I RUN THIS TOWN

I had to start running.

It was only a couple months after moving to LA
that I realized it had to be done.

In New York I was always walking.
Always climbing stairs.
Always rockin' the sidewalk turbo-style
alongside my fellow New Yorkers.

In Los Angeles I was in a car.
And I totally felt myself turning to oatmeal.

So I started running.

Now I've always liked running.
Although I DID once draw myself giving a rude gesture
to my college lacrosse coach
with a word balloon stating
"I will never run for you ever again"
when I graduated.
But aside from that.
I like running.

It was pretty hard to start again.
I took it slow at first
(and still ended up spraining a hip)
but eventually worked my way to
getting up at 6am every morning,
walking a mile to the local park,
running two miles on the path,
walking back a mile,
and getting home just in time
to feed the wolves before school.

I've been doing that over two years now.
And it'a a good feeling.
I get a lot of thinking done on those outings, too.
(It helps that I'm a morning person)

So last weekend I decided to run my first 5k.


It was kind of a no-brainer.

I like running.
I like hockey.
and
I like good causes.

And it wasn't like I had to train.
I run every day.
So 5k is easy.
(that's 3.2 miles to you non-metric folk)

And I had a lot of fun doing it.
Even thought it rained
THE WHOLE TIME.


Yuck.

Still... I came in 7th in my age group with 23 minutes and 52 seconds:


And 115th out of 690 overall:


I'll take that.

Now on to the New York City Marathon!

LOL jk
No thank you.

I'll stick to a 5 or 10k.

JOHN SCALZI'S LIST

I assume you've heard by now.

That I,
Mr. Warburton,
like,
TOTALLY
made the list.

Uh huh.

The List of Awesome People Who Are Awesomely Awesome.

Specifically...

JOHN SCALZI's

List of

Awesome People

Who Are

Awesomely

Awesome.

Yeah...


THAT John Scalzi.

Who would have ever thought a kid
from the mean streets of
Ambler, PA would make the list?

I DID have a little help, though.
Firstly, Cheryl Willems,
(Mo Willems' better two thirds)
who turned me on to Mr. Scalzi's books.

And secondly,
Athena Scalzi
(daughter of Mr. Scalzi)
who just so happens to be a sooper triple giant mega KND fan
and helped orchestrated a mutually awesome trade of swag.

What did I get in the deal?

Oh, just THIS:


YES!
A signed and numbered special edition!
And somehow, I got just the right numbuh:


And a VERY nice inscription:



Wanna see one of the things I sent out Scalzi way?

Check out the post on his WHATEVER blog.
Which, BTW...
you should be reading every day anyway.
It's THAT good.
(You should be reading his books, too)
(Seriously.)

So in closing,
Thanks Cheryl...
Thanks Athena...
And thanks Mr. Scalzi.

For getting me on the list.

STEWIE!

While digging up that Power Puff Girls drawing I posted last week,
I came across another very postable sketch,
Specifically, this one:


Yes, maam.

That's an original drawing of Stewie by
none other than Seth MacFarlane himself.

I met Seth at Hanna Barbera/Cartoon Network/Warner Bros
when I was making Kenny and the Chimp.
He was writing assorted cartoons for these companies,
but in his spare time he was making funny interstitial shorts for
America's Funniest Home Videos.
You know, the show with stuff like this:



Unfortunately, the shorts never got put into AFHV.
Instead, they became their very own show.

Something called...

Family Guy

And you know how that went.

Anyway, when Family Guy was still in it's infancy
and I was back in NYC
my good friend and line producer of both my pilots
Diana Ritchey
(currently, producer on American Dad)
was visiting our small, but microscopic apartment.
Seth happened to be in town, too
so he came over to visit as well.

That's then I locked the door and told him no one
was leaving until he drew me a picture of Stewie.

And
I
Still
GOTS
IT!

THE POWER PUFF GIRLS STILL SAVE THE DAY!

You know what I love?

Walking into a room and finding my kids watching a REAL cartoon.
Like...

The

Powerpuff

Girls!


The wolf cubs recently found it in the
On Demand section of the cable guide
and can't get enough of the show.

P is even drawing pictures of them.




So imagine the look on the boys' faces when I showed them this:


BOOM!

I mean, PPG was one of the reasons
I wanted a show on Cartoon Network.
(the other being Dexter's Laboratory)
So when I came to LA to make my Kenny and the Chimp pilot,
I went out of my way to meet show creator Craig McCracken.
I even got to go out for root beers with him!
(That's what the TIki Ti reference is about.)
(But as I remember things, it was mostly me with all the animation geek talk.)

Either way, it's been great getting to chat with Craig
here and there over the years.
And these days I get to see him 'round the halls of Disney.
(where he may or may not be working on a sooper secret (awesome) project)

If you haven't watched PPG in a while,
Check it out.
It still ROCKS!

ALL SKETCHBOOKS MUST DIE!

Yes, they must.

Case in point, my latest monster that just kicked the bucket:


It all started with this title page on October 3rd, 2011:


After that, all manner of things began inhabiting the pages/
Like this creature that lives in my cord/charger/electrical drawer:


Or this Whaledestroyer:


A Cactusssasin:


Tako desu:


Big MacArthur:

note: i found one of the McDonalds Monopoly game pieces and printed the rest from the internets.
If I actually ate at McDonalds my intestines would probably fall out.
Blech!

A deer with handtlers


Lonesome Pines:


Tourists:


Seraphim:


Cat/teacup/jellyfish/whatevers:


Plants, of course:


Big city teeth:


Things in my drink:


And just when I thought it would never end:


It did.
On January 11th, 2012:


I like this sketchbook alot.
This time around I made a conscious effort
to take more time on ideas and
lean into them harder.
Which was fun.

And now it's onto the next one.

How's about you?
I hope you've got a sketchbook
and draw in it whenever you get a chance!

BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD

By now you've probably heard that these guys are back on TV.

And if you're interested in hearing how
they ever got on TV in the first place,
head on over to CARTOON BREW to read the post
HOW BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD SAVED MY LIFE
by the show's producer, John Andrews.


It's a great window into how the ground-breaking series came about.
But I've got some stories, too.
After all, I was the Production Designer on the first season.
Which pretty much meant that I was the $1.98 version
of show creator Mike Judge.


It was my job to go through all his films, drawing by drawing,
and find out what made him tick.
I got copies of all his sketchbooks and picked apart how he drew his characters.
How he timed his animation.
How he colored his backgrounds.



I then translated these to model sheets that the rest of the production would use to draw the Mike Judge way.
A style that is all at once quirky, naive, inconsistent, and 2043% perfect for it is.
Even so, Mike was always leaning on us to improve upon his drawing.
But J.J. Sedelmaier insisted on keeping Mr. Judge's drawing style
exactly the way it was.
That was part of what made Beavis and Butthead so great.
And personally, I thought Beavis and Butthead WAS great.

At the time, there was nothing like it.
It was primitive.
Yet had a definitive style.
It was crude.
But with a sly intelligence.
It was ugly.
Yet full of character.
And most importantly...

It was ?$%&# funny.

There was nothing on TV like it.
There was also no other production like it.
We were actually animating the show in-house
and digitally coloring and compositing it in LA.
This was virtually unheard of for a TV series
at the time since 99.5% shows were sent overseas.

It was crazy.
No one knew what they were doing.
Things hadn't been done this way before.
But we made it work.
Spectacularly, if I may.

So why not give you some anecdotes regarding that first season?

____________________

We couldn't hire some people on Beavis and Butthead
because they couldn't dumb down their drawing enough.
They were simply TOO good.

I have never had that problem.
__________________

The character design for Daria (who eventually got her own show)
was done by no less than 35 people. Mr. Judge had a very specific idea in his head for how he wanted her to look. Unfortunately it was stuck there.
I must have done 50 designs.
Sooperstar character designer Ben Price probably did another 50.
We kinda looked like this afterwards:



Mike drew a couple roughs we played around with. Still nothing. Virtually everyone in the studio gave it a shot. Mr. Sedelmaier even jumped in. I don't think we ever got an officially approved design. Time just kind of ran out.


_____________________

I contributed to the death of the hair-metal band band Winger.


Yup.
Love me or hate me for it...
Twas me.
Even before Beavis and Butthead, I used to draw myself wearing a Winger shirt when I wanted to make myself look like a dork.
So when the first script with dorky Stuart hit my desk I slapped Winger onto his shirt like,

UNGH!

In general, we weren't allowed to put real band names on shirts
because getting permission to use them was a tedious process.
But when Mr. Judge saw the Stuart design he was all like,

UNGH!


Years later, I heard that Kip Winger was on the Howard Stern show and claimed that a good part of the death of the band
was the Beavis and Butthead thing.

You're welcome.
_____________________

Because Mr. Judge was so busy,
I often sat in the recording studio designing characters
and then slipped them under the door
to the recording booth to get them approved.
_____________________

After the success of the first season, MTV decided to take the plunge and open their own animation studio.
And I had to make a choice.
Go there.
Or stay at Sedelmaier's.
I stayed.
But I kept this:



An original layout complete with Mike Judge post-it revisions.

Love it!

MO IN DA WAPO!

I'm sure all of you just happened to be reading
The Washington Post this weekend.

And I'm sure you read that nice article about
Mo Willems that was in the Lifestyle Section.

Therefore you saw the quote where I called him a poopyhead.

Or something like that.

To see the actual quote (and more importantly, the rest of the article),
just head on over HERE!

(they might make you do one of those annoying free signy-uppy things.
You can always try BUGMENOT
if you're not into that kinda stuff.)

QUADROPHENIA

I don't know about you,
but I need to listen to music when I work.

I can't when I'm writing.
It's too distracting.
But when I'm drawing...
the music MUST go on.

And it's no secret that my favorite band is The Who.
But did you know that my favorite album is
QUADROPHENIA?

Yup.
The whole thing.
Every song.

Such drive (5:15, Bellboy).
Such emotion (Love, Reign O'er Me).
Such teenage angst (Cut My Hair, The Real Me)

I never get tired of it.

So how happy was I when I heard that Mr. Townshend was remastering it?
Kinda happy.
I usually don't care for remastered stuff.
I like the music how I remember hearing it.
But the super deluxe edition they were releasing has a big hardcover book,
song by song track notes and all sorts of bonus goodies.


Okay...
I'm in.

Then I heard they were gonna have a listening party at the
Petersen Automotive Museum here in LA.
I guess because they have some Vespa scooters there.
(which were very important in the English Mod movement when Quadrophenia takes place)

So off I went.
And the museum was AMAZING!
(if you like cars)

Me?
Cars kinda make me go "meh".
Still, you can't help but be impressed by the place.

So as I walked around and looked at car after car (after car)
while the remastered songs of Quadrophenia played over the speakers.
But after half an hour I was pretty much done
so I wandered over to the listening area.
Which wasn't much.
Just a bunch of folding chairs around a sooper amazing speaker set-up.
There was a Who concert playing on a DVD,
but it wasn't Quadrophenia so it wasn't quite in sync with what was playing.



To be perfectly honest...
It was kinda lame.

But I couldn't leave.
I was meeting a friend later at the museum across the street.
So I had an idea.

I went back to my car and got my sketchbook.
After all, the Kids Next Door were practically BORN to the strains of Quadrophenia.
And you know what?

I had a GREAT time just sitting there drawing my kids.
It was relaxing and fun!

Another good reason for staying was that they were gonna have a drawing
to win a copy of the remastered edition.
10 of the regular ones and 1 of the super deluxe.
And there was barely anyone at this thing.
So i figured I was a LOCK to win one.



But I didn't.

Fortunately for me, only 3 people showed up to claim their prize.
So they drew again.

And I didn't win again.

Fortunately, 2 people didn't show up to claim their prize that time.
So they drew again. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand...

I didn't win AGAIN!

Ugh.

So I asked for one for Christmas.
(Thanks Mom and Dad)

Anyway...
Here's what I drew while I sat there listening to my favorite album of all time.



Maybe I can finish it if the band tours.

RICE FISHY TREAT!

Or is that spinach?



Either way, it was the star of our Fish Hooks holiday party.
Awesome job by Production Rockstar Carolyn Roach!