Mike Milo's Journal

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.

Until recently I’ve been using the same animation desk that I used in art school- a drafting table with a hole cut in it and a light under it. Last year a friend of mine was selling a Hanna Barbera desk which is really cool as I know that stuff like Dexter’s Lab and Powerpuff Girls was drawn on as well as many other cartoons. Anyway I brought it home but never really set it up until my brother helped me fix my studio up a bit.

I swear I have the modern day version of Termite Terrace.

Milowerx Studios 2008

Another shot of my studio, You can see my house in the distance to the left.

Anyway, I reorganized my studio and setup my tablet PC on the Hanna Barbera desk- sort of old meets new. I love it!

Here’s some pics…

This was my original desk bought in 1987

Here’s a shot of my portable tablet on the desk in the Family room at my house…
I do this every night because my Father-in-Law sleeps in my studio at night…

Another shot of the Portable Tablet PC on my make-shift desk

Here’s a shot my new setup in my studio ( converted Guest house).
This is the Hanna Barbera desk I bought for $100! Sweet huh?

Another angle on my Animation Desk Setup.

Yet another angle on my Animation Desk setup.

Here’s an opposite angle looking from my animation desk. This is my basic PC setup.
Nothing special but it ain’t bad. the guest house is about
600 sq. feet which is pretty good for what I need.

Man, I gotta say having a website is an amazing experience.
Since last week over 8000 people have visited my site! Some of the hits of course are just spambots trolling the web but you can tell if it’s a real person looking at stuff by the length of time they stay and also by which page they are looking at.

The biggest hits here by far are for my 2D animation page and the Storyboards page both of which have various clips from Tazmania, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain and Xiaolin Showdown among others.
Lately, since I’ve updated the site and added some content I’ve noticed a marked increase in traffic. People from all over the globe see this site which is pretty cool considering that I am just small part of the animation business in Los Angeles. Just in the last few days we’ve received visits from The Netherlands, Mexico, Brazil, Russia, The Arab Emerites, Saudi Arabia, The East Coast, Midwest and West Coast of the US, the UK, Ireland, and Thailand!

Some of the traffic is people searching directly for me, but most is people looking for animation studios, or storyboards, or Flash tutorials or sometimes they’re actually looking for animationinsider.net (a great website for animation news) and they come to animationinsider.com which is one of my domain names.

It’s incredible really that so many people can view my small site. People I’ve never met before (and unfortunately probably never will), all with a genuine interest in animation like myself.
I LOVE THE WEB!

If you visit the blog, we’d LOVE to hear from you!
In other news Happy Father’s Day to all you dads out there. I myself am the proud dad of two sweet girls, Melissa, who’s 8 and Megan who’s 6. I love them more than my own life and am so glad that God has brought me these two incredible gifts! If you have kids you know what I mean!

So the new look is up and operational. I’m sure there are things that will not work to start but I am working like a busy lil’ bee to try and get it all back online right away. Apparently this new design works because I’ve already had three inquiries for work today alone! Amazing what an organized site will do for your business.
As for other endeavors I am currently in negotiations with a few companies about making some animation for them. All this and some freelance too makes me one busy little boy! Still it’s very cool to be working again! Lastly you can now post comments here. I don’t know who WILL post comments but please feel free to say stuff!
Today I went to see my brother and my niece. Aww she’s so darn cute! It’s amazing! Must be his wife’s blood ’cause us Milo’s are not exactly what you’d call eye catching material… Or at least I ain’t!
I’m also taking private lessons with a really great teacher who shall remain nameless until he says it’s cool to do otherwise but he’s worked on so many excellent films that you know. One of them rhymes with The Day Tricks and another one rhymes with Yell Boy.

Well, well, well! I finally got a new look to the website! Amazingly enough. I’m pretty tickled with it actually. Of course my genius friend Harry helped make it a reality and if you notice on his website Zaptoons, the new Milowerx site is very similar. Thas because I copied his layout and I gotta say it looks great! From now on my main site will be primarily a business site and Animation Insider will be a personal, blog. Kinda cool huh? Oh yeah and now finally you can all post comments! Not that anyone will but still you can and that’s cool! Thanks again Harry! Ya’ll is not such a bad fella after all! ;-)