Hey hey everyone, thought my last journal about naruto has run its course so I figure I'd give you all an update on what I've been up to. I forgot to mention for you all to watch the Simpsons tree house of horror this year because I did a lot of work on it. I worked a lot on the "dial m for murder" and the zombie segment especially. The hitchcock segment was pretty standard so I won't point out which scenes were mine, but I did do most of the sequence of Bart and Lisa in the playground. The zombie segment was where I really shined. There was sooo much to draw in that one. The point when zombie Burn's bites Homer until they get to the safe zone is all my stuff. I even designed the crazy guy they run into which I actually got to fully animate, finally! I did other scenes as well but that sequence was my favorite.
Presently I am working on the dvd menu's for the season 13 dvd. I can't tell you what's on them but I can say that they are the most involved menu's to date. Oh and no I don't know when it will be released. As far as the show i've been pulled off for the time being to work on these special projects, which I actually like because I get a lot more freedom creatively. Anyway, thanks for all your support, and be sure to check back soon for some new pics...hopefully.

As many of you know 2009 marks the 10th anniversary of the Naruto series, quite a feet I must say. So I thought I would just take a moment and comment on what has been my favorite manga series for the past few years. Now I say manga and not anime because I think the manga is far superior to the show. Now there are those few episodes that are well animated and great representations of its manga counterpart but on the whole the show falls flat for me. Thinking back on it I have read Naruto every week ever since I first got into it back in 2001. I remember because it was my senior year of high school that getting subbed manga's was becoming popular at the time and a friend of mine and I happened to stumble upon Naruto. I loved it right away and I understand it's not for everyone so don't worry I'm not one of those ultra fan boys that takes it all personally when someone bad mouths it. For my tastes though and what I like it's great.
It's a very character driven story and that's one of the things I love about it because I'm a character guy. Naruto in particular I think has gone through a huge personality change in the 4 or so years we've seen of his life beginning when he was around 12-13 to now being almost 17. He started out as an attention craving trouble maker with not a lot of confidence and the whole village hating him. Now I wonder if the village initially hating him was a statement about our prejudices today, because they hated him because of the Kyuubi being inside him. It wasn't sealed there because he wanted it, in fact if he had a choice he wouldn't have wanted it. He actually comments on how much trouble it's caused him to his father the 4th when they encountered each other in Naruto's psyche. People being judged today because of the situation's they were born into could be a good comparison to the story; but that's probably getting too far into it hehe. Now he's very mature, confident but not cocky, thinks before he acts, and genuinely wants to help people. I'm looking forward to more of his and the other characters development. It's an interesting character trait, because when he was younger all he wanted was for people to accept him for who he was that's it. You ask any 13 year old what he wants today and he'd say an xbox or something, but all Naruto wanted was to be thought of as equal to everyone else. Now that's he's older the village see's him now as a savior, mainly because he defeated the guy that flattened their homes, but also because he didn't turn out to be an asshole like his buddy Sasuke.
Ah yes the Naruto/Sasuke part of the story. All the fans know it so I won't get too into it. All this time Naruto has been saying he wants to bring Sasuke back to the village because he's "like a brother" to him. But it's been so long I'm starting to wonder if he's just doing it now because Naruto doesn't like to admit defeat; in this case saying he'd bring Sasuke back one way or another. It's not like him to not see something through that he said he'd do. When they were on the same team together Sasuke was a total dick to him and Sakura, so you gotta wonder what's Naruto's motivation? I still think Sasuke is a cool character from a design point of view and it seems his costume is changing constantly. I have to keep reminding myself of his age though, especially reading his fight with the Raikage. I mean this older much much stronger man is literally body slamming this 16 year old kid into the ground so hard it creates small craters. The same goes for Naruto and the others of his generation when they're in battle with enemies, I forget how old they are because they're making mature decisions and are generally treated as if they're older. Look at Naruto's battle with Pain, essentially 7 people against 1, and he's only 16?
So in conclusion I'm glad the Naruto series has made it as far as it has. Kisimoto has definitely created a unique universe and for that I have nothing but respect for him. He took a very traditional figure like the ninja and put his own spin on it. Granted there are things I wish he didn't do, like his color choices; they are WAY too colorful. His color palette is all over the place. I guess that's why the manga is better because it's black and white. His backgrounds on the other hand are amazing. If you look at some of his panels the backgrounds are very well drawn and he should be commended for them. I hope the series is able to continue until the end because there's a long ways to go. So to Masashi Kishimoto I give my thanks for bringing this story to life. Happy 10th Anniversary Naruto!

Hey everyone, it's the beginning of summer here in SoCal and the weather has been a little funky. Anyway just want to apologize for not posting in a while. I spent some time with my lovely girl friend :: in the philippines and we had a great time. We became open water certified for scuba diving, man was it great. I highly recommend it. She is doing fine now and will start school soon. I'm back at work, sorta. It's a long story and I don't know how much I'm allowed to say but there's been a lot of changes at the studio. I'm currently on the special projects crew workin' on some fun stuff i'll post some vid's when I can.
Oh now that I'm here can anyone help me with a photoshop question? I wanted to know how I can change the line color of my line art before I color. For example if I want to make the line's around a red shirt red, how do I do that? I'd really appreciate any help. I'll be posting some art work soon, just had to hook up the scanner to the new comp. Thanks a bunch!!

Hey everyone, it's the beginning of summer here in SoCal and the weather has been a little funky. Anyway just want to apologize for not posting in a while. I spent some time with my lovely girl friend :: in the philippines and we had a great time. We became open water certified for scuba diving, man was it great. I highly recommend it. She is doing fine now and will start school soon. I'm back at work, sorta. It's a long story and I don't know how much I'm allowed to say but there's been a lot of changes at the studio. I'm currently on the special projects crew workin' on some fun stuff i'll post some vid's when I can.
Oh now that I'm here can anyone help me with a photoshop question? I wanted to know how I can change the line color of my line art before I color. For example if I want to make the line's around a red shirt red, how do I do that? I'd really appreciate any help. I'll be posting some art work soon, just had to hook up the scanner to the new comp. Thanks a bunch!!

Ok so now that the opening has officially aired I can talk about it. I knew about the first leaks on the net but I couldn't discuss it until it actually aired. Contract stuff. I watched it myself in HD and I thought it looked great, the colors and stuff were very crisp. Here is a list of the things I worked on..

1. Crow flying across clouds-I didn't understand it's purpose either but they wanted a throw back to blinky. The version they used was my 4th pass. My first pass was awesome because they first told me to animate it "like a real crow but with more personality because it has 3 eyes." So I did but Groening said it was "too cartoony," so I did another one more realistic. He said it was "too realistic," so we settled on what's there now. It's a little strobey because I had origianlly did it on 1's because they wanted fast wing flaps but it looks like they put it on 2's. Once it's out of my hands I don't know what will happen to it. I'll try and post the first one I did. Oh, I also did the other crow landing on lard lad.

2. Bullies sawing statue head- This one I had fun with, all on 1's. Just to repeat I didn't come up with the ideas, I just draw what they tell me. It was one of the last things they added and I said originally, "wasn't Bart the one that sawed off the head?"

3. Bart landing on leaves/Barney- Just added the bounce to the original animation. Barney was fun to animate, it was done in-house meaning all the drawings are mine. No inbetweens from Korea, Kearny/Jimbo the same thing.

4. The super market-This whole scene was mine. I didn't like what they did where they cut pieces of body parts and moved them in the computer ie. Maggie's head etc. It looks like it was done in flash. About the Marge turn, I had originally done a version where she did a nice head turn but, again, they didn't want it. "Just have a simple head turn because we want the joke to be Maggie and the unibrow baby," they told me. I didn't know they were going to stiffen it up that much, I'm just defending myself because that seems to be the first thing people mention is Marge. They kept my Maggie scan and popping out of the bag though and in my defense they added the fist shaking later, I didn't do those 2 drawing cycle *eck*

5. Sideshow Bob, Helen Lovejoy, Comic book guy, Disco Stu, and the rich texan on the sidewalk- Bob was fully animated on 1's as well and I did a sweet fluid version of him swinging the machete but the response I got was "it's too fancy." I think it turned ok in the end but I still like my first pass better. The others weren't doing much, not much to say about them.

That's basically it for the stuff I did. The reason why the show has stiffend up is because there was an era when fox would tell directors that we had to draw every pose we drew perfectly on model. No distorting of the forms of any kind. It has slowly been dieing down the past couple seasons but they still insist on making the show more about the writing and less about the looks. Every once in a while we'll get let loose and we can do some fun stuff but on the whole don't blame the artists please. Believe me all of us working there would love to express the characters in more ways but there's just so much we can do. I'm just happy to be working, I can't complain anyway I'm on the longest running show ever. Hope you all liked the opening, I'd love to hear all feedback. Please don't hold back.