Kick-Heart at AX2013

Today I went to Anime Expo 2013 here in LA. I got to meet my favourite director, Masaaki Yuasa, and see the North American premiere of his new short Kick-Heart. Yuasa was kind enough to do drawings for everyone who asked, and I asked him to draw Hiroshi from Crayon Shin-Chan (which he worked on early in his career).

Kick-Heart did not disappoint. I won't spoil anything, since it hasn't been sent out to the backers yet, but it was amazing. The opening credits alone were spectacularly funny and vivid, and from there it just got better and better. There was some very interesting sound design later in the short, and the animation was brilliant throughout. The audience was laughing out loud almost constantly. It flew by incredibly fast, feeling much shorter than its 12 minutes.

The producers stated at the Kick-Heart panel that they didn't currently have plans to release it other than to the Kickstarter backers and on the festival circuit, so if you didn't contribute then, I hope you know somebody who did. You need to see it!

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I'm in LA

In case you haven't been following me on Twitter or facebook, I just moved to LA! I'm only planning to stay till December, but I got a job at a studio down here working on a new TV series. I can't say anything about it other than it seems like it's going to be a really fun project, and I wouldn't have gotten the job without the help of the awesome Scout Raskin. I did the animation and designs for a short that Scout wrote called "Bakerman & the Bunnymen" over the past few months while finishing my final year of animation college. It was a fun short, and when it finished, she helped me get this current studio gig. I am eternally indebted to her and Andrew Racho for helping me get the job, get settled in LA and just generally being super-nice to me.

My main work on the show doesn't officially start for another week, so my days are currently split between doing character designs and looking for apartments, setting up my phone, bank, transportation, etc. I don't drive, which will make it tough to live in LA (as everyone I meet tells me) but it seems that as long as I find a place close to work I should be okay. Later today I'm hoping to visit a few potential apartments I found online.


I've already seen some famous people I'm a fan of, which was pretty cool. It's definitely exciting being in LA. It's such a beautiful city-- even the areas that locals seem to think are ugly. There's a lot more greenery than I'm used to seeing in urban areas, and it's going to take me a while to get used to seeing mountains in the distance while walking down the street. I haven't had time to take many pictures yet, but I'll get around to it soon, hopefully.

I'll keep you all updated if anything interesting happens.

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2013 Anijam

Last Saturday was the Toronto Animated Images Society's annual shorts showcase. They screened Fester Makes Friends as well as another new piece of animation I did for the Anijam, where a whole bunch of animators each contribute a short piece. The guidelines were simple-- it had to be 10 seconds long, and the theme this year was UFOs. Here's the piece I threw together.




And here's a picture of me they took for the Canadian Animation blog.

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Dynamite in the Brain Episode 90 - Memories

This week I made another guest appearance on the anime podcast Dynamite in the Brain. We discussed the anime anthology Memories by Katsuhiro Otomo, played a game and oh so much more. Listen to it now!

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Couple of GIFs

Last weekend I had some free time so I animated a couple of little GIFs.

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Fester Fish T-Shirts!

Here's a message from Fester about the new shirts. Once again, you can buy the shirts here!

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Creep and Bus Driver

Just a couple of drawings based on sketchbook doodles. I don't usually like cleaning drawings up this much because I find that they lose some of their rough energy, but I'm pretty happy with these two.

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