Salsblog

The Salsblog has moved

2011-12-09T12:07:00.001-05:00

http://alexsalsblog.tumblr.com/

Baby Rumors

2011-11-06T23:34:00.000-05:00

The recent Justin Bieber scandal reminds me of the paternity rumor I tried to create a few years ago.

In "Not Your Mom," my junior-year project, Mike goes on a date with Christine:

In "Shrinkage," my senior-year project, she appears briefly, on TV, pregnant:

Nobody noticed.

Watch them both here!

Monsters

2011-10-27T13:22:00.002-04:00

This Halloween month I've been so busy that I've become the scariest monster of all: the guy who doesn't update his blog. To make up for it, above is a sneak peak of Monday's Halloween special.

Clue

2011-10-20T09:18:00.000-04:00

This week's comic was inspired by the board game Clue. A few years ago I myself dressed as Colonel Mustard in a Clue group costume. It was one of my favorite Halloweens.

Alex Berry

2011-10-18T09:19:00.004-04:00

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!

More BrainSurge!

2011-10-14T00:18:00.001-04:00

At long last, another one of my segments appeared on Nickelodeon's BrainSurge. Celebrity BrainSurge in fact! Well, Nickelodeon celebrities, but I admittedly recognized some of them. I often babysit, so I've seen many more episodes of iCarly than I would care to admit.

Working on BrainSurge, we had folders and folders of stock characters we could use, but I wanted to design my own characters whenever possible. For this clip, I needed to design four friends that would join Jeff in his secret clubhouse. I decided they would be a little bit sketchy, each with an "illicit" item:

Above is how they ended up looking (though the guy on the left got replaced by a stock character, Jeff's brother Bobby). Below is how they looked when I first designed them:

Needless to say, I was told by the producer that we were not allowed to show a "dime-bag of cookies" on Nickelodeon. I think the soda kid's nose was deemed too phallic, and the guy on the left didn't look anything like a kid.

Like with the football one, I got to design a background. I had a lot of fun making Jeff's clubhouse:

Guest Comic - Pat Moss

2011-10-10T07:22:00.000-04:00

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 soundeffects 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!

Hitler and the lost "Men's Room Monologue" scene

2011-10-05T18:19:00.000-04:00


(click to enlarge)

This week's comic for the Halloween Spooktacular is only loosely Halloween-related in that Hitler is scary. But really it's much more of a history joke than a Halloween one. I am, after all, a nerd.

But this comic reminded me of another Hitler drawing I did...

The year was 2005. Before the crudely-animated "A Men's Room Monologue" was a viral sensation, it was my freshman project at RIT's film school. What the two million twelve-year-old boys on Newgrounds still don't know is that when it premiered at RIT's spring screenings, there was an additional scene that never made it online.

During the bathroom graffiti segment, I touched on the token swastika that adorns many a bathroom stall. The gag was that even if Hitler himself was drawing these, I wasn't worried because he clearly has some sort of stomach issue (because he spends so much time in bathrooms).

In hindsight this isn't that funny anyway, but at the time the only reason I pulled it before putting the animation online was that my parents were worried that the mere image of Hitler and the swastika would offend people. At the time their concerns succeeded in making me nervous.

Now that I've been doing this for awhile, and have actually seen a real swastika-cartoon-related scandal (a great story for another day that I promise I will eventually tell), I'm a lot less worried about poking fun at one of the worst people that ever existed.

It's October...

2011-10-04T20:09:00.001-04:00

...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:


(click to enlarge)

Shana Tova!

2011-09-29T16:57:00.002-04:00

Mazel Tov!

2011-09-28T17:08:00.000-04:00


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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!

2011-09-25T10:23:00.000-04:00

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

2011-09-23T12:05:00.000-04:00

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.

Facebook Changed Again, Apparently

2011-09-21T12:56:00.001-04:00

Facebook changed the news feed slightly again, and I only noticed because everyone mentioned it on the news feed. Not sure why anyone cares. Facebook has been creepy for years, I'm not really sure they can make it any creepier.

I remember when Facebook first added the news feed (go back and read that sentence in an old man voice). It marked the beginning of their transition from a website where college students shared photos and checked if other college students were single to a mega-site where everyone and their mom constantly participates in an orgy of oversharing.

Everyone was up in arms back then, so I drew this cartoon for Reporter Magazine, RIT's weekly publication:

Now people love the news feed. I admit it makes it easier to do what I do and promote my cartoons. The only thing I miss about the old Facebook is that guy's face. He made it so much easier to make fun of Facebook.

Another Hard Drive Find

2011-09-19T18:10:00.000-04:00

Was searching for something old and weird to show you guys and this drawing from high school art class did not disappoint.

I have no idea what the assignment was or why they didn't send me to the guidance counselor immediately.

Buster McKilty

2011-09-16T11:23:00.002-04:00

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

2011-09-14T17:32:00.001-04:00

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

2011-09-09T12:05:00.000-04:00

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."


(click to enlarge)

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!

2011-09-07T14:07:00.000-04:00

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!

Who I'm Going With

2011-09-01T12:37:00.001-04:00

I'm really lucky to still be close to so many of my friends from high school. I once drew them on a tablecloth for some reason:

(click to enlarge)

Where I'm Going

2011-08-31T15:24:00.000-04:00

San Fransisco and the surrounding bay area is one of my favorite places to visit. Two years ago I made this time-lapsy video thing for some reason.

Birthday Card Illustration

2011-08-30T16:34:00.002-04:00

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

2011-08-29T13:58:00.000-04:00

(click to enlarge)

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

2011-08-26T19:57:00.000-04:00

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?

2011-08-25T09:15:00.000-04:00


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

2011-08-24T15:33:00.000-04:00

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

2011-08-16T07:49:00.000-04:00

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:


(click to enlarge)

High School Political Cartoon

2011-08-15T08:56:00.000-04:00

Dug through my hard drive today for something to show you and this seemed very fitting for the times:


(click to enlarge)

I was the cartoonist for my high school paper. Every year during a speakers series called "Winter Week," our school would bring in local libertarian Carla Howell for the hapless task of trying to convince hundreds of liberal Massachusetts teenagers that "small government is beautiful." She wasn't very successful...or very nice to us. So I drew this cartoon, mocking the Tea Party before there even was a Tea Party.

If I recall correctly, we weren't allowed to run this until after her visit, because it was deemed disrespectful to an invited guest. At the time I was indignant, but now I'm surprised they let us run a cartoon about a local politician trying to shoot a high school student at all.

BrainSurge

2011-08-12T22:48:00.002-04:00

I spent January and February out in LA working on Season 3 of Nickelodeon's BrainSurge. It was an amazing experience and I met so many talented people out there.

The show has been airing this summer, and the first piece that I worked on has finally hit the airwaves! If anyone was watching on Thursday night and saw the "Brain Tease" segment where Jeff plays football, that was me!

All the contestants got it right! I'm so proud. Or maybe I didn't make it hard enough...

It was a fun segment to work on. The funny football characters were actually designed by talented animator Hayden Mills, and I designed the background and put it together. We had a lot of freedom designing for the show so I had fun experimenting with the best way to create the crowd for the background.

Sadly, the bootilicious touchdown dance I animated for Jeff was sent to the cutting room floor to make time for an instant replay scene. But it will be on my demo reel soon, and in the meantime, here's a taste:

More about BrainSurge soon, including my Nickelodeon voice acting debut! But I shouldn't end this post without once again thanking BrainSurge lead animator Bob Rutan for the great opportunity to go out there and work on the show!

So if you like cartoons, want to maybe see some of my work if you catch it on the right night, and don't mind fart jokes, watch BrainSurge Monday-Thursday at 8 on Nick!

Happy birthday to my Mothah

2011-08-11T11:23:00.000-04:00

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

2011-08-09T15:11:00.002-04:00

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!

2011-08-08T09:27:00.000-04:00

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!

2011-08-03T20:00:00.002-04:00

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

2011-08-02T02:03:00.002-04:00

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

2011-07-29T18:15:00.000-04:00


(click to enlarge)

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

Failed Online Dating Companies

2011-07-28T19:36:00.001-04:00

(click to enlarge)

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!

From the Depths of my Hard Drive

2011-07-27T17:27:00.001-04:00

I have a lot of random, random drawings on my computer from over the years. I'm excited to use this blog to share them with the world, whether the world likes it or not.

Here are three I just stumbled upon from college. A friend was making a short 3d animation about the stork and wanted some "children's letters to the stork" in the background:

Pirates vs. Dinosaurs

2011-07-25T13:00:00.002-04:00

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

2011-07-25T12:49:00.001-04:00

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

Welcome!

2011-07-24T20:56:00.001-04:00

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

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