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Nobody Home
Jul. 20th, 2009
08:18 pm - Live Rhino Interviews
Wow - I thought I had posted this months ago! But here it popped up when I tried to post something else. Weird!
For those of you who've already seen any/all of this, or heard about it, please forgive my ongoing narcissism, but how often does stuff like this happen to someone you know?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
http://www.youtube.com/
Sorry - I'm trying to edit this, take out the old outdated stuff, but something's not letting me make changes easily! So the first link was just the promo, which was all I had at the time - sorry!(But there are several of the other interviews listed to the side of the youtube page if you're interested) Here's the Rhino clip from Monkey News Source: http://www.thestream.tv/watch.php?v=1353 The full interview with me, if you have a lot of time to waste: http://www.thestream.tv/watch.php?v=1349
Mar. 4th, 2009
02:42 am - Creepy Photoshop Madness (or A Halloween Costume for Morgane!)
I had a GREAT IDEA: spend a really long time obsessively tinkering with a Photoshop file! (I've had this idea before!). But my FIRST idea was to try out a brilliant concept in my head for my girlfriend's Halloween costume this year! (I don't know if I've told her yet, but she needs to dress up as Coraline! And no, she hasn't seen the film yet, but I'll make her!)
See how cool it could be?? Especially if I had amazing mask-making skills? She could even carry around a few replacement masks with different expressions to wear when appropriate!
Ha ha ha! See? She's one of the few women petite and skinny enough to actually pull this off! But wait - look how much even her own facial features mimic Coraline's - especially if you mess around with them in Photoshop forever!
If only her real head were about 10 times as big as it normally is, and slightly deformed, she wouldn't even need a Coraline mask - just a little blue wig!
Ok, maybe that's a little creepy - so what if I split the difference between the two...?
Hey - maybe...ok, um, maybe I need to turn off Photoshop and go to bed.
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wiredFeb. 27th, 2009
11:14 pm - Campus Wildlife - Oh, that wacky Mort! And also Sally Forth, etc.
Ok - I hope you appreciate just how much effort I put into scanning these 2 comic strips in 2 halves each, since the monitor connected to the big scanner was broken, and then how I carefully pieced them together, resizing and rotating endlessly, never to my full satisfaction, and then cleaning up fingerprints and smudges I hadn't remembered - did I smear the ink while I was copying them this time? - and then the computer wouldn't save them as jpeg's, and...then I realized I had already scanned them a week ago, when they were smudge-free! HA HA HA! That was a hilarious 3 hours! So see, even if you don't think the strips are funny, you can laugh at my chronic ditsieness!
Paul wrote and roughed out the above strip (the poses and facial expressions are very much his)- all I did was ink it in my style. It seems like the next strip was a lot of his writing too, although I think I might have contributed a line or two:
I hate to admit it, but it's clear now that the strips that were Paul's ideas (primarily) tend to be clearer, less cluttered compositions, with just enough writing to not overwhelm the visuals. I miss working with him!
BTW, I was really annoyed lately when the LA Times, which had been testing out different comic strips to rotate into the comics section (to replace the "For Better or for Worse" reruns/redux's) not only picked my two least favorite strips of the 4 or so that auditioned, but suddenly replaced "Sally Forth" with the worst-drawn one, out of nowhere! I have to say, I have grown to admire the writing in this strip tremendously - it's got real-life situations and problems (Sally dealing with her awful mother and/or manipulative co-manager, Ted losing his job, etc.,), but handles them in a very funny AND sophisticated way, adding just a touch of weird, zany randomness every so often! And some jerk had the temerity to send a letter in amongst the many impassioned complaints, not only dissing "Sally Forth" but reassuring the editors that most of the hate mail was from people who didn't even have an LA Times subscription, from out of town, who had been stirred up by reading the writer's blog! ARGH! I want to find this boogerhead and kill him. Well, at least I found a place I can read it online...
PPS I've seen Coraline 4 times now (it's just not going to be the same on TV, in 2-D!) - what are you guys waiting for? It's extraordinary!
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crankyFeb. 20th, 2009
06:44 pm - Happy Valentine's Day...oh, wait. That was last week.
Ok, as is hopefully obvious, my life is still in great turmoil. I really had planned to post this last weekend, but at the last minute, I got homesick and went back to Utah for the long weekend, and I couldn't upload this before my plane left, which I missed anyway, and then I had like three big projects waiting for me when I got back for a short week on Tuesday...blah, blah, blah, I know. Anyway, here it is - if I would have published this in continuity, you wouldn't have seen it for several weeks, so it could be worse, right? Right?? I'm pretty sure Paul wrote this: at school, the campus bookstore was selling Valentine's Day condoms, which, at the time, for a couple of Mormon boys in the middle of Cache Valley, which was something like 85% LDS (much moreso than Salt Lake), it was positively scandalous (and therefore great comic ore to mine). Now, for you, maybe not so much. Oh well!
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groggyFeb. 4th, 2009
04:55 pm - More Campus Wildlife!! Whee!
This strip marks the first time I stopped using felt-tipped pens and Sharpies to do the artwork and started using a "brush" pen (I believe it was a Mars-Staetler) for reasons I can't remember. Obviously I'm still overcrowding the panels (at least the last panel) but I really started enjoying inking the strip from this point forward - there was something about the freedom, power, variety and unpredictability in that brush pen that really hooked me, and I think the strip looked a lot better as a result.
On a totally unrelated note, Twirlynoodle and I are about to go see an advance screening of "Coraline"! Woo hoo! I hope it's good!
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accomplishedFeb. 3rd, 2009
04:16 pm - I LIVE...again! (Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! Obamarama!, etc.)
Ok guys - lots to say, lots to apologize for (as usual) - lemme see, since last I posted, I've been back to Utah 3 times, including a week for my birthday/promoting Bolt and 2 weeks for Christmas, spent 3 weeks in France (5 days promoting "Volt" in Paris, over 2 weeks in Nice with my girlfriend's family), went to the "Bolt" premiere in the US and Europe, got my hopes up for the film's box office take, only to see it crushed like a bug by some teen romance with vampires, was elated to be nominated for an Annie for Best Voice Performance in an Animated Feature (only to lose to Dustin Hoffman - well, he IS Dustin Hoffman), and my girlfriend was by my side for almost all of it, until I had to bid her "adieu", at least for now, because her 90 days expired, she couldn't get a job here, and she's out of money and out of ideas how to stay here. But what you're all really waiting for, I bet - what you've been waiting for for over a YEAR now - is the next installment in "Campus Wildlife"! Right? Too bad! Here it comes! Originally, I was going to post this last January - how pathetic! - but between getting ready for Joe Jump's big presentation, and then traveling like crazy when it was canceled, I finally decided the strips were so out of sync' with the seasons that I'd rather wait until this January to start again (which turned into this February, but hey! I just got back from France! I had almost no internet access! Cut me a little more slack, ok?) Anyway, imagine that it's still January, Christmas and New Year's barely behind us, as Bingo and Mort start a new quarter (or semester, if you prefer) back at school after the holiday break...
If I had actually succeeded in posting this back last January, I would have mentioned the irony that I, myself, had just left behind the frozen (but beautiful) Salt Lake Valley (visiting my family for Christmas vacation, as I usually do), to suddenly emerge from my plane to 75 degrees F in sunny Burbank, whereas when I'd written the strip, I had imagined how horrible it would be to go home to Southern California for Christmas vacation, only to return to freezing snow in January (and to have to go to school)... you know, I have a good life!
Dec. 2nd, 2008
06:44 pm - The Marauders - Walton-style
Ok, so my girlfriend has been bugging me for awhile to do several drawings for her (what do I look like? An awesome drawing machine? Well, ok - maybe you've got me there... ;) ), like of the teenage Marauders first mentioned in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. So just for fun I dashed this off, hoping this would buy me at least a moment of peace, and she actually loved it enough to want me to post it. I think it's really silly and crude, but you can judge for yourselves. Think of it as a rough draft, if that helps at all...
<img src="http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f
http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f263/m
(sorry I only have a link: photobucket is not cooperating at all today)
(update:2-3-09 - Ok, I finally figured out how to do this - things have changed since I was regularly posting about a year ago! - and man, it is annoying!!)
sillyNov. 25th, 2008
07:20 pm - We interrupt this prolonged silence for some important announcements...
Hey guys - did you miss me?
Guys?
Darn, I was afraid of that. I haven't posted anything for almost a YEAR, and I've totally failed to keep up with any of my friends' journals either - how could you all help but give me up for dead (or just an incredibly thoughtless jerk?). Well, although I'm flaky and disorganized at my best, I've been extraordinarily distracted this year, and particularly the last couple of months - but I'm getting ahead of myself. Joe Jump, the movie I was toiling away on for more than 2 years (with my friend as a director) got canceled, I took off more vacation time than I have for the last 3 years or so combined (I traveled to Nice and Cannes, France, Italy, Taiwan, up and down the New England coast, Toronto, Canada, Southern Utah for the Shakespearean Fest., San Diego for the Comic-Con, Monterey and Pacific Grove, CA., Salt Lake City for a promotional tour...am I forgetting anything? I need to post pictures) had a story in an anthology comic book published (Who is Rocket Johnson?), turned 40, and several other things of note happened...but the two that I really should have mentioned a long, long time ago, are these, if anyone still cares:
1) About 2 years ago, I met an amazing girl from Nice, France - Morgane - right here on LiveJournal (you may know her as Fairy_Gany), and started emailing her, and then chatting with her, and then I met her several months later in Nice, and then she came to visit me 5 times (!) in LA, and came for two of my birthday parties in Salt Lake, UT. (she's met my family), and I vacationed with her in Nice, Cannes and Vintimiglia, Italy earlier this year, and now...well, ok, we're not married yet, but it's pretty serious! She's here now, trying to get work as an Au Pair (the easiest way short of marriage we could devise to get her a visa for a year), and she's pretty amazing, and a huge part of my life now. I'll have to post some pictures!
2) For those of you who may have noticed, amongst all the hoopla surrounding "Twilight", that Disney released an animated film last weekend about a dog, the girl he loves, a cat, and a hamster named Rhino...
...well, I'm the voice of Rhino. (da da daaaaa!!)
Those are pretty much the most amazing, surprising things that have ever happened to me. And for the foreseeable future, I'm going to be posting links here to photos, articles, interviews, video clips, web sites that feature me (and occasionally Morgane), mostly in relation to Bolt - in other words, this will become the very kind of self-absorbed, self-congratulatory, self-hyping everything-I-do-and-say-and-think-is-soo
http://www.apple.com/trailers/disney/bol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2-zHK4O-M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-76YN4hJJ
http://youarefullyawesome.com/ Rhino is now YOUR biggest fan - I had to record hours of names, states, etc., but when the site works, it's so cool!!
http://www.sltrib.com/entertainment/ci_1
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/movies/1
http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Movies/1
http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Movies/1
http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/movi
P.S. I've seen the movie in 3D, and if you have the chance, you really ought to see it at least once that way - it works really well, in a non-cheesy-in-your-face-headache-producing way.
accomplishedDec. 25th, 2007
10:32 pm - Merry Christmas!
OK, I've gone and gotten lazy once again! I was planning on posting one of these about a week ago, and the other yesterday, but I've been having too much fun with my family in SLC (well, and shoveling snow to the point of almost breaking my back, but that's part of the deal out here). Anyway, sorry, here they both are (it's still technically Christmas here in Utah, anyway)in all their black and white scribbly glory. Hope you guys didn't have to work today and are having an awesome Christmas!
P.S. If any of you have left comments or emailed me lately with no replies for a long time - well, I said it above. I'm not a good multi-tasker! I believe in enjoying where you are and who you're with to the fullest (particularly when it's in a good place with people you love and don't see often enough) But I'll get back to you eventually - I promise!
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peacefulNov. 30th, 2007
12:13 am - Startling new evidence!
Ok, ok - I was going to keep my little discovery to myself, because I didn't want to bruise any egos or shatter anyone's fragile fantasy world...then I buried the link in a response to another entry (some of you may have been astute enough to catch it)...but because certain people (my girlfriend) INSISTED on me settling this question once and for all in a whole new entry...
There were a few of you, a few weeks back, who, I am sorry to say, doubted (gasp!) my awesome ear for movie dialogue and claimed that Iago says, "I tink I'm going to have a heart attack and die from 'not surprise'"(which makes absolutely NO SENSE, by the way, or, at the very least, is incredibly bad grammar, but that's neither here nor there). I must admit, so great was the opposition that I myself was starting to doubt my own awesomeness. It was tragic. But wouldn't you know that someone with a video camera and internet access came to my rescue? Behold...
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ffUXfbuX43c
See? See??? HA HA HA HA HA! In conclusion:
1.It was in Disneyland.
2.It was on Youtube.
3.Ursula said it, so it must be true.
Thank you.
p.s. I am totally kidding. I'm being intentionally obnoxious and childish solely for entertainment purposes. It's totally OK with me if you think it sounds like "not surprise". I honestly don't care. I still love you even if you persist in your tragic delusions. ;)
Nov. 21st, 2007
02:27 pm - Campus Wildlife - Bingo freaks out, bad jokes for all
Since I'm going to be out of town with my folks for the rest of the week, here's two strips to tide you over. I wrote both of them, as you can tell (the second one in particular is VERRRY wordy). Are they funny? I must have thought so at the time, I guess! Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving! Gobble gobble!
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anxious (behind in my work)Nov. 16th, 2007
06:40 pm - Campus Wildlife: Hacky Sack and Fitting In
Hey true believers! I hope this isn't going to turn into a bad habit - posting two strips at the end of each Friday - but chances are, it probably will! Anyway, the first strip is a really silly joke, and if you don't see why it's funny, it's because it's not. But it seemed funny to me at the time. And I'm proud of coming up with a gelatinous alien ahead of the student driver in "Lifted" (the Pixar short) - I liked making Mort even weirder than he looked. 
The second one is my brother's idea. When this was printed, the newspaper editor asked me to replace the guy on the bicycle, because he was based on a real guy, Brent, who was mentally handicapped and rode around on his bicycle, honking his little horn, often missing his false front teeth, yelling "Hey HEYYY!" to everybody. I loved Brent and thought this would be hilarious for the people who knew him; the editor thought we were cruelly mocking a helpless handicapped person. Oh well! But it's my journal, so I'm putting Brent back in. I thought it was leavened a little by putting a caricature of myself in there, too, but feel free to tell me that I'm being insensitive if you really think so. (To be honest, I don't even remember what I put there instead - something lame, probably.) Another "real" thing (well, based on real people) on campus was "The Society of Creative Anachronisms" - people who designed and built their own costumes, chain mail, helmets, armor, etc. - totally authentic and functional - and had battles. Were they really, really cool or nerdy in a scary way? I was never sure. But they sure were memorable! It was really cool when one of them would model for us in illustration class, anyway.
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lethargicNov. 8th, 2007
07:30 pm - Intro to Archibald and Life's Lessons
Sorry guys - I was planning on posting a strip on Wednesday, but got distracted - so here's a double dose to start your weekend off right. (Did that sound really dorky? Oh well)
My bro' wrote the first one, and I honestly can't remember who came up with the second - maybe we figured it out together? There were a few like that where we bounced the strip back and forth to the point where I can't remember who came up with what (I loved those times!)
I think the first strip is pretty self-explanatory (language warning: even though it's written really tiny, you may be offended by the phrase "b***-n******" - I make no explanations or apologies for my brother's potty mouth ;) ) It is kind of funny, in retrospect, that Mort mentions "most of the other roommates" - perhaps we imagined there were more at the time - when it turns out there's only Max (the cat) besides them and Archibald! Archibald, by the way, is based on a real roommate we had a year previous, who did not play rugby like Archibald (and there's no rugby team at USU - we just thought a gorilla rugby player was a cool idea, and jocks - bless their little hearts - are so easy to mock), but who actually did and said many of the things his counterpart does in the strip. Although it was annoying at the time, I really should thank him for providing us with a goldmine of comic material!
The second strip came about, I believe, because the VHS (remember those, kids? BEFORE DVD's? when you had to wait as much as a whole YEAR before the movie was released to video?) of a certain Disney movie had been released just few weeks previous, and our current roommates were quoting the movie like crazy (the parrot in particular, although Kenley did a lousy imitation with his flat Ogden accent) and hey, we both loved it (it's one of the few movies I saw multiple times in the theater) and why not make a strip about it? Man, I wasn't expecting to be so long-winded tonight...
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distractedOct. 31st, 2007
06:16 pm - HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!! BWA HA HA HAAAAA!!!!
Sorry for missing yesterday - here's a double dose for Halloween! Unfortunately, the first strip doesn't make much sense unless you know that the USU mascot is "Big Blue", the bull. Happy Halloween everyone!
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HalloweenyOct. 29th, 2007
08:56 pm - Campus Wildlife - Mort's Revenge
Here's a prime example of one of "my" strips: almost relies entirely on dialogue (a LOT of dialogue, all of which I was convinced was hysterically funny), reducing the space for the drawings to next to nothing (which have too much complicated shading on them, making them even harder to read!). You be the judge of whether the strip works or not - I must admit, I still have a fondness for the last panel.
accomplishedOct. 26th, 2007
06:20 pm - Campus Wildlife 10-20-93 (#3)
The first strip I authored. Too wordy, lame joke - oh well! :)
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exhaustedOct. 25th, 2007
08:46 pm - Campus Wildlife - The Saga Continues!
This was another strip that my brother wrote and thumbnailed out (isn't it nice and simple, even with my sloppy markering and weird textures for shading?):
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awake12:20 am - Campus Wildlife - a blast from my past
Once upon a time, my brother and I were roommates at Utah State University. We even worked together at the school cafeteria for a while, delivering pizzas, making rude caricatures of the customers on the pizza boxes...ah, those happy college days! When the school newspaper put out an ad for a cartoonist, my brother and I thought, "Wouldn't it be fun to draw a strip together, featuring the characters that we invented as small children?" And it came to us: make them roommates in college! We could base the strips on our real lives (loosely), and the experiences of those around us! While we were initially worried we'd run out of material for strips, when we sat down to write down a few ideas, we realized we'd never run out - we quickly came up with way more ideas than we would ever draw. With established characters and all the comedy inherent in a campus setting, the strip practically wrote itself. For the first year and a half, my brother and I pretty much wrote half of the strips each, and I did all the finished artwork for consistency's sake (although my brother is a very funny cartoonist in his own right). When I left USU my brother took over the strip for about another year.
I can see all kinds of things I would do differently now, 14 years later (!) - the strips I wrote tend to be way too wordy, the text crowding and dominating the pictures. And some of the jokes are very dated and might only make sense to a USU graduate. Still, the strip represents the one, very enjoyable artistic collaboration I ever had with my brother, and one of the best times of my life. I've been meaning to post these for years, and for one lame reason or another, never seemed to get around to it...anyway, they're really old now, but for what it's worth, here they are. I'll try to post one a day until they catch up with the seasons that some of the strips correspond to. Let me know if you guys enjoy these at all.
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nostalgicSep. 26th, 2007
08:31 pm - Die Hard: The Puppet Musical!
Ok, ok, I could spend forever apologizing and explaining why I've been invisible for, what, more than a year? But this is important!
(chances are, I've alienated all of you long ago and no-one will read this anyway)
I know I mentioned this a long time ago, but now it's finally finished and playing on (off-off) Broadway!
</a>
If any of you know anyone who's going to be in the NYC area this Sunday, who would enjoy seeing "Die Hard" with songs, puppets, and lots of swearing (be warned!), you should have them check this out:
http://www.nymf.org/Show-76.html
There's one show left Sunday (the 30th) at 9pm, and there are still tickets left!
It's fairly hilarious, the puppeteers are really talented, and my brother James scored all the songs (and wrote many of the lyrics), made a lot of the puppets, and plays Argyle (the sock puppet limo driver) and Sgt. Powell (the puppet officer). (and no, I'm not prejudiced in the least!)
More links to articles, etc:
http://www.diehardthepuppetmusical.com/m
http://www.black20.com/middleshow/?s=255
http://www.broadwayworld.com/viewcolumn.c
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excitedJan. 15th, 2007
05:04 pm - My accent
I realize others have beaten me to the punch here (finding out what they sound like to everyone else), but I note with some satisfaction what I have always suspected about myself (how rarely do our self and public perceptions converge?): I, like many (not all) of my fellow natives of Salt Lake City, UT., HAVE NO ACCENT! I am blandly, unremarkably correct in my standardized pronunciation of the American English language! (Unless I'm doing one on purpose, purely for entertainment purposes, naturally)
| What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio. | |
| The West | |
| Boston | |
| North Central | |
| The Inland North | |
| The South | |
| Philadelphia | |
| The Northeast | |
| What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz | |
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