Finally

I know it's been awhile since any of you have heard from me or andrea, but just to let you know, we made it safe and sound in our new town of Portland, OR, and are currently living out of boxes in our new home. We made it on Sunday, the 25th, but since we don't have internet set up yet (they're supposed to get us hooked up today), we haven't been able to do any updates. I'm at work now -- mad busy already, but will post more updates soon, complete with photos.

We did it! Can't believe we're here. Feels like a big dream....

Crossing the Divide

We crossed the imaginary line dividing the continent yesterday. The vistas were amazing, with nary a human being in sight. Wyoming was beautiful -- Utah even more so. Looking forward to seeing what's ahead for us today and tomorrow. We're expecting to arrive in Portland on Sunday.

Meet me

...in St. Louie.

Well, actually, you'd be too late. We've already hit that town and are now rolling across the Great Plains.

Okay...

We're off.

it's all happening

I can't believe it. It's Tuesday and the movers come Thursday to pack our things, Friday to load it on a truck and then Sunday... we leave.

You know, I could probably wax eloquent here with all the swirling thoughts inside my brain on leaving my hometown, my family, my whole entire life as I know it -- but alas, I don't have the time. There's just so much to do on both the work and home fronts. I'm trying to finish up all the animation for this last spot (mentioned in a previous post), so in order to do so, I have to take home scenes to work on them -- but that then pushes aside the few precious moments that I had alloted especially for organizing and packing, therefore creating more drama.

I know that it'll all be over before I know it and I'll find myself in the middle of Wyoming wishing that I had the time to sit and think about my last days in Georgia in the right frame of mind. But I don't.

It hurts. It hurts to leave, but if nobody ever left anywhere, what good would that do? Where's the fun in that, right?

Just thinking.

More Sundancing

Well it's been a week since my last post and it feels so...wrong. I'm neglecting my duties here but I'm sure that you all understand. At the same time we're packing everything and moving to Portland, I've had to try and wrap up all the animation for this Trix Yogurt spot I'm currently directing. It's a sweet way to go out, man. Some great animation that I'm very proud of -- and all my peeps working on it are doing a fantastic job. Once it airs, I'll be able to disclose more. But in the meantime, thought I'd do some tooting of the Primal horn. Ever since I posted about the Sundance screenwash I worked on, there have been other mentions across the world wide internets about it. See for yourself:



First off, Primal put up an official press release of all our Sundance work for everyone to read and enjoy. You can finally get a chance to view Spark City in motion with a (pretty large) Quicktime clip available to download. It's about 2 minutes long so you're missing a good amount of the 6 minute long cycle, but at least you get a chance to see the little guy at the bottom of the screen wipe out near the end of the clip. Pretty funny.

There was a short interview with head designer Rick Newcomb soon after the film fest in Canada's National Post. He was the guy who headed up the project.

Studio Daily did an Interview with Primal music guy Steve Mank and if you scroll down there's mention of the Sundance work we did.

We got Brew'd, too! Amid Amidi mentioned us on the ever-popular Cartoon Brew. Sweet.

And lastly, Justin Cone did a nice write-up on his fantastic and brilliant site, Motionographer. Thanks, Justin!

Ava Thursday: Hmm!

As you might've guessed, Ava Thursday has evolved from a weekly thing to a when-I-can-find-the-time thing. But I'm sure you all understand, right? I mean, you know that it's just a tad crazy for me right now.

Rarely will I ask Ava to draw something for me specifically for Ava Thursday. Most of what I post here has been something that she's done on her own, for school, or just for funsies. Last night I walked by Ava in her room and I feigned worry and concern, "Omigosh Ava! It's Ava Thursday tomorrow! What am I going to post?" She knew that I was joking around (we have tons of artwork that we've yet to scan of course) but she smiled at me and said "I'll draw sumfin!" I told her that there was no need to, but she wouldn't hear of it. Fifteen minutes later she came up to me with all smiles and handed me this drawing you see here. "Here ya go, Daddy!"

The story is that the Main Girl in the middle is having a party and that she just handed out the party invitations to all her friends in the picture, except the one who has a red face. Ava tells me that she's the Mean Girl and that she wasn't invited to the party. She's red because she's mad and jealous that she's not going and everyone else is. The Main Girl is giving Mean Girl a "Hmm!" ("Humph!") as in: "That's what you get for being so mean!" Notice that there's smoke coming from the Mean Girl's ears, too. Nice cartoonish touch. I really dig all the action going on in the background, especially the girls jumping rope on the right.

Parties and party invitations are high on Ava's list right now because she just gave some out for her Going Away/Early Birthday Party coming up a week from Saturday. Just some ice cream and fun times at a children's bookstore and ice cream parlor down the road from us. Ava's so excited she can hardly stand it. And she's very excited about moving out to Portland. She's looking at it like a Big Adventure. Andrea and I are trying to do the same, but it's hard when you have boxes covering every single square foot of your home right now and it seems like nothing has changed for the past several weeks.