Sample Poem

Something different. I've been writing more lately and figured I could add this to the blog as it has been too long...

I only know a peddle of her beautiful flower
And a minute or two of her splendid hour
She’s a crescent moon on a cool August night
And a partial puzzle, where the pieces fit just right

I only know the first few pages of her amazing story
And I can’t wait till she’s standing there before me
She’s my inner child’s Christmas morning anticipation
And my first time skydiver’s hesitation

Martin the Spartan Episode 1

Episode 1 is complete and ready for viewing. This Episode runs about 2:30 minutes.

Frederator RAW

Federator Studios have brought us the likes of the Fairly Odd Parents, Chalk Zone and Oh Yeah! Cartoons to name a few. Over at Frederator.com they have a "forum" based site "Frederator RAW" to allow amateur animators like myself and the professionals to post pictures and video to the site, with a Myspace kind of vibe.

If they like what they see they'll feature it in their podcast. And it doesn't hurt to get your stuff out in an area that professionals of the animation industry can see. I just became a card carrying member just a few days ago. I encourage you to check out the site. You can get to it by clickity-click-clicking the badge located over there on the right. No a little more over to the right, yeah thats it. I have posted a few images from Martin the Spartan. Nothing that you can't see here, but if your into animation, you should check-it-out.

Prototype Minion

Every villain needs minions. Lots of them. In Martin the Spartan, that is definitely the case. Here is a concept of a minion I have been working on. Based from the Ancient Egyptian god Seth.

Update! Final design for the minion and its official name... Sutekh Drone.

Spartan Wasteland

Latest screen shot of Martin the Spartan. The idea for the sequence came to me at work and it killed me to sit there for eight hours just waiting to get on my own computer and get this scene completed.

Wall*E and Martin the Spartan

Last week I caught Wall*E. Amazing. The first 30 minutes of the movie you forget that you are watching an animated film. I can't recall a movie that I have seen recently with this much heart. Pixar has outdone themselves. Kudos Pixar!


Martin the Spartan (The Animated Short) is coming along nicely. I had some time this past week to get to the animation of the opening scene. I'm taking a different attitude and sense of patience with this project. I really think this could be a pretty amazing project for me. Usually, I'd be in a rush to get something like this out, but not this time. I may post a snap shot here and there, but that's about it. I'm treating this as seriously as I can. If it takes another year to get this done, I'll be fine with it. I just want to finally complete something that just doesn't last two minutes and has a "to be continued" at the end and never actually continue it. MtS has the possibility to be a ongoing story other then the "short" which will introduce the story of Martin the Spartan and end with a sense of completion.

If it's not hard, it's not worth doing.

Here are some screen shots of the opening of the Animated Short "Spartan the Martin". I especially like how the museum came out. I have no release date for StM as this will be a work in progress. I've been torn about animating this, as I really didn't think I had the chops. BUT, as the saying goes...if it's not hard, it's not worth doing.

I've been fortunate to have some fresh inspiration come from different area's of my life recently and I've finally decided to make this animation happen. I love the story even more as it developes and the character designs and backgrounds have really come along to where this deserves to be animated.

Over this past weekend I saw Kung Fu Panda...for the second time. I enjoyed this movie a lot the first time around. I found it even more amazing the second time as I could take in the animation and design of the film even more. This film is definitely one of those points of inspiration. for me., right down to the soundtrack. Which I now own.

3 minutes of pure Animation Goodness!

I've been following MukPuddy animation for sometime now. I've admired pretty much everything that these four guys from New Zealand have produced. It's stuff like this short below "The Pugh's" that gets my creative juices flowing. After watching this short I told myself that somehow, someway I will get Martin the Spartan animated! If only I can talk four amazingly talented kiwi animators into doing it for me...


It's the Pughs - Help Me Rudy! from Mukpuddy on Vimeo.

The "Forgotten Land" Tablet

The "Forgotten Land" tablet, located in the London Museum of Fine Arts and Antiquities. The tablet was discovered by legendary archaeologist Arthur Mitsbottom at an undisclosed location in 1836. Little is known of the tablet or the Spartan and Evil that the text on the tablet speak of. Unfortunately this is all that was discovered. Though rumor has it that Mitsbottom found additional pieces, but lost them during a cave in of the undisclosed archaeological dig. Escaping with only his life and the story locked within his memory, Mitsbottom before his death passed on the story to his only grandson, Miles Mitsbottom as a bedtime tale.

Or so the rumor goes...

In a Forgotten Land and Time...

The verdict isn't quite out on this background. I like the mountains and the clouds over the night sky. It's the city itself that I'm still trying to decide whether I should stick with it or not. I'm going to start working on the story more over the next week and start fleshing things out a bit more.

Yep, another Martin the Spartan Background

Still working on the style and design of the Martin the Spartan backgrounds. I'm not sure if the shadowing is correct, but I think it's got a great gloomy feel to it.

Another Background Study

I used the previous blogged background of Scott Wills as reference. Once again, I'm pleased with the results.

Background study

In an effort to create Martin the Spartan with original art, I've been working on digitally painting my own backgrounds. This is my first test. I think for a first try it didn't come out half bad.

Middle School Crushes

I can still remember the day when my "Adventures in Babysitting" picture book came in from my book fair order back in Middle School. It was just me and Elisabeth Shue on the walk home from school. Some crushes die hard. I obviously fell for her in Karate Kid, but it wasn't Love till Adventures in Babysitting.

I think what we're looking at here is a nice little jumping off point for the start of the new and improved Life On Pause. We will see.

Making Time for Martin

Poor Martin. This guys keeps being shoved of a cliff when it comes to me deciding on what projects to work on. So I gave Martin some love today and worked on "Martin the Spartan" I have a lot of excitement for this as the story starts to come together. I keep going back and forth on whether this should be animated, AKA ( A LOT OF WORK) or convert it into a story book style read. I'm leaning towards the story book. This is definitely a hobby project as I am using copyrighted material (Scott Wills Backgrounds from Samurai Jack). As shown here in this promo for Spartin the Martin. I love photoshop.

The Trojan Spam Strip

I've been e-mailing some of my art to someone and they complimented my work by saying "It's better then getting SPAM." It was one of those moments where they said it and they didn't mean to intend how it came out . So I couldn't help but jump all over the innocent remark and shoot them this strip in return....

Bunglestar Galactica?

A "Bungled" idea that never came to fruition. As I played around with other ideas for comic strips, I was thinking of making a parody of one of my favorite shows on TV... Battlestar Galactica. Here is an example of a sketch of what the Cylon centurion was going to look like.

It was Indiana Jones like...

Wow. When I moved a while back I had thought this was lost like the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. But as usual, I was looking for something completely different and came across this strip.

When I first started working on Life On Pause, I didn't have the tools to do it the "right" way. Meaning, I didn't have a scanner. So I drew LOP in photoshop (See Image below) which had mixed results. Although I didn't have the means to scan LOP, it didn't stop me from drawing the first strip free hand, inking it and not doing such a great job keeping tabs on it. As you can see it's pretty much...Night. And. Day.

Concept for "Baal" from Martin the Spartan

I was doing some research into "Ancient Demons" trying to find a style and perhaps a name for the Antagonist of Spartan the Martin.

I came across "Baal" There appears to be many different images of this one demon. So I tried to interpret a few different ideas into one. The flames I added myself. I want to pay homage to characters like "Aku" and "Demongo" from Samurai Jack with the flames. The design isn't perfect as I only spent about a half hour on it today. I'm interested in how it will look once I make the two thousand changes I'm sure I'll make before it's all over, but thought it would be cool to show a starting point.

Martin the Spartan

I've always been fascinated with Ancient History. When the movie "300" came out I thought it was amazing and was ashamed that I had never read Frank Millers "300". So I have taken it upon myself to create a Spartan world. It's a planned Animated short called "Martin the Spartan". The style and part of the story telling lends credit to Samurai Jack. I'm currently still working out the story and character design. From left to right is Daphne (Martins One True Love) Oracle, Belle the Nymph and of course Martin the Spartan. Click image for larger view.