The Legend Of Korra

Avatar: The Last Airbender was a very successful anime-inspired seies for Nickelodeon. Unfortunately the franchise took a hit last year with the M. Night Shyamalan live action feature. Undeterred, Avatar creators Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko are supervising 26 episodes of a new spin-off limited series, The Last Airbender: Legend of Korra, which is scheduled to debut next year. Last week at Comic Con Nick released this first taste:



Thanks to Cartoon Brew:

Maurice Binder

One of the unsung heroes of 'Title Design' (before it was even considered noteworthy) was Maurice Binder. Like Saul Bass and Pablo Ferro, he belonged to small group of people who made the title sequences to films.

Maurice was asked to create a 'modern' montage of sorts for the upcoming 'James Bond' movie 'Dr. No in 1961. Little did he know how iconic that opening couple of seconds would become. He went on to design the sequences on all of the Bond films, all the way until 'View To A Kill' (or, when the movies started to suck).

Comic-Con 2011

Ah yes, another year of insanity and nerd-dom in San Diego! It MIGHT have been slightly less crowded than previous years, but, that didn't stop 100,000 guests from attending! All sorts of sights to behold at this one, plus the regular haggling for old 50-60's comics and random finds. Still on the waiting list for the 1985 booth, but, it's always interesting to see what people come up with, and build some ideas for when the times comes.

Copyright Infringment®

A while ago I got slapped with an Infringement Notice sent by Warner Music. The dispute was that a music video I'd created for an artist was illegally using the music . This seemed like a strange issue considering I've always thought of the music videos I've created as being mere ads for the artists themselves, who's purpose is to sell records.

This Infringement Notice notice gave me a few options. I could a). Take the clip down. b). I could challenge it with Warners Lawyers (not the recommended option.) c). Or, have the option to manually on YouTube, switch out the audio track, and keep the video up. I chose option "C" and picked, of all things, a spiritual Norma Fraser track.

The artist wasn't very happy about this, and contacted me right away, wondering what happened. He went through the channels at Warner Music and got it settled.

This got me thinking, what on earth is Warner Music doing? They just made the video into a Norma Fraser music video, that isnt even on their label. It goes to show how the large music companies just don't get it. It almost seems like they're analog radio enthusiasts showing up at a cable television conference. After the whole incident, I finally got the idea that there are no more artists in these companies. Warner Music is pretty much a building filled with lawyers.

Bay Bronx Bridge

This was originally intended as art for the 12" single release of the track, from the Masters of Illusion LP (2000). The inspiration from this came from the 'Sleeping Bag' singles done by GNOME CWK. The art was clearly graffiti inspired with a heavy dose of anime style characters, which at the time, were like nothing I'd ever seen.

The GNOME art was made using markers, and airbrush. The result was unique and made the LP covers look like pages out of someones blackbook.

Team Extreme Part 1

In late 2004,a friend Jeff Burkett and I put together a one sheet pitch for a contest on FUEL TV. The contest was for an 'extreme sports' based feature/ or documentary film. The winner would then get a modest budget to create the film they pitched.

A few months later, a co-worker of ours (IFILM) mentioned that she'd read that Jeff and I were among of the finalists. The contest granted 10 finalists a modest budget to make their film and show it at Sundance Festival. The winner within those final 10 films would then get 1 million dollars to make their film for wide release.

Upon finding this out, and being surprised when we received our first check from FUEL, we set out to get started. Jeff by now had quit his job, and was slated to write the final screenplay. I'd suggested that he direct as well, and I'd stick to Art Direction/ Production Design duties. We assembled a crew, and got started.

The story we'd written was about a cop who patrolled on roller skates. A simple enough premise, but, we had to come up with a caper, as well as a host of characters. The setting would be Venice Beach, and after the final script was written, we started casting. Finding actors who suited the characters on the page was entirely different matter. I never figured how tough it'd be. The main character, Calvin Castleberry, was to have been a famous roller skater back in the 1970's. Jeff and I would explain the he wasn't 'roller disco', in fact , we'd say, Calvin hated disco in the 1970's, and was much more akin to The Eagles or Bread.

We finally found our lead, and started drafting up a schedule. By now the crew was at about 20 of us, and we we're looking at a summer 2005 shoot (cont).

1985 Vol #4 Page 5

Detective Thornsbury

I just uncovered this short lived series of comics I'd sketched up around the time of my 10th birthday. I'm not sure what the inspiration was, but, it looks to have a bit of James Bond influence with some sort of a caper plot added. Sad to say, the Detective Thornsbury series didnt make it past 6 pages.

Bay Bronx Bridge

A cover for a Masters Of Illusion single that went unused. Turned out, the artwork didnt get finished in time, so, this ended up becoming a birthday gift for the artist!

Big inspiration here from the 'Kev' artwork on the Ultimate Breaks and Beats series.

Genius Of Love