Forgotten Firsts

Often, a first isn't really the first. It's simply the first that people remember. Steamboat Willie isn't the first sound cartoon, but it's the one that made a difference, so it's the one that enters the history books.

If a first isn't very good, it tends to be forgotten. That's the case with Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future, the first TV series to include computer animated characters. It ran only 22 episodes in syndication in 1987-88. I wrote the article below as production on the series was ending.

It's ironically fitting that the article appeared in the first and only issue of Cartoon Quarterly, edited by John Cawley and Jim Korkis and published by Gladstone in the fall of 1988. The magazine had a fannish slant, but the roster of writers is one that readers of the blogosphere will recognize. Besides Cawley, Korkis and myself, the authors included Leonard Maltin, Jerry Beck, Floyd Norman, Will Finn, Scott Shaw! and Mark Kausler. The magazine showed a lot of promise and this 22 year old issue is far more interesting than any recent issue of Animation Magazine. Unfortunately, the magazine is as forgotten as Captain Power.

Valentine's

Schoolism: Assignment #4, The Features

This week's Schoolism lecture was on features. The assignment was to draw a page of hands,eyes,noses,ears. A few realistic and a few cartoony.  Here is a page I did of hands.  Some of these are okay, most are way off.  Hands are always some of the weakest parts of my drawings, and I need all the practice I could get. 

Case in point.  Here's a sketch I did for the Draw Force blog some of the artists here at work run.  Ironically missing any sorts of hands!

TARZAN (Disney, 1999)

AM Newsletter

Here's a little bit of a interview/post-mortem of the making of my Animation Mentor film, Better off Undead!  Thanks for showcasing it AM!

 I remember trying to get this film done last year, in time for Valentine's Day, and I didn't even come close!  So it's cool this was posted now.  It's funny to read this interview and scroll back just a few posts in the past and read how frustrated and disheartened I was going through it at first.  Melodramatic much?  But what's really cool is reading and remembering how many people, both good friends and strangers, offered to help me out.  I would get messages from people asking if I needed any modeling, animation, lighting help.   That was so awesome and I'm super grateful! 

As an aside, a little after I finished Animation Mentor, I posted it on CG Talk, and I was contacted by a talented artist named Jason Walker who said he wanted to do the environments for my short!  We went back and forth a little bit but he eventually got too busy with school, and I eventually moved out here.  But he did send me these initial lighting tests and I was already blown away!

HIGH DIVING HARE (Warner Bros., 1948)