Rediscovering the Road Not Taken …

The place I work is hiring -Animax in Van Nuys, California. You can see the latest postings on Craig’s List.
http://losangeles.craigslist.org/search/jjj?query=Animax

I can’t answer queries about these jobs so just use the links to find the info you need. I can say that I have had a great time here at Animax! It is dynamic, very friendly, and full of smart creative people.

The fast growth has also opened unexpected opportunities. I have already pitched one show (they are taking it to the Kidscreen Summit in 2 weeks). I just scheduled another pitch session in 4 weeks, where I will pitch 3 more shows that are a collaborative effort with two fellow artists.

This wonderful classic animation by Frédéric Back is based on the marvelous and poignant book by Jean Giono, The Man Who Planted Trees.

I’m in my sixth month here at Animax and having a great time designing elements for Flash games, interactive websites and animated films. I feel very fortunate to be surrounded by so many talented creative folks -hope more of it rubs off.

There are two items on the official Animax news page I thought I’d share.

Starlight Starbright Children’s Foundation, Legacy Interactive and Animax Entertainment today launched The Tuttles Madcap Misadventures: Starlight Starbright Charity Challenge (www.tuttlesfamilygame.com), a casual platformer style downloadable videogame that pairs having a good time with doing good. Call it ‘funraising.’ Animax wrote the script and directed the celebrity voice actors and helped conceive and create the game and animations. Actors William Shatner, Bob Saget, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ashley Tisdale, Dominic Scott Kay, Dave Coulier and Animax’s very own Dave Thomas contributed their voices to the animated game. Supporters can try the game at www.tuttlesfamilygame.com and purchase it for $19.99 with $15 of that amount coming back to Starlight to brighten the lives of seriously ill children and their families. Read the official press release here.

Animax relaunched the “Coping with Chemo” site for Starlight Starbright Children’s Foundation - the series of Flash animated webisodes helps kids who have cancer understand the physical, emotional, and social impact of chemotherapy treatment.

Now that I’m finally working at a studio I find I don’t have a daily stream of my own art to post. I figured I’d post a link to a pretty cool resource for those strange folks who have been visiting my blog - as many as 500 on some days according to the stats page.

For free music for your non-commercial projects (I used it for all of my student shorts) as well as a bunch of PDF paper generators to create things like storyboards, guitar fret position charts, calendars and plenty of other uses check out Incompetech by Kevin MacLeod. Great stuff.

I haven’t time to post much since I started working at Animax and figured I’d fire off a quick update.

I was hired a couple weeks ago to draw props, and do some illustration, but through a fortunate misunderstanding one of the project managers assigned me some animation. I worked on the new game at Keep Our Oceans Clean where I got to draw most of the trash items and do the swim/catch animation. I know, I know -simple- but considering I spent 30+ years doing other non-art stuff this was a lot of fun. As a result I was given a few other small animations do, along with some Photoshop work. I’ll post some news about the other animations as they go live.
It’s been stressful, but fun. Yes, I’ve discovered that all stress is not bad. The stress I feel now is a result of the things I need to learn and my desire to excel. Funny how this stress doesn’t wear me down but rather drives me forward. The work environment is also different than I expected. Being the senior citizen, in a room full of young artists who grew up with positive reinforcement, I find that everyone is relaxed, friendly and pretty darn cool. I do feel a bit like a dinosaur in a china shop, but I also feel myself starting to fit in.

Well, time to dash off to work - two hour commute to the studio, which strangely is less bothersome that the 20 minute commutes to the jobs I use to do. Have fun!

Here are a couple quick finds …

e-frontier has a contest with some cool prizes for Anime Studio (formerly Moho) posted here.

Filter Forge is an interesting procedural texture generating plugin for Photoshop. Those who are interested can use the demo version to create presets, and if three of your presets are rated popular by the community you can get a free copy of the product - a $300 value.

ColorWheelPro is a utility which may be of interest to those trying to create harmonius color schemes. It is usually $40 but if you provide a link back to them from your website you can get your copy for free.

This may very well become a common greeting in the future as

After six weeks of submitting resumees, checking out every online resource I could think of and pestering artists I finally got my first industry job. Woohee!! I’ll be starting at

That’s it for now. I’m feeling a little uncertain of what will come next, but I also feel grateful, happy and hopeful. Now to start down that path I missed the first time around …