An Update

The past couple of months I've been figuring out the best way to exist on this crazy internet thing in order to reach and entertain the most people. As always, my website www.PokeGravy.com is the place for all of the work I do under the PokeGravy brand, which is most of it.

If you want to get to know me better, I now have a personal tumblr. It's full of sketches, humor, food and other fun things from my life.

If you want an easy way to follow PokeGravy Studios and what we're working on, like us on Facebook and that's covered!

And then that brings us back here. This will be a behind the scenes of PokeGravy Studios. If you want to know what makes us tick, how a cartoon is made, and more detailed info about upcoming projects, look no further. In the coming weeks I'll bring this up to date with:

A behind the scenes look at the most recent PGS original.

A look at some work I'm doing for a local museum about everyone's favorite forgotten war, The War of 1812

A look behind the scenes at some of the illustration work we've been doing.

So thank you to all of the PGS fans and I look forward to making more fun stuff for you guys!

--Alex

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:

(click to enlarge)

Shana Tova!

Mazel Tov!

 

 

 

(click to enlarge)

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."