Looking Back - Bluth days

This post is prompted by Mark Pudleiner's 'Memory lane' post on his website. He put up a pic of the Land Before Time clean-up crew in Dublin at Bluth in 1987. This is the 1988 assistant animation crew on All Dogs Go To Heaven. Some of these people were previously clean up artists and in Mark's photo as well. Enjoy. Doesn't seem like that long ago really.

Left to right are: Me, Patrick Gleeson, Konrad Winterlich, Denis Deegan, Greg Tiernan, Eddie Goral, Michael Kiely, Rob Koo, Ben Burgess & Paul Bolger.

Pasadena Rt 66 Car Show

I went to a fabulous car show on Sunday Sept 14, in South Pasadena. It was on Mission Ave at Fair Oaks Blvd, which also happens to be one of the original sections of Route 66. Being a Route 66 fan, I just had to go. There were probably well over 200 cars, including, old trucks, vintage fire engines, European sports cars, musclecars, hot rods, even antique pumping motors used on farms, almost all mesticulously restored. Portions of the proceeds from vendors, and other donations are used to fund the South Pasadena Torunament of Roses Committee - the oldest self built float in the parade.

It was great time, met some great people and of course saw lots of neat cars. And it was right off the original 1926 alignment of Rt 66, which went down Fair Oaks Blvd before hitting Huntington then Mission onto Broadway and ending downtown at Broadway & 7th St. More on Rt 66 in future posts.


Here we have a line of cars that looked like they were ready to eat that little girl if she didn't watch out.


The fearsome threesome - Robin, Batman, and Wonder Woman, or a close facsimile.

Of course, The Batmobile. Although, not the real 'first' car. A replica, clone, what have you, of which I think there are 4 or 5. The original George Barris Batmobile made from the 1955 Lincoln Futura is in George Barris' shop on Riverside Dr, in N. Hollywood.
A few of the many 'finned' entries. The one in front is a '56 Chevy Bel Air and the white one behind it is a 1956 Lincoln Premier. I love finned cars. And of course these were only a few of the hundreds of cars. Will post more later.

Hot Rods and Nice Photos

This is just a shameless plug for my daughter's new hot rod photography blog. Her name is Lauren and she's getting to be a pretty good photographer and like me digs hot rods, musclecars, and stuff that goes fast. Please check it out - Life In The Fast Lane blog Check out this photo of a '41 Ford front end.

Mr. Fun

If you haven't yet had a chance to check out Mr. Fun's blog, (aka Floyd Norman) please do. I'm sure most of you pros in the business either know him or have at least heard of him, but those of you who aren't in animation or haven't heard of him are in for a treat. Floyd was a long time Disney artist, a storyman at Pixar and all around nice guy. He's full of wonderful stories about the old and new days in the studios and of course his famous 'gag wall' from which the cartoon above is from. As we must keep these studios on their toes sometimes, Floyd does with these wonderful cartoons.

"The Wrecking Crew"

If anyone of you out there have a chance in the next few days to catch the documentary, "The Wrecking Crew" you won't be disappointed. If you are or were a fan of 60's pop music, rock music, The Beach Boys, Sonny & Cher, Phil Spector's "Wall Of Sound", Glen Campbell, The Monkees, then this movie is for you.

This movie is being shown as a part of the ArcLight Hollywood theater's DocuWeek showings of documentaries. Hurry too, as there are only screenings of this tonight Aug 26, Wed the 27th & Thurs 28th. Go see it. It's great! I saw it today at lunch at the ArcLight.

It's a fabulous look at who exactly were the musicians that played on all those top hits of the 50's and 60's and behind the scenes interviews with that close knit group of super talented artists that were instrumental to those songs by Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, The Mamas and Papas, Nancy Sinatra, The Monkees, The Beach Boys, The Byrds, all of Phil Spector's hits and many more.

My hat's off to Tommy Tedesco's son Denny, who made this film and to all the wonderful musicians such as Hal Blaine, Tommy Tedesco, Glen Campbell, Earl Palmer, Don Randi, Carol Kaye, Plas Johnson and many others.

Go here to see the trailer.

Old WB stuff

Here's some old drawings I found from a spot I animated on from back in the WB Classics days. It's Daffy of course, selling this drink in Spain or Mexico called Trina. It was a Spanish language commercial. There were 3 Daffy's sitting side by side drinking it. Doug McCarthy directed the spots.

Mars Bar Robots

These are robot sketches from a robot I designed for our 3D short, Mars Bar. No telling when it's going to be done. It's sort of in limbo at the moment as people have other commitments like heavy duty work at the studios. But I started playing with the designs again in Sketchbook Pro.
He's a fun robot, aptly named Unibot.