Outlaw Angel sketch

Preview sketch of 'David Cross' from Will Caligan's Outlaw Angel artbook. Plan to throw some colors on it this week.

mojomann launches!!!

mojomann.com

YEAH!! My portfolio site finally is up and running. It has been a long time in development. This is the third design and the first one to actually launch!

I have to give some big kudos to a couple of guys that have helped me out. First off is my man, Adam Venturella! He is a excellent web developer I work with. Adam helped in the direction to code my site in and has been a great inspiration, motivator and good bud too. Next up is another co-worker and good friend, Jon Yuskus. Jon is awesome cold fusion devloper. He has helped me work the kinks out of some of my html (note we still have some to attend too!)Without these two chaps, I would still be a couple months off from launching! Thanks guys!!

Last but not least is to thank my loving wife, Juanita. She has been patient as I have worked and re-worked this project, while shuffling several other personal projects as well as helping her raise our duaghter Kayliegh and our new baby, Alexa. Hard to believe that this design was started last year about this time, right before we were blessed with Alexa. All three of my girls are my inspiration. God has blessed me. I love ya J, K and little A.

To all my web buddies and deviantArt friends, thanks for your support, the best is yet to come (I hope!!)

New Look and a little tease

As promised, I have posted a new skin for mojomannimation. It goes with my personal site, mojomann.com. And now for the tease...

I have been working on a new animation short/trailer/teaser for a little while and I wanted to let everyone see a little of the progress. The short is based on the upcomming Hellboy animated shows that will be on Cartoon Network. Over the July 4th holiday, I hope to have my new website complete and up. It will have a microsite just for the Hellboy short with all sorts of goodies. For now here is a tease for you all. Of course the sharp ones will notice a certain red guy in the header of the new design too.



Thanks to 'Cheeks' for the heads up, I forgot to mention a few credits for this. Hellboy is © of Mike Mignola, Hellboy Animated is © of IDT Entertainment and Revolution Studios. The background is a reference posted previously at the Hellboy Animated Blog and is owned by IDT Entertainment and Revolution Studios. It's for this shot only and won't be in my animation. The pose is referenced from a sculpt by the talented sculptor, Tony Cipriano which is based off of the production designs by my friend, Sean 'Cheeks' Galloway...whoo, lots of credit to go around. Like the Justice Leauge trailer I did, this is inspired by the works of many wonderful artist that are involved with the actual production. I want to pay homage to their work and the character that I love so much. Everything in my animation is being recreated or designed by me in vector format so it will be easier to animate and so I am not using the actual works from the production. Going forward any references based on production work will be duly noted with credit to any indivuduals and said copyright holders.

Cars and the redesign

Pixar's Cars


After Pixar's The Incredibles, they gang out in Emryville had a major task to top. The pressure on their latest film, Cars, to perform well has been quite heavy. Many critcs have given it solid reviews but all seem stuck on comparing it to Nemo or Incredibles. Yes these two films are benchmarks in movie storytelling whether it be animated or live action or sock puppets. The simple fact is Pixar gets IT. They put story first, characters the matter to the plot over big name egos to voice creations that don't fit. I like many fans was worried when the annoucement came about Disney buying Pixar. With the recent track record of Disney films, it looked like Pixar would tarnish the shiny armor so to speak. Truth be told if you look at the deal and what Pixar got from it, it's more like a merger with Pixar gaining control in some major areas of Disney, not to mention the big chunk of change that was paid for th company to come back under the Disney roof.

Anyhow back to Cars. I love all of Pixar's films and this one is no different. The story had a couple of layers that some nice rewards in the end. That and two conflicted characters having major resolution that was heart felt and endearing. I grew up with old cars and summer vactions with the family packed in the station wagon and hitting the road. Cars was a nostalgic trip for me as well. The respect for Nascar, Route 66 and the automobile industry could be seen everywhere. They say that the devil is in the details and boy does this picture deliver in that category. From the rust on the old cars too the little rubber 'marbles' that collect on the sides of the race track, Pixar did not miss a trick. This may seem like a simple premise to present but at times you could swear that you were watching a fancy (and expensive) car commercial or actual coverage from a Nascar race. Visually this movie is spectaular, but not at the expense of letting the story shine. As always the music was perfectly suited and never used to cover up weak story spots or just to fill time. My response is that Pixar has done it again, a perfect movie for families with a sweet message and loving hug to car fans everywhere.

A bit of blog news. I hope to have a face lift for my blog site done this weekend. I am going to be launching my personal site and want the two sites to have a similar look. I plan to post my news here as well as animation reviews and more, so stay tooned!

Ice Age: The Meltdown and Over The Hedge

Ice Age: The Meltdown

The start of the animation movie season kicked off with the wonderful sequel to Ice Age. The new movie, Ice Age: The Meltdown, brought to us from the fine folks at Blue Sky Studios and released through 20th Century Fox, was a delight and surprise (a little).

The story picks where the last movie left off, but now the gang has to face the meltdown from the ice. Also Manny starts to think he may be the last wholly mammoth. The plot itself was not very deep and perhaps not as fun as the first movie. Visually the animation and graphics were taken up a quite a bit. Since most of the cast from the first movie were upgraded for this outing, Blue Sky did not simply rely on the original models or rendering styles. The fact that this movie was done in 8 months is incredible, even with pre-existing models that were tweaked. I enjoyed the movie as much as the first Ice Age. I did not laugh out load as much as before but still really liked it. Blue Sky continues to create wonderful movies with great visual style and fun humor for the whole family. Well done!


Over The Hedge

Over The Hedge came out against some heavy competition, The Da Vinci Code. Though neither film really hits the same audience, I think it did have an affect at the box office on opening weekend. Over The Hedge comes from DreamWorks Animation, makers of Shrek and Madagascar. After DreamWorks last couple animated films, I was a little leery of Over The Hedge. The over-the-top marketing and continued use of big name actors for the voice acting had me wanting to see something else. For those who might lump Wallace & Gromit with 'latest' release of DreamWorks, my reference was to actual DreamWorks Animation productions (Shark Tale & Madagascar specifically) were as the wonderful W&G (and Chicken Run for that matter) was produced by Aardman Animation and distributed by DreamWorks. They like to use the marketing gag of claiming "from the creators of Shrek and ect..." when in reality Aardman is located in the UK and 'creates' their work completely separate from DreamWorks. They have even started the propaganda train for Flushed Away with the tagline of 'from the creators of Shrek and Madagascar" when it those creators have NOTHING to do with the film. Why aren't they touting 'from the creators of Oscar® winning Wallace & Gromit and the Curse of the Were-Rabbit’. With the poor showing that Madagascar had (compared to the expectations) I don't know that I would wave it as a flagship title. Aardman continues to make amazing films and does so without the 'creators' at DreamWorks having anything to do with them. But I digress...

Back to Over The Hedge.
I have to say I was surprised. It was much better than I expected. The animation was done well, the style for the animals was great, though the human characters seem to lack in the design department. Some of the voice acting was a little stiff and goes to further prove that big name stars do not mean great voice actors. Look how Pixar always creates characters first and then finds the voice that fits the character. Some would argue that Tom Hanks and Tim Allen would qualify as big name actors, but both of these guys were not quite big names when the original Toy Story was in production.

The story for Over The Hedge was simple and to the point. A family lesson was thrown in for good measure. It seams like each of DreamWorks animated films they have to have the 'character that steals the show'. OTH was no exception. Hammy the squirrel was funny and did add some of the films best moments. Hammy appears to be loosely based on Scrat from Ice Age. He was not quite as cute or clever, but still was still a good character. Overall Over The Hedge was a solid film, better that Madagascar, light years ahead of Shark Tale and possibly a sign that DreamWorks can make good animated films beyond the Shrek franchise.

A Little Chicken and Zargons from Space

The kids are alright and the family films aren't too bad. Disney's Chicken Little was better than I had antcipated as was Zathura (more on that below.)

With Chicken Little, Disney made it's first foray into CG animation from their own studio. The movie would be held against the mighty efforts of Pixar, a high standard for any movie. To my surprise it was pretty good. The animation was cute and held up well. The acting, voice and animated worked really good together. The story was not bad, though it did get a little predictable towards the middle of the movie. My one complaint would be that within the first 15 minutes of the show, they had three musical peices all pop songs with no dialogue during the montagues. Normally this is okay to help stretch the time and tell a little story but not three times before the movie even gets started. Overall the movie was cute and well suited for kids. My little girl enjoyed it which is a good bench mark.

Zathura is based on a children's book by the same author of Jumanji and Polar Express. The story is somewhat similar to Jumanji, where two sibilings play a board game that luanches into high adventure. This movie was a surprise as well, it was well acted, the effects were pretty good and the story I felt was even better than Jumanji.

Family movies tend to be the better investment for studios as of late and that's fine with me. With two little ones of my own and being just a big kid myself I like to have a movie that we all can enjoy and that I don't have to cover my kids eyes in.

-mojomann

MAX 2005 Day Three

A week later and some time to digest all of the info from the conference, time to address day three and the show as a whole.

Day three had no general session but was still filled with tons of great sessions. Part of my main agenda for the day was mobile content and design in Flash as well as character animation. The mobile classes showed insight into the current state of Flash Lite 1.1 for mobile and the potential that is right around the corner with the announcement of Flash Lite 2.0. This new build is based on the Flash Player 7 and actionscript 2.0, which is a huge step over FL 1.1 (based on player 6 and Flash 4 scripting) Though most of the devices that use Flash Lite are just now reaching the States, they have already been tested and proved in the Asian and now European markets. The leading mobile provider in Asia, Docomo, made a BILLION dollars in revenue with just Flash content on their iChannel phone network! That is a major market that will be knocking on our doors very soon, so now is the time to start getting ready.

The character animation session was one of my favorites from the entire conference. Our presenter, Steve Piscopo of Nectarine Studios, was well prepared and had a fun class. Though most of the content in the class I already knew, I still really enjoyed the session.

Overall the show had a hand full of surprises, plenty of great information and promoted a wonderful sense of community. My only complaint is that most sessions should have been a half hour longer. Many of my sessions were rushed to squeeze into the time schedule and could have been better served with a little extra time. The site, Anaheim, CA, was an excellent choice and helped to make it that much more special. I can't wait for next year to see what Macromedia/Adobe has in store for us developers. Major kudos to the entire staff of Macromedia for putting such a great show to match their awesome products.