Mike Milo's Journal

My family and I were on our way back from Lake Powell about 9 years ago when we stumbled upon this cool Flintstones park. I believe it’s in AZ but I’m not sure. Anyway I believe these designs are either based on the original Ed Benedict designs or from the newer redesigns done by Craig Kellman in the early 90′s Either way they’re cool!

My daughter Megan ignoring Barney Rubble at a park somewhere in AZ.

Me and my daughter Melissa posing with Fred Flintstone

My daughter Melissa poses with Dino.

Me getting my mojo on with Wilma

My daughter Melissa posing with Wilma

Bamm Bamm posing for the cameraA statue of Sherwood from my short film The Ignoramooses (A What-A-Cartoon short) which the animators from the studio Fil-Cartoons in the Philippines sculpted. Pretty cool huh?

Three years ago I created a seven minute animated film called “Flavio” for Nickelodeon/Frederator Films, about an over-emotional goat who works as a dishwasher in a pizzeria and longs to be a famous inventor like his hero Leonardo DaVinci.

I have not been able to post it on my site because it had to air on telivision first to be eligible for Emmys and Annies and all that stuff that only animators care about. Anyway, I can finally show it. Please check it out and as always I love to here your thoughts!
You can see a production blog about the making of Flavio at Frederator.com and learn more about Flavio here.

Check out this amazing Lego sculpture of the hero from my favorite movie, Iron Giant from a guy named Graznador!

You can read more about the Iron Giant Lego sculpture here..

Oh man I want one of these! If you can’t tell from the picture it’s a Wacom Cintiq built into an animator’s desk! It swivels just like a classic animations disc. Really cool! I’d love to get me one of these puppies but there’s only one in the world. Besides, I ain’t got $2500 for the Cintiq anyway.

Here’s the first pass at the final banner I did for my latest client.

It’s pretty big eh? Not sure why they’re calling it a banner but they are. I think it will be the opener for a website. It was a lot of fun to do and I got to animate it all by hand in Flash on my Tablet PC. I soooo need to animate a scene with this thing. It’s so easy to use too. The cleanup can be a bit difficult unless you size up the scene to a huge size and then the pencil cleanup looks crisp and clean. the colring is pretty easy too. At first I had a bit of difficulty with the Paint Bucket and filling in the cleaned up lines but then I realized if I filled it in blocvks it might work and lo and behold it worked beautifully!

I know, it’s not really a logo per se but that’s what the client is calling it so that’s what I’m calling it. Anyway, if you want to see it bigger, click the picture below. Next I will be doing an animated banner for these guys with the dogs running through the screen and the man cleaning up after them.

I’m pretty pleased with the dog running so far which you can see below. It was entirely hand drawn animated in flash. Kinda cool no?

A special thanks to my brother Andy who set my blog up now so it can do Flash right in the posts! He’s cool huh?

It’s the end of an era.

Warner Bros Animation, after almost twenty years of cranking out hits and more than 22 Emmy Awards is shutting it’s doors. I have heard they will restructure on the Warner Lot in Burbank and I am sure they will succeed yet again but for me it’s still the closing of a huge chapter of my life.

WBA started the 2nd Golden Age of Animation and really in a lot of ways ushered in the way for studios like Nickelodeon, Disney Channel and Cartoon Network to start up themselves. Back in 1989, they OWNED kid’s TV and I am extremely proud to say I was a part of it.

It’s really sad to see WB close it’s doors. For me it is like a family moving away, one you’ll never see again. The kind folks at WB gave me my first break on Tiny Toons way back in 1989 freelance in-betweening for a studio called Kennedy Cartoons (when they sub contracted the work out to them) while I was still in NJ. Then again they gave me my next big break when they hired me to work full time on Tiny Toons, Animaniancs and Tazmania doing layout for them. They yet again helped me when they gave me first directing job years later on Pinky and the Brain (I moved up) Histeria and Detention.

They next gave me yet another big break when they collaborated with Cartoon Network to help me make Swaroop, the first cartoon starring an East Indian boy. But wait! There’s more! A few years later, they hired me to not only direct Xiaolin Showdown, but also picked up TWO development projects (Knights of Sherwood and The Jackalope Boyz)  with me at the same time!

I spent 8 years there off and on during my career and some of the memories were the best I’ve had professionally and personally. I met my wife through a P.A. working on Tazmania. I got married while working on Animaniacs, my wife had our first daughter while I was working on Pinky and the Brain and I lost my grandmother as well during that show’s production. We had our second daughter during the production of Histeria. I lost my mom during production of Swaroop.

A large part of my personal memories are tied in some way to that studio. I owe quite a debt to Warner Bros. and Jean McCurdy, Tom Ruegger, Christopher Keenan, Linda Steiner and Sander Schwartz. They have helped to keep me employed and gave me many good years of memories.

That’s all Folks!

This is the first cartoon I ever directed many years ago. In fact, it’s the first cartoon I ever storyboarded, color-keyed, sheet timed and key animated too! You can read more about Bloo’s Gang here.

Today would have been Walt Disney’s 105th birthday! that has me thinking… what would he think of today’s animated features? Would he cringe or be inspired? Hmmmm.