My Weekend with Pat Smith

The recent Fourth of July weekend was a great opportunity to spend some time with my Scribble Junkies blog-mate, and great animator, Pat Smith.  He and his family live out in Montauk, a little bit of paradise on the tip of Long Island, New York.

It was fun for me to catch up with him on his career and see what he's been working on - we only really connect in person a few times each year.  He's got this great studio in a reconverted garage and in a way, it's the total opposite of my studio.  Pat's gone paperless - he even got rid of his DVD library and most of his books - his studio consists basically of his Cintiq computer and a large screen.

By contrast, I still have an animation disc, a drawing table, stacks of animation bond paper and jars of pencils and sharpies - and of course, in my studio, 100 or so large boxes containing all my original art from my old films.  By the way, this old art is an excellent source of needed income - it's all for sale.

So Pat's gone totally paperless - and me, I've got paper everywhere - and I suppose you could say I should be ashamed for causing the demise of so many beautiful trees.  But I just love the pencil on paper experience, or more often now, ballpoint pen on paper.

While we were hanging out on the lake, drinking rum punches, we came up with a lot of ideas for future Scribble Junkies articles and we're starting to put together another Scribble Junkies Film Festival - but more about that later on this fall.

One other idea we had, which I love, is to create a Top Ten list of stoner films - not films about smoking pot, like the "Cheech & Chong" movies, but films that give you the experience of being stoned.  Please send in your favorite "stoner" films and I'll add my own and we'll have a list of the Top 25 of all time.

Also, I'm going to include here some recent sketches I made during my daily subway rides:

And also, don't forget to come to my booth, #1537, and my events at the San Diego Comic-Con, which I'll reprint here:

My new animated short "Cop Dog" is going to screen as part of the Comic-Con International Independent Film Festival (CCIIFF).  This will be on Thursday, July 20, at 4:30 pm in Grand Ballroom 3&4 at the San Diego Marriott Marquis, 333 W. Harbor Drive, which is right next to the convention center (closest to Hall A).  I'll be there to do a quick introduction for the film, which is (believe it or not) the FIFTH film in my very popular "Dog" series.

Then on Friday, July 21 at 5 pm, Jim Lujan and I will have a panel in Room 25ABC (on the upper floor) at the convention center.  We'll show some of my new shorts, like "No Snow for Christmas", a clip from "Revengeance" and "Modern Lives", one of the new music videos I've been working on for Jackie Greene.  Jim will moderate the panel and we'll take questions from the audience and everyone who comes to the panel will get a free sketch from me.

And on Friday night, 7/21 at 10:35 pm, we're going to screen the full film of "Revengeance", this will be the first non-film festival screening in the U.S.!  This is going to take place in Grand Ballroom 8 at the San Diego Marriott Marquis, 333 W. Harbor Dr. and admission is going to be FREE for anyone with a Comic-Con badge - WOW, that's huge!  The seating is limited, so please try to get there early!

I hope to see you all there!

--Bill Plympton