Wrapping up the NY posts

I have been back from New York for several days, fighting a cold and playing catch up from the trip. But before moving forward on what is new, I wanted to bring some closure to the trip blog before moving forward.

On Tuesday I worked till about 4, had a couple meetings read some contracts and sent some e-mails around. On the way to Mike's office I popped into the MoMA's store and picked up some presents. 1 for Mike Daubert at the Animation Farm and another for my niece, who has a birthday party on the Sunday when I get back to Houston. One of my later meetings got cancelled so I called Mandy and we quickly made our way to the Museum of Natural History.

The Museum is really amazing, but it also somewhat surreal. It could easily also be called The Museum of Goofy Taxidermy. Most of our photos did not turn out due to our cameras inability to take indoor photos.

After the museum, we changed, then made our way to Broadway to check out "Talk Radio," with Liev Schreiber.


The play was excellent. Somehow, Mandy got us front row tickets- dead center. If we would have stood up, we could have slapped the actors. Props fell from the stage right in front of us. I wanted to snag a couple from the floor as souvenirs, but my wife has more scruples than I do.

If you are in New York, and have a chance- go see this play. Liev Schreiber is truly amazing. I listen to a lot of talk radio. My theory is to listen to extremes on both sides of the political spectrum. I listen to Ingram, O'Reilly, Savage, Air America, and 2 of the BBC daily broadcasts, a few of the NPR podcasts, the NY Times podcasts, and a few more when I can.

The script was interesting because it explores the relationship between artist and the unseen audience in this world that has party apparatchiks mixing entertainment with news. After the play, Mandy and I went to Da Tomasso, an Italian Restaurant in Hell's Kitchen that Mike recommended, and I waxed pretentious about the play.

On Wednesday I had several meetings. I had a bad start, taking an uptown train for two stops instead of a downtown train, and barely made it to Mike's office on time. The meetings went well. I had lunch with Mike and his Dad, who ran American Artists before Mike did. We listened to him tell stories of the old days of being an art rep, back when most of the art was done in oils and there were no computers. One of my meetings was at the Comedy Central offices in the Newsweek building, which was a thrill to see. After that meeting Mandy, Mike and I went to have dinner and drinks with a current client at the fancy Dream Hotel around the corner.

Thursday was a bit hectic, we had to leave at 5am on Friday to catch our plane. I had some more meetings, and then left around 5pm to make the train to Brooklyn. In Brooklyn, we met Tom Fulp (middle) and Tim from Newgrounds.


I had never met Tom or Tim before, but it was like we had known each other for a long time. Newgrounds runs the Captain Capitalism cartoons, and Tom has been nice enough to help me out and sponsor the last cartoon. These are simply great folks. I had a blast talking about Flash games, the next version of Flash, the internet market, and many other things. I even got a sneak peek at some of the Newgrounds redesign.

Barrcade itself is a cool place. It is a small bar with great beers that is encircled by old arcade games, which as you may know from the Captain Capitalism arcade machine I made, or the arcade machines we made at Powerhouse, I have soft spot for these things.


The really cool thing is they have a high score board, that people from all around the world come to compete for. The way I was told, people from Austria will come to defend their scores if someone usurps them at Blasteroids.

New York was a blast, but I have gotten a bit behind and some of the things I learned and talked to folks about in New York just added to my to do list. But exciting things are on the way, stay tuned...

Monday in New York

Monday-

We got up early so I could move Glen's car for the street sweepers. Being from Texas, I don't have much experience driving in snow, much less in a place Manhattan. It was pretty easy, once I made it over the snow bank.

After that I started work e-mailing some folks. I ended up working at the apartment until around 3pm. Mandy who had a lot to do as well, worked across the small table at the apartment with me. We did not have anything to eat all day, so we decided to head out to get a late lunch. We went down to 5th Ave, an area we don't really know well, and explored for a place to eat. Part of the reason we went to this area is so I could pass by Marvel's corporate office. I don't know why I was expecting something else, but Marvel's office is just a non-descript building. No giant Spiderman on the door, no name on the building, no giftshop, or themed restuarant where I could order a Captain America hotdog. Sullen, I left Mandy to shop, around 4pm, and I walked to Mike Mendelsohn's office in Hells Kitchen.

Walking by the MOMA, there was man making animals out of woven weeds, I bought a little Mantis from him:

Mike is one of Powerhouse Animation's agents, and works out of a great little brownstone about a block from Letterman. Mike is a great guy, and he let me look through a bunch of notes we just recieved from a client, and use his phone to talk to Bruce back in Austin. Around 6, Mike needed to leave to make the train back home. I walked with Mike towards his train, then caught up with Mandy.

We walked around, until we made it to Central Park, around FAO Schwartz. Mandy remembered that the restaurant Tao was right around the corner. Tao is a place we have been too several times on trips to NY. It is a sushi bar/restaurant with a giant 4 story Buddha in the middle. Lights that change the tint of the room every few seconds reflect off the giant statue if Siddhartha. The food was great, as usual. For dessert, we had a giant fortune cookie, with 1 side filled with vanilla custard and the other side filled with chocolate mousse.

After Tao, we walked through Central Park. We admired the snow, and went past Tavern on the Green, back to our apartment.

Tighten up lassies, drinking yourself to death, and shootings

On Sunday, we woke up and went to Balthazaar's for Brunch.

Afterward, we headed down to Chinatown, I geeked out looking through a whole bunch of Praying Mantis Kung-fu books and weapons at one of the shops. There is one great shop down in Chinatown called Pearl River that has lots of Lion Dancing costumes, and great Chinese trinkets and antiques.

We went to a few other shops including the art stores Dick Blick and Pearl Art supply. After playing around the area, we headed down to near the Cooper Union. I applied to go to grad school at the Cooper Union at one point, but ended up going to The Vizlab at Texas A&M instead. My favorite figure drawing professor, Bob Schiffhauer, went to Cooper Union, and I always enjoy walking around this area, imagining what it was like for him as an art student in the area during the peak of the Beat Generation.

Right around the corner from Cooper Union is McSorely's tavern, a great place, and frequent hang out for Powerhouser Jason Williams when he spent 6 months working from Manhattan. Jason told some great stories about the bar, so we stopped in a for a few afternoon ales. The place did not disappoint.

The staff at McSorely's, which has been around since the 1800s, speak with a thick brogue. When you walk into the bar, you get asked bruskly,"Light or Dark," which when answered prompts two beers being plunked down in front of you. Always two beers at a time, at McSorely's, which only takes cash. But since the two beers are only about $4, (cheap even by Texan standards), it is hard to complain. McSorely's has only been renovated twice since the 1850s. Once when plumbing was added, and the other time when they finally started allowing women to frequent the establishment to add a woman's toilet. There are still dusty photos and newspaper clippings all over the walls, some old enough to elect "New York's own Teddy Roosevelt for Vice President"

They take pride in being a "community seating establishment." Two young attractive New York ladied came in and took up one of the few tables, setting some shopping bags in a couple of the chairs. When someone new came in the barkeep barged over to the shocked ladies and declared "Tighten up, lassies, this is a community seating establishment."

Mandy and I staggered to a few shops including a Tokyo Toy store that had all manner of vinyl toys, and Chelsea Market, home of the Food Network. We went to the Staten Island Ferry and Battery Park to check out the statue of Liberty, but had missed the last ferry over to Ellis Island. So we walked from the Ferry down to the formerly mafia haven, Fulton Fish Market. We walked around the market awhile, and admired how even though the FBI tried to break the back of the mob, it was the GAP, Abercrombie and Fitch, and other such strip mall shops that finally did them in. Capitalism killed the mob in this area.

In the Capitalism spirit we walked through the financial district. By this time we had probably put in about at least 10 miles walking so far this day. I was wearing crappy shoes so it was beginning to wear on me a bit. We walked to the World Trade Center area. I have been a couple times since 9/11, but Mandy has not. It really is pretty staggering and numbing what amounts to a massive hole in the middle of the city. Even thought they have built a lot of the understructure back up in the past 6 years, it just feels like a void.

Afterward, we made our way down to Greenwich Village to eat at the Spotted Pig. They were full, so they took my cel # and we walked around the corner to the White Horse Tavern. In memory of Dylan Thomas, I had a whiskey. About 55 years ago, at this self-same establishment, Mr. Thomas, (depending upon which version of the story you believe), exclaimed "18 whiskeys, I think that is a new record." He then exited the White Horse and collapsed outside...falling into a coma. I decided not to try to best the welshman's record, and we sat back and relaxed until the Spotted Pig called.

On our way into the Spotted Pig, we met Vera Wang coming out. The place was definately "hip." But the food, in your blogger's, humble opinion was crap.

We caught a subway to get back to the apartment , and decided to switch trains around Madison Square Gardens. As we got out of the train we knew something was wrong. You could sort of feel it in the air. There were mobs of younger high school age kid running around and shouting at one another. We quickly got on a train, and it did not leave for 3-4 mins. Finally a voice came over the intercom letting us know the train would not be leaving and asking for everyone to exit. This was strange, but we are not terribly familiar with things, so we quickly exited the station avoiding some fights between high school students, and walked the underground all the way to Time Square. When we exited into Times Square we were literally between NYPD officers, in riot gear, and a bunch of disgruntled kids. We tried to turn down a side street, but one of NY's finest told us that street had been closed. Apparently, gunfire had erupted. We quickly made our way through the confused crowds, on our bruised feet, from Time Square all the way to 68th and Columbus...I don't know how far that is in miles, but it took forever. See and read more about it here: STORY

When we finally made it back, and then watched people we just saw on the local news getting arrested. We soaked our sore feet, and went to sleep with ease.

We're all Irish here

Saturday-

I am in New York this week. Wrote a blog about it. Like to hear it? Here it goes.

Things have been pretty fast-paced since we got here. We were supposed to leave on Friday, but due to the Northeastern Ice Storms, and becaused we flew out on Jet Blue, we did not get to Manhattan until late on Saturday. We were supposed to go to the St. Patrick's day parade but had to settle on watching them on our Direct TV monitors provided by JetBlue.
We took the train from Kennedy through Jamaica Queens to the apartment we are staying at near Lincoln Center. The apartment is nice, but New York sized, so we spent a bit of time setting things up so that Mandy and I can work while we are here.
Part of the reason we are staying here in NY is to "cat sit" Mandy's aunt's Persian cats; "Tarzan" and "Sheeba." Here is Tarzan helping me set up my work area.

We are neighbors to the ABC building, off of Peter Jennings way. After getting settled, we took off to Kennedy's Irish Pub to take in some of the waning St. Paddy's Day festivities. On the way into the very crowded bar we bumped into John Krasinski and his entourage.
We had a good time at Kennedy's. Lots of happy folks singing a long with U2 and other Irish songs. Not to lend credence to the 40's film stereotypes, but the place was crawling with police officers who were letting loose. I called one of the hosts, "sir." To which he replied "Don't call me sir, boyo, just say 'aye.' We're all Irish here." It was a really fun time.
After dinner, we went down to Rockefeller Center, since SNL was about to begin, just to see what was going on.
We took the somewhat over-priced "Top of the Rock" tour, and admired some pretty amazing views from 70-something stories above the city. Mandy is pretty scared of heights, and the views over the ledges induce a bit of vertigo, but she was a good sport. The Empire State Building was lit up green for the holiday.
We tooled around the area, took some photos, then decided to head to the apartment to watch SNL. On the way home we stopped by a little restaurant next door to the apartment for dessert.

Recent design work

I have spent a lot of time recently working on the Captain Capitalism designs. Too much, really. I have been taking Stephen Silver's brilliant designs as a starting point, but trying to bring them a little bit more in line with my own designs so that they will blend well into the parts of the next cartoon that I have already done, like this still from a scene with the "Greatest American Hero"-like character and Karl Marx that I have completed:

One major change that you might notice in the designs above and below is the lack of "self-colored" lines. I really like colored lines in designs, I actually have to restrain myself from doing it. But it really is a time suck on the production of the cartoons, it takes a lot of time, and since I only really work on these cartoons in the evenings and on the weekends it is pretty ridiculous. There are still a few, but not near as many.

I understand that any changes I made to Steve Silver's designs are a step backward. Stephen's designs are genius. But what I tried to do was work on top of that design over and over, and draw it strictly from memory. I also experimented with animating the character, in the manner that the character works in the cartoons; posing him, doing mouths and facial expressions. I made a few changes based on that, mainly in the arms and head structure.

Also, I have been looking a lot at Jaimie Hewlett's Gorillaz recently. I got the "Rise of the Ogre" book, and have been watching the videos. I love Hewlett's line style, with some simple straights, and the ways that the line with varies in his pieces. He also has an amazing sense of color, and I have been trying to incorporate what I learned into the designs, because I think they will work well in Flash.

Below is a sort of progression, from Captain Capitalism, (as he appeared in Nightmare of a Red Christmas), to Stephen Silver's brilliant redesign, to what I have been working on recently.

Of the other designs that Stephen did, the Castro design probably stayed the closest when he was brought into Flash and broken into pieces. The color change is because all of the undead reds are zombie colored, something that will be explained in two episodes.

The Lenin drawing changed a bit more, mainly because of the voice work that was done for the cartoon. I love the original design, but the voice that I had was much too deep to work with this character. I considered redoing the voice, but it took so long to get the audio done on this cartoon, and I need to move forward, so I tried to adapt the design to work with audio.

Mao stayed pretty close to the original design as well. Frank Gabriel did a brilliant read for Mao, and I can't wait to start animating it. Of all the characters, this one so far is the one that is the most complete and ready for animating.

I have become kind of a line nazi, you can probably see it the most in the Mao design since he is broken apart into animatable pieces in Flash already. If you ever worked with drawings done on paper that have been vectorized and brought into Flash, you know how much the lines can change. It is hard not to go into each line and smooth it out and make it even.
Because of the change in character design, I have redone the home page and the animation page. You can now watch some early versions of Captain Capitalism cartoons in the animation section as well. I took them down, because some of them are so bad that I was embarassed, but now I am kind of comfortable in the progression that they show.

The problem with a redesign like this is what to do next. I want to redo the entire website, and all of the merchandise artwork now, but with the time that I have to work on the cartoons that would take forever, so I am just going to move forward with the next cartoon, I have dallied enough recently. Furthermore, I am sure it is going to adapt even further as I work on animating the next cartoon.

Captain America R.I.P.

I got a few phone calls and e-mails yesterday from folks offering me condolences for my loss.

Thanks to all of you who showed your concern. It helps dull the pain and the void in my heart:

Good bye, old friend.

Captain Capitalism kind of springs from a fascination with iconic heroes, especially Captain America. For the none of you who remember my old blog, my office at Powerhouse has a Captain America shrine:

This picture is actually a few years old, the collection has grown quite a bit since then.

I read the issues, and it does not seem like this is going to really last long. He is a super-hero and he was still in the hospital at the end of the issue. Also, Iron-man morphed into a new Ultron in another title, so they might all be life model decoys. Wow, I just let a geek flare off, didn't I?

Curse you Wikipedia for making me feel like my geekiness is more prevalent than it actually is and luring my into a false sense of security in such a public forum as the web! Curse you!

It looks like Quesada and company found an opportunity to get some press and up the sales on a book that does not always do well. Good for them. Though it was surreal seeing Martin Bashir talking about it on Nightline last night.

I wore black today. But unfortunately, my office flag is too big to fly at half-mast, but it does in spirit.

Addition:

The always wonderful, Captain Capitalism contributor and fellow Powerhouser; Sam Deats did a cool digital sketch to help ease the pain:
Pretty cool, huh?

It is funny, I hate zombies. Maybe" irrationally dislike zombies" is a better way to put it. I love Captain America, and hate zombies, yet I really like this drawing. Thanks, Sam!

Dwight Schrute: Intergalactic Assitant to the District Manager

So last Saturday, Rainn Wilson was on SNL, which I watch pretty faithfully. That night I actually had dreams about character design ( I had played with Captain Capitalism designs all evening, trying to take some things from the Stephen Silver designs, but still keep it in the world...I'll probably blog about this seperately one day).

I guess my day's experience welded together in the land of make-believe and I was doing Dwight Schrute designs in my dream.

So to warm up on Sunday morning, before digging into Captain Capitalism, I tried to draw a Dwight Schrute. Funny thing is, as I was drawing it, I was thinking about the plot line. Something corny like bad 70's/80's cartoons. Dunder Mifflin gets a shipment mix-up with a mad scientist who mail ordered a worm hole machine. Dwight accidentally uses the machine to make copies, but makes a worm hole instead and gets zapped into outerspace in the future. But since Dwight is 100% full-blooded middle-management material, he is quickly hired by an alien conglomerate corporation as "Intergalactic regional manager"- but in space business is deadly, and Dwight gets into zany situations. Sounds totally plausible in the world of Harlem Globetrotter cartoons and Far Out Space Nuts. I think he should have a cute character that does cute babbeling...and Dwight loathes him.

I'd watch it. Would you?