Tony's Flinch Studio Blawg

Good Riddance, Bin Laden

2011-05-02T01:29:00.001-04:00

.
.
.
Don't let Hell's gate hit you in the ass!

A Groovy new Commercial

2011-04-18T13:49:00.004-04:00

.
.
.
Flinch created this groovy new TV spot for GroovyDo.com - a location-based commerce aggregator that scours the web for items you are looking for and lets you know when you're getting warm.

This was one of those rare gigs where I was able to jump into the trenches and do all the animation. Nice to be able to flex those muscles once in a while!

T

Mystery Mavs Episode 27: Conclusion!!!

2010-04-12T18:44:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
The riveting final episode of Season One... covered with a heaping pile of excitement!

Hope you enjoy it!!

T

Mystery Mavs Episode 26: The Home Advantage

2010-04-12T08:59:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
The aliens bring the fight to the Mavs' home turf, and the final battle begins!

...stay tooned for the gripping final episode!

T

Mystery Mavs Episode 25: Interplanetary Playoffs Part 3

2010-04-11T19:34:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
Who will win the interplanetary playoffs???

to be continued... only 2 more episodes left!

T

Mystery Mavs Episode 24: Interplanetary Playoffs Part 2

2010-04-11T10:03:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
The Mavs face the powerful Clone-Bots on the court.

to be continued

T

Mystery Mavs Episode 23: Interplanetary Playoffs Part 1

2010-04-10T15:58:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
Using cunning detective work, the Mavs discover the secret alien hideout.

to be continued...

T

Mystery Mavs Episode 22: Gator Food

2010-04-09T21:03:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
Doug & Rob fall prey to Nellie's hunger.

to be continued...

T

Mystery Mavs Episode 21: Circle of Confusion

2010-04-09T09:08:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
A whirlwind of events set the investigation off in a new direction.

to be continued...

T

Mystery Mavs Episode 20: Robot Repair 101

2010-04-08T21:17:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
Can the Mavs turn Robo Dirk?

to be continued...

T

Mystery Mavs Episode 19: Robo Dirk Part 2

2010-04-08T10:17:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
Champ must face a touch decision: save his friends, or save his pizza.

to be continued...

T

Mystery Mavs Episode 18: Robo Dirk Part 1

2010-04-07T15:11:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
Robo Dirk unleashes his awesome taunting power.

to be continued...

T

Mystery Mavs Episode 17: Dirk in Distress

2010-04-06T20:26:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
Mavs Man won't help the Mavs... and Dirk finally meets his evil doppelganger!

To be continued...

T

Mystery Mavs Episode 16: Nellie Cleans Up

2010-04-06T09:16:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
Nellie's plan comes together.... and then falls apart.

To be continued...

T

Mystery Mavs Episode 15: Conspiracy Theories

2010-04-05T20:05:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
It's official: They're Not Human.

To be continued...

T

Mystery Mavs Episode 14: Mavs Rock

2010-04-05T09:45:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
The Mavs track one of Nellie's homing devices - but it's not Nellie wearing it!

To be continued...

T

Mystery Mavs Episode 13: Takes a Lickin', Keeps On Tickin'

2010-04-04T10:05:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
Doug and Rob secretly help the Mavs in their own sneaky way...

to be continued...

T

Mystery Mavs Episode 12: Nellie Loses His Shirt

2010-04-02T19:09:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
Nellie tries to figure out what the the strange aliens plan do do with him.

to be continued...

T

Mystery Mavs Episode 11: Robot Repair 101

2010-04-02T11:51:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
Nellie makes a shocking discovery about the fiends behind the Impervious Inhuman Impostor...

to be continued...

T

Mystery Mavs Episode 10: Nellie Loses His Edge

2010-04-01T18:59:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
Nellie finds out that he's on his own if he wants to escape..

to be continued...

T

Mystery Mavs Episode 9: Who's Driving the Bus?

2010-04-01T14:56:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
The Rasheed Wallace impostor mysteriously disappears

to be continued...

T

Mystery Mavs Episode 8: Jailblazers Part 2

2010-03-31T09:55:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
The Mavs face a superhuman foe on the court.

To be continued...

T

The Mystery Mavs Episode 7: Jailblazers Part 1

2010-03-30T11:41:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
Nellie's fate is revealed.

To be continued...

T

The Mystery Mavs Episode 6: Big Apple Mavs

2010-03-29T11:15:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
The Mavs take NYC for a blow-out party - will Dirk ever find the snack table?

to be continued...

T

Mystery Mavs Episode 5: Invitation to Intrigue

2010-03-29T11:08:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
The Mavs prepare for a mysterious party... and bake a pie.

to be continued...

T

Mystery Mavs Episode 4: Nellie Doo, Where Are You?

2010-03-27T09:36:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
The Mavs engage in B&E in search of clues and snacks.

To be continued

T

Mystery Mavs Episode 3: Jumbo Trouble Part 2

2010-03-26T09:48:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
Nash and Finley confront Divac - now with 50% more evil.

To be continued...

T

Mystery Mavs Episode 2: Jumbo Trouble Part 1

2010-03-26T09:45:00.001-04:00

.
Vlade Divac: Acting Mysteriously evil, of course...

To be continued...

T

Mystery Mavs Episode 1: Divac-Jacked

2010-03-24T12:10:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
In honor of the NBA finals, we are posting episodes of the Mystery Mavs from now through mid-April. Here's Episode 1: Divac-Jacked, where we learn of a mysterious kidnapping.

Enjoy!

T

MoMA credit

2010-03-10T20:00:00.000-05:00

.
.
.
My niece visited the Tim Burton exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, and snapped this photo from the video installment:

I thought it was pretty cool! No wonder the phone's been ringing so much...

...oh wait, it hasn't.

T

The Flinch 2010 HD Showreel has landed!

2010-03-03T17:47:00.001-05:00

At long last, I've completed the new HD show reel, and it looks pretty awesome I must say! This one took a LONG time to put together - not only was I working with an immense portfolio of work here, but almost everything pre-2008 had to be converted to HD format.

Vist the flinch site to check it out.

Most of this stuff is from the last 4-5 years, but I had to include some of my favorite classics. Thanks to all of my great clients, creative people, animators & designers - who made this body of work possible, it's quite a walk through history.

Enjoy!

Inspector McCloud on DVD

2010-01-27T15:14:00.000-05:00

The Brand New Inspector McCloud DVD has arrived!

Watch the whole movie here

Mavs Save Christmas

2009-12-24T12:02:00.000-05:00

.
.
.
Here's a little piece we did a while back for the Dallas Mavericks. It has Santa in it. Other than that, really no reason to be posting it.

Watch Movie

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays!

T

Inspector McCloud in espanol, senor!

2009-11-10T14:13:00.000-05:00

.
.
.
Currently in the process of mixing the Spanish Language voice track for Inspector McCloud's Stormwater Adventures. Here is a taste of scene 11, where McCloud brings in some celebrity muscle to sway the crowd.

Watch the movie

Enjoy it while you can... as you can see, there's an outside chance that someone will cry copyright infringement (even though it is clearly a parody!).

T

More BetterKidsTV Character updates

2009-11-02T11:36:00.000-05:00

.
.
.

This fella is Jake - a beach bum yes, but don't let looks deceive you. Jake runs the most successful business in Atlantic Beach.

He's also got a pretty sweet pad, fully loaded with the latest in entertainment and desktop technology.

More to come on that, BTW...

T

Bellisima!

2009-10-30T10:44:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
Updates of one of the characters we're developing for the BetterKidsTV project.

Though we're still in the script development stage, we're close enough to start finalizing the designs on most of our characters, so these assets are not only designed, but prepped for animation!

She's a cute kid, and I think she'll be a fun character once voiced and animated.

T

Stainboy in HD

2009-10-13T13:11:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
Flinch Studio just finished remastering the Stainboy series we created for Tim Burton back in 2000 and 2001 for a Museum of Modern Art exhibit honoring the director's work.

Because this series was created entirely with Flash vector art, it is Resolution Independent, so none of the design assets had to be recreated at higher resolutions... but we faced huge challenges and spent a great deal of time converting the compositions from their original 4:3 screen ratio to 16:9 for HD.

Episode 1

The first challenge was updating these assets to the latest versions of Flash. For some reason, many of these old Flash 3 & 4 files were opening up and we simply weren't seeing the animation as we created it... heads, eyes and arms were just not there anymore. The original SWFs we output in 2001 still look okay, but the newly-reopened FLAs and their subsequent outputs were a monstrosity. This strange compatibility contradiction occurred somewhere between Flash 4 and 7... so we've been looking at it and scratching our heads for years.

Episode 2

To fix the issue, we would have to drill down into every single problem symbol to simply reveal each element - pupils, fingers, etc... and then it would show up on the stage, like "look Flash! See? there it is"... "oh yes, thanks, I got it." This was the case for dozens of deeply nested symbols in each file.

So you save as a new file... but the next time you open it - poof! All the changes were gone! So it was fix fix fix, output, pray. We had to figure out how to make our fixes more permanent for these files, so we could make changes after post if necessary.

Part of the problem may have been the odd way we chose to execute the animation. Because of limited bandwidth back in "those days" our file sizes had to be ridiculously small - we're talking under 1MB or no approvals from Shockwave, who hosted the movies. So every 40 or 50 K we could shave off mattered... hence, we kicked into R&D mode.

Episode 3

We did a fair amount of R&D in 2000 while working with Shockwave on this gig, including finding a practical way to portray Burton's watercolor stain FX with vectors. Shockwave had a team of coders working on it (this was a very prestigious project for them), and we figured out a solution in 2 days using the tools at hand.

We also discovered that executing the animation segments as movie clips and controlling their frame designations with commands would save us hundreds of KB (rather than using animated graphics clips), so entire files were rebuilt that way like some kind of animation/code hybrid. We were outputting SWFs, so the final product looked fine... but trying to decipher the animation in the FLA (or any non SWF output) was pointless. So for this project, we had to reconvert the movies entirely back to a linear playback so they would output into post-production-friendly frame sequences correctly.

Episode 4

And of course, there were the stains. All of the animated stains were created using multi-layered shape tweens of raw gradients of varying transparencies. They worked fine when we originally created them, but... well, shape tweens are finicky enough, but 8-year old shape tweens from 5 releases ago are nothing short of a nightmare. Much time went into repairing the tweens and making those stains work again. Permanently!

Episode 5

Finally, there was the challenge of Post Production, including our first foray into Blu Ray DVD production & authoring. After much learning & testing (our biggest problem turned out to be audio synch), we had a product that looked and sounded amazing on a Blu Ray / HD screen setup. It even looks pretty good on YouTube!

Episode 6

It was kind of amazing seeing Stainboy at this size, this resolution.... like we've never seen it before. It's not often I get the chance to be thankful I chose Flash as my medium of choice - this was definitely one of those times!

I hope you enjoy these shorts equal to or greater than the amount of hair we pulled out bringing them to HD!

T

If you like chasin' your tail...

2009-08-04T00:39:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
This one bubbled to the surface many years back. Still tickles me a little bit. Sorry for the roughshod appearance - these are the raw squeezins, right out of the coconut.

Puppy Boy. Like so many superheroes before him, born of a radioactive bite. Hey, it was either that or being fused in some kind of transporter. It's really just an excuse to show dogs doing funny things... and introduce the world to this talented canine cast:

I don't know if we'd ever see any actual action... when this was conceived, it was more about the silly, mundane day-to-day life of a hero - in this case, among a city of dogs who attempt to deny their base, doggish desires - like rolling-off in the grass and butt-sniffing on a first date.

Nowadays, Adult Swim shows like like the Venture Brothers, Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Family Guy cover this subject matter pretty completely. Still, I hope we get to churn out some dopey laughs with this one sometime.

T

Better Kids

2009-07-21T22:45:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
As we wrap up on the Inspector McCloud project, we're putting together a new project for Better kids TV. It's a series of videos designed to educate kids about finance in an entertaining way. The project is pretty involved, incorporating multiple media and new technologies to present a combination of animation and live action.

Here's a peek at the main characters from story that weaves through the lessons and interviews.

I'd love to tell you more about the project, but it's still early in the process, and we can't share too much info. As Willie is busy cranking out some more looks for the project, we're digging into our live-action production roots to "cast" some of the live action roles. More to come...

T

A New Song

2009-07-12T21:55:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
I'd like to present a new song, produced by myself and Will Jenkins, the composer for Inspector McCloud's Stormwater Adventures.

This little ditty, called "The Republic of the Rio Grande", was inspired by the history behind the Texas/Mexico border towns, the culture that links all of these regions, and the need to unite in the protection of their most important natural resource.

Listen to The Republic of the Rio Grande

This version of the song, which will play during the closing credits for Inspector McCloud's Stormwater Adventures, features samples from the show, and is voiced by Stephen Grillo as the character of the Narrator. There were incredible contributions from several other musicians as well, all of whom will be credited in the final piece.

The original Republic of the Rio Grande was an actual nation located in a disputed zone between Mexico and texas back in 1839. The country lasted less than 200 days, and was governed from Laredo.

To learn more about it (its actually a fascinating history) visit The Republic of the Rio Grande Museum website and take the tour. Nice folks there!

T

Suck or Chew?

2009-06-12T00:35:00.000-04:00

.
.
.

T

Inspector McCloud Part 10: Music

2009-06-09T23:04:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
Here's a little bitty taste of the score we are producing for Inspector McCloud. This piece will open the show.

Flinch music is almost always a family affair - Composer Will Jenkins, my brother in law, scores more than half of our projects, and my brother Steve steps in to co-write songs for our musical shorts. Sister Barbara often provides vocals, and of course, I fill in where needed.

This time around, we were joined by my talented brother Jerry, who provided the whistling cowboy you hear in this song. I tried to pull it off, but clearly I was not the one who inherited our Father's world renown lips. When Jerry's not blowing me away (what a delicious pun!) he's a senior editor for Georgia Trend magazine and a funny playwright.

Thanks to all my musical kin and the others talented musicians who have jumped into the mix - stay tooned for more hot numbers!

T

Another Flinch Monstrosity

2009-06-05T21:00:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
Meet inspector McCloud. No, I mean... Meet Inspector McCloud! He's actually out there, walking the streets of Laredo. Probably scaring the crap out of little kids!

These pix were sent to me by my friends over at the City of Laredo... they work fast. I'm not even finished with the dang cartoon, and they already have a costumed supermascot ready to thrill his future fans with tales of storm water adventure.

I don't know about you, but I was always terrified of man-sized manifestations of cute cartoon characters. Strolling the idyllic lanes of Disney World, I always made sure to circumvent the giant Mickey and his unsettling incorrect proportions.

Truth be told, it is absolutely a pleasure to see your drawings turned into living towers of felt & pleather. Just the idea that some costume designer spent hours ogling my artwork is thrilling in itself... but when you see pictures of little kids hugging them, it just plain awesome, damn it, and I don't care if I'm obviously lame and easy to please.

It's not the first time one of our creations has made the jump from 2D to a strip mall near you. You may remember Otto, our Irvine Auto Center mascot.

Clearly, not every kid shares my fear of cartoon characters come to life and towering over them. Good for you, cast of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants... good for you.

Robin Williams knows what I'm talking about...

To quote the Mork: (regarding a trip to Disneyland): "Mickey Mouse to a 3-year-old is a six-foot f***ing rat!"

(sorry for the censorship, it's a Family Blog).

T

Inspector McCloud Part 10: Wreaking Havoc

2009-05-31T16:36:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
Another exciting moment from Inspector McCloud - the Pollution Cartel drowns Laredo in a sea of garbage.

T

Inspector McCloud Part 9: Going into Battle!

2009-05-21T22:24:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
On their way into battle, our heroes get a little distracted.

T

Inspector McCloud Part 8: Action in the Park

2009-05-19T21:27:00.000-04:00

.
.
.

Wrapped this scene last week. Things get messy at City Park... where's Inspector McCloud??

Takes a while to load... patience....

T

Democracy

2009-04-28T21:26:00.000-04:00

.
.
.

Another Game for Psyclops

2009-04-27T21:48:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
This is another game we did for Psyclops.com. This one's a little easier to get the hang of!

Have fun!

T

You think I did this?

2009-04-26T21:38:00.000-04:00

Inspector McCloud Part 7: A little piece of animation

2009-04-25T21:28:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
Here's another peek at sequence 2 - no music, but completed animation.

Not really prepared for internet delivery - give it a minute to start playing!

Animation is taking a gruelingly long time. I may starve to death before I complete this dang thing. But it's gettin' done!

T

A new game from Flinch

2009-04-24T22:55:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
Check out this new game we created for the Psyclops site.

It takes a few minutes to get the hang of it... but it gets fun really quick!

T

The Universal Position of The Biker

2009-04-06T00:13:00.000-04:00

.
.
.

T

before stewart did it...

2009-04-02T19:10:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
Before you saw it on the daily show...

T

2009-04-02T00:02:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
Just saw W.
Reminded me of this old doodle I did...

T

Inside the mind of a 6-year old filmmaker

2009-03-27T23:10:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
In between the long hours of running this company (into the ground), coaching T Ball, being a reasonably attentive husband and coercing Flash to give me adequate results, I somehow manage to selflessly donate time to helping kids fulfill their dreams - provided they are related to me and do what I say at least 85% of the time. And have small dreams.

So one day, my 6-year old (who, by the way, has never seen Mad Max) shows up with this drawing of a most heinous bullet car, and says he wants to turn it into an animation. After trying unsuccessfully to convince him that I didn't know where to find any animation equipment, I relented and let him have full access to my Cintiq (which I haven't even started paying off yet, for you cynics who doubt the depth of my fatherly love).

This was the result:

While I helped him with the technical aspects of animation, this film is all Charlie. Every little detail, down to the blood-soaked spikes in the road, came from him. This chaotic, violent masterpiece is his Directorial debut... a Dad couldn't be more proud.

And, he's starting to get pretty comfortable with Flash too. Perhaps I have found some cheap labor to exploit?

T

Inspector McCloud Part 6: Uhhh... more Color Animatic

2009-03-26T23:46:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
So, here's another piece from the Inspector McCloud Color Animatic / Rough Cut.

In these scenes, we see the Pollution Cartel taking over the city park while Stormy & McCloud get to know each other. Still working with very little animation and temp music (Thank you Juan Garcia Esquivel and John Barry).

Probably going to need a "meanwhile.. " or two.

Have fun!

T

Inspector McCloud Part 5: Color Animatic

2009-03-25T22:45:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
3 weeks, no new postings. I'll try to make up for that here.

We have completed the Color Animatic / Rough Cut of Inspector McCloud, and are ready to share a little!

There is very little animation at this point, and the music is all temporary, to give a taste of the direction we're hoping to take it (thank you Ennio Morricone).

Have a peek at this scene, which takes place early in the show:

Obviously, there is a lot more work to do... we have another pass at animation, as well as a mountain of post production - but we're proud of this little bit.

I hope you enjoy!

T

Superjail

2009-03-04T21:24:00.000-05:00

.
.
.
How the hell did they do it?

How did Christy Karacas and his band of psychos get Superjail on the air? It's sick and subversive, sloppy and disjointed... and completely deranged. And brilliant. This thing is the closest thing to art Adult Swim has ever aired.

I can't get enough of this damn show. And it's not fair, dammit. After many long, long years trying to clean up my designs and streamline my production pipelines, trying to simplify my layouts so I can tell my story quickly and efficiently, trying to keep my characters on model and establish rules for style, these guys turn it all backwards and upside down.

It's the only show on Adult Swim - hell, on most of TV - that's still drawn FRAME BY FRAME! I don't even have the balls to try that! And we're not talking about simple artwork here - look at this:

Frame by frame, bitch.

It's like the 70s all over again... not the bad, stiff Hanna Barbera Saturday Morning 70s, but the trippy Ralph Bakshi, anything goes 70s. It's Yellow Subrarine on acid - a lot of Acid. It's Schoolhouse Rock for the criminally insane.

The characters, like liquid, seem to evolve from shot to shot - the result of a truly fluid and organic animation process - but it only adds to the show. In that way, it shares much with Ren & Stimpy. And the gags - my god. Lots of people die horrible bloody deaths, but it's okay apparently, because they're murderous criminals.

Every episode ends with a full-scale battle resulting in mass carnage. The plot that takes us there is almost irrelevant by the time we arrive, because the pure visceral thrill of the carefully (or carelessly) storyboarded action overshadows the whole experience. Even a sudden orgy provides more gore than a Freddy Kruger movie.

I challenge you to watch this show and find a main character without serious personality flaws (sadism, narcissism, emotional detachment, submissive self loathing - all to the point of turning your stomach) - and yet, I'm fully engaged. Adult Swim, Augenblick Studios, their sponsors - all took a huge chance on this one and it is paying off. Fans are clamoring for Season 2 and, at the rate it must take to produce each show, there will be a bit of a wait. But I expect the process will be as painstaking as season 1.

I don't know what makes this show so damn addictive, but I can say this with certainty: the guys who produce Superjail love to animate.

More - cause you gotta love it.

If you haven't bothered yet, give it a go.

T

Inspector McCloud Part 4: Design

2009-03-02T21:17:00.000-05:00

.
.
.
Not Much to say about the design for Inspector McCloud - it's been a long time since I was sitting in the designer's seat, at least to this extent. For the first time in... God know how long, I have taken on the roll of designing every last facet of a major project, from Characters & BGs to Props and FX. Even the title sequences will be me, I expect.

The villains prepare for a picnic.

It took a long time to dust off the illustration chops and get back to where I could build these things from scratch. It also took a lot of going back to the cartoons I love and analyzing why I love it. Although I love watching cartoons... that still counts as work.

Doin' Time

I've also had the good fortune of working closely with designers like Willie Castro, Gene Fowler, Peter Parpan and Brian Chin, all of whom had an influence on this style.

Sandy, making a guest appearance, develops a crush on Matthew McConaughey

McCloud takes his air quotes for a test flight.

ESD Headquarters

One of the hardest things to wrap my brain around was (and is) color. Making color choices is one of the most painful processes for me - like deciding which T-shirt to put on in the morning. Once I was able to break from the idea of Sky=Blue, Tree=Green, I was able to make some progress. I am by no means "free", but it's a lot easier to get moving now.

Mmmm... cake.

Some of the locals line up to take shots at Agent Public.

The climactic battle begins!

Much room for improvement... but I'm having fun, and learning how to draw again!

T

Hmm.. where have I seen that one before?

2009-02-28T21:24:00.000-05:00

.
.
.
I'm getting around to this one a little late, but...

I thought perhaps you might like to see this editorial cartoon by Jeff Stahler of the Columbus Dispatch, released on Obama's Inauguration day - January 20, 2009:

Pretty cool idea, Obama in the Lincoln Memorial, sharing a fist bump with the great emancipator, a fellow Illinois Congressman-turned-president. I thought so too when I drew this one on Election night, two and a half months earlier:

Now, I ain't got no high-falootin' "paying job" at no fancy newspaper, but I thought this one was worth printing... despite my clearly inferior illustration skills. That's why I sent it out to every publication I could think of in hopes that someone would break all protocols and print the damn thing.

To be fair, I'm sure Mr. Stahler never saw my cartoon, or any of my work (which puts him in good company). Also, it is his job to come up with several ideas a week worthy of printing... while this was merely the result of random inspiration for me. Who would roll the dice on an editorial one-hit-wonder?

Still, I reserve the right to be irrationally pissed off about it. What else can I do? I have nothing else to bitch about.

T

What a Cartoon Show gives birth to a new generation of animators

2009-02-19T19:48:00.000-05:00

.
.
.
Does anybody remember the "What a Cartoon" show from the early 90s? In the vein of the Channel Frederator model, "amateur" animators could bring their vision to the small screen compliments of Cartoon Network's in-house studio.

Eddie Fitzgerald brings his Spumco chops to the table

This was one of the first attempts to develop new content on the cheap through a weekly showcase - and it worked! Shows such as Dexter's Laboratory, Powerpuff Girls, Johnny Bravo, Courage the Cowardly Dog and Cow & Chicken were all born from this model - as was the look and feel of the modern Cartoon Network!

It worked like this: submit your cartoon idea to CN in the form of completed Storyboards. If they liked it, they would give you the staff & resources to complete your cartoon, and then show it on Cartoon Network. One major caveat - CN owned your content (with the usual development deal of 5% profit participation or something along those lines, depending on what a hardass your agent was).

That's the other major caveat to submission: you could not submit Storyboards without being represented by a professional agent. This served the purpose of weeding out a ton of crappy work by amateurs around the world (myself included). It sounds unfair, but sorting through that kind of volume would have been costly and time consuming, and probably would have hurt the overall quality.

As you can imagine, most of the opportunities were given to Hollywood Studio staffers, a sort of insiders club of young and talented players... what we outsider animators called the "Cal-Arts crowd" (named for the amazing Valencia-based school whose program consistently launches some of the best and most successful animators in the business).

Do I sound bitter? I'm not, actually. All of these guys worked their asses off, creating their storyboards on spec, busting out complete (and funny) cartoons on a lean budget and a tight schedule... but there definitely comes confidence & incentive with having the industry experience and professional relationships that would come under scrutiny during the award process.

Still, it did (and still does) kind of reinforce a clique-mentality within the Hollywood animation scene - but nothing so sinister that genuine talent can't permeate it.

Robert Alvarez had me craving pizza for days with this one.

The What a Cartoon program produced one new cartoon every week for like, a year. It was also not uncommon to see these cartoons showing up on Boomerang or any of the other warmed-up leftover channels. Not only did it give Cartoon Network several of the most profitable properties they've ever had, it launched a bunch of careers... creators like Butch Hartman (Fairly Odd Parents), Craig McCracken (Powerpuff, Foster's Home) and Genndy Tartakovsky (Dexter, Samurai Jack) as well as Directors like Robert Alvarez (Johnny Bravo, Grim & Evil), Zac Moncrief (Family Guy), and Mike Milo (Chowder, Pinky and the Brain).

Even those who do not swing big balls in the studios have gone on to enjoy enormous opportunities and respect from their peers since participating in the program. Miles Thompson and Joe Orrantia both graced and tortured me with their presence on the Li'l Pimp crew back in ought 3. Talented and mischievous, both of them.

Miles Thompson's installment - I'm convinced he based the worm on himself.

Some of these cartoons represented a look that was rather stale and mainstream by that time in CN history (I will not specify out of respect), but most of them brought something kinetic and wild to the screen, a combination of fresh and retro, a Hanna Barbera on acid approach (partially influenced by Kricfalusi) that helped usher in a new era of animation that has defined Cartoon network over the last 15 years.

The most memorable aspect of this series is, for me, the opening theme song. it sounds like someone took the guitar solo from The Beatles' "The Night Before" and turned it into a punk rock song.

If you've had any love for the animation of Nickelodeon & Cartoon Network over the last decade, drink a toast to the What a Cartoon show.

T

More High Finance Humor

2009-02-17T20:26:00.000-05:00

.
.
.
As promised, here's the other piece we did for Mark Cuban's blog, "Blog Maverick".

This one features the big boys of Government Financial Management, hitting the road in a heap of junk after being taken down a couple of pegs by an unruly economy.

This was was a little harder to write than the Madoff one - lots of research for a limited IQ numbnuts like me to get wrapped up in this stuff.

Very little of the research actually makes it into this piece (just a few key points - the title for example), I just have to really immerse myself in it before I can gain the perspective to write something that's (hopefully) funny. I also feel compelled to write something smart enough to keep Cuban's interest - the guy's a freakin' genius.

If you haven't spent time on any of Cuban's blogs, and you ever want to have a business of your own, GO.

http://blogmaverick.com
http://news.cnet.com/marc-cuban-blog - I highly recommend this one.

Much, much good business advice there, as well as some unique insight into the things we take for granted.

T

The Ballad of Bernie Madoff

2009-02-16T21:43:00.000-05:00

.
.
.
We just completed a quickie job for Mark Cuban, bringing a little financial sector humor to his blog, "Blog Maverick". It's a cut-out head number, parodying the Free Credit Report.com ads (and using the original spots as a background plate).

This is my first time with "high finance humor" - I had to do a bit of research so I could write funny songs to go with the animation. My sorry voice appears prominently in the pieces.

It's set to make its world premiere on Cuban's blog... normally I would hold off on posting it here, but I'm pretty sure he won't mind that 5 or 6 people saw it before his readership did.

Here's the first one - it features supervillain Bernie Madoff bragging about this undertakings while settling in to his new job:

There's another one on the way.

T

Pogo Possum by Chuck Jones

2009-02-13T20:09:00.000-05:00

.
.
.
Okay, here's a truly strange one...

In 1969, Chuck Jones actually took a crack at the beloved Pogo Possum Swamp gang. Honestly, this is nothing like the original Walk Kelly comic (unusual for an animated adaptation, no?) - but it was still an interesting discovery.

Weirdest of all: at 7:40, the porcupine... that Chuck himself doing the voice!

T

MoreTime for Timer

2009-02-12T21:20:00.000-05:00

.
.
.
This was another Time for Timer. Not as awesome as the other one... less clever, and the voice guy is forcing the whole Texan accent, which kinda kills it. Kind of cheesy, if you'll forgive the pun.

The Time for Timer PSAs were actually a "spinoff" of The Incredible, Indelible Magical Physical Mystery Trip, produced in 1973 as an ABC after school special. I remember seeing this damn cartoon (yes, when it originally aired - I'm THAT old), and it may have sucked for all i know but I thought it was an awesome adventure!

This one's a little better:

The voice is that of Len Maxwell, who did voices for the Batfink cartoons back in the 60s and, more recently, Celebrity Death Match! This one's great too, but the quality is a little crappy:

Timer was created by none other than DePatie Freling, the nuts who did the Pink Panther series. The similarities are very noticable at times.

T

Time for Timer

2009-02-12T00:15:00.000-05:00

.
.
.
Just found this one... first time seeing it in over 30 years. Despite the years, this song is burned into my brain, word for word. My wife thinks I'm crazy, but now there's proof!

It says vintage 80s, but this is pure 70s.

Almost as cool as Schoolhouse Rock, but 10 times as stupid.

T

She a bitch

2009-02-07T01:04:00.000-05:00

.
.
.

She was a bitch.

Not as a person, just the design & cleanup. I don't actually know her - you might.

Care to take a guess? Don't be shy... if you don't get it right, it's actually me who loses.

T

So... Busy...........

2009-02-05T23:11:00.000-05:00

I just haven't been able to stop. long... enough... to... blog....

Nonstop Character Posing - it's actually causing severe back problems and music collection fatigue. Here's some more Inspector McCloud Laredoans.. Loredans? Loraiders?

Back as soon as I can walk!

T

Vacation Leftovers

2009-01-27T21:04:00.000-05:00

.
.
.
Just a couple of doodley-doos documenting my last trip to the beach.

Fat Guy surfing.

Old guy surfing.

Mick was right. What a drag it is.

Sniff.

T

The Old Navy of animation

2009-01-26T21:14:00.000-05:00

I was reminded recently of something I recently told a fellow – a particularly penny-pinching pinhead who grilled me for over an hour trying to get a sack of gold for a sack of nickels.

At the limit of my patience, I said this: “We’re not Wal Mart – we’re more like Old Navy.”

Now, we work cheap, there’s no doubt about that. But we don’t have the resources, the cunning or the utter lack of ethics required to manipulate hard work out of desperate, hungry animators for a few coins and some lint – so we’re probably not the cheapest Studio. But we do aspire to making cartoons that aren’t revolting to watch… “great” would be nice, but we’ll take not revolting.

Much in the same way Old Navy clothes aren’t utterly revolting to look at.

Now you may have some kind of “fashion sense” or “style” that far exceeds mine (like that’s hard – I invented the Mullet) but in general, it seems Old Navy duds hold their own, as long as you’re not hanging out at Country Clubs or.. well any clubs.

And if you can’t afford to shop at uber-casual outlets like Banana Republic, or Tommy Hilfiger or Needless Markup (I’m looking at you, career animators), but you’re not willing to contribute to the slow painful death of America (by shopping at Wal Mart), Old Navy is much appreciated.

I like to think of Flinch as the Old Navy of animation. Mock me if you must, but have you seen their commercials? Not the old ones with the silly songs and the 80’s has-beens, the new, sexy ones with the pretty girls! And people talk about how sex sells… I don’t know if sex sells to me, but it makes me stop fast-forwarding for a few seconds.

And that’s exactly what we try to do, get you to stop fast forwarding for a few seconds – just apply that to whatever metaphor comes to mind. That’s our goal for now – to do that and get paid.

When we get some traction, we’ll be going for the JC Penny crown!

Character Cleanup

2009-01-21T00:17:00.000-05:00

.
.
.

Character Cleanup takes so damn long! I've been slaving away on these suckers for weeks! Here's a few of the Inspector McCloud characters in their presentable state:

Agent John Q. Public

E.S.D. Worker

Willie makes a guest appearance

As does McConaughey (not his first time appearing in this Blawg)

It's not just the initial poses and turns (turns - yeah right!), it's all the damn assets too. Eyes, mouths, arms, hands... kill me soon, please.

Here's the next batch I gotta do:

Next it's on to it's Hugh Grant, Jesssica Simpson, Sandy Cheeks... when does it end??

T

Air Travel

2009-01-15T10:21:00.000-05:00

.
.
.
Prolly not too legible, but...

Typical Air travel moment.

T

"Work-cation"

2009-01-14T08:46:00.000-05:00

.
.
.
Hi folks,

I'm writing from my vacation, or "work-cation" as I have so cleverly redubbed it (yeah, I'm not expecting an emmy nod for that one).

I'm holing up in this nice little time share with the rest of America's SOV crowd (Seniors on Vacation). Guess which unit is mine?

Got a visit from my good friend Kim. Here she is after one of our signature low-key surf sessions:

Working on vacation is obviously a bit limiting... it feels so primitive without my Cintiq, my scanner, my light table, my blasting music.... but one adapts. I'm doing all my character cleanup on my bulky laptop (I call it the lap-crusher) with a mini optical mouse. If I need something more hand-drawn, I'll draw it in my sketch pad, snap a photo, dump the image onto the laptop through the USB cable, then clean it up via mouse in Flash. Oh, and I have i-tunes for the blazing rock!

It's a little more difficult when you want to work outdoors. The first two nights here featured a spectacular full moon, so I was out on the grass patio in a deck chair cleaning up Chuck Norris' head. Though my moon-tan might suggest otherwise, there wasn't enough light to see the keyboard very well, so there will probably be a lot of mis-named assets.

I'm also using this trip to meet with a friend here who is gearing up to produce an autobiographical animated series taking place in Melbourne. We'll be snapping lots of photos today of this guy's world to take back to our icy caves and turn into pure entertainment gold. More on that later - hopefully.

Amid the sunshine and surfing are tons of little nuggets of inspiration. Here's one that had me tickled:

Didn't catch that? Let me zoom in for ya:

You see those damn birds? What a poop-storm that must be! I can't wait to work that into a cartoon.

While I'm gone, the Family back at Flinch is keeping the artistic vibe flowing:

Charlie has a morning rendezvous with a dishy Waffle Lady!

More to come -

T

I Got Bugs!

2009-01-08T00:26:00.000-05:00

.
.
.
Follow-up to my Bugs Bunny Post: After lodging a serious complaint to the deaf-o-shpere about the dearth of Bugs Bunny on Cartoon Network, They go and run a Looney Tunes Marathon on New Years Day, which was quickly rushed out the back door of my TIVO by a flood of Daily Show reruns.

But not to worry, because my good buddy Sean sent me - I mean sent my son - a fully loaded collection of Looney Tunes on DVD. My boy went crazy!

I don't know what made me more excited, the gift or the fact that he's reading my blog.

Thanks Buddy!

T

Wall E - The E is for Muy Exellente!

2009-01-07T18:27:00.000-05:00

.
.
.
Like most animation geeks and/or Pixar Fans, I saw Wall E when it came to theaters last summer. I enjoyed it (as much as someone can while in full parent mode ), but I can't say I truly appreciated it for the stellar piece of filmmaking it is!

I'm not just talking about the much publicized message - that Convenience will one day destroy everything we love and force us to grow fat & plug into the matrix - it's just a damn well made film!

As soon as it was released, it was almost completely overshadowed by paranoid accusations from the right wing that is was a bunch of liberal preaching wrapped up in a cute kids movie (how preserving our quality of life became partisan I do not know). They even tried to make roaches cute, those bleeding hearts!!

Not the first Pixar film to have a political agenda hung around its neck - The Incredibles was perceived by many to be a statement that government bureaucracy was impeding on exceptional peoples' ability to do their best. 3D Socialism!

Oh, and Spongebob is Patrick's gay lover.

Pixar just plain makes awesome movies (though they pushed their luck with Cars). The technology and the inconceivably tight attention to detail & quality has made them so much fun just to look at that you could turn down the sound and enjoy them! And that's just what I had to do the other day, pretending to do adult stuff during a dinner party while the Wall E DVD was playing in my line of site from the next room - I was enthralled.

Even without the message, the amazing imagery, or the big budget thrills - in terms of just pure storytelling - this movie rocks my bones! The characters are so rich and expressive, the plot evolves effortlessly but with palatable twists and turns, and the imagination that moves the story forward - none of these things rely on giant budgets (respectable ones, yes).

In the end, Wall E is a really great love story with robots... robots that play out some pretty interesting gender role twists. There's also a lot of action, visual gags, and liquified food. Best of all, they worked the Haliburton Logo into the branding for Big & Large, the offending corporate giant behind the species' sedation.

Okay, maybe it's a little political ;)

T

Inspector McCloud Part 3: Script & Recording

2009-01-04T23:03:00.000-05:00

One of the most thrilling aspects to the Inspector McCloud project (for me) is the way it was written.

David Knoell as Burnt Ciggy and Agent John Q Public

Though I had developed a basic story outline to work from, Inspector McCloud’s script was Quasi-Improvised by the voice talent. Incorporating improvisation into the voice mix is nothing new, but we actually wrote most of the dialogue on the spot, as a group, and over-packed the tiny recording booth to lay it down in groups - which explains the less-than-stellar audio quality (something I do not usually allow, but the results are worth it in this case).

Daniel Cohen Plays Dirty Diaper Dan

The McCloud cast consists of a handful of scalawags from the Central Florida area who work in one part of this industry or another. Many of these guys were SAK improv folks who had been working with me since Popped Culture Theater back in 2005.

Chrissy Keihl as Lucy Litter

For several years, we had been discussing the idea of doing an improvised animation piece – just a handful of people in a room knocking out funny ideas and then running into the booth to serve them up while they’re warm. Problem is, once the recording is done, I get to slave over the animation for weeks while everyone goes on with their lives. Inspector McCloud gave me the opportunity to get paid to do it.

Steve Grogan as Tommy Treadless Tire

Because of their enormous contribution to the development of the characters and scenes, the voice artists (David Knoell, Jim Acamondo, Autumn Alexander, Steve Grogan, Daniel Cohen and Chrissy Keihl) have also earned writing credits.The show truly would not be been the same without them.

Jim Acamondo plays Oil Slick Willie

Along with my brothers Jerry and Stephen Grillo, the cast helped to shape the characters and the sequences as they will ultimately play out. Again, you may see this sort of thing going on a lot within certain creative circles, but for a small, work-for-hire studio like ours, it was a special treat to have a client remain open to this process.

And John is an awesome client. He understands the limitations of our budget, and has given me enough rope – er, I mean room to build it the way I want to. One of the best decisions I made was to bring this group of very talented people on board to help shape the script. Not only did they remain focused on the elements that would bring the characters forward and tell the story, but they brought some amazing voices to the piece.

Autumn Alexander in Yellow-face...

...and fish face.

As improv artists and live interactive show professionals, most of these guys were able to give me several options to work with. I myself prefer to write my lines out so I know what I'm going to say - but when you're in the room with folks like Chriss, Autumn, Daniel, David & Steve, the ideas just bubble up like bad gas! Hopefully, the final product smells just as sweet!

Stay Tooned,

A Holiday Cartoon

2009-01-04T00:16:00.001-05:00

.
.
.

I drew this single-panel cartoon to celebrate the holiday and the new year. It was written mostly by my 6-year-old son, who just cracks me up sometimes.

The problem is, nobody got it. Not my son's fault, he was a hoot saying that line "Egg Here, Egg Nog, a play on McCain's "Drill Here, Drill Now" mantra that earned he and Alaska Barbie so many donations from Big Oil.

It was my execution and, primarily, my assumption that everyone was as immersed in the McCain campaign as I was (what with making cartoons about the man all summer) that killed the joke.

If you haven't heard him say it, here's one example:

Single panel is hard, but that is no excuse. Being tired and drunk when I did it - that is a fine excuse. Still, I think the concept of a "Big Nog" is hilarious (that was my wife's... come to think of it, what the hell do I do around here?).

T

Inspector McCloud Part 2: Travel & Research

2008-12-28T11:43:00.000-05:00

To kick off the Inspector McCloud Gig, I arranged a trip to the city where it all takes place: Laredo Texas.

Research is a major part of project development, and most of the time you can get away with what Google has to offer… but Laredo is practically a main character in this story, and I knew I wasn’t going to get the same results from a series of crappy photos of the main tourist attractions.

I love travel, I just hate the traveling part. But seeing other parts of the country (and world) is awesome, even when it’s for business.

I really don’t care about driving a sweet car. This is not a lie. I like comfort, pep, and a sweet CD player if I can get them, but I’m just happy if it doesn’t break down between the airport and the first taco stand I see. Sexy body design means nothing. Cars should not be chick magnets.

That said, check out the sweet car they rented to me when I was in Laredo!

It’s some kind of mustang, I believe.

I don’t know what mistake led to this free upgrade from a Ford Fiesta, but I was apparently the first customer to drive it, and didn’t have to pay for it (unless you count the bruises I got on my knees every time I got out of the cramped cockpit).

Coming to Laredo was a fun and educational experience, and not even remotely a waste of time. I derive much of my story inspiration from locations for some reason, so it helps to have been there and know the zone I’m writing about, whether on not I am representing it successfully.

My client, John, was kind enough to take time off to show me around town, to all of the battle fronts where the Stormwater war is being waged. He also gave me a pretty thick history lesson on Laredo. I don’t want to get too deep into Laredo trivia – there’s too much history and info to do it any justice. Suffice to say that Laredo and Nuevo Laredo are international sister cities, and it’s hard to spend time in Laredo without being tempted across that border to see how the wild half lives.

One of my goals for this trip was to get a couple of voice references for Inspector McCloud. Because I wanted to nail the border-town Mexican accent, I had planned to get the appropriate people to speak to my camera somehow… but I am unfortunately shy about asking strangers for such performances.

In my last few hours however, I walked into a local history museum and found that he curator had exactly the voice I imagined for Inspector McCloud. I managed to coax him into giving me the rundown on some key local historical figures (a couple of the Zapata boys among them) while I videotaped him. Under the pretext of consuming a history lesson, I got the voice reference I was looking for.

Another goal was to snap tons of photos. I knew that our story would evolve, and I wanted to make sure I was covering every angle. Here are some images that help contribute to our look and our story:

When you’re afflicted with whatever condition causes me to be a scatterbrain, you have to come to terms with the fact that, no matter how many checklists you make, you will forget something important. When the time came to depict the Environmental Services Department building, the HQ of Inspector McCloud, I realized I had not taken a single photo of the place, despite having been there 3 times. Not really a serious problem as long as you don’t plan on using establishing shots. Which would be stupid.

Thank God for Google Street view, and the army of camera-laden vehicles they must have been sending out over the last year. This is one of the photos I was able to download from Google Maps:

And here’s the rough BG rough that came from it.

Now it's on to production! Next time around, I’ll talk a little bit about the writing & Voice recording process.

The Spongebob Channel

2008-12-25T21:01:00.000-05:00

.
.
.

It's official: Nickelodeon has become the Spongebob channel. Have you seen the lineup? It's the Spongebob Christmas special followed by 2 Spongebobs, followed by a Spongebob Marathon.

And rightfully so, I suppose. Has there been a kids TV show more A-A-A-A-Awesome in the last 10 years than Spongebob?

You can argue otherwise, I won’t engage you sir, but it’s no wonder Spongebob is now to Nickelodeon what Homer Simpson has been to Fox for 18 years and counting: the flagship show. Upon the realization, I was inspired to create this abomination:

Still, it’s a little unnerving. What's really sick is that I'm almost always tempted to watch it. Damn little sponge is just so much fun to watch, and it's not like my kid would ever steer me away to something more... substantial. Thank god for the wife.

You may remember this particular by-product of my obsession.

The question is this: how many more episodes of Spongebob will need to be produced before Nick can realistically fill their programming schedule with nonstop Spongebob? And would we need to give Sandy her own spin-off to help fill the slate? And would that show any good?

You don't have to think about it if you don't want to. I will be focusing on it intently enough for us all.

Surfy's Law

2008-12-23T19:00:00.000-05:00

'
'
'
So there are probably many, many people who have not seen this. It's Surfy's Law, created and produced by Flinch & Banga UE. I would like you to see it. I would like the whole world to see it... but first, I would like you to see it. Then go tell the world about it.

Ahhh, just enjoy it.

T

Where's Bugs Bunny?

2008-12-20T21:06:00.000-05:00

.
.
.
Question: is there some kind of Looney Tunes conspiracy going on? Why can't I find Bugs Bunny on TV anymore?

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to see Tom & Jerry getting their exposure on CN, and Tex Avery is still getting the occasional bump.... but where the hell is Bugs and the rest of the legitimate Looney Tunes gang???

I don't mean the airbrushed, Phone-Service-hawking, Space Jamming, Sunglass-wearing, Back in Action celebrity spokesman hipster Bugs, or the eyelash-endowed, watered-down 1970s Chuck Jones Bugs (no disprespect Chuck, you created many respectable cartoons before going into loop mode), or the warmed-over Christmas Special Bugs...

Surfing... really???

Bugs if he lived in Whoville

I am talking about the aimless 1940s & 50s wascal with nothing to his name but a well-hidden carrot and the indomitable will to weed out and humiliate a-holes (and the occasional misguided dog) with painful, mind-boggling Testicular Brooklyn Magic.

I have a son who is at a very tender and impressionable age, and he's not getting enough Bugs Bunny in his viewing diet. I believe in educational TV, but you have to round it out with a few hammers to the head... and the 3 Stooges just doesn't deliver on the waterfall of animated Pain Stars. Storyboard-driven animation needs to make up at least 30% of your cartoon diet.

Is WB trying to drive up DVD sales or something? I mean, do what you gotta do to stay in business, but give us our Bugs Bunny man. It saddens me to know that an entire generation's only memory of Bugs Bunny is the rabbit who used to sell sneakers with that basketball player guy. Few characters have ever been so cheaply exploited... although I do recall standing in the middle of Rite Aid when Phantom Menace came out and being incapable of finding a single stoner-friendly product without Jar Jar on it. But I digress.

Give us back our Looney Tunes, WB. And don't try to pass that Roadrunner loop off on me (one really amazing cartoon that was remade verbatim 150 times), or any of that Teleplay-format 70s Daffy & Speedy garbage either (sorry Friz, I don't blame you - RIP brother).

Crank up the projector and lets see some of the classics. I need to watch some fat opera singer have alum poured down his throat and turn blood red.

T

Inspector McCloud Part 1: A sweet gig?

2008-12-16T23:11:00.000-05:00

In the summer of 2007, I was contacted by a fellow who worked for the City of Laredo, Texas. Besides lending its name to both a sad country song and a sporty Jeep model, Laredo is a Border Town with the honor of being the largest inland port into the mainland US.

The Laredo man, whom I will call John, had scored a modest grant to produce a short video that would teach kids about Stormwater runoff and how it affects their main source of water, the Rio Grande. The story was to be named after its hero, Inspector McCloud.

This being a government project, it would be under-funded, paperwork laden, and slow to develop (it would take a full year to get through the review, application & approval process – I kid you not), but I managed to get them to agree to 2 very important conditions: 1. A very flexible delivery schedule and 2. Creative control. Not only would this give me the ability to earn income on other projects and carefully manage costs, it would allow me to make the cartoon I wanted to make and try something brand new with story and character development (which I will get into in a later post).

By the time we got the green light on the project, the economy was well into its death spiral, and the phone had, for the most part, stopped ringing. I sort of saw this coming, and planned Inspector McCloud as something I could work on by myself if I had to, keeping costs low and extending the life support of the company (cue the stubborn heartbeat).

Folks, this job turned out to be a blessing.

Some while back, the City of Laredo had commissioned some music and a comic book featuring these characters, and had fully expected that we would use the designs as they were. These are the designs he was talking about.

My first act was to create some new designs. It was a tough sell, but not that tough (I will elaborate on this as well in a later blog). Problem is, I'm not really a great character designer. I struggled with the task for a while, but finally gave birth to this:

There are a lot of influences from various sources, including Jay Ward, Time Squad and Clone High… but ultimately, this style has become a natural (slightly cleaner) extension of my own sloppy, improvised drawing style. Here are the villains:

Once I figured out this style, I found myself really looking forward to the process. Despite the minuscule budget, this has turned out to be a really cool project with a lot of facets to it, including travel (which I will cover in the next posting).

Stay tooned for that!

Airbus

2008-12-11T22:30:00.000-05:00

.
.
.
Haven't you ever had this image put into your head?

T

Super Charlie

2008-12-11T02:00:00.000-05:00

.
.
.
A little fun from Dad.

Not that the boy's a ham or anything!

T

Rock Humor

2008-12-08T23:00:00.000-05:00

.
.
.
Rock N Roll!

Q: How many Lead guitarists does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: Just one... all the rest just watch and say "Phh. I can do that."

Q: What do you call a musician without a girlfriend?

A: Homeless

Now it's off to practice!

T

Stickman Spots

2008-12-07T01:00:00.000-05:00

.
.
.

Flinch recently completed a series of spots for Sukle Advertising and Fuser.com entitled Never Miss a Message. A lot of Firsts on this one, including lowest pay for an animated spot (probably).

Here’s a peek:

Another first: this was our maiden voyage with the new Wacom Cintiq (stay tooned for a review of the Cintiq in an upcoming post). Working from the lead of the client and their capable Creative Director, we used a stickman style for this one. It was a perfect match for the Cintiq, and the timing was perfect too. We had just gotten our hands on the Cintiq for an upcoming gig (you didn’t think this one paid for it do did you?), and were eager to give it a test run.

Most of the design work was actually done by Willie on another Cintiq, but having this one made our work consistent… so it still counts!The Cintiq definitely has its issues (I will address these at the appropriate time), but this was a really fun way to work!

And it came out pretty well, I think. Could have been better with more time, more money, a script, etc. You know the drill.

Otto is back

2008-12-05T22:33:00.000-05:00

.
.
.
Hey, Autofanz! It's another spot featuring Otto the Otter, Irvine Auto Center's car-crazy mascot who enjoys tearing up the roads of Southern California in his anonymously branded sporty convertible.

This time, he's tailgating at an undefined stadium, rooting for a generic team. In the world of TV spots, we're often instructed not do do anything that would ruffle even a few feathers, and that means being vague - even with colors.

It also means inventing products (like the case of Codfish Cola in the trunk).

Is there some symbolism to his closing the trunk on said product? Hmmm... well, you tell me - do you really think we get paid for symbolism? Jeez.

Thumbs by Willie

Fun spots, we love these guys and we love doing these commercials... but their budgets keep shrinking and shrinking. I fear the next time around, we'll be paying them! It's would almost be worth it.

Almost.

T

War Mart Contest Winner

2008-12-03T21:16:00.000-05:00

On a side note: We do have a winner in the War Mart logo parody contest!

Sarah Booth of New York City (the one in New York state) correctly guessed it... cue scary music:

Sarah happens to be a very good friend of mine from way back in High School on Long Island. Hey, I never said friends and Family couldn’t enter… and besides, all you non-friends-and-family readers (all 2 of you) had plenty of time to nail it.

Jeez, how hard was that anyway?

Stay T’d

Matt Danner returns to the Adult Demographic

2008-12-01T22:33:00.000-05:00

.
.
.
So that's where Matt Danner's been hiding!

Back in the early days of the 20th century, before Flash was recognized as yet another way to drive down costs on kids TV animation (...before we could even convince a single studio to invest in a Flash TV production), there was promise in the air that Flash would drive the popularity of grown-up animated internet content to the point where anyone could have their own show on the web, and actually eek a living out of it... maybe even see it developed into a real TV show!

Damn having a realistic business model, this was the future of entertainment!

One of our favorite pieces, and the seeming proof that we were well on our way to seeing that dream come true, was PussyCow, directed by Matt Danner (a former Spumco guy, and it shows). For almost a year, we kept hitting the site where the PussyCow SWF was posted, just to get a taste of the subversive, oddly transgenderal, nun-bashing short.

Then one day, it vanished. It was nowhere to be found on the web. Gone. We had hoped that this was a good sign, that Danner had struck a deal with some well-paid TV exec with a vision for a future similar to what we had wet-dreamt of, and the stupid money to back it up. Maybe this was all part of the content moratorium that would precede its grand release.

Alas, this does not appear to be the case. It simply disappeared.

Well, God Bless YouTube!

After seeing Matt listed as Director of a new Drinky Crow episode I was forced to make that fateful search again... this time with positive results! Again I will say it, and let all you copyright obsessed Viacom & Fox lawyers hear me say it loud & clear: God Bless YouTube!

Drinky does not seem to be Matt's cup of milk. He did a capable job, he's a pro storyteller and you can see that... but it just doesn't stand up to the likes of PussyCow, or even some o fthe kid's contant that Matt's been producing (like Coconut Fred or Foster's Home). You can view a typical Drinky show (not a Danner episode) by clicking on the highly marketable toy image below.

Not a terrible piece of entertainment. I never read the Maakies Comic that the show is based on, but I would venture to guess that it was probably not captured aptly on TV... and while the translation to 3D looks intriguing, Drinky Crow was clearly meant to shine in 2D. I can only guess they did it for budgetary & scheduling reasons, as 3D animation tools feature asset management that ever more and more superior to Flash.

Damn Macromedia. They're shooting themselves in the foot by resting on their web laurels. We've been waiting to see shows like PussyCow become a reality (and wishing for all of those other Flash shows with their teeny tiny budgets to yield higher profits for us blue collar studio yokels thanks to more controlled asset management costs), and instead 3D keeps getting cutsies to the front of the line while we stand out in the rain waiting to get a peek at the pretty girls inside. I have half a mind to go learn how to use one of the 50 or so versions of Toon Boom and drop Flash altogether.

I'll say it again so all of the software developers at Adobe can hear me loud and clear: Damn Macromedia!

Stay Tooned

T

Flinch delivers the election for Obama!

2008-11-29T16:56:00.001-05:00

.
.
.
Too Dramatic? I needed a title that would compete with the likes of Fox News. In actuality, our Political Cartoons probably did little to sway a single vote this year, but we had fun, made some people laugh, and most importantly, didn't have to work entirely for free!

After the almost completely unnoticed release of Oh McCain, it was hard to get my client (the incomparable Charlie Fink) to commit to another political cartoon. Luckily, he's as big a sucker as I am, and agreed to do more toons.... but he wanted a series that could address issues quickly. This meant developing a system that would allow us to turn around topical animated content only days after an event occurred - like South Park does, but without the budget or the crappy-looking design.

Fink had the idea for an Angel & Devil combo to represent McCain's conscience, his moral struggle with waging a mostly negative campaign. This became The 2 McCains.

So we designed the characters and developed our Flash assets into complete "Comps", including a wide array of expressions, phonemes, hands, and a huge assortment of limbs to choose from. We also decided to try something new - the Trick or Script plug-in "Thumbnails". It has its pros & cons, but for something quick like this, it made it unnecessary to develop a complete code sheet for the production assets or employ extensive asset management. With Thumbnails, assets are chosen & swapped visually, and with a crew this small (2 or 3 guys max), asset management doesn't need to be complicated.

When the debates rolled around, we were ready to start animating! The next problem was acquiring live video from the debates. In the first couple of passes, we tried pulling clips from internet video sources. This proved to be either expensive, time consuming, or of questionable quality. In later passes, we wound up transferring the footage from TIVO (yet another reason to love TIVO!). This worked great for the debates, where we could predict the air times and choose the broadcast with the least supers - but might not have been the best option for breaking news items (which, it turned out, was never a factor).

So following each debate, we had to get a script together, have voice recordings produced (by the great James Adomian) & mixed, transfer and capture footage, cut a Video Background master, create character poses and work them into the composition, animate the characters, composite and edit the piece, add sound FX and sweeten audio, then output for YouTube. All in 3 days!

Ultimately, we did 8 episodes of The 2 McCains, with the last one being 100% animated. Even Sarah Palin showed up in a couple of episodes, voiced by the amazing and funny Rosemary Watson.

How did we get these pieces out so quickly? Basically, we started as soon as the debates were over! Every time a debate occurred, I kissed my family goodbye for while and devoted my life to John McCain. He's a funny guy without my help, but we had to take it a little further if we we wanted to make YouTube history.

And we did! We probably had the lowest traffic-to-effort ratio in YouTube history! While some pimply-faced doofus flushing a roll of toilet paper or a teenage girl lipsynching to a bad song while pushing cleavage can get 100,000 hits in a matter of days, our carefully planned, skilfully-produced, topical pieces were floundering with 1500-3000 hits each.

Finally, Fink made a deal with Lisa Nova to run "Oh McCain" and the "2 McCains" series on Lisa's YouTube channel. Lisa Nova's humorous and sexy YouTube site draws some huge traffic, thanks to her wit, a talented cast, and a bodacious set of... thumbnails. We were fortunate enough to enjoy a brief ride on that balloon.

This arrangement wound up costing me 25% of my already thin budget, but we wanted people to see these damn cartoons!

Oh McCain premiered on Lisa's site in Mid October, ultimately racking up 350,000 views (to date). Not really a huge audience by YouTube standards I understand, but it took only 3 days to find the traffic it received in 4 months on the original Lunatics and Liars channel (!), and has now surpassed that number seven times over! The 2 McCains episodes didn't do quite as well, but they managed to draw huge numbers fast, and the comments were plentiful, though not all good (some were quite angry and overtly racist)! It was a hell of a wake up call, but one we would never have had if not for Lisa.

At the end of the day, I think we were all hoping to have some small impact on the election. Johnny Boy's not a bad guy - a little misguided, but a likable guy with a distinguished life of service, who sadly, seemed to lose control over his own campaign, ceding it to the likes of Karl Rove and that whole Fear First mindset. But Obama is the man - he started things off the right way, by talking about unity & bipartisanship, and focusing attention on the real problems: deep-pocket lobbyists and growing class separation.

Ultimately, we did this for laughs first. On November 5th, we were all enjoying a good laugh.

No so much a laugh, as a jovial sigh of relief.

Stay Hopeful,

T

Coming up for Air - in a new Studio!

2008-11-29T16:20:00.000-05:00

.
.
Whew! It's been a while. Did you miss me?

Looking back about 30 pixels, I realize my last post was to announce the release of the Oh McCain Director's Cut (our first foray into political entertainment)... a lot has happened in the political world since then, in case you've been in a coma (or a cave - I'm looking at you, Osama).

I don't need to tell you we've got a new President...

I'm proud to have participated in the subversion of this year's election for a few cheap laughs, but more on that later.

I'll use the next few entries to lay out some tasty updates for the five or six people who read this blog. Tasty? Really? Yes.

So why the long lunch hour? Well for starters, Flinch Studio moved its offices from Florida to Georgia. Not really an excuse for a 4-month absence, but it's hopefully big enough news to distract you while I slip quietly back into my cubicle and pretend to have been working the whole time.

Flinch is now located in the basement of my childhood home just outside of Atlanta. Here's the view out my back window:

I'm sure you'll agree, it's much better than the view outside my old office window:

This is not a joke. That was my actual view. I have to look at these pix from time to time to remind myself why I moved so far away from year-round surfing. Access to great food and live music also helps to kill the pain. It's good to be back in my old stomping grounds!

Other than the move, it's been bitchness as usual. Plenty bizzy, plenty bitchy, plenty broke. The life of an animator. Lot's of really cool stuff to share though, including pictures. Lots of pictures, and animation too.

Stay 'tooned,

T

.
.
.

Oh McCain - Director's Cut

2008-07-01T12:01:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
Presenting the World Premiere of the extended Director's Cut of Oh McCain, the political piece we created for Lunatics and Liars.

This version was our original cut before being edited down to a 2-minute format. It features a little segment up front parodying McCain's penchant for napping (uh - I mean, "taking notes") during crucial moments. It also provides a setup for the last shot, which we didn't have in the released version.

Finally we have a quick little scene showing McBush "passing the cowboy crown" as it were.

BTW - We still don't have a winner on the War Mart Logo contest. If you can tell me what the War Mart Logo is a parody of, write me at blogga@flinch.com and you will win a free Flinch T-Shirt!!

Stay Tooned

T

Thow Shal not Kyill

2008-07-01T11:22:00.000-04:00

.
.
.

Political Irony... if I could bottle it and convert it to energy, my power bill would be much more manageable.

Previously Unreleased: Mariah Carey

2008-06-27T12:38:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
Another one from the Popped Culture Theater series that was never released - Mariah Carey.

This one was a lot further along than the Britney Spears Episode, but not nearly finished. It's basically a Color Posed Animatic, ready for animation, Audio Mix and post.

We were well into production on this one (including music) when it was canned. The client called and told us to wrap it up because the sponsor, Pepsi, had just signed a deal with Mariah Carey to be their spokesperson (a professional relationship that has since expired), and they did not want to create bad blood.

Interestingly enough, Britney was once also a Pepsi spokesperson, and hers was the next cartoon we went into production on (and was also cancelled in mid-production, though seemingly for different reasons).

This Mariah cartoon actually started out kind of funny, but the script slowly devolved into a series of metaphoric puns trying to connect Maria's voice to the sound that Dolphins make. I was only sorry that we never got the chance to fix these problems and make it work!

With most of the Popped Culture Theater pieces, the scripts we started out were not quite... funny. Most of the writers were very talented music history devotees and solid journalists, but their scripts were never fully cooked (hey, comedy is tough!). But the stories were built on firm foundations and loaded with the good ideas, so once we brought in the improv-oriented voice talent and applied our visual magic, things came together for the most part - not every short was a smash, but we' were very proud of some of them!

Stay Tooned

T

Previously Unreleased: Britney Spears

2008-06-26T17:08:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
Introducing the never before seen (and never quite finished) episode of Popped Culture Theater, "Britney & K-Fed".

This is the love story that was never told: Boy meets Girl, Boy dumps Wife & Kids, Boy screws up big time, Girl Dumps Boy, Girl shaves head - come to think of it, it's a good thing it was never told.

Never mind the Cinder Blocks

Excluding the above still, we never got past the B&W Animatic stage on this one, and since it was yours truly doing the drawing, it ain't pretty (don't hate me because I can't draw!). But the audio track was (mostly) completed, and it's actually one of the funniest PCT bits we've done!

When Kevin Met Britney

This is as far as we got when we got the call that the popped Culture Theater series was kaput. No real reason why -perhaps we weren't hitting our numbers, perhaps it was that fact that we were too offensive...? I don't think the cartoons were bad Per Se - not always great, but certainly worthy of a few minutes' time from some bored office worker.

Here's one more image - this is what the characters would have looked like once cleaned up (designs by Willie Castro - a real designer!).

Stay tooned.

Unreleased Work

2008-06-23T10:52:00.000-04:00

As novice animators, almost all of us dreamt of our creations making it into the mainstream and being seen by millions of devoted fans. In our immortal youth, it was never a question of whether we would succeed, but where and how.

One possible idea for a new TV show.

As we got older and settled into the industry, our priorities shifted, along with our definition of success. Now we're just happy to know we can draw funny pictures all day and still feed our families - but the dream of reaching a wide audience never quite goes away.

On a handful of occasions, Flinch Studio has been fortunate enough to work on projects that made it into the public eye, if only for a short period of time. Usually the catalyst for this attention comes from being associated with celebrity (such as Sandler or Burton) or participating on an already popular property (The Critic, Family Guy), or simply having the good fortune to create content for display before a captive audience (The Mystery Mavs).

Tim Burton's Stainboy - 2000

Up late with Stewie & Brian - 2007

But not all of our hard work is seen by mass audiences - in some cases, it is seen by nobody at all. This is never due to a lack of quality (though we have produced some crap in the past) - it usually comes down to the purpose or the politics.

Often times, we are hired to produce pilots that are only intended for display to development executives... of course, it would be nice to see them go the distance and become shows, even if we are not producing the series.

But other obstacles stand in the way of mass release as well - sometimes clients experience a changing of the guard, a change of direction, a conflict of interests, or just may not have thought it through all the way before writing us a check (God bless them!).

Take Ottoland (2007) - what plan did an online car sales company have to leverage a mini-series about a group of teens stuck inside an amusement park into increased sales? I'm not really sure, but they funded the development and production of 6 decent episodes, and then shelved the whole thing as soon as it was done.

Ottoland Episode 1

They were an awesome client, and they paid up - they even gave me the green light to post the series on YouTube... but they basically paid a small crew to work for 18 weeks for something they would never use (repeat: God bless them!!).

What follows is a (very) brief excerpt from an undisclosed piece that was created a few years ago for an undisclosed client. We were under a very strict nondisclosure contract with this one - no displaying it or even talking about it until it was released. Well, it was never released. We were paid to create it, we were paid to make revisions, and then it was shelved. The following clip is all I can show you without giving away anything that could be considered "damaging".

Tom Cruise gets upset.

Any project that pays and gives you the satisfaction of having produced a funny, narrative piece is rewarding just for that... but there is something inherently frustrating about watching your work fade into obscurity - especially if it has potential.

In upcoming posts, I will present some more unreleased Flinch content, including pieces that were only partially completed before they got the axe. The content itself is often not as interesting as the story behind why it was shelved!

Stay Tooned,

The Phat Dragon

2008-06-21T10:55:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
Finally! Someone has decided to address youth culture's thirst for Dragons and Hip Hop!

The Phat Dragon

It was either this or a dinosaur with a skateboard.

Lil Hip Hop

2008-06-19T11:35:00.000-04:00

Presenting Lil Hip Hop, a series created by Curtis Ray that focuses on a group of inner city rascals working their way to the top of the heap.

This is a quick little pilot to get the development execs excited about the prospect of a series.

We developed this for Ray and his Partner, Ishmael Brown Jr. on a budget so small even I'm surprised we pulled it off! Some of our top Flinch guys jumped in to help out, and we're pretty happy with the result of our very limited production. This is the epitome of Guerrilla style TV-friendly animation.

For the music, we used a combination of Hip Hop & 70s soul (and Hip Hop that samples 70s soul).

This is one of the few pieces we've worked on that I can feel good about showing to my kids - and they seem to enjoy it too, which is always nice!

More GeeGuides

2008-06-19T10:09:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
Here are a couple more animation samples from the GeeGuides modules mentioned in the previous Blog. These represent such a small piece of the big picture - none of the imaginative Geeguides scructure or interactivity is present here - but you'll get an idea of the style and nature of the animation.

The Egyptian Module

The Moustache years

The style for these pieces is based on the old Disney Ward Kimball shorts from the 50s & 60s - Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom, and the Space Program specials that were created for the Disneyland TV show. For anyone interested in working in this style, I highly reccomend the Disney Treasures series Tomorrowland DVD - it's expensive, but so, so worth it. Here's a couple of screen grabs:

For those who have met me in my heavier years, this one looks frighteningly like yours truly.

Enjoy!

GeeGuides (our coattail award)

2008-06-18T22:43:00.000-04:00

.
.
.
If you haven't heard of GeeGuides it's high time you do!

http://www.geeguides.com/

GeeGuides is an interactive animation based learning module series dedicated to using "edutainment" to teach. To date the only existing curriculum is (my favorite) art!

GeeGuides was formed by a group of ex-Disney guys after the Orlando 2D Studio was shut down (one of the Eisner Regime's more brilliant moves). A ton of great talent was scattered to the winds that year, and many of them re-formed to create small studios or ventures.

The Modules that GeeGuides put together (with Flinch teaming up with Fatkat Animation to handle Animation & Interactive design & code) are nothing short of brilliant. I was blown away by how much I learned just working on this project. Hey, it won awards - two, I think!

I can't wait until my kids are a little older and can really dig into this stuff! Take a look:

Tickles, Furnace & Ruby: Armed & Endangerous

The co-founder and creative force behind GeeGuides is Eric Guaglione, former Computer Animation Supervisor for Disney's last few 2D films. He is something of a Leonardo Da Vinci, equally proficient in technology and art. That's him doing the voice of Furnace.

It is truly an honor to get to work with people like Eric - every bit as much as it was working with more well-knowns like Sandler & Burton. Like any great creative lead, he maintains a clear vision while allowing the people working under him to exercise their talents. The other folks at GeeGuides deserve equal mention, especially our boy Randy Parker, the coolest cucumber in the salad!

And these guys made US feel like the rock stars!! To be fair, we did some pretty awesome work:

GeeGuides goes down in history as one of our favorite clients to date. We're not sure yet what will happen with the program, but it is so amazing (and ahead of its time) that it's bound to be a success.

We sure are proud to have worked with them.

T