Rapunzel Party

Young J, Joe Bowers and Me at the Rapunzel Animation Pit Opening Ceremony.

Working with Glen

Is Awesome!........thats all I have to say.

Congrats are in order

No, no..not for me, clearly I have not the mental capacity to be admitted to this school. My brother Joe, however, just got accepted to Georgetown University Law School, one of the most prestigious law schools in the country. Congrats Bro!!!

Magic in the building

I saw Magic in the lobby yesterday as I was leaving the studio. I'm not sure why he was here but he's really tall.

More Michael Craziness

Ok, so there are about 12 choppers in the air outside our building right now. Apparently Michael is being buried in the cemetery across the street from Disney Animation.

Disappearing Pig Trick

For fun, I thought I'd share a little more early work. I put this on my demo reel when I applied to Disney. It's full of all kinds of problems so please disregard the bad if you can.

Happy Independence Day!

We live in this free land because of these great men and women. It amazes me the contrast between our corrupt politicians and our men and women in uniform. I say fire the politicians and replace them with these guys, then we'd see progress. We've had enough of you self-serving, arrogant, hypocritical "important people" (Democrat and Republican) We Americans love our country...and you politicians need to stop screwing it up.

Anyway, ... Happy 4th!

Give it up for the King!

Failure is not an option...unless you're trying to launch a space shuttle

You've probably all heard that the space shuttle launch got canceled...twice. When it got canceled the first time we decided to postpone our flight home by two days so we could see the rescheduled launch, but alas, they were unable to fix that same fuel leak problem and it got scrubbed again. They did however manage to fire off the "Atlas" rocket to the moon...3 hours after our flight left for California (adding a little insult to injury). As depressing as all that was, the rest of our vacation in Florida was so much fun. We ate a lot of great food, we went to Disney World and the beach and
I got to see an actual "Saturn V" rocket.

This is my sweet wife under the Saturn V Apollo 18 rocket. This is the actual rocket that would have launched if the Apollo missions had not been canceled. They told us that the Saturn V rocket was so loud that the only thing louder was an atomic bomb. They also said that the sound waves alone for a shuttle launch would kill you
from 800ft....which is cool.

Me and my boys in front of the boosters from the first separation of the Saturn V.

Actual consoles used during the Apollo missions


This is a close up of the main booster engines on the Saturn V.
A complex mess of tubes and hardware
that I thought looked really cool.




These are my boys (who happen to be just as addicted to NASA as I am) pretending to be the Saturn V rocket.


So, I highly recommend a trip to Florida. The Space museum is awesome and great food is everywhere. In fact, We really only had two frustrations on our trip:
1) Shuttle launches are fickle things that should never be counted on.
2) The Florida water tastes like frozen beef
and should be avoided at all cost.

Vacation!

We finished up with animation for "Prep and Landing"on Friday and now it's time to celebrate. A few weeks ago, in a rare moment of impulse online purchasing, my wife and I booked a trip to Florida to see the shuttle launch this coming Saturday. So we're off tomorrow morning, sure we'll stop at Disneyworld a while... before witnessing Endeavor entering orbit at 17,000 miles an hour. Serioulsy?....!7,000 miles an hour?....thats what they told me!

Beatles Animation

Any Beatles fans out there? Even if you're not this movie is awesome!

Back to School

I decided , with all my extra time, to go back to school...online school that is. I'm going to be taking one class a semester until I graduate, that means I should finish up sometime towards the end of 2032.

Really late review of X Files...the worst movie ever made

I know it seems like my blog is just turning into a movie review page but I had to comment on the latest X-files movie. This show is worse than Twilight.....do I need to say more? There was nothing good about this film. And, sorry to ruin the surprise for everyone, but THERE'S NO ALIENS IN THIS SHOW!. How can you do an X-files movie without the aliens?! It's so long and so boring. The story is this mix between "Silence of the Lambs" and "The Island of Dr. Moreau"... which would have been fine if there had been aliens! oh, and Scully has had so much plastic surgery you can barely even tell its her. Don't even waste a dollar on this despicable piece of garbage. Please forgive this really negative post, it was just such a disappointment.

p.s. For any of you who've seen it, do you agree that this is the worst film ever made?

Prep and Landing

Terminator Salvation Review

Terminator 2 is one of the coolest shows of all time....Terminator Salvation is not. I will say that this movie was a lot better then I thought it was going to be. The battle scenes are very cool and the many references to the old terminator shows put a smile on my face, the story however has a lot of problems (and does Christian Bale have to talk like batman all the time?) There is however one part of this movie (I wont spoil it for you) that I was completely not expecting and when it happened everyone in the audience cheered, I should have seen it coming and it was pretty awesome. This movie also scored extra points with me for having no sex scenes or sex innuendos and actually very little swearing. I'll recommend the show, just go see it with low expectations.

UP Review

I had the chance to see "UP" this morning at a special screening with my wife and kids. (one of the perks of working at Disney of which you should all be jealous) I had seen the first sequence of the show previously in its story board form and I was immediately hooked. I was aware, however, that I am part of a certain group of people in this world who go into a Pixar movie thinking, "This had better be the greatest CG movie ever!"I did that on "Ratatouille" and "Wall-e" and (even though I now absolutely love both movies) I walked out of the theater thinking "mnnnaa....it was ok". So when I watched "UP" this morning I reminded myself that I really should just keep my expectations in check. This movie was spectacular. It was beautiful, It was heartwarming, and I laughed from beginning to end. Was it perfect?...no, even with my checked expectations I have to admit that I was bothered by a few things here and there (keep in mind, of course, that I am the same person who thought that the "Incredibles" had some serious problems). As a whole, however, this film delivers on the Pixar quality and story telling we have all come to expect. "Cars" (and of course "Bolt") will still be my kids favorites but for me, "UP" now ranks as one of the top Pixar Pic's. Go see it and tell me what you think.

UP

The reviews are starting to come in. Rotten Tomatoes has "UP" at %100 after 16 reviews. I actually think this will be the best reviewed Pixar film ever....and it will, of course, make a ton of money.

New Pixar Studio

I heard about this last week along with a lot of rumors. Today, I read that The Hollywood reporter basically said this:

Pixar has announced plans to open an additonal Studio to create animation for theme parks, television, internet and related venues.The new Studio will not feature film work, promotion work or Pixar short films.

Dylan Brown and Darwyn Peachey from Pixar, and Amir Nasrabadi from Disney Toons Studio will lead this new venture under the direction of Ali Rowghani.

Here's the New Princess Trailer