Kyle + Rosemary

So, having completed voice casting, after much painful deliberation (there were many great candidates) I decided on Wil Wheaton for the voice of Kyle. I’d call this an inspired casting choice; for one thing, Wil is a self-proclaimed geek, and for another, he runs his own hawesome weblog, in which he professes his geek-ness several times a week. But Wil’s entries are more than just that; he’s also an accomplished writer who has published a few books, and his blogs are thoughtful, funny, and real reflections of his feelings and life.

I just wanted to share this blog entry of Wil’s with y’all. It made me smile. The web is a wonderful thing, ain’t it? See, we as directors and creators go through the casting process with often rarely a thought to the multiple lines of actors and actresses trooping through, hoping to get parts on our shows based on the quickest of [Read more…]

The brave explorers explore a cave. Don’t worry, they’ve got lights so they won’t get scared.

So anyway today Aliki and I did some voice casting for our films. Voice casting is very enlightening. You have this idea that someone is gonna be right for your film based on what they’ve done in the past, but this is not often the case when you actually get them into the studio. Sometimes they have a great voice but they don’t understand the character. Or sometimes they don’t have a natural voice for the character but their acting is so great that they make you change your mind about what you thought the character should sound like….

The sun had gone down perhaps two hours ago. The now-risen full moon illuminated the mist, which had slowly crept over the lake and muffled many of the forests’ sounds. Small, dimly-lit insects buzzed here and there amongst the bushes, seeking their minor fortunes. And still they stood. Face to face. The silence draped itself over them like a winter blanket.

The Paladin finally shuffled his armored feet. The small metallic sound snapped the Elf out of her reverie.

“So…”she finally said, quietly,”I have something…something to tell you.”

The Paladin glanced up at the Elf’s finely boned features and saw uncertainty there. He was silent, and waited for her to speak again.

“We’ve known each other a long time,’ she said, “and I can no longer withhold the truth from you. I must – I have to…”

She stopped short and took a breath. The Paladin dropped his eyes. He knew what she was about [Read more…]

OH NO! Sir Horace is in big trouble!

That mysterious stranger with the crude blue airbrushed magic effects hand is approaching!

WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT?!

a. The mysterious stranger will turn out to be Sir Horace’s mother and will send him to bed without grog.

b. Sir Horace will single-handedly fight off all the bad guys with the power of LOVE!

c. The blue hand is really made of cotton candy. Sir Horace will eat it in a single gulp, rending the mysterious stranger’s powers useless.

The intrepid aventurers charge down the hill - because they’re super hopped up on cupcake sugar. Kids - eat cupcakes in moderation!

Wow, down the street there’s a whole store just for cupcakes!! Aliki and I got some.

[Read more…]

The intrepid adventurers gathered for…adventure! See if you can guess which geek’s game character is which. I bet you can.

Yeah - I cheated and used a foresty background from a game. It’s only a storyboard!!! I swear we’ll create our own backgrounds when the time comes!!!

The above title says ‘leet toonage and gaming geeks’. This is ‘Leet Speak’, the technique of replacing letters with various numbers and punctuation marks that vaguely resemble the letters, the goal being to confuse the non tuned-in reader.

What does this have to do with my cartoon? Nothing really. I’m just admitting that I’m a crazy out and out geek.

So lets see.

Last year, 2005, for reasons which I won’t get into here, was one of the worst years of my life. (Although I must clarify, not the part where I got to work on Aliki’s film =)

Did I turn to drugs, drinking for solace in my misery? No! Being the geek that I am, I turned to MMORPGs. “Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games”

Here’s one of my game characters from World of Warcraft sitting in the pirate town of Booty Bay.

Millions of people of all ages and countries are various levels [Read more…]

And here’s Rosemary and her friends. Rosemary’s the one on the far left. As you might guess, they embrace a certain lifestyle.

Speaking of which, check out this french site. Scroll through some of the pics. I bet these people spend hours on their look. Man, that takes dedication.

It’s just the beginning folks, everything and anything could change, but…

…this here’s a rough color lineup of some of my characters. Kyle’s the one on the far right. I’m gonna need a good cleanup artist to help me make the drawings purty. I really admire those guys. I know I can’t live without em. I’m far too impatient to nail down perfect linework. This laziness comes from years and years of storyboarding. Storyboarding - where you pretty much don’t have to make clean drawings or even draw the characters on model. Yup. My cleanup skills, if I ever had any, have been ruined by storyboarding.

Coming next: Rosemary and her gang!