Friday Freak: Milt Neil

This week has sure been exciting! My birthday was Tuesday, and the family and I went to my favorite Mexican place to eat....and it was STILL open!
( In my neck of the woods, restaurants open and close quickly).
I was brought on to work with a company I have been trying to get into for years, but more about that later.
Yesterday, as I was riding my bike at the park, I took a nastie header as I was negotiating my way through a herd of small children.
As I was picking rocks out of my road rash, the kids came over to ask if I was ok.
This drawing of Milt Neil is also from my days at the Kubert School, circa 1981.
My only regret is that it's drawn in marker, and every year it seems to spread out a little bit more.
Milt was an old Disney animator, and worked on a lot of cool projects, such as "Fantasia" and "Dur Fuhrer's Face".
The man could draw anything, and he didn't take sh*t from anybody.
He was such a wealth of knowledge. When he would go down the line and help each of us with our assignments, it was amazing, and nerve wracking!
We'd go to the pencil test machine, and he would critique us one by one.
It was during our flag waving tests that he yelled at a guy for copying the flag from the " Timing for Animation" book. He saw instantly when someone was cutting corners.
Once, we were going over one of my scenes, where this depressed dinosaur was sitting on a log, looks up at the viewer, and gulps.
Milt said.." that looks real good, son."
I walked on air the rest of that week.
More often than not, Milt would flip your scene, say that it was getting there, and then motion for you to get out of your seat so he could sit and" show you how to take this further."
Watching him made you realize just how much you didn't know.
When he was finished, he'd get up, clap you on the shoulder, and go to the next guy.
Leaving you with a pile of Milt's animation that he just roughed out as he was talking,20 or 30 pages of key frames, alternate drawings for cycles to break them up, etc., that flipped beautifully, and that you didn't have a chance in hell of duplicating.
I'm not even going to talk about his mastery of pastels.

Curious George

One of my fondest memories is of my dad taking me to the library for the first time.
I was able to check out three books,( I was very young, maybe 5), and " Curious George
Learns the Alphabet" was one of them. I loved this book!
The Man in the Yellow Hat will let George eat a bag of donuts if he learns his ABCs.
So to help George learn, the Man draws animals using the letters as the foundation for each animal.
I still remember "Cc" as a big crab and a little crab.
Here we see George looking at a gay fish. : )

Otterly Cool!

We went to Zoo Atlanta yesterday for Father's Day. Great time! The weather couldn't have been nicer, and the employees at the zoo were some of the friendliest people I have ever seen working a counter.
As we were walking around the exhibits, we came upon this sign. I had worked with an agency in Atlanta a few years back, and had designed this character for them to be used at the Asiatic Otter display.
This sign is above the snack shop.
I did the character in Flash.

Happy Father's Day!

My dad was many things, not to mention a jokester, and a talented craftsman.
He would create all sorts of lawn ornaments. The ones with the spinning wings and stuff.
I would draw the patterns for him, and he would cut them out, paint them, etc.
He also hired some of the more artistic kids in town to help him paint.
So...HAPPY FATHER"S DAY to all you dads out there.

Friday Freak Sergio Argonés

During my first year at the Kubert school, Sergio Argonés came to speak.
One of the greatest people I have ever met. His talk was so funny, as he's telling us about doing cartoons in Mexico and coming to America, barely able to speak English, just really funny stuff.
We were all in the Animation Trailer, ( this was back at the old location on Myrtle Drive. I think it's student housing now), and Joe Kubert was there because he and Sergio were old friends.
Sergio was busting Joe's chops about how expensive the school was because Joe liked to buy new cars.
At the end of his talk, Sergio did sketches for us. I was constantly drawing rats, ( this was before "Secret of Nimh" came out), and I asked him to draw a rat for me.
Look at this sketch. Completely loose, and not over worked, yet he still captured a mood, making the viewer wonder what this rat is up to.
Two more things. One, he whipped this out in less than a minute, without penciling anything, while using a Sharpie.
Two, he did over 100 sketches, in this sort of detail, for everybody there, and not once did he ask for a drawing back because he didn't do a good job and wanted a mulligan.
Not like some of the Prima donnas you run into at some of the comic conventions around the country.
You know who I'm talking about......
On a sad note, during Sergio's talk, a third year student came into the trailer and told us all that Wally Wood had died.

New Jersey's Best #6

When I lived in New Jersey, I used to do some t-shirt design work for WDHA in Dover, NJ.
I can't remember the station manager's name, but he was a good guy.
Anyhow, they would put out an album of home grown rock, with a contest for the album cover that was open to anyone.
I always submitted covers, but never won. The closest I ever came was when my room mate,
Pete Callahan, won with a really cool concept. Imagine a geologist's work station, with a magnifying glass, rock samples, all kinds of stuff.
So for the sixth album, I turned in this idea. I don't have the finished piece, just this rough.
The station called me a few days after I turned this in, and said that if I wanted to be part of the contest, I had to turn in a different cover.
They didn't want this sort of imagery. They liked it, but it was dead in the water.
Oh well....

Brainy Bob

Just a quick sketch of a left over character design.