o.k., so he’s coming along. Definitely not done, but he’s getting there. I spent most of last night sculpting. So here we go:

Feet in progress and after baking. I use pins and styrofoam for “tie-downs”. May not be the most stable thing in the world, but it’s worked for me so far. I love his big ass feet. Tie-downs in the back and front. Jointed in the middle with exposed armature.

Hands in progress and after baking. The fingers turned out better than I expected.

Damn, the hair was a pain in the ass. I initially tried using a glue gun to attach pieces of hemp rope to straight pins. Messy AND a failure (why can’t it just be one or the other). In the end, I made a small twist of florist wire and tied a piece of hemp to it. A small dab of super glue helped me control the direction of the hair and hold it in place on the wire. I snipped the wire close and, voila, hair plugs for puppets.

Head shot in progress and after baking.

Full body in progress and after baking. I still need to trim up the torso and pelvis, but he’s getting there.

O.K. Today is officially Phil Mulloy day. I just catch this genius animator’s work five days ago and FPS Magazine has posted a podcast of an interview done with him. The page also has clips of his films. Genius. One of the best animators living today Oh, and his personal website is back up! With some hidden clips too!

Go now!

Started fleshing out Uncle last night. Miserable. I don’t like the looks of him at all so far. The hands are going to be too stiff. I can tell already. The feet are o.k., but I very discouraged at this point. I’m hoping as I get the head done and the hands better tuned, I’ll feel better about it.

1) Never judge a project until it’s finished.
2) A project is never finished until you’re satisified with it or it must be scrapped.

Story idea. Young boy waits in line among a lot of other children at a kiosk on a dock. They are buying wind for their parent’s fishing boats. The shop keep is out of wind by the time the boy reaches the counter. Instead he sells the boy two extra days for the week to give him more tomorrows to buy wind.

When the boy returns home his mother is furious. Now she has two extra days of chores and cooking, but no income coming into the household without wind. His father is secretly happy. Two extra days to kick up his feet. The boy simply wants to be out on the water, floating with the waves.

I’m trying to document as much as possible so I don’t have to reinvent the wheel (AGAIN) when it comes time to make the nephew.

I got the legs and feet armature done and the whole thing wired together. Things look even enough and, hell, he even stands.

I covered the front of the eyes with a thin matte laminate to protect the print out. I laid them upside down on a cheap Crayola light box so I could evenly plot out where to cut them out and place a line for the mounting loop. The loops are the same 24 guage florist wire glued on with plain old white Elmer’s.

Some more pics of the Uncle being made.

“The Intellectual” © Phil Mulloy – Spectre Films

I just discovered Phil Mulloy. Caught his “Cowboys” and “Intolerance” series. Absolutely stunning. Another animation hero. Pick up his DVD. (Region 2, PAL) Here’s a review.

Here are some pics of the puppets in progress. Armature in the making.

Tools of the trade: Needlenose pliers, drill and 24 guage florist wire.

Fold four thick and I hang the resulting loops over a old rusty nail on my porch. Gravity helps me keep the length even and tight.

Tuck the other end in the drill and tighten up. (Did I really use to do this by hand??) Power on in short controlled bursts so you can control how tight it twists.

The end result. Make it in bulk and cut as needed.

How much is needed? I draw up a full sized blueprint to get a feel for how long to cut the various chunks of armature. Here are raw drawings of the Uncle and Nephew I drew up a couple of days ago with some other prop randomness. I use 8 unit proportions. 4 units for the legs, 3 for the body, and 1 for the head. The arms are 3 units. Hands are supposed to be 3/4’s. These are ideals, but give me a rough starting point.

The torso and pelvis are cut from 1/4″ thick balsa wood. I’ll sandwich the armature between the layers.

“Well isn’t that cute… BUT IT’S WROOOOOONG!!”

I’ve been watching and re-watching one of my favorite series ever, 2 Stupid Dogs. A lot of people write it off as just another Ren and Stimpy rip-off, if they’ve even heard of it. But it’s the show that launched a thousand shows (well a couple anyway), saved Hanna-Barbera and launched Cartoon Network. It also returned Super Secret Squirrel back to the small screen, the precursor of the recycling of many older H-B cartoons in a better, funnier format.

First off it’s not a big surprise that it’s compared to Ren and Stimpy. The creator, Donovan Cook, was a second director under John K for some of the early R&S eps. 2 Stupid Dogs is about a tiny dog and a big dog (But it’s a big dog NOT a big cat, see the difference??). However, if there were similarities then there apparently wasn’t much bad blood between John K and Donovan. John K provided a voice for the Big Bad Wolf in the 2 Stupid Dogs ep “Red Returns”. John K was also helpful in recylcing some of the amazing talent from 2SD for Fred Seibert’s “What A Cartoon!” show.

Honestly though, as “ground breaking” as Ren and Stimpy was, I simply enjoy 2 Stupid Dogs more. Brad Garrett (whom you might know better from “Everybody loves Raymond”) and Mark Schiff provide voices that simply rock. Each episode was light and fun and given the talent on board it’s not hard to figure out why.

Roll Call!

2 Stupid Dogs sported the talents of:

Robert Renzetti (My Life as a Teenage Robot (ehhh…), with work on Dexter’s Laboratory and The Powerpuff Girls)

Craig McCracken (No Neck Joe, The Powerpuff Girls, Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends)

David Feiss (Cow and Chicken (Another underrated, absolute fave!))

Genndy Tartakovsky (Dexter’s Laboratory, Samurai Jack, Star Wars: Clone Wars)

Paul Rudish, Buzz Potamkin, and too many others. This was the show that was real launch pad for what to was to come for H-B and Turner in the 90’s even more than “What A Cartoon!”. Next time it’s on CN or Boomerang, catch it. You won’t be sorry.

I hate making hands. My fingers are poked with the small pin pricks of 24 guage florist wire. Getting them even close to the right size and even with each other sucks and is still trial and error. Maybe someday I’ll work out a system.

Went out and cleared the shelves of our local Michael’s hobby shop of its Super Sculpey. (Yay, Super Sculpey). I drew up some live scale layouts for the armature and balsa skeletons of the uncle and nephew. The eyes printed out too dark so I corrected the contrast and brightness and redid the proof sheet.

Let’s see… I also did some voice tests with the new mic and a new digital dictaphone. My laptop had too much hiss and the recordings sounded like crap. Recording the sound into the dictaphone and then feeding it to the laptop seems to work pretty well. I then finished the night off with some live action shots of me playing the uncle and nephew to plan out the stop-mo. Busy day.

Finally got to work on the puppets. Got some armature wire twisted and took some pictures of my own eyes to use as the new replacement eyes. Here’s the legend:

You can see how I use the eye replacement in my “Eyes” test. You can also see why I wanted new eyes.

Work has been crazy this week. Not much time for MUDH. I have been fine tuning the storyboard based on the animatic and thinking about the motion in the individual scenes, sound FX, etc.. My travel for work next week was cancelled at the last minute, so I hope to have time to work on the puppets and sets. It’s a lot of work that I’ve been putting off.

Been reading John K’s blog and how “Basically, for the last 15 years, Spumco has been the research and development department for the rest of 2D animation.” There’s a lot of focus on how they were never even paid let alone recognized for this. Whatever. Ren and Stimpy was ground breaking, it rocked, even the new ones, but George Liquor and Ripping Friends suck. There’s a lot to be said for the technical achievements and ideas he mentions in the post. It’s worth the read. He’s got a neat little cult going on, but honestly his arrogance and self importance are so lame. Brilliant, probably, but he just isn’t funny.

[2:36 PM O.K. forgot about the Boo Boo eps. They rock too. maybe I'm just being too harsh.]

There’s been actual activity here. Welcome all you anonymous lurkers. I’ve opened up comments, so feel free speak your mind.

It’s just about impossible to track down some of the more independent animator’s work. I’d love to give you my impressions of the shorts that were up for an Oscar this year, but I haven’t seen any of them and will probably NEVER GET THE CHANCE. Unless you hit the festival circuit, I think that’s about it. Even old supposedly trend breaking animators are just about impossible to get their stuff. So here’s a wish list of animators whose work I’d really, really like to see. If you have any ideas of where PLEASE send me an e-mail.

George Griffin
John Canemaker
Carolyn Leaf
Walerian Borowczyk
Ryan Larkin
Eli Noyes
Evelyn Lambert
Lotte Reiniger
Oskar Fischinger
Frank Mouris
Co Hoedeman
Bretislav Pojar
Hermina Tyrlova
Zenon Wasilewski
Karel Zeman
Grant Munro
Len Lye
Mary Ellen Bute