MY WACKY RACES PITCH

You've seen it, right?

This brilliant homage to  Wacky Racesby Peugeot: I loved Wacky Races  when I was a kid. The characters. The humor. And of course, THE CARS:

A bunch of years ago,

before I moved to LA,

I pitched a reboot 

of the show.

I thought that since

Warner Bros.

Cartoon Network

Hanna Barbera

and

DC Comics

were all within the 

same company,

why not 

mash 'em their 

characters together?

Here's the 

pitch pamphlet 

I put together:

And you know what? The guy I pitched  it to at  Warner Brothers said he LOVED IT! But he also said it would never happen. To get that many companies to agree on anything would be impossible. Licensing fees for the characters (even though they're all owned by the same entity) would be ridiculous. Revenue split that many ways would  come out to nothing. So... nothing ever happened. But I hear there might be talk of a Wacky Races reboot sometime  in the future.

WHERE THE WILD THINGS WEREN'T

I recently asked/begged/pleaded Mr. J.J. Sedelmaier if he could dub me up some .mov files of the stuff I worked on during my tenure at his studio. The copies I made before I left are all on VHS and slowly rotting away in a closet. I don't even have a VCR-- I had to go to a neighbors house to watch the tapes to compile a list of what I needed!

The problem is-- I was at JJSP for FIVE YEARS and worked on a ton of spots, promos, commercials, interstitials, shows and assorted other stuff.

No easy feet and I know J.J. has way more important things to do than worrying about whether I have digital copies of everything I worked on.
Such a task would have killed a normal man, but somehow JJ got it done!
And what a blast it is seeing all that stuff!
Yes... some is painfully dated.
(commercials for Burger King, McGruff the crime dog...)

But others hold up despite their age!
(commercials for Celebrity Cruise Line designed by Gary Baseman, Slim Jim, Levi's, and an awesome Volkswagon commercial starring Speed Racer!)

One spot that holds a special place in my heart was for some Converse sneakers called Wild Things. There were three spots in total, one for each of the staff animators; David "The Raging Pencil" Wachtenheim, Dean "The Wizard of 1's" Lennert and plain ol' Tom "Where'd My Pencil Go?" Warburton.

The agency had some VERY rough 4 panel storyboards that showed a hornet, a snake and a spider that turned into sneakers.
I think.
It was hard to tell. But it was up to me and the guys to take those storyboards and make something awesome out of 'em!

Unlike working on a TV series, where you generally just do one thing (like designing characters or storyboarding), commercial work usually means doing a bit of everything from script to screen as a team. You storyboarded and then keyed, assisted and inbetweened the animation. You wrote your own exposure sheets. You shot your own animatics. Then you jumped right into production; xeroxing, painting and cleaning cels. And eventually you ran everything over to the cameraman late at night and prayed it would turn out all right.

Anyway... my spot was the one with the hornet and I loosely based its flying on the Flapters from Hayao Miyazaki's CASTLE OF LAPUTA:


Maybe you'll see the influence... maybe not. But here's the commercial:


Cool, right?

I remember pushing to make the hornet fly faster and faster. But looking at it now-- it looks sooooo slow!

I also remember tearing my hair out trying to draw that bicycle at such a low angle. It wasn't easy. But it was for fellow Sedelmaier inmate Gideon Kendall. I made him draw it for me.
He designed the look of these commercials so he had to help me.

Okay now... remember what happened to my Celebrity Cruise Line spot?

Yup.

This commercial died, too. Converse pulled the plug on the sneakers before the spots aired.

Drag.

Still, JJ put the spot in some festivals and it got some nice props from Animation Magazine:




"Arresting".

Nice.

OLD SCHOOL HEAD SPLITTING

Once upon a time not long ago, when people wore pajamas and lived life slow (in 1995) I was working in the lofty tower of J.J. Sedelmaier Productions out in White Plains, NY.

We did a whole lot of commercials there, which for a time seemed to come in batches of three. This worked out well since there were three up-and-coming staff animators champing at the bit to prove themselves. Their names were:

David Wachtenheim
Dean Lennert
and the handsomest of the trio...

ME!

And it's a good thing I had the handsome thing going for me because Dean and Dave were (are) way better animators than I ever would or could be.

Still, it was cool how JJSP would get commercial orders in these 3 spot batches that would allow each of us to take one and run with it.

We each got spots for a line of Converse sneakers.
We each got our own episode of Schoolhouse Rock to direct.
And we each got a spot for Celebrity Cruise Lines designed by none other than the mighty Gary Baseman.

You know... the awesome illustrator who also created Disney's Teacher's Pet?


Now this was the thing about JJSP--

Mr. Sedelmaier (and the rest of us in turn) prided himself on taking an illustrator's style and being as faithful to it as possible.

And I think we did that with these Baseman spots.
See whatcha think of mine over HERE

Do you remember seeing that on TV?!
You do?

LIAR!

You couldn't have seen it because it never aired!!!
I think the guy that owned Celebrity Cruise Lines thought it was a little too creepy, what with all the head-splitting, devil horns and skull melting.

Oh well...

At least we had fun making it 15 years ago...

And just a couple days ago, totally out of the blue, Mr. Baseman posted the pic at the top of this page on Facebook. And imagine my surprise when I saw the soda can with a picture from that spot!!!
So now where do I gets me one of those?!

But while animating the commercial, I did get something way, way better than a soda can.

I got a drawing from Mr. Baseman in my sketchbook:


What? You thought I only recently started pestering folks for drawings?
Maaaaaaan, I been kickin' that for years!