An update of sorts...

Sheesh, it's been forever since I've updated this thing. Anyway, what's up with me you ask? Well tons. Tons, I say! We finished the pilot for FX and are currently waiting for the big green light to come down. If and when that happens, we have to take off running to hit the schedule that's tentatively laid out. Til then, we're all taking some much needed time off. Which means I get to experiment with designs like the above.

On his forum, White Chapel, Warren Ellis posts a weekly redesign/remodel thread. The above is my take on Click Rush, The Gadget Man. Via the site:

The Gadget Man. Click Rush, the Gadget Man, was created by Lester Dent and appeared in Crime Busters from 1937 to 1938. Rush was a tall, lean, strong young man with brown hair and eyes. (Brown was his favorite color; he usually dressed all in brown.) Rush was an amateur investigator who invented gadgets towards this end. He'd come to the "big city" with the "notion of selling super-modern, crook-catching gadgets to the police." After the cops laughed him out of the station house he went out on his own.

Well, okay. He was prompted by a talking toad: "Bufa, of the species Bufonidae, which feeds on snails, slugs, insects, and such undesirable things....(I'm) eager to hire an expert private detective to investigate crimes I think need solving." The toad succeeds in convincing Click to solve crime (the $10,000 fee for each crime helped, too.) but proved to be an only average boss, enjoying giving Click the razz and showing a mean sense of humour.

Among Rush's gadgets include a portable x-ray device, phone-tapping equipment, a bulletproof vest, a repeating hypodermic needle he used to deliver a knockout drug; exploding matches; knockout gas vials; containers of liquefied tear gas; and a number of other such things.

Dans la tete (in the head)

Sorry for the lack of updates, my nights and weekends have been consumed with the pilot were working on. I can't show anything from it just yet, but it's incredibly exciting. In the meantime, here's this awesome little diddy:

Via the front page of CGtalk, this is the best short I've seen in quite a while.

Dans la Tête
Uploaded by Esma-Movie

On a happier note: Holy I-dunno-if-this-is-a-joke.

Via Coilhouse, my new procrastination enabler.

Back online for the New Year.

As many have heard by now, Cartoon Network passed on the Xtacles and as a result 70-30 Productions had to close shop. I chose to not post, not really talk about it because frankly, it's weird and it sucks and it still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth and a pain in my heart.

The only silver lining is that a new company has formed quite literally from the ashes, led by our former writer/producer, Adam Reed. We're developing his new pilot for FX, and while still early in its infancy, I love it. It will be without question the most challenging project of my career to date. The techniques Mack Williams, Eric Sims and I have developed in one week of work are leaps and bounds beyond what we were doing on Frisky Dingo and The Xtacles. I am, in a word, pumped.

Coupled with that, the upcoming inauguration, which seems to be covered every minute of every day, has me 1.) sick of hearing about it 2.) wishing it would hurry up and 3.) hoping that it comes remotely close to meeting its seemingly impossible expectations. I've met many people that start their opinions of President-elect Obama with "Now I'm not an Obama fanatic or whatever, but..." The problem is I think I might be. I have drank the Kool-aid and it was delightful. So color me a believer until I'm given a reason to think otherwise. I believe in hope. Maybe that makes me a sucker, only history will tell.

Currently, I'm reading a book Adam Reed lent me, John Huston's autobiography, An Open book. John Huston was an actor, writer, director, former boxer, and one time Mexican Ranchero. His life reads like Indiana Jones. He punched Errol Flynn in the nose. He wrote and directed The Maltese Falcon, The Red Badge of Courage, The African Queen, and acted in some twenty others.

The symmetry of the below passage struck me, as he was 28-ish at the time, and I am 28 currently:

During the Depression there was an army of unemployed on the roads, and a large number of children: over five hundred thousand kids whose parents were victims of the Depression. Most of them were riding the rails. The railroads allowed this, but many towns and cities wouldn't let them off the trains. There were some very bad incidents; in Texas a number of such children died in a boxcar. Willy and I took a trip around California, talking to kids, brakemen and hobos. Then we wrote a script.

...

The picture was never made, for the best of reasons: the day we finished writing the script Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office. Before the picture could go into production, the kids were off the roads, working in the CCC camps in the reforestation program. That tells something about the Rooesevelet Administration. The change in public attitude was magical. Overnight it seemed there was a new spirit in the air, a feeling of high confidence which persisted throughout the first two Roosevelt Administrations--right into World War II.

Hopefully, we're about to witness a turn, not only in our own country but throughout the world. I believe one positive change can have a ripple effect, that good inspires good, the broken window theory in reverse I guess. I believe everyone should drink this Kool-aid and high five. Israel, I'm looking at you.

For the blog, I doubt I'll be able to post much of anything to do with the pilot for quite some time. Keep your fingers crossed, as hopefully by Spring we'll know if we all have jobs for another year. In the meantime, I'll post what I can. Chad Hurd and I have some exciting side projects lined up, that I'll be posting soon.

Neal

Neal Holman.com

So www.nealholman.com is finally live. My first website. Sigh. And it looks it, too.

In the next few days, it's going to change pretty rapidly. For lack of better tools, I used iWeb which... while easy, is a little too simplistic to do what I want to do. For now, however, it will do.

If you want to make my website, for peanuts... shoot me an email!

Neal

New Lonely Island Video (probably not safe for work)

Foodscapes

Stumbled on this from the Drawingboard, London artist Carl Warner creates fantastic landscapes with food. Broccoli trees, dead fish doubling as rippling water, the guy's imagination is fantastic.

The one above is my favorite, but there's plenty more over on the Telegraph.