Wednesday, August 16, 2006

******* ***.

The ******* *** pilot I worked on has surfaced (and sunk) over on Myspace Videos. It was a great project to work on, but unfortunately the network gods have passed on it. Maybe through some interweb white magic, it can surface again. The pilot is good, but the additional boards done by both Andy Suriano and Stephen DeStefano really made the show something different. Maybe Stephen can post some of his favorite sequences on his blog (don't think he can anymore).... oh yeah... Stephen has a blog!

real quick- I met Stephen while working on the Venture Bros (literally the day his interview in Draw came out). He was kind enough to give a total n00b like me some pointers, and began schooling me in the ways of the cartoon gods of christmas past. He's a great friend, amazing artist and teacher, and does a world class impersonation of Nien Nunb. Go to his blog.

here's the pilot (here was the pilot)...



and a few of my favorite designs..









i hope ya dig,
UP

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

what I've been up to

I've had a crazy month and this is one of the highlights.

photo by C.H. Greenblatt (back row L-R) an Anna Chambers' Proboscis Monkey, a blurry Gweelok, AJ "Nothing but net" Spalinski, your favorite uncle, Randy (Emmy Mug x2) Myers. (middle row L-R) total package Kristina, Little C, Billy. (front row L-R) Stephen of Stefano.

My Grandma (Little C) spent a week with me here in LA. That same week, Pete 'Gweelok' Browngardt, Grandmaster Stephen DeStefano, and myself met with development here at Cartoon Network. Our meeting went well, well enough that we should be busy on some pretty sweet stuff for at least the next few months, and hopefully will eventually lead to even more sweet stuff.

The pitch process was really quite the thrill ride. This was my first experience pitching traditionally and will definitely not be my last. I was lucky to be involved in a development cycle at Nick Jr. in New York. But that experience was much different, and all of our (Mike Oviedo, Rhada Blank, and myself) ideas were submitted on paper. We would receive feedback in person, but we never got to talk through our ideas with the people making notes. It felt cold at times, and the notes tended to contradict themselves, but it was a great learning experience that I was lucky to have... and our show made it fairly far into the process. Oh well....

But yeah... pitching at CN was awesome. Sitting besides Stephen and Pete was great enough, but sitting across from Craig McKracken, Rob Renzetti, Heather Kenyon, and Alex Manugian was the real icing on the cake. A handful of my animation heroes in one room, listening to us talk about know-it-all mechanics, pete's love of older men, the lack of good soap operas, uncles, uncles, and more uncles (coincidence, i swear). My only regret was that Little C wasn't in there with us, but then again, she was pretty busy cooking meatballs. And delicious they were.