Watch 'The Turtle and the Monkey'

I've just made my De Anza College student film, The Turtle and the Monkey available to watch on vimeo and Youtube.

I figured that it's probably time, after about a year of trying to get into all of the free festivals and a few of the paid ones. I wasn't as successful as I had hoped, but you take your lumps, learn from them, and move on. If I could do it over, I'd probably make the film considerably shorter.

That Sporting Life

I was looking through a folder of warmup sketches and found some stuff that I might not have been feeling at the time, but I think look kind of groovy now. First off, some sports themed sketches.

Continuing from yesterday's post, here are a couple more Sacramento Kings ... fan sketches, I guess, from earlier this year. I don't know why I find Isaiah Thomas to be a good subject for practice with distorted perspectives. The second drawing is of sharpshooter Predrag 'Peja' Stojakovic from the glory years of the early 2000's. I was probably humming John Tesh's 'NBA on NBC' theme as I was drawing it.

 

And this sketch is my attempt at drawing boxer Nonito 'Filipino Flash' Donaire in the style of Masanori Morita's 'Rokudenashi Blues' manga. As a teenager, I admired the hell out of Morita, especially how kinetic his fight scenes were, using lines to convey motion blur. But as far as likenesses go, this doesn't look at all like Donaire. 

 So yeah ... basketball and boxing. I'm hella Filipino.

They're playin' baaaaasket-baaaaaall

October means the NBA season is starting up again soon. Here's a drawing of Isaiah Thomas of the Sacramento Kings, minus his tattoos.

Falling In Flames

About a year ago, I worked on a music video for indie hip-hop icon, Murs, and his Yumiko, Curse of the Merch Girl graphic novel project which he co-created with Josh Blaylock. I've been a fan of Murs since picking up his album, "The End of the Beginning" back in 2003, so I was honored to get to work on this. We actually wrapped just before Comic-Con 2012, after which it seemed to vanish off the face of the earth. To my relief, it finally surfaced online a year later, in conjunction with the digital release of the Merch Girl graphic novel.

I worked on this project as the lead storyboard artist and lead animator. I happened into the lead animator position by virtue of being the only one on the crew without anything else going on his life; the rest of the animation team was mostly made up of students from Cogswell College and San Jose State. Our crew on this project was actually pretty big - apparently too big to completely fit into the youtube video description. For the lead animator position, I'm simply credited as "Leo" because that's where the cutoff point happened to be, meaning that the other animators aren't credited at all.

Who the hell is interrupting my Kong Fu?!?!?!

The more I looked at the previous Black Dynamite sprite, the more I kind of hated it. So, uh, do-overs. I studied the SF Zero sprites a little more and adjusted his proportions accordingly. I'm still not sure that it looks like it fits in that world yet, but it's an improvement.

Oh, and hey look! He's moving!

Sprite created in Photoshop and animated in Pixen.

SoDak Animation 2012

I'm honored to announce that The Turtle and the Monkey was selected for SoDak Animation 2012 in beautiful (?) Brookings, South Dakota.

It's scheduled to be shown during the first night of the festival, Wednesday October 17th. I've been thinking about attending, but I'd probably only make it to Nevada before I ran out of money.

The Podcast Divide or Animation is Animation, Guys. WTF

So after discovering the hotness that is iOS's Podcasts app (subscribing to podcasts without having to download them? Word?) I set about on a subscription frenzy, amassing a list of podcasts in my subscription list that I'll probably never be able to clear.

Music? Stones Throw, Mad Decent, and Fool's Gold got me covered. Information? NPR and Phil Yu's Sound and Fury. Comedy? Yo, I 'f*x with' Neal Brennan's The Champs Podcast.

But as far as animation goes, there are hundreds to choose from, but I haven't found many that discuss animation in a way that interests me. I'm probably making gross generalizations, but animation podcasts seem to fall into two distinct camps. The ones discussing Eastern animation ('Eastern' almost always meaning Japanese) are usually enthusiastic anime fans sitting at a table talking about whatever the hot new film/series might be, sprinkled liberally with references to "Over 9000" or some hot internet meme. Which is cool, I guess, but because they don't have a ton of supplemental information or access to anyone on the production side, I don't find them particularly insightful. The ones focusing on Western animation ('Western' usually meaning 'American') might satisfy my thirst for critical discussion and 'insider' talk, (the Alt Animation Podcast, for instance, is excellent), but there seems to be an almost willful ignorance of anything coming from other parts of the world, particularly Asia ... particularly Japan. Judging by the descriptions in various show archives, Hayao Miyazaki is apparently the only living Japanese animator. Even then, his work is considered like some bizarre Martian artifact, impenetrable and wholly unlike anything done in the West. Meanwhile, discussion-worthy work like Kaiba, and Noitamina shows like The Tatami Galaxy and Kids on the Slope are banished to the 'otaku' podcast ghetto where discussion barely ventures beyond plot, love triangles, and kawaii factor (Again, I know I'm probably making some nasty generalizations here). Not to mention all of the innovative works coming from Europe that appear to be cockblocking my film on the film festival circuit.

Really, is it too much to ask for a podcast featuring knowledgeable, well-rounded, animation enthusiasts introducing and/or discussing cool animation, no matter where it comes from? The only thing out there that seems to fit the bill for me right now is the French TV show Catsuka. But it's not quite a podcast, and I can't understand a word of French.