Mike Milo’s Journal

Well I am down to the last few weeks of my production of Flavio. Went fast didn’t it? Today we will be putting together and editing the animatic which is the storyboard synched to the sound track. After that all that’s left is the exposure sheets.

Well there are also some backgrounds to do and the painting of those backgrounds and also coloring all the character art but most of that is being done by others so for me I am getting towards the end. Anyway, here is what will be my THE END card. it’s a little homage’ to an old Bugs Bunny THE END card. If I could find a pic of it I’d post it as well.

Here’s a picture Flavio had taken by his mom for Father’s Day… His father is saying,“Mama Mia! Takea the picature already!”

I don’t know if any of you use Firefox (in fact, I’m not really sure if anyone even reads this blog anymore) but I have found it to be an amazing product. One, because it’s free which is great, but two, it has extensions which you can add to the browser. It’s a great tool. What can you do with extensions for your browser? Tons of stuff!

For isntance, you can add an extension to make pictures larger on a page by pressing a button, you can add access to an FTP server from within the browser, you can access your Gmail account and have a little icon on the top right tell you if you have new email there. You can add links to your blog, or even use your Gmail’s 2 gig storage space for storing files instead of jsut email. How useful is THAT!?!?!
Yes, Firefox is pretty cool… One other addtion to Firefox which i am absolutely hooked on is tabbed internet browsing which is a must in my opinion. Let’s say you are looking on someone’s blog and you see a bunch of links you like while reading it. With Firefox, you can right-click and select Open in new Tab and the new page will loadin the background ready for you to see it when you want. If you add up a number o fthesae during your surfing experience, you can right click on one of the tabs and select save to bookmark and all the opeed tabs will be added to your bookmark list. the whole Extension experience has brought new life to the web in my opinion.
MY favorite extension of late is Foxmarks which allows you to put your bookmarks up on a server and then syncronize them with all your computers. For a tech geek like me who has 5 computers, it’s pretty cool to be able to just install that little widget and sync my bookmarks anywhere I go.

My brother found a great spot on the web for calcuting film footage. It’s a HTML feet and frame calculator put on the web by Panavision and it is pretty cool in my book.

I also use something called the Frame Master II which was manufactured by Calculated Industries. For those of you who really can’t imagine what we might use this for I will tell you.

traditional 2D Animation takes 24 frames per second or 1 and a half feet of film. Apparently they used to literally measure it I guess. Anyway, this is how we measure time for cartoons.

One second equals 16 frames. So we calculate based on 16’s not on 10’s as you would in ordinary math. For instance 1foot 8 frames plus 1foot 8 frames equals 3 feet because 8+8 equals 16 and sixteen becomes one whole foot.

Yup! It can get pretty complicated so we use thing slike these calculators to help us.

It’s quite normal to have to add up footage like 4ft 2fr + 6ft 3fr + 34ft 1fr etc. after a while converting with a regular calc can get pretty difficult. Annnnnywwwaaaay, I thought it was pretty cool that Panavision put this up on the web. I will say that my illustrious brother made one himself with Excel late last night for me when I had forgot my trusty Frame Master II at work! I’ve begged him to make a real one (preferably in Flash) and perhaps he will at some point! Ain’t it great to have a brother that can code?

When I was a kid there were lots of really cool toys but my favorite was a toy line called The Outer Space Men which was manufactured by Colorforms. I loved those toys… they were bendable action figures and each came from a different planet in our solar system. they were suppsoed to work in conjunction with Major Matt Mason another favorite of mine.  My favorite alien was Colossus Rex the Man from Jupiter but Alpha 7 was a close second place too. Below is some stuff I found on the web about them. They don’t make toys like this any more fellas. In fact with video games action figures don’t even really anymore because kids don’t seem to want to have to imagine if they can have it done for them. Sad. In 30 years will there even be people who come up with original materials? Anyway check out The Outer Space Men! Cool stuff!

Alpha 7 The Man From MarsThe smallest of the aliens, he has a clear blue plastic helmet and a pistol. Alpha is the quintessential “little green man” He is finished in blue metallic paint. There are two variations, the dark blue paint seen here, and a lighter blue.Far below the surface of the dying planet Mars, the descendants of a once great race live on. Above them the majestic cities have long since crumbled and the vast canals lie buried beneath a silent sea of rust red sand. With time and water running out, Alpha 7 and the other members of the Martian armada travel the galaxy in search of a suitable planet to make their own. Their frequent reconnaissance missions and landings on our Earth have given rise to what most earth men consider “wild” stories of “flying saucers” and “little green men”.	Alpha 7
Astro Nautalis The Man From NeptuneThe rarest of the aliens, he comes with a trident. He appears to be a rough approximation of a squid or octopus, give or take a limb. Deep beneath the stormy seas of Neptune, great cities loom majestically in the shimmering twilight of a vast and beautiful water world. Here the mighty Triton people live. Not content to see the sun as but a glimmer and the stars as tiny ripples floating on the surface of the sea above, Astro Nautilus and his band of Triton mariners venture forth to sail and chart that greater ocean, Outer Space. Often visiting our planet they land, secretly, without all human knowledge, in the very depths of Earth’s great oceans.	Astro Nautalis
Commander Comet The Man From VenusThe only alien with a human appearance, he has a clear pink plastic helmet, white plastic wings and a brown crossbow. The commander is a cross between an astronaut and cupid. He was originally painted gold, but with time fades to a greenish color.From Olympus, largest of the great cloud cities of Venus, the mighty cloud ship Cumulus sets forth. Like a fiery comet it blazes through the blackness of outer space toward Earth. Its captain, Commander Comet, is a direct descendant of the mighty Zeus, leader of the historic first Venusian expedition to Earth, which landed near the Grecian Isles 3,000 years ago. Commander Comet’s present mission is one of routine Earth surveillance, and once within the atmosphere of Earth, his ship will join the great fleet of Venusian craft that float like clouds above our planet night and day, watching undetected over our world.	Commander Comet
Electron + The Man From Pluto1950’s movie style android with clear purple plastic helmet, amber jewel in his chest and sidearm. He has a benign almost angelic expression. He is gray rubber, painted silver.The cold and desolate planet Pluto is too far from the sun to derive its heat and, thus, the very atmosphere lies frozen and life as we know it cannot exist. But there, at the very edge of our solar system, the great Intergalactic Winds that blow between the stars carry with them great masses of cosmic energy. In the beginning, this living energy bombarding the frozen planet did itself freeze to become living matter and, thus, a mighty race of beings began. Created of energy, they can become energy at will and Electron +, from his laboratory in Electra City, can transport himself throughout the universe as a beam of light.	Electron
Orbiron The Man From Uranus (No Jokes, Please)Do you remember the Metaluna Mutant from “This Island Earth”? Orbitron has a clear red pistol. Orange with brown accents. From the barren mountains of Uranus great waves of thought reach out through the blackness of outer space probing the universe. Thus, Orbitron and the men of Uranus search the stars seeking the lost knowledge of the Ancient Ones. On great ships they travel to the farthest reaches of our galaxy and beyond. Able to read the minds of men, they have collected the learning of a thousand worlds, and yet they go on searching in a never ending quest to learn that which it has been ordained no man shall ever know.	Orbitron
Colossus Rex The Man From Jupiter Large, knurled, and for some reason, aquatic. Comes with translucent purple mace. The mace has a small loop at the end to facilitate his holding it. Green rubber with aqua metallic paint and purple shorts.From the huge red spot near the equator of the giant planet Jupiter, a great ship travels forth. On board is the mighty warrior, Colossus Rex, strongest of the strong. The colossal strength needed merely to survive the crushing pressure of the atmosphere and enormous force of gravity on his native Jupiter make him a veritable superman on other worlds. Invulnerable to attack, invincible in battle, brute strength alone is his only weapon. Yet no power in the galaxy can defeat him. We hope his mission is merely to explore the universe and not to conquer it.	Colossus Rex
Xodiac The Man From SaturnXodiac has clear orange accessories including a helmet, staff and pistol. The staff is fragile and easily broken. There is a saturn logo on his chest. He is orange fluorescent rubber with dark blue metallic paint.Saturn is the most beautiful of all the planets. Its symmetrical rings give it a matchless grace and there is nothing like them anywhere else in the solar system. Constructed and placed in orbit by the Elders, millenniums ago, they give the people of Saturn complete mastery over the forces of gravity on their planet. Thus, all work is done by perpetual motion and men can fly above their world in great machines tuned to the frequency of the rings. Freed from manual labor, the men of Saturn have developed great wisdom and the wisest among them is Xodiac. It is said of him that he can tune his staff to play upon the great rings; the music of the spheres resounding throughout the universe to be heard by wise men everywhere.	Xodiac

Here’s a really cool one because we get to see a few faces from the strike. Who are these ladies?

It’s very highly possible that these women inked and painted Snow White and the Seven Dwarves or Bambi or Dumbo or even fantasia. Wow! What a piece of history! these ladies are famous! It’s also interesting to note the sign she holds as it is still the same in the animation industry today. Studios still do not respect what we do nor will they ever apparently. It’s sad because they would not have what they do without the artists. Especially Disney.

Striking cartoonists at Disney Studios, 1941
Description: Striker holding a placard in the picket line at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, 1941. The sign barely visible at the top right reads “Local 852. San Fernando Central Labor Council.” Around 1939, the Screen Cartoon (later Screen Cartoonists) Guild (SCG) was formed as the Local 852 chapter of the Painters, Decorators and Paperhangers Union. “Walt Disney Studios, with its 700 potential members, soon became the Guild’s major organizing target. Disney employees belonged to the Federation of Screen Cartoonists (FSC), an organization which the SCG identified as the ‘company union.’ . . . The Guild’s successful organizing drive of Disney cartoonists quickly led to the 1941 Disney Strike. The strike resulted in a bitter defeat for Disney and the Federation”�

Here’s an interesting memo that Walt sent out to his workers. I find it really interesting that he also mentions WWII as well in the memo. It must have been interesting talk around the water cooler back then. Can you imagine Walt Disney himself coming up to you and telling you to get back to work? I have to say that’d be pretty cool. I guess it’s akin to the people at Pixar talking to John Lasseter.

I found this flier as well… I guess they were gonna have some sort of benefit to raise cash for the people out of work. In our Union today, we are not even allowed to strike. Not much power in that I’d say.

Found this one there too! Apparently,even back then artists and producers were at each other’s throats. Cool stuff!