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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Fester t-shirts are ready!!

It took me a while, but the Fester Fish t-shirts are finally available for purchase!

Be the envy of everyone on your block with the snazzy "Fester Pose" shirt!

Create a dancing frenzy with the amazing "Bob Rhythmically" shirt!

Or make a striking socio-political statement with the controversial "Fester as Che Guevara" shirt!

There are more designs too. You can change the size, color and style to whatever you want on each shirt page. Easy as pie, and less than half the fat. Go buy a shirt!! Better yet, three!

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Talking Mind Game on Dynamite in the Brain

This week I was a guest on Dynamite in the Brain for a third time, to discuss Mind Game and play an extremely difficult quiz game. Go listen to it!

http://www.dynamiteinthebrain.com/episode-83-mind-game/

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Lack of Updates = Workin'

Hello gentle reader. You may have noticed my lack of posts recently. That's because I'm busy working. I haven't had time to post anything substantial, which is why I've been using twitter more. If you want to follow me, once again I'm @aalong64. I'm not abandoning the blog or anything, just making excuses for not posting more.

The short I've been animating for Sonic Bunny Productions, "Bakerman and the Bunnymen" is almost done and I'll be sure to post a link to it here when it's online. It's been fun working on it and Scout Raskin, the director, has been fantastic about giving me extra time to do the shots when my school gets to be too busy.

The Fester Fish shirts are done, and as soon as I get the samples back from the print-on-demand company, I'll make them available online. Get those credit cards ready, folks! I'll also have a separate stock of them in person so I can take them to conventions and stuff.

Finally, I'm almost finished animation college. That's obviously what's taking up most of my time, as I put together a portfolio, resume, demo reel, etc. not to mention finishing all the actual classes. The school has been challenging, but overall I'm glad I went there.

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To Live and Die in LA

A few months ago I watched most of this movie and was bored to death. I don't know why I watched it. It's a completely generic 80s cop movie. I started sketching, but wasn't particularly interested in drawing the characters from the movie. I can't remember if these look like them or not. Probably not.

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More Sketchbook Stuff

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Fester + Space Goose Crew

Quick doodles of Fester and the crew from Space Goose. First Mate Ugly and Dr. Donkey probably shouldn't be overlapping like that-- It looks like Dr. Donkey is riding Ugly's head.

Anyway, if you haven't seen the Space Goose cartoons, they're still on my Youtube channel (here's the first one). They're a bit over-written and the animation is wonky, but they were fun to make and I learned a lot doing them. I miss doing the back-and-forth interactions between the characters in this series. It's hard to do much of that with Fester because he's so dumb.

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Oddry Hepbirn

I was sketching while watching Wait Until Dark a couple of months ago. I love that movie. There are a some stupid aspects of the plot but I think it's pretty effective anyway, and Alan Arkin is amazingly creepy and funny in it. Perhaps I should've drawn him instead, cause this doesn't really look like Audrey Hepburn.

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Bunch of Kids

I'm going to break the sketchbook stuff into individual posts, since that seems to be what most people do on their blogs, and it seems to flow better. Anyway here's a group of kids I've been drawing for what might be an upcoming project.

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Sketchbook Dump 1

My sketchbooks tend to be pretty lazy and scribbly. I mostly draw in them when I'm lying in bed, too tired to fix my mistakes or draw cleanly. Some of the drawings occasionally turn out okay though, and I've neglected the blog lately so I'm going to be sharing some art. This is the first of at least two posts. I used Photoshop to slap in some colour.

Some of these characters may eventually wind up in a cartoon if I can develop a full storyline... I'm about halfway there with it at the moment.

More to come! Also, a few basic Fester fish T-shirt designs are done. I'm just waiting to get some samples back to see how they turn out before I start telling people to buy them.

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