Eddie Pittman

Print vs Web / Foot vs Mouth

2008-03-31T11:36:00.002-05:00

I've posted this at my site but it isn't getting a lot of traffic and I want to make sure it gets a little exposure.

There has been a very interesting dialogue going on at Alan Gardner’s site, Daily Cartoonist, that has webcartoonists and syndicated cartoonists debating webcomics. It has been fairly civil, informative and, for me, inspiring.

At some point Scott Kurtz of PVP fame entered the conversation with an offer to host a teleconference via Talkshoe so that the differences of the two sides could be aired out and hopefully a new understanding could emerge. I participated in the call which, with everyone’s permission, was recorded and became a podcast (check it out at Webcomics Weekly).

Talkshoe’s teleconference was an interesting experience. Imagine being on a cell phone party line: everyone trying to talk at once, noticing that someone else was talking, stopping, hearing the pause, then in unison trying to start again. That, combined with the sounds of Manhattan courtesy of Ted Rall’s cell phone, created quite a setting for the call. But despite that, what I feel took place was a very honest discussion.

I did, however, do what I seem to do best when I’m talking about things that I probably have no business talking about. I open my mouth wide and swallow up to my knee. I have a habit of thinking out loud sometimes and it is usually not the smartest sounding thing.

This is how it played: toward the end of the call, when most of the participants had dropped out, Scott asked me what I thought. My response was, “There seems to be a bit of a fear of this. Like it’s something they just don’t understand. Obviously we hear that in the things they say and the things they post. But I think they are very afraid the webcomics will overtake them in some way.”

As soon as that last sentence popped out of my mouth, I new that wasn’t right. It wasn’t what I had been thinking up until that point, but for some reason it just popped out. So, for the record, let me elaborate on what I really do think about this relationship between webcartoonists and syndicated print cartoonists.

From all that I have heard and read from the syndicated artists, they aren’t afraid of the webcomics movement; they just don’t take it seriously. To many of them, webcomics are just not comics. Not real comics, anyway; they are nothing more than a novelty. Now, I know the vast numbers of webcomics are amateur works having more in common with fan art than pro art. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But there are some very serious webcartoonists whose work is either better than many of the print comics, just as good, or quickly catching up to them. Those are the ones I’m talking about.

The syndicated cartooning business has always been one of the pinnacles of the cartooning world. It is also one of the hardest to break into and, as a result, the nation’s syndicated cartoonists are a very close-knit group. If they have any fear of webcomics, I would say it’s the fear of opening the door of acceptance to webcartoonists.

There is an interesting parallel from the animation industry. In 1984, the computer division of LucasFilm hired a former Disney animator who had been let go from Disney. Now at this time in the history of animation, computer animation was a step above Pac-Man. At best, in the eyes of many traditionally trained animators, it was a novelty. Now, the reason this animator had been let go was most likely because he kept pushing the idea that traditional animation could incorporate computer graphics and step into a new exciting era of animation. Well, I don’t really know if he thought that, and, if I ever meet him again, I’ll ask him; but he must have known that it was groundbreaking stuff. And I’m sure he couldn’t ignore the fact that Walt Disney was a person who loved the challenge of adapting new technologies.

So here is this fired Disney guy working as the sole animator for a small computer group. The group gets sold, changes its name, and eventually has the resources to hire a second animator. This guy--–the second animator, a graduate of Cal Arts— didn’t spend any time at Disney like some of his classmates. And I’m sure many of them thought he was crazy taking a gig that would most likely be a dead end. Still, he went and made Listerine commercials as his classmates made The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, etcetera, etcetera.

Well, despite those who said the computer could never produce animation that an audience would warm up to (very similar to the words Walt heard while producing “Disney’s Folly”), John Lasseter is the leader of the computer animation zeitgeist; and, ironically, he and fellow Pixarian, Ed Catmul, now run Disney animation. The second Pixar animator, Andrew Stanton, is an Academy Award winning director with a new film opening this summer. And what was left in the wake of this technological and artistic paradigm shift? Traditional, hand drawn animation.

While I was at the Disney studio in Florida, most of the artists and animators thought it would never end. They were in shock when the doors closed in January 2004. And, although the hand drawn animation is making a return at Disney, it is at the expense of those artists. Supervising animators who made salaries well into six digits are now working for union scale. Some of them don’t even have offices, just cubicles in a common room. Now, I’m sure they are all happy that they can animate again at any rate; but I can tell you from personal experience, it took a long time for many of those artists to understand that they were no longer worth what they had once been paid in the animation boom of the 1990’s. It is a simple law of economics.

The world changes. My experience has taught me that it can change in an instant, and it’s often the people who were once disparaged who find a way to survive and thrive. I was talking to my friend Broose Johnson, who was an animator at the Disney studios when the Pixar revolution took shape. “We all knew (having loved TRON) that it was coming,” he said. “ But none of us expected it to start developing so quickly. Of course, now we're used to that kind of speed.”

But what do I know—I’m just a cartoonist.

I'm back....

2007-11-20T00:23:00.000-05:00

...but not here.

Find my new blog at my website www.eddiepittman.com

Father's Day

2007-06-17T13:24:00.000-05:00

I just received the Art of Ratatouille as a father's day gift. Pixar books have become somewhat of a tradition on father's day (although I have to admit we skipped the Incredibles book because of the lack of drawings in it). One of the biggest surprises in previous years was the Art of Finding Nemo signed by John Lasseter.

This year I had mentioned that I didn't want to even look at the book until I had seen the movie, fearing that the story would be given away. But we surprised my five year old last night and took her to the sneak preview. What an amazing film! We can't wait to see it again!

Here is the beautiful wrapping paper from my gift by the talented Ginny:

It's Remy and Emile. Evidently, Emile now has angel wings. Don't worry. No spoiler there.

Hey Pixar, she's available for the next film and she will probably work for Mac & Cheese and some toys.

"Lucky" Story Reel

2007-06-12T00:02:00.001-05:00

I few weeks ago I posted the story reel for the unfinished animated short film Lucky on my other blog. Lucky was to be the first production from the short lived Legacy Animation Studios established when Walt Disney Feature Animation shut down the Orlando studio laying off most of the animators and artists. After an amazing amount of (free) publicity, Legacy closed up because the primary investor changed her mind.
So for those of you who are interested, here is the most recent version of Lucky. Originally boarded by myself, John Hurst and Broose Johnson, it has been reworked a bit since the original screening in 2004. The story, however, is the same. The music is a temporary scratch track.

For the whole story on Lucky and Legacy Animation Studios, visit my Lucky blog.

"Lucky" short film

2007-05-21T17:22:00.000-05:00

Last week I announced on my other blog that I no longer could find the time to work on my short film Lucky. So I have once again shelved the project. As promised I posted the final parts of the Legacy Animation story as well as the Lucky story reel. Check it out at http://luckyanimated.blogspot.com/

Another character design

2007-05-15T12:37:00.000-05:00

Here's another quick character study for Red's Planet.

The Aquilari are the last of a race of collectors who have spanned the galaxy searching for rare collectibles. Of course, some people's collectibles are other people's junk.

Red's Planet Character Design

2007-05-08T21:19:00.000-05:00

Here's an early character design I did last year for an upcoming comic project called Red's Planet. It's slowly moving through development as I work on it a little here and there in between freelance gigs. A first draft of the script is almost finished and I hope to start drawing issue #1 this summer.

At this point I'm thinking of publishing it as a web comic, but that's still up in the air. So far I'm having a lot of fun developing it, but it's early and I could still screw it up.

I hope to have more work to show soon.

Ginny Sketches

2007-04-18T15:32:00.000-05:00

I am such a proud papa. I have to share this stuff with the world. My 5 year old is proving to be an amazing little artist. Here is one of her most recent drawings.

It's a giraffe and snail with balloons. The snail has let go of his balloon (how he was holding it don't ask. We been watching too much Veggie Tales.).It's completely out of her head but there are elements in the giraffe's head and expression that are keen observations from a statue we have in our living room. It's great to see how she interprets things.

2007-02-04T03:50:00.000-05:00

Here's a little vis dev on a personal project I'm working on. It's a bit of a departure from what I usually do.

2007-01-21T02:01:00.000-05:00

Here's a study I made from the cover of The Bad Child's Pop-up Book of Beasts illustrated by the amazing Wallace Tripp. My sketch was done on the Cintiq in Photoshop 7 and it doesn't do the original justice. It does, however, give me something to post.

Couple of sketches

2006-12-20T22:38:00.000-05:00

One from me...
…and one from Ginny, my 4-year-old daughter. I bought the Hanna Barbera version of Charlotte's Web for her a few weeks back (boy, I remember that movie being much better than it actually is). Her favorite character is Templeton the rat and she spends a great portion of her days stuffing pillows into her shirt so she resembles him after his consummate binging. When she isn't rolling around the house on her prosthetic belly, she's drawing in her many sketch books. Here's a recent Templeton.

2006-12-05T00:52:00.000-05:00

Bunnies

2006-09-29T19:19:00.000-05:00

Here are a few bunny sketches for a story concept I have. They were all sketched in Photoshop on my Cintiq. The two head studies are based on a couple of sketches David Nethery posted on his blog. (here and here)
The man can draw bunnies !

Ginny's Mater movie

2006-08-12T14:47:00.000-05:00

I spent the afternoon showing my four-year-old how to make stop motion movies and the rest of the day trying to figure out Youtube. Here's her first effort ( and mine).

Tough Guy

2006-08-10T13:40:00.000-05:00

Here's a quick warm-up that I did on the Cintiq today. Kevin asked if there was any lag time and the answer is "it depends." First of all I am running Photoshop 7 on my 1.67 GHz Powerbook with 1 GB of ram and the Cintiq runs great! However, I'm mainly doing storyboard sketches with very simple brushes. I find that (obviously) the larger the file and more bells and whistles on the brushes (scattering, texture, color dynamics, etc.) the more lag I get. The other thing is with my method of drawing, I use a lot of short strokes rather than long fluid strokes. When I do make a long stroke, it can take a beat to catch up. Still experimenting. more soon.

I'm back!

2006-08-02T11:52:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I know it’s been ages since I posted, but I have been slammed with work for the past few months! Not only have I been working full time as the associate artistic coordinator on a video game called The Act (check it out. It’s pretty cool.) I’ve been helping to storyboard a new Veggie Tales movie set to be released in 2008 (a lot of fun and great people to work with). But now the storyboards are finished and I was laid off from the real job and theoretically have more time to blog. Right?

So the latest news is I bought a Cintiq. My four year hold thinks it’s daddy’s new Magnadoodle (and she’s probably right). I did my last batch of storyboards for Big Idea on it as well as a couple of other freelance gigs and I have to say, it’s pretty sweet. Couldn’t have made some of those deadlines without it.

So after a week of resting up, I’ll be jumping into a few things that I’ve wanted to do for a while now, including getting the ball rolling on Lucky again.

So for anyone who may still be out there, I’ll be back soon. Really.

A New Blog

2006-03-17T02:35:00.000-05:00

Since I do such a great job keeping this blog updated :P, I've decided to add another. Check it out: luckyanimated.blogspot.com
The plan is to document the production of a short film I am working on in my spare (ha) time.

boston terrier

2006-02-26T20:04:00.000-05:00

Here are a few sketches for a character in a short film I'm working on. More about the film in a few weeks.

I'm still here...

2006-02-14T22:04:00.000-05:00

After three months of commuting 200 miles a week to work and back and two months of packing and unpacking, we are finally settling in to our new digs in Orlando. It's great to be back in O town with old friends!

It's been a pretty exciting time watching all that's going on in the animation world the past several weeks. I work in a small studio that is almost completely staffed with former Disney animation folk and I have to say that the place is buzzing with the news of Disney buying Pixar.

At first, I have to admit, that I was more than deeply numbed when I heard the news. I felt that all hope had been lost; the giant had slain the hero. But when the word that Ed Catmull and John Lasseter would be in charge of Disney Animation, my excitement began to rise. This is a watershed event for animation. My coworkers are equally excited at the potential of this new partnership and the return of the Disney culture by the keepers of its flame.

And you know what has absolutely nothing to do with that? This drawing:

Just a few random doodles.

More to come…

PS. My wife seemingly has no problem with me blogging on Valentines Day :)

Character Development

2005-12-07T07:41:00.000-05:00

Here are some sketches from a current project. Searching for the right look for the characters...

A few character designs

2005-11-25T09:55:00.000-05:00

Here are a few designs I created this year for a themed dentist's office. My goal was to push the graphic shapes of the characters while still keeping appealing personalities.

Yet another sketch blog...

2005-11-23T21:37:00.000-05:00

…but why not? As an old friend used to say, "all your friends are doing it." I might as well jump on the bandwagon, late, of course, as usual. Here are a few sketches to start things off.