Alex Berry

Alex Berry is another friend of mine from college, who currently works at Soup2Nuts in Watertown, MA (the studio that made Home Movies for Cartoon Network and WordGirl on PBS). He's an extremely talented animator, and we formed camaraderie in school as two of the only people in our class sticking to good ol' fashioned 2D.


Alex has done tons of stuff for PokeGravy over the years and I could always count on him to do funny and awesome work. Here's some of the stuff I've made him animate:

Frank Jones in his bathrobe

Hilariously defective mechanical elves

Lots of wacky shots of Gabe from "Counseling"

Almost all of the animation (and character design) for "Washington's Pick"

No comment.

I hope we get to work together on a project again soon, Alex!

Guest Comic - Pat Moss

The first guest comic of the Halloween Spooktacular is by talented cartoonist Pat Moss who draws a comic strip called "Robots Don't Have Weiners."

Pat is a friend from college, and while my favorite memory of Pat involves a dress, a fake soul patch and an all-night diner, I'm going to tell a different story that's a little less "college."

There was an animation class that I took with Pat, Alex Berry (who worked with PokeGravy on this, this and this) and our friend Joe (who's now in law school, but when he did animate he made stuff like this). The class involved showing and critiquing the projects we were working on. For a lot of reasons, most involving the other members of the class, it was very frustrating to sit through.

 I decided to make bingo cards for the four of us, but instead of numbers, I put common frustrating occurrences. Examples include: "Christina attempts to provide the sound effects to something on the screen" and "Helen or Michelle makes a racist comment" (names changed to protect the irritating).

But the rule that made the bingo game the most fun was this: since we were in class, you obviously couldn't shout "bingo!" Instead, you had to work the word "bingo" seamlessly into a question, comment or critique.

Joe got bingo first, but he panicked. I can't remember exactly what he said, but all I know is that he raised his hand, squirmed, and in the middle of a sentence he awkwardly blurted out "ACK! BINGO!" We decided not to count it.

Pat got bingo next, and he calmly raised his hand to critique the students' work on screen: "Last week it looked like you were struggling with the backgrounds on this film, but this week, bingo, it looks great." Pat won the game, and we were all very impressed that he didn't break into laughter (as in a later round I almost did).

Anyway, I'm happy to still be in touch with, and get the chance to work with, a lot of cool animators (and one law student) from RIT. Thanks again for the guest comic, Pat!

It's October...

...and the Halloween Comics Spooktacular is here! As I got ahead on comics for October, I realized that all four of the comics were somehow loosely Halloween-ish, which inspired this online "event." What I'm most excited about are the guest comics I have lined up. My cartoonist friends are funny.

This month on the blog I'll do my best to supplement the comics page fun with some other Halloween drawings I have lying around! I'll start with this "Poke & Gravy" comic I drew in high school, shortly after 9/11 and the subsequent anthrax scare:

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Shana Tova!

Mazel Tov!

 

 

 

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Just a depiction of Jesus and Joseph having a gay Jewish wedding. No big deal. As long as I don't draw Mohammed.

And go Patriots!

At my friend Bruce's house growing up, they would say grace before meals. His dad usually included the Red Sox or Patriots, even if he had to amend someone else's grace. I paid homage to that in "Shrinkage."

Little or Big

Sometimes it's fun to do really simple drawings, like these question cards I made for a documentary that interviewed kids back in 2009. I just got around to putting it up on the site.

The third-to-last question WILL get a song in your head.

Buster McKilty

Mike Petit of Boston-area Petit Productions created a character named Buster McKilty, who is a singing Scottish baseball. He asked me to bring him to life last April:

Having Buster march directly at the camera was a fun animation challenge. Here is the digital "pencil test":

And here's what it looked like before I added lipsync, and before we decided that showing his face head-on was terrifying:

Try not to let that haunt your nightmares!

Insane, Creative Minds

This week I subbed in at Cabot After School in Newton, where I used to work every day. It was great to see everyone again!

The kids at Cabot are very talented, and over the years I've taught a lot of them how they too can be professional animators like me (their parents must be so excited...)

Here's some amazing hand-drawn work from the kids (ages 7-11) in my "Animation Club" last year:

Watching this makes me miss having the insane, creative mind of a child.

I'm currently developing an animation class just for Cabot, coming this winter! So look forward to more crazy and awesome stuff!

Enticing

For future reference, the absolute best way to make me want to take on an illustration is to say something like this:

"Also, fair warning, we went for broke on the scene being ridiculous."

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Lots of fun to draw! For those of you who are nerds like me, I did the character art in Flash and the background and glowy effects in Photoshop.

The middle on the money-rocket, Matt, received this as a birthday present from the other two guys. I think he liked it...

Happy Birthday, Adam!

Adam is my annoying baby brother, who stopped being annoying roughly eight years ago, and stopped being a baby roughly twenty-one years ago. Older siblings often say things like this: it's weird that he's 23 now and not still 12.

Adam is a Salsberg, so he's awesome by default, but in addition to that he's ridiculously talented. He's a musician and audio engineer. He does almost all of the music for my animation. I'm constantly impressed that he can translate my embarrassingly non-expert instructions ("I need something kind of rockin', but, like, jazzy and sort of psycho. Well, not psycho, but about psychology, but also kind of fast, but not too fast...") into musical scores that are perfect for my cartoons.

He currently plays in a Chicago band called Cage Match. Check them out!

And if you want to hear some of his finest work for me, go watch Shrinkage, which he wrote several pieces for!

Happy Birthday, Adam!

Birthday Card Illustration

Got asked to do some cartoony beefcake art for a birthday card. Besides having to google image search muscle men, it was a lot of fun to do.

I thought I'd also use the opportunity to show my step-by-step process for illustrations:

initial (bad) sketch

refined sketch

outlines

color outlines

colored in

shadows

highlights

tweaks/finishing touches based on client input ("his boob is too big")

If anyone else wants custom art for a birthday card, sexy or non-sexy, don't hesitate to get in touch!

Hurricane Irene

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Hurricane Irene is over. Some thought the storm was way over-hyped, but others are still dealing with death, destruction and loss of power, so who's to say? I do want to comment on hurricane coverage though:

It's funny.

The highlights:

Reporter with perfect hair, outside in Boston: "I'm out here and -- oh wow. It just started raining. WOW!"

A reporter in Southern MA trying desperately to cling to her NBC hat in the high winds.

About a half hour later, that same reporter wearing a BU hat, reporting "I lost my hat."

But the best line was during a female news anchor showing footage from a beach, where teenagers were daring to wade into the tumultuous surf. About half way through some dry reporting she broke into an extremely motherly tone and shouted "WHERE ARE THEIR PARENTS?!"

I will also say that WBZ's Joe Joyce, who recently hired me to draw the below adorable hurricane, is awesome and wins the "Most Enthusiastic to be Outside in Harsh Weather" award.

Window Painting

Yesterday I did a window painting for Clean Homes, LLC, a Somerville, MA home maintenance company. It was a lot of fun painting on a window (I used tempera paint so it would come off in a month for a new painting) and it was fun working for another Boston-area company. Especially because the owner of the company told me in all seriousness that the painting looked "pissah."

Their office is on the corner of School St. and Medford St. Go check it out!

Is There a Doctor on the Plane?

This Week's PGS comic

On our flight home from Alaska we were woken up by not one but two medical emergencies.  Everyone ended up being perfectly okay, thanks to two unlikely heroes...

 

 Sleepy Doctor and Enthusiastic Nurse! Also known as Enthusiastic Lady-Who-Was-Hopefully-A-Nurse-Because-She-Implemented-An-IV!

Back From Alaska

I'm back!

I wasn't able to post anything from Alaska, which was okay, because I didn't get a chance to do much drawing there anyway.

But the people I stayed with in Homer, AK get their water delivered, which did lead to the need for this cartoon sign:

Alaska

I'm off to Alaska for a week. I'll try and update with some drawings while I'm there, we'll see how it goes.

In the meantime, here's a recent Alaska-themed comic I did:

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Happy birthday to my Mothah

The birthdaypocalypse continues...today it is my mom's birthday!

You can once again call me biased, but my mothah is the best mothah that a nice Jewish boy from Bawston could ever have. She never tried to make me be a doctor instead of a cartoonist. In fact, she's done quite the opposite; she has always encouraged me to follow my dream and never misses a moment to promote my work. She even loved the "Mike's Mothah" cartoons, despite the fact that friends and family are convinced that the main character is based on her.

In honor of her birthday, I'd like to take this moment to clarify the differences between Mike's mothah and my own...

My mothah is not shaped like a gumdrop
My mothah does not wear drab orange and brown clothes (she dresses in nice colors)
My mothah does not watch all those reality shows (only ones about decorating)
My mothah does not sound like a man
My mothah lets my dad watch football and even watches with him sometimes

But there are some similarities:

My mothah does have a Boston accent, and is known to say "Oh my gawd!"
My mothah does provide safety-based commentary on my dad's driving, and does get distracted by nicely-painted homes
I am not, and have never been, allowed to say "shut up" to my mothah

But most importantly:
My mothah does care infinitely about the well-being of her children, and would absolutely climb a burning ferris wheel to save one of us, if it came to that. And that's why she's the best mothah ever.

So what are you waiting for! Go to her website and look at her art!

Happy birthday, Mom!

Caving

Good friend and PokeGravy voice regular Harley Harrison (featured in last week's post) stars in the online short "Caving" by the fratty sketch comedy group Lambda House Productions. LH asked me to provide some illicit cartoon cave paintings for the episode, which were fun to draw despite making me feel dirty.

You can watch the short, and see why that dinosaur is so upset, by clicking the link below. Be warned: this is not appropriate for work, children or your mothah (or mine). But if you can handle it, it might be worth it...Harley has a very funny scene with a wheel.

Lamba House - Caving

Happy Birthday Dad!

August is the Birthdaypocalypse. Somewhere between 8 and 100 of my friends and relatives were born in this wonderful, albeit toasty, month.

I'm probably biased, but my Dad is the best dad ever. He's always been there to give advice, talk politics, talk about Harry Potter, or talk about the politics within Harry Potter. He's also done his fatherly duty by taking me to countless Patriots games.

I honored his love of the Patriots by giving the dad in the "Mike's Mothah" cartoons the same passion. My real dad makes a cameo in the cartoon, to the right of the dad character in the Patriots game scene:

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Happy Birthday Ellery!

Ellery was my neighbor for 16 years, and is still a great friend. He's coded every single iteration of the PGS Website since before we realized animated gifs weren't cool. He's a computer genius and I like that he always pretends not to be annoyed when I constantly ask him for tech support.

I have no idea why, or when it started, but for as long as I can remember the above "Poke & Gravy" comic I drew when I was ten has been known to us as "Ellery's favorite comic."

Happy Birthday, Ellery!

Voices

One of my favorite parts of the animation process has always been recording and editing the voice track. Tonight I recorded two awesome PGS regulars, and friends of mine, for the client piece I'm working on. Harley Harrison and Ben Sloane are both working actors in New York who spend their summers in Boston running Harley's theater workshop. They're ridiculously funny and have taken so many PGS productions to the next level. I can't thank them enough for taking time out of their busy schedule to work on my projects. Here are some highlights of the session:

Parallelos

 

 

 

 

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I'm heading into NYC this weekend...by car. Pray that Parallelos is merciful.

Failed Online Dating Companies

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This week's new comic. Tip for aspiring cartoonists: If you're going to wait a month and a half to post a new comic, it should be full-color and contain jokes about both arson and incest.

For more of the (ideally weekly) PokeGravy Comics go here!

Pirates vs. Dinosaurs

I couldn't wait to post this one...

A few months ago my co-worker's son was turning three. The lucky kid was allowed to choose his own party theme, so it's not surprising that it was something this awesome. I was commissioned to design the invitations. This was one of my all-time favorite drawings to do.

Tickling Kittens

Here are some boards from a project in development for a client. I'm VERY excited to animate this scene.

Welcome!

I'm blogging now! I'm a blogger!

(Fitting screenshot from an old "Poke & Gravy" animation)