Beat obessesion and Chuck Jones' brilliant longterm salespeople

I am a little behind on the cartoons I am making. I was supposed to finish one of the four animatics this weekend. I was going to try edit all the sound and draw all the layouts and boards too. I still have not finished all the sound.

One day earlier in the week, I was blog surfing and made a stop at Gabe Swarr's blog. Mr. Swarr is a great Flash director and had posted a short, and the animatic for the short. In the animatic he had a neat little graphic symbol that apparently was being used to keep track of the beat. I had never thought of doing that, and so I made one to use in the animatics I was making. It was a brilliant idea. But I might have become over obsessed with it.

I used to play drums. Recently I have fallen back into playing, not real drums, but the wife and I have been playing Rock Band. When I first saw the game, I kind of scoffed at it. But just like the genius of the Chuck Jones sales people, in the second part of this blog, the folks behind Rock Band knew the Achilles heel of former drummers/consumers my age. Rock band has Rush songs. Tom Sawyer, sir. All drummers in my day tried to talk their bands into playing Tom Sawyer. Not because it was a great song, but because it was all drums.

I might be over doing it, but it has been really fun trying to make the cartoon have a genuine rhythm to it, without making it obvious. I have even gone so far to do time compression on the sound effects and music to make everything land on the beats.

Also this weekend, I got my Chucks Jones figure drawing back from the framer.

10 years ago, on our honeymoon, Mandy and I went to the Chuck Jones gallery in Sante Fe. I spent a good long time in the gallery looking throught drawings, wearing little gloves going through stacks of paper, trying to find something I could afford. I really wanted to purchase this print of figure drawing of Chuck Jones' wife, but being a newly married graduate student, I could only afford a signed copy of Chuck Amuck.

A few days after we got back from the honeymoon, I got a letter from the gallery. Inside the envelope was a note from my childhood hero that congratulated us on our wedding.

There was also a picture of Mr. Jones and his wife, and in what I assumed was a brilliant sales tactic; the picture was taken in front of the figure drawing the sale person knew I wanted so badly.

It took 10 years, but apparently it worked. Mandy got the drawing for me for our anniversary. And it now hangs downstairs.

Orignality and the superabundance of content.

This week I wrote a new Captain Capitalism script about shaving. I was shaving in the shower, and had the idea. My goal this year is to make 4 internet cartoons, and this idea is only about a page, written out, and only about 10 layouts. It should be pretty quick to make and I think it is kind of funny.

When I was telling my focus group, (the four fine folks who work in the same room at Powerhouse), one of them said that though my take was different that it reminded her of an SNL skit.

I am not one of those people who think that everything under the sun has been done. But the superabundance of media and the saturation of quickly passing, quickly produced, pieces has made a bit harder to come up with something completely new. Don't get me wrong, I believe there are wonderful unique and innovative ideas out there to be found. I don't always have them.

For example, a while back I wrote a script about a kid who could see dead people for a cartoon. Not terribly original I know. But unlike in "Sixth Sense" the kid who could see dead people, used his abilities to solve mysteries and help ghosts that haunted places move into the light. Futhermore, in this cartoon the two ghosts who were in every episode helping the kid were Martin Van Buren and Freddie Mercury.

When I was telling one of the guys at work about the cartoon, I was trying to the gags with the ghost of Freddie Mercury. And he was laughing and said, "Oh like Cromartie High School."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeOm-YvU9iM

I couldn't believe it. There was another cartoon that had been produced, with an irreverant take on Freddie Mercury.

What really was strange is that I had written the piece because I was frustrated, because I had just abandoned a Captain Capitalism cartoon. One night I was working on the CC cartoon and watching South Park. My cartoon was kind of a response to the Danish editorial cartoons fiasco. They used a punch line similar to the one that ended my piece. And that was that.

Now I know Captain Capitalism himself, is not necessarily unique. There are over-the-top over musculized characters in many places. From Mad Magazine's Super-Duperman, The Tick, Megaton Man, etc etc. And there are also several tongue-in-cheek uber-right wing characters.

But I stopped doing more current topic cartoons with the character because shows like South Park, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report will almost always beat you to a topic with their teams of writers, daily productions, and needs to fill shows. Come to think of it, I should have plowed out several cartoons during the writer's strike.

Out of the 30 or so Captain Capitalism scripts I have probably started working on 5 of the those cartoons, then stopped working on because of similar situations. Working in my spare time, it is difficult to get the ideas out in time to either beat someone to the punch or keep it truly topical.

In fact, the "To bleep or not to bleep cartoon" was done when Dick Cheney cussed on the Senate Floor. He had told Patrick Leahey to do something that is not anatomically possible. By the time I finished the cartoon, that story was long gone from the media cycle...luckily for me, Cheney was still very much a part of the news. But I think most people never realized that that cartoon was directly referencing that incident.

But even with that cartoon, I caught some slack from people who post critiques on sites like Atomfilms, Newgrounds, and Youtube about that cartoon being a rip of a George Carlin routine. I didn't hear the routine, until after the cartoon was out. To be honest, other than them both listing cuss words, I don't see it.

Anyway, I guess the point to this rambling overly-defensive post is I am going to do the shaving cartoon anyway. I have not seen the skit. I am not ripping it off. I am not going to look it up to see the similarities. I am just going to do it, and see what happens.

Here are some images from what I have been doing lately. Here is a kayout sketch from the shaving cartoon. The fella is kind of based on my brother-in-law, Sean, who is currently staying with us for a few weeks:

and another sketch of the smirky shaving models in your standard shaving commercials:

I also went to a figure drawing class for the first time in a couple years. Man am I rusty as hell. Here are a couple gesture sketches:

The wife and I took a break from working to go kayaking on Ladybird Lake. The wife snapped these shots. The turtle was huge, though you can't tell by the lack of context clues. The water was very choppy and cold, but it was nice to be outside.

2008 Resolutions

In the spirit of the New Year, I am going to skip the obligatory apologies for not posting in a while...It is a 2008, and I am full of vim and vigor. I am going to do my best to actual create a few Captain Capitalism cartoons this year, as well as finish my first episode of "Alabama in Space."

I have already started on some storyboards and animatic and should have some new drawings to share for the few folks who visit this site.

I got one of those Franklin-Covey goal oriented planners for Christmas. Normally, I would be the first to dismiss such a cheesy thing. I am not necessarily a "7 Habits of Colored Parachutes and Moved Cheese," kind of guy. But I went through the exercises in the book with Internet cartoons in mind, and I guess we will see if it works out.

Another project that I have been working on recently is a spreadsheet that tracks the amount of money spent per foot on various animation projects throughout time, adjusted for inflation. I must say it is a Captain Capitalism way to look at the state of our industry. The sheet include lots of projects, from early Fleischer shorts to current Flash based TV programs. I have also gone through a lot of salaries of various animators and directors throughout their careers. In a weird way, it has been inspiring. I have had some great help from folks like Cold Hard Flash's Aaron Simpson and and Cartoon Brew's Amid Amidi. I have just about finished the research and am just trying to figure out the best way to organize the information for people to view online, and organize some thoughts about it.

As I write this I am little blog "taking a break" from an online defensive driving course. On Christmas, while driving back from Houston, two hours from my 32nd birthday, I got a speeding ticket. It was my first ticket in many years. I elected to do defensive driving to dismiss the ticket. The course I am doing was produced in Flash. I think it is actually a program that our studio made a bid on at one point. Apparently, they went with an overseas studio. One clue to this is they have an road-killed armadillo character that looks like a warthog.

Apparently, I skipped some chapter of Inferno back in undergraduate school because I was not aware of this part of the concentric circles of hell. In this portion of the dark realm, Flash animators who travel 11 mph above posted speeds are condemned to watch 300+ minutes of the worst Flash animation ever produced.

The punishment does not fit the crime. I don't think I will ever speed again. I am actually considering never driving again.

In order for this not to be a purely textual post, here are some cakes.

The guys at the office got me for my birthday:

And another cake that the fine folks at Bakerman's made for a Powerhouse party:

I am going to try my best to post weekly in 2008, so stay tuned.