Angry man

 Here's a drawing I recently did of a very angry man.  "Why is he angry?", you ask.  Well, he's in my little film that I'm still working on and should hopefully be done in the near future.  Having a full time job AND a toddler son to chase around does make the work that much more difficult.  But, with perseverance I know I can make it happen. 

The writ has finally dropped

 Election season is upon us once again here in Canada. It was announced just today. Although, the circumstances for this election are a bit different than the ones I posted about in the past because this time around the sitting Prime Minister felt the need to resign.

*Justin Trudeau in the act of resigning*

He clung to power as long he could but, as of last February, could not hold on any longer. So he will NOT be in this leadership race this time around. There are a whole new batch of candidates to choose from, some new and some all too familiar. Here they are:

Mark Carney

 

Pierre Poilievre

Jagmeet Singh

Yves Francois Blanchet

Elizabeth May

...and bringing up the rear:

Maxime Bernier

The election day happens on April 28.  May the lesser evil candidate win.

Go Canada!

Airplane test

 

Just a bit of airplane animation I did for my upcoming video.  I still have tons of work to do on it.  I can't wait until it's done and I can finally show everybody.

Tex Avery: In His Own Words

 

 

 Recently, some lovely person found an old recording of Tex Avery giving an interview about his life and career.  Apparently, at Chapman College back in 1974, somebody was doing a retrospective showing of animated films and Tex was an invited guest who spoke at it.  That's the year I was born so if I had been there I wouldn't have gotten so much out of that interview.  It would've been great if I was there at the age I am now or even 25 years ago.  Oh well, the best I can do for myself is embed this interview clip on my own blog for what would've been Tex's 117 birthday had modern science managed to avert death in any way.

What perked my ear the most about Tex's speech is what he thought of "modern" cartoons, those being made at about that time.  He's right about how the tight television deadlines as well as the sponsor's imposing opinions put a huge damper on the animation industry as a whole. There was not nearly as much room for creativity as there was for Tex at WB and MGM in the 1930's and 40's.  Things weren't 100% perfect of course, but they were marginally better than the Saturday morning era of the 70's and 80's.

Tex did express a small bit of hope that the industry could improve in the future.  Whether it has improved at all since 1974 is certainly a matter of opinion.  However, I think one thing that Tex might've overlooked in lamenting about the future of animation is the technology. One big reason animation studios couldn't afford full animation at the time was because they were using the same method of animating on paper followed by inking and painting onto cels. The late 80's and all of the 90's had the rise of computers being used which caused animation projects to be completed that much quicker.  That's why at Disney they could finish one fully animated every year instead of every 12 years or so. And, of course, we saw the rise of a small fledgling studio called Pixar which would soon be purchased by Disney and become huge. 

People at Pixar are just as nostalgic for short cartoons in theatres as Tex was. To that end, whenever they released a feature film in theatres they would make room to attach a short animated film before it. Below, I've embedded one such Pixar short. It won an Oscar as I recall. It's also highly comedic and full of gags that Tex Avery may have enjoyed. Maybe some future Pixar employees were at that Chapman film festival back in 1974 and were inspired by Tex's words when they heard them? Mmmmmmmm.......... could be. At any rate, for your viewing pleasure, here is For the Birds. Maybe Tex is looking down on this and smiling? Here's hoping.

How my son deals with Archie Bunker

 

A birthday present I bought for myself last June was the All in the Family box set. It's got all nine glorious and hilarious seasons. At this point I'm just about finished season 7. I'll be moving on to season 8 and 9 very soon.

However, of course, I have much more to do that just watch some old TV show. I have a full time job AND a baby son to look after.  He alone requires so much attention. He's got to be fed and entertained on a very regular basis.  Anyone who has kids or has raised kids in the past knows all of this and more I'm sure.

Anyway, like I said, I'm often called upon to keep my son Avery entertained whilst mom is busy with work and other things. While entertaining him, he has come to glance at the antics of the Bunker household now and again. He of course understands absolutely nothing of what he sees, but it does turn his head at times.  He definitely notices when Archie starts yelling. He certainly can't understand what Archie says when he yells and he most certainly can't understand to context of what Archie is yelling and who he's yelling at.  All he sees is a crazed and angry old man.

You'd think that my son would be saddened or even somewhat traumatized by seeing such vitriol being spouted like that. But no, that's not how he reacts at all. He has instead taken one of the small mallets used on his toy xylophone, walk over to the TV and hit Archie right on the head with it.  It wasn't a hard hit that could wreck the TV thankfully. It was just a tap big enough to express how he felt about Mr Bunker's bellowing.  I have made a quick drawing commemorating that very action:

He's only done that once, but for me it was quite memorable.  

Anyway, I do plan to keep working my way through the seasons any time I can.  I'll end this post with a song that I've been hearing so many times in the past few months as you can imagine.  It's stuck in my head so now I'm getting it stuck in yours. Enjoy!

Cleaner kitten animation for an upcoming video I'm making

 

The animation for my video is coming along nicely, I'd say.  Remember the kitten animation from my previous blog post?  Well, this is a further cleaned up version of it.  What do you think?

I'd also like to point out that having a kid is quite a time consuming thing.  When my son was still a tiny baby, he could just in his crib or wherever he was comfortable and either just sleep or play.  This gave me some time to dedicate to this video of mine.  However, now he can walk around and get into things.  So, he needs so much more attention now, especially since my wife's maternity leave has ended.  This, as you can imagine, has pretty much reduced the production process to a small trickle.  I'm not sure when this will be done, possibly when my son starts kindergarten.  

But, at any rate, I look forward to the finished product and the reaction it will get.

Kitten animation test for my upcoming video

 

 Up top is some animation of a kitten I just roughed out.  I'll clean it up nice and as polished as the time on my hands can allow me.  As you can imagine, having a full time job AND an infant son can eat up sooooo much of that time.

Hey, speaking of my infant son:

            sx z    

My son was on my lap for a brief time while I was making this blog post.  That "           sx z  " text is the first thing he ever typed.  I enlarged it and changed the colour for emphasis like the proud father I am.  Could this be the start of him typing many profound and thought-provoking things? Only time will tell.

At any rate, please give enjoy and/or give critiques of the above animation.  Thank you.