MY BEST AND WORST JOBS

I'll start with the worst animation job I ever had. No, I didn't draw the picture above. It was a handed out as reference for a cartoon I was invited to freelance for about a zillion  years ago. It was not, to put it mildly, my type of thing and I should have respectfully declined it, but I needed money so I took it home and tried to get started.

I spent hours then days staring at white paper, unable to draw. I simply couldn't imagine how a creature as appallingly generic as that would think or act. I ended up giving it back and the schedule no doubt took a hit. It was not my finest hour.

My best job? I've blogged about some of them, but here's one that I might not have mentioned. It was for a video game that Spumco consulted on, and it was so much fun that I could hardly wait to get to work in the morning.

One of my tasks was to think of obstacles a skateboarder might encounter on his trip through a haunted house, a demented Disneyland-type theme park, etc., etc. Not a bad job, eh? I had to work fast but it was pure pleasure.

One assignment was to draw a ghost airplane and I sketched several versions.

One of the versions had a ghost with a big pistol. The one that was chosen was the one on the right.

I cleaned it up (above) a bit.

You can do anything with airplanes.

Once I realized it might be okay to to use guns in a video game I began putting them in everything (above). I realized that trees can have guns, parakeets and goldfish can have guns, and even ghosts can have guns. Guns make everything funnier; witness Oil Can Harry's shootouts with Mighty Mouse. Of course, modern audiences are sensitive about the subject so you have to be careful.

Ghosts are easy to think of ideas for because they can never get the hang of dealing with real world objects. Even eating a meal (above, bottom right) is done in an unconventional way.

I also like the idea of purse bashing old lady ghosts on skateboards (above).

Old ladies are on the cutting edge of animation though few people realize it yet.

I did some shoe ghost gags.

Haw! Here's (above) an update of an old Mack Sennett gag.

Here (above) was a first pass on city buildings that resemble people. I had to try several versions before I got it to work.

Well, that's all I have room for. Copyright by the copyright holder.