NY Licensing Fair 2006

Another thing I wish I had blogged about, closer to when it actually happened was the NY Licensing Fair. I took the trip with Mike Daubert, President of The Animation Farm. The Animation Farm is a 3d studio in Austin that Powerhouse has a really good relationship with, and we share contacts and work on projects together from time to time.

The show was kind of crazy. We talked to a lot of people and did a lot of schmoozing. Here is Mike schmoozing with Curious George:

and me schmoozing with the Backyardigans:

I have to admit a show like this is slightly bittersweet. I really enjoyed seeing some of the booths and loved talking to so many people about animation. That being said, licensing can really be the dark side of our business. That may sound strange coming from a guy who has a character named Captain Capitalism, but that was part of the initial idea behind the character...more on that on another day.

There was a Tweety bird merchandise booth with designs by Nikki Hilton. Nuff said?

And is it just me, or does this guy "resemble" 2d from the Gorillaz by Jamie Hewlett:

Here are a couple of more images that I will let speak for themselves:

Funny thing though, the highlight of the trip for me did not have much to do with animation...well not yet.

While walking across the floor, I could have sworn I saw Pat Miletich. I followed him for a second to be sure, and he ended up at an IFL booth. I had heard of the IFL from reading websites and a magazine article, but did not know much about it. Then I saw Gareb Shamus, Editor of Wizard Magazine at the booth as well.

Now my "career" has been coincidentally inextricably linked to both Wizard magazine and mixed martial arts too much for me not to recognize the synchronicity of it. Let me explain...

I have been a fan of MMA for years. The first 3d character I modeled in graduate school was Tank Abbott. One of my first jobs as a young freelance animator was doing some really bad animation for a documentary called "Blood, Sweat, and Teeth" which chronicled a young man trying to enter the then more extreme world of Mixed Martial Arts.

Then after starting Powerhouse with Bruce and Frank, I wrote and we created a short for the Wizard "Direct-to-Video" called "Heroes" which got our little fledging studio noticed by Kevin Smith. This led to us producing animation for a couple of video games for Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, (which an article was written about in Wizard.) Since then we have done animated film tests, and shorts for Mr. Smith. So in a way, Wizard magazine is somewhat responsible for some of our studio's success.

My wife and I are still pretty hardcore MMA fans now, and we spend many nights watching Pride and UFC and wasting hours on sites like Sherdog and MMAweekly.

So talking to Mr. Shamus again, and getting this picture with a former UFC champ, who now coaches the Heavyweight, Welterweight, and sometimes the Middleweight champion was a high-point for me:

I had a lot of fun on the trip with Mr. Daubert. We got along very well, despite me continually getting us lost. I know Manhattan pretty well, but I think this trip proved that Mandy is really the one in whole gets us where we need to go when we visit. After full days walking around the show and proselytizing the need for licensors and licensees to use our services, we would do some minor site seeing, (though we were pretty beat each night).

We went to Tao, Michael Jordan's restaurant in Grand Central, Midtown Comics, and walked around Time Square. Though the excursion I will remember the most was visiting the World Trade Center. Although I have been to NY 3 or 4 times since September 11, this was the first time I visited ground zero. Construction is progressing so much that we were able to go underneath the site, and walk to the recently completed subway system. We had an odd experience in the cab ride down though, with a cabby who seemed to be talking to himself, then started chanting loudly till we made it to the site. It was very surreal.