Category: Blog

Categories
Blog

See my Animation Showing in LA

I’m feeling particularly embiggened this week.

Animation Show 2007(In addition to my winnings in Vegas this weekend) I learned this Sunday that one of my Emergency 411 cartoons was selected to be in The Animation Show! So of course I’ll be there to see my tiny, tiny video on the big, big screen. I had already caught the show last year at the Nuart theater in Santa Monica and can’t wait to see what’s been added since, as well as see who the other mobifest winners are. You can still see all the videos submissions over at mobifest.net where my Skydiving video — much to my amazement — graces the front page.

If you’d like to go, The Animation Show is this Tuesday at Laemmle’s Music Hall 3, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Tuesday, April 3, 2007 at 7:30 PM.

On top of all this, my site got a mention on the Animation Show journal, in particular a cartoon Nick and I did on that jaded green giant, the Sarcastic Hulk. Check out the awesome quote:

…you’ve got to spend some time over at his site timtoon.com. In particular his “Sarcastic Hulk” is one of the funnier tv funhouse style revamps i’ve seen in a long time

All it takes is a little positive feedback to get me movin’ again. Now I can’t wait to start on another SH clip. One that has the Sarcastic Hulk, y’know, actually in it.

Categories
Blog

Dan Danger: Hide And Seek Danger

Scott McCloud, author of the thought-provoking meta-comic Understanding Comics had a great idea to get people making and thinking about comics more: The 24-Hour Comic. The idea is simple: make a 24-page comic book in 24 hours.

My friend Pete is the one who introduced me to this, and was responsible for rounding up three friends for a full day of drawing comics. Having the artistic and storytelling skills of your average grade schooler, I made my weaknesses my strengths and created a cold-war era hero your 8-year-old brother might’ve dreamed up. His name is Dan Danger.

Dan Danger

John Woo eat your heart out

In his first outing, the ever-grimacing super-spy Dan Danger is tasked with rescuing a top rocket scientist from far behind the iron curtain! Enjoy 24 action-packed (and dialogue-light!) pages of secret agent adventure filtered through simplistic jingoism.

And while you’re reading, you may want to ignore what we discovered — that Scott McCloud’s idea of fostering creativity in the visual storytelling medium actually turned out to be a way to churn out some really rushed, mediocre comics.

Categories
Blog

Make tonight a Weak Night

When I was at UCLA, probably the most significant thing I did was partake in a student-run television show some friends and I aired on campus TV. Sad, I know. Well, several years down the road, those of us left have endeavored to capture lightning in a bottle a second time, and the result is called Weak Nights:

Visit Weak Nights

I have to say that, much to my chagrin, my user profile on the site is a family tree that does not branch. Instead of making videos, I’ve been spending my time programming the site you’re waiting to look at in that new browser tab. So go there, click around and see the totally amazing videos my friends have produced. And if you’re going to comment-spam, just remember the person who made it all possible.

Categories
Blog

MobiFest gets the Emergency 411

A year ago, I had submitted an episode of my cartoon series What Would Jesus Do? to The Animation Show, in the hopes I would join the ranks of this generation’s top animators, perhaps through a clerical error. And since I’m not currently rolling in that sweet religious satire money, it’d seem Mike and Don didn’t think all that much of what I had to offer.

However, roughly a month or two ago, I got an email saying my Jesus video was in fact a finalist in their competition, and that was reason enough for them to invite me (and I’m sure several hundred of my peers) to compete in their latest venture: MobiFest.

And so I spent the next four weeks keeping myself very busy, furiously animating as well as working my other jobs. What I had at the end of it was the first two of what should be a continuing series of just-in-time info on what to do when you find yourself in a heartstopping situation.

I also ended up with a bit of flak from management for sleeping at work the day after I finished, but that’s neither here nor there.

Anyway, here are the videos:

Emergency 411: Building an Atomic Bomb

Emergency 411: Skydiving

Categories
Blog

Santa’s Little Helper Redux

I don’t know what it was, the long-winded description of the “jug-eared, clap-happy dipshit” clapping, or the idea of Marmaduke howling a blood-curdling scream, but this selection from Joe Mathlete Explains Today’s Marmaduke brought tears of laughter at the explained antics of an oversized dog:

Marmaduke responds to a jug-eared, clap-happy dipshit’s entreaty to fetch a stick with either a massive yawn (which is how he signifies his boredom) or a blood-curdling scream (which is how he pumps himself up for a round of stick-fetching). Marmaduke’s owner-man responds to said jug-eared, clap-happy dipshit’s entreaty with a hint regarding the futility of the ridiculous little man’s enthusiasm

As for the title of this post, there was a friend of mine who got the same perverse glee rewinding a 5-second clip of Santa’s Little Helper jumping up onto Homer’s belly for a good 20 minutes. Dogs are just funny like that.

Categories
Blog

Another dimension. Another Dimension. And now that you mention, another dimension!

Rob Bryanton, for his new book, Imagining the Tenth Dimension offers up a quick Flash tutorial that takes the viewer from the first to the tenth (and final?) dimension, and the viewer’s brain from a functioning organ to complete mush: www.tenthdimension.com

…in the biggest picture possible, we could say that the 4th dimension is a line that joins the big bang to one of the possible endings to our universe.

Now entering the seventh dimension, we’re about to imagine a line that treats the sixth dimension as if it were a single point. To do that, we have to imagine all possible timelines which could’ve started from our big bang, joined to all the possible endings of our universe — a concept which we often refer to as infinity — and treat them all as a single point.

So for us, a point in the 7th dimension would be infinity — all possible timelines.”

I could understand 10 dimensions, but 11 would just be silly. Once you start tacking on extra dimensions to string theory, you start to get into the dangerous territory of “Meme-Theory”, in which the different ways of conceptualizing the known universe all start getting their own dang dimensions.

Categories
Blog

Best Underappreciated Comic Shops

Just a quick bit of pimping myself; I wrote an article for LA Weekly’s Best Of issue. I thought I’d link to it, just so LA Weekly can get a few extra cents of ad revenue. It’s a gripping 312 words!

Some comic shops are more like museums. A curator decides which artists to stock, there are some very expensive pictures hanging from the walls… and I’m afraid to touch anything. When I mentioned this to the clerk at Burbank’s stylish House of Secrets, she told me to, by all means, touch.

Best-Underappreciated Comic Shops

Categories
Blog

The 1981 Computer Will Seduce You

This is a surprisingly less-than-dated look at the future of computers from a 1981 news piece and, unsurprisingly, it gives me a big nerd-boner thinking about the home computer as “the world’s biggest backyard fence to talk over.” Of special note is millionaire Steven P. Jobs discussing how computers will “seduce you.” Done and done!

Categories
Blog

The Microsoft iPod?

Just the idea is enough of an ipecac for me, but some clever jokers posted on YouTube a parody of Microsoft’s answer to the iPod’s subtle package design…

Categories
Work

Don’t Gloat Yet

Nothing to add, but here’s a good article from the last 2005 issue of OC Weekly, guaranteed to get Pete upset:

Don’t Gloat Yet – A bad year for Bush is bad for all of us by James Washburn