cabin in woods.

Here's another image from the Twisted Whiskers show I'm working on. The show is all CG, but there's a Halloween episode where Tiny Head tells the story of how his cabin was built over the top of a hole where a monster lives. This sequence will be animated in Flash and will look like this painting I did.

boingo.

This is an image I created for an animated show I'm working on called Twisted Whiskers. It's an episode where we imply something bad has happened to poor Boingo the space monkey and we cut to this photo. I cobbled together a couple astronaut photos, took an existing Twisted Whiskers monkey head, and exaggerated the mouth and then weathered the whole thing to look like an old photo. Bill Kopp, our director, sometimes signs personal letters with "Stay funny!" and I thought it'd be funny if Boingo did the same.

let's write a sawng.

Rivers Cuomo, the front man for Weezer, started a videoblog on Youtube called "Let's Write a Sawng" where people all over the world can contribute video responses and literally write a song together. He acts as the ringleader and the director and it seems like he watches all the uploads. I'm sure it's some promotional thing for Youtube and not like this is something he decided to do out of boredom but that doesn't take away from the fun. I think he approaches it in a pretty genuine way and the song isn't turning out half bad. It isn't officially finished yet and it's been a few months since he's posted. I guess he's busy out touring and all that.

If you start watching from the 1:00 mark you'll see him referring to a video I actually uploaded. (The sound is weird because Rivers often pitches his videos up or down for comedic effect.)



Below is the actual video I uploaded to him.



Which was in response to this one.

woooooooooooo!

Even though I work at American Greetings, I have nothing to do with making greeting cards. We're a completely separate division that creates and develops properties for kids that leads to animation and consumer products (toys, backpacks, undapants.)

As an exercise, we had the opportunity to create a property for a different demo -- our card buyer. I just happened to have this idea laying around that I was calling "Woo Girls" and we went with that.



It's based on my wife (the brunette), her friend Becky (the one with the short hair) and Kelly, a woman who sits next to me (the blonde.) The idea is -- that any woman, when around her bestest friends, is able to let her guard down and "woo" at anything from a Bon Jovi song coming on the jukebox to hanging out of the sunroof of a taxi after a girl's night out.

I ended up drawing and writing all 8 cards. Most are birthday cards and they all say something like "It's your birthday, WOOO! Hope you have so much fun you don't notice the creepy guy staring at you like a freak all night." or "You're hotter now than you've ever been. Seriously."



Originally the above image was all I had in mind. I was just going to have floating heads, it was all going to be pink and black, and I'd thought that each girl would have a "normal mode" and a "woo mode." Also I thought there'd be endless Woo Girls and it'd be more of a "look." And last, the whole concept revolved on this being a sound card where you'd open it and it'd go "Oh my god it's your birthday WOOOO!!!" But because of the expense of sound chips I wasn't able to get my wish.

In the beginning, I didn't think I'd have the time to complete all this art because I still had my "real" job that took up a lot of my time. I thought I'd have to freelance this out, so I had some Woo development sketches done by Joel Trussel at joeltrussel.com as well as some by Vera at Verabee.com. Here's what they came up with. Note: These aren't my drawings and they didn't see the above drawing. I wanted to see what they'd come up with based on concept alone.


Joel's sketches.


Vera's sketches.

When I saw both of these I thought "Oh yeah, I should give them bodies." Both did hilarious stuff that really helped me figure this out. I wanted to land somewhere between these as far as the girls being cartoony or anatomically correct.



This is the very first card concept I came up with. I drew it really fast with sharpies and highlighters, folded it in half and went to a meeting where I was supposed to show my progress. The card team liked it but thought the girls were a little too skinny. So, when I went to final I just made sure to thicken them up a little.



Here are all 8 cards together.



Here they are on the shelf at Walmart. Despite being out of college for 10 years, this is the first time I'd ever seen something I had total control of on the shelf. It was fun to see and I actually saw a woman buying two (no it wasn't my mom.)







At American Greetings we have a greeting card store in the building where employees can purchase our products. After returning from vacation I was surprised to find a giant Woo display in the window.




Wooo!

my favorite tinpo.

yacht rock.

I have a new favorite thing. It's called Yacht Rock. What's great about discovering something like this a year after everyone else, is I get the joy of watching all 11 episodes in a row.


McDonald on the left. Loggins, right.

The thing I'm talking about is Yacht Rock, a low budget internet series based in the world of Yacht Rock music -- The smooth sounds of performers like Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, The Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, Hall and Oates and more. Each episode tells an origin story behind a particular Yacht Rock song that's part BS, part reality. It's hilarious.



I love the down and dirty, low budget nature of it. Don't let this fool you though. It's sharp, witty and moves at a breezy pace. Characters break into song, and it cuts just before it gets old. Each episode leaves you wanting more.



The writers don't just shoot from the hip. The stories are actually really clever. They take facts, rumors, invented relationships and mix it all together to tell a story chock full of hidden references. There's lots of connections based on reality, like Toto playing on Michael Jackson's "Human Nature" or the Doobie Brothers' producer producing a Van Halen album.



Another thing great about Yacht Rock is that they poke fun at this music genre and performers with love. One could easily just make a mockery out of the whole thing, but they don't. There's a level of appreciation they seem to have for these musicians that seeps into the execution of the show.



They depict guys like Loggins and McDonald as buddies that just hang out all the time and have this crazy passion for their music, yet they cuss each other out. It's great.



I've got all the episodes below, so click away and enjoy. I didn't include Episode 6 because really, that's the only one I didn't enjoy. It's a period piece about the real Jethro Tull. It breaks the format of the show quite a bit. Even though I can appreciate the guys trying something new, it just left me scratching my head.

Here are the episodes.

Episode 1: What a Fool Believes


Episode 2: Keep the Fire


Episode 3: I'm Alright


Episode 4: Rosanna


Episode 5: I Believe In It


Episode 7: I Keep Forgetting


Episode 8: Gino (The Manager)


Episode 9: Runnin with the Devil


Episode 10: FM


Episode 11: Footloose


The original SCTV sketch that made McDonald an "irrelevant joke."

disintegrated einstein.

When I first graduated college and moved to Connecticut I spent (wasted) a year of my life recording an "album" under the band name "Disintegrated Einstein." It first started out as a joke and I had this crazy idea about selling original songs on Ebay, which never happened. What did happen is that I had fun making these songs up all on my own.


This is where it all went down. Collinsville, Connecticut circa 2001.

Back in 1999, mp3.com allowed you to sell CD's and post music anyone could listen to for free. Since there weren't as many music sites, it actually got a lot of traffic. I felt weird listing my music under my name because I felt like people would be more open and objective about a band's music rather than one guy.


Jesus Christ, Doc. You...

So I created this fake band and made up the names of all the people in the band. Our bass player was Ren McCormick - Kevin Bacon's character in Footloose. The guitar player was Paul Proteus - from a Kurt Vonnegut novel. And the drummer was Holly Star - this came from the movie the Big Lebowski which was filmed at the now defunct Hollywood Star bowling alley in LA. In some of the shots you can see "Holly Star" written on the bowling balls. It was kinda fun having this alter ego. I had a mailing list and would even send out "band updates" sometimes as if written from different members of the band.


I didn't paint the album cover, Chris Ryniak did.

If you're curious about what any of this stuff sounds like, you can find the album at I-Tunes. If you click the following link I-Tunes should automatically open.

Disintegrated Einstein -- Tell Your Friends




It's got all the tracks from the original 2001 album as well as 9 new tracks -- demos, unfinished songs and just plain ol' bad early stuff. The song "My Street Corner" is the first song I ever recorded and it's a mess because I played the drums live and I'm all out of time throughout the whole song.

A few years back I did a cover of "Czar" by Frank Black as part of a Frank Black tribute album as well as designing the album cover. I always liked how "Czar" flowed right into "Old Black Dawning" on the original album, so I actually included the opening bars of OBD at the end. You can download the mp3 from the link below for free.

Disintegrated Einstein -- Czar.mp3

cinematic titanic.

For the last few weeks I've been waiting in anticipation. Anticipation I haven't felt since seeing the words "to be continued" at the end of Back to the Future back in 1985 or the first time I heard the familiar "DA DA DA DA DUM" music and saw all that fire in the Terminator 2 teaser trailer. I'm talking about that anticipation you feel when you find out that the thing you love, that you thought was over and done with...is about to live again.

That's how I felt in early December when I read that Joel Hodgson and the original gang from Mystery Science Theater 3000 were getting back together again. Those voices we first heard in the age of New Coke, B.U.M. Equipment and Forenza sweaters were once again going to be making comments during old-school sci-fi flicks under the moniker -- Cinematic Titanic.



As soon as I saw the following trailer, I knew I must have it.



I couldn't wait. I immediately ordered my copy of "The Oozing Skull" and waited...and waited...and waited. This afternoon a little white envelope FINALLY came to my door containing a little ol' disc that looks like this:



I literally went to my mailbox, ripped open the envelope and put it right into the DVD player. I feel like I'm a kid again. I love it. It has so much of what I loved about MST3K. It has this "live" feel, everyone is overlapping each other, having fun and most importantly -- it's FUNNY.

I'll admit I'm biased. I first found MST3K back when I was in 8th grade. It was on "The Comedy Channel" that later became "Comedy Central." I loved everything about it, especially the low production value which helped me connect to the show. It made me feel like I was the only person in the world who knew about it and was watching it. I loved that. Something about the DVD arriving in a plain white envelope complete with low rent DVD menu (a still image of the disc label itself) had a familiar "homemade" charm that was apparent in MST3K all the way down to their planet logo that looked like a ball of silly string painted primer gray.



During this first season (which I guess will never be on DVD) I wrote a letter to MST3K and drew a very crappy picture of Joel and the bots. It actually got read on the air and I still have the VHS of it. It followed the movie Moon Zero Two. Here it is:



I suppose I'm pre-destined to automatically love Cinematic Titanic. So there, I admit it. It also makes me pre-destined to resist the new things like "A female voice in the mix?!! Whassup with that?" (No offense Mary Jo.) Still, 20 minutes in and I warmed up to her the way I warmed up to that other guy who does Servo probably because lo and behold...they're both funny people. (I'll admit I never couldn't get on board with Mike hosting the show. I know, I know he was head writer for years...it just wasn't the same for me without Joel. I completely blame my biases and not the talented man, myth and legend who is Michael J. Nelson.



One thing different about Cinematic Titanic is seeing a movie in its entirety. They do freeze frame it a couple times for a gag or two, but without the commercial breaks, skits, intros, outros and the 'this has movie modified for television' edits that MST3K had...it runs out of steam around the one hour mark. It's the fault of the original movie itself, not the CT gang. I do look forward to seeing what they come up with to help this as the series develops (I call it a series because I don't know what else to call it.)

Another thing I was looking forward to was some sort of premise explaining where or why they're watching this movie together. Are they in Stephen Hawking's private screening room? Atop makeshift scaffolding during an outdoor screening at Hollywood Forever? Or are they just supposed to be themselves, getting together in front of a green screen to entertain us? I don't really have a preference... I'd just hoped for some sort of intro or explanation of "it" whatever "it" is. Maybe we'll see that in DVD's to come. Related to this, it'd be great to have some sort of recap with them chatting about the movie at the end. It could be as simple as seeing their silhouettes having a cup of coffee and piece of pie, recapping their thoughts or making fun of it. Maybe that's just me not wanting it to end.

All in all, it's Cinematic Titanic is a great thing and I'm so excited to get each new movie every month. I hope these guys will keep making these forever and all the MST3K fans out there will buy their DVDs so they can.

tinpo.

If you've flipped past CBS recently on a Saturday morning you might have seen some animated shorts starring a few of the friendly faces in the photo above. I love these little guys and am proud to have been part of the team that helped bring them to life.



Tinpo was created by Derek Welch and Jason Bacon, the creative..dare I say, geniuses...behind UNKL and Big Giant.



A few years ago, our studio chief Jeffrey Conrad came across their booth at Comicon, bought all their toys and decided to option the property. Since then we've developed 10 animated shorts, each 30 seconds long, and added Tinpo to the AG Properties library permanently.

You can see the shorts online at AG Kidzone.com as well as on CBS Saturday mornings.

When we planned to do the shorts, we had to figure out what the Tinpo world would look like. We threw around the idea of these Tinpo working inside a factory and thought it would be cool if the characters looked dimensional, yet the backgrounds were more graphic. I created a little animated test where I used an illustration of what I thought a machine would look like in the factories from our AG Properties logo.





The idea behind the test was not only to test a "look" but also try and sell everyone on the idea of using 8 Bit music for the shorts (which I used as background music.)

I'd already had a slew of 8 Bit music from the site 8 Bit Peoples that freely shares music created by artists using Nintendos, Gameboys and all kinds of crazy stuff to make music. I became a fan of Anamanaguchi aka Peter Berkman. His music is fun and quirky and doesn't sound straight out of a video game. It's more organic and he layers in other 'real' instruments as well.



Everyone here was on board with having Anamanaguchi do the music as well as Anamanaguchi himself, so we went for it. Listen for it in the shorts. Oh, and I should point out a cool thing he did. In each of the shorts there is what we call the "aha moment." No it's not the moment where everything switches into a black and white comic book and they begin singing "Take On Me." It's the moment where the Tinpo figures out the solution to a problem. You'll notice that in each short, the music is only 8 bit before the "aha moment" and then turns into full instrumentation after he figures it out.



Let's not forget the animation! It was done in sunny Dallas, Texas at Reel FX Entertainment. These guys are awesome to work with and did an awesome job. Check out their reel and prepare to have your minds blown. They treated Tinpo like it was their own baby and really went the extra mile for us. Anthony Davila set the visual direction for the shorts and worked closely with Reel FX to get everything look nice and pretty. Anthony has a talented team of illustrators here in Cleveland who designed most of the props, vehicles and things. Once they set the style, Reel FX also helped conceptualize and design things too.

We talked with Reel FX early on about how the Tinpo should move. We all thought it would be cool if the Tinpo moved as if invisible hands were playing with them and moving them along, versus just always moving under their own power. Reel FX also approached the sound design as if things were more "digital" in a way in order to make things feel like they're part of a unique world. Lots of bleeps and bloops.



Look for future posts where I hope to share more of the stuff we're creating.

robot roll call.

Some art from a commercial I animated for a local technology service back in Connecticut.

tag.

Saw this in London.

espresso hut.

On a recent trip to Seattle, I saw these little espresso huts all over the place. They're these drive-up foto-mat lookin places where you can pull up, get an espresso and be on your way. They're crazy small. I guess they're proportionate to the tiny shots of espresso they're peddling.

on a touristy street.

my clutter.

lettering doods.

Now when I'm bored, I doodle letter sets that I can later slide around in Photoshop. It's a DIY ghetto font.

me mountain.

the argumints.

Click here and prepare for some breath fresheners to rock your world.

I just saved a bunch of money on my entertainment center.

Very recently I finally bit the bullet and got myself a 50 inch plasma. It wasn't the Panasonic I'd been hoping for, but it was such a good deal (open box at Best Buy) that I decided to compromise and go with a Samsung.

I didn't really want to mount this thing on my wall which meant I had to find a new entertainment center that would hold this beast. Everyone I looked at was $300 and up. Most didn't look that cool and were usually made of crappy materials anyway.

Frustrated with the selection atplaces like Target, Ikea and Crate & Barrel, I decided to look for an old credenza that I could turn into an entertainment center. I thought something long and sleek with pointy legs would look cool and drew up this little sketch:

I started poking around on Ebay searching the word credenza and sorting the results by nearest to my zipcode. (You can also search for "sideboard" and "buffet" too.) The idea was to find something within driving range because shipping something huge like this was out of the question.

I found some cool ones, but they were pricey. I was leary on spending over $250 since I was intending to do some hacking away at the thing like rip out drawers and make holes for all the wires to run inside, so I started looking at local thrift and antique stores. I really wanted something that had cabinets on both sides and drawers in the middle that I could rip out to make shelves. After months of searching I finally found this one at a local thrift store for $30.


Don't let the pictures fool you. This thing was in ratty shape in some areas. I would've loved to have just cleaned it up and been done with it. Had it been solid wood I would've stained it instead of painting, but in the end painting was the way to go.


It was in good shape. No wobbly legs. No major problems.


The worst part was this messed up corner. Nothing a little wood putty couldn't fix. I knew it'd have a somewhat "weathered" feel when I was all done, so I few bumps and blemishes just added character.


Here you can see what I had to work with once the drawers were pulled out. In the beginning I thought of leaving the bottom drawer in for storage, but it ended up looking weird so I just pulled them all out.


The first thing I did was scuff everything up with 100 grit sand paper. Then I pulled out all the stapes which held the back panel on (which is just thin masonite.) I also ripped out all of the tracks for the drawers.


We're looking at the back view here. I left all the framing for the drawer tracks because I wanted to use them as support for my shelves. I ended up cutting pieces of masonite large enough to fit on top of the framing so that it would be one nice smooth shelf from above. To hide the layers from the front I bought some thin molding to finish it off. You'll see that in the final photos.


At this stage I wasn't sure of final details so I did a quick little photoshop mock-up of my living room, TV and a couple options for the credenza. I kicked around the idea of throwing a little color into the door panels but ultimately decided to make it all the same color.


I hate wires with a passion. (Just look how angry I am.) In an effort to hide them, I cut notches behind all the shelf supports. I planned to put the surge protector inside one of the cabinets, so this allowed me a place to run all the wires in a stealthier fashion.


It ain't pretty but it works. No ones sees these notches because they're all on the back side. I'd just cut two slots and then chisel out all the particle board crap. Here you can also see that I'd tried spray painting the inside of everything black. I thought this would save me time and look good next to the really dark brown paint on the outside of the unit. It didn't so I ended up painting over all this black spray paint with the final color anyway. Waste of time!


Here it is. Done. (That robot to the right was done by my friend, Alan Joyner.)


I'd like to eventually get a wireless surround sound unit so that ugly subwoofer thingie you see on the right can go across the room under an endtable or something.


There you have it -- $30 for the unit, $20 for a tank of gas (had to borrow a truck from a friend,) and about $50 in paint and supplies. So for about $100 total and a couple weekends of work I've got something more unique than anything I could buy in a store.

I really like these credenzas. They come in all shapes and sizes and have many different uses. I'm looking for a higher, longer one to put in my kitchen right now. I've got this odd open space in there that one of these would fit nicely into. I'm thinking I could outfit the top of it with stainless steel and a cutting boards so we can use the top as a prep area and the bottom cabinets as storage. I also wouldn't mind getting a lower one to use in my office. Right now I have this giant L-shaped desk that I call "The Command Center." If I found another credenza it could be used as storage and to hold all my components. Then I'd only need a small desk to hold my monitor, keyboard and wacom tablet.

wish you were punchy.

fast enough for you old man.

me likey bikeys.

desktop patterns. series 1.

you don't say.

spike jonze gap commercial.

Gap is revamping their stores and had Spike Jonze do a commercial for them called "Pardon Our Dust." I'd first seen the original Spike Jonze version which uses the classical song "Peer Gynt Suite." I remember thinking, "Why does it have this stupid elves-hiding-christmas-presents music?" After a Google or two I found out that Gap actually released it with an different, more obscure "hip" song instead.

I actually like the Gap's version better because I've never heard it before and don't already associate it with other ironic shit like the Home Alone 2 trailer. Others might disagree, but I'll be siding with Gap on this one. One problem, though, is that they just slapped it into Spike's original that was already edited (more tightly) to the Peer Gynt Suite. Still it's an ok compromise to get rid of that song. Ultimately, it might've been better if Spike had a different song in mind from the get-go.

Spike's cut.
Gap's cut.

diet coke please.

berlin sketch.

some pretentious novel.

I painted this back in September after returning from my honeymoon. The wedding was finally over and I could finally relax.

It'd been years since I'd even thought of painting something, so I was looking forward to this. I wanted to do something simple and easy in order to assure instant satisfaction. At first, that's what I got. It came together quickly. After all, it was simple, flat color.

Then my wife made the unpleasing (yet accurate) observation that the wall was too plain. "It needs bricks or something." So I laid tracing paper over the thing, drew some half ass perspective lines and plotted out my bricks. Then I selected the "keepers" by outlining them with a black Sharpie. Finally I cut out each individual brick and used the hole as a template.



I should've never picked something with a brick wall because I haven't painted anything since. Maybe I need ritalin.

best show ever.

Okay, I admit it. I'd never seen Freaks & Geeks before, but I'm watching it now. It's the best.

At first an outsider might think this is a show full of cliches -- The geeks. The stoners. The Jocks. The nerds. This is true, but that's what high school is, an on going cliche. What's great is that at first you do see the characters as cliches. You group them into the same categories people get lumped into all the time.

Then, as each episode passes, you start to see other sides to these characters. They're multi-dimensional and have a hyper-realism about them. For example, take Tom Wilson ("Biff" from the greatest movie of all time) who plays a coach/P.E./health instructor. Sure we see him clapping his hands yelling "Let's go ladies" to a bunch of guys during practice. We see him postively reinforce jock behavior during a dodge ball match, too. But then we see him teaching a sex education class. When he finds out Sam is confused about sex and bothered by it after seeing a porno, he closes the door to his office with an "I could lose my job telling you this" disclaimer. Next, porn music drowns out all other sound as we watch through the window as he tells this kid what's up. We see the kid make faces in disgust and eventually he starts cracking up laughing. And this isn't actor-style fake laughing by a 24 year old playing a high school student. It's a real kid really laughing. It's great.

I've only seen the first 5 episodes and the one I just described is number 5 (Test & Breasts.) I liked the first 4 a lot, but this one is the first one I've loved. I think it's because the first 4 were all about Lindsey trying to fit in with a different crowd of kids. It felt like every story was centered around her and this same dilemma.

Can't wait to watch the rest of these.

new suit.

la policia.

on deck.

lo-rise.

A scan from the ol' sketchbook.

suzie.