Here’s Bill and I with Kevin Kirwan the engineer from Encore Hollywood

That’s the back of my jughead checking out Hero Heights on Encore’s cool set up while Kevin plugs away.

Here we are with Oracle Post engineer Bill Devine. Check out the big grins on Bill Ho and I. Can you tell we were happy with the sound effects?

Greetings True Believers!

Last week Bill and I ventured over to Encore Hollywood to review our color corrections. We got to sit in a studio that looked like the cockpit of The Millennium Falcon and had engineer Kevin Kirwan at the helm. This session was scheduled in order for us to go through the cartoon and make sure we were happy with the colors. If something seemed too bright or dark, Kevin could use his technical expertise and fix it the way we wanted. Overall there were only a few minor adjustments needed so we were in and out of there in less than an hour. Thanks for your help Kevin!

Today we got a preview of the Hero Heights sound effects over at Oracle Post in Burbank! (Which, by the way is a really nice place!) Bill Devine the engineer did a fantastic job of putting it all together. Every whoosh, boom, smack and thud was expertly placed throughout the short. He really blew us away with the way he handled Smart Alec’s power hum. Since he uses his power though the whole cartoon, Bill made sure the sound effects he chose weren’t too distracting. He also gave us a variety of sounds depending on how Smart Alec was using his power at the time. Whoa! Talk about professional! We’d like to thank everyone at Oracle Post for contributing so much to our cartoon. But we’d especially like to thank Bill Devine for the sweet sound effects he arranged for Hero Heights! This cartoon required a lot of different sound effects so we knew it was a tall order.

That’s all for now! So until next time this is Raul Aguirre Jr. and Bill Ho saying, “Excelsior!”

Check these last few stragglers out!

Maurice did a fantastic job. these are the bgs that the runners I posted a few days ago will go on top of.

I like how the table cloth looks like that cheap plastic checkered one that you can buy for $4.50 at Target. Exactly the kind you’d find at the Ferget Aboutit Restaurant!

Only two more bgs after this and we’re all done!
Hard to believe!

You really need to pick up a hefty copy of S Curves: The Art of Shane Glines. I’ve been a big fan of Shane’s work for a long time, and his Cartoon Retro site is a daily stop for me. Seriously, this hardcover book is high-quality, the color’s great, and, or course, the art is fantastic. It’s pricey, but at 400+ pages, worth the money.

It’s Relatively Speaking Week, and the idea was that we would trot out cartoon character kinfolk for the next few days. What you get today is “The Wabbit Who Came to Dinner,” a terrific Friz Freleng item from 1942, wherein Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd do a lot of yappin’ about rich Uncle Louie (or, as EF would have it, Uncle Wouie.)

We will ignore, for the moment, the inconvenient detail that the old guy never actually shows up, and focus instead on how fully these cultural icons fell into character so early in their screen careers. Bugs looks a bit scrawny and Elmer is positively corpulent — about this time Mr. Fudd seemed to suffer an alarming, though temporary, weight gain (I think the idea was for him to look more like the actor supplying his voice, Arthur Q. Bryan, but the end result has him more closely resembling a kidney bean.) No matter. Personality wise, they’re pretty much the wabbit and fallguy we love to laugh at. Our friends at the Big Cartoon Database tell us this is the first instance of Bugs Bunny cross dressing (fair warning: you probably shouldn’t be doing anything like, you know, drinking coffee when that gag pops up —guaranteed spit take!)

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Dave Kirwan

So HERE is the contraption, all rigged up and ready for action. Let us know what you think!

Also, if you’re in Boston this week, we’ll be staying at the Colonnade Hotel during Siggraph. Stop by and say hello.

-Floyd

At an early age, despite there being hundreds of reported encounters accross the country, I firmly believed that Bigfoot was just one creature. Just one hairy guy loping back and forth between states. And this belief went uncorrected for . . . much longer that it should’ve. And there was only one Yeti, too; he and Bigfoot worked different beats.

Layouts and sketches by Edward Juan

Of course, now I know better. Bigfoot is either a species of unknown ape, a Gigantopithecus blacki, a planetary species from Hercules Mercury or a paraphysical interdimensional nature people. Yes, even fringe science has its fringe.

Last week, as he was hewing a pair of sabots from solid wood, Larry Huber reminisced about one of his first films; it was an eco-fable featuring the Hodag All I could think was, “Dang, Larry got there first.” Thankfully, there are many other mythical archetypes and folk beasts to glorify and obscenely misrepresent through cartoons.

Dry your eyes after this one, folks. If puppies, penguins, homeless aid, and Santa don’t pull at your heartstrings, we’re not sure what will. This sweet film by Suzanne Hensler was made at Vancouver Film School.

Thanks Suzanne!

Melissa

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Here’s a few more of the runners at the end. There’s also the Mayor who has the only other speaking part in the film and was voiced by John Mariano who did a great Ed Wynn type voice. The kitty is my favorite as it is based on my wife.
At this point I’m pretty much done with color ( a few odds and ends to sweep up) and Maurice just handed me the last bit of BG color excpet for some rendered static bgs that he is going to paint traditionally which I should get next week some time.

With only one minor adjustment, our boards are now ready to go through the process that will take them to tv screens as living animation. It’s our hope to be able to translate the poses and staging that J Chad did with his pencil, into our finished animated 3D characters. Keep watching this space to see how we’re doing!

-Floyd

Yesterday, Dahveed posted a quick sketch I did of Teapot, complete with wincing bystanders!

So here, as I promised, is Dahveed’s super-cute take on Tabby! I imagine the scene to be somewhere in the distant future, as Tabby tours with her underground, psychotic punk rock band. I can only imagine the trouble she gives her poor, equally psychotic mother. Tsk.

-A