THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Working on getting the show done.  It’s going well so far.  I’m doing well so far.

Late Thursday of last week, we discovered that this show is the 64th or 65th Simpsons show (I forgot which) the director I’m working with has directed. That’s a TON of shows.  Most TV shows don’t ever even get to do that many shows done much less have have one guys actually direct that many.  Wow. No other director on this show has directed so many.

FAMILY

Happy Birthday to my little boy Dante.  He turned two this weekend on the 31st of January.  For his birthday, we took him to a restaurant located in the Disneyland Hotel called Goofy’s Kitchen.

We weren’t sure what it was going to be like and we kinda made the arrangements late Thursday. We realized we had to make a reservation and we weren’t sure if we would get it on the day and time we wanted. It was late enough in the night that we didn’t want to spend the next couple of hours calling people to see if they could make it.  We were going to go only the four of us but at the last minute decided that maybe my parents might be able to go. We didn’t want it to be a party thing. We thought we would invite people over to our house instead and make the restaurant thing something small.

My parents said they could make it and I quickly made reservations for 11:30 am.

Next day we made our way to Anaheim. We got free Valet parking and made our way to the restaurant.  My parents showed up a few minutes after I payed and we all got seated but not before we got our picture taken with Chip from Chip and Dale.  The thing that made me want to bring Dante to the restaurant was  the fact that  Disney characters walked around and hung out with you as you ate.

Dante and Munchkin LOVED it. Goofy, Pluto, Chip, Baloo the bear and even Princess Jasmine, walked by and said hello to them.  They loved the food too, which was buffet style.  Dante didn’t stop smiling the whole time.  At one point during Munchkin got up and danced along with Goofy with all the other kids. It was great fun.

I couldn’t afford another trip to Disneyland but I still wanted to give Dante a little bit of that experience.  This restaurant was the next best thing.

Later in the day, we had family and friends come over for his “official” birthday party.  There were so many kids running around our house, we barely saw Dante.  He was having so much fun playing with his cousins and friends.  We can truly say from the perpetual smile on his face:

ART

Next week, I’m going to be putting up some of my clean up pencils, of one of my favorite projects to have worked on, in the for the Simpson comics. I drew it years ago. Here’s a preview of what you can expect.

MY WEB COMIC

I really don’t mean to get in on the band wagon. I’ve been thinking a lot about my next personal project, after I’m done with my comic (which is coming along great). What I want to do is a Jim Lujan inspired “Ghettomated” cartoon.  In other words, a colored animatic. The thing is, I’m not going to use my  Black Terror Kid character. I was going to try out something else.

What I was in the mood for was a comedic “Pulp” action hero. I’m really somewhat into pulps right now.  I think it’s because just about everyone else in the world seems to be into them too.  Alan Moore has been writing them for a few years now, I’ve been reading Robert E. Howard’s Conan, the very popular tabletop role-playing game Spirit of the Century let’s you create and play out a pulp character, I’ve also owned the tabletop role-playing game Pulp Hero book for years now,  Star Wars The Clone Wars (TV Series) is basically a sci fi pulp show, the new Immortal Iron Fist, comics read like a pulp story, DC is now coming out with their new pulp heroes universe called “First Wave“…etc. You get the idea.  I think all this stuff has gotten into my brain and made me want to do one too. Even though I didn’t think I was getting influenced by them as much as I have.

So here I am, thinking I was being original, coming up with a spoof on pulps when EVERYONE is writing pulps. So I’m just going to be a “me too”.  But then again, my comic is about a superhero so it’s not like that’s very original either.

I think my take will be a fun one though.  I also have a Swords and Sorcery style story that I’m going to be working on as well since I like Conan so much. I think my take on it will be unique so I’m looking forward to working on it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about these things.  I’m very excited.  I’m planning on writing VERY short stories for all these things.  Snippets of stories. That way I can get them out of my system without them getting tedious.

VIDEOS

Time for some videos.

This first one is J.J. Abrams (director of the new Star Trek movie, and creator of Lost, among other things) talking about storytelling and the “Mystery Box”:

These next two are some new comic book animated movies that are out or will be out soon that I’m really interested in watching:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf13JRZKspM

And last, I’m putting a link here for a site that has some great video of John Romita Sr., Joe Kubert, John Busceman, Bill Sienkiewicz, Dave Gibbons and Travis Charest DRAWING:

http://www.fanboy.com/2008/03/comic-book-artists-in-action.html

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