11 Second Club Entry

I've been working on an entry for the 11 Second Club this month...its was a bit of a fustercluck.  I had a really hard time because I didn't do proper planning.  I kinda skipped the all important thumnailing phase...oh, and the key pose phase as well.  I was just lazy, and it ended up that I kepting working myself into circles and I didn't even finish (thats why it unravels at the end).  Funny how when you're lazy you end up working twice as hard for half the quality.   All that aside, I'm proud I stuck to it and at least got it to the end of the sound clip.  Next months entry will be better- I'll be damned if I don't do thumbnails.  Here it is!

"Laughing Orangutans" Coming in 2009

Over the summer, I got an exciting commission to produce eight :30s shorts for the upcoming revival of Sesame Workshop's "Electric Company". I didn't have much time, and there were a lot of setbacks, but I got the job done and of that I'm proud. Now that "Electric Company" is close to premiering in January of 2009 (next month!) I feel like I ought to make this announcement. So check your local listings! While its not anything near stellar animation, its my first credit on a TV show so I'm pleased.

(By the by, this image I have posted here was early design when the "Laughing Orangutans" were still "Laughing Gorillas." The final designs look absolutely nothing like this, so I figured it was safe to post.)

Wedding Thanks

Here's the drawing I used for some of my wedding gift thank-you notes. It was a last minute thing (I ran out of store-bought cards) but it got the job done.

Ezra

I've been trying to plan a little short cartoon about a cat ever since Juxtaposer. Here are some designs I'm toying with.

Daily Crapbook

I was doodling while playing "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes" in the background. Its a entertaining film with wonderful actors that offers some exploration into the character of the famous detective. Naturally, the film inspired me to doodle a rollerskating waitress.

Bad Haircut

Sometimes drawing takes the edge off reality...

A Nugget of Thanks

As today is Thanksgiving, I want to share something I haven't posted online since I took down my Animaniacs fan page. Its an mp3 recorded from the "Animaniacs Attack" marathon of KidsWB aired in July of 1998. The network had asked fans to mail in postcards voting for episodes they wanted to see during the marathon. I had a lot of favorite episodes, so I sent in a lot of postcards. What aired made me very happy. Take a listen.

Don Hertzfeldt & Daily Crapbook

Ok, a couple weeks ago Don Hertzfeldt came to Atlanta to show his newest film and give a little talk. He was a really cool dude. He regaled us with a story of how he snuck into a sold-out Monty Python reunion by unwittingly posing as Johnny Depp. Very cool. I even talked to a him a little and maintained what could pass for composure. Although I fell short of my goal becoming best pals, or even telling him my name, I feel it was a successful and inspiring event.
Other than that, I haven't been terribly busy. I did one job for a local studio while waiting to go back to Primal, and I've been handling fun married stuff like thank-you notes, baking cookies, and house-hunting. Here are just a few doodles for the sake up posting something.

Slow Wave, and Daily Crapbook

Got a great surprise in the mail today. Jesse Reklaw, creator of the unique and hilarious "Slow Wave" comic strip, was generous enough to send a free copy of his new book "Night of Your Life" to all the people who contributed their dreams to his comic strip (go to his site to see what I mean). These comics are so bizarre and addicting and perfect- definitely check them out (and see if you can spot the dream I contributed!).

Also, here is a page of doodles I did today when I should have been working:

Tiny Toons DVD Makes Me Happy

A pleasant surprise of a wedding gift: my friend Zoran got me the first Tiny Toon Adventures DVD. I haven't seen these cartoon in maybe..fifteen years (shudder). I'm surprised at how much I still remember, a pose here, a line there...but I'm more surprised by all the stuff I don't remember. Tiny Toons, while the most kid-oriented of all the Spielburg/WB shows, is still really funny and thoroughly enjoyable. I haven't drawn any WB characters in a long time, but I felt like it tonight.

Daily Crapbook

Again, nothing new today as I'm working on two jobs right now. Here's an unused design sketch from one of them.

Back From Mexico

Nate and I have returned from the honeymoon, and that means back to work. But before I *really* get back to work, I want to post some amazing inspired drawings that I did on vacation! Actually though, and unfortunately, all of those amazing inspired drawings are actually lazy half-assed embarassing drawings, so nothing is really "postable" at this point. So I dug up some old rejected sketches I did for a CNLa job because I need to post *something* for gossake. At least it Mexican-themed!

MARRIED!

It is done! See you in a week!

Finished!

At last! My 2008 portfolio is up on my website. Three years late, but better late than never.

www.cupojo.net/art.htm

Nobody called me a lazy bastard (on my blog at least) so I deem this experiment a success.

,,,Almost There

The portfolio is nearly complete! I'm only coloring a few drawings for my "Primal Concepts" page, and then it will be up. Here is a sample of the bits I'm doing- a pirate girl from a show Primal pitched to Cartoon Network. It didn't get picked up, but at least I got to design some fun characters.

Lost the Ultimatum

Well, its well into Saturday night and I didn't finish my portfolio. But I only have four pages left to go, and I'm pretty sure I'll finish it tomorrow, so the week wasn't a total loss. Here is picture of some dude- I had this sketch for a long time and decided to try something with it.

Still Portfolio-ing

Don't call me a lazy bastard yet- I'm about halfway done, I swear! The hardest part is figuring out what I ought to toss out and what I ought to keep. Some artists can't stand the sight of their old work, but I weirdly prefer a lot of my old stuff to what I have done lately. I feel like every time I learn something new, my brain chucks out something in order to make room. These pages from my old, outdated portfolio show what I mean. Even though these drawings are crude and unrefined, there's a fun looseness about them that my current art lacks. I am tempted to keep these pages in, but my brain is telling me to make room for newer stuff. These pages had three years to get me someplace. Maybe the drawings I replace them with will be more of a success. I'll just look at these pages a bit longer and try to remember how to draw this way...

Marriage On The Mind...

...or "Brides On The Brain"! I didn't get much portfolio-ing done today, as I had to bake an emergency batch of peanut butter cookies. But I did sketch in my crapbook about an event that has me preoccupied.

Ultimatum

Keep an eye on me- because if I don't suck it up and have a new portfolio up by the end of Saturday, please call me a lazy lazy bastard. I have some good excuses for not having it done already, but excuses are just excuses. So..here's a guy holding a sharp thing.

Daily Crapbook

My online moniker has been "Jo The Zette" ever since middle school. She's a reference to Freakazette, a female counterpart to Freakazoid that was never used in the show. At the time, I thought it would be presumptuous to call myself Freakazette, as in THE Freakazette, so I took the "zette" and added a Jo to make her more my own. These days my avatar is that Cup-Head-Jo-girl-thing you see all over my site, because Jo The Zette is a little too fangirly to market me as a professional (and yes, in some twisted way I feel the CupHead Jo will make people take me more seriously). Anyhow, I haven't drawn ol' Zette for a while, and I thought I'd give her a makeover.

Daily Crapbook

Adorable Baby Animal Show

Animal Planet has some really addicting shows. One of my favorites it "Growing Up..". Its a show about people who rescue abandoned or mistreated exotic baby animals and raise them. I just saw an episode called "Growing Up Sitka Deer". Even though I've seen "Snow White" and "Bambi", I never knew how affectionate and sweet deer could be. Hell, if you have the land for it, they seem to make wonderful pets. This lady on the show has rescued two fawns, and watching her interact with them really made me dissatisfied with my cat. They would jump and lick her face whenever they saw her, follow her around, nuzzle and cuddle, and she could even walk them on a leash! Anyhow, this is a fanciful picture based on that.

Daily Crapbook

There is Chuck Jones cartoon about a bored little Martian (not Marvin- a different one-hit-wonder Martian). I can't recall the title, but it was a really adorable cartoon. There was a lady Martian in it whose design was fantastic, but as my memory is very patchy, I decided to forgo trying to remember exactly what she looked like and just doodle something inspired by her.

Daily Crapbook

Daily Crapbook

Daily Crapbook

A few new doodles, and a couple ancient ones I must have missed in my past doodle sheets.

Silesia Walk Cycle 2.0

I unexpectedly got a break from working today, so I decided to waste time a bit. A few years ago I realized I needed to get over my hated/fear of Flash if I wished to continue to eat, so I decided to acquaint myself with the program by bringing in an old school walk cycle pencil test and just drawing over it. The process turned out to be more grueling than I anticipated, so once I felt Flash-friendly enough I abandoned the project. Until today! Here she is, in all her cyclical glory.

Ohm Is Where The Heart Is

(Yes, I did draw this just so I could make that lame pun.)

Daily Crapbook

I got some new markers- inking practice went a little better today.

Daily Crapbook

Tried inking again today- its damn frustrating!

PBS Kids Expansion with Dot and Dash

This was the job I was also working on during last spring alongside the previous Cocoa Puffs spot. This was a massive network rebranding- I'm not sure, but I think that the final tally of spots delivered was in the range of 40 or so. I touched maybe half of those, and of those there were only a few where I was pleased with my animation. It was a different pipeline to work with, as I'm more comfortable with handling my animation from keys to to clean-ups. But I had to learn how to animate with other tweeners in mind some time, and this was a good learning experience. Take a look!

Cocoa Puffs: Big News Combos

I'm just now getting around to posting the jobs I worked on last spring. Here we have a Cocoa Puffs spot. I wasn't on this job for very long and didn't get to do much animation, and what little animation I did do was either cut or edited (The news anchor bird got completely chopped out at the last moment). But I got some good pencils out of it- here ya go!

Daily Crapbook

Nothing good today- here's two sketches from yesterday.

Daily Crapbook

Here's one for the crapper- a nice drawing of Libra that I muddied by overworking it. I'm posting it to remind myself to do better next time.

"The Trouble With Angels"

A few weeks ago I caught a really cute film on TCM. "The Trouble With Angels" starred Rosalind Russel as Mother Superior in a Catholic girls' school and Haley Mills as a troublesome student. Its a really cute, fluffy movie that sometimes feels like a sixties precursor to "Saved". One of my favorite scenes is when troublemaker Mary is "volunteering" at an elderly ladies' home at Christmas, and witnesses the heartache of being alone and old, forsaken by your family. She tells the Mother Superior with ferocity: "I hope I die young..and very wealthy." Again, its a very cute film and the acting is superb.

Another cool part is that the titles were done by DePatie-Freleng, and have a very cool scruffy look. I did some sketches somewhat based on them.

Daily Crapbook

Its been a while since I've put pen to paper, so I'm spending this week warming up my drawing muscles again. (I think I may have posted that green-background dude before, but hey, it can't hurt to see that ugly mug twice.)

Dragon*Con 2008

Nate and I got to spend one fun-filled day at Dragon*Con Atlanta this year, and I'd like to go over the highlights.

The Skeptic Track: This was actually the main reason we decided to go this year. Michael Shermer and The Amazing James Randi were holding panels, and Randi alone was worth the price of admission. He is well into his twilight years, but sharp as a rapier blade and full of pluck. He demonstrated how two napkins could topple our metaphysics, and I got to shake his hand! Shermer was delightful as well, and his lecture was a blast.

The other draw this year was a bunch of wonderful artists I wanted to meet. Now, I am *not* good at approaching people I admire- the latent fangirl in me bursts out in a tirade of babblings, titters, sweat in weird places, an oddly, an inability to focus my eyes on the appropriate part of the speaker's face. So while Nate educated himself in the Battlestar Galactica panel discussion, I took a stroll down Comic Artist Alley. After stalking up and down the rows a few times, I spotted Shane Glines and decided to approach his table with stealth and warm up before attempting to make contact. My eye caught the work of an artist I hadn't heard of before, but his nifty fifties style was delightful...

Derek Art - I don't know his full name- but just go to his page and be wowed. Totally awesome fifties and tiki art thats so much fun to paw through. It turns out he's a local in Atlanta- he's done work for Cartoon Network and even did poster art for Atlanta's premier improv theater Dad's Garage. How did I find all this out you ask? I actually *spoke* to the dude, and only made a minor ass of myself. With the confidence I gained from that conversation, I felt safe enough to sidle up to...

Shane Glines: One of my greatest artistic heroes. I met him briefly years before, and got my picture taken with the back of his head (it was candid). This year I was determined to talk with him, and through an ingenious segueway in which I commented on his makeshift sketchbook and produced my own homemade crapbook, he actually asked to see it. Masking my glee with a nonchalant "ok", he thumbed through my entire crapbook and even said it was good! I could feel my head turning beet red and knew my luck had peaked, so I hastened to make an exit. Upon turning about, I noticed the table of another hero of mine...

Stephanie Gladden: Another Atlanta local, she's an exquisite draftsman and her drawings are exploding with unbridled joyful fun. Even though I had briefly met her several times, and she even sent me a congratulatory email when she saw Juxtaposer on Local Point TV, it was still hard for me to muster up the courage to talk to her. But as soon as I introduced myself, she knew exactly who I was and immediately gave me a complimentary sketchbook for her property "Girls of Monster Paradise" (its so fantastic- I highly recommend snagging a copy). We chatted about "the biz" and after about ten minutes I felt myself getting babblesome so I excused myself to celebrate quietly in a corner.

Nate and I eventually trekked up to the Walk of Fame, where we bumped into my awesome friend Lucas Ryan who was all dressed up in his Mr. Friskett duds, with a zoetrope gun he had made. He had to run off, so then we sought out C. Martin Croker, whom I've worked with at Primal and is always a pleasure to talk to. Of course, it was about a year of fangirlish terror before I could speak to him like a human being, but I'm glad to say we're friends now and I hardly embarass myself at all in his presence anymore.

It was a full day, and after topping it off with a lecture on Dark Matter on the Science Track, I was ready to call it quits for Dragon*Con 2008. We had such a good time, we might even attend for more than one day next year! Start saving up...

Long Awaited "KUSPER" Main Open

Last winter, my good friend Zoran asked me to animate a main open for a pilot he was making for MTV. The pilot didn't get picked up, which boggles my mind, because it was hilarious. (Go to www.lowcarbcomedy.com to see all of Zoran's awesome videos, including the entire pilot episode of "Kusper"!) Maybe the MTV suits didn't like my depiction of corporate types. Anyhow, I'm now free to post the final animation.

The project had a very quick turn around time- three weeks. Well, it seemed like a quick turn-around back then. Based on the my experience working on these Electric Company spots, three weeks to work on 30 seconds of animation seems like a cake-walk. But anyhoo! It was a very fun process to work on Kusper, because Zoran was very supportive and liked all my ideas. Or..he at least knew we didn't have a lot of time so he okayed all my ideas. There is, of course, a lot of quirkiness in the final piece that I'll never get around to fixing, but on the whole I do like this main open. It was the best I could do at the time, so there ya go.

Here's the process!

Boards:





Animatic:




Final:

Progress Report

Since its been a while since I've posted a goddam thing, I just wanted to give a quick update: I've working like heck on some spots for the upcoming Electric Company show. I have a lot to do and not much time, so thats why I haven't been doodling anything lately. I'm on a vampire's sleep schedule, my cat has decided the whole apartment is her litter box, and I can't seem to wash that stale corn-chip stink off my favorite sweatshirt, but I'm otherwise alive and healthy. I have a few very exciting projects coming up in the next couple of months, but I don't want to jinx it by blithering on about it just yet. Thats pretty much my life's philosophy... "If something exciting is happening, don't ever tell anyone, so no one will be disappointed in case it doesn't work out." Which reminds me, did I ever mention I was getting married?

After I'm done with my Electric Company spots, I plan on posting the projects I worked on at Primal over the spring. Until then, here's a cute little commission I popped out recently for a Christmas deer/Elk/thing made of a tree.

Viacom Apologizes!

Its officially over!

I was personally contacted by an executive at Viacom, who explained how my film got mixed into their system. Juxtaposer was in a film festival that was presented by Nicktoons, which is of course a Viacom company. They offered selections of the festival as downloadable content, and Juxtaposer was one of them. They just forgot that Viacom's rights to those films were all nonexclusive. He personally assured me that Viacom is no longer making a claim to my film and YouTube should be sending me documents affirming that shortly.

Thanks again to everyone on my blogs and on the Consumerist! And also, thank you to Viacom who stepped up, admitted their mistake and apologized, within two days. This is definitely a nightmare averted.

"Viacom Steals" Update

I want to thank everyone who commented on my blogs, YouTube page, and on the Consumerist, and left me such great advice. I did dispute Viacom's claim immediately. And surprisingly enough, after one day of throwing a hissyfit, the "claimed by Viacom" tag has been taken off my video. However, I'm still a tiny bit concerned because I haven't had any further communication from YouTube alerting me to a final decision. They would send me a "hey, sorry about that! Our bad." email when it was all over, wouldn't they? Maybe so, maybe not. But just in case things become sour, I'm very happy that I now have resources to turn to. Again, thanks to everyone who gave me a hand!

Viacom Wants To Steal My Film

I just got a notification from YouTube.com that Viacom has made a copyright ownership claim to my film Juxtaposer.

It is so absurd that it frightens me. I got my film's copyright secured in October 2006, and I only entered into distribution agreements that were nonexclusive. I can't fathom under what pretense Viacom has made this claim. There's no money in it for them. The dollars I've made from Juxtaposer can be counted on my fingers. Maybe they just really liked it. Maybe they want to make my life just a little bit more miserable. Or maybe this is their way of gloating over their recent court victory against Google.

Anyhow, I've disputed their claim and I have the documents to back it up. I'm just a scared that my little film will be lost in the shadow of the hulking monolith called Viacom.

Daily Crapbook

Daily Crapbook

"Blowin' Smoke"- This Monday Night!

As a follow-up to that blurb in the AJC, I though I should mention that "Blowin' Smoke" will be screening on July 14th at 8pm at the Five Spot bar in Atlanta's hipster district Little Five Points...for FREE.

The stuff I'm screening is a project I won't be able to release online for a long while, but I am allowed to screen it among friends. Aren't ya just frothing over with curiosity??

Hopefully, I'll see you Monday night!

Blurb In The AJC

I submitted some work to ASIFA-Atlanta's professional animation show "Blowin' Smoke", and the write up in the Atlanta Journal Constitution included a screenshot of mine and a little blurb about how awesome I am.

That makes today's daily drawing a little inappropriate, considering how happy I am...

The Squirrel Is Out To Get Me

I'm still a novice at illustration, but this picture turned out so nice its hardly embarrassing at all! I'm posting it in stages so you can see how it progressed. If you or your sister has any suggestions on technique I'd be very happy to hear them!