Lookout honey, ‘cuz I’m using technology.
When you find yourself adrift in outer space without a spacesuit, the first thing to remember is don’t panic.
Seriously, it uses up your precious O2 that much faster.
I was so proud of myself for having this idea until I realized it bore a striking similarity to an episode I had already made.
Continue reading ‘E411: I blew it out the god damn airlock.’
Two episodes of Emergency 411, “Finding Parking” and “Having a Baby” are finalists in Crackle’s Wet Paint animation contest, and with my cartoons garnering somewhere between 15,000 and 4 views, my chances are anybody’s guess. Both have been featured items, even though they aren’t the most-watched nor the highest rated videos. But you can still change that! I am proud to have two videos in the contest out of 70 entrants, and at least it means better odds than the chances of the CERN supercollider destroying the world.
Speaking of CERN — and the earth suddenly becoming a ball of evaporating strangelets — I think I may throw a party as a last hurrah before the imminent destruction of the world by Swiss high-energy particle physicists — or to celebrate our continued existence as fairly mundane, non-black hole matter.
I don’t know what I would enjoy more, my continued existence or winning an animation contest. I’ll get back to you on that.
I’m pleased to announce that my latest Emergency 411: How-To How-To was a winner in Mobifest’s MobiBio contest! What could describe me better than a minute cartoon about wasting time and sitting on my ass? Myself and some of my fellow esteemed animators and filmmakers have all won one thing or another, so I guess what I’m saying is I’m just keeping my head above water.
In case you need a refresher:
Once again, Channel Frederator’s got the inside track on more Emergency 411, so check it out — but be sure to get those tax returns in first!
I haven’t started mine yet. Is that bad?
Also, watch for William Hohauser’s Silly Gags. It’s like the WarioWare of animation.
(Speaking of timeliness… next time I’ll try to give updates on time, and not a month after my cartoons have gone up. Oh, and Happy St. Patrick’s Day!)
I’m pretty excited that FIVE of my Emergency 411 episodes have been featured on popular animation blog Channel Frederator. Check it out:
That Tim Heiderich has some hilarious observations. His 411 shorts are simple, graphic, and very funny.
After missing him at Mobifest Toronto, I was delighted to meet the man behind Channel Frederator, Fred Seibert, at Nickelodeon in Burbank. He shared some great insights into how one fits into the entertainment industry and told me that the only way to get ahead in Hollywood was to…
Wait, why am I telling YOU?
Check out my work as well as an unbelievable amount of amazing animation updated more-than-weekly at Channel Frederator.
For my MobiBio submission, I reveal how I procrastinate produce every episode of Emergency 411.
Who knew animation involved so much sleeping and goofing off? View it now, along with the rest of the E411 guides over at Mobifest.net!
The Emergency 411 keeps showing up in more places! This time, it’s part of Crackle’s Wet Paint contest, featured alongside many fine (and some familiar) animated shorts currently gracing the web. If you’ve been stuck circling the block and haven’t gotten a chance, check out Emergency 411: Finding Parking — it’s on Crackle right now!
And while you’re there, the shouting talking half of Penn & Teller has something to say on Penn Says, with one of my favorites being his thoughts on fame. And just because I’m linking to Penn doesn’t mean I’m trying to convert you into an internet libertarian.
It was 2001 when my friend Nick and I wrote our first (and only) cartoon about the sardonic, ever-suffering super hero The Sarcastic Hulk. And over the last two years I had been living that cartoon. I’m so damned observant I only needed my friend Lisa to point it out. You tell me if there are any similarities between a certain mild-mannered workaday tool and the jaded giant:
And most of all…
Talk about life imitating art! If only someone had kept writing these I may have had some warning. Oh wait. But what gets me is I didn’t see this situation coming and I wrote it.*
*I will catch endless hell from one Nick Shaheen if I don’t mention that he also wrote the script, and that I’m an ass for taking out all his best jokes. Nick, nobody was going to get a joke about Meredith Baxter-Berney.
The navigation for the Gorillaz DVD Slowboat to Hades puts you, the viewer, inside the Gorillaz world as an ersatz crime scene investigator / tomb raider, skulking through the not-quite-abandoned Kong Studios and all its leaking, shorting, smoldering disrepair. Navigation can be either an immersive or a tedious experience (depending on your point of view) as you move from room to dimly-lit room, shining your flashlight over whatever strewn detritus it is that will unlock the next featurette.
Jamie Hewlett’s design and animation support the themes established in the Demon Days album which this DVD is derived from. The premise, shown in broken 52″ flatscreen TVs hung askew on puched-in, graffitied walls, and studio recording equipment connected through a dizzying rat’s nest of patched, mismatched cables, states that all the money and success you enjoy will not stop the world from falling apart, and all those creature comforts will too succumb to systemic decay.
It was while immersing myself in this (fantasy… I hope) world that I noticed it had something in common with a few other games I enjoy: Super Mario Galaxy, Mario 64 and Myst.
Each environment is an island unto itself (sometimes more or less literally so). Each game establishes a series of very detailed worlds, each with its own flora and fauna, themes and internal logic. Each is a puzzle; constrained but with enough room to allow the visitor to move freely, to explore and interact with this unique, peculiar environment. It’s comforting to know that the experience is bounded, but not limited — there can still be a great deal of variation inside its isolated shores, and maybe finding out what those limits are is part of the fun.
And is it a coincidence that they all involve islands?
This reminds me of when I asked an artist friend to paint me a picture of “an enclosed space”, not really knowing myself what it meant (neither did she, which is probably why my fine art collection is floundering).
Whether it’s Noodle’s flying windmill island, the Stoneship Age, or Mario making his way across the Gusty Garden galaxy, I find something captivating (no pun intended) about each game’s world.
Some time ago, I had the brainstorm of making a T-shirt featuring the Puma Man of MST3K fame. I’m proud to say it was received with great enthusiasm! And zero sales. Big surprise. In fact, the only feedback was when a friend posted a link on A Special Thing and got back, “Neat shirt, too bad it’s on CafePress.” Yikes, I guess my one sale’s dog got run over by Baron Von Cafepress when he was a kid. But looking back at the shirts, I did have one legitimate design gripe:
I needed to make the logo bigger.
Enter Printfection. Though it has the look and feel of a beta of Windows Explorer, Printfection handles the nuts and bolts of creating merchandise better than CafePress: lower prices, multiple pricing levels for items, better image management tools, the ability to sell multiple designs for each clothing item. And yes, you can make the logo bigger (up to 4.67″ high)! All Printfection needs to do is fix their clunky and occasionally unclear interface.
But the most important question is: how do the shirts look? I took a chance on Printfection’s $2 t-shirt offer and printed up a quick Puma Man shirt for myself. Printfection doesn’t seem to handle solid, non-web-safe colors especially well,
which resulted in a shade of yellow something like the one here. But switching to the similar #FFCC00 for the color of the text seemed to fix that problem.
The PUMA MAN tee is perfect for wearing to the gym, as if to say to the world, “I’m out of shape and a huge nerd!”
And there’s a shirt depicting the cold-war kid’s drawing Dan Danger, available in special commie red:
Bigger logos, smaller prices. These as well as womens’ styles and other apparel are available all at a reduced price at my Printfection store!
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