And the cool award goes to....

This is Kathy...she's a friend of mine who happens to be the most kickass HR person in the history of both HR and persons....oh, and she's cooooooooooooool.

luvs ya Kathy

The Way of the Future!!!!

"Can you outsmart bullet?"

So now what do we do?

So I have a friend (surprise!) named Wade who (with another friend named Andrew...not that Andrew, a different one) made a book. It's an awesome book of sketches, drawings and all around mayhem.

Wade and Andrew's book is available for purchase HERE!

I love this book like mean people love kicking puppies...so, a lot.

You will like this book...I garauntee it. I'm so sure you will like this book that if you buy it and don't like it I will personally call you a dumbass for having bad taste.

Enjoy!

Busy and sick and busy again

Between crunch at Valve, the current quarter of Animation Mentor and buying and being in the process of moving into a new house...well, not a lot of time has been going into the old website. so in the mean time I leave you with...
...me with my dumbass manchu and strange straw hat....your kung fu is good, but my kung fu has a dorky hat.

Ron Burgundy would be proud....

Not Since Ron Burgundy has the jazz flute been this cool....ok, never in the history of anything has jazz flute been this cool.

Art am pretty....

I love this industry because you can't throw a stick without hitting an incredible artist...and believe me, I throw sticks all the time....big ones, with nails in them. So after my last round of stick wielding mayhem I came across a friend's website just chock-full-of arty beautifulness.

Andrea is one of the artists at Valve, and like all of them I hate them a little every day for being so damned talented and making the rest of us want to see them get hit in the head with a stick or something...deja vu?...I think not ( love ya Andrea.) Anyway, take a trip on over to Andrea's site and bask in her artistic brothy goodness. It'll make you a better person and earn you brownie points with god.

Sweep the leg

Hamish's word of the day....

Any of you that read my blog....all four of you...know that I'm lucky enough to call Hamish McKenzie my buddy, my pal, my dear old chum (becasue if you put him in the water, sharks come a swimmin'.) One of the many, many other things that I find so gosh darn swell about Hamish is his never ending ability to increase my vocabulary with the wonderfully discriptive vernacular of the Australian peoples.

Todays phrase: "That's the duck's nuts"

That just leaves a mental image that is both distrubing and freakin' hysterical all at the same time.

Remember, use it three times and an angle gets it's wings, then kills a kitten.

9 to get feature treatment

Over at Ain't it Cool News they have a small write up on Shane Acker's dark and wonderfull short film "9". Seems like Tim Burton has taken a liking to it and is setting Shane up to direct a feature version full of big name star voice talent. I hope they keep the feel of the short. Will be interesting to see though since so much of the great vibe of the short comes from the fact that it's all in the body performances. Not a word needed to be spoken.

Anyway, here's the short...sorry for the quality. Youtube probably isn't the best venue to present this fine piece of work.

Caught like a rat in a trap...

Here's a nice over seas trailer for Pixar and Brad Bird's next flick. Kinda slow but still beautiful. I'm looking forward to Ratatouille. I wasn't a huge fan of Cars and I'm hoping this is a return to form for the house that Luxo built. Don't get me wrong, I didn't hate it by any means. It's beautiful...BEAUTIFUL if every respect except story, which is why it was a disappointment. I know "they" say there are no original ideas left (which, for the most part is true according to the never ending flood of mediocrity spewing onto the movie screens) but Pixar's strength was taking that idea and making it their own and making it "their own" made it feel fresh and new...well to me at least. Cars didn't feel like that, it didn't feel like it was a story unique to the talents of the great story department in Emeryville. I'm not saying that every other Pixar film is perfect, but man, they're all damn entertaining and all in my top 20 animated films. Cars story felt, well, plain and predictable. I guess it's kinda hard to follow something like The Incredibles and maybe that has biased my opinion of Cars...wow, have I gone off on a tangent. Anyway, I'm really looking forward to Rata-ta-tat-tat-tatouille.

Heros in a Half Shell !!!

I loved TMNT when they came out in the original black and white comics. I loved TMNT when they came out with the animated series. Dear lord, I loved TMNT when the video game hit and sucked up countless quarters and I even loved all of the live action movies....yeah, even the one with Vanilla Ice in it. I was a little leery about the idea of a new Turtle movie. It just felt like all the other 80's merchandise that's making a comeback...but man, after seeing this last trailer/featurette I have to say that I am seriously excited about this. This is fun, different...it's not talking, fuzzy, smart ass animals trying to out smart the humans and live happily ever after...it's talking, smart ass, genetically altered reptiles who eat pizza and kick ass....the only thing that would make this better would be if they fought hordes of the undead. They could be our only hope (since Zombies obviously don't eat turtles....d'uh!)...ok, I digress. This movie will own the monkey's heinie.

Spline-ly Explained

The uber talented and damn good-lookin' Victor Navone has a new tutorial up about the mysteries of the spline. Part 1 of a 2 parter, Victor get's into the importance of good spline work as well as looking behind the curtain at what splines really are. A definite must read especially for those who would rather hide under the covers and whimper and cry than open up the graph editor.

The Animation Show on I-Tunes

Cartoon Brew posted that you can now find The Animation Show in nice bite sized chunks over at the i-tunes for $1.99 each.

A few years ago I loaded up the truck and headed down to Austin with some friends to catch this at the Alamo Draft house. Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt were there along with a million adoring fans...ok, closer to a couple hundred drunk animation geeks. It was tons of fun and ended with a 2am run to the I-Hop down the street from our hotel...all of us enjoyed the goodness of pankcakes, except for Gas. He was too busy being unconscious.

UPDATE: E-mail is back up

Back....

We're back. The trip was a blast and I can't wait to get some pics up. Hamish took this picture of the ship....damn that thing was huge.

Purple and Brown....

I don't get to see Keith Lango get all soft inside about a lot of stuff so it was really fun reading his post about Ardman's "Purple and Brown " shorts. Stop by and read his post then hop on over to YouTube for all the fun. If you don't laugh at these then you're dead inside

Geri's Game Redux

Caught this over at Cartoon brew. Remember when they did a shot for shot remake of Psycho?...it took me a while to like a Vince Vaughn film again and, well, Gus Van Sant is dead to me. But this take on Geri's game feels like an homage to me and a definite labor of geek filled love.

News from the House of Mouse...

Got this, from of all places, Aint it cool news....

"Toy Story 3" is coming in 2009, but John Lasseter won't be the director.

In addition to confirming for the first time that a third "Toy Story" is in the works, most likely for 2009 release, Lasseter said Lee Unkrich will helm it. Unkrich co-directed "Toy Story 2," "Monsters, Inc." and "Finding Nemo" but has never before been sole helmer on a Pixar pic…

Michael Arndt, Oscar-nominated scribe of "Little Miss Sunshine," is penning the script.
Lasseter also revealed a behind-the-scenes shift at Walt Disney Feature Animation -- which is separate from Pixar but also under the control of Lasseter and Catmull -- by announcing that Chris Williams, a vet story artist at the Mouse, is now directing 2008 release "American Dog." Pic was developed and previously under the control of "Lilo & Stitch" helmer Chris Sanders, who recently left Disney.
Catmull denied speculation that Walt Disney Feature Animation may become a 2-D-only studio, with Pixar handling CGI, though he did confirm the Mouse will bring back hand-drawn pics.

"We're really excited about that and have brought back some great directors to work on that," he said, presumably referring to "The Frog Princess," a 2-D pic being developed by "Aladdin" and "Treasure Planet" helmers Ron Clements and John Musker, whom Lasseter brought back to Disney last year. That pic is believed to be on the fast track and may be the division's next release after "American Dog."

...I am excited about 2D coming back to the house of mouse (but most of us have known that for a bit) and I'm interested in seeing Lee Unkrich on his own but I'm not sure about "An American Dog" without Chris Sanders. And, honestly, TS2's ending...well, I wasn't a huge fan of the ending but it felt like a pretty good period at the end of that story. No one wanted to see it done by Disney sans Pixar and I'm really not sure I want to see it done by Pixar at this point. Wasn't it just a couple years ago that Jobs said they had more than enough original content, what's the point of doing sequels?....well Mr Lasseter, what's the point?

In the coolest places...

Ok, so Ernesto Bottger is the coolest of cool. We worked together at DNA and now he's at ReelFX. Back in 2005 Ernesto's short film "Help" was selected to be in the Nicktoons Animation Festival. Well, last night I'm making my way through content on the old x-box live when what to my wandering eyes should appear but the Nicktoons filmfestival and Ernesto's short. If you're on x-box live just go to Video Marketplace/TV Shows/Networks/Nicktoons/2005-Nicktoons Animation Festival: Episode 5...man, that was a mouth full. If you don't have an x-box or x-box live you can still see the short here...but you won't be as cool, your friends will laugh at you and the terrorists will win.