What I'm Thankful For

It's been an interesting year. It's not often that you lose a great job due to downsizing and then win awards for the work you did there, and then not find work for the next six months. But that's the position I find myself in. I could be crabby about it (and sometimes I am), but the truth of the matter is this: I'm a pretty lucky guy, and I have a lot to be thankful for this year. I'm especially thankful for all the support and encouragement I've received from my friends, my parents and siblings, and my former colleagues, many of whom are in the same boat I'm in, job-wise. I'd name names, but I'm likely to forget someone, so best to just say thanks - you know who you are.

But, first and foremost, here's what I'm most thankful for...



...my wonderful wife Laura, and my kids, Sam and Hannah. Laura's support and encouragement have been unwavering; it's a hell of a lot easier navigating this rough patch in my career knowing that my best friend and partner believes in me and what I'm doing. And Sam and Hannah? They just make me happy.

So, Happy Thanksgiving! Go gorge yourselves on turkey. I know I'm going to.

-EB

Comment on a Comment - Georgia Runoff

I got a comment today from someone going by the moniker "An American Idiot," sort of related to last week's post about the Georgia Senate Runoff election, and I felt like it was worth posting up front so I could respond:

Elliot you are a guy with too much time on your hands! One good reason to vote Republican in this runoff is to insure there IS the ability for the minority to have a voice. As we have seen Nancy Pelosi is not the most open minded person who has ever led the House. When one party controls everything you get group think. This is bad. Think about that when you are standing there ready to drop your vote. I have more on this topic on my blog @ http://anamericanidiot.wordpress.com/

Hi, An American Idiot - thanks for taking the time to comment. First, in response to your comment about "having too much time" on my hands, I can only assume you're referring to my "Mustaches I Have Admired" post. What can I say, I'm between gigs.

I also wanted to respond to your plea for me to vote Republican in next week's Senate runoff here in Georgia - not going to happen, and here's why:

1. I think Saxby Chambliss is a corrupt dinosaur who still believes in trickle-down economics, and I would have an exceedingly difficult time voting for a guy who engaged in really despicable campaigning the first time he ran for the Senate, smearing Max Cleland, a genuine war hero, as not being brave enough to take on Al Qaeda. Once upon a time, John McCain thought that was pretty disgraceful, too, but apparently not so disgraceful that he didn't mind putting in a couple of appearances here in Georgia on Chambliss' behalf over the last couple of weeks.
2. It's not my responsibility as a voter to make sure the minority party has a voice, it's my responsibility to vote my conscience; if enough people feel differently than I do, Chambliss wins, and the GOP has that extra hedge in the Senate. That's the way a democracy is supposed to work. This year, Republicans lost seats in the House and the Senate because people thought they have been doing a lousy job - and I agree with that, so why would I want to help them out, especially someone like Chambliss, who I believe is part of the problem?
   
3. I voted for Barack Obama, I believe in his agenda, and I'm not going to do anything to put an obstacle in his path.

One other thing - you mentioned Nancy Pelosi, and that she's not the "most open-minded person who has ever led the house." It's true, she's been as partisan as her Republican predecessor - but that has no bearing on this particular race. Here's something to consider - the new leader of her party, the President-elect, has made it pretty clear that this is not the time for partisan nonsense. He's setting a tone, and to further his policy agenda - one that Pelosi presumably agrees with - the Speaker of the House is going to have to adopt his tone, because he's going to need support from the other side of the aisle, as broad support is what's going to enable our recovery to get going.

One last thing to consider, as well - assuming that the Democrats do not get to sixty seats in the Senate, there are still going to be issues where the filibuster is busted, because there will be issues where two or three moderate Republicans will be willing to side with the Democrats to get business done.

That's how I see it, anyway.

Thanks for reading,
EB

Mustaches I Have Admired

Don't worry, I'm not going to grow one.

-EB

Chinese Democracy

Can a nation of more than a billion people ever truly be a democracy? And why does Axl Rose give a damn? And how can Guns'n'Roses be Guns'n'Roses without Slash? I assume the new album Chinese Democracy will sell, but more out of curiosity than anything else. Honestly, though - does anyone really care that this album came out, other than the apparently millions of people who are going to cash in on the free Dr. Pepper promo?

-EB

Deep Thought of the Day

On my way to pick up Sam from school today, I noticed a car festooned with bumper stickers expressing a certain political and lifestyle view - "Be a Vegetarian!", "Nice Truck, Buddy! Sorry About Your Small Pee-Pee.", "Kucinich '04", that sort of thing. It was really a case of vehicle as mode of expression, and I've seen it across the cultural spectrum, from NRA-W the President-Love It or Leave It pick-up trucks to ten year old Hondas covered with stickers for obscure goth bands. Which led me to the following:

Are blogs and Facebook pages the more verbose bumper stickers of the information super-highway?

I know - it's heavy, man. Heavy. (And you thought I was kidding when I said "deep thought" in the subject line...)

-EB

Big Website Update; Jeffrey Brown

As indicated in the title of this post, I made a big update to my website today, adding a section for my current projects, cleverly titled "Current Projects." Go there. Click on it. You'll be glad you did! I'd make a money back offer if you were to find the experience unsatisfying, but I'm not charging you anything to visit.

One of the projects you'll find on the Current Projects page is something I've been teasing off and on here, which we've decided to reveal - and if you're an indie comics fan, perhaps you've guessed, based on the post-semicolon portion of this blog entry's title, that it involves the amazing cartoonist Jeffrey Brown. We've put together a pitch for an animated show we're calling Jeffrey Brown's Sketchbook. We're hoping to find a home for it soon. Here's a small excerpt from the proposal (click for a larger view):
I think Jeffrey really captured the essence of my chest hair. More on this (Sketchbook, not the essence of my chest hair) as it develops.

-EB

The Map, One More Time

As I've previously mentioned, I am fascinated by the Google Analytics Map. Here's the latest, detailing the worldwide Elliot outbreak:
And as I've also previously mentioned, my wife is a data connoisseur; she deals with data every day, and is really interested in the visual representation of quantitative information to explain studies and provide context. So she was really in love with CNN's election map as operated by the map maestro, John King. It turns out Laura wasn't the only person into the map - so was The Daily Show's John Oliver (who once got his butt kicked, along with teammate John Hodgman, in charity scrabble tournament by my sister-in-law Elaine). But where Laura sees potential for good in the map, John Oliver sees...evil (worth watching):


That's today's map update.

-EB

Not People's Sexiest Man Alive...Again.

For the 17th year running, I have inexplicably been passed over by People Magazine for the title of Sexiest Man Alive, this time by this guy:That's Hugh Jackman, best known to comic book geeks as Wolverine of the X-Men. Yeah, he's a handsome guy, but I can only assume that I was not chosen because the editors at People did not see any pictures of me running along the beach without my shirt on, which happened a lot while I was in San Diego this past August. It's a travesty.

-EB

Memo to The Blogger Team Re: Comics Addiction

Dear Blogger Team:

I received your email about my other blog, Comics Addiction, being identified as a possible spam blog. As requested, I've submitted it for review, but just in case you investigate the other blogs in my Dashboard to determine the validity of Comics Addiction, I wanted to post something here to let you know it's not spam. I just haven't done anything with it yet. I've been considering starting a blog about comics, but I haven't figured out what the angle is, so I haven't started posting items to it yet - which I'm pretty is not a violation of Blogger's terms of service. Here are a couple of other blogs I've registered but not posted to yet: Nine Panel Grid and The Package. One is the news blog for my company, the other is an impending webcomic. Neither is a spam blog.

Thanks,
Elliot Blake

My Wife is Also Famous

My lovely wife Laura is the type of person who prefers not to have the spotlight on her, but today she was mentioned in the blog of the Teagle Foundation, a major foundation providing grants to educational institutions, including Agnes Scott College, where Laura works. Here's a link spotlighting Laura's professional awesomeness (along with that of Katherine Smith and her art and art history department colleagues). Why is this important? Because it shows what an excellent job she's doing for Agnes Scott, and gives her some much-deserved national attention in the higher education sphere. And it's nice to be able to put a spotlight on that.

-EB

The Map, Again

I really do find the ability to see where the hits for elliotblake.com are coming from to be fascinating. I added a continent since the last map post: South America, specifically, Argentina. Very cool. (Click map for larger view.)
I also checked the traffic for this blog, and yesterday, I got a hit from Beijing, which was a surprise. Either the person who wound up here from China was very interested in the Georgia Senate Runoff, or accidentally clicked on my blog instead of Elliott Gould's. Which could happen.

-EB

Georgia Sentate Runoff Election

Georgia has been in the news quite a bit lately, due to the runoff between incumbent Senator Saxby Chambliss (R), and his opponent, Jim Martin (D). The outcome of this runoff is important nationally because if Martin wins, it puts the Democrats one seat closer to having a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. I'm not going to get into the politics of this; instead, I bring it up because my friend Jim Wiseman, an associate professor of mathematics at Agnes Scott College, who studies the mathematics of voting and chaos theory, has written an outstanding op-ed piece in today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the problems with our electoral system. But it's not just about the problems - it's also about solutions, and Jim makes some excellent, reasonable suggestions that could probe beneficial to everyone who cares enough to vote. It's totally worth a read. So read it!

-EB

Two pitches...

...out the door to the network.

Keeping fingers crossed.

-EB

The Map

My lovely wife, a true data connoisseur, is very much in love with the touchscreen electoral map so ably navigated by John King on CNN, but now that the election is over, she's suffering from a little withdrawal. I mentioned in my last couple of posts the quantity of hits my website has received over the last few days - a teeny, tiny amount by commercial standards, but good for me - and where those hits have been coming from across the globe. So, for Laura, here's the map:
I think you can click the map for a larger view. What I like about it is all the dots, each representing a geographic location from which a hit originated. It looks like some kind of global Elliot outbreak, which my ego really digs. The bigger dots indicate a larger quantity of hits from that region, which is why the entire southeast of the United States is obscured by a giant dot representing the Atlanta metro area. Yesterday, I got a hit from Hong Kong. That's just cool.

-EB

Website Update

I updated elliotblake.com this morning to include the Jim Lee Talks... interview series I did for GameTap. Those videos have been available on YouTube for about a year now, but I thought they were worth aggregating in one place, now that GameTap has dispensed with all video programming.

If you have not seen these videos, but you're a fan of Jim Lee (he's a living legend amongst comic book artists if you're not a fan), they're worth checking out, as Jim talks about his artistic process and gives a tour of Wildstorm, his San Diego-based studio. He was a gracious host and an engaging personality, so producing these videos was a pleasure.

-EB

More On Google Analytics and Web Hits

Yesterday, I noted that thanks to Google Analytics, I knew that my website received 34 hits in about a week's time. Well, yesterday, I posted a "situation wanted" ad on the industry newsletter and website Cynopsis, and thanks to that ad (and my continuing networking on LinkedIn), elliotblake.com received 33 hits in one day. Which is more than double my previous record, which was something like 14 hits from Suwanee, Georgia a couple of days before I gave a workshop at the Decatur Book Festival. So the Cynopsis ad is working, I would say, and using Analytics is incredibly useful for determining where the hits are coming from. If you have a website, and you're curious about your traffic, I highly recommend this Google tool. (And they're not paying me to say that. Although they should.)

-EB

Project Updates

Before I get into the project updates portion of this entry, I just want to say a word about Google Analytics, which is a tool that helps you track website traffic. Using Google Analytics, I'm able to see how many hits my blog and websites get on a daily basis, where those hits are originating, and whether or not the hits came from a referring site, like LinkedIn or Facebook. This is just awesome, and here's an example of why: between November 4 and this morning, www.elliotblake.com, the site where all my produced work lives, received 34 visits from 25 cities in 9 countries - 7 hits from 5 countries this morning alone. The bulk came from here in the U.S., but I've also received hits from the U.K., Italy, Canada, India, Spain, France, Poland, and Finland. That's right, Finland. Apparently, I am an international superstar.

So, how does this tie in to the title of this post? Well, the vast majority of those hits came from a posting I left in a discussion forum on LinkedIn, looking for an artist for a webcomic project. I'm happy to report I've found the right artist for the job, a guy named Alexis Ziritt, who is a magazine illustrator, poster artist, storyboard guy, and a co-founder of Calavera Comics, a small publisher specializing in stories taking place where crime fiction and the Mexican masked wrestlers known as luchadores meet. Which is good, because my story is a piece of crime fiction that takes place, in part, in Mexico. He's got an amazing style - very European, with a touch of Paul Pope thrown in for good measure. Here's a taste:

From looking at his work, I think he's the perfect guy for the job, and I am really thrilled to have him on board. I will update you on our progress as we move forward.

In other news, I have in my hot little hands (actually, they're really not small, and it's about 65 degrees in the house, so they're not hot either) a tape containing all the interviews and b-roll shot a couple of weeks ago with Cully Hamner and the Gaijin Studios crew. I begin transcribing today. More on this as it moves forward as well.

-EB

p.s. I'm going to add some additional link content to the sidebar here on the blog, and I'll be adding a new section or two to my main website as well - one for new projects, and one to add the interview series I shot last year with Jim Lee at Wildstorm Studios. It's all on YouTube, so why not?

Draw Every Day For a Year. That's An Order.

My old pal Albert Calleros, whom I worked with at Rough Draft Studios back when I was a design coordinator and he was a storyboard guy, has a fascinating blog called Draw Everyday For a Year, where he does, in fact, post a new drawing just about every day. Albert is an animation director now, working on Fox's American Dad, and he's really just a phenomenally talented artist, able to work in a tremendous range of styles. He's up to Day 300 now, and it's hard not to admire what he's done. How I hate him.

Albert is also one of the creators of the yearly anthology comic Hot Mexican Love Comics, co-published and edited-in-chiefed by our mutual friend Ira Sherak. (Other Hot Mexican Lovers deserving of a shout-out include co-creator Larry Reynosa and the world's angriest Canadian, Bob Bowen. An entertaining blog detailing the convention exploits of the Hot Mexican Love crew can be found here.) The anthology features stories by some of the finest talents of the animation industry, some of whom happen to be friends of mine. Others are mortal enemies. Check it out!

-EB

Looking for a Comics Artist Collaborator

I have written the script for the first chapter of a webcomic which I'd like to submit to DC Comics' online comics venture, Zuda Comics. But I need an artist, one who can handle crime fiction. And finding a good one who can or will work on spec - i.e., for no money up front, just like me - is not easy, because odds are if an artist is good, he or she is getting paid for their work, and paid work has to come first. A quandary indeed. But, if you are a comics artist, or you know a comics artist who might be interested in working on a relatively low risk venture with an award-winning writer-producer (that's me), click on my profile to the right, hit the email link, and shoot me a message.

Thanks,

EB

Teasing a Project

Yesterday, I received a package from one of my favorite indie cartoonists, with whom I've been developing an animated series off and on for the last three-plus years. Over the summer, the development has been more on than off, and now I have in my hands the final art for the series proposal, which will be hand-delivered to the network sometime next week. To say that I am excited about getting this out the door is an understatement. When I can post a more formal tease of the project, I will.

-EB

File Under: From the Mouths of...

"Hannah - do you know who won the election last night?"

Her reply? "Rocko Bama!"

Godspeed, President-Elect Bama...

-EB

File Under: Kids Say the Darndest...

Today as we were pulling up the driveway, a clip of Barack Obama's speech from last night came on the radio. I turned and said to Sam, my five-and-a-half year old son, "Buddy, we did a great thing last night in electing Barack Obama. You're going to grow up in a United States where anyone can do anything, with no barriers--"

"--or vampires?" he interrupted?

"Um, right. No vampires."

"What would Barack Obama do if he saw a vampire? Would he kill it?"

"Um..."

Ah, to be five.

-EB

Live-Blogging Election Night: Relief

I am completely overwhelmed right now. This is a great thing for our country, and I pray that President-Elect Obama can be the great, transformational president that we need right now. I was really worried that somehow McCain would pull off an upset - but now I feel a tremendous sense of relief, and that we, as a country, have a real chance to climb out of the deep hole we're in. He's got a tremendous challenge ahead of him, and we have tremendous challenges ahead of us as a nation, so I hope we can all pull together after a hard-fought, sometimes nasty campaign, and support this man in moving our country forward.

Signing off,

EB

Live-Blogging Election Night: The Big Prognosticator

The results of Indiana not withstanding - still don't know the outcome as I type this - I am very surprised to be watching this man who blew me away with an inspirational speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention be on the verge of the presidency of the greatest nation on Earth. I said to Laura back then, whoever wins, this Obama fellow is going to be president one day. I remember trying to figure out when it would happen; if Kerry had won, I was thinking 2012, but if Bush won, I wondered if a guy so new to the scene would or could run in 2008. And sure enough, Bush won. And Obama ran. And now we're here. And CNN just projected he's going to be the 44th President of the United States. And I actually have tears in my eyes.

Wow.

Wow.

Thanks goodness.

-EB

Live-Blogging Election Night: Big Calls on the Way

California closing soon - six minutes as a I type this. Fifty-five electoral votes. It's getting really damn close.

-EB

Live-Blogging Election Night: John King and the Map

My wife, Laura, really loves that fancy map John King navigates and operates with such alacrity, and also is very appreciative of the way CNN has been talking about data, as she's a data connoisseur. Someone should get her one of those big interactive digital touchscreen whiteboards.

Kudos to you, John King!

-EB

Live-Blogging Election Night: Joe the Plumber

I guess his fifteen minutes are up.

Thank goodness.

-EB

Live-Blogging Election Night: Not Jumping the Gun

This from Josh Marshall of the outstanding Talking Points Memo blog:

A lot of states are still out. But with Pennsylvania, New Mexico and especially Ohio, this race is all but over. Obviously, if the networks projections are wrong in Ohio or PA, all bets are off. But assuming those calls stay in place, it's virtually impossible to see how McCain wins. He would have to win a big blue state to get back into the race. And I just can't see one on the map. There aren't any more available that were even remotely in contention. Things are looking extremely good for Barack Obama.

Good words of caution, worth heeding.

-EB

Live-Blogging Election Night: Hey, Ho, Where'd You Go...

...OHIO.

A little Pretenders for you there, loyal readers.

MSNBC, Fox, and just now CNN have projected Ohio for Obama! Absolutely huge. I know I was waiting on Indiana to call the election, but that's why I'm not on television right now. With Ohio in Obama's column, I don't see how McCain wins this thing. Also, my three-year-old daughter was firm in her prognostication that Barack Obama will win tonight, so that pretty much seals it. Hannah calls it for Obama.

I won't sleep, however, until there's 270 securely in the Obama column.

Still. WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

-EB

Live-Blogging Election Night: Beer!

...is making me tired.

-EB

Live-Blogging Election Night: Georgia, Part 2

Okay, so Georgia has been projected as going to McCain - not a surprise. But the county by county maps on the NYTimes are very interesting; right now, overall, it's 60%-30% McCain, but if you look at Fulton and Dekalb counties, it's 60%-30% Obama. That's 'cause we're heavily African-American in these counties, and also heavily pinko.

Still waiting to make my projection.

-EB

Live-Blogging Election Night: Georgia

This is the first election where Laura and I have lived in a state that wasn't reliably blue, and it's nice to know that our votes may actually count this year - not that I'm counting on Obama winning Georgia, but I'd like to see it happen. In the meantime, we're sitting here with our laptops, clicking on the state results on the New York Times website, and looking for the Dekalb and Fulton county results, waiting to see those counties turn blue. Yes, we're geeking out here.

I'm getting ready to call the election - just waiting on the results from Indiana, which are trickling in. The networks are all saying Pennsylvania is key to denying McCain victory, but I think it's Indiana. Or Virginia. Or North Carolina. Or...

-EB

Live-Blogging Election Night: DirecTV Election Mix

Right now I'm watching 8 channels of election coverage on DirecTV's Election Mix channel, which ROCKS! Now I can know when to switch back to CNN for John King and the map (which my lovely wife is geeking out on), and MSNBC, so I can see when Rachel Maddow comes on. I've always wanted picture-in-picture, but never had it - now I want eight channels at once. All the time. Election Overdose!

-EB

Live-Blogging Election Night: Projections

With 0% of the precincts reporting, elliotblake.blogspot.com is now projecting that Virginia is making me nervous, and that I'm going to have a beer.

-EB

Live-Blogging Election Night: CNN

Mary-Grace, Randy, this is for you - Live-Blogging Election Night!

Wolf Blitzer was just hyping "something never done on television", with CNN's Jessica Yellin, and I said to Laura, "Are they beaming her in?" And sure enough, that's more or less what they did, complete with Star Trek Original Series visual fx (but no sound effects), beaming in a hologram of Jessica Yellin, who's in Chicago, to the New York studio. Impressive. Nerdy. Necessary? I'm curious to know if Wolf was actually seeing the hologram as presented live to viewers in the studio, or if he was seeing the effect on a monitor. Appropriately, Yellin said she felt like Princess Leia, but certainly Wolf Blitzer is not our only hope.

More to come.

-EB

I Just Hung Up on John McCain

Well, it turns out the robocalls aren't going to end until the fat lady votes. John McCain just called to campaign in my ear for a moment, and I hung up on him, as it turns out I voted more than a week ago, and it wasn't him I voted for.

Finally!

It's election day. If you haven't voted already, please go do so. (Although I'm fairly certain that my regular audience of 10-15 people are not in need of any reminders.)

I know I'm not the only person in the country to be relieved this day is finally here. I'm staying away from the television coverage until the polls start closing today, and then I expect I'll be glued. Apparently Direct TV is going to have a "election mix" channel, with the screen split into six boxes featuring coverage from the broadcast networks, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and one screen splitting time between BBC America and Comedy Central. That's probably what I'll be watching. One last hardcore mainlining of election news before I go cold turkey.

I will admit to being on pins and needles today. I'd like to see an Obama victory, and while many of the pundits and news organizations and analysts seem to think that's the likely outcome, I'm not going to believe it until it actually happens - if there's one thing I've learned working in the entertainment business, it's that you take nothing for granted, and that no such thing as a done deal until the check has actually cleared and the funds are securely deposited in your account, a metaphor which I think is easily extended to presidential election politics.

More later, I'm sure.

-EB

Confessions: Weird Al

When I was at GameTap.com, I had the privilege of co-creating, with the whip-smart and talented Chris Jordan, a little show called Confessions, which was an intentionally crudely animated program featuring people's tales of videogame-related woe. Including the pilot, we made seven episodes, under the more-than-capable stewardship of writer/producer/professional funnyman Dave Drabik, who has written for comedy greats David Letteman, Jay Leno, and Bill Maher, and who was brought in to help with Confessions because I was swamped with the Re\Visioned: Tomb Raider show. There are a couple of Confessions episodes written by yours truly up on my website; all-in-all, it was an enoyable experience.

Not long before the plug was pulled on GameTap TV at the end of May, I was tasked with making one final episode of Confessions, this one with a special guest star: Weird Al Yankovic, who, if I remember correctly, was supposed to be the GameTap Artist of the Month for June. GameTap TV was pulled off the website sometime in June or July, so I honestly couldn't tell you whether or not the Weird Al programming happened, but I can tell you that we finished and delivered the Weird Al episode of Confessions before we were shown the door. I was poking around YouTube today, looking to see what GameTap TV programming was still floating around the web, and much to my surprise, I found the Weird Al Confessions, capably written by my occasional writing partner Carl LaPan, produced by me, directed by John Henshaw of Turner Studios, and featuring the actual voice of Weird Al Yankovic. There's a strange video glitch in the YouTube encode, but I embed the episode here for your viewing enjoyment:



-EB

When I Bite Into a York Peppermint Patty...

...I bite into a York Peppermint Patty.

It's good, but I wish it were as transcendent experience as they'd have you believe.


That is all.

-EB

A Day at Gaijin Studios

I mentioned last week that I was finally getting to a project I'm pretty excited about, and while I don't want to give away too much in the way of details, I can tell you this much: interviews for the pilot episode of a new show I've cooked up with my co-producer, the talented and award-winning Will Payne (also late of GameTap/Turner Broadcasting), were shot last Thursday at the offices of Gaijin Studios, one of the premiere creative studios in the comic book industry. Here's Will and I with Cully Hamner (center), the comic book artist best known for the new Blue Beetle at DC Comics and the mini-series Red with writer Warren Ellis, which was recently optioned for a film:
Cully and his studio-mates - Brian Stelfreeze, Laura Martin, Tony Shasteen, and Doug Wagner - kindly allowed us to invade their space for a day, and they really couldn't have been more gracious if they tried. Here's what I can tell you about the pilot: it was shot in HD, and we had a jib arm, allowing for some really smooth camera shots. I think it's going to look great, and it's definitely going to be interesting. More will be revealed as the project comes together.

-EB