Moved

One more short break from this prolonged period of move-related not-blogging, this time to let you know that we have moved, and as of Tuesday, June 9, we are once again residents of Los Angeles. Once we have furniture and get ourselves settled, the period of not-blogging will end, and regular blogging will resume.

Carry on.

-EB in L.A.

Fungus Among Us

A break from move-related not-blogging, to bring you the following piece of animation recently discovered on YouTube:



Fungus Among Us was a Cartoon Network pilot created in 2002 by Wes Archer, who was one of the original Simpsons directors, a director on Futurama - where I met him - and, for a long time, supervising director on King of the Hill. And I think he might be doing the same on the new Mike Judge show on ABC, The Goode Family, but don't quote me on that - I'll find out on Wednesday when it debuts.

When Cartoon Network greenlit the Fungus pilot, Wes was working at Rough Draft Studios on Futurama. He wanted some help with the script, so he turned to me and Rich Moore (supervising director on Futurama), and we aided him in fine-tuning things. This was a thrill for me, because this pilot was my first on-screen writing credit. After the pilot aired, CN put Fungus back into development, and we spent the next several months writing and re-writing several more pilots which never made it past the storyboard stage, and eventually, the network passed. Nevertheless, it was a great experience, and I learned an awful lot about the development process at the network level. And, perhaps most importantly, it taught me that you have to pick your battles, because I wanted to fight every change - and that's just not the way it works. Ah, the naivete of youth.

-EB

Elliot Blake, Where Have You Been?

Well, if you've been following my Twitter feed, you might be aware that we're gearing up for a big move back to Los Angeles. If you haven't been following my Twitter feed, well, we're moving back to Los Angeles, and all of the planning for the move and the selling of the house here in Atlanta, and the looking for a place to live in L.A, and the looking for a school for the boy and a pre-school for the girl have been eating into my blogging time.

I will post when the opportunity arises - I don't know if any of you out there are still dying to hear stories of Re\Visioned: Activision (viewable here and here), but I have not completely abandoned ship on that. In fact, here are some stills from the recording session with Dave Foley, Ed Begley Jr., and Nicole Sullivan:
Nicole Sullivan voicing the campfire in Pitfall.

Me directing. Next to me is casting director Dawn Hershey.

Ed Begley Jr. and I discussing a character.

Ed Begley Jr., a consummate professional.

Dave Foley, after I told him he couldn't have any more coffee. Okay, not really - he was voicing the confused chicken Ralph for the Freeway episode of Re:Visioned: Activision.

And finally, not related to my move or professional endeavours, a video from the award-winning documentary, "Playing For Change: Peace Through Music", totally worth watching, as it will remind you of the power of music:


Playing For Change | Song Around The World "Stand By Me" from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.

I came across this on John Rogers' Kung Fu Monkey blog, and it's really great.

That's all for now - updates when time allows.

-EB

Mekano Turbo! The Package!

For your enjoyment, the first page of MEKANO TURBO:
Created and drawn by Alexis Ziritt, written by me, headed for Popgun Vol. 4. Volume three of Popgun is out this week I believe, and sports a great cover by Tara MacPherson, who worked with me briefly at Rough Draft Studios back in the day.

And for your further enjoyment, page 1 of THE PACKAGE:
Created and written by me, illustrated by Ziritt, headed for the web later this year.

More updates when they're available!

Making of Re\Visioned: Activision - The Backstory

I've been promising this on Twitter for several days now, so let's get to it - a behind the scenes look at the making of each episode of Re\Visioned: Activision. But first, a little history:
Re\Visioned was created by my former boss at GameTap, Ricardo Sanchez, who thought it would be cool create some original animation based on existing videogame IP from the GameTap library. But rather than doing a straight adaptation of these games, Rick wanted to present new takes on the games, or as he put it, "revisioned." And when he added a backslash between "re" and "visioned," a title was born.

Initially, Rick wanted to hire great animators to spearhead the project, but given the budget and time restraints, he was willing to entertain other ideas - which is when I floated the notion of hiring comic book writers and artists to handle story and art, with the idea that those things could be handed off to an animation studio for production. He liked the idea, and then we all went back to what we were doing.

A few months later, Rick struck a deal with The Hero Initiative, a non-profit comic book industry group that raises money to help industry veterans who gave years to the business, often without a safety net or retirement plan. The Hero Initiative would provide scripts and art from a mix of popular current creators and respected veterans in need of work. Included in the group were writers Mark Waid, Paul Jenkins, John Ostrander, William Messner-Loebs, the late Steve Gerber, and Hero Initiative president Jim McLauchlin; and artists Dave Simons, Armando Gil, Joe Rubenstein, Flint Henry, Bob Hall, and Claude St. Aubin. A really talented bunch.

Scripts were written, designs were drawn. And then a decision was made at GameTap to move Re\Visioned: Tomb Raider, a more high-profile, super ambitious project intended to be season two of the series to the head of the line. The Activision project was put on the back-burner, and approved scripts and designs languished for close to a year.

When we finally did get back to Re\Visioned: Activision, the bar had been raised significantly by the quality and complexity of Re\Visioned: Tomb Raider, and while we had less money to throw at Activision, my executive producer, Chris Peeler, and I knew that we needed to find a way to live up to R:TR. With that thought in mind, we went back in to the Activision materials we had commissioned, and found that while we had a good project, some of the scripts were too modest in scope. After consulting with the boss, it was agreed that we would use the materials created by the Hero Initiative as a starting point...

More tomorrow.

-EB

At Last, Re\Visioned: Activision

I am pleased to announce that at long last, after spending a little more than a year in the can, Re\Visioned: Activision, the last web series I produced for GameTap.com, is available for your viewing pleasure. Apparently, the fine people at GameTap uploaded the six episode series - presenting new and original takes on the classic Activision games Pitfall, Cosmic Ark, Pressure Cooker, Kaboom, Freeway, and H.E.R.O. - on Thursday, which just happened to be my birthday. I don't think it was an intentional birthday gift, but after waiting for a year for this thing to be released, it certainly feels like a gift. I will write a more in-depth post about this project on Monday, but until then, please enjoy (all six episodes are available in the embedded player below, or you can view them bigger here):


-EB

Comics, Big Stack Of

Went to the comic shop yesterday with some birthday cash in hand and bought a big stack, which is always fun. But before I get into what I bought, I want to relate a little story about the store itself. While I was browsing the new releases, the manager and a staffer came over with the new order book and started trying to figure out what they should be ordering, by looking at what was on the shelves and counting what was left over. The manager actually said, "I wonder how many of those we actually sold?" This store is regarded as the best in Atlanta - possibly because it's the only one I can find inside the perimeter - and the manager didn't have any idea how much they were selling, which means that they were ordering in the dark. Before yesterday, I had not noticed the absence of a POS (point of sale) system, which means they're not using the bar codes on the comics, GN's, and various merchandise they sell to track their inventory. I am not a retailer, but I'm the son of one, and, really, you don't have to be the son of a retailer to realize this is a really bad way to manage your business. Comics retailer Brian Hibbs writes extensively about the benefits and insights gained from using a POS system in his column Tilting at Windmills, so if you're at all interested in this, it's worth checking out.

Now, to the fun stuff - here's what I bought:

• Captain America #48 - Ed Brubaker's run on Captain America has been outstanding, and the Butch Guice art on this arc is the best I've ever seen from him. Really great stuff. Killing off Steve Rogers and bringing back Bucky could have been hokey, but Brubaker's mastery of character has made this a compelling read every month for four years now, and that's quite an accomplishment.
• Daredevil #117 - Another great run on a book by Ed Brubaker, who for my money is one of the top three writers in comics. The Kingpin made his return last issue, and Brubaker, along with artist David Aja, showed us a side of Wilson Fisk that we've never seen. The great runs on Daredevil have always been less about the costume and more about the man inside it, and there's no character in comics with more drama in his life than Matt Murdock. Bad for him, but good reading for us, which is what it's all about.
• Black Lightning #6 - A good updating of the characters origin. I usually buy a comic for the writing, but this one was all about the art, and I don't think I've seen anything finer from Cully Hamner. (Who, in the interest of full disclosure, is a friend.)
• Fantastic Four #565 - I've really enjoyed Millar & Hitch's FF - it's no Ultimates, but it's been entertaining and typically full of big Millar ideas.
• Scalped #26 - One of the best comics currently being published, by writer Jason Aaron and artist R.M. Guera (although this issue is drawn by Davide Furno). Crime stories at their most brutal. I wrote about Scalped extensively here.
• Ex Machina Special #4 - Lost writer/producer Brian K. Vaughn's political fable set in New York, following the exploits of its mayor, the world's first and only superhero.
• Potter's Field: Stone Cold - A follow up to last year's Potter's Field miniseries by creators Mark Waid and Paul Azaceta. Solid crime/mystery comic.
• Batman: Battle for the Cowl #1 - I have to admit I was skeptical about this effort from writer/artist Tony Daniel, which is about the struggle to succeed Batman, who seemed to have perished at the end of Final Crisis. Not the best comics writing I've ever come across, but nevertheless, this was a lot of fun. If you're a longtime reader of superhero comics, it's easy to predict who's going to wind up as the next Batman, even when it's not accidentally leaked (all indications point to Dick Grayson), but the comics geek in me wants to see how it unfolds.
• Wolverine #71 - A continuation of the "Old Man Logan" storyline by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven. I've enjoyed it. It's nice to see Marvel do a story which is clearly a stand-alone, non-continuity piece, as part of the monthly series rather than a mini. Of course, there's plenty of in-continuity Wolverine to go around on a monthly basis...
• Wolverine Saga - A free offering from Marvel that appears to be a linear explanation of Wolvie's convoluted history.

A couple of comics fell off my list of regular titles I'm following, including New Avengers and Dark Avengers. I generally really like Brian Bendis' writing, but I'm burned out on these books. I don't really buy the Norman Osborn Dark Reign thing (I've explained why here), and I'm feeling like I've had enough of the Marvel U status quo-changing storylines, which is part of what has made Captain America and Daredevil really appealing. They may touch on this stuff, but they're not about it - they're about the characters, and that's why I keep buying them.

-EB