Paranorman

If you've been a fan of my blog scribbling over the past few years (and I hope you have) then you've probably noticed that I've been a bit tardy on my postings the last few months- of course there are lots of other cool goodies in our blog- Pat Smith's wonderful posts; my sketch a day feature and of course my Cheatin' production blog- but that's no excuse- I have a lot to write about: festivals, films, animation tips and gossip.

That's not the problem - The real problem is I'm trying to make my February deadline to finish my new feature "Cheatin'". So I've been working night and day to wrap the animation on this wonderful new feature. I've only got 10 more pages of storyboard (about 3 minutes of animation) plus I have to go through every shot to finish al the art. There are about 1,100 different shots - WHEW! And as I speak my studio is coloring and shading all of the artwork. So you can see I'm a busy little beaver.

However I was fortunate enough to go to the premier of "ParaNorman" over the weekend. What a delight, great visuals and characters in a wonderful horror plot. After the screening the directors Sam Fell and Chris Butler talked about the speed technology now involved in puppet animation. According to them, because of the digital mapping process each main character has the possibility of 1.5 million different facial expressions. That’s way too many (I make about 3). In any case it’s a wonderful film and be sure to check out the sequence where the zombies erupt from the graveyard. It was animated single handedly by Laika president, Travis Knight.

I give the film an A.

And I promise as soon as I finish animating Cheatin’ I’ll deliver more blogs. P.S. Don’t forget about our, “HAND DRAWN ANIMATION SHOW” at SVA theatre on 23rd st on Aug 23rd 6:30. It’s free- It will also count for the official NY book signing for my new Focal Press book - “Make Toons that Sell Without Selling Out” and each person who buys a copy will get a free Bill Plympton caricature.

See ya there- Bring your friends!