Emmys!

Last Friday night was a big night!

They pile up all the trophies on stage, like pirate booty!

This was the sign on my chair. I read it less as a seating assignment than an affirmational message. I'm going to start putting them on my friends chair's too.

This is the category I won:

It's the one category that you know you've won ahead of time, so I practiced my speech over and over and over again... For a week! - But the second I stepped on stage, my mind went blank! Thank goodness I made a cheat sheet with everybody's name on it. I'd post a picture of the notes to show you that they actually said, "WIFE," because I knew I'd forget. (I have in the past!) I swear, those stage lights take away 50 IQ points as soon as they hit you.

This is me, hugely relieved that I remembered to thank everybody. Whew!

Grave Escape Pt 2

One great thing about digital storyboarding is that it makes it easy to experiment with lighting. The shading and color effects can be added on a separate layer behind the line art, so if they don't work out they can easily be deleted without damaging the original.

It's easy to get carried away and over render your panels. But on the flip side - you can also use tones to pull masses together out of very rough sketches

I'm just starting to get my feet wet here - but by later episodes I really dove in. Hope you like them.

Grave Escape Pt 1

First boards done 100% in Photoshop

One of our best episodes. Some of my best work. Some of everyone's best work, I think.

Animated in Hollywood, USA - by the great 6 Point Harness Studio.

El Tigre Wins!

Holy Cow! El Tigre won the Annie last night for Best Television Production for Children!



To stand on the same stage as three of my biggest animation heroes, Brad Bird, John K and Glen Keane...Unbelievable!



Here's what I wanted to say last night, but forgot the instant I stepped up to the podium:

An award like this belongs to the entire crew, so I'd like to thank everyone - both at home and abroad, who worked so hard to make something we can all be proud of.



I would like to give a special thanks to our friends at Boulder Media for giving us the best animation on TV.



Also a special thanks to Shawn Patterson for his beautiful music.

A big thank you to Tim Yoon, the World's Greatest Line Producer.



And a big thank you to Jorge and Sandra for letting us not just work on, but really be a part of their wonderful creation.

A few pictures:

Sandra, Jorge, Me and Tim Yoon - World's Greatest Line Producer!

World's Toughest Composer Shawn Patterson!

Me, Annie Nominated super genius animator Monica Kennedy, her friend, Annie winner Sandra Equihua, and DOUBLE Annie winner Jorge Gutierrez!

La Tigressa

La Tigressa is a Frida driven story - so direction wise, I didn't want it to feel like a Manny driven episode. Frida's personality is a bit more aggressive than Manny's, so I attempted to reflect that in the pacing and shot choices of the cartoon.

A big inspiration was Paul Greengrass, director of the Bourne Identity and the Bourne Supremacy. He created a sort of impressionistic style of editing action sequences. They move so quickly you can't tell exactly what's going on - so what you're left with is a feeling.

That's what I was attempting to do in the montage sequence of La Tigressa. Not just simply, literally, illustrating what she did with her new found powers - but trying to convey her feeling of exhilaration through the editing.

Wether it was successful, I don't know. But that was the theory anyway! And it was an awful lot of fun.

Yellow Pantera

You may have heard that Nickelodeon has decided not to make anymore El Tigre's for the time being.

Our ratings didn't justify the budget, so that's that.

My only real regret of the series is that I didn't get to work on more scripts by Scott Kreamer. Episodes like Yellow Pantera are the reason I feel this way.

Scott thinks visually, which makes boarding from his scripts a pleasure. On top of that

he's really funny. And even better than that, his humor is character based.

But one of my favorite moments of Scott Kreamer writing isn't funny, or particularly visual. It's the argument with Rodolfo, when Manny calls his father a coward. In the Miracle City universe, this is about the worst thing you can call someone. Rodolfo loses control of himself for just a second. And in this moment of rage he terrifies Manny. And after recomposing himself, Rodolfo instantly feels regret.

It wasn't an easy thing to convince the studio that what their network needed was more parents yelling at their children. But to their credit, they trusted us, and I think we played it well. A little humor was added to lighten it, but it still plays pretty honest. To me that's the mark of some pretty good writing.

Puma Licito

My back was against the wall on this one. I dug down deep and came up with...Nothing. A handfull of stiff drawings, some shots I'd done before, and a couple of ripoff shots from better films.

What do you do when inspiration deserts you? I get really selfish with my insprations - spend a fortune at the comic book shop - and watch a ton of dvd's. After this board I think my comic shop guy added a new wing to his house, and Blockbuster had to close early.

Oh well - as the saying goes - fail, fail again, fail beter.