Counting is Fun....

...until your counter is reset without your knowledge. Yes the good folks at GoStats have updated their site and all that implies. This wouldn't have been a big deal except my counter disappeared off my page due to the code being out of date.

The new code doesn't seem to although me to set the counter and seeing as how I didn't want to start from "1"....new counter it is!!!

I had already been using StatCounter to track page hits within my site. Now it will be my main counter as well. I just wish the numbers could be a little bigger.

Flags

You may have noticed the spiffy country counter that I added over there on the right. My buddy Shephard added one to his blog and by god it looked so cool, I needed to have me one as well.

Right now I'm using the trail version. There is a pay version and a free version. I will see how it goes, but most likely I will plunk down the $17 for a year license.

Oh yeah if you click on a flag it brings up a little map. So if you happen to see, say, Gibraltar, on the list and wonder "where is that?" click on the flag and there ya go.

More First Noel

Yarrow and Carrie Cheney, writers, directors, creators...of The Very First Noel have started a blog. Their first post has a lot of color script paintings from the show as well as other nifty images.

If you are a fan of VFN or if you know nothing about it, why not stop by and check them out.

H.R. Fuss n Stuff

In general things have been going well with Lil Pumpkin. He's a cute little guy. He'll smile and laugh here and there for no apparent reason which is kinda funny. Like he just thought of something amusing.

Wonder-pea is enjoying being a big sister and hasn't been too too jealous of the new person. Although every once and a while she will tell my wife to "put him down"......I mean come....you've been holding him long enough.

However, this past Sunday was one of "those" days. Lil Pumpkin cried pretty much the entire day.....sometimes it was so intense I thought he was going to asplode. It was so bad that at one point I went into the kitchen and stuck my head in the oven. Of course since its not a gas oven I was looking at a bad burn at most.

Wonder pea likes to sing the SpongeBob song "this is the best day ever". On Sunday we were all singing "this is the worst day ever" because nothing would appease the Pumpkin King. It was like someone had snuck into the house the night before and replaced our happy child with the spawn of satan.

"Are you hungry? Need a diaper change? This toy? This one? A blanket? A pillow? Your tired? Your cold? Your hot? You want $10? Here take $10...just stop, for the love of god stop!!"

By some miracle he actually went to sleep that night. At which point the three of us collapsed right where we were.

The next morning I approached his bassinet with cross and holy water in hand. As I peaked in I could see he was awake and happy, smiling for no reason and laughing at the air. I was thrilled that the evil had left him. I picked him up and said "hey buddy how we doing today?" He looked at me, smiled and then spit up all over me.

At least he was happy...

Turtle Power

Today we wrapped animation on ReelFx's portion of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It was great to be part of another feature project and a lot of fun to work on a property that I enjoyed so much as a kid.

Imagi Animation Studios in Hong Kong is handling the majority of the animation for the film. I can tell you there are some pretty insane action scenes with the turtles that give me a headache. Not from watching, but from thinking about how they planned and blocked it all out. Yowza.

The film opens March 30, 2007 and should be a fun time at the movies.

The Ant Bully on DVD

The Ant Bully is now on DVD. Apparently a few people missed it while it was in theaters so hopefully those folks will give it a look on video.

Now I will admit that the cover art is rather awful. Lucas looks stupidly happy and all the other characters are in no way proportionate to one another. Don't let that dissuade you from picking it up. Most folks who saw the film in theaters (all 10 of them) seemed to enjoy it and perhaps you will too.

I did a bit of animation on the Behind the Scenes section, which I have put up in my Animation area for your viewing enjoyment.

Werewolves

Here is my submission for this weeks DrawerGeeks because werewolves have kids too.

Bleeding Pixels

I recently answered 10 Quick questions over at Dave Johnson's bleedingpixels.blogspot.com. Other buddies o mine have done the 10 Quick, like Andrew Burke and Mike Walling. Why not stop by and have a read? When your done, take a look around the rest of the blog for some good information and links.

Dave is one of my students this quarter at Animation Mentor. Check him out at 3dave.com.

The Very First Noel

The Very First Noel is now on sale at a retailer near you. Yes it is true! It is great entertainment for the whole family so why not run out and buy a copy. Or buy 10 copies and get that Christmas shopping done early.

In celebration of the release, I have uploaded some of my shots to the Animation area.

The offical web site has gotten a pretty nifty upgrade as well.

Pirate Cove

With the help of fellow ReelFxer Jason Owen, I finally hauled all my pirate stuff up to the studio. I never realized how much I had until I had to break it down when I left DNA. My wife was thrilled when all this stuff left our house.











My area at ReelFx is a good bit larger than what I had over at DNA. There is actually room between the animators which is nice in case I want to stretch out and take a nap on the floor, which I frequently do.....


One of the guys has a Master Replicas Kermit the Frog....




I felt much safer knowing that Kermit was standing guard.

Halloween

So last week was Halloween and if you were like me you ate so much candy that you went into a chocolate coma. I love Halloween. You get to dress up and be someone else for a day AND you get to gorge yourself on candy. What could be better?

How about a Halloween party. Every year my good friend and ex-DNAer, Deanna Molinaro and her husband Aaron invite all of us misfits to her house for beer and cake. This year was freezing, freaking cold so most everyone stayed inside the house.

Now you combine beer and a lot of people in close quarters and things are bound to get crazy. Take what happened with me and my buddy Ernesto Bottger.

Ernesto came as a popular character from a Spanish kids shows, super hero El Chapulin Colorado. Seeing as how I don't speak the Spanish and had a little too much Mr Beer, I basically called him Captain Hot all night.
At one point Ernesto flipped out and let me have it.

And a scuffle broke out.

But since the alcohol was making us tired we decided to call it a draw. Because that is what Halloween is all about: costumes, candy, fighting and friendship. Deanna as Mother Nature, Ernesto as Captain Hot and me as a pirate....of course.

Texas State Fun

A couple weekends ago we went to the annual Texas State Fair. I like going to the fair, it is a fun way to spend the day and to drop a lot of money. My god is it expensive to go the ol fair. When the day started, we were doing pretty well. As we were about to buy our tickets a nice woman turned to me and said here ya go and walked off. She handed me a complimentary ticket. Awesome. That plus a coupon that got Wonder-pea in for free, and we were doing pretty well.

But once you get inside its all over. Since they make you purchase tickets you really have no idea how much anything really costs. Wonder-pea wanted to go on a train ride which was 6 tickets. I wanted to ride with her, because I just love riding the kiddie train, which cost me 6 tickets. I figured out later that the experience really cost us about $6. Needless to say we avoided more rides. But then....there is the food.

Funnel cakes, corn dogs and anything you could ever want deep fried is all there waiting for you. In addition to fried ice cream, oreos, cheesecake and several others, this year they had fried Coke. Someone who had deep fried everything imaginable must have figure that the only challenge left was to fry a liquid.

While cruising the fair and trying to figure out how the hell you actually deep fry Coke, we passed a stand selling "fried donkey tails" which immediately made a picture in my head of tailess donkeys standing in a pen with white X's on their bums. The initial reaction was: bleah.

Later we found a food booklet that told us what a fried donkey tail was: a footlong hot dog split down the side, filled with cheese and deep fried in a tortia. My god that sounds....delicious. We sought out said fried donkey tails, devoured them and headed towards the fried cheesecake which I adore.

But something happened on the walk to the cheesecake. Maybe what I had just eaten had just registered with my brain or the smell of fried everything in the air was just too much for my stomach, but hearing the words "fried" and "cheesecake" just about sent me into cardiac arrest.

Instead we went over to the car show where Wonder-pea had a blast trying out all the latest models and as a bonus, it required no tickets. I just wish she would open her eyes when driving.

New Addition

Next Thursday we had a C-section scheduled, but apparently my son did not want to miss Halloween and decided to come.....today!!

Lil Pumpkin didn't make a lot of fuss when brought from his warm, liquidy home, into the big bright, cold world. He was kinda like "WAAAAaaaa..... ooo this blanket is nice.. oh I get a hat too?....sweet...I'm digging this".

Both Mom and baby are doing great and Wonder-pea is super excited that her brother is finally here.

Drawer Geeks

This week is my first submission.....well..2nd...sorta to Drawer Geeks! Every two weeks at DrawerGeeks.com several talented folks post drawings based on topics ranging from "Childhood Nightmares" to "Godzilla". I used to almost, be sort of, not too bad with the whole drawing thing but to be honest I haven't really drawn in a long time.

So here is my first submission for "Movie Monsters", which as it turns out was for this weeks topic last year. Big thanks to Tony Bonilla for giving me wrong information. I will get you Tony...oh yes..



And then there is my real first submission for the topic "Grim Reaper". Not as super ninja awesome as a lot of the other fine art work on the site, but it's a lot less painful than a hot poker in the eye.

Three Wise Men

Recently, I completed animation on my first project for ReelFx called The Very First Noel, which is the story of the three wise men.

The project was a lot of fun and was probably the smoothest production I have ever been a part of to date. The web site has just gone up, so drop by and take a peak.

Hopefully TVFN will be on broadcast television this holiday season before making its way to DVD shelves near you.

Prepare to Be Pitied

Next week TVland premieres Mr. T's new show I Pity the Fool, not to be confused with Mr. Ed's new show I Pooped in Your Pool. If I have learned but one thing from watching the A-team, it is that duct tape can be used to hold anything together: tanks, planes, the spaceshuttle, anything. The second thing I learned was that everyone and everything, can and will, be pitied by Mr.T.

The sneak peak of episode 1 looks both totally insane and completely awesome as Mr. T works his magic at a used car dealership. Notice how he makes the word "motivation" appear out of mid air; he truely is magical. But things heat up by the end of the clip and me thinks next week some chumps will have their jibber jabber cut short as T tosses them over the camera; just like in the old days.

Where a Kid Can Be a Kid

Today we took Wonder-pea to Chuck E. Cheese for the very first time. This particular CEC was lite on the video games yet heavy on games and rides for little ones. Since we had a little one with us this worked out well.

I remember when I was about 13 there was a CEC like joint called Showbiz Pizza Place. This place rocked with tons of the latest arcade games, but one day the games began disappearing and ball pits and wack a moles sprang up. Then Showbiz got bought by CEC and that was the end of that. Anyways....

After eating some delicious pizza made by Chuck E. himself, me and Wonder-pea hit the games. And the game of choice was skee ball, which is not only fun but extremely dangerous when playing with my daughter. She hasn't quite mastered the idea of rolling the balls. She much prefers to throw them.

During a skee balling attempt in Disney World, Wonder-pea managed to throw balls into other lanes, at neighboring games and at passers by. She seemed confused that beaming Goofy in the crotch didn't produce extra tickets.

Today, however, we had a system. She would hand me the skee balls and I would roll them. And we were doing pretty well. After several games we had a whopping 44 tickets. I noticed that if you got a score of 450 you would get 200 some extra tickets. Seeing as how I could barely break 180 points this seem virtually impossible for anyone in the place......

...until another Dad managed to hit 460. An alarm went off....balloons fell from the ceiling...Chuck E came out and gave him the key to the restaurant....children were cheering. It was beautiful.

My mere 44 tickets seemed poultry compared to the riches that awaited anyone who got the 450 score. What can you get for 44 tickets? I figured I would at least try and see if I could be as cool as this other Dad. I noticed that his key to success was sinking skee balls in the hard to hit 100 point hole. This was something I have never done because basically I suck at skee ball. But I wanted those tickets and the praise from Chuck E.

Wonder-pea was still enjoying pressing the coin return and passing me skee balls, so what the hell...I made a go at hitting the 100 point hole. The first couple tries weren't pretty, ending in a score of less than 100, but eventually I managed to sink 2 100s in one game. Wonder-pea was super excited that our usual three tickets had turned in to fifteen.

Then, suddenly and without warning I sank 4 100s damn near in a row with an ending score of 510. By god I did it!!! Take that Dad who got 460!! Gather round children of Chuck E Cheese and behold your new king!!. Tickets poured from the machine. So many....so beautiful. An alarm went off.......glorious......ok where are the balloons...no balloons?.... no Chuck E?......hey kids look at that score!!.....yeah no one cared.

One little girl had her hands over her ears scowling at me because the alarm was really, really loud.

After standing there with the alarm blazing for 10 minutes an attendant finally came over and gave me my 200 ticket prize. All in all we had gone from 44 tickets to 340. And we were heading to the prize counter!! 340 tickets!! We are getting something good baby!!

Of the various junk levels of prizes, Wonder-pea wanted the 15 ticket items. She left the prize counter with 40 tickets worth of bracelets and rings. Apparently 44 tickets was all we needed. The other 300 are in my wallet....

White and Nerdy

The title could be describing me, or it could be describing the new video by Weird Al. His new CD is in stores Sept 26!

Look Alive Mates....

....because today be International Talk Like A Pirate Day. That's right me hearties. It be that one day of the year where scalleywags the world over break out the rum and bad pirate jokes. Arrr.. a good a time indeed.

But caution be warned to any mate using their bestest pirate pick up lines... "prepare to boarded ye wenches" and "might I dock me ship in your port"...could end with ye meeting the wrong end of a sword....or at least getting the scurvy slapped out of ya...savvy?

Drink up me hearties yo ho.....

Summer Heat

A fun, summer thing I like to do here in Texas is to go up in the attic for long periods of time. I tell you what there is nothing better. Our attic happens to be quite large and spacious so you can walked around up there. However there are several dangers in the attic....the most evil (aside from the insane heat) are the many exposed nails lining the ceiling.

Apparently the roofers used the longest nails they could find when nailing the cardboard thin shingles to the roof. One wrong turn in the attic and WHACK...nail in your head, eye, back. This of course adds to the fun, giving me something else to do while working, sweating and trying not to fall through the ceiling.

One day last summer we noticed that we had no hot water. So I determined that I needed to inspect the hot water heater...which is in the attic. After a brief inspection I notice that the pilot light was out; its a gas operated hot water heater.

So now step one is to try to relight the pilot which involves me laying on my stomach and sticking a lit match into the bottom of the 10 gallon heater; current temperature in attic 1000 degrees. At this point I was scared to death that I was going to do something wrong and blow up myself, the house and everything in a 5 mile radius.

Attic temperature + nervous me= heat index of 20000 degrees

First couple attempts didn't go well mostly because I had my eyes closed. By about the 7nth try I got the pilot lit....YAY...I did it and as a plus I didn't blow up....small victory! So now all I need to do is turn the heater on...switch it to on.......pilot goes out. Remember in Back to the Future at the end when Doc is dangling from the clocktower? He gets the cord off his pants cuff, stands in front of the clockface, positions himself to triumphantly connect both cords only to discover that they won't reach. It was that kind of moment.

I let out a big Darth Vader "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"

So now its back to trying to relight the pilot. This time I get it in 2 tries. Switch the heater to on....pilot.....goes out. Temperature in attic rises 100 degrees as I start getting angry. The goat sitting nearby encourages me to try again. Yes the heat was so bad I was halluncinating at the point.

"Stupid ****in pilot....***damn piece of ****" When I started I was scared to death to even light a match near the heater. Now I was striking these bad boys left and right......lit pilot...turn on...pilot goes out....repeat. This went on until I burned through the whole box of matches.

At this point the monkey that was drinking tea with the goat, suggested that the problem may require a technician. Since he was wearing a monocle I figured he was pretty wise. I called it a day.

While the heater remained broken I did overcome my fear of blowing myself up AND I did loose about 150 pounds from being in the heat of the attic. Also I am playing racket ball twice a week with the monkey and the goat...so there is a bright side.