Month: September 2004

  • Fun links:

    Jamaican 1960′s Ska!  History, photos, soundclips. Can’t get this song out of my head…


    click to listen (Real Audio link)

    The Strandbeest is a ‘skeleton’ that walks on the wind. Check out the videos. Thanks, Tony!

    Cinematoast movie reviews

    Pantspress sketchblog by Vera Brosgol (via Johnny Bacardi)

    Modded Truck Show via Octopusdropkick

    Hot Rod movie posters! (via Eye of The Goof)

    OMG! This Halloween luchador costume on eBay is SO bad it’s hilarious. Don’t you love the ‘muscles’? (thanks, Keith for the link!)

  • Chilling out…

    This afternoon, we took a drive out to Beverly Hills to check out one of Jim‘s L.A. cultural/shopping recommendations - the Taschen bookstore

     
    Two new publications that could be worth buying: Animation Now & Manga Design

    It was as described: At the back of this austere Phillip Starck-designed haven of beautiful books, there is a corridor that leads to a white ‘ice-room’. In the middle of the room is a Jeff Koons dolphin sculpture. Uh huh…

    We then had brunch at The Farm, and headed home via Melrose.

    Stopping by the Blue Demon store, Eddie picked up some very nice official Blue Demon t-shirts. Jorge‘s new t-shirts (by Xochico) look awesome too, my favorite design being the one on the right. Check out more designs at Muertito.com

    Currently listening to: Webjay Stream - Evolution Controlled Creations - “Funky comic remixes by ECC and RX”. We love The ECC! Two old ‘Public-Enemy-meets-Herb-Alpert’ favorites: HERE and HERE (mp3s)

  • ¡Mucha Lucha! news

    This huge Flea walk-around character was last seen at the Six Flags WB Backlot event. Thanks to Michael and Anna for the groovy photo!

    People keep asking us “Where do you buy the ML toys? We can’t find them in the stores”. If you are located in the US and Canada, you can order the toys online at Amazon.com or CartoonNetwork.com.  The best deal is at the Cartoon Network Shop where you can buy the entire MixAlot toy pack (6 figures) for $30. If you are outside the US…. so far there’s only eBay, sorry.

    While you’re at CartoonNetwork.com, also check out the new Mucha Lucha online wrestling game!

    Coming soon: Mucha Lucha at KTLA Kid’s Day Los Angeles! From the WBA Publicity Dept:

    On Saturday, October 2, we’re featuring the series at this year’s KTLA Kids’ Day Los Angeles, a well-attended family festival dedicated to the children of Los Angeles.  The event, to be held at Exposition Park, will run from 10 am – 5 pm. More than 10,000 people each year attend KTLA Kids’ Day, which features live performances, educational booths and kid-friendly activities. 

    Recently, Dann Lennard of Betty Paginated Zine (Australia) interviewed Eddie about ML. You can read the interview HERE.

    * All ML-related press is archived at www.fwakanimation.com.au/mlpress

    Last but not least, here we are with our new Rikochet piñata from TJ. We have many fun things planned for him…

       

    Random Links

    Can anyone recommend good and inexpensive DVD-capture software (for Windows)? I want to extract clips from movies and save them as AVI/QT files.

  • It’s a Virgo world!!! We know of at least TEN birthdays in the first half of September. Thursday night we celebrated Eddie’s, Gabe’s, and Annette’s birthdays at the Burbank Bar & Grill. Thanks to everyone for coming!


    Eddie & Nathan


    Keith, Eddie, Dave


    Lili & Gabe


    L: Lili, Gabe, Annette…
    R: Ricky, Eddie


    Clockwise: Annette, Roman, Illya, Jorge, Jon,
    Tony, Amid, Sandra…


    Tony and Amanda


    Ricky, Greg, Sandra & Eddie

    It was good to catch up. Most of these guys are now finished on Mucha Lucha and working at other studios… eg, Disney’s new Maggie The Maggot, Fox’s Family Guy, etc.

    Mucha Lucha Gigante – this week

    If you miss the Saturday morning episodes (as we do, because we like to sleep in), they are repeated on Kids WB Network – Fridays 3.30pm. This week’s episode is “Spider & The Flea” (storyboard - Gabe Swarr) and “The Incredible Penny Plutonium” (storyboard - Darren McGowan).


    From Spider & The Flea


    From The Incredible Penny Plutonium

    Next week: “Dare To Lucha” & “Yo Ho Ho & A Bottle of Horchata”.


    Currently working on… Doing things differently. Taking risks. Breaking old design habits. It’s really hard.

    *edited

    Wednesday night we joined some friends at Philippes for dinner and the conversation turned to books and writers. Anna was reading Nabakov’s Lolita … which inspired us to hire out the DVD last night. (The original 1962 movie by Stanley Kubrick, not the Jeremy Irons remake).

    It’s brilliant. I loved the book when I read it at 16; I’d forgotten how wonderful the movie is too – the character drama, the Nelson Riddle score, that infectious song…

    Eddie:  Yeah, Lili and I decided we needed to watch Lolita again.  Man, I’d forgotten just how great this movie is.  So risque for 1962; my favorite bit is when Lolita is packed off to spend Summer at a camp for girls (‘Camp Climax’, no less!).  Peter Sellers as swingin’ sophisticate Clare Quilty is awesome.  And the movie is shot brilliantly.  But best of all is the song ‘Lolita Ya Ya’…I think I feel a Muerte mash-up coming on…

    Just got back from seeing Sky Captain & The World of Tomorrow! Lots of fun, if you like superstylized art direction, pulpy adventure-romance cliches and giant robots!

  • We’ve blogged before that Eddie used to be in an electronic band (Shanghai Au Go Go) back in the 80′s, Melbourne. Well, now he’s BACK! With new music!  We’ve just uploaded four tracks… more to come!

    P.S. Stream the tracks via Webjay.

    It never ceases to amaze me the things you can learn on the internet:-


  • Coming soon: Lucha Va Voom!

    The Egyptian Theatre screening on Wed. night would’ve been awesome, but we chose Kaiju Big Battel at The Avalon instead. High energy, hilarious monster costumes and lots of sweatiness (also for those of us not wearing padded foam).

    Upcoming events:

    Random Links


    Cavaliere © Camilla Falsini


    Oscar Carreño has recently shared with me a bunch of designs of Masked luchadores. His company – Studio Alebrije  is developing a new lucha libre card game titled Leyendas Del Ring (Legends of the ring) which will be completed in Jan 2005.

    Example character-cards:  Dr Muerte (Dr Death); El Aguila Escarlata (Scarlet Eagle); El Publico (The Public); El Referi Maldito (the Evil Referee) … and a range good guys and heels. Sounds like fun!

    © Studio Alebrije

    Currently listening to: Go Go Jackson & The Pop Brass (stream here) * very cheezy!

  • A new FLASH for Animators?


    Finally! After three seasons of Mucha Lucha, we are very relieved and excited to learn that a new version of Flash for Animators/Designers is in development! In a recent email received from Mike Downey of Macromedia Inc.:

    … I’m happy to tell you that we’re in the early stages of defining the next version of Flash, code-named “8ball”, and will be focusing the release on animators, multimedia designers, and digital artists.  We have a lot of features in mind, but one of the biggest areas that we are having difficulty defining is video export from Flash.  We understand that there are limitations in our Quicktime exporter (which I understand is necessary for exporting to broadcast television).  One of these limitations is the fact that we don’t support exporting nested movieclips.  Several experienced developers in your industry have told us that they must export from Flash as SWF and then import into Director MX 2004 as SWF, then export from Director as Quicktime – just to get nested movieclips recognized on export.  We obviously want to fix this for the next release.

  • * moved from other post.

    Season 3 Premiere!

    The above is a ‘Sneak preview’ invitation to cast and crew. The official launch of Season 3 will be this Saturday morning, Sept 11th, at 7.30am (LA time) on Kids WB Network.

    Tonight: Kaiju Big Battel!

  • Atlanta Weekend

    We’re back! We had a wonderful time staying with our groovy hosts Lisa, Manfred and Thea, in the lushly green and mellow City of Tucker (on the fringes of Atlanta).

    So here are some of our experiences of the ‘South’ with photos, as promised!

    Red Velvet birthday cake for Eddie!

    Other Southern culinary delights tasted for the first time: grits, fried okra, key lime pie, barbeque, corndogs, waffles, muscadines and beerbutt chicken (Lisa’s specialty) 

    On Thursday we spent a whole day at Turner/Cartoon Network putting names to faces and admiring the amazing original artwork on all the walls. We also had the pleasure of meeting the Harvey Birdman Flash animation team, Cartoon Network online, the very nice people from Programming… and received lots of cool swag!

    Some Mucha Lucha news: The DTV movie - “The Return of El Malefico” will be airing on Cartoon Network (USA) in Jan or Feb 2005!  ¡Arriba Cartoon Network! P.S. This DVD release date is in October.

    Another Atlanta highlight was dinner at Abdullah the Butcher’s House of Ribs & Chinese food, and meeting Wrestling great, Abdullah The Butcher in person!


    Eddie: Seconds after this picture was taken, I was able to reverse
    the Chin Lock into a Arm Bar, and make Abdullah tap out…

    Seeing The Woggles at the Echo Lounge in East Atlanta Village. Watching Manfred transform from quiet, reserved nice guy into whirling, jack-knifing, Lead Vocalist was amazing!

    Drive Invasion on Saturday and Sunday! An awesome music-carshow-and-movie experience. We arrived at around 5pm on each day and stayed until just after midnight.  Highlights included the amazing custom car (and motorcycle) show, dancing to Deke Dickerson and The Ecco-fonics, enjoying jalapeño corndogs and beer while watching movies under the stars. (Repo Man, 13 Ghosts and The Wild Angels).

    Eddie: This was wild!  It was so awesome seeing the different subcultures mix side by side.  Best T-Shirt spotted: “My Other Ride Is Your Mother”


    At the Drive-In


    Trailer Vics: the Lowbrow Trader Vics


    Psychobilly couple



    Too many cool cars!

    Needless to say Drive Invasion was also fantastic reference for our Endsville project.

    We definitely need more Atlanta. Must go back and explore more of the South!

    –> More photos HERE


  • (click image –> Driveinvasion site)

    It’s Eddie’s birthday and we’re off to Atlanta for this Labor Day Weekend! (Leaving in about an hour) Not sure if there will be the time or means to update this blog over the next few days but rest assured there will be a show-and-tell when we get back Monday night. Have a good weekend everyone! 

     


    The Ultra Car!
    Designed by our friend Jim Cherry (‘futuristic car’     fanatic )

    Ojingogo – is a great  little online comic strip by Mathew Forsythe.

    Luchadores in their Natural Habitats


    Atlantis vs The Creature


    La Park Vs Demonios

    Artwork © 2004 Eddie Mort & Lili Chin