the Roosevelt a few times, we had never taken cheesy photos of our hands in the imprints at Graumman’s before, so we went and did that. I apparently do not have large enough hands to ever attain any form of celebrity…oh well.

The next morning I went and had breakfast with Chris Bailey. Chris is currently animation director on Alvin & The Chipmunks, but has directed the animation on many great projects; like the Clerks Animated Series, Runaway Brain, and Kim Possible. Chris is a really nice guy and it was a blast to listen to him tell stories and talk about some of his projects. We are doing Chris’s new website at Powerhouse so we discussed that as well.

After breakfast I made my way to the Endeavour offices in Beverly Hills. After a brief meeting there, I met up with Mandy and we walked around the Beverly Hills shops. The security guards must not have thought we fit in, and followed us around a couple of the shops, so much so that we got uncomfortable and left the area and headed to Santa Monica.

I spent most of my time there at another comic shop, Heigh-di-ho comics. They had a great selection of books and sketchbooks and I picked up a Shane Glines book and Kelsey Mann’s Noir sketchbook. I also spent some time trying to find some comics for my buddy Brandon, and found a couple that he was missing in his close to complete later X-men run.

That night we went out to eat another couple great friends from my days back at the Vizlab Jeremy Sternberg and his wife Cindy. I had forgotten how much I missed these guys.

Jeremy is another one of my favorite people in the world. I had not seen them since they got married, and they make a great couple. We had a good time hanging out with them, and after walking around the area they took us to dinner, they dropped us back off in Beverly Hills.
The next morning Mandy and I spent most of the day relaxing before packing it up for the long trip back to Austin.

So that is it, probably not terribly interesting to the greater Internet populace, but it gave me a chance to do something with all the faboo pictures Mandy took.

I spent the rest of the weekend backing up my old computer, to move everything to a new machine. While doing so I watched "Dragon Tiger Gate," which was awesome.

My old machine is about 7 years old, and on it last leg. Maybe the new, improved and organized machine will inspire me to produce some drawings for the blog here. Until then...

Wisdom teeth, Heroes of Asgard, Mantis

2007-05-02T21:30:00.000-07:00

So I got a pretty bad head infection after having two of my widom teeth removed. I'm still not over it.

I should probably post about some of the project I worked on while I was learning to use the cintiq. I got a copy of a book I loved as a kid off of e-bay, Heroes of Asgard by AE Keary...and started animating Tank Abbott as Thor:

I was having trouble animating Captain Capitalism stuff, so I thought I would learn faster animating something I did not care about and did not have to use.

I should also probably address Captain Capitalism getting named checked in the Cartoon Brew EcoZone/Ripping Friends debacle.

But instead, I am going to take some more Tylenol 3, and post some pictures my wife took when we went kayaking a couple of weeks ago.

Mandy is really into the kayaking on Town Lake here in Austin. It is quite a bit of fun.

These geese attacked us a few minutes after this picture. No shit. I had to beat them off with an oar. I felt ridiculous, but asked some other folks around and apparently this happens all the time.

Also, out of the 300 Mantids that hatched, I have 3 left...this is another story for another blog too, but while I am high on pain killers, thought I would past some of this just to generally confuse people.

Black Belt

2007-04-15T21:17:00.000-07:00

I got my black-belt this weekend. Got a few bruises and a fatlip in the process... But it was a pretty proud moment for me.

UFC and black belt test

2007-04-11T11:50:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of Captain Capitalism posts recently. Things have been very busy.

I found out last week that I have my first black belt test this coming Saturday, so I have had to work a lot of training into my mornings and nights this week.

Over the holiday weekend, while visiting family in Houston, Mandy and I went to the UFC event. We went with our good friends Brandon and Becky Bollom. Brandon is an amazing photographer, we used to work at the newspaper together. He is currently getting his Ph.d at UT here in Austin. Check out some of his work here.

While at the event Brandon took some photos:
I got a photo with world famous "cut man," Jacob "Stitch" Duran.
And Mandy and Becky got their photo with Jiu-Jitsu master, and after this weekend; new UFC light-heavyweight champion of the world, Matt Serra.
In other news, I finally bit the bullet and bought a Wacom Cintiq. Since I have not gotten very far on the next cartoon I am going to go back and try to make this next Captain Capitalism completely paperless.

But first I have to catch up on some other work, I am helping Steve Silver with some web work on a project of his, helping my wife with a website, working on that black-belt, and various other things.

One thing I have been exploring recently is getting a "designer vinyl" toy made of Captain Capitalism. I have been doing a turnaround of CC, on the Cintiq to get used to using it. As this progresses I will post images.

Until then...

Cintiq

2007-04-03T11:39:00.000-07:00

Powerhouse bought a Cintiq last week. It is a thing of beauty. I borrowed it for the weekend and spent most of my time "test driving" it at home.(Here is a shot with John McLaughlin watching over my desk, as I play with Captain Capitalism on the Cintiq.)

I believe this tool will revolutionize things. I know this is not news to anyone in our industry, and I am probably behind the curve on this, but I am looking forward to catching up.

We tested the a Cintiq in 2002 or 2003. Unfortunately, at the time we were a much smaller studio and we were working on Disney's Proud Family at the time. Our contractor wanted pencil on paper drawings, not digital images...so none of us really had a chance to play with the Cintiq, and we had to ship it back before really using it too much.

Currently, several of us use 9x12" Intuos tablets both at home and at the studio. I probably have used them less than most, and get frustrated when trying to work on them paperless at home. The simple fact that the Cintiq can rotate, and you can see where your curves are going, makes a major difference.

It was a bit awkward at first, but by the end of the weekend, there were times that I forgot I was drawing on a monitor, and felt like I was at my animation table inking.

One thing I wish the folks at Flash and Wacom would get together for a pow-wow. I would love to see a plug-in Flash where the amount of pressure you used on the Cintiq corresponded to opacity when doing rough animation. I would also like some more options in Flash for drawing and line smoothing...but I understand the new version might address some of this.

I think I am going to bite the bullet and order one for home and Captain Capitalism use.

Powerhouse turns 6

2007-04-03T11:19:00.000-07:00

Powerhouse Animation Studios, Inc. turned 6 years old the other day. So we went to Buca di Beppo to sit around the "pope table" and celebrate. I passed my camera around the table for some photos: One of my partners, Bruce Tinnin(L) and animator Sam Deats. My other partner, Frank Gabriel and his lovely wife, Leslie.Jennifer Anderson and Jessica Cuellar. Jennifer is, apparently, using her heat-vision.

The rest of the Powerhouse Crew.

Afterwards, some of us headed over to Dave & Busters. My wife kicked a bit butt on the trivia machine:

And Mr. Deats, hit a jack-pot, allowing us to take a Playstation 2 game as our prize.
I think a good time was had by all. Looking forward to next year.

Wrapping up the NY posts

2007-03-27T21:53:00.000-07:00

I have been back from New York for several days, fighting a cold and playing catch up from the trip. But before moving forward on what is new, I wanted to bring some closure to the trip blog before moving forward.

On Tuesday I worked till about 4, had a couple meetings read some contracts and sent some e-mails around. On the way to Mike's office I popped into the MoMA's store and picked up some presents. 1 for Mike Daubert at the Animation Farm and another for my niece, who has a birthday party on the Sunday when I get back to Houston. One of my later meetings got cancelled so I called Mandy and we quickly made our way to the Museum of Natural History.

The Museum is really amazing, but it also somewhat surreal. It could easily also be called The Museum of Goofy Taxidermy. Most of our photos did not turn out due to our cameras inability to take indoor photos.

After the museum, we changed, then made our way to Broadway to check out "Talk Radio," with Liev Schreiber.

The play was excellent. Somehow, Mandy got us front row tickets- dead center. If we would have stood up, we could have slapped the actors. Props fell from the stage right in front of us. I wanted to snag a couple from the floor as souvenirs, but my wife has more scruples than I do.

If you are in New York, and have a chance- go see this play. Liev Schreiber is truly amazing. I listen to a lot of talk radio. My theory is to listen to extremes on both sides of the political spectrum. I listen to Ingram, O'Reilly, Savage, Air America, and 2 of the BBC daily broadcasts, a few of the NPR podcasts, the NY Times podcasts, and a few more when I can.

The script was interesting because it explores the relationship between artist and the unseen audience in this world that has party apparatchiks mixing entertainment with news. After the play, Mandy and I went to Da Tomasso, an Italian Restaurant in Hell's Kitchen that Mike recommended, and I waxed pretentious about the play.

On Wednesday I had several meetings. I had a bad start, taking an uptown train for two stops instead of a downtown train, and barely made it to Mike's office on time. The meetings went well. I had lunch with Mike and his Dad, who ran American Artists before Mike did. We listened to him tell stories of the old days of being an art rep, back when most of the art was done in oils and there were no computers. One of my meetings was at the Comedy Central offices in the Newsweek building, which was a thrill to see. After that meeting Mandy, Mike and I went to have dinner and drinks with a current client at the fancy Dream Hotel around the corner.

Thursday was a bit hectic, we had to leave at 5am on Friday to catch our plane. I had some more meetings, and then left around 5pm to make the train to Brooklyn. In Brooklyn, we met Tom Fulp (middle) and Tim from Newgrounds.

I had never met Tom or Tim before, but it was like we had known each other for a long time. Newgrounds runs the Captain Capitalism cartoons, and Tom has been nice enough to help me out and sponsor the last cartoon. These are simply great folks. I had a blast talking about Flash games, the next version of Flash, the internet market, and many other things. I even got a sneak peek at some of the Newgrounds redesign.

Barrcade itself is a cool place. It is a small bar with great beers that is encircled by old arcade games, which as you may know from the Captain Capitalism arcade machine I made, or the arcade machines we made at Powerhouse, I have soft spot for these things.

The really cool thing is they have a high score board, that people from all around the world come to compete for. The way I was told, people from Austria will come to defend their scores if someone usurps them at Blasteroids.

New York was a blast, but I have gotten a bit behind and some of the things I learned and talked to folks about in New York just added to my to do list. But exciting things are on the way, stay tuned...

Monday in New York

2007-03-20T10:10:00.000-07:00

Monday-

We got up early so I could move Glen's car for the street sweepers. Being from Texas, I don't have much experience driving in snow, much less in a place Manhattan. It was pretty easy, once I made it over the snow bank.

After that I started work e-mailing some folks. I ended up working at the apartment until around 3pm. Mandy who had a lot to do as well, worked across the small table at the apartment with me. We did not have anything to eat all day, so we decided to head out to get a late lunch. We went down to 5th Ave, an area we don't really know well, and explored for a place to eat. Part of the reason we went to this area is so I could pass by Marvel's corporate office. I don't know why I was expecting something else, but Marvel's office is just a non-descript building. No giant Spiderman on the door, no name on the building, no giftshop, or themed restuarant where I could order a Captain America hotdog. Sullen, I left Mandy to shop, around 4pm, and I walked to Mike Mendelsohn's office in Hells Kitchen.

Walking by the MOMA, there was man making animals out of woven weeds, I bought a little Mantis from him:

Mike is one of Powerhouse Animation's agents, and works out of a great little brownstone about a block from Letterman. Mike is a great guy, and he let me look through a bunch of notes we just recieved from a client, and use his phone to talk to Bruce back in Austin. Around 6, Mike needed to leave to make the train back home. I walked with Mike towards his train, then caught up with Mandy.

We walked around, until we made it to Central Park, around FAO Schwartz. Mandy remembered that the restaurant Tao was right around the corner. Tao is a place we have been too several times on trips to NY. It is a sushi bar/restaurant with a giant 4 story Buddha in the middle. Lights that change the tint of the room every few seconds reflect off the giant statue if Siddhartha. The food was great, as usual. For dessert, we had a giant fortune cookie, with 1 side filled with vanilla custard and the other side filled with chocolate mousse.

After Tao, we walked through Central Park. We admired the snow, and went past Tavern on the Green, back to our apartment.

Tighten up lassies, drinking yourself to death, and shootings

2007-03-20T09:47:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, we woke up and went to Balthazaar's for Brunch.

Afterward, we headed down to Chinatown, I geeked out looking through a whole bunch of Praying Mantis Kung-fu books and weapons at one of the shops. There is one great shop down in Chinatown called Pearl River that has lots of Lion Dancing costumes, and great Chinese trinkets and antiques.

We went to a few other shops including the art stores Dick Blick and Pearl Art supply. After playing around the area, we headed down to near the Cooper Union. I applied to go to grad school at the Cooper Union at one point, but ended up going to The Vizlab at Texas A&M instead. My favorite figure drawing professor, Bob Schiffhauer, went to Cooper Union, and I always enjoy walking around this area, imagining what it was like for him as an art student in the area during the peak of the Beat Generation.

Right around the corner from Cooper Union is McSorely's tavern, a great place, and frequent hang out for Powerhouser Jason Williams when he spent 6 months working from Manhattan. Jason told some great stories about the bar, so we stopped in a for a few afternoon ales. The place did not disappoint.

The staff at McSorely's, which has been around since the 1800s, speak with a thick brogue. When you walk into the bar, you get asked bruskly,"Light or Dark," which when answered prompts two beers being plunked down in front of you. Always two beers at a time, at McSorely's, which only takes cash. But since the two beers are only about $4, (cheap even by Texan standards), it is hard to complain. McSorely's has only been renovated twice since the 1850s. Once when plumbing was added, and the other time when they finally started allowing women to frequent the establishment to add a woman's toilet. There are still dusty photos and newspaper clippings all over the walls, some old enough to elect "New York's own Teddy Roosevelt for Vice President"

They take pride in being a "community seating establishment." Two young attractive New York ladied came in and took up one of the few tables, setting some shopping bags in a couple of the chairs. When someone new came in the barkeep barged over to the shocked ladies and declared "Tighten up, lassies, this is a community seating establishment."

Mandy and I staggered to a few shops including a Tokyo Toy store that had all manner of vinyl toys, and Chelsea Market, home of the Food Network. We went to the Staten Island Ferry and Battery Park to check out the statue of Liberty, but had missed the last ferry over to Ellis Island. So we walked from the Ferry down to the formerly mafia haven, Fulton Fish Market. We walked around the market awhile, and admired how even though the FBI tried to break the back of the mob, it was the GAP, Abercrombie and Fitch, and other such strip mall shops that finally did them in. Capitalism killed the mob in this area.

In the Capitalism spirit we walked through the financial district. By this time we had probably put in about at least 10 miles walking so far this day. I was wearing crappy shoes so it was beginning to wear on me a bit. We walked to the World Trade Center area. I have been a couple times since 9/11, but Mandy has not. It really is pretty staggering and numbing what amounts to a massive hole in the middle of the city. Even thought they have built a lot of the understructure back up in the past 6 years, it just feels like a void.

Afterward, we made our way down to Greenwich Village to eat at the Spotted Pig. They were full, so they took my cel # and we walked around the corner to the White Horse Tavern. In memory of Dylan Thomas, I had a whiskey. About 55 years ago, at this self-same establishment, Mr. Thomas, (depending upon which version of the story you believe), exclaimed "18 whiskeys, I think that is a new record." He then exited the White Horse and collapsed outside...falling into a coma. I decided not to try to best the welshman's record, and we sat back and relaxed until the Spotted Pig called.

On our way into the Spotted Pig, we met Vera Wang coming out. The place was definately "hip." But the food, in your blogger's, humble opinion was crap.

We caught a subway to get back to the apartment , and decided to switch trains around Madison Square Gardens. As we got out of the train we knew something was wrong. You could sort of feel it in the air. There were mobs of younger high school age kid running around and shouting at one another. We quickly got on a train, and it did not leave for 3-4 mins. Finally a voice came over the intercom letting us know the train would not be leaving and asking for everyone to exit. This was strange, but we are not terribly familiar with things, so we quickly exited the station avoiding some fights between high school students, and walked the underground all the way to Time Square. When we exited into Times Square we were literally between NYPD officers, in riot gear, and a bunch of disgruntled kids. We tried to turn down a side street, but one of NY's finest told us that street had been closed. Apparently, gunfire had erupted. We quickly made our way through the confused crowds, on our bruised feet, from Time Square all the way to 68th and Columbus...I don't know how far that is in miles, but it took forever. See and read more about it here: STORY

When we finally made it back, and then watched people we just saw on the local news getting arrested. We soaked our sore feet, and went to sleep with ease.

We're all Irish here

2007-03-20T09:23:00.000-07:00

Saturday-

I am in New York this week. Wrote a blog about it. Like to hear it? Here it goes.

Things have been pretty fast-paced since we got here. We were supposed to leave on Friday, but due to the Northeastern Ice Storms, and becaused we flew out on Jet Blue, we did not get to Manhattan until late on Saturday. We were supposed to go to the St. Patrick's day parade but had to settle on watching them on our Direct TV monitors provided by JetBlue.
We took the train from Kennedy through Jamaica Queens to the apartment we are staying at near Lincoln Center. The apartment is nice, but New York sized, so we spent a bit of time setting things up so that Mandy and I can work while we are here.
Part of the reason we are staying here in NY is to "cat sit" Mandy's aunt's Persian cats; "Tarzan" and "Sheeba." Here is Tarzan helping me set up my work area.

We are neighbors to the ABC building, off of Peter Jennings way. After getting settled, we took off to Kennedy's Irish Pub to take in some of the waning St. Paddy's Day festivities. On the way into the very crowded bar we bumped into John Krasinski and his entourage.
We had a good time at Kennedy's. Lots of happy folks singing a long with U2 and other Irish songs. Not to lend credence to the 40's film stereotypes, but the place was crawling with police officers who were letting loose. I called one of the hosts, "sir." To which he replied "Don't call me sir, boyo, just say 'aye.' We're all Irish here." It was a really fun time.
After dinner, we went down to Rockefeller Center, since SNL was about to begin, just to see what was going on.
We took the somewhat over-priced "Top of the Rock" tour, and admired some pretty amazing views from 70-something stories above the city. Mandy is pretty scared of heights, and the views over the ledges induce a bit of vertigo, but she was a good sport. The Empire State Building was lit up green for the holiday.
We tooled around the area, took some photos, then decided to head to the apartment to watch SNL. On the way home we stopped by a little restaurant next door to the apartment for dessert.

Recent design work

2007-03-11T19:14:00.000-07:00

I have spent a lot of time recently working on the Captain Capitalism designs. Too much, really. I have been taking Stephen Silver's brilliant designs as a starting point, but trying to bring them a little bit more in line with my own designs so that they will blend well into the parts of the next cartoon that I have already done, like this still from a scene with the "Greatest American Hero"-like character and Karl Marx that I have completed:

One major change that you might notice in the designs above and below is the lack of "self-colored" lines. I really like colored lines in designs, I actually have to restrain myself from doing it. But it really is a time suck on the production of the cartoons, it takes a lot of time, and since I only really work on these cartoons in the evenings and on the weekends it is pretty ridiculous. There are still a few, but not near as many.

I understand that any changes I made to Steve Silver's designs are a step backward. Stephen's designs are genius. But what I tried to do was work on top of that design over and over, and draw it strictly from memory. I also experimented with animating the character, in the manner that the character works in the cartoons; posing him, doing mouths and facial expressions. I made a few changes based on that, mainly in the arms and head structure.

Also, I have been looking a lot at Jaimie Hewlett's Gorillaz recently. I got the "Rise of the Ogre" book, and have been watching the videos. I love Hewlett's line style, with some simple straights, and the ways that the line with varies in his pieces. He also has an amazing sense of color, and I have been trying to incorporate what I learned into the designs, because I think they will work well in Flash.

Below is a sort of progression, from Captain Capitalism, (as he appeared in Nightmare of a Red Christmas), to Stephen Silver's brilliant redesign, to what I have been working on recently.

Of the other designs that Stephen did, the Castro design probably stayed the closest when he was brought into Flash and broken into pieces. The color change is because all of the undead reds are zombie colored, something that will be explained in two episodes.

The Lenin drawing changed a bit more, mainly because of the voice work that was done for the cartoon. I love the original design, but the voice that I had was much too deep to work with this character. I considered redoing the voice, but it took so long to get the audio done on this cartoon, and I need to move forward, so I tried to adapt the design to work with audio.

Mao stayed pretty close to the original design as well. Frank Gabriel did a brilliant read for Mao, and I can't wait to start animating it. Of all the characters, this one so far is the one that is the most complete and ready for animating.

I have become kind of a line nazi, you can probably see it the most in the Mao design since he is broken apart into animatable pieces in Flash already. If you ever worked with drawings done on paper that have been vectorized and brought into Flash, you know how much the lines can change. It is hard not to go into each line and smooth it out and make it even.
Because of the change in character design, I have redone the home page and the animation page. You can now watch some early versions of Captain Capitalism cartoons in the animation section as well. I took them down, because some of them are so bad that I was embarassed, but now I am kind of comfortable in the progression that they show.

The problem with a redesign like this is what to do next. I want to redo the entire website, and all of the merchandise artwork now, but with the time that I have to work on the cartoons that would take forever, so I am just going to move forward with the next cartoon, I have dallied enough recently. Furthermore, I am sure it is going to adapt even further as I work on animating the next cartoon.

Captain America R.I.P.

2007-03-08T06:50:00.000-08:00

I got a few phone calls and e-mails yesterday from folks offering me condolences for my loss.

Thanks to all of you who showed your concern. It helps dull the pain and the void in my heart:

Good bye, old friend.

Captain Capitalism kind of springs from a fascination with iconic heroes, especially Captain America. For the none of you who remember my old blog, my office at Powerhouse has a Captain America shrine:

This picture is actually a few years old, the collection has grown quite a bit since then.

I read the issues, and it does not seem like this is going to really last long. He is a super-hero and he was still in the hospital at the end of the issue. Also, Iron-man morphed into a new Ultron in another title, so they might all be life model decoys. Wow, I just let a geek flare off, didn't I?

Curse you Wikipedia for making me feel like my geekiness is more prevalent than it actually is and luring my into a false sense of security in such a public forum as the web! Curse you!

It looks like Quesada and company found an opportunity to get some press and up the sales on a book that does not always do well. Good for them. Though it was surreal seeing Martin Bashir talking about it on Nightline last night.

I wore black today. But unfortunately, my office flag is too big to fly at half-mast, but it does in spirit.

Addition:

The always wonderful, Captain Capitalism contributor and fellow Powerhouser; Sam Deats did a cool digital sketch to help ease the pain:
Pretty cool, huh?

It is funny, I hate zombies. Maybe" irrationally dislike zombies" is a better way to put it. I love Captain America, and hate zombies, yet I really like this drawing. Thanks, Sam!

Dwight Schrute: Intergalactic Assitant to the District Manager

2007-03-07T15:26:00.000-08:00

So last Saturday, Rainn Wilson was on SNL, which I watch pretty faithfully. That night I actually had dreams about character design ( I had played with Captain Capitalism designs all evening, trying to take some things from the Stephen Silver designs, but still keep it in the world...I'll probably blog about this seperately one day).

I guess my day's experience welded together in the land of make-believe and I was doing Dwight Schrute designs in my dream.

So to warm up on Sunday morning, before digging into Captain Capitalism, I tried to draw a Dwight Schrute. Funny thing is, as I was drawing it, I was thinking about the plot line. Something corny like bad 70's/80's cartoons. Dunder Mifflin gets a shipment mix-up with a mad scientist who mail ordered a worm hole machine. Dwight accidentally uses the machine to make copies, but makes a worm hole instead and gets zapped into outerspace in the future. But since Dwight is 100% full-blooded middle-management material, he is quickly hired by an alien conglomerate corporation as "Intergalactic regional manager"- but in space business is deadly, and Dwight gets into zany situations. Sounds totally plausible in the world of Harlem Globetrotter cartoons and Far Out Space Nuts. I think he should have a cute character that does cute babbeling...and Dwight loathes him.

I'd watch it. Would you?

Stephen Silver

2007-02-22T22:19:00.000-08:00

So the big exciting thing that I have been wanting to share has been doing some work with the amazingly talented Stephen Silver...and to show some sketches that he has done.

I have been doing a little bit of work on a project with Stephen, and in return he is doing some design work and sketches for Captain Capitalism.

Stephen is an amazingly talented, and extremely nice guy. Which is a rare combination...especially in this industry.

I have been a big fan of his work ever since we worked on Kevin Smith's various Clerks projects at Powerhouse. Stephen did the design for the original television series, which I have always loved.

As I told Stephen, and as I have talked about a little on the blog a bit...I have been in a design rut. I feel like I have fallen into using crutches and symbols a bit too much.

I have tried to loosen up by doing some caricatures, and by trying to draw straight into flash with the wacom to break things up. I am horrible at it, by the way. I hope that I can get my hands on a Cintiq one day...but I digress.

Anyway, after drawing various versions of the same character for 6 years, at varying skill levels you kind of fall into patterns even when trying to change things up. I thought it would be great to see what someone who really knows character design would do with the character...

And who know more about it than Stephen...

So enough with my incoherent babbling, check these out:

It is going to be a lot of fun seeing how I can incorporate these ideas into the next cartoon. I am very excited about getting into the next cartoon.

So thanks a bunch, Stephen. That is all for now folks...

Getting back on track...

2007-02-22T21:20:00.000-08:00

Sorry about the lack of posts recently. The last couple weeks have been trying.

Some great things have happened and I have wanted to write about them, but unfortunately some not so great things have also happened... which has prevented me from doing so.

Work has been really busy, which is great, but I have had some late nights in the past two weeks. A few of these nights involved trying to regain 2 years of sent and recieved e-mails that I lost in an Outlook crash. The stress level has gone up a bit with the amount of work we have, and I have actually needed some time to decompress a bit in the evenings.

My grandmother also passed away this last weekend. She was 89, and has been sick for some time, but I come from a very big extended family and she was the center of it. It hit pretty hard.

I am trying to get back on track this weekend...so hopefully this entry is the first of a run.

Mixed metaphors

2007-01-22T21:12:00.000-08:00

Now, I don't wanna give too much away... but in the cartoon after the next cartoon, I have an overly mixed metaphor. There are a group of characters that protect the "Universal Economy," against intergalactic threats. They are a bit of a parody of the "Guardians of the Universe," from DC comics.

In the original script, they are more of a mix of the 7 dwarves and the Guardians. However, I started drawing them this Sunday, while John McLaughlin's voice was still ringing in my ears...and the leader ended up looking like the former priest turned talk-show mediator.

Then I ended up drawing the other "Guardians" as other Sunday talk-show moderators.

It does not make much sense, but it made me smile. Also, it gives them good voices for the voice actors to try and mimic.

The caricatures need a bit of work...but see if you can name them.

Speaking of weird; saw Chuck Norris this weekend.

I had a 4 hour Kung-fu seminar, and afterwards got some tickets from our teacher to go see the World Combat League, which is owned by Chuck Norris, who was in the crowd. It was pretty fun, then afterwards Mandy and I had a great meal at Cafe Jezebel here in Austin.

I'm off to read a little before bed, Mandy and I have been reading Fiasco by Tom Ricks recently, which has been pretty good.

Fidel-ities

2007-01-18T20:31:00.000-08:00

So, Fidel Castro is in the script for the next cartoon. This got me thinking. Considering the fella's current medical condition and age; it may not be such a great idea. With my luck, he'd kick the commie bucket the same day the cartoon came out, and I'D look like the evil dictator who oppressed and destroyed a once proud nation.

Then I remembered this cartoon:

The cartoon is by Mike Peters, and is in the Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year: 1995 edition. This cartoon making fun of how long Castro has been a pain, is itself 12 years old. It is more about an overthrow and his government falling than the dinosaur dying, but is still kind of relevant. This only strengthens the basis behind the cartoons that are coming out over the next few months. By the way, the reason the cartoon above has a giant ink stain is because I started doing editorial cartoons for my university paper and a local paper in 1995. I carried this book with me everywhere. I was the prententious type of wanna-be-editorial cartoonist who did all my cartoons with a bottle of ink, and old-school pen nibs. This means I ruined lots of clothes, carpets, books, and 3/4-finished editorial cartoons.

I highly recommend the "Best of Editorial Cartoons..." series edited by Charles Brooks. I have most of the editions from 1975-2006. I'm not just saying that so that the fine folks at Penguin Press won't ask me to take these images down, but because they are great books for inspiration and design. Also, the books that Darryl Cagle puts out are great, as is his website.

Here are some more Castro toons I ran across today:

I also ran across this cartoon, which must have somewhat subconciously influenced me a bit in the next few scripts:

Looking at all of these cartoons today reminded me just how amazing an artform editorial cartooning is. It is a shame that it has been dying a slow painful death; and not just because of Islamic fatwahs on Danish cartoonists. Newspapers have been reducing budgets and the cartoonists are usually the first to go. I would say that becoming an editorial cartoonist might be the hardest job to obtain in the graphic arts. This is because there are so few positions out there, when somepme gets hired as an editorial cartoonists they tend to stay there for a while, and if they dont get fired the paper tends to remove the position when they leave. God bless folks like Mr. Cagle who are exploring ways to keep the artform alive in syndication and online.

So, I threw away my plan to really take my time with the design and spent about 30 minutes whipping out Castro for the next cartoon. And I a pretty pleased with it to be honest with you.

I included the crappy sketch to show how much better my life would be, and how much less paper I would waste if I had a Cintiq.

I was going to talk more about design influences and processes, but this blog took too long, and I need to get back to drawing before it gets to late...so I will leave that for another day.

Channel Frederator

2007-01-17T19:19:00.000-08:00

So, "To bleep or not to bleep" is a part of the most recent installment of Channel Frederator.

I submitted the cartoon a long time ago. Over a year, actually. I think it was submitted it way back in Nov, 2005. So, when I got the e-mail saying it was going to be in the new podcast, I was very surprised.

Watching this cartoon is kind of painful now. I guess anything that you do, and see over and over and over again gets painful to watch, especially so long after the fact. Some of the animation is pretty rough...

Another thing, when I watched the podcast, was that the audible bleeps had dropped out for some. Hopefully that is not the case when everybody watches it. The bleeps really help the piece. They are in the name, and one gag doesn't really work without them. In a strange way it also makes the piece seem even dirtier to me.

All that being said, I am very glad to be a included in Channel Frederator...they have a great podcast.

New Years....

2007-01-16T20:28:00.000-08:00

S'funny. I thought I was keeping up with this. Next thing I know I am more than 15 days behind.

I started working on the storyboards for the next cartoon. Gonna try to spend a little more time on the design process on this episode.

Admittedly, I have been taking it a bit easy, as far as working on Captain Capitalism is concerned, the past couple weeks. There is usually a big push finishing the cartoons. Since the last cartoon had a kind of deadline with the holidays, I let a lot of things slip. I spend a lot of time sitting in a chair. Since I am have my black belt test in a few months, I have been trying to get back in shape, to make up for the holidays and the last cartoon.

I am also trying to talk someone into sponsoring the shorts, in a way, and do the whole advertising in the cartoon sort of deal, like when Fred Flintstone would schill Winstons. I think it would be very fitting for the character.

A nice guy, Tom Luffman, has a nicer girlfriend. She bought him a bunch of Captain Capitalism merchandise, and keeping to my word, I did a sketch for him. Tom is a boxing writer, being a fan myself, I decided to do a boxing themed print for Tom. Called "K.O. of the Pinko."

I love George Bellows' boxing paintings. So I looked at several them before starting.
Then I realized I would never have the ability to create something like that , so I dismissed everything and made this rubbish:
then I tied the rubbish down:
which finally became this:

Been working from home the past few days...it has been terribly cold here, for Texas. It snowed. Something we don't see so often. Nikita (my husky) has become so Texanized, that despite her breed, she too was confused by the snow:

Here are some of those cake pictures I have talked about previously:
The cake pan is only two years younger than I am.

The abstract Captain America that was made for my 31st b-day.

Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz, made immortal in cake for the last UFC pay-per-view:

Me and the champ-cake:

Hopefully I will be back with some boards soon. Apparently, "To bleep or bleep" is going to be on Channel Frederator this week...which is strange since it has been so long since that cartoon came out...but I will be back this week to talk about that and provide links.

Random things...

2006-12-28T21:40:00.000-08:00

Well, I have finished writing the next two cartoons. I am still going to doing a few more edits to touch up the dialogue, and refine them a bit before I send them to the voice folks.

I watched Talledega Nights the other day. And they mention Manimal in the movie. Manimal is also mentioned in my next toon, so I am a little heartened that the film execs felt confident enough in the reference to use it in the film. I am still befuddled by how many people did not recognize the Greatest American Hero in the last cartoon.

I turned 31 the other day. Had a good birthday, complete with a Captain America cake. I'll post a picture here when I get it. My wife got me a great boxing set complete with speedbag for my birthday and Christmas, and I have been playing a lot with that lately. I kind of slacked off working out and missed a lot of kung-fu while I was finishing the cartoon and busy with the holidays, I am looking forward to getting back on track in the new year.

Looking forward to the UFC event this weekend...should be a good card.

If you missed Meet the Press last weekend, check it out. There was an interesting conversation with Rick Warren, the author of "A Purpose Driven Life," about Christianity, Capitalism, and Communism.

See ya in the New Year!

Brad

Animovie maker

2006-12-28T21:27:00.000-08:00

If you are an animator, or would like to be, check out the Animovie maker.

http://www.jazwares.com/animovie/

Basically it is all of my childhood dreams come true on two fronts. First of all, it is a battery powered pencil test machine for less than $60. Second, it has Marvel Superheroes all over it.

I gave one to my nephew for Christmas, and bought one for myself too. I took the one I bought myself apart, and I am trying to figure out a way to connect the pieces directly to my animation disc.

It is a webcam that connect directly to your TV through RCA jacks, similar to those Atari 2600 and Pacman toys they sell now. But you can capture sequential images, and play them back at 6 frames per second. The picture is pretty decent, and it is a fast way to capture your keys as you are drawing, without having to scan or go to your computer and test the animation.

I can't imagine how much time and money this would have saved me, over time ,if I had one of these when I was younger. In highschool I had to shoot things on Super-8, and then send the film in to get developed at $48 bucks a pop, not to mention that by the time the film came back I had lost all interest in whatever it was I was working on. I have had tons of slow, and expensive scanners on CGA computers, and VGA computers. It would take forever to scan and publish movies to watch. These days, I still use a scanner that takes about 1 minute per drawing at home...

The drawback is the 6 frames per second. Most of the Captain Capitalism cartoons are animated at 24 fps. But this is a good way to check keys, or watch a slow play to check arcs and things like that...

While on the phone at work I do little "post-it-note" animations...in the next few weeks I will capture some of these with the animovie maker and show you how it works.

Tracking Nightmare

2006-12-28T21:11:00.000-08:00

Well, Christmas has come and gone. As I approach the new year, I am going to stop checking the stats on the Nightmare Cartoon, and concentrate on finishing the next two cartoons. My goal is to have the next one done by mid February.

I came pretty close to the goal of 100,000 views. Here is how it broke down, as of the last time I checked on Dec 27th:

Newgrounds: 75,000 views
Captain Capitalism.com: 6,185 views
Flash Portal: 9,736 views
Vidshadow: 2,186 views
Youtube: 395 views

Total views I can track: 93,502

I also found the cartoon on several sites that somehow got the swf, and put it up on a site, and I cannot track those hits...so I think I might have actually come really close to 100,000.

Newgrounds helped sponsor the toon, and I sold some minor merchandise.

Next time around I am going to experiment with doing some internet ad buying, just to see how that affects things.

One interesting experience I had was trying to post the message boards. It was recieved fairly well in a couple of places, but the at the majority of messageboards I just got flamed for trying to "advertise" my stuff. I think that is kind of funny, considering the cartoon is up for free for the world to see...and I dont make any money off of views. In fact, if anything I lose money due to bandwidth overages. I was a little more prepared this time, but still got hit a little bit by going over my allowed bandwidth. Meh.

How the cartoon is doing

2006-12-17T20:44:00.000-08:00

So the cartoon has been out for a few days, and seems to be getting around fairly well...despite it not being posted very many places.

So far, as of 10:45pm, here is the view count:

The Youtube version, which is really only referenced on this blog and the myspace page has been viewed 145 times.

The Newgrounds version has been viewed 45,537 times.

The version on Captain Capitalism has been viewed either 4,623 or 2,720 times. Something strange is going on with the counter. If you did not notice, there is a number at the bottom-left of the screen before the credits start. If you look at it closely, it flashes two numbers. I don't know what is happening there. However, since the session count on the site is 6,000ish, and I am an opimist, I am going to go with the higher number.

Since Wednesday, (when it "public") the cartoon has been viewed about 50,305 times. Which I am pretty pleased with.

I hope that by Christmas the cartoon gets about 100,000 views. That would make me happy.

As I have said, Captain Capitalism is a kind of experiment for me. This one has taught me a lot. I'll post more about that later.

Nightmare of a Red Christmas

2006-12-14T16:18:00.000-08:00

So the cartoon is out and about...if you ended up on the blog you probably saw the new link through the website.

You can also check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzqSzbrtTao
And feel free to link to it, in any manner, but I put the youtube version up, in case folks wanted to do one of those fancy links, where you see the youtube window in a blog or whatever.

I wanted to thank Tom Fulp, and the fine folks at Newgrounds for helping out by sponsoring the cartoon. Hopefully it will do well enough, and that they will continue to sponsor the shorts.

Speaking of, if anybody else wants to sponsor Captain Capitalism let me know. His name ain't a joke, we'll throw your logo up on the cartoon. Heck, he'll use your product in the next cartoon if you would like.

And speaking of Newgrounds, check out and vote for the Star-spangled Sentinnel of the American way here: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/353983

Read the reviews if you get a chance. While I appreciate them all, they are quite funny at times.

Also, Captain Capitalism has joined the Paris Hilton set and gotten a myspace page:
http://myspace.com/captaincapitalism

Last but not least, as a special treat to anybody stopping by the blog here are some links to version of the Captain Capitalism cartoons for your I-pod. They are kind of big, and I am hosting them, so I don't know how long I can keep them up...but get em if you want em, while you can:

http://www.captaincapitalism.com/ipod/

Nightmare of a Red Christmas is done.

2006-12-12T22:31:00.000-08:00

So, aside from a couple of tweaks, "Nightmare of a Red Christmas" is done.

I am not putting it up tonight, because I wanted a couple of other folks to get a first peek before I release it to the cold, unforgiving, world.

I want to thank Jennifer Anderson, Krishna Jain, Jason Williams and Sam Deats for helping me out with a bunch of the puppet animations. Everybody did a great job, and I could not have gotten this done on time without the help.

Also want to thank George Manley, Frank Gabriel, and Bruce Martin for the voicework.

I had a plan on this cartoon. The most important being getting it done in time to have it out and about by Dec 12. I can get a bit silly about deadlines, even self-imposed ones. I think it comes from working at the newspapers, where missing a deadline meant missing print and having a hole in the paper. I told myself that no matter what state the cartoon was in, today was gonna be the final day to work on it.

It takes a while for things to spread on the internet, and the holiday season is already upon us. Since this story has a Christmas theme, it was either get it up by now, or wait till next year. Since I wrote the next 3 chapters to this "serial" already, that would have been quite a setback.

I had intended to do a lot more drawings, and admittedly short cuts were taken to get the cartoon done on time. It is not perfect, but hopefully folks will dig it, and the cartoons will improve with every episode.

Speaking of which, this cartoon is the first of what I hope will be 6 chapters in a serial story. My goal is to finish them all this year, and release one every couple of months. We will see...

Powerhouse Christmas Party

2006-12-12T22:17:00.000-08:00

Powerhouse had the annual Christmas party last weekend. Hopefully, a good time was had by all.

We have Powerhouse jackets...so that when we go out in public we can act like the Jets and Sharks and challenge other animation studios to turf wars. The newer members of the crew got their jackets at the party.

From L to R: Samuel Deats, Jessica Cuellar, Krishna Jain, Louie Granda and Cindy Crowell.

We had a "white elephant" gift exchange, which was fun. Here Krit and Jason Williams and Krishna Jain enjoy the festivities. By the way, Jason did not end up with the gumball machine...he ended up with the giant robot ninja.

Jennifer Anderson (here with husband Ryan) got a grab bag from the local Blue Genie Art Bazaar.

At the end of the party, everybody gathered for a Powerhouse photo.

(BACK ROW L to R: Frank Gabriel, Louie Granda, Bruce Tinnin, Jason Williams, Jessica Cuellar, and Jennifer Anderson, FRONT ROW L to R: Doug Beck, Krishna Jain, Vladmir Lenin, Cindy Crowell, and Sam Deats)

My wife went to San Franciso and all I got was jealous

2006-12-12T21:57:00.000-08:00

So, my wife, Mandy went to San Francisco the week after Thanksgiving. She went to visit her brother who is a graduate student at Berkeley.

I am a bit jealous of part of the trip. She went to go have lunch with former Powerhouser, Vizlab buddy and all around good guy; Stephen Parker, (here he is with his girlfriend Carrie):

Steve lived with us here in Austin for a while. He is currently working for George Lucas on Skywalker ranch. Steve invited Mandy to lunch at Skywalker where she saw George Lucas in the flesh, and a bunch of other cool stuff.

I have not seen Steve in a long time. Hopefully, he will make it down to Austin soon.

She also saw seals.

Sitting in front a computer was much more fun.

I can't think of a title for this entry.

2006-11-14T20:25:00.000-08:00

I have not had a lot of time to blog. I have been working on the next Captain Capitalism cartoon as much as I can in my spare time. The cartoon is Christmas themed, so if I don't get it done by Dec 15th or so...it is pretty much a waste of time.

To complicate things, on nights like tonight, I sit and stare at a file in Flash and don't get much done, I just sit there and scrub the audio over and over again, 15 mins or so will go by with me just zoned out.

So I thought I would write a quick blog to change the pace. I have been making a list of things to blog about, so here is a random assortment of things I have done or seen recently.

Got to meet Bill Plympton at a local showing of his "Hair High" feature:

On a Captain Capitalismesque topic, there is a great DVD set (although it is a bit pricey) about Soviet propaganda animation. They put a good bit of the first DVD of the set online. Check it out here: http://store.russiananimation.com/ansopr.html

Also, sort of on point, Don Smith (a brilliant local animator and all around great guy) sent me a list around the time of the election about political affiliations of comic book characters:
http://daveslongbox.blogspot.com/2006/11/election-day-2006-whose-side-is-your.html

When you are working on an animated cartoon you have lots of opportunites to add little details, since you get to be in control of everything. For instance, The cartoon I am working on has a lot of inspiration and references to Kevin Smith's Mallrats, since the cartoon takes place in a mall...and that is what I think of when I think of the mall.

In a stranger place to draw inspiration from, there is a part of the cartoon that uses Michelangelo's portrait of St. Bartholomew from the Sistine Chapel:

See if you can find it when the cartoon is done. Don't look for anything deep or symbolic. There was just one part that made me remember this image, so it ended up in there.

Speaking of the cartoon getting done...

Jason Williams' Halloween Party.

2006-10-29T20:51:00.000-08:00

While I am posting Halloween pics, Jason and Krit Williams had a Halloween party which several Powerhouse folks crashed:

Here is the hosts, as Richard Simmons and disciple.

The wife and I came as Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.

Cindy Crowell and her beau, Sitoshi.
Krishna Jain, another Powerhouser came with his friend Kaleem (hopefully I a m spelling that correctly), and the came dressed as "two guys who did not feel like dressing up"

Powerhouse team member, Jennifer Anderson (center), came as the undead Nancy Drew, and brought her brother-in-law. She took a moment to pose with fellow Powerhouser, Sam Deats, who came as Mario.

Louis Granada came as "The Dude" from The Big Lebowski" and brought some friends.

Jason and Krit threw a great party and a good time was had by all.

For the last several posts that I have made, you can no longer click on the photos and get a larger version...does anybody out there know why?

My niece's Halloween costume

2006-10-29T20:32:00.000-08:00

Now I know this is way off-topic...but my niece had a really cute Halloween costume that her mom, and my mom made, and I am too proud an uncle not to share:

Printgocco!

2006-10-29T20:25:00.000-08:00

Another thing that I have been doing lately, instead of working on Captain Capitalism, is some do-it-yourself screen printing.

Our friend Brandon bought a Printgocco machine. Which is a Japanese silk screen maker. It uses flash bulbs to silk screens from laser printed images. It is actually a lot of fun to play with, and I would recommend getting one to any artist our their who would like a simple way to create silk-screens.

I made some kois, buddhas, and dragons in Flash. Then the four of us made a slew of baby clothes, jackets, t-shirts, and other pieces to sell at local markets, on-line, and at craft-type-fairs. I will keep you updated as we do more.

Telluride Films Festival

2006-10-29T20:09:00.000-08:00

Mandy and I went to The Telluride Film Festival in Colorado on Labor Day weekend. It was so long ago, that I don't spend too much to writing about it, but in here is a synopsis in brief.

First of all, I like Colorado again. I am not really a scenery kind of guy. I prefer urban sprawl to mountain's majesty and spacious skies. And I had a bit of a bad time with the fine folks in Colorado on my last visit. But Mandy and I had a really good time on some jogs through the mountains, and it really is beautiful. I am sure the good folks of the Centennial State are very glad to hear this, but all is forgiven now.

Second, rich people assembled together to watch hours and hours of pretentious films can be annoying when standing in line with them for hours. We saw some great movies; Babel and Last King of Scotland. We saw some crappy movies too.

Third, Penelope Cruz is really frickin short.

Fourth, Mandy's family (Glenn and Nancy) are a lot of fun to hang out with. We had a great time talking with them, and I am really glad they were there to keep us sane after hours and hours of mind-numbing fictitous assaults.

Five; Comedy is essential. On some days during the festival we would watch four films in one day. Telluride is known for drama works, there was nary a comedy in the bunch. I have to say, after 8+ hours of high-brow drama, you are ready to jump from the side of the mountain to the kind, warm, and loving concrete below.

Couple of cool things, I got to meet John Canemaker and there is a Chuck Jones theater in Telluride.

All in all, we had a really good time in Colorado. For the most part though, it was because of the company, the scenery and just a few of the films at the festival.

An interesting side note, on the way into Telluride we had to stop to take care of some last minute legal business for Glen and Mandy before we could start the weekend. They needed a fax machine, so we stopped in a small town and I asked the first person I saw on the street and asked if we could use a fax machine. The gentleman said sure, and I went into the office, which happened to be called Billings Artwork.

It just happened to be where they make the Grammy Awards and many other awards (including the Annie Awards for Animation). This is a picture of Tim Burton's Ub Iwerk's award, which was in the shop for repairs.

We had a great time talking to the father and son that run the shop, learned a little about bronze-smithing, and posing with awards.

IFL game and other excuses

2006-10-29T18:54:00.000-08:00

Ok, so it has been well over a month since I posted. So to all my imaginary readers, I apologize. So, just what in the hell has kept me from dutifully documenting the daily deeds of my drab days, you ask? Well first of all it was the IFL game.

Check it, bleed.

For years, I have been dying to do a StreetFighter based in Flash. I have designed many StreetFighter and Punchout based games...with many different characters and different names. Unfortunately, there is too much work in creating one of these games from scratch, on your own, without any budget.

It has been a hard idea to push. There are not too many companies that you can convince to make a fighting based game either. Not really something that your standard corporation would want to sell their services or products. But then I met up with Gareb Shamus and Pat Miletich at the New York licensing fair and finally found a company that could actually use a fighting game, the International Fight League.

Special thanks need to be given to Mr. Phillipe, Jason Yandell, and Sam Deats for working with me on this project. A majority of the work was done at night, most night we worked till at least 1am together. I think the final product turned great though.

Play the game and let me know what you think. Hopefully we will get a chance to keep updating the game with more functionality and characters as the IFL grows.

After the IFL game, I took a break from late nights for a few weeks to get back in shape. I have a black-belt test coming up in 3 months or so, and started a conditioning regimen.

A couple weeks back, I went to a fellow student's (Ronald's) black-belt test to check it out first hand. The first part of the test is a timed, two-mile run. I was allowed to make the run with Ronald, and we made it in about 12 minutes. I was pretty proud, but luckily I got to stop. Poor Ronald had to immediately do about another hour of endurance tests (including sit-ups, push-ups, pull-ups, toe-jumps, 5 minute long stance holds and more). That was followed with many form demonstrations, and then culminated with 30 minutes of fighting. Every 5 minutes a fresh opponent would get introduced.

I'm not really ready for the test, but I am trying to get a few hours of excercise in 6 times a week to get ready.

But, I am also working on Captain Capitalism again. I really missed the big lug, and after finally getting past some other issues with character, I have re-dedicated myself to cartoons.

The plan is to have the Christmas piece, (Nightmare of a Red Christmas), I wrote last year done by the end of November. I have the new voice work in an animatic, and have done a good amount of work on the cartoon.

So, to get back on track, I am going to update the good ole' blog in order to get back in the habit of keeping track of things...but I gotta do a little bit of catching up before I get caught up to the present day.