Mike Milo’s Journal

Many moons ago (1992) I used to moonlight as a comic book artist for Warner Bros. Some of the comics I would do were Italian comics for a book called Bunny Band. Basically it was their word for Tiny Toons. I really had a lot of fun doing these and the money was great!

The following comic is about Buster Bunny and Babs Bunny and it’s called ‘Cli Ammiratori Ci Scrivono’. What that means I don’t have a clue.

If you’d like to see them all together you can download the pdf.

I just got back from pitching some projects for a studio who’s name rhymes with Quisney and it seemed to go pretty well. They’re looking for funny ideas yet still have them be able to fit in with their slate right now, which is hard, I think, for cartoons. they also wanted more of a single character idea and not so much an ensemble cast of characters.

I pitched three ideas; Manny the Nanny, Lump’s Life and Killer; Whale at Large. Of all of them, (I got a million of ‘em) they sparked to Manny the Nanny the best. I pitched three ideas and you can see a smidge of artwork from them below!

"Manny" from Manny the Nanny

"Killer" from Killer; Whale at Large

"Lump" from Lump’s Life

Tatsu: the craziest Roller coaster I’ve ever ridden!

Yesterday my family and I celebrated my daughter Melissa’s 11th birthday by going to Magic Mountain in Valencia. For those of you who don’t know what it is, it’s a Six Flags Theme park and I have to say I had a blast. We went on some of the craziest and sickest rides in the country.

There’s this one called Tatsu which suspends you from a track on your belly as if you’re being held by a dragon’s foot and swoops you through loops and twists and turns. It was the scariest ride I’ve ever been on except if you count my brief stint piloting a fighter jet and pulling 3 G’s. That didn’t end so well and my family still teases me about being white as a ghost when I came off the plane. These rides were a piece of cake compared to it but they were a ton of fun!

We also went on another ride called X which rides you around suspended (again) from a track backwards and the car spins around and around as you twist turn and loop around. You also go about 200 ft in the air, backwards without knowing when you’re going to start your drop. What a ride!

We went on every ride they had there but my favorite was Goliath which has a drop of 250 ft! It was nuts! We went on that twice!

Check it out! Seelippers in action!  the designs I did are not done yet but either way it’s cool!

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.

A Lexiophile is someone who loves words and the way they’re put together. I love how in the English language, putting certain words together produces different result. Check out some examples below.

1. A grenade fell onto a kitchen floor in France, resulted in Linoleum Blownapart.
   
2. You are stuck with your debt if you can’t budge it.
   
3. Local Area Network in Australia: The LAN down under.
   
4. He broke into song because he couldn’t find the key.
   
5. A calendar’s days are numbered.
   
6. A lot of money is tainted: ‘Taint yours, and ‘taint mine.
   
7. A boiled egg is hard to beat.
   
8. He had a photographic memory which was never developed.
9. A plateau is a high form of flattery.
   
10. Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.
    
11. When you’ve seen one shopping center you’ve seen a mall.
    
12. If you jump off a Paris bridge, you are in Seine
    
13. When she saw her first strands of gray hair, she thought she’d dye.
    
14. ]Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead to know basis.
    
15. Santa’s helpers are subordinate clauses.
    
16. Acupuncture: a jab well done.

So I’ve decided to get back on the Pitching trail. It’s been quite some time since I did this and my last successful pitch was about two years ago called Flavio.

Next week I’ll be pitching to National Geographic and the week after to Disney’s Shorts division. I am scheduled to pitch at Nickelodeon at some point as well.

Below is one of the shows I’ll be pitching called Jessie’s Human which is based on my own dog Jessica. It’s the story of a bachelor and his jealous Lucille Ball type dog who’s always getting into trouble in one way or another. I hope someone likes it. Believe me, you’ll be the first to hear!

As always click the image to see a bigger pic.

So last week my beautiful wife got me a copy of Halo 3 and I didn’t even ask for it! She’s awesome! Anyway, I played it all the way through in one week and it rocked! The best part is that they put a good ending in like in the original Halo.

Halo 2’s ending seemed lame in comparison to the first Halo’s ending. Well, Halo 3 delivers nicely on that end. The graphics are a bit better but most of it is environmental. The trees during gamerplay look lush and even sway when you hit them. A nice touch.

I was honestly shocked by how bad the Cinematics were. Bad, modeling, really bad textures, bad bump mapping and bad animation. Really bad rigging and weight mapping. Some of the characters arms actually broke through each other when they bent which was shocking to me considering how weight mapping is 3D 101 and how difficult it would be to get a job at Bungie.

Half Life 2 and Fear kick it’s ass with regards to quality. Still it was a great game to play and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

I really want to get Half Life’s Orange Box next but at $60 I ain’t got near the cash flow to do so.

I guess I’ll wait until it goes down on Amazon…

Jury Duty Scam
 
This has been verified by the FBI (their link is also included below).  It is spreading fast so be prepared should you get this call. Most of us take those summonses for jury duty seriously, but enough people skip out on their civic duty, that a new and ominous kind of fraud has surfaced.

The fraud has been reported so far in 11 states, including California, Oklahoma, Illinois, and Colorado. This (swindle) is particularly insidious because they use intimidation over the phone to try to bully people into giving information by pretending they are with the court system. The FBI and the federal court system have issued nationwide alerts on their web sites, warning consumers about the fraud.

Check it out here: http://www.fbi.gov/page2/june06/jury_scams060206.htm
And here: http://www.snopes.com/crime/fraud/juryduty.asp

Here’s a quick comic I did …Click the link to see a better pic…