Monday, July 27, 2009



I picked up quite a few cels at the Com Convention in San Diego. There was a strange Cartoon Network version of "The Flintstones: On the Rocks" (2001) Directed by Chris Savino and David Smith. The designs look like slightly exaggerated. Very similar to the first pilot. Voices sound like the original cast, slight more mature situation.

Here is a cel of Beavis and Butt-head designed by Mike Judge. It was the only cel of cel that was left of two, I paid $30. There's a lot to learn from the simplicity of that show. Probably one of the most popular cartoons of the 1990'. Anyone who ever grew up is southern california would have know somebody who resembled one, if not both of these unlikeable likeables.

I was never a big Friz Freling fan but I always liked to watch the Pink Panther when I was kid. I thought $40 compared to some of the other cels was a great price. The animation in the feature by Richard Williams always uses to have me running to the television growing up. There was someone else who was interested in this cel the same time I was looking at it. Luckily there were two.

Sunday, December 14, 2008


I asked a group a kids watching to help me with the grass, it got done surprisingly fast.
The guy next to me won first place for the "Cartoon Alley".

Here are some pictures I found on the net at the Pasadena Chalk Festival. I was excited to see these so I thought I post them.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

FAMILY DOG TREE

Upload Image Time: 1.5 min
Original Size: 12 x 8.5
Resolution: 72
Kind: JPeg (Very High)



MORE THOUGHTS 
SIZE AND COMPRESSION

Here are the images that really sold me on this book.
Super simple images of different kinds of dogs with different shapes and no black outlines.

File Size 
988 KB
Original size 
16 x 23
Resolution 72


Visual Pop ink Pop Culture

These images are printed on the reverse side of the front cover. Note, repeats in color and design boxes but for the most part you can not see the repeat of the dogs.  All dogs have decided shapes but all work is consistent and no one one dominates over another image. 

JPEG AND SIZE TEST

The original image size out of the book was
6 by 10
Scanned 16.5  by 23 (72 dpi) changed to 12 by 6 (300 dpi)
 
size 1.1 MB
time to upload image - under one minute

I had to play with color adjust to get it to look like the picture in the book.  I cranked up the exposure and bought down the outset? The when I got it pretty close over all I had to select the dress and color replace to get it the correct red.  Too much work!!


Understanding 
Scans and Sizes

size 17 by 22

This scan took me three tries. The setting on 
"Save for Web" jpeg - quality set to (Very High).
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Scanning
1st scan - crooked
2nd scan - o.k. save as (tiff to photoshop)

Uploading to Blogger
2 mintutes - Could not upload image first try
Second upload a little over a minute to 
Upload Image
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Why?
I keep looking at the tree silhouetted in the background.  Since I've been working on forests I need some trees that clearly show environment. Note there is only one tree and  ditto for the foreground element: Tree Branch. No black outlines anywhere give the picture freedom of color.

POP INK
This is a paint by number painting I got from the book "Fluffy Humpy Poopy Puppy". It's Charles Spencer Anderson's book in a series called POP INK Visual Pop Culture.  Pop ink merges low art and high design into visual statement, removing them from their original environment renews everything in strange way.

I liked when I read Anderson, "In design, form and function are not opposing ideas. Form lends interest and beauty to the function. Function adds utility and meaning to the form. Good design is effective both aesthetically and functionally."

UNDERSTANDING 
SCANS and SIZES

by Eric Stefani

Here is the same image, now the dog is center and the background sky that I loved is the right color, red (althought the picture in the book is a brighter red!)  

This one was saved using  "save as" in Photoshop which brings up the save for web box and I chose Quality "high" (not max.). The file size is only 1 MB and it took less than a minute to upload.

Also I feel much more organized and at peace since I know what I did and what worked.

Original size 5 1/4 by 7 1/2

Both of these pictures oddly enough open larger in Blogger. Still can not figure why some do and some don't.
UNDERSTANDING 
SCANS AND SIZES

Original Photoshop Size 5 1/4 by 7.5

Here is  a scan I did which default forced me to use "TIFF" in order to get it directly over into PS so I can crop  fix color and change for my needs of inspiration. 9.2 MB.  This was too big when I tried to upload it took too long.   

I now went back to the original and pressed "save as" to save as a "jpeg" setting best as possible under settings. 1.2 MB. The upload time was longer than 30 seconds in fact it took over a minute which is ridiculous! Gave me some time to correct some type-os. Finally at 20 minutes it said "Can't Open Image".  &%$#@!!!

Here is the same scan although I saved it as a Photoshop document. The file size is larger 14 MB. The reason for this test is to find out which scanned items open larger and which do not on Blogger.

Both of these seem to take a about three minutes or longer to upload.   Blogger does not show you how long it take to upload which I find you have to kind of guess.   Can you imagine if you guessed which freeway to take!


Monday, October 13, 2008


Here is a full color illustra- tion I did just out of high school.  It's done in color- ed pencils and has all the band mates.  At the time this was probably my best work to date.  I would probably done it paint now but back then I was really into colored pencils.

Here I adjusted the size of the frame to see if could get the image larger after you click on it.  I'd still rather be playing the piano than figuring out sizes.

Title - Fishbone (1987)
File Size - 15w by 18h
File Kind - JPeg
Materials - Colored Pencil

File Size 7.5
Resolution 300






Saturday, October 11, 2008























Here's a flyer I found when "No Doubt" first played opening up for "Fishbone".  I remember the other opening bands were really like "Fishbone".  Fishbone was the wildest sounding music group I'd ever heard.

Our songs back then were covers of the ska bands from england.  We played "Night Club" by The Specials, "Baggy Trousers" by Madness and "Mr. Big Stuff" by that K-Earth band.

Funny this background on this flyer of "the pier" sat doormat for years uncolored until 1998 when I set out to color my first animated film "A Very Fishy Event". Funny the "No Doubt" logo here is in cartoon lettering like 'Mickey Mouse' with the drop shadow and all.  A flyer like this may have taken 2 hours.  Note Chris Dowd and Dirt Walt in the corners.

The "A Very Fishy Event" at the bottom was taken from a t-shirt Bret Palazzo and I were working at.  So weird. It's a perfect name for the cartoon because the band Fishbone never approved the cartoon, I was just making it for the pure delight of it all.

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Fishbone Drawings
Dirty Walt Kibby
Norwood Fisher
(Special K) Kendall
Angelo Moore
Chris Dowd

Monday, October 06, 2008

Chris Dowd played keyboards and sang for the band Fishbone. They were one of my favorite bands to see live and listen to on record. I still listen to their albums from the late eighties.
I found this picture in the garage and always thought it was a powerful image.

I like how Chris D. hair is in silhouette and the background trees share the same elements.  Stussy is a brand of clothes sold thru the california beach community.

I remember Chris asking me to hold his jacket while her went to talk to a girl in a store on Melrose in Hollywood, California when I was 17.  This ad was probably around Summer 1986 after their first EP.

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Mighty Mouse T-Shirt design by Jeff Pidgon. Ralph Bakshi & John Kricfalusi Producers
I think I had helped with getting the t-shirts silk screened. I may have done the color separations and contacted the printer.  I remember that top font.
My dad brought home a ream of these when I was 7 or 8.  It really got me into drawing and i REMEMBER USING THE BACKS OF THEM TO DRAW ON!! I still have a stack in the garage.
"Crusher" from Bugs Bunny.  This was traced off of one of the many model sheets I got from Cal Arts back in 1987.

While I was clean the garage I found some large portfolios full of artwork.
These images excited me.

Thursday, June 26, 2008


Three animated short 20 seconds spots make the pencil test "Uncle Berry's Truck".  It was a short film sequence I made after an experience with the highway patrol.  I've been going through scenes getting it ready for color.  Shooting to get it done this summer.

Saturday, March 15, 2008


Frisbee (2007) is now available to watch online! If you'd like to comment I welcome your observations and opinions.

The film took a considerate amount of time to complete so please stop frame it and enjoy the animated inbetweens too. Check back for updates and other animated adventures

Friday, March 14, 2008

Today I search the Fox Animation Archives and found three scenes I had worked on. It's really rare when I find an animation I helped work on. The prices were high and since I only had done the revisions on these scenes I don't think I'll fork over the cash for them.





On this scene, Istvan Majors had originally done the layout for Mark Kirkland (Director) but the drawing of Bart were not right and far as the extremes. I thought they were pretty good but after I told Mark what I thought he sent me into see David Silverman (The Animation Supervisor/Producer). I knew I was in for it, then to my surprise David just whipped out perfect poses of Bart in silhouette with really simple beautiful gesture. Later he showed me a book of dancers for inspiration and then I went back to add numbers and details to his beautiful drawings. (I still have his originals logged away in a folder somewhere.)


Check out the fantastic episode at: http://www.veoh.com/videos/v16859496xGYq4jg



In this one scene from "Lisa On Ice" (1994) Bob Anderson (Director) asked me to make the entire crowd of people all gesturing the same. I had to do a same crowd for Lisa (only flopped) and so I ran upstairs where they had a special xerox machine that xeroxed on animation cels. Then (without lettering on the signs) I xeroxed the layouts so we could get the drawings reversed without redrawing all the characters and thier poses, and so they would be facing the other direction! Thus "Go Lisa!" posters. It was challenging making them ALL do the same action without drawing extra actions like I wanted.







In this one retake scene from "Treehouse of Horror VII - The Thing and I" (1995) Mike Anderson (Director) asked me to thumbnail poses of the drawings I would do BEFORE going a head laying it out. I did it and he surprisingly approved it. Mike almost NEVER approved anything I did for him. I was so happy I ran back to my desk and flushed out the thumb nails into layout poses.
My new cartoon is "The Postman". It's almost done I just need to finish the ending. My only problem is that the computer broke at the tail end and along with it went all the programs. I bought a new computer but the old programs don't work at all! Even after installing the software from the original disks!! I hooked up my other computer with application like PHOTOSHOP and ILLUSTRATOR but after I copied them a message read, "Some files for this program are missing, program will quit now"!

Monday, July 23, 2007

I finished my film frisbee (2007) on June 27, 2007 in color and editing. Although I think of it as done I still want to edit the four sections together. Two of the movies are in Quicktime format and I don't know how to convert it to an Adobe Premiere file to have it match the ending ones. I've tried and it keeps coming out pixels.

I have very clear notes of what I did before so maybe I should just go a head and keep trying.

Sunday, July 08, 2007

Well I'm Back.

I was reading several Blog's of other people and find it's a great way to
organize your thoughts and also a great way to communicate to others.

Saturday, October 07, 2006



Here are new images from a sequence that needed a reaction shot. Sometimes on the Simpsons they would do these extra shots to cut away when there was a problem with another scene and they could sort of "save the sequence". In my case I just thoughts it would be funny to show her reaction.