Remembering Frank Thomas

Nice lengthy tribute to Frank Thomas at Animation World Magazine from such heavy hitters as John Lasseter, Andreas Deja, Ron Clements and a Leonard Maltin interview with the other half of the dynamic duo, Ollie Johnston.

Pen-tastic

As a new business, you get a lot of mail from companies who want to be there with you from "the ground up". I just got this in the mail from a not-to-be-named-here pen company trying to convince us with more than words of their products. Thank you for showing me that dreams do come true.

From the Thanksgiving Queen

Opinions aside, I had to post this excerpt. I couldn't help but think this was so sad and poignant as I sat and read it:

As you would expect, the loss of freedom and the lack of privacy are extremely difficult. But I am safe, fit and healthy, and I am pleased to report that, contrary to rumors you might have heard, my daily interactions with the staff and fellow inmates here at Alderson are marked by fair treatment and mutual respect.

In short, I am in good spirits and making the best of this difficult situation. Visits from my friends, family and colleagues – together with your goodwill and best wishes -- will get me through this chapter in my life. For this friendship and support, I am very grateful this Thanksgiving.

Sincerely,
Martha Stewart
www.marthatalks.com

I honestly like her work and brand (and I benefit from my wife's love of it as well).

Hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving, Martha.

DRAW!

What a great surprise to find a plug for Ghostbot in the definitive "How-To" Magazine on Comics and Cartooning...DRAW! I can't say enough about what a great resource this magazine is. It's jam-packed with interviews, artwork, and industry tips. The enormously talented Mike Manley - comic artist extraordinaire (Monsterman, G.I.R.L Patrol) and war-torn animation veteran (Batman, Superman, Batman Beyond) - leads the production team and it's published by TwoMorrows Publishing (Write Now!, Alter Ego, The Jack Kirby Collector).

Some of my favorite issues of DRAW! are:

• Issue #2 (interview with Genndy Tartakovsky),
• Issue #4 (sweet Kevin Nowlan art)
• Issue #6 (a fantastic interview/art bonanza with Bill Wray and Stephen DeStafano)

I had the privilege of meeting Mike in person at last year's SD Comic Con and after a good chat, I found out he was a big fan of Joe Paradise (I still owe you a picture, Mike!). What an honor from such a cool guy. Go out and support these guys by buying the current issue. You won't be disappointed.

We're famous!

Brad
Roque
Alan

Not really. Goes to show it doesn't take much to get snagged by the internet. Got a good laugh out of this...especially Alan's acting credit.

SKWIGLY interview with our very own Alan!

Great interview. Kudos to Kimmy Gorden at online animation magazine SKWIGLY and Alan for his talent and all-around shizzle.

Check out their site too - clean design, highly informative. Good stuff. (They have another good article/interview with the extremely influential and always nice, Linda Simensky.)

Ghostbot drawn by the amazing Dean Yuen

Hey,

Check out this awesome image of a Ghostbot drawn by Bay Area local illustrator Dean Yuen!

Dean's worked in video games and illustrated for playing cards and books. He promises a color version some day soon so stay tuned!

Alan

If I was drinking milk it would've come out of my nose

...instead I just spit at my monitor after reading Zach Braff's hilarious Blog:

"Thank you to those who have been writing nice things about my nominations for The People's Choice Awards. I was indeed nominated for lead in a TV series, lead in a film and Scrubs was nominated for best TV comedy.

What is particularly funny, is that in the leading man category I am nominated alongside: Brad Pitt, Jude Law, Colin Farrell and Jim Carey. Yes indeed me and my friends had a good laugh about that one. A "Fraggle" has a better shot at winning that award than me. But I'm flattered to be alongside them..." -Zach Braff

Remember these guys? I used to envy all my friends who were cool enough to have that new thing called "cable TV" where they could watch these twice-removed cousins of the Muppets.

Who is that pink haired girl?

As I was checking my Yahoo! mail account, I was recently surprised to find this awkwardly posed lady staring back at me:

Meet "Erin" from the octane-infused Esurance ad that Alan animation directed, Phil Robinson directed, and Ghostbot worked on (Brad: layout, animation; Roque: layout, bg/prop design; plus some nice help from Dave V: animation).

Looks like an internet ad campaign based on the spot.

We got fwakked!

This past Comic Con, Ghostbot had the awesome privilege of meeting the super-creators of the hit WB series, "Mucha Lucha!" Their site is a permanent fixture in my bookmarks thanks to their pioneering and constantly updated fwak blog! Today they were kind enough to link to us. Thanks guys!

Someplace hot just froze over

Robert Zemeckis' thoughts on his upcoming film, "The Polar Express" (starring a CG/mocap Tom Hanks): "$165 million = thrifty spending". All I know is I hope Chris Van Allsburg got a good paycheck...

Incredible (pt 1)

I think this is the perfect occasion to draw the other 'Bots to start blogging (ya hear that guys?!). Go watch this movie. After watching a 1:45 pm showing opening day, all I have to say is I have see it again. Digitally projected this time, what the heck. Here begins my amateur review:

Of course the excitement has been building for this movie. C'mon - PIXAR + Superheroes + Brad Bird? That's gotta be some sort of sick fan-love combination if I've ever heard one. I've tried to keep myself as sheltered as possible from trailers, detailed reviews, commercials, etc. Hard this day and age, but I was somewhat successful. Some of our friends who had seen early screenings said some crazy stuff. One from our pal, Fee:

In my opinion, the Incredibles is by far my favorite Pixar movie, and the animated movie you have been waiting your whole life for. I recently saw a couple of completed sequences and it continues to destroyed me. Completely blew the flesh right off my bones.

From Jamie Baker's website:

There always has to be a quibble somewhere, and as good as it is, that is still definately the case with The Incredibles. There is only one thing that bothered me about this movie, and that is that I didn't get a chance to work on it myself...

Amen to that. But I'm jumping ahead of myself.

First of all, the movie was advertised with previews of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Cars, the next Pixar film. Now that's almost enough to get you to go watch any film. (We should talk about those separately as well). When the movie started, it took me literally 30 minutes to get over how amazing the movie looked. I've always thought that Pixar humans looked odd and that's probably why all their movies up to now focused on non-humans. Let me state the obvious here: Pixar has BLOWN THE DOOR off of human animation in 3d. We all knew it would happen when they released the very first teaser (which on a side note: even as amazing a piece of character animation as that trailer was, they didn't even have to include it in the feature). But to see it alive in front of your eyes...stunning. Hence the 30 minutes to get over it.

More to come...

I'll blog your blog if you blog mine...

We got blogged! Leave it to the speedy and always-on-top-of-news Amid at Cartoon Brew. Wow. Awesome. A little unexpected since we're just "premabloggers" but that's what you get when you link other blogs. Thanks, Brew!

The polls are in

America has voted!

Daily Ghostbot-isms

One fun aspect of Ghostbot is sitting around one table, drawing over each other's drawings, and hearing the crazy things that come out of our mouths:

"That just landed in our pants..." - Brad
"We can make clams dance on the moon if they want..." - Alan

I plan on starting a collection.