I love Wawa. I love Hoagies. I love the Beatles. I love fake Beatles homages. I do believe I've died and gone to heaven.



http://hoagiefest.com

I was just looking around in the video section on adultswim.com and discovered that there's loads of clips from the Birdman finale "The Death of Harvey" posted there. So, I'm gonna link to some of them here, and include some riveting commentary relating to my part in their animation.

WE'LL BAG 'EM, YOU TRY 'EM!



This was the first shot I worked on for this episode, and I did 90% of the animation myself. We open on the recently released villians reaking havoc on the city. So, in this one scene I got to animate Magilla Gorilla choking Squiddly Diddly, Speed Demon, the Ant Ape robot from a classic HB Birdman episode, Pa Rugg from the Hillbilly Bears, the little green aliens from the Harvey episode "Shoyu Weenie", Hokey Wolf, plus some garbage cans. There was a lot of fun acting here from Birdgirl, and from Peanut. Some of the funniest stuff we got to do was with Birdgirl's Birdlocator helmet. This is the first shot that we see it in action and it was here where we decided to make it so ridiculously huge. My assistant, Darrell animated the helmet view with the old school vector graphics, and Birdgirl punching out Squiddly. Then I finished up with Birdgirl returning the purse to the Old Lady. I added in her cigarette myself.

THE BIRDTEAM RETURNS



This is a great sequence, and not just because I animated most of it myself. Haha! This is the big moment in the episode when Harvey returns to his superhero roots and once again becomes Birdman. And we get to see Peanut for the first time in his Birdboy persona. And of course, Birdgirl as the true Birdgirl. These run cycles were re-purposed and embellished from run cycles that I did for the final shot of the episode "Birdgirl of Guantanamole". I had to slow them down, re-tween them, and re-draw the models for the superhero outfits. My assistant Darrell handled most of the re-drawing of Harvey here, while I did Peanut and Birdgirl. Then new animation was needed to get them out of the cycles and into the held "hero" poses. We then cut to Eliot, the Deadly Duplicator, watching the action from the sidelines through the copy shop window. This bit was also animated Darrell. Then it's more of my animation of Eliot shouting and gesturing and interacting with the female customer. Eliot is voiced by Lewis Black, and the customer here is voiced by Paget Brewster, the voice of Birdgirl. The clip finishes with some of my favorite animation that I did, X's over-the-top take when he is surprised by Eliot. We had such a tight deadline on this episode and I had originally animated this a bit more straight-forward, thinking more about getting it done fast than it's comedic value, or how good it would look. Thankfully, my director, Rich, had me redo it much more over the top. So, for the remainder of the episode, I made sure I gave each scene the attention it deserved, no matter the deadline. Needless to say, that involved working some 12 hour days for 2 weeks straight, but it was damn-well worth it.

SAVING THE CITY



The action is really kicking into high gear here. I animated the opening 2 shots in this clip. I particularly liked how the profile run cycles turned out and think the shot looks great with the depth of the scrolling backgrounds. I also really enjoyed animating the next scene, Birdman flying up to confront Nitron on the building tops. Even though Nitron was animated in 3D, I still had total control over how I wanted the character to behave and what the final animation looked like. The 3D animation was vector rendered out of Maya and then imported directly into Flash. I then hand-drew the animation of Nitron's bulging muscles. The final bit I animated here was Birdgirl's capture by the Defcon12. Needless to say, it's always fun to animate Birdgirl, and I had a good time drawing her funny face in this shot.

SUPERHERO, DEPRESSION



I include this clip  mainly because I had so much fun animating all of the crazy action going on outside the window on the street. Now, where else can you get paid for animating Huckleberry Hound clobbering Squiddly Diddly and Magilla Gorilla with a 2 by 4? I ask you?

Here's my big report about our costuming experience at MNSSHP 2007!

Sunday the 14th was our first night in costume. We ended up being very late after a mix up with our lunch dining reservation and we did not arrive at the Party until about 10:30pm. We made a mad dash towards the Mansion and got stuck on the wrong side of the Boo To You Parade in Liberty Square. We sure took some folk's attention away from the parade! We actually got there right when the Haunted Mansion float was passing. After the float passed, we went on to the Mansion and our first ride. It was pretty empty so we asked the Foyer CM if we could wait for the next Stretch Room. He agreed and left us alone to surprise his counterpart CM working the other room. She was quite surprised to find us waiting in the Foyer after resetting her Stretch Room!



We had fun talking with her, and also the other CMs in the Load Area. They took some photos of us with their own cameras, and then we got on the ride. Afterward, a Mansion CM set us up in front of the Mansion and took some photos of us. This is when other party guests started to want pictures with us, and another CM came by and told us we couldn't take photos here. He also was extremely nice about it and took us into the backstage "Servant's Quarters" door and took us right into the Stretch Room to have another ride. We then wandered around Liberty Square until just before Midnight when we returned to the Mansion for our traditional midnight last ride of the evening. We then spent some time outside the Mansion taking separate photos of ourselves with the Mansion gate plaque. Here's me!



Now well after midnight and our slow walk back towards Main Street is when things started to happen for us. Main Street is basically devoid of guests and just the Photopass folks and Cleaning CMs are around. Well, they all immediately stop us in our tracks and insist they take our photo, and insist they jump into some photos themselves!



We had some Photopass pictures taken and the CM in yellow wrote us a slip and said we could get 4 free 8x10s of these photos! So, we head on down to Exposition Hall to get our prints, and the CMs working in here all start to go nuts! So much so that the Manager CM in here insists we have professional studio shots taken in one of their on-site studios! Check out some of this action!







Once again we were given free 5x7s of these shots and we were on our way. One last fun moment happened on our way to the buses. A CM named Steve stops us at the turnstiles and recognized us from last year! It turned out he was our bus driver and drove us in costume from our resort to the Party last year! He radioed and requested a bus for the Bride and the Hitchhiking Ghosts. We had our own bus back to our resort.



After realizing how much time we needed to get in costume and makeup on Sunday, we made sure we got an early start on Thursday. We made it to the bus stop at our resort at around 8pm, and for the first time we were seen by a whole lotta folks at the stop and on the bus. We made quite scene. We were through the turnstiles at 8:30pm and decided to head to Tommorowland. This would be the first time we had ventured to any other area of the Magic Kingdom in costume.



We stopped on the bridge to Tommorowland to take a photo with the Castle and were overrun by other park guests wanting our picture and to get pictures with us. We were honestly stuck there for a good 10 minutes! Then a Dream Squad CM came over basically to see what was happening. I told her we were trying to get to the Peoplemover. She laughed, and then escorted us to the TTA. She asked us where we were from, basic chit-chat during the walk and we said thanks, got on the ride and didn't think much more of it.





We finish the ride and head back down the ramp and there is our Dream Squad CM waiting there for us with a big bag of Halloween candy! She gives us the candy and asks us if we were fans of Space Mountain. We all were of course and she said she wanted to give us a Magic Moment and take us all on a backstage tour of the Space Mountain control tower and then go for a ride! Well, we all took the tour, but our costumes would only allow 2 of us to ride, Pickwick and Prudence. It was awesome, and I wish I talked with Prudence before writing this since she knows our Dream Squad CM's name, while I forget :(.



We then headed on to Fantasyland for a ride on Small World. We were surprised and stopped by a Haunted Mansion CM on her off night there with her family who saw us on Sunday. We talked with her for a bit, then more pictures with guests and we finally got to Small World for a ride.



Then it was off to the Mansion for our first ride of the night. The only disappointing thing about our Mansion rides in costume this year was none of the Mansion CMs we met and became friends with last year were working the parties we went to. But we met some really great new friends this year.



Then it was off to ride Pirates.



On our way back to Liberty Square for our traditional Midnight last ride of the night at the Mansion, we ran into Jesse and Bullseye in Frontierland, and an awesome CM who was playing a creepy Night Watchman near the Riverboat. We also got his contact info and made another new friend this night.





So we once again finished our night as the final riders of the day on the Haunted Mansion. The night was over except for our slow walk back to the main gate. We stopped for many photos, including this one in front of the Hall Of Presidents. This is the best photo we got of our Bride's beating red heart (She had beating heart sound, too!).



And that's about it for our MNSSHP adventures for 2007!



Hope to see you all next year!

Oh... and here we are in our secret identities!



(L-R, Ezra, Phineas, Gus (me), Bride, Pickwick. Prudence is taking the photo, and thanks to her for all the other photos, as well!)

On the morning of September 4th, 2007, James and Oliver Phelps, who play Weasley twins Fred and George in the Harry Potter films, visited the offices of "Adult Swim" over at Williams Street in Atlanta. The actors were in town over the Labor Day weekend at Dragon*Con 2007, the huge Atlanta Sci-fi, Fantasy, Comics convention, along with their co-star Matt Lewis (Neville Longbottom). So, on the morning before they were scheduled to head to the airport, an impromptu tour of the Adult Swim studios was put together for the Twins. They looked to be thoroughly enjoying themselves as I and fellow animator Darrell showed up to meet them. They were visiting Adult Swim Senior VP Mike Lazzo when we stumbled across them at William Street. The Twins are fans of Adult Swim, having seen some of the shows on the Bravo Channel in the UK. They didn't know "Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law" though, which is the show we worked on, or "Stroker and Hoop", another of ours, but they were still very pleased to meet us and talked with us for quite a while about the animation process.

They were snapping photos all around the studios, and the above shot is of us posing with a standee of one of our "Birdman" characters "Bear".

We ended up tagging along with their tour for about 10 minutes. It's not often we get to visit Williams Street ourselves, as we work at Turner Studios which is across the highway. They were given huge bags of swag, which included some "Birdman" DVDs as per my request, and then they were on their way.


I'm a big ol' geeky "Potter" fan myself and meeting these two super-nice fellows was a real treat. It's too bad Matt couldn't make the tour. He wanted to, but his schedule didn't allow for it. I did get to meet him at the Con, though. Hopefully there was enough swag in the bag to share.

Ahhhh, The Shemp Meditation Tapes. Not for everyone, but a must for any Shemp fan!

I found Shemp Meditation Tape #1 more than 10 years ago, quite by accident. A guy I worked with used to live in Northern New Jersey and was constantly spouting off about this great radio station he used to listen to back home, WFMU. So we looked them up on the web one day, found our way to their online catalog, and discovered this cassette tape for sale called "The Shemp Meditation Tape". The sound clip on the site was hysterical, so I ordered one. Here are the liner notes:

WINDEM SLIME TAPES PRESENT - THE SHEMP MEDITATION TAPE-

Recommended for new age nitwits and chuckleheads alike....scientifically mixed in SHEMP-A-RAMA for your enlightened casaba-banging pleasure. Soar the Horowitz Heavens and become One with Shemp's karma on the "HEEEEE BEEE BEEE BEEE BEEE side. Transhempify your mind and cook your chakras on the life-infirming "AHH HA HA HA HA HA" side. Produced under armed guard for WFMU by Mahavishnu Dave Thespazzyrama in the palatial Spazzintologist Compound.

These outrageous tapes are the brainchild of WFMU DJ Dave "The Spazz" from his "Music to Spazz By" Radio Program. I originally wrote about these tapes over on my Shemp website wallofshemp.com. Imagine my surprise when after about 2 months of having my Wall of Shemp webpage out there for human consumption, I get an e-mail out of the blue from "The Spazz". He told me about his latest Shemp Meditation #2 Tape. Needless to say, I begged him for a copy of it! Thanks again, Dave. Although the second tape is about half as long as the first, I think #2 is even funnier.


Once again, the Shemp Meditation Tapes have entered my life. I just stumbled on MP3s of all 4 Shemp Meditation tracks over on WFMU's "Beware of the Blog"! Here's what I found last night. A write-up and MP3s of Meditation Tape #2:

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/05/more_shemp_than.html

And a link to Meditation Tape #1:

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2005/10/the_shemp_medit.html

And a link to purchase the long unpurchasable tapes for your very own. But, with free MP3s available? Still, I bought one... and you should too!

http://store.wfmustore.org/shmeta.html

This year's Animation Show was in Atlanta at the Carter Center on Friday and Saturday February 2nd and 3rd. The Show is the brainchild of Mike Judge (of Beavis and Butthead fame) and Don Hertzfeldt.

A group of us from the Studios hit the Friday night showing at 9pm. I wasn't originally keen on attending since I thought last year's show was a bit underwhelming, but Mike Judge was in attendance this time around and was doing a Q&A afterwards, so I went along.

I must say that I really enjoyed this year's show. It was a solid offering of entertaining animation. A few of my favorites: "Dreams and Desires" Directed by Joanna Quinn, "9" Directed by Shane Acker, "Game Over" Directed by Pes, and "Rabbit" Directed by Run Wrake.

So after the show and before Mike Judge's Q&A, they had a quick trivia contest to give away a couple of Animation Show Box Set DVDs. The final question was prefaced with "Now here's a question that no one in any previous city that we have been to has gotten correct". Hmmmm, must be hard. So the question is "In Animation Show 1, we showed a clip from the Disney Short "Mars and Beyond". Who created this short?" which of course I knew the answer was Ward Kimball, even without ever having seen Animation Show 1! So I shout out the answer, but was a split second too late as I hear "WA..." just as I shouted the same! It turned out that the guy who beat me too the punch was my fellow animator Mike who I work with at Turner, so I wasn't too upset. But, the MC was so flabbergasted that TWO people knew the answer, he hooked me up with a poster! Sweet!



Mikey with his DVD and me with my poster! Thanks to Darrell for the photo!

Then Mike Judge came out for a short Q&A, some photos and autographs. It was a really great evening.

Today, I decided to check the Animation Show website to see just which cities they had been to previously and to marvel at them for not knowing this answer. And here they are:

Santa Barbera, CA, Seattle, WA, Boston, MA, Portland, OR, Tucson, AZ, New Brunswick, NJ, New York, NY, San Francisco, CA, San Jose, CA, Berkeley, CA, Hartford, CT and Washington, DC.

For shame!

Jeff Lange has written an article over at JimHillMedia.com about his night at the Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party that includes lots of great photos of us dressed as the Haunted Mansion Hitchhikers that night. Check it out!

Beware of Real-live Hitchhiking Ghosts

We had the most awesome time down in Disneyworld at the Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party on Monday night, October 2nd. There were five of us travelling together for a week at Disney. So, for the Halloween party on Monday night, the three of us guys were going as the Hitchhiking Ghosts from the Haunted Mansion (with me as "Gus"), and Liz as the Bride.

We took the Disney bus to the Magic Kingdom from our hotel. The bus was empty except for the driver, who's jaw practically dropped when we got on. We exited the bus and made our way to the front gates and were stopped for a few photo requests (A sign of things to come!) We got to the front gate of the Magic Kingdom around 9:30 pm as it took a good 2 hours to do our makeup and get dressed.

As we are going through the turnstiles, the Cast Mambers working there are applauding us! We get in, get our wristbands and start making our way up Main Street to the Mansion in Liberty Square. As we passed City Hall, a Guest Relations manager came out and complemented us very highly on our costumes, and started following us a bit, writing on some paper. He presented us with a free Fastpass to get on any ride without waiting in line and a voucher for 5 free Haunted Mansion Pins. (Again, a sign of things to come!) It worked out great that the "Hallowishes" Fireworks had just started because everyone was watching the fireworks as we were walking up Main Street from behind them. If more people had seen us walking up Main Street, I don't think we would have ever made it to the Mansion.

We made it as far as the Liberty Tree in Liberty Square when we got stopped again for photos. This time they didn't just want photos of us, they wanted photos with us!

After that stop, we finally made it to the Mansion, and after compliments from the Maids and Butlers, we were able to ride. It was so fantastic. We each got into Doom Buggies individually, in the proper order. Darrell as "Phineas" followed by Detag as "Ezra" and me as "Gus", then Liz as the "Bride" along with Gina, who acted as our handler for the evening. She kept water and took photos and was our liason with the Mansion Cast Members.

By the time we were exiting the ride, word had spread amongst all the Mansion Cast Members to get a look at us. We stopped near the ride exit, and that's when everyone wanted to get pictures with us. Parents and kids, Mansion Maids and Butlers... it was insanely cool! There was a line for cryin' out loud! Later, we were taken to some backstage VIP areas of the Mansion and were given lots of insider info about its creation and inner workings. A Cast Member named Nicole was pretty much responsible for all of the wonderful treatment we received that night.

We really made their night for them since Pirates Of The Caribbean is so huge this year, it seemed that every other person there that night was dressed as a Pirate. For us to show up, not only dressed as some of their Haunted Mansion characters, but to go to such extremes and really do them well, so well that we had lines of people waiting to get their pictures with us, and much better than even their own Hitchhikers that appear in the "Boo To You" Parade, we really put some of the spotlight back on to the Mansion, at least for a few hours. I'm glad we could make their night more special because they really made ours fantastic! We actually got to take the final ride of the evening on the Haunted Mansion and took one great big group photo with the four of us and just about every Mansion Cast Member.

Jeff Lange DVD Productions was there to catch our visit to the Mansion. Could we be showing up on his "Trick or Treat 3" DVD?

It was well after midnight by the time we started making our way out of the Magic Kingdom and back to our hotel for some well earned rest. Of course, we had to stop and get a photo of ourselves with our alteregos.

And then we walked off into the moonlight. "Hurry back!" we could hear off in the distance. And we will be. See you next year at the Mansion!