Floyd Bishop

While recording audio for “The Academy” at CDP Sound, I got to meet Del Casher. What a great guy with an insane amount of variety in his past!

Del has played with Gene Autry and Frank Zappa. He’s been in films with Elvis Presley and Jerry Lewis. He produced and arranged music for “The New Zoo Revue”. He was featured on the soundtracks for “The Ghost and Mr Chicken” and “The Shakiest Gun in the West”. He is the anime producer for the Tenchi Muyo DVD series. He’s the inventor of the Wah Wah pedal, and friends with Les Paul, who does stuff with guitars or something like that [Read more…]

So one of the reasons my posts have been a bit sparse this month is that I’m hard at work on a new animated project called “The Academy”, written by Michael Tabb.

On Valentine’s Day, we went to California Digital Post Sound and recorded the first set of actors for the pilot.

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If you’re unsure what the strike is all about, this video should explain things for you.

-Floyd Bishop

When I was in and around Burbank on Thursday, the strike was still quite visible. I think it’s interesting to get the story from the guys and gals on the line (I didn’t shoot this video). This is film from outside of the Disney Studio early on in the strike. The picketers are still going strong, with a presence at each entrance to the lot, and not just at Disney. Writers and their supporters can be seen at Warner Brothers, NBC, and many other places in and around town.

With the changes made to this year’s Golden Globes and the awkward People’s Choice Awards, the effects of the strike are only starting to manifest. We’ll have to wait and see if the two sides can come to an agreement before the Oscars on February 24th.

-Floyd Bishop

So I’ve begun to set up my controls for Virgil in Maya. We’re basically swapping out pieces on this character in order to create the animation, in a method similar to cut out animation or something you might see on South Park.

Here you can see Maya’s Connection Editor. I’ve created a control curve for the mouth which will be a place where I can control which mouth is visible and when. I connect the “Aah_mouth” geometry visibility to the “Aah_mouth” attribute on the mouth control. When It’s set to “1″, the mouth will be visible. When it’s set to “0″, it will be invisible. The dialog will be animated by turning on and off the appropriate mouths.

Here’s the drawing of Virgil I’m working from to create the 3D model.

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Remember these guys? I posted about them a few months back on the Channel Frederator blog. I WAS going to do a short with these guys using Flash, but I’m no Avi Tuchman, so I’m going full 3D instead (which Avi is also really good at, by the way).

A few years back, my studio did a short called “Opposites Jamboree”. It got quite a bit of attention at the time, and was also in the first episode of the Wubbcast.

“Opposites Jamboree” screened in a few festivals (including Ottawa) and got us a few projects as well. While most people thought that was done traditionally, or in Flash, it was actually done in Maya. We will be doing the same for this new piece.

This short with the old men will be the second piece in the new super short series (which I still don’t have a name for), but will be [Read more…]

Happy Holidays from Bishop Animation!

If you haven’t noticed, there is now a Floyd Bishop blog. So what’s it all about? Well, I’m still figuring it out. I met with Fred in LA a few weeks ago, and talked about short subject cartoons. Really short. Like ten seconds or less. A series of those.

This is in line with Fred’s institutionalization of cartoons. Instead of making one big thing, make lots of smaller “somethings”.

This snowman film is the first “something”. Think of the one panel cartoons you have seen in some magazines, but animated. That’s kind of what I’m going for.

I don’t have a name for the series yet, but maybe you, the blog readers can give me some suggestions?

Keep watching this space for more cartoons and more info on the series, and Happy Holidays!

Floyd Bishop

Up until now, I have not been a “Family Guy” fan. I’m not sure why. It’s basically in the same vein as “Robot Chicken”, which I enjoy. Based on the actions of Seth MacFarlane, I now have a reason to start watching it… but not the episodes currently airing.

Why is that? Well, Seth is siding with the writers during the current Writers Guild of America strike. Rather than put Seth’s show on hold and run reruns instead, Fox has decided to finish up some episodes without Seth. This is the show that fans demanded be brought back from cancellation, and the series that recently celebrated its 100th episode.

“Family Guy” will be going on the air without the okay of its executive producer when Fox airs “Padre de Familia” this coming Sunday, Nov. 18.

Seth said, “It would just be a colossal dick move if they did that,” and that the next [Read more…]