Ray Chase: animator-boy

Foombi

2011-05-21T21:08:00.004-05:00

Man oh man have I been busy and as such my poor blog has been severely neglected. What have I been doing you ponder? Well animation wise I has been super colossal busy working on projects I can't really speak of yet under penalty of death.....ooooo mysterious. But I have also been super busy working on a app for iPhone/iPod with some buddies: Animation Trivia: Disney Edition

Over 1000 questions with 3 different levels of difficulty and two modes of game play. Over 200 True and False questions, beautiful original artwork, original music........ I get goosebumps just typing about it. We would love for everyone to check it out, give us a rating/review and tell all their friends to do the same. A lot of blood, sweat, tears, love and more blood went into creating this app and we hope everyone enjoys it.

And we'd love to hear your feedback, comments, suggestions as well: visit us at www.foombi.com
We are also on the Facebook and the Twitter, if you'd like to like us, friend us and/or stalk us. And ya know....we'd love you to do all three.

Ok, now that the infomercial is over let me mention that I saw Pirates 4 last night and thought it was a lot of fun. Not as good as Black Pearl but still fun. We saw it in 3D which I swore I would not do anymore. And let me again swear that I will not watch films in 3D ever again! The projection was dark to begin with (a buddy complained to no avail) and once the glasses were on it was like watching a black and white film. Booooooooo to you!

Open Season 3 reel

2011-02-05T12:11:00.004-06:00

I posted some of my shots from Open Season 3 on the Animation page under DVD. OS3 is available on DVD and Blu-ray right now!!

Walt Disney World Marathon

2011-01-15T17:00:00.019-06:00

In 1995, while vacationing in Disney World, I became aware of the Walt Disney World Marathon; the first was held in '94. I lamented how cool it would be to run a marathon through the parks of Disney World. Over the next 15 years I would occasionally mention how much I wanted to run the marathon, but never did I take any steps to make it happen. I am proud to say that last weekend I ran and finished the 2011 Walt Disney World Marathon.

The marathon started at 5:30am in front of Epcot. I had read several accounts of previous marathoners that the traffic getting into Epcot the morning of the race can be hellish and that staying on property and using Disney transportation was the way to go. And this is what I did. My parents got me a room at the Polynesian which is near Magic Kingdom and is right next door to the monorail station.

The night before the race I didn't get much sleep. I tried to go to bed early but Magic Kingdom's fireworks kept me awake and then general anxiety did the rest. I got maybe 3-4 good solid hours. Again I had read the key is to get a lot of sleep in the days leading up to the race, in case you lie awake the night before.

The run started at 5:30 am and I was up at 2:30am; so weird to be getting up that "early". After getting myself ready and going to the bathroom...a lot, I left the hotel for a short walk to the monorail and was on my way.

The set up in the parking lot of Epcot was pretty nice and well organized. I didn't check a bag but the bag check seemed much better than the Wine and Dine. After going to the bathroom two more times it was time to head to the start which was a long slow walk out to Epcot Center Drive. Man it felt like we were walking forever. Oh and did I mention it was cold? Not freezing cold (that was the 2010 WDW Marathon..20 some degrees at start..brrrr)but in the 40's and breezy. When we finally arrived at the corrals I noticed several runners heading off to the nearby brush for a last minute..potty break. I looked around "hey...people are peeing...no one seems to care?...ok". Apparently running a marathon gives you leeway to pee in public.....so I did too. I mean hell, why not right?

There were 8 corrals and I was in the 5th..corral E. Unlike the Wine and Dine I could see the start so when the race began and there were fireworks and fire, I could see it all. There was an overpass behind us and shortly after all the hooplah in front of us there were fireworks and fire shooting off the overpass behind us as well. Everyone seemed surprised and it was pretty cool having pyrotechnics going off all over the place.

Unlike the Wine and Dine and other previous WDW marathons, they did a wave start with about 2 minutes between waves. Our corral approached the start, they gave us a 10 second count down and with music and pyrotechnics blasting we were off!

The Clif Bar 5 hour pace team was a little ways in front of me and I figured if I could keep line of sight on them I would be good. We went down Epcot Center Drive then turned to pass through the Epcot Toll Plaza then on up to the park. As we entered Future World I noticed some runners peeling off to use the park bathrooms. Standing out in the cold and having a bladder the size of a pea, I did need to go. I figured I'd be better off stopping and starting at mile 2 than at mile 20 so I zipped into the restroom for a quick pit stop. This would be my only stop the enter run.

Back into the fray I quickly caught up to the Clif Bar pace team as we entered World Showcase. It was really cool being the only ones in the park. The Christmas decor was still up and it was just nice running through there; quiet and peaceful. We exited World Showcase between Norway and China, I think, through some of the backstage area making our way back to Epcot Center Drive. Next stop: Magic Kingdom.

My least favorite thing about the Disney marathons are the banked roads. Anytime you come down off an overpass or god forbid up onto an overpass, you are running on banked pavement and man oh man there is just no flat spot. When we exited Epcot Center Drive onto World Drive, the big circle ramp down was not loved by my legs at all. My legs never really hurt mind you, but they felt really weird. Odd pressures being applied because of the slanted road.

At some point here I passed the 5 hour Clif Bar pace team. I thought "this might not be a good thing", but I couldn't exactly turn around and go find them. Onward!

As we headed up to Magic Kingdom I thought I was hallucinating because I saw Spaceship Earth in the distance. What the hell, we just left Epcot! It was actually a Epcot hot air balloon that was anchored...whew! Worried me for a second. Pretty much every half mile or so there was something to see. Characters you could get a picture with, actors from the park, parade floats, high school bands, lots and lots of on course entertainment.

We zip zagged a bit through Magic Kingdom's parking lot up through the Transportation and Ticket Center (monorail station). As we approached the TTC I was a little overwhelmed by how many people were out cheering us. It was early and cold and I didn't expect that many people to be out, but there they were. I had told my parents to hang out here if they wanted to see me and I did see them (and them, me) as we ran through the TTC and up to the park.

We entered the Magic Kingdom by Tony's Restaurant and made a right up Main Street. The right side of the street was coned off for runners while lots and lots of people lined the left. We made a right into Tomorrowland, running into Fantasyland and out through Cinderella's castle. Out of the castle it was a right into Liberty Square then through Frontierland and out the backstage (parade exit) next to Splash Mountain. They had a pirate ship float parked back there with Jack Sparrow, Barbossa, several more pirates and movie music blasting. It would have been cool to stop for a picture.

Many people were stopping for pictures throughout the run. This one guy was in a spandex Incredibles outfit. I would see him standing in line to see Chicken Little or Goofy, then he would blast past the rest of us on to the next photo op. Unfortunately for me, once I have racked up several miles I can no longer stop running and then start again. I can't even walk and then run. So no photo ops for me.

Leaving Magic Kingdom is was on to Animal Kingdom. I had read that this was the "worst" part of the run; there's not much to look at for about 4 miles and that this leg of the run feels long. Honestly it was not too bad, although somewhere between 15-16 miles I started thinking about how much further I had to go. Bad idea. If you think about it too much you will mentally psych yourself out; which started to happen a little.

Coming through the backstage area of Animal Kingdom we past a wonderfully smelly garbage plant and/or sewage plant. Mmmm boy that's what I want to smell right about now! Yuck! Seems like we entered Animal Kingdom around Kilimanjaro Safaris and headed left towards Everest. A cast member was out in front of Everest telling runners that the ride was open if anyone wanted to ride. Several peeled off to ride the coaster, but if I had sat down at that point I would have never gotten up. By now the parks were starting to open and guests were appearing in the park. Yay more spectators!

Leaving Animal Kingdom the course became very similar to the Wine and Dine as we got out onto Osceola Parkway heading towards the ESPN Wide World of Sports. Getting closer to mile marker 20, I was starting to feel it. I didn't hurt and I didn't feel wiped out, but goddamn we've been running a long time. The 5 hour Clif Bar pace team passed me and I wondered if I should speed up. I have NEVER run more than 21 miles and I was a little worried that if I tried to push, I might flame out at mile 24. I decided that it wasn't important to "hit the gas" and to just focus on finishing.

Passing mile marker 21, I entered unknown waters. This was now the farthest I had ever gone. Only 5 more miles. No problem.....right? I knew I had slowed down my pace, hence the pace team pacing me, but in general I felt ok, just getting tired. We entered the Studios behind the Tower of Terror and ran through the backstage area, emerging on New York Street. We reached the beginning of New York street and made a left onto Commissary Lane, then it was down Hollywood Blvd to the front of the park. Lot's of hooplah and people cheering; it was pretty awesome.

The run back to Epcot was just like the Wine and Dine. I had passed mile marker 23 at the Studios and it felt like hours before I reached mile 24. Where is it!! For the love of god where are you mile 24! We entered Epcot between Canada and the United Kingdom and made a right. Oh fantastic...nice big incline to get over to France. In my mind I surmised that this was the last hill, which made me very, very happy.

As we left World Showcase I heard someone say "hey we were just here 5 hours ago". Yeah I guess we were..lol. On to Future World and the end was getting near. I had passed mile 25 somewhere in the countries so mile 26 was getting close. I heard a runner say "it's only a half mile now!", which made me very, very happy. We could start to hear cheering and the DJ and I think everyone was getting pumped. I rounded a turned and after a moment I could see the beginnings of the crowd.

I started to get a little emotional at this point. It was all rather overwhelming. I had thought for so long that I would never be able to do this. As I've gotten older NOT running this marathon had become something of a regret. Even 6 months ago it didn't seem like a possibility. Now I was about to finish it, running the whole way just like I wanted.

I pulled myself together, figuring that I would not be able to run if I was blubbering like a baby and how embarrassing would that be to flame out .5 miles from the finish.

I ran as hard as I could that last half mile. I crossed the finish line with a chip time of 5:10:53. As soon as I stopped running.. my thighs felt like there were about to explode. OMG they hurt! I received my medal and slowly walked to the food tent to get some snackies, then on to meet my parents.

Later in the day, thinking back on the run, it almost seemed like a dream. Holy crap did I really do that? My aching legs reminded me "YES! Yes you did...we hurt!"

As with the Wine and Dine, the volunteers were fantastic. A big thank you to all of them and to my parents for coming out so early in the cold. This is only my 3rd run (did the Dallas White Rock Half in December) but I think it's definitely my favorite. They have this thing called the Goofy Race. If you run the Half on Saturday (Donald medal) and the Full on Sunday (Mickey medal) then you get a third medal...a Goofy! That's 39.3 miles in two days. You'd have to be freakin Goofy to try it and next year, I think I just might be :)

Shrek 4 commercial

2010-12-22T11:04:00.003-06:00

This is a McDonald's commercial I worked on for Shrek Forever After. I animated Shrek and Donkey only.

Looney Reel

2010-12-19T23:10:00.006-06:00

My shots from the theatrical Looney Tunes shorts can be found on the Animation page under Film. This a larger version than the YouTube version below. It was an honor and a privilege to work with these classic characters.

On Stranger Tides -teaser

2010-12-13T16:52:00.000-06:00

Rabid Rider Clip

2010-11-28T19:40:00.002-06:00

Here's a clip from our next Looney Tunes short! It will play in front of Yogi Bear.

Disney Wine and Dine Half Marathon

2010-10-07T17:00:00.004-05:00

This past weekend I ran my first ever half marathon. The event took place at 10pm Saturday night at Walt Disney World.

Saturday afternoon, my brother and I went to the Expo to pick up my race packet. Then it was off to the All Star Movies Resort to check in. After figuring out where we would meet at the Epcot after party, my brother went home and I got ready for the run.

Because of road closures for the race, runners needed to be at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex (the start of the race) by 8:30pm. Since I was a little nervous about missing the bus and hence missing the race, I got there at 7:30pm, an entire 2 and half hours before the run was to begin. What to do what to do. Well, there really wasn't much to do other than sit on the ground and watch all the pre-race festivities which included a DJ trying to get runners to dance. Ok if you want to wear yourself out you go right ahead and dance your little hearts out.

Along one side of the field where we all gathered, was an army of porter potties. Seriously, if they were to have come to life they could have easily massacred everyone...there was A LOT of them. As 9pm drew near, I knew that we would start lining up soon so I headed over to use the bathroom. Each potty had a line ten people deep. Yay!

Since I had not run a race in 12 years I had no proof of time, so I was scheduled to be in the last corral, Corral D. Once in the corral, I noticed some runners weaving their way to the front of Corral D which was a good idea seeing as how we were sorta far back. I followed their lead and ended up almost at the front of D, back of C. Excellent Smithers.

It's now 9:30pm and I'm starting to get a little anxious. People who know me, know of my pea size bladder and even though I had just gone to the bathroom no less than 10 minutes ago, I now questioned if I needed to go again. I told myself "it's ok...it's no problem....it will be dark...if I have to go, I will just go and no one will be the wiser". Even though I had no intention of peeing myself as I ran, I thought this might fool my bladder. It didn't seem to be working so I played Angry Birds on my iPod to take my mind off it.

The wheelchair participants got a 2 minute head start and then it was our turn. With a blast of fireworks (that I couldn't see) the race began! Annnnnd heeere weeee stood....and stood...for at least 5 minutes. Then we began walking to the start. It must have been about a 1/4 mile walk. Finally the starting archway was in sight and the excitement was building. Crossing the start I began to run and nearly ran into a wall of walkers. Seriously? You're not even going to try to run the first mile?! Got around them and then more slow pokes. I started to get frustrated and did something I thought was brilliant. I left the road and went up on the grass. FREEDOM! A few other runners followed my lead and we were blowing by people. It was actually rather exhilarating because I felt like the Flash or something. Maybe these people were starting slowly, I don't know but I was whooshing past them.

The plan seemed to be fool proof until I stepped into a small divet and felt my left leg drop a bit and my foot point down. Ouchie. Boy I hope THAT doesn't come back to bite me in the ass. I decided I needed to get back on the road and did so quickly.

Aside from an 8K nearly 12 years ago, I have no experience running in a group of people. It is just, a little "different". I found myself constantly looking for a window to jump ahead of people. Slowing a bit to weave around this one or judging whether there was enough room between runners for me to squeeze through. It was kind of fun actually, but required a lot of concentration. I was very aware of my fellow runners though. I didn't want to clip anyone or cut anyone off and aside from some light shoulder grazing I didn't bump or push anyone.

Along the trip down Osceola Parkway, floats from Magic Kingdom's Spectro Magic were set up with photo ops with characters like Chip and Dale; heard Goofy came out later...blast I missed him!! When I stop running my body says "oh we must be done" and starts powering down. So while many runners were enjoying the fun and stopping for pictures, there was just no way I could.

The first several inclines where no problem and allowed me to get ahead of a few runner clusters. Training around my house where its hilly certainly came in handy. I wisely brought my own water bottle with Gatorade as the first water stop was insane with people slowing if not stopping all over the place. The crowded course would continue for several more miles.

My bladder began insisting it needed to be emptied. I told it to shut the hell up. It responded by giving me mild lower abdomen discomfort...for the whole damn run. Bladder..I hate you.

Animal Kingdom was the first park we ran through. I really love this park at night but found that since I was still in a packed crowd and eyeing opportunities, I couldn't really enjoy the surroundings as much as I hoped. There were several tight spots where we all nearly came to a full stop. Various cast members and volunteers lined the course cheering us on. Elements from the Animal Kingdom parade were visible along the course as well.

Leaving Animal Kingdom it is was back down Osceola Pkwy. The Spectro floats were still out, as well as some musical entertainment. Around mile 8 my left ankle started to hurt. What the hell is wrong with my ankle? This never happens to me. I honestly had no idea why it was hurting (duh) but was thrilled that the crowd seemed more open.

Making our way down onto World Drive, a green army man from Toy Story yelled at us to "Take that hill!" and sure enough we were coming up on a dimly lite incline. My ankle did not seem to like this at all. The fact that the road banked as we went up and then down to World Drive, did nothing to help. My bladder suggested that perhaps the ankle would feel better if we stopped ....and oh hey we could use the potty. I pretended I didn't hear that and kept on trucking.

My plan had been that once I hit the Studios I would kick it hard for the last 4 miles. But my ankle would have none of it. Other folks must have had the same plan as several runners started to pass me. We entered the Studios behind the Tower of Terror. Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl greeted us, with music from the film blasting; pretty cool. We ran in front of the Rock N Roller coaster and then in front of the Tower. As we hung a hard right to double back through the queue of Fantasmic a volunteer yelled "Hill coming up on your right!". And it was a nice steep incline. My ankle screamed, I whimpered and my bladder laughed.

We ran all over the Studios and even though my ankle was feeling worse and worse this was my favorite part of the run. The course took us past Toy Story Mania where Woody was out front waving at us. Then we went through part of the back lot tour and ended up on the floor of the Lights, Motor, Action! Stunt Show where I got to see myself on the jumbo-tron. Hello me!

From there it was up New York Street where the Osborn Family Christmas Lights were on with Christmas music playing, which was a cool surprise. As we rounded the corner and headed past Star Tours the Imperial March could be heard and Vader himself was out front for photos and force choking.

Before I forget, let me say that the Cast Members and volunteers working the course were great. Lots of cheering, high fives and fist bumps were offered for those runners that could muster the energy. I think I hand slapped a whole line of volunteers at one point which was kinda cool and gave me an adrenaline boost. Big thanks peoples!

Leaving the Studios we were on the last mile and each step was killing my left ankle. Part of me briefly wondered if I should walk, but I refused to give in. The last half mile to Epcot took us past the Yacht and Beach Club resorts were A LOT of people were lined up to cheer us on. That gave me a charge and I ran as fast as I could to the finish; pain and all. As soon as I crossed the finish and started to walk, I began falling on my leg side..almost as if I had....TWISTED MY ANKLE! It all made sense. My bone headed move before mile 1 caught up with me. Stupid stupid stupid. It could have been way worse, I could have stepped in a big hole, done a face plant and I would have been out. Before mile 1. Idiot.

I wanted to finish in 2 hours or less and looking back, I shouldn't have been so focused on the time, especially for my first half marathon. I ended up finishing 2:16:24 and placed 1945 out of 7275 finishers. I met my brother at the Epcot after party and spent some time beating myself up about my time and my rookie mistake. He pointed out "dude you ran 13 miles...I couldn't run 2" which gave me some perspective. One year ago I could barely run two miles and now I've completed a half marathon, which, regardless of my time, feels pretty damn good. All and all it was a lot of fun and I can't wait to do it again!

Fur of Flying

2010-09-16T10:35:00.003-05:00

Here is a clip from Coyote and Road Runner: Fur of Flying...I did the last shot! You can see the entire short in front of Legends of the Guardians opening Sept 24!

Ice Creams

2010-08-06T13:20:00.000-05:00

So funny...so true...

Sunny D Commercial

2010-08-03T22:42:00.002-05:00

This is a Sunny D commercial I worked on last year. I did all the animation of the Sunny D bottle and the soccer ball.

Pirates 4 teaser from Comic Con

2010-07-29T17:57:00.001-05:00

Coyote Falls

2010-07-22T21:42:00.003-05:00

Here's a clip from the upcoming WB short, Coyote Falls. Cartoon Brew has more on the short HERE.

Wile E. Coyote

2010-05-20T00:54:00.004-05:00

The New York Times has an article on new Looney Tunes. The CG shorts we have been working on at ReelFx got a mention, along with the first released image from the first short!

Featured Mentor

2010-04-07T14:00:00.002-05:00

I'm this month's "featured mentor" in the Animation Mentor newsletter...read my words HERE!

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

2010-03-23T12:24:00.002-05:00

Finally...his story will be told...

Bedrock Studios

2010-03-17T15:18:00.003-05:00

Big news today!! Here is the press release from the Hollywood Reporter!

Granat, Reel FX form Bedrock Studios

Animated feature 'Turkeys' is its first project

By Borys Kit

March 17, 2010, 02:07 PM ET

Cary Granat's Granat Entertainment is teaming with Reel FX, the company run by former ILM exec Ed Jones, to form Bedrock Studios, with the aim of developing and producing franchise films in the range of $35 million and under.

The company also hopes to produce content for TV, publishing and digital media.

Granat and Jones have been quietly working for months on the venture, slyly acquiring and developing material and is now hitting the ground running,

It is in preproduction on its first project, the animated feature "Turkeys," has tapped Owen Wilson and Woody Harrelson to voice star as two turkeys who discover a time machine and travel back to the first Thanksgiving to take themselves off the menu. Ash Brannon ("Toy Story 2") is directing while John J. Strauss and David I. Stern wrote the script and are producing. Luke Wilson is also lending his voice, and Peter Farrelly will executive produce the project.

Bedrock has also acquired the screen rights to Madeleine L'Engle's classic young adult fantasy "A Wrinkle in Time" and William Joyce kids book "Dinosaur Bob." "Rats of NIHM," which Granat had set up at Paramount last year, has been folded over into a Bedrock project.

On one level, Bedrock continues the themes that Granat ran with when he ran Walden, which encompassed literary and family-friendly material and marries it with the resources of Reel FX, which made a name for itself producing CG animation for films such as Sony's "Open Season 2," Disney's "The Wild" and providing special effect for movies such as "Enchanted" and "Sin City." It also produced the animated companion piece to "Watchmen," "Tales of the Black Freighter."

Bedrock will continue to operate in the animated and visual effects world, where it counts almost every studio as a clients, and be based out of Santa Monica and Dallas.

Beep! Beep!

2010-02-01T07:40:00.002-06:00

Today we start animation production on the first of three, Coyote and Roadrunner shorts for Warner Bros. Huzzah! It will be super fun and a little intimidating to work with such iconic characters.

I gotta say it's been awhile since I've been this jazzed for a project. I can not wait to start!

The shorts will be playing in front of Warner Bros. films later this year and will be shown in stereoscopic 3D. Neato!

Christmas Time is Here!

2009-12-20T22:19:00.003-06:00

Yes with Christmas just five days away you may be in a mad scramble for some last minute Christmas gifts; especially if you are in the northeast and are snowed in. Why not give the gift of animation? How about The Very First Noel! On DVD and available at Amazon, just click HERE.

I finally caught Prep and Landing tonight, which was awesome by the way, and it made me wish our little Christmas show had made into the yearly holiday circuit on TV and cable....tears. If you are some big shot TV exec..could you make that happen please? I will send you a cookie...seriously I will.

Acting Insights

2009-11-12T22:21:00.001-06:00

Great acting insights from Sir Ian Mckellen....

Webosaurs: Battle Arena

2009-10-23T10:53:00.001-05:00

This is the other webosaurs spot I co-directed and co-animated with Eric Drobile; I did the big ass fight at the end. I wanted this one to be different that the other spots; more like the Marvel comics version of Webosaurs and I'm pretty jazzed with how it turned out. Huge thanks to everyone who made an extra effort on this one. Amy, Chris, Liz, Julie and Frank..big thanks to you guys!

Butter Fingers

2009-10-15T10:31:00.009-05:00

So last Sunday we are having dinner...yummy lasagna. I poured myself some wine and as I went to put the half full bottle back in the frig..SWOOSH the bottle just drops out of my hand and hits the the floor...SKADOOSH! Wine and glass went everywhere. The only thing left in my hand was the bottle topper. I was bare foot at the time so I froze immediately..slowly looking down, I expected bleeding piggies. All ten looked ok.

What a lovely mess and a giant waste of wine! Initially I tried lapping up some off the floor but the glass shards made my tongue bleed. After bandaging my tongue and armed with rolls of paper towels and the vacuum, I set about cleaning up the mess. When I was done, I tossed the bag o glass into the garbage can in the garage and FINALLY was able to eat my dinner. My one thought, "at least no one got hurt".....well...at least not yet.

Today... is garbage day. I put on my flip flops and went out to the garage...filled up the garbage can with various miscellaneous bags o trash and tossed in a couple phone books; so now the bag was nice and heavy. Yanked the bag out of the can and began heaving it down to the curb. On the last big heave hoe the bag grazed my foot and immediately I feel a sting. I look and there is a 4 inch long gash across the top of my foot AND it looks a little deep. What the hell did that.....oh CRAP the glass from the wine bottle! Yep some glass was poking out of the bottom of the bag...awesome.

I hobbled into the house and sat in the bathtub. It didn't look as bad as when I slice my knuckle (see Meat Flap) but it was bleeding none the less. No one makes me bleed my own blood better than me. For whatever reason, I always think its a good idea to run water over major injuries. This does 2 things: 1. it makes the injury hurt way more 2. its like turning on the blood faucet because the injury starts to bleed...A LOT; clearly I never went to medical school.

With my wife's help I got band aided up and off to work I hobbled. Thank god for cruise control.

The morale of the story: If you drop the wine you WILL get cut.

More Animation Tips and Tricks

2009-10-13T21:56:00.003-05:00

I have a couple more blog postings up at Animation Tips and Tricks. What steps do students often overlook was one from a few days ago. Pose to pose or straight ahead is the latest. Check em out!!

Toy Story 3 trailer

2009-10-11T00:33:00.001-05:00

Looking forward to spending some time with the ol toys...

Animation Tips and Tricks

2009-09-28T14:23:00.003-05:00

Woohoo!! I'm a guest blogger over at the AnimationTipsandTricks blog. The first question I am answering is: What is the importance of clean blocking? Can you provide some tips on clean blocking?

Quick...go see what I say!!

Cloudy With a Chance of AWESOME!

2009-09-28T11:43:00.003-05:00

I took Wonder-pea to see Cloudy opening weekend in normal, boring 2D; I still find it odd that I go to see a CG movie and then request a ticket for the 2D version..the mind boggles. We both enjoyed it quite a lot and I dare say that it is my favorite animated film so far this year. Enjoyable story, fun characters, lots of good honest humor (no pop culture refs) and just entertaining start to finish. The snappy animation style worked well within the world that was created and I look forward to doing some single framing once the DVD comes out. I would love to give that animation style a try...so fun.

In its second weekend Cloudy retained the number one spot only falling 18.8% which is great!! If you haven't seen it yet then shame on you...and your family. Go give it a look, you will be glad you did.

New Webosaurs Spot

2009-09-10T11:56:00.004-05:00

I co-wrote and co-directed this spot with my buddy Eric Drobile. We also animated the spot. I did the close up of Horns (Bring it Rexxy!) and the shot with Pterry at the end. Big thanks to everyone involved for making it snowtastic!!!

My Demo Reel

2009-08-24T07:30:00.000-05:00

I uploaded my first video to YouTube! The upload/encode process took a looooong time but I'm pretty happy with how it looks.

Steven Spielberg Admires Animators

2009-07-30T13:29:00.002-05:00

Maybe directors don't have to be animators first, but it sure is a wonderful thing when they have a clear picture of what they want.....

2012

2009-07-09T16:03:00.001-05:00

This is so awesome...that I might have to go see the movie..

Webosaurs spots

2009-06-29T11:34:00.008-05:00

Later this summer ReelFx will be launching www.webosaurs.com a massive multiplayer online game aimed at young kids. The game is currently in beta....go give it a try!!

I animated on the Horns! Horns! Horns! spot. I did the shot immediately before the game footage and the shot immediately after the game footage. I also did the back flex shot.

More to come!!!

Meet the Crashes

2009-06-23T10:39:00.001-05:00

If you are a fan of TF2 you will love this...if you are not, then you will only like it A LOT..

Ghostbusters: the release party

2009-06-16T21:16:00.005-05:00

My buddy Paul Allen invited me to the midnight release party for Terminal Reality's Ghostbusters: the video game which was held last night. I did a little work on a couple cinematic shots for the game, so it was cool of him to invite me. The party itself was open to the public and held at a GameStop near TRI's studio. Lot's o fans turned out for the midnight release, many in home made ghostbuster costumes...and I gotta say they did a mighty awesome job constructing their proton packs.

Photo by Paul

I played an early version of the game about a year ago and it is A LOT of fun. If you ever wanted to blast ghosts while trashing a hotel ballroom, then this is the game for you. I would have played all day.....and now I CAN..because the game is out RIGHT NOW! A big congrats to all the peeps at TRI for making a busting cool game.

Me with the original Ecto-1 and a headless person.

Paul with the original Ecto-1 and some junior Ghostbusters.

Slap Chop

2009-05-09T00:13:00.003-05:00

*Update* You can download the Rap Chop song by DJ Steve Porter here.

This has been all the rage around the studio this week... makes me want to buy one.

Twitter

2009-05-04T00:00:00.005-05:00

I haven't really been into the online social sites. Between work, spending time with the family, Animation Mentor and fighting crime, I'm just too busy for such things. I did get involved with Facebook, although anymore I'm usually signed in so I can play Mafia Wars or Pirates; join my family/crew!

I had checked out Twitter's main page a few times to see what all the hub bub was about. As near as I could tell it was just a "status update" only version of Facebook. After pronouncing that Twitter was dumb I went on to do other things less dumb, like taking the Facebook quiz which Crayola Crayon Are You?

But last week I finally joined and instantly saw the appeal. It makes stalking celebrities easy and fun! Right now I'm stalking Jon Favreau, David Letterman, Weird Al, Jim Gaffigan, Eddie Izzard and Rainn Wilson. I hope to start stalking more this week. These people are in LA, New York and London, there's no way I could have followed them around on my own. A. it would be expense...all that traveling B. I'm too lazy. Thank you Twitter!!

My twitter home: http://twitter.com/raychase

Going Bonkers

2009-04-27T13:20:00.001-05:00

Today is my daughter's 6th birthday. Happy Birthday Wonder-pea!! Over the weekend we celebrated her birthday at Going Bonkers. The place is like Chuck E Cheese except with better pizza, a ginormous play area complete with tunnels and slides and no giant rat.

The ginormous play area is the highlight of Going Bonkers and within minutes of arriving Wonder-pea was off. Now her little brother, Lil Pumpkin, who is 2 and 1/2, wanted to explore the play set as well. The difference: my wife made me go with him. Now I will admit, it was pretty dang fun crawling and climbing through all the levels. Many times I thought "10 year old me would have gone crazy for this", but alas...I'm not 10 anymore.

The play period before pizza and cake was from 11am-noon...one hour; no problem. Lil Pumpkin and I entered the play area at 10:50. At 11:05 I needed a nap. Man oh man do you get a work out crawling through that thing.

My son had no trouble with the climbing and the crawling and since the whole thing is padded there was little chance of him knocking himself out. OK so why did I have to go with him? Basically I was there as his personal bodyguard, making sure the other kids didn't rough him up....or shake him down for pizza money.

Here we are crawling through one of the many tunnels. You can't see Lil Pumpkin because he is way ahead of me. At several points he would be three or more sections ahead of me going "come on Daddy", before climbing up another level. Now the really awesome thing about these tunnels is the many hanging obstacles that you have to push your way through. FUN!

Many times I tried to slow my son down. Lil pumpkin....-gasp-.....wait....I'm coming...-gasp-....lil pumpk....lil.. I told him that he should go on with out me, that I was slowing him down and endangering the mission, but he would have none of it. Apparently we had to keep moving at all times; perhaps raptors were tracking us. I even found a spot on one of the upper sections that was near an AC vent..the air..so cool. Hey buddy let's sit here a sec- come on Daddy!!....I wept, tears of blood.

In the below photo, I'm smiling because we stopped moving for 10 seconds. It was a glorious 10 seconds. In just a moment we would climb the ramp to our left and then roll down the other side. Yippee!! Now I don't have the best posture, but with only four areas large enough to stand up straight, my back was not enjoying the experience.

After an hour of crawling around Satan's playground, it was time for pizza and cake. At this point I was pretty damn hungry and feared that I'd go all "Tazmanian devil" at the first sign of food. Fortunately that didn't happen and the party went great. Barbie was the theme this year, so we got Wonder-pea a Barbie cake which she liked a lot.

All the kiddies seemed to have an awesome time and after the eating and the singing and more eating, the partiers played some games and everyone started to leave. Lil Pumpkin pondered a return to the play area..I could see it in his eyes. I begged him to not take me back in there. There was much whining and crying on my part.

After going bonkers for a total of 3 hours, we were bonkered out. On the way home Wonder-pea recounted all her party fun while Lil Pumpkin slept, tuckered out from all the activity. When we got home I collapsed in the driveway and took a four hour nap.

It was a good day.

Coco-Nutty Monkey

2009-04-17T01:05:00.005-05:00

A couple months ago I worked on a commercial for Play Doh, promoting their new Coco-Nutty Monkey toy. I bought one for the kids and they seemed to like it quite a lot. Dad's a hero when he comes home with a monkey.

The animation I did for the spot is up in my animation area. You can check out the entire spot here.

Dragons

2009-03-27T00:35:00.001-05:00

I haven't done a DrawerGeeks in forever....this week is Dragons.

25 Things I Hate About Facebook

2009-03-06T08:38:00.002-06:00

I laughed...and then I updated my status. Facebook why can't I quit you??!!

The Colonel

2009-02-24T10:21:00.001-06:00

the Meaty

2009-02-20T17:18:00.002-06:00

Build your own hero at: The Hero Factory

LOST Brotha

2009-02-13T14:09:00.001-06:00

Wow he does say that a lot doesn't he...

Open Season 2 Reel

2009-02-10T23:33:00.000-06:00

Tonight, the studio held a screening of Open Season 2 at a local theater and I think it turned out pretty well. A big congrats to the ReelFx crew and to the folks at Sony. The DVD was released last week and opened at #1 in DVD sales with $11 million; not including blue ray. Not too shabby.

I have posted my OS2 reel which can be found HERE.

Batman gets pwned

2009-02-03T12:57:00.002-06:00

LOST in the background

2009-01-22T22:49:00.010-06:00

When watching LOST I always enjoy noticing what the other castaways are doing. You know..the ones in the background...who are toiling away......digging in the sand, chatting it up, nodding a lot when Jack is explaining stuff or just plain hanging about doing nothing. They don't mingle with the cool kids like Sayid, Kate and Sawyer, rather they keep their distance. They don't head off with "the gang" to find food, explore DHARMA stations or any of the useful survival sorts of things. No they basically loiter about waiting to either A. run from the smoke monster B. run from the Others or anyone else that is shooting at them C. nod their heads when Jack is explaining stuff. They are..the ambient castaways.

Now the ambient castaways don't have to be in the background forever. They can elevate themselves to the next level, which is convenient castaway. This can happen when one of the primary characters actually speaks to one of them, for what seems like, the very first time. "Find Kate...person I have never talked to until now." Or they may voice concerns at a tense moment, to which a primary character must respond.

Take last nights season premiere were we are introduced to Neil. He is pissed about the time shifting and is not gonna take it laying down...in the background, where no one can see or hear him. He is up front yelling at Bernard and trading barbs with Sawyer.

This could mean one of two things. Neil is being elevated to official secondary castaway ala Rose and Bernard or.....he will be dead momentarily. Unfortunately for Neil the ladder was true..as he shifted from convenient castaway to expendable. Neil-cabob anyone?

And this is the risk you take as an ambient castaway trying to make the leap to secondary castaway. It is not an easy move by any means, especially if you happen to be annoying. Like Arzt. Remember him? Mr Science Teacher...I'm sooo smart...careful with that dynamite blah blah blah BOOM...your dead.

Or perhaps Nikki and Paolo.

These two made a good effort, slinking their way from the background to the foreground almost overnight. They even went trekking through the jungle with some of the primary characters which is mostly unheard of for anyone below secondary level. A couple episodes later they are being buried alive by Sawyer and Hurley....ewwww nice try.

Now there are those times when the ambient castaway will find himself in the worst predicament of all. This is when they are elevated to conveniently expendable. A sure sign that this is about to happen, is whenever there is a lot of shooting. We may be led to believe that a primary character will be injured or killed, only to have a expendable castaway conveniently get in the way. This is an ambient castaway's worst nightmare.

Background characters, I enjoy watching you hanging about and I want you to be safe, so please heed my advice. Just stay back there. If you absolutely have to talk to a primary character keep it short, do not make eye contact and do not let them learn your name. When an attack comes be sure you are not running nearby any primary character, in fact hang back when the attack first starts as the primaries are always likely to be leading the way. Remember no one is aiming at you because your a nobody....keep it that way and you just might survive.

Planet 51

2009-01-16T11:18:00.001-06:00

I'm looking forward to this one....looks fun!!

Meat Flap

2009-01-13T12:23:00.008-06:00

This past weekend I put away the last of the Christmas decorations. As much as I love Christmas I was very glad to have the house back to normal. Fortunately, this years deChristmasfication ended without incident...unlike.....last year.

Post-2007 Christmas. It is January '08 and I had just installed some metal shelving racks in the garage to better hold the many tubs o Christmas decor. These racks have L shaped corners which allow for the shelves to be adjusted. As I am bending over to place a tub on the bottom shelf I slipped and fell into the rack, with the top of my left hand slamming into one of the metal L shaped corners.

EEeeeeouch!!! pain shot up my left arm. I pulled my hand back to see that the L corner had sliced the knuckle of my middle finger....pretty darn deep...there was thickness . My knuckle now had a meat flap and I swear I could see bone. Better not look too close or I was sure to pass out in the garage, where I would bleed to death.

Into the house I went, yelling to the wife that I needed a band aid or ten. I stuck my hand in the sink and turned on the water and when the water met meat flap, man or man that hurt. I wrapped my hand in a towel and stuck my hand under my right arm. My wife suggested I go to the doctor, that it would most likely need stitches. Doctor?.... HA!! I have a stable gun if it comes to that and no, I don't need no stinking doctor. I had her call her father instead. He's not a doctor, but he watches them on TV.

While standing there with my hand tucked under my arm, I started to feel dizzy and the tall glass of orange juice didn't help...thanks for nothing vitamin C. My wife's father said I was probably going into shock. Really? Shock? Well ok, let me lay down with my feet elevated. Wonder-pea laid next to me with her feet up. Apparently she was in shock as well. While we laid there in shock, I realized that had the L corner taken the knuckle clean off, I would have most likely died since my body seems unable to handle minor injuries.

After applying pressure to the hand for about 15 min, the bleeding stopped, but I needed to keep my finger completely straight. The slightest bend of either the middle or forefinger was enough to pull the skin around the meat flap and start the bleeding once more. Again I scoffed at the idea of seeking professional medical attention. Instead I took jumbo popsicle sticks and taped em to my middle and forefinger. And oddly enough, it worked quite well at keeping those fingers from bending.

The next morning I took a look at flappie and it seemed to almost be reattached. Small movements of my finger didn't reopen the wound or anything. Amazing! I was like that cheerleader on that show. Until...I rubbed it against a towel...the wrong way.... and the pain and the blood all came rushing back.

I made one last attempt at MacGyvering my injury. This time with the popsicle sticks and a big medical pad (that would be used for a gun shot wound) bandaged on top of ol flappie. Success. My fingers would not bend, nothing would brush up to, rub or otherwise anger flappie...let the healing......begin. Now if only...I could....tie.. my...shoes.....arggh....

Yeah the big ass Sleestack hand I had for the next couple weeks was sort of a pain, but I made do and flappie healed up nicely. And best of all, I didn't have to go to the doctor.

OS2 extended clip

2009-01-13T11:51:00.005-06:00

An extended clip from Open Season 2 is available HERE

Billboards are popping up as well. Chad Sellers snapped this one out in LA.

Biscuit Sammiches

2008-12-17T14:12:00.004-06:00

Last night ReelFx had their Christmas party which was a lot of fun. Food, drink and a lot of Rock Band. A picture booth was going strong for most of the night...here are some pics of that killer new band: Biscuit Sammiches.

Our 2009 world tour starts in January.

Ka-blewie!

2008-11-16T20:02:00.001-06:00

My shots from SotFF are now up in the animation area. If you haven't picked up the DVD 2 pack then I can only assume your asking Santa for it, which is fine if you want to wait two months for awesomeness.

Also if you head over to happymeal.com you can select your own ending to a Madagascar2 McDonald's commercial for which ReelFx provided the animation. I did the Great Wall of China ending so be sure to give it a look.

Secrets of the Furious Five

2008-11-09T00:20:00.004-06:00

Today Kung Fu Panda comes out on DVD and Blu-Ray! Two disk packages include the all new feaurette: Secrets of the Furious Five.

ReelFx handled all the CG animation for the feaurette. I was SUPER excited to have worked on it, as Kung Fu Panda is one of my favorite animated films of recent times.

Next week I will post the shots I did...skadooosh!!

Election Day

2008-11-04T16:35:00.000-06:00

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Giant Monsters!

2008-10-24T12:30:00.003-05:00

I finally got a chance to do something for drawergeeks. This was inspired by my battle with a ginormous possum that plagued my landscaping.....whom I think is back!! Dun Dun DUUUUN!

Ooops...my bad..

2008-10-23T10:37:00.002-05:00

Open Season 2 trailer

2008-10-06T21:02:00.004-05:00

Here is the first real trailer for Open Season 2. The DVD comes out January 29, 2009. We wrapped production on it months ago..seems weird we have to wait sooo long for it to come out.

I have one shot in the trailer. Boog saying "..we can't give up on our friend Weenie."

California Dreaming Part 3

2008-10-01T22:55:00.006-05:00

Our last couple of days in California were spent in San Francisco. Our first night was July 4th and unfortunately our room was on the street side of the hotel..ground level. Yes it was noisy pretty much all bloody night. I declared that I hated San Francisco and tried to teleport myself someplace else...with my mind. It didn't work which was for the best, because I actually really loved San Francisco...even more so after we got our room changed.

Here we see another boat of prisoners being taken to Alcatraz.

At Pier 39 there is a shop called Chocolate Heaven....the name does not lie..there was lots of chocolate and I was in heaven. The kids got a sugar high just looking at the store front.

After some shopping and lunching at Pier 39, it was finally time to pay homage to the greatest hot fudge sundaes in the world, by visiting Ghirardelli Square. It was like visiting the Emerald City...and I wept softly. I counted about three different shop locations at the square all packed with people. My plan was to visit them all..

Wonder-pea and I are enjoyed our Ghirardelli Square experience. Me perhaps a little more. Yes that is a second sundae sitting there. Through some mathematical miscalculation, my Dad ordered one more sundae than was needed. Since Ghirardelli sundaes are protected under California law, I had no choice but to eat it. It was the greatest day of my life.

After prying me away from Ghirardelli Square, we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge to visit Golden Gate Park.

The vegetation was huge!

Here we are at the top of a waterfall.....

...and my parents at the bottom.

I do have an almost, sorta, fear of heights. Not so much fear of being high, but rather falling to my death from a high spot. Regardless, I was determined to get a kick ass picture of the Golden Gate Bridge. We stopped at an overlook. The wind was blowing like crazy as I made my way up the path to the top.

The actual overlook was slopped down towards the bay so that if you got a running start you might actually clear the side of the cliff as you plummeted to your death. Nice. After taking some long deep breaths and focusing on a happy childhood memory, I inched closer and closer to the edge and snapped this......
..not too shabby.

The very last thing we did in San Fran besides visiting the airport to come home, was to visit Muir Woods. Home to some HUGELY amazing trees.

Lil Pumpkin made friends with a local.

The End.

Good times were had by all! It was a busy trip but still pretty gosh darn fun. I would have loved to visit all my buddies out there in Cali, but perhaps next time. California was great fun and I am sure we'll be back. I must admit that late at night, when its very quiet, I can hear the chocolate of San Francisco calling to us......my precious.....and we must haves it..

California Dreaming Part 2

2008-09-22T00:01:00.007-05:00

Our visit to Monterey was more laid back than our Disneyland visit. No big crowds, the weather was cooler and no giant talking animals.

One of the highlights was 17 mile drive, a scenic drive along the coast.

The worst thing about 17 mile drive, if not the entire trip was our stop at Bird Rock. As the name implies, bird rock is populated with a lot of birds(and few sea lions). The smell was perhaps the worst thing I have ever smelled....ever. Take a dumpster full of moldy food, through in 100 lbs of dirty diapers and 50 gallons of yak vomit, and you would have something almost as bad as this. The amazing thing is that there were picnic tables nearby...and people were sitting there eating. I would have taken a picture of this but I was on the ground, convulsing.
Near the end of the drive stands the Lone Cypress; its that tree on the rock. It may not look like much, but this baby has withstood the harshest of storms for nearly 250 years. Pretty amazing.
Another day we took a trip down to Cannery Row which has lots of shops, restaurants and cans

We stopped into the Ghirardelli shop and got sundaes.....mmmm boy I love me some Ghirardelli hot fudge sundaes. This was a prelude to the chocolate greatness awaiting in San Francisco.
Wonder-pea had her eye on a bake good or two...or ten...at a super delicious bakery. Oh sweet Ghirardelli weep not, for it will never replace you...in my heart

Waving good-bye to Monterey, we headed further north for the extremely steep streets of San Francisco.

Drink Up Me Hearties

2008-09-19T00:00:00.000-05:00

Talk like a pirate day is here!! ARRRR! In case you are rusty and need to brush up on your pirate speak, check out this informative video....

California Dreaming Part 1

2008-09-09T11:00:00.000-05:00

Our big summer trip this year was to California. We met my parents in LA and set out to visit Disneyland, Monterey and San Francisco all in one week. It was a busy trip but really fun nonetheless.

I haven't been to Disneyland in nine years and wow has it changed. The Downtown Disney area and new park were under construction when last I visited. We stayed at the Grand Californian and this was our view from the room. It was pretty nice, looking out your window each morning and feeling like your NOT in Anaheim.

I love night time pictures...much more than my camera does; if only I had a tripod.

Unlike Disney World, Disneyland still has Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. I'm a big fan of the cartoon so it was fun to get to ride it once again. Wonder-pea was not impressed, as going to Hell is not her idea of a good time. O-K fine be like that....

Lil Pumpkin looks for attractions that won't send you to Hell....

We all really liked the Storybookland ride. The attention to detail on the houses and scenery is super cool. Plans are underway to build this ride in my backyard.

It was great to see the subs running once more. A few buddies worked on the Nemo redo and I so wanted to check it out, but the line was over an hour each and every time. I bet the management folks in Florida are regretting filling in their sub lagoon; damn us!

Fun little spot off to the front of the castle that we happened upon. I hear it has been bulldozed for a Tinkerbell/Fairies area......boooo

Wonder-pea is a HUGE Wall-E fan. Wall-E himself is HUGE at Disneyland.

This was the first time we had every been to Disney's California Adventure, and I was surprised that we actually spent a good bit of time there. The park is not a total bust there are some nice sections like this.....

...but then there was this.

Notice the complete lack of shade. The only sunburn I got the entire trip was from walking around Paradise Pier. If the intent was to recreate the hot, summer time misery of walking along a ocean boardwalk then: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

I was looking forward to checking out the Animation attraction but was bummed that it's more or less a one visit deal. Once you take the quiz in Beast's library or record your voice in Ursula's Grotto (the inside IS very well themed and neato looking), you don't really need to come back here again....ever. I welcome the changes the park will be experiencing in the coming years.

After a couple days of Disneyland fun, it was time to drive up the coast to Monterey.

Wooden Playset

2008-08-24T16:19:00.020-05:00

One of the things that kept me pretty darn busy for the first half of this year, was our new wooden playset. We wanted to put one of these in for the kiddies and right after the new year began, we starting shopping around. The design we wanted would have two towers, a princess one for Wonder-pea and a pirate one for Lil Pumpkin. The towers would be connected by a bridge. That's not too much right? But to get what we wanted would have cost upwards of $10 thousand dollars; and no I'm not exaggerating.

So we considered getting a playset not as elaborate but were unhappy with what we could get for even $3 thousand. There was a vision of what we wanted and settling wasn't an option.

Around this time a friend at work, Aja Bogdanoff, built a pretty awesome gazebo around her desk. It seemed pretty complicated but she researched it, drew up plans and made it happen. With that in mind I told my wife that I would be building the wooden playset....she concluded that I was insane...I agreed and began planning.

I looked at a lot of store bought sets and even bought a plan for a smaller, single tower one, just to deconstruct it and figure out what I wanted to do. I've built stuff in the past, pirate cove, a fish tank table etc, but this project was well beyond anything I had ever done.

This is what I came up with. Ah to be insane. It seemed so little and cute and doable in Maya.

Ground breaking! Lil Pumpkin inspects the site for his pirate fort. And then its time to frame! I used 4X4 cedars posts...strong and sturdy and they smell good too.

It soon became clear that my cute, little playset was in fact huge and monstrous. I started to feel slightly overwhelmed. The first modification to the original plan was losing the small princess tower all the way to the left. I need to step up construction and it wasn't that big to be of any real use. We may put a tubular slide over here next year.

The building inspector lends a hand.

Ramp time! The second modification was the length of the ramp. On the original plan it just wasn't long enough. We wanted something that Lil Pumpkin could get up fairly easy and the orginal plan would have had him practically climbing rather than walking.

The building inspector approves the ramp.

Time for some floors and slides.

The building inspector spots a mistake.

Shame on me for not being better with the pictures. My Dad said I should have taken pictures every step of the way, which was my intent...but alas...I sorta didn't. Soooo, rails, spokes and 2 roofs later it was done.

I tried to trim as little as possible off the trees. It fit pretty well into our "forest"; the princess tower is mostly hidden by the foilage.

View from our back porch.

It took a loooooot of time, much longer than I anticipated, but it was worth it because we got what we wanted and the kids love it. HUGE thanks to my Dad who made two trips from Florida to help me out; I couldn't have gotten the framing or roofs done without his help.

Amazingly I only had three major plan modifications and only a couple minor screw ups; the original plan for the princess roofs was for them to be pyramid/gazebo-like..but I couldn't quite get it to work.

I estimated that I spent under $3 thousand for the whole thing which is not bad. Man hours..I couldn't even guess. Many a weekend, I was out there from 8am-8pm, but it was actually pretty fun so it didn't feel like exhausting work.

There is more I need to do to it; put floors in the bottom sections, add a ships wheel, telescope and post caps on the little deck as well as some pirate and princess theming elements to both towers. Once the weather gets cooler this fall I will be back out there for phase 2.

My wife was so impressed with how it turned out, she is making a small list of things she wants built. Compared to the wooden playset, entertainment build ins and bookcases should be a breeze.

Oktapodi

2008-08-15T17:10:00.002-05:00

I love everything about this short; very well done.

The official web site: Oktapodi

Genie

2008-08-08T12:26:00.000-05:00

This weeks DrawerGeeks...

Poor Neglected Blog

2008-07-24T01:22:00.005-05:00

Yes blog I am sorry that we haven't been spending much time together. This year has been busy, busy. I have pictures...I have posts, but I have been too darn busy to get them up here. Don't cry blog..I still like you.

I will get back to you soon blog, but right now we are getting ready to head to San Antonio. Tomorrow is our ten year wedding anniversary and we are leaving town with the kids for a few days. We'll do some River Walk...maybe some Sea World...because nothing says love and romance like a giant killer whale.

So hang in there blog...dry those tears and maybe I will bring you back a picture or two.

Results..finally...from the poll: What Did You Think of Indy 4?
So awesome my face nearly melted
from the awesomeness (26%)
The Holy Grail of the franchise (0%)
Better than a bowl of monkey brains (43%)
I would have rather been covered in snakes (13%)
It was so bad, I wanted to rip out my heart (17%)

And...what is that...is that a new poll...might be....

Barry the Bee Interview

2008-06-27T13:52:00.002-05:00

We did this awhile back and I hear that it's on the DVD, however this is the first time I have seen it cut together with human footage. It plays pretty well.

Preview of Pixar's Presto

2008-06-17T16:06:00.001-05:00

Looks super fun!!!

David's New Snail

2008-06-03T10:27:00.001-05:00

I thought this was pretty fun....at some point I may do this with my kiddos..

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

2008-05-27T17:39:00.006-05:00

Let us begin: overall I really liked Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; whew..I thought the Pirates movies had long titles. It felt like an Indy movie and was mostly on par with Last Crusade and in that regard: expectations met!

Some giant crystal skull sized SPOILERS ahead...toss me the idol and run away!!

Things I dug. I dug the kid...Shia is rather charismatic and I thought he worked great. The interaction between him and Indy felt good and not a retread of the Ford-Connery team up in Crusade. Great seeing Marion again, although they introduced her so late in the movie (or so it felt to me) I had almost forgotten she was in the thing. Then of course there's Indy. Ford is obviously older, but I think he looked great as Indy and was just as fun to watch as in the old films. In fact I didn't want the movie to end because I was enjoying hanging out with the "ol gang" so much.

I was a bit skeptical, as it was becoming more apparent, that the aliens were going to be real. When we got a good look at one in the body bag I became a little uneasy as to where the movie was going. But then I thought "hell its the 50s...aliens, A- bombs, Elvis and communism..its reflecting the times". Plus if you can buy off on a box filled with killer ghosts and that a guy can get his heart ripped out and lives...if you can talk to a knight that is 100s of years old and drink from a healing chalice....why not aliens influencing early man? And it plays off the idea that aliens built the pyramids and that monkeys hate Russians...wait..what? more on that later..

Some fun references to other films. Indy mutters "I have a bad feeling about this" a nod to Han Solo. We get a glimpse of the Ark, albeit unnecessarily. Nice hat tips to Marcus Brody. And the one I was proud to figure out right away...when Indy is telling Mutt about riding with Pancho Villa, that was actually an episode of the Young Indiana Jone Chronicles. Indiana Jones NERD right here people..

At the very end, I loved how the hat blew to Mutt and as he picked it up, the cries of a million fanboys yelled out in horror and then were silenced....when Indy yanked it away. Nice. Honestly I could see a Mutt Jones spin off, .although hopefully he will change his name to Dakota or something. I feel that they need at least 1 more film with Indy headlining before they can truly hand the baton off. If they indeed do a Indy 5 (and the buzz I have heard is that it is a possibility) the Jones family could go on another adventure, Mutt, who is now calling himself Dakota has been back in school and learning the ropes from Dad, thereby making a better spring board for a spin off.........Lucas, call me.

Now it wasn't a total Indy 4 love fest 2008. The things I didn't like are great and small...lets start with the small..

This film felt smaller and more contained, like Temple of Doom. Raiders and Crusade felt more exotic with far more globe trotting. KOTCS felt like it was all in the jungle and in caves...like it was an episode of LOST.

While it was great seeing Marion again, there wasn't much for her to do. The reason I liked her so much in Raiders and why her and Indy are such a good match, is that she goes toe to toe with him. She's a very strong character. But, since she shows up so late, she doesn't do much other than drive... a lot.

At the end of the film I didn't feel that Indy had much to do...he seemed to easily get into the chamber...then there is a lot of standing around, bad feelings are had, things go awry and they run away. I wanted Indy more involved somehow. Of course this may have been a choice by the filmmakers to make the ending more like Raiders where Indy and Marion stand there tied up the whole time, and less like Crusade where there is stuff breaking, people falling, ground opening....chaos.

Which brings us to the silliness. My chief complaint with Last Crusade is that its too jokey. Brody somehow turned into a complete boob. Sallah is a wacky sidekick. And gags happen. Like a flaming plane passing Indy and Dad in a tunnel. Hey road runner...where's the coyote?

So I was expecting goofiness in Indy 4. Surviving a nuclear blast by hiding in a fridge..ok...get propelled in said fridge and surviving...well...he would be dead from the impact if nothing else....but ok.. exciting fridge and seeing CG prairie dogs....why?..is this needed....ah lordy we're getting cutesy now. But I enjoyed him running around the test site and even thought "how in the hell will he get out of this one"...so I bought it all.

But during the jungle chase...when Mutt is up in the trees..swinging with the monkeys, my eyes rolled a lot. My suspension of disbelief turned into complete disbelief. He's freakin Tarzan all of sudden....really? My buddy Ernesto pointed out that it wouldn't have been so bad, it could have even worked, if he was awkward doing the swinging...like Parker when he first became Spiderman. No no Mutt is apparently a natural at this. Ok whatever...maybe you could swing from those vines...I wouldn't have put it in MY version of the movie..but ok.

Oh we're not done though, because once Mutt, Lord of the Jungle, exits the forest with his army of monkeys, he apparently commands them to attack the Soviets. Honestly this moment bothered me more than the swinging. On the humor/gag/silly meter it comes in under Crusade...but before Temple of Doom. Why has silliness been injected into the franchise? Raiders is the stand out film....straight action adventure..no gags no silliness...just greatness.

Over the weekend when I thought about the movie there was a lot that I really liked about it. The good and the great out weigh the silly moment or two. Bottom line: It was great fun hanging out with Indy..it was like watching your Dad kick ass again. If they do try to make a go at Indy 5 (originally there was to be 5 films total in the series) here's hoping they don't wait 20 more years.

Dr. Jones

2008-05-22T12:34:00.004-05:00

Unless you live under a rock, you probably know that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull opens today. Woohoo! In a few hours I will be heading to the theater to enjoy "the adventure of a lifetime" with the "man in hat"...and other tag lines that have been used with these films.

I am reasonably excited, but not overly so. I waited 20 years to see some other movie sequels from a franchise I enjoyed as a kid only to walk away with a feeling of "meh". Thank god the guy responsible for "those" sequels isn't involved with this new Indy movie......oh wait...

My expectation is that it will be on par with Last Crusade, which was a good movie but had too much humor/gags in it for my taste. When I learned that Indy would have a tweenage companion I thought "crap..Short Round". Now I liked Short Round just like I liked the Ewoks....when I was 12, but now..not so much.

I've also been a little concerned that KOTCS would be too Crusade-like, but in reverse. So instead of clueless Dad along for the ride we have clueless tweenager asking dumb questions and chasing seagulls on the beach.

But...I am excited. It will be fun to go on one last adventure with Indiana.

Poll results for: Bad Jobs for Donald Duck...and we have a tie!!
911 operator (21%)
child care worker (5%)
english teacher (26%)
motivational speaker (11%)
opera singer (5%)
brain surgeon (26%)
yoga instructor (5%)

New poll is up!!

Meet the Real Wall-E

2008-05-16T10:51:00.003-05:00

We do a pretty good job with Wonder-pea, telling her that what she sees in movies and TV, is not real; it's just pretend. I showed this clip to the kids last night and she asked "Daddy is Wall-E real?"..........."uhhhmm well......yeah...it uh..looks that way".

This is totally cool....I want one.

Having Computer Issues?

2008-05-02T11:45:00.002-05:00

This could be the problem.....

The Simpsons Ride

2008-04-24T11:39:00.008-05:00

The Simpsons Ride is now open at Universal Studios Florida (it should be opening in Cali later this spring). ReelFX did a couple minutes of the ride film which was pretty fun to work on. Being a big theme park geek, I have always wanted to work on a theme park ride.

I can't really say what I did on the ride because A. Mr. Burns would have me killed and B. it would give away a semi important part of the show. My scene does involve Maggie, Sideshow Bob and a panda, and occurs towards the end of the ride.

Hurry down to Florida and check it out. Free donuts and beer for the first 500 riders!

Digital Grunt

2008-04-08T18:34:00.001-05:00

So hilarious........so true...

Home Alone

2008-04-08T00:50:00.002-05:00

This week my wife took the kids up to Maryland to visit her parents, so it's just me and the fish. Woo..hooooo.........hoo sigh. I started missing the kiddos right away. While eating dinner and looking at the empty chairs, I must admit I got a little blue. Fortunately Wonder-pea has a lot of stuffed animals so I populated the table with Elmo, Mickey Mouse and the like. It was like when Cartman had the tea party. "Would you like some more tea Polly Prissy Pants?.....Yes please".

It became clear that playing with stuffed animals was no way to pass the time. Instead I focused my energy on doing stuff around the house. First thing was to rent a Rug Doctor to clean the carpets. Two little kids are hell on floors let me tell you. As I moved all the furniture I found Cheerios at every turn. Even in places you wouldn't expect to find them. I would like to know the ratio of Cheerios eaten by Lil Pumpkin, to how many he throws on the floor. My guess is he's not eating many.

Cleaning the floors didn't take long and with every fan in the house going full steam it was time to head outside....yay I love working outside! The big project was fixing, what we affectionately call, Shrek's Swamp. One side of our house gets little to no sun and it stays wet over there pretty much all the time. Over the years the grading has slowly flattened out and water just pools. Lots of mud, moss...lovely.

While I'm schelping around in the mud my foot feels way wet. Yanking my foot from the mud I see that my crappy outside shoes have stepped it up in terms of crappiness. The sole of my left shoe, about 90%, had come completely off. If my shoe and a flip flop mated and had a baby, it would look like this. Awesome I'm practicaly working outside in my socks.

With Shrek's swamp kinda, almost...most likely not entirely fixed, it was on to planting roses, flowers, jasmine and my much anticipated money tree; I hope it blooms $20s. When it came time to re-mulch around our trees, I found fire ants around most of them. At first I was like "yikes..stay away"...then the ghost of Steve Irwin appeared and said "Crickey mate I used to wrestle 10 alligators at once." By god your right...gloves on..and in I went and wouldn't you know...I didn't get biten not once. It was a Christmas miracle!

When I was finally finished with everything, I headed up to the Walmart because I like to hang out there...and I needed light bulbs. After two days of doing stuff around the house, morning to night, I was starting to feel pretty beat, almost to the point where my body was refusing to move. "We have decided that you have done enough, and if you won't stop moving by your own choice then we, being your arms and legs, will simply refuse to function."

Moments later as I was laying on the floor of Walmart, light bulbs clutched to my chest, I wondered what the kids were doing..

Poll results for: What do you think of the Indy teaser
Woohoo!!(45%)
May 22...get here NOW(17%)
I shed tears of joy (10%)
Looks great...but where is Jar Jar? (7%)
Meh(17%)
It's no National Treasure(3%)

And amazingly...a new poll is finally up!

She Took My Eggs

2008-03-24T01:52:00.013-05:00

Are ya like me? Do ya like to color eggs at Easter? Well I don't actually color them, but my daughter Wonder-pea does. This year she graduated to official "dunker and retriever of the eggs" and for the most part she did a great job. Only one or two eggs met their end prematurely.

Now while it is true that Wonder-pea handles the egg decorating I do color one or two a year.... the cracked ones. I looooove dying me some cracked eggs. I like to dye them to look like some weird dinosaur or alien egg. I have made some neato ones in the past but never recorded them for posterity....until now! Behold..my single contribution to Easter.

I hope it hatches soon.

Horton Hears a Who

2008-03-14T00:55:00.004-05:00

In theaters today...yes it's true....it's Horton Hears a Who. Many friends worked on this movie up there at the Blue Sky; watching the credits will be extra fun, yet challenging, as I scramble to check off everyone's name.

Why not take the family and enjoy the work of these fine peoples? Here is a fun clip in case you need convincing.

The movie looks super fun!! Go...GO NOW!

Let Me In

2008-03-11T16:03:00.001-05:00

Very funny....

Indy One Sheet

2008-03-10T15:50:00.002-05:00

Looks spiffy!!

Knight Rider

2008-02-18T20:37:00.015-06:00

This past Sunday NBC ran the 2 hour movie-pilot-series relaunch of Knight Rider. I admit that I was looking forward to watching. When I was a kid I was a big fan of the show and after some weak attempts at relaunching over the years, it looked like they might have finally gotten it right.

Or not.

There is a brand new K.I.T.T. voiced by Moses himself, Val Kilmer. All new K.I.T.T does is drive fast. No turbo boost, no pursuit mode, no super pursuit mode.....just ZOOOM. Everywhere. A 2 hour commercial for a Ford Mustang with many, many MANY shots of the car zooming through the desert. "Experience the new 2008 Ford K.I.T.T."

K.I.T.T. can analyze a persons body tempurature, can detect heat signatures in a building, you know, the kind of stuff that's been going on in movies and sci-fi for the last 10 years. Amazing. What K.I.T.T., your using onboard GPS to plot a route to Vegas.....neato!! Maybe I'm driving K.I.T.T. because my car can do that too...

The single cool thing K.I.T.T. can do is morph its appearance. No, it can't turn into Optimus Prime but it can morph into cars of similar mass. This was cool....the first time. Three times later it seemed clear this was the "big" trick the car did....sigh..... couldn't Viper do something similar?

In one scene that made me laugh out loud, the bad guys start to hack into K.I.T.T. to take control of the car. Wow, never saw THAT happen on the old Knight Rider. Worse yet, K.I.T.T. made no attempt to stop them. Is the car running Windows 95? Enough about the car...

The new driver is a guy named Mike, because only name variants of Michael can drive the car. A John, Dave or Joe would just not work. When we meet Mike he is in his garage which looks like a set from Growing Pains. Apparently he is some sort of loser race car driver, who was raised by mom cause dad left...tears. Mike spends much of the movie "acting" badly and threating to punch K.I.T.T. in the throat; zero charisma. After K.I.T.T. saves its inventor's daughter they pick up Mike and lots of familar conversations are had about how K.I.T.T. doesnt understand human emotions......yawn..

At a crucial point near the end of the movie, Mike, his mom and inventor guy are trying to allude bad guys when mom decides its time to tell dear Mike about his father. Yes son I was waiting for just the right moment to tell you this...what better time then when we are jumping out a window. She tells him that dad is none other than Michael Knight. And she makes this revelation in a "ta-da" sorta way like Mike is supposed to say "Michael Knight??!! Really!! Holy crap!!! I used to love that show!! I can't believe he is my dad!"

Moments later mom is shot and killed and Mike has to "act" and its painful to watch. Show some emotion...anything...I would take a laugh even...a inappropriate emotion would be better than the stare.

The Hoff shows up at Mike's mommy's funderal. Did he have this kid while he was driving the original K.I.T.T. or before when he was Michael Long (remember he was a cop that got shot in the face)....was he married...one night stand? They never tell us and at this point I didn't care, I just wanted it to end. Hoff tells Mike that "one man can make a difference" and then walks off into the woods. These words from the father he never knew convince Mike to leave the Seavers garage and to sign up with the new Foundation for Law and Government, drive K.I.T.T. "offically" and continue to act badly.

Apparently the show got huge ratings and will most likely become a series, which is fine. Recast Mike. The original show "was" about Michael Knight..."a man who did not exist". For all the cheesy acting and yelling into his watch Hoff was fun. The new Mike....not so much.

Get better writers. I swear this script was pooped out minutes before the strike started. Don't recycle old show ideas from 20+ years ago and give the car some neato aspects we've never seen before.

Then and only then..the show *may* be fun to watch.

Indiana Jones and the Teaser Trailer

2008-02-14T08:10:00.003-06:00

Woohoo!!!!

Results from the poll: the New Years resolution I have NO intention of keeping

eat more vegatables (20%)
learn french (30%)
to exercise 3 times a week (0%)
no more milkshakes (20%)
to not worry about work (30%)
play less Team Fortress 2 (0%)

And its true. I most likely won't be learning French this year. Aaaand try as I might I will probably be worrying about work...it's in my nature. New Indy poll is up!!

Georgia Aquarium

2008-02-13T23:24:00.003-06:00

A few weeks ago, while in Atlanta, we visited the Georgia Aquarium. It was without a doubt the coolest aquarium I have ever visited.

In the main area there is a ginormous video screen showing fish and rainbows.

Inside this area resides the biggest damn viewing area I have ever seen. It measures 63 feet long and 27 feet high. Each panel (6 total) is 2 feet thick. It was like sitting on the ocean floor. Super cool. I want Home Depot (the sponser) to build one in my house.

Whale shark!!!

The River Scout area had some pretty unique fish displays.

One of the ballrooms was open so we took the opportunity to take a break. There were a few nice viewing areas there as well.

Whale shark!!!

What's that in the distance???

WHALE SHARK!!!

This area had lots of hands on activites for kids as well as a kiddie play area. The next two areas we dimmly lite so the pictures were pretty grainy....so the entrances are all I have to show.

Those are video displays and not actual tanks.

Nemo!!! Actually this guy, who has his own 3D movie up stairs, is named Deepo. Now I am assuming that since Home DEPOt is a big sponsor...and their store color is orange....that was what inspired this character. Nevertheless I amused myself several times asking Wonder-pea if she had seen Deepo. No? Then we should go Find Deepo....come on everyone....we're Finding Deepo.

We had a great time and the aquarium is pretty awesome. The World of Coke is located across from the aquarium but we didn't have the time this trip. Next time...oh yes....

Kung Fu Panda trailer

2008-02-12T17:17:00.000-06:00

Looks like the Disney lawyers yanked the new Wall-E trailer off YouTube. Free publicity whaaaaa??? Here's some fresh and legal Kung Fu Panda instead. Looks way fun!

Wall-E Trailer

2008-02-11T11:14:00.000-06:00

Super Bowl WallE

2008-02-04T16:17:00.000-06:00

There more little bits I see with him, the more I'm looking forward to the movie.

Back in Time

2008-01-31T18:15:00.000-06:00

A local Back to the Future super fan brought his tricked out Delorean by ReelFx. Justin Barrett braved the cold to take pictures of us staring at the car. Once powered up...the flux capacitor was fluxing..oh yes it was.

Sarah Connor

2008-01-15T17:19:00.000-06:00

The other night I checked out the new Terminators series, the Sarah Connor Chronicles, which picks up about two years after Terminator 2. Yet again those pesky terminators travel back in time to kill John Conner and yet again a terminator is sent back to protect him. But instead of Ah-nold, John's protector is the lovely fembot, Cameron.

The thing that struck me immediately is that no matter how many times they blow up Cyberdyne or destroy Skynet, those damn terminators will continue to exist. What would be an interesting twist, is if John Conner is somehow responsible for Skynet, thus making him the disease and the cure.

Now if you were going to travel back in time and kill say....Hitler. Would you do it when he is a teenager? Seems like the killer robots from the future should be traveling back to the day John was born and.....asta la vista baby. Get it!!...cause he'd be a little bab-nevermind. Better yet go back and kill Sarah when she was a kid. But terminators aren't cold blooded like that. They want to give their victims a sporting chance.

Ok fair enough. But why send back one terminator? You want John Conner taken out, send back ten of those bad boys. Likewise for the resistance. One termi might be a good defender but 20 would be better.

Regardless of logistics and some silliness, I did enjoy the pilot and will continue to watch for now. But it could go down hill. If John takes fembot to the prom.. I will most likely stop watching.

Go Rudolph you red nosed freak!!

Favorite Rankin/Bass Holiday Show
The Year Without a Santa Claus (15%)
Frosty the Snowman (15%)
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (62%)
Santa Claus is Coming to Town (8%)
Rudolph's Shiny New Year (0%)
Pinochio's Christmas (0%)
Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey (0%)

New poll is up!

LOST in the New Year

2008-01-01T23:38:00.000-06:00

Christmas Is Coming...

2007-12-20T13:48:00.000-06:00

...the goose is getting fat...and I along with it. My lord there has been no shortage of holiday goodness around the studio. It would be rude of me not to sample each and every one. And so I have.....several times.

I had been doing pretty good. I was watching what I was eating...working out a little and loosing some weight but from Thanksgiving to New Years its just a hopeless cause. To hell with trying to do good....bring on the cookies!!

Results from the poll show that people hate the lemon pie....me too!! I put it on there for my wife and she didn't even vote for it. Take that lemon pie!! Pumpkin and apple will fight to the death to determine the true winner.

Favorite Kind of Pie
pumpkin (25%)
apple (25%)
banana cream (20%)
lemon (0%)
chicken pot (10%)
pecan (10%)
blueberry (10%)

And just in time for the holidays and new poll is up!!

Christmas Time at Chase Manor

2007-12-10T18:01:00.000-06:00

As December was approaching this year my wife proposed we get a 2nd tree for our game room. I immediately checked to see if she was ill. Our existing tree is quite a job and combine that with 2 Christmas villages and lights in the backyard and front, I already had my work cut out for me. But she insisted that it would be a smaller tree on which we could hang all of our cartoon/kid ornaments.

Secretly I suspected that this was her way of getting rid of Spiderman. I have a Spiderman ornament and he is in a cool web slinging pose. Each year I put it in the center of the tree and each year she asks "Does it have to go in the center?" to which I reply it most certainly does. But now Spidey, Jimmy Neutron and all our Disney ornaments have been cast out, to a tree of their own. Spidey front and center.

Putting up a 2nd tree was not as much work as I thought and has added Christmas cheer to the west wing. That was a good thing....but then..

With the Christmas lights, I put those barely moving deer and a snow man in the backyard so the kiddos can look out the kitchen window and ooo and ah. Out front I usually just put lights in the trees and bushes. This year my wife suggested putting icicle lights on the house. With most houses around us having lights up on their houses I figured this would help make our street a powerhouse of Christmas cheer. Her suggestion of a 2nd Christmas tree worked out well, so what could possibly go wrong.

First thing was locating the lights. I went to a Lowes, Home Depot, Garden Ridge, France, Target and three Walmarts before finding them. But I got em so SCORE.

The guy who takes care of our yard offered to put up the lights. You silly fool!! I can do that myself. No problem...its just lights..its not like its hard or anything to hang lights. I continued to laugh at him until he drove away. As he sped off I remembered that the last time I tried to get up on the roof I had a panic attack and peed my pants. My laughter turned to a pained look. The kind our President gets before speaking..

But I had a plan. I would put the lights up.....at night!! That way if I freaked out and started crying OR if I fell off the roof and landed in a bush, no one would see me......or call 911, mmm yeah it wasn't a well thought out plan.

So out I went. Dark. Cold. Perfect. I started with what I thought would be the easy part of the roof line....the part that I could get to from the ground. Of course all the bushes and plants were in the bloody way, so much creative maneuvering was in order. With that string of lights mostly on it was finally time to get on up on the roof. Woohoo lets go!!

My yard is sloped so it took some time to find a nice stable spot for the ladder. I trotted on up with lights in hand.....looked out on the vast, dark, cold roof. Here we go. I put my left foot on the roof...aaaaaaannnnnnd decided that there was no way in hell I could do this. Maybe if I sorta...turned around...no no that's even scarier. Well why do I need to put the lights on the gables anyways...I mean.....sigh...YOU FAILED.... I would call yard man the next day.

After two hours I had put up one and half strings of lights. I suck.

The next day yard man put all the lights up. My wife called to tell me how beautiful the house looked. I got home and saw no lights and none of the outside plugs were working, which is always a good sign. Quick trip to the circuit breaker box and sure enough the outside circuit tripped. Well we will just flip that back on an....POP-a flash of orange-smoke....FLIZZLE FLAZZLE!!

The electrician comes out the next day and sure enough the circuit overloaded. Yes the POP-FLASH-SMOKE was my first clue. The backyard lights (3 amps) were on the same circuit as the front house lights (18 amps) and the circuit is a 20 amp circuit. Damn you 1 amp. The GFI outlet had a short in it which caused the main circuit to fry, but with some plutonium adjustments to the flux capacitor and proton pack....we were back in business. A lesson in how electricity works for only $270.

Light problems aside, I'm glad we got em. And now at last, Chase Manor is ready for Christmas. Bring it on.

It's a Wonderful Bug's Life

2007-11-21T13:55:00.000-06:00

Results from the poll:

Favorite Animated Insect Movie
The Ant Bully (19%)

Antz (14%)

Bee Movie (5%)

A Bug's Life (62%)

People love the life of bugs......bee movie?....not so much.

A new poll is up just in time for the holidays!

Thomas the Expensive Tank Engine

2007-11-19T15:53:00.000-06:00

Christmas is approaching...there it is....right behind you!! And so begins the shopping. Now both my daughter, Wonder-pea, and my son, Lil Pumpkin, dig the Thomas the tank engine. When visiting any Barnes and Nobles much time and fun is spent playing with these little trains.

Wonder-pea has been a Thomas fan for awhile and has a few engines and some track, all provided by family members at previous birthdays, christmas etc. We've been thinking of expanding the collection, maybe even getting a train table like they play with at the book store.

As it happens, I found myself in the Toys R Us and decided that I would pick up a few things. Ya gotta start the shopping early before everything is gone and you are left with giving your children scotch tape and beef jerky. So here is me...beating the rush.

This first thing I took a look at was a Roundhouse where Wonder-pea and Lil Pumpkin could store all their trains after a hard day of training around.

How much is this thing........hummm oh here it- $80.00!!! HOLY POOP!!! I dropped it like it a hot biscuit. Once I finished shaking I turned it over with my foot and looked at the price again... and again...and again...and again...

I quickly walked away.

Maybe another little train with a coal car would be good. $20.00!!! OK train with no coal car $15.00. My Pirates of the Caribbean figures from NECA, which are pretty detailed, run $14.00.....why in gods name is this thing $20. And then I saw that the Thomas line boasts: Made from Real Wood. Damn you real wood.

How about "Made From Something that Won't Make This Stuff So Expensive".....like paper or feathers. The more I explored the wonderful toy world of Thomas, the more it become clear that Learning Curve, the makers of this cash cow, are rolling in the freakin dough. Sure it's "official" merchandise and then there is the "real wood" thing. But come on. A little 3 inch train should not be $20.

After my mind stopped spinning, I though, o-k maybe we can just get the table. It's just an average looking table with a scenery image on top. We will get the table and trick- uh-CHECK...to see if other family members want to buy the crazy expensive trains, track etc.

Tables run: $250-400. My.....god...

I hope the kids enjoy the scotch tape and beef jerky.

Sith

2007-11-09T01:59:00.000-06:00

I finally had some time to do a decent drawergeeks submission.

Ninja Parade

2007-11-05T15:54:00.000-06:00

Ninja Parade Slips Through Town Unnoticed Once Again

Bee Movie

2007-11-02T00:46:00.000-05:00

Bee Movie opens today. Yes its out right now!! Go....hurry.....time is running out!! ReelFx did some promotional spots for the film. I have a couple shots I did up in the animation section. Enjoy.

A new poll is up as well. Here are the results from the previous:

Favorite Team Fortress 2 DEFENSE character

Demoman (33%)

Heavy (33%)

Engineer (33%)

A three way tie!! You're all winners!!

Kung Fu Panda

2007-10-31T15:19:00.000-05:00

**UPDATE movie is working again**

I'm super excited for this one. Go Panda!!

Spiderman 3 on DVD

2007-10-30T17:03:00.001-05:00

Not gonna buy it. Not gonna rent it.

Look at him over there, sitting in the rain, looking all depressed. What went wrong with my movie? Too many characters? Too much dancing? Too much crying? Yes, yes and hell yes.

Have you forgotten dear Spiderman why your 3rd outting sucked so bad? If so, reread what I wrote about it here and then here.

Eagles Scream

2007-10-25T02:37:00.000-05:00

Tonight I hit a steam rating of 10 after spending about a week bouncing around in the 9.somethings. Woohoo!! I have no idea what this rating means but woohoo!!

I've been playing TF2 a lot and by a lot, I mean A LOT!! I need to ween myself down on the game play so I don't burn myself out. I've been telling myself that over the past two weeks. Apparently I'm ignoring myself.

Peace Love Frankenstein

2007-10-24T21:53:00.001-05:00

There is a new shirt design in the My Shop area.....hard to believe? Tell me about it. It's the first new anything to go into My Shop in months. One wonders how long My Shop will stay in business.

Team Fortress 2

2007-10-10T13:59:00.000-05:00

TF2 is out!! Yes its true. I have been playing the Beta Orange Box release for a few weeks now and its a lot o fun; I'm actually doing pretty good...who would of thunk it possible. Now you can join in on the fun by going HERE.

Big congrats to my buddies up at Valve: Andrew Burke, Hamish Mckenzie, Karen Prell and Matthew Russell.

Poll results...for: Of my 5 shows, which will rock the hardest this season

HEROES (40%)

The Office (47%)

LOST (7%)

24 (7%)

Smallville (0%)

..damn you NBC

2007-10-02T22:56:00.000-05:00

Technology is pretty awesome when it works but when it doesn't, its really really annoying. Take our dual tuner DVR for example. Recording an entire season of a series...wonderous...recording two shows at once...a miracle of the modern age. The only problem is that one of the dual tuners is flaky and must only be able to hold 6% instead of 100%.

We discovered this when the disk space suddenly jumped from 56% to 100%.

We discovered this last Thursday when we had premieres of The Office and Smallville scheduled to record at the same time.

Smallville recorded but The Office did not, even though we were at 56% full at the time of the recordings; 100% after. I jumped around like an angry monkey...hit the DVR with my club and threw a rock at the TV, but to my dismay The Office was still not showing up in my playlist.

Then I remembered that NBC had just announced that they were pulling out of iTunes making episode available for FREE, the day after they aired. Awesome. The next day I happily went to nbc.com to download The Office premiere.

The kids are in bed, the wife is ready to watch and.....why isn't it working? Let's try again...nothing. Glad to see they tested it out. Reboot..nothing...try Firefox...no.....curse at it unmercifully...nope. There is nothing NOTHING on the page that says anything about "what you need to view the shows". Brilliant. Does it use some fancy new Java plugin or magic...who knows. Also nowhere does it say "having trouble viewing the show?". No support!! Fan-freakin-tastic.

Fortunately there is a forum on nbc.com and a thread for Tech Support. Sure enough, many folks are having the same problem. This is Friday...NBC's new season launched on Monday...their player is not working and no one from "support" is telling people anything in the forum. NBC you are upsetting me.

I check iTunes, maybe just mayb-NO...no Office season 4, which the more I thought about it the dumber this seemed. People use iPods to watch their TV..to take it with them. Pulling out of iTunes completely alienates that market. But I guess NBC doesn't like making money.

So I turned to Google. For the love of god Google tell me where I can find this episode. Google returns some options but what a surprise the content has been removed...most likely by NBC. No no consumers...you will watch our shows on our broken player or you won't watch them at all!!

But then I see it...my salvation....Amazon.com. Apparently I can pay $1.99 and download the episode from something called Amazon Unbox Video. Wow sorta like ITUNES! You would think that with the problems NBC was having with their own FREE player, that they might point people over to Amazon....make a little cash and keep people happy. Insanity!

In the end The Office premiere was pretty funny...making the journey worth it; Amazon I have feelings for you...call me.

TV Returns

2007-09-24T12:14:00.000-05:00

It's a week of premieres!! Three of the five shows I watch come on this week; LOST and 24 don't start 'til next year.

Check out the commercials:

HEROES

The Office

Smallville

Poll results for: What I did over the summer

Wrestled a lion (7%)
Got thrown out of a theme park (13%)
Saw a crappy movie (47%)
Went out..got drunk..threw up...repeat (13%)
Embraced internet dating (13%)
Spent a couple hours in jail (7%)

New poll now up!!!