It was a dark and cruel night...

As we are working on the next WatchCat episode, I keep seeing cats at various houses and apartment buildings in my neighborhood. Each cat I see, looks as if he or she is guarding the place. Maybe they know I know their secret story and now are watching me...

I have a cat named Moe, who doesn't act like a cat. Once after a shower, most cats will avoid the water that's left behind. Moe will jump into the tub of water and stand there looking down at his soaking paws, he has no fear of water. Moe likes to study water and watches the moving drops go down the drain. 

He also recently showed me that he likes to play fetch with a Nerf dart bullet.

 Here's a link:
http://youtu.be/Ww1bU6SsRTk 

As I mentioned, both Greg and I have been busy on other projects and hope to get back to working on Watchcat in the next few weeks. In 2007, Greg and his friend Lee Anthony Smith, wrote "War" with Jet Li and Jason Statham and now are making their next feature called "Noir". They are busy getting ready for their Indy gogo campaign, which will be beginning on February 2rd. Here are some great pictures of the cast, soon to be famous.

 

       

I have also been helping out on the film as well as working on my own freelance animation project. Here are a few "making of" photos from Noir.

 

                                                               Until next time...

Famous Felines in Animation 2

Last year I started a few articles about Famous Felines in Animation and I thought I would continue this during the production of this project.

The most popular cat and mouse animated cartoon series has to be "Tom and Jerry" created by Jack Hanna and Joe Barbera. The cat and mouse duo first premiered on Feb. 20th, 1940 MGM cartoon "Puss gets the Boot" and was nominated for an Academy Award.

Tom was referred to as Jasper in this cartoon and his character design changed over the years.From Hanna and Barbera (1940 -1958), to Gene Deitch (1961-1962) and Chuck Jones (1963 -1967). Here you can see how much his design has changed.

Feb. 23, 1940, another cat had a bit part and made its debut in Walt Disney's Pinocchio. This was the kitten known as "Figaro", animated by Eric Larson which he base on his nephew's personality. Figaro is also featured in several Pluto cartoons as Minnie Mouse's pet cat.  

A much nastier cat character from Cinderella (1950) was Lucifer, animated by Ward Kimball.

 

1957 MGM closed its cartoon studio in a panic over diminishing audiences due to television. William Hanna and Joe Barbera formed their own company and began making cartoons for TV. The Hanna-Barbera TV cartoon program "Ruff & Reddy" began.  

Also in 1957, Dr Seuss's "Cat in the Hat" was published, became an animated TV special in 1971 and an awful feature film in 2003.

            

 

Then around 1970, Disney released the Aristocats featuring the hit song, "Everyone wants to be a Cat." I remember seeing this as a kid, but I wasn't very impressed with it at the time.

The 1970s, was a decade where a lot of different cat characters emerged to become famous, others had a brief success and some are even still around today. 

The Pink Panther had several feature films named after him, but only appeared in the animated opening credits, one of the best done by Richards Williams.

 

Fritz the Cat was the first X rated adult cartoon first created as a comic by Robert Crumb and later made into a feature film by Ralph Bakshi. Crumb hated the movie so much, that he killed Fritz in one of his later comics, just to make sure more movies didn't come out. Oddly enough a sequel "The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat" was made, however without Bakshi or Crumb's involvement. 

 About the same time, a real orange tabby tom cat named Morris debut in a Robert Altman feature called "The Long Goodbye" and later "Shamus" starring Burt Reynolds. Morris soon became the spokescat for 9Lives catfood and appeared in many tv spots like this one.

Then around 1975, Bernard "Hap" Kliban, the cartoonist known as B Kliban drew up a whole bunch of cartoon cats based on his unique cat design. His artwork was soon on everything from mugs to calenders to t-shirts and beyond.

Then Jim Davis created Garfield which in41 newspapers in 1978. The character designed changed over time as the stripe grew in fame. Here is an early version Garfield.

Garfield's design evolved into the fat cat we know and love. From 2D cartoon to 3D computer animation. Here's a sample of my animation from the first Garfield movie done at Rhythm and Hues, don't blink. 

Garfield has been a very successful character and also became a balloon character in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade in 2003.

                                         

I've discovered that all cartoon characters tend to evolve over time to find their final style. Notice how Tony the Tiger began as a simple graphic back in the 1950's and now is a three dimensional muscle bound tiger of today.

And maybe one day our cat will join this famous group?

If you learned something new, click on the ad to the right and the ad below this article, let us know you appreciate animation , Thank You!

Until next time: Click below to...

5000 VIEWS!

To celebrate our WatchCat Files 5,000 all time view. Greg Bradley and I will be live streaming from the WatchCat Studios in Burbank, CA. Join us Friday, February 26th, 2016 @ 7pm PST on our youtube channel WatchCat Films.

Happy New Year Mankind!

Hopefully you had a happy holiday and are getting use to writing down the new year of 2015. It was a good break, but now we all have to start making those New Year's resolutions come true and for me its working on WatchCat Episode 2.

Over the Holiday, I tried boosting our first episode on Facebook just to see what $5 of advertising could do. I am no web guru, but Facebook advertised WatchCat episode to everyone we knew and their friends. I got this data sheet saying we had reached 1574 people and by adding more money to the budget we could reach twice as many. However, only 7 people actually clicked on our youtube video, so I'm really wondering if someone can explain how this all works or at least a little bit?

The other thing we are trying to do is get our WatchCat website up and running for the new year. We are working on that one and learning all about how fun website hosting can be!

This is an establishing shot which begins our second episode. Its a panning shot from the top of the buildings, moving down to street level and then towards the Police station. To make this background, I usually need to find a few reference photos to help me out with the colors and textures. Here are are a few images I like so far...

The next time you watch a movie or TV show when there is an exterior night scene, notice if the street is wet or not. Chances are it will be, this is because a wet pavement reflects light and adds to the scene by showing the street more. I'll continue to work this background and will show its progression along with other artwork.

Watchcats are around and if you're lucky, you might even spot one on duty. Here's one I found guarding this apartment building. If you spot any Watchcats in your neighborhood, send in your photos if you can take their picture...

Until next time...

 Happy New Year Everybody.

One of our New Year's Resolutions is to use Animate Pro for this next project.