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DOODLE DOO DOO…

What’s with all the doodles?

Well, I’m glad you asked proverbial voice-used-to-make-it-seem-like-someone-else-is-talking-besides-myself!

It’s not often that, we as artists, get a chance to work together and do something good for the community.  Above, I’ve attached detail photos (they’re from my iPhone, so pardon the low res) of a jam board that was created specifically for an auction to benefit the organization, New Directions For Youth.  On it, are sketches of Cartoon Network creations, both old and new, drawn by artists at the Cartoon Network Studios (many of them drawn by their actual creators!).  The following is the list of contributing artists:

Steven Choi – Character Designer – Ben 10

Chap Yeap – Character Designer – Ben 10

John Fang – Supervising Producer – Generator Rex

Mike Roth – Supervising Producer – Regular Show

JG Quintel – Creator – Regular Show

Van Partible – Creator – Johnny Bravo

Dave Smith – Storyboard Artist – Dexter’s Laboratory

Dave Wasson – Creator – Time Squad

Tom Warburton – Creator -  Codename: Kids Next Door

C.H. Greenblatt – Creator – Chowder

Serapio Calm – Character Designer – Chowder

Maxwell Atoms – Creator – The Grim Adventures of Billy And Mandy

Ian Wasseluk – Storyboard Artist – Billy & Mandy

Pendleton Ward – Creator – Adventure Time

Michelle Xin – Character Designer – Adventure Time

Rebecca Sugar – Storyboard Artist – Adventure Time

Patrick Seery – Production Assistant – Adventure Time

Kent Osborne – Story Supervisor – Adventure Time

Tom Herpich – Storyboard Artist – Adventure Time

Natasha Allegri – Character Designer – Adventure Time

Ian Jones-Quartey – Storyboard Supervisor – Adventure Time

Cole Sanchez – Storyboard Artist – Adventure Time

Alex Campos – Clean-Up Artist – Adventure Time

Oliver Akuin – Animatic Editor – Adventure Time

Santino Lascano – Background Designer – Adventure Time

Andy Ristaino – Character Designer – Adventure Time

Now that you know who these artists are, see if you can match the name with the drawing in the photos above!

And while you do that, a big thank you to all those who participated!

To learn more about the New Directions For Youth, you can visit their website at http://www.ndfy.org/

FUN FACT: For those of you at home, playing Six Degrees of Mary Poppins, the event where the auction took place was at the Skirball Cultural Center and the evening’s entertainment was none other than Dick Van Dyke and the Vantastix!  But if that fact isn’t “fact-y” enough for you, three, count ‘em, three of Cartoon Network’s show creators work on the Disney Channel’s “Fish Hooks” right now: Tom Warburton, Maxwell Atoms, & C.H. Greenblatt!

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JB GOES TO BOLLYWOOD… DONE DONE AND DONE!

So it’s finally finished!  After almost two years of work, we’ve finally outputted the final mix for our 72 minute opus, “Johnny Bravo Goes To Bollywood!”  It was produced primarily out of Asia and will soon be arriving at a Cartoon Network near you!  The only problem is, I have no idea when that day is!  What I do know, is that it’s going to premiere in Australia later this year.  Other regions will soon follow after that.  In the meantime, I’ve posted a few images from the production.  Above is the layout for the opening main title.

Below is a mood board produced by the artists at Inspidea for the Bollywood Song, “Learn About Bollywood.”  For those of you who don’t know what a mood board is, it’s a technique used in animation (and other design arts) to help set the tone and style of the production.  I wanted to share this piece because it gives you a nice idea of how much effort we put into the production to make it really feel as alive and as vibrant as the most colorful Bollywood productions…

And finally, a faux magazine cover which appears onscreen for a few seconds in the middle of the film.  There’s barely enough time to enjoy the full magazine cover in the film, so I thought I’d give props to the artists who put so much time and effort into developing this fun piece of art…

As I get more information, I’ll be sure to let y’all know.

So until next time…

JESSE TYLER FERGUSON

As the new fall TV season approaches, I thought that I’d post a video promo which stars (IMHO) one of TV’s funniest actors, Modern Family’s Jesse Tyler Ferguson.  It was made back in the late 90′s for Cartoon Network’s “You with us?” campaign. The fine folks in Atlanta did a genius job in writing and directing a series of live action commercials to promote, not only Johnny Bravo, but the Powerpuff Girls, Dexter’s Laboratory, and Ed Edd, and Eddy. I’ve always had a copy of these on videotape and hoped that someone would someday post these online for everyone to enjoy. Enter Crimsonflamewolf on Youtube and BAM! So enjoy JTF as new recruit, Steve Mank, in the cult of Johnny Bravo.

Thank you Crimsonflamewolf for posting these!

NEW SCOOBY DOO DVD

Just wanted to let everyone know that there’s a new Scooby Doo DVD that’s flying off the virtual shelves of Amazon.com.  It was ranked #556 as of 9:20 AM (which is pretty good for an 8-disc set of a show from the 70′s!).  It’s enough sales to beat Tom Selleck’s “Jesse Stone: Night Passage” at # 2,899 but still not enough to beat “Jesse Stone: No Remorse” at #399.  Well played Mr. Selleck.  Well played.

Besides being a big fan of Scooby Doo, I’m mentioning it because I did an on-camera interview for the DVD featurette, “Scooby-Doo The Whole World Loves You” which, according to Amazon.com, “focuses on Scooby’s continued popularity and fans continued love of the character. Features interviews with various writers, directors and actors who have worked on Scooby TV and Movie projects over the last 40 years. (20 mins)”  For me, it was a tremendous honor to be a part of it because I’m such a huge fan.  I can’t really say I’m the “ultimate” fan because I don’t dress like anybody from the show and I haven’t named my kids Velma or Fred.  But I have been known to say “Jinkies!” so I got that going for me.

For the DVD, I mostly talked about my work on our “Bravo Dooby Doo” episode and Mr. Barbera’s involvement in the show.  The most random anecdote about my interview is that I wore a shirt with green stripes for the interview.  Why is that interesting, you ask?  Well, whenever they do these interviews, they do them in front of a green screen so they can lay down whatever images they want to in the background by altering anything that’s green on camera.  (I don’t want to go into too much technical details when we have Wikipedia for that.)  Anyhow, I ended up changing shirts with one of the crew members who happened to be my size.  It was just another reminder of why it’s important to shower before you leave the house. So, if you’re watching the featurette and thinking, “Man, that Van sure is a fancy dresser,”  then I apologize for misleading you into thinking I’m so fancy.

That was really the only anecdote I have from the recording session. Besides the fact that they put some man makeup on me before the shoot.  At least that’s what they said it was.

PRESS CONFERENCES AND MONKEYS

No.  I didn’t have a press conference with, or about, monkeys.  The title was my eyecatcher for those of you who love both press conferences and monkeys.  But before you skip this post because you don’t see any monkeys (I didn’t hide any in the above picture either), you may be pleasantly surprised by the end of this post.

Above is a stitched picture pan of the lovely people from the press in Malaysia.  The group included representatives of The Star, The Sun, NST, Berita Harian, Superkidz, K-Zone, Gempak,  New Man, TV2, HOT, and RTM News.  Interesting note: the majority of them were female journalists. I don’t know if it’s because that’s the way things are in Malaysia or if they thought that they were going to meet somebody that actually resembled Johnny Bravo.  Either way, it was fun chatting with them all.

We officially announced the start of Cartoon Network Asia’s Malaysia specific Snaptoons initiative.  We kicked it off with a talk from Silas Hickey of Cartoon Network Asia, then Kamil Othman, Vice President of MDEC (Multimedia Development Corporation), and myself. Beforehand, we got our talking points and press briefing, which made me a tad nervous because I tend to talk off the top of my head with a lot of nervous energy.  But then again, it’s not like we were trying to hide a scandal or anything.  Everyone ended up being very cordial and the whole event made the morning that much more fun.

Afterwards, I spent my final day at Inspidea Animation Studios drawing pictures and hanging out with the crew.  Again, it’s just like any other animation studio in the States.  On their free time, they play video games…

Gossip…

And hang out in front of the studio playing guitar and smoking cigarettes.

I spent my final night with the staff at a fantabulous dinner where I got to know them all a little better.  Who’s dating who, what they do in their spare time, what their favorite movies are, why they’re ranked number one in countries that spend the most hours on Facebook and have the most number of friends.  Bonding stuff like that.   It was a fun way to end my time in Malaysia.

So now is the part where you say, “Can we get to the monkey portion of the post already?”  Wait for it…

Before I hopped on my plane to LAX, CJ See brought us out to the Batu Caves where you can climb 272 steps and see… you guessed it…

Monkeys!  They’re just all around you frolicking the way monkeys do.

From Mongkok to Malaysian Monkeys, thus ends my time in Asia.  Ni Hao America!

INSPIDEA

I downloaded the above picture from my camera, looked at it, and thought, “That just doesn’t look real.”  But it is.  It’s the view from my hotel of the Petronas Twin Towers, which were the world’s tallest buildings from 1998-2004 (before Taipei 101).  Whatever it’s height credentials, it’s still massive!  Every time I look out my window, I imagine myself as Big Man Japan tromping around the downtown area.

So with that, you may have been able to guess that I’m in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  Yesterday, I went and visited the lovely animation studio, Inspidea.  They’re the ones that are doing the heavy lifting for our upcoming TV special, “Johnny Bravo Goes To Bollywood.”  For those of you that have never been to an animation studio in Asia, I thought that I’d give you a mini-tour of the place.

First off, I wanted to share my lunch with you.

(I love makeover shows, so I had to fit in some sort of before and after shot somewhere.)

Anyhow, Inspidea was founded by four guys, two of whom are still there, Andrew Ooi and CJ See.  Terrific to see them.  We worked together on another Snaptoons project a few years back.  I didn’t know what to expect, but I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by the outfit they run here in Malaysia.  The outside of the building is rather unassuming. Below is a picture of Silas Hickey, the Creative Director of Asia Pacific Animation Development, Turner Entertainment Networks Asia, Inc. (Whew! Long title!) waiting for them to buzz us in.

The first thing I noticed was the most obvious cultural difference: we had to take our shoes off.

From there, it was just like any other independent animation studio in the states.  There were several floors of artists, all working on computers, but in different areas of production.

Again, the only differences were cultural.  For example, you weren’t really allowed to shake the hands of some of the females due to religious beliefs.  More interesting to me though, was the average age of the people who worked there.  At Inspidea, they were a predominantly young lot.  It may have been due to their Asian skin, but it felt like I was walking amongst a group of university students. I’m used to seeing veterans who had been around for decades peppered in with a few younger folks.  I was told that it was because there isn’t a huge pool of talent to pull from in Malaysia so a lot of their talent come straight out of the schools.  Below is a group shot of all the people that are going to be working on my show.

I gave a talk, similar to the one I gave at CNAsia, where I introduced myself, talked a little bit about my background, and expressed my gratitude and excitement for the project they’ve agreed to undertake.  I’m really looking forward to seeing what they can bring to the table and excited about their potential of being a major player out here in Asia.

So that’s day one in Malaysia.  I’m hoping to get a picture of the monorail that runs through all the major parts of the city.

Wait a second.  What was that?

Did I just say monorail?

I sure did.

CARTOON NETWORK ASIA BOUND

If you’ve been missing my day-to-day posts, fear not, I’m still here. I’ve most recently been working on an international Johnny Bravo project with Cartoon Network Asia that should be finished some time next year.  It involves Johnny Bravo and Bollywood.  Then hilarity ensues.  In different languages, even. (That last sentence should be said using Snagglepuss’ voice.)

We just finished a whirlwind recording with some amazing voice artists this past week in Los Angeles.  The show was directed by the multi-talented Charlie Adler and we went from 8 in the morning to 5:30 in the evening, non-stop, with one five minute break.  It was like a crazy rollercoater ride!  But even though we went at a breakneck speed, Charlie was able to yield every ounce of direction from his being and make sure that the performances ended up being top notch.

Below, from left is Lou Fagenson (composer), Sharon Muthu, me, Cree Summer, Tara Strong, and Charlie Adler.

Charlie, Tabitha Kumar, me.

From top: Me, Guy Hector, Charlie, Brenda Vaccaro, Jeff Bennett

From top: Eric (the engineer), Sheetal Sheth, Lou, Charlie, me, Amir Talai

Me, Mark DeCarlo, Ajay Mehta, Sunil Malhotra, Tom Kenny

Having finished that, I’m now in the middle of my trip overseas.  My first stop was to visit the offices of Cartoon Network Asia in Hong Kong.  I was finally going to to meet the folks across the Pacific to say “Thanks!” and poke my head in their offices.  So after my fourteen and a half hour flight, I hopped in a taxi with Silas Hickey and Ivy Lau from CNAsia, ran to a boat, and took a bus to a golf course where CNAsia’s creative services team was having a retreat.  I was told that many of them never leave work earlier than midnight so when you talk about dedication, props to them!  I put on an improptu presentation, met a number of folks, took pictures, and drew a few drawings.

The following day, I was able to venture around the offices and meet some more fun folks.  I got to see their crazy offices and spent some time in the massage room (a little room with electronic massage chairs!)  From there, it’s been a lot of meetings mixed in with sight seeing.  And scary taxi rides.  All in all, it’s been a fun and cultural experience visiting here.  If I had to sum up my experience in Hong Kong, I would have to say that it’s an eye catching, fast paced city, filled with lots of color and beautiful architecture.  A few random observations:

Hong Kong is a very vertical city.

The hotels have a 13th floor.

It’s daunting to see bamboo used as scaffolding.

At 8:00, the skyscrapers put on a light show.  So it’s like Disneyland.  Without the churros.

The escalators in the subways move twice as fast as the escalators back home.

Random people tend to unabashedly burp in your face without saying “Excuse me.”

I now know what a real “pungent” smell smells like.

And if you’ve never been to Mongkok, the Guinness Book of World Records calls it the most densely populated area on the planet. Mixed with the heat and the smells, let’s just say it’s an experience and a half.

Next stop: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia!  But before I go…

Big Hug to Hong Kong!

P.S. My new friends, Tim and Tina, took this picture to make sure the kid didn’t pickpocket me.

INSPIRATION AND MONTY PYTHON

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For me, comedy is something very personal and unexplainable. The moment you find a rule for it, it says, “Oh really? You’re not the boss of me!”

I’m often asked the question, “How did you come up with…(fill in the blank)?” A humorous anecdote usually follows about some odd occurrence in my past. Sometimes, I explain to them how my ideas are a mixture of my life experience, the media that I absorb, and divine inspiration.  If I really think hard, I can usually trace back the pedigree of my ideas to that one “Aha!” moment which is usually something accidental or something I was fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to observe.

When I was teaching a class at Loyola Marymoungt University, I had my students talk to someone they normally wouldn’t talk to and journal about it.  For those students who actually did the assignment, they got a taste of what it’s like to overcome their fears and open up their world of experiences.  It was a step towards opening up their lives to other experiences besides the ones in their own bubble.

As I try to develop new stories and properties, I try to keep my eyes open for inspiration by changing my life experiences, constantly searching for knowledge about things I know, things I don’t know, and especially for things I don’t know I don’t know.

During this time, I often go back to the following quotes below to put me in a mindset. They’re about comedy and they’re from John Cleese and Michael Palin. This is but one source of my inspiration, but it’s a good one:

John Cleese: You can always inject a bit of energy into something by introducing anger, shouting, bad language, or simply shocking. Young comedians know this, and that is why very frequently. they seem to be thrashing around, because if the material isn’t very good you have two alternatives: one is you die, and the other is you thrash around – and on the whole, thrashing around is less humiliating.

David Attenborough, a man I much admire, said to me after the first series of Python, the best advice I ever had: “Use shock sparingly.” If you start using it too much, then it becomes the norm and it’s not shocking anymore, and then you just seem to be thrashing around. The great thing is to use it very, very sparingly, like that wonderful conversation in The Life Of Brian, with all that stuff about, “Tell us Master, tell us!” Brian says, “I’m not the savior!” Somebody says, “Only the savior would deny his own divinity.” So he says, “All right, I am the savior!” They all go, “Ahh, he is the savior!” And he says, “Now f*%# off!” That’s a wonderful use of real shock; we weren’t using bad language before so that really hits you.

I do remember an extraordinary experience: the first time we showed And Now For Something Completely Different, there was hilarious laughter up to fifty minutes, then the audience went quiet for twenty, twenty-five minutes, and then they came up again and finished very well. So we took all that middle material, put it at the beginning, and it all worked beautifully up to about fifty minutes, and then [the] audience got quiet! We discovered that whatever order we put the material in, at about fifty minutes they stopped laughing. And in order to get people to go with you past the fifty minute mark they have to want to know what’s going to happen next. In other words, you have to have characters that they care about and a story they can enjoy and believe in. There’s a huge learning curve.

Michael Palin:  A strand which I think is in a lot of Python humor, from all the various sources but perhaps particularly from Terry and myself, is human inadequacy – the fact that things don’t always work out right.  The grander magnificent scheme which is set up by mere humans, you know, will go wrong.  And in a sense the characters which John and Graham have written, like in the “Dead Parrot” sketch, is just a man giving lots of excuses, and somebody who knows what he wants and not being able to get it.  That’s a similar kind of humor: you set something up and then some tiny little thing destroys it completely, because that’s the way human beings are.  I mean you can be in a solemn occasion where trumpets play, something like that, [then] somebody farts at the back, and immediately the atmosphere collapses.  Because we are all on the edge of the awareness of absurdity.  It’s just a nice vein we used to tap.

In Holy Grail that’s constantly happening to Arthur and his troupe;  they’d be very kingly and yet something would happen, they’ll talk to some toiling peasant in this very hail-fellow way:

“Old man, tell us the way.”

“I’m thirty-seven, I’m not old.”

“Yes, okay, we don’t want to get into that…”

I think that’s a great strand of humor, which is dragging all those pretensions down to a certain level.

THE SAN DIEGO COMIC CON

Last week was the annual San Diego Comic-Con.  If you like anything that has to do with pop culture, you may have heard of it.  If you haven’t, it’s literally the biggest comic book / sci-fi / fantasy / anime/ television / movie / animation / video game / toy / publishing / cosplay / stand in long lines next to people who decided not to take a shower / eat cafeteria food because the nearest restaurant is too far to walk to in the heat / convention of the year.

But let’s step back into the wayback machine for a moment shall we? Let’s say, hmmmm… 1986.

I was fifteen years old, taking my first road trip from Central California to Southern California with my brothers and our friends to spend a week attending “The Con.”  That was the year it was held at the Convention and Performing Arts Center and Hotel San Diego.  If you loved comic books, that was the place to be.  It was there that I had my first brush with comic book royalty and got some of my first autographs.

Clockwise from Left: Ray (Fahrenheit 451) Bradbury, Jack (Fantastic Four, X-Men) Kirby, Sergio (Mad Magazine, Groo) Aragones, Dave (Cerebus) Sim, Archie (The Greatest Comic Book Editor Ever) Goodwin, and Kevin (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) Eastman.

Everybody was very down to earth.  Even Jack Kirby, the reigning “King of Comic Books,” who was mobbed by everybody on the floor when it was announced that he was going to do a signing.  Bottom line: it was exciting to see the faces behind my favorite comics and just be in the same air space as them.

Being 15, I wasn’t completely enthralled by many of the panels.  I spent most of my time picking up freebies, looking at the original art, gawking at the old back issues, and watching the various artists draw sketches for their fans.  Back then, the freebies were usually flyers, trading cards, buttons, stickers, mini-posters, and exclusive preview comics. At the end of every day, we would dump out our bag of schwagg and compare “our stuff” with one another.  If we didn’t have something, we made sure we got that something-something the next day.

When we weren’t at the con, we would drop off our bags at our hotel room and hide our badges so as to not be associated with the other “geeks” at comic-con.  It was like being in a super secret society that you loved but knew others wouldn’t understand and make fun of you so you kept it all on the down low.  So while most of my friends were going camping or to the beach on their summer breaks, I was looking forward to my week at comic-con.  But only in certain social circles.

Fast forward to today.  The con has grown from 6,500 attendees in 1986 to over 126,000! Instead of Jack Kirby being the big draw, it’s every A-list actor from Angelina Jolie to Robert Downey Jr. and every A-list director from J.J. Abrams to Joss Whedon.  As for freebies, you got a gigantic tote bag from Warner Brothers (which many broke from the amount of freebies people were carrying).  It’s now being called “Hollywood’s Cannes for Blockbusters.”  So, now it’s “kinda cool” to go to the San Diego Con.  But only in certain social circles.

So if you haven’t been to the San Diego Comic-Con, it’s takes place every year in the summer.  It’s an experience.  And if you go, be prepared to be overwhelmed.  If not by the sheer magnitude of the convention, than perhaps by the over-the-top culture of it’s participants.  Excelsior!

JOHNNY BRAVO AND BLUR ANIMATION

When I was developing my senior thesis film at Loyola Marymount University, I ran into a huge problem.  With my storyboard set and my models ready to go, I had to try and figure out how to animate my 5 minute project, by myself, in a few months, while keeping up with the rest of my schoolwork.  My animation professor, Dan McLaughlin suggested that I watch “The Dover Boys” and freeze frame the inbetweens to study Bobo Cannon’s usage of  blur animation. (For those of you who are wondering what I’m talking about, the blur animation starts at about 3:02 with the introduction of Dan Backslide.)

I was completely enthralled.  I saw things moving that only had three inbetweens between them.  “I could do that!” I thought to myself.  Watching the cartoon, I knew that all I had to do was move the shapes of the characters and stretch the masses from one pose to another.  According to what I was freeze framing, I simply had to make sure that the predominant masses and colors were represented in the blur.  No antics needed.  No overshoots or cushions.  Who would’ve guessed that there was such an untapped time-saving style of animation?  All I had to do was create strong poses to smear into and I was home free.  In short, the technique grew from my college-aged need to do things cheaper, faster, and easier.

The sequence below is from my first Johnny Bravo short.  The layout is by Ginny Hawes, the clean up by Miriam Goodman, and I did the inbetweens.  In it, Johnny has just slid up to a fine looking zookeeper and proceeds to check his armpit fragrance.

Scenes like the one above were always fun to animate.  The only problem we ran into was making sure the masses were colored correctly.  Otherwise, the movement would pop.  The colorist had to consistently refer to the sequence of drawings to make sure they were keeping the masses consistent.

This type of animation was a key ingredient in helping me create the unique persona of “Johnny Bravo.”  I think that it may have had a lot to do with the selling of the show.  It made it stand out from the rest of the other projects being pitched by creating a character trait based on the way the character was animated.

It also made for some surreal Dali-esque cel set-ups.

When I got the series, I realized why blur animation wasn’t used very often.  It was a special type of animation that had to be called for overseas.  Most producers weren’t going to take the time to call for it on the sheets every time (although, I did catch them using it on “Sonic The Hedgehog” when it was still in production).  Whatever the reason, I feel fortunate to be able to capitalize on a technique developed by Robert Cannon and Chuck Jones in their original Warner Brothers short.