Blog Van Blogahan McBloggerton

Wow, have not blogged since November of last year. Doesn't seem right. Going to try and keep up better with it. But instead of dwelling on that, let me share some of the things that have been keeping me from typing descriptions.

Powerhouse:
Things have been going real well at the animation studio Frank, Bruce and I started 9 years ago. Hard to believe it has been that long.

We have a ton of great projects, including some new cinemas for Hasbro's latest videogame version of Risk for the Xbox: http://www.joystiq.com/2010/01/21/risk-factions-sets-the-stage-for-war-with-two-trailers/

Also, we have reorganized the company a bit. I am now a CEO. Things are feeling really good. We have 30+ employees now and the jobs are nice and diverse. I think it will be a great year.

New niece:
I have a new niece, Rebecca, named after my mom.

My little brother is daddy. I know I am getting older but it is a bit of a mind trip. Mandy and I have been to visit a couple times in Houston on the weekends.

Here is the photo of me holding the newest family member, trying to drink a cocktail at the same time.

I guess I am going to be that uncle.

Robert Schiffhauer:
Around Christmas time, I went back to the alma mater with my co-alum Scotty Sharp who was visiting from NYC. Scotty, Mandy and I paid a visit to Bob Schiffhauer who I used to TA for in grad school. Bob is a Cooper Union and Yale Alum and a fantastic figure artist. He is also an inspiration. He has done over 100+ paintings in the past year, and done them while having major hip and leg surgery and being 80 years old. All of this while coming out of retirement to teach a full course load.

Makes me feel like a lazy bastard for belly-aching about how busy I am.

Mandy and I bought a couple of his pieces, but his work is phenomenal. Proves you are never too old to improve.




Resolutions:
As I do every year, I made 100 resolutions for 2010. I spent a lot of Jan and Feb trying to plan out how to make these resolutions work, and now I am starting to get into the meat of some of the work. Speaking of resolutions, I plan on doing a lot of animation in my spare time, especially as in my new role at the company, I don't really have the time to animate.

This year my goal is to do 1 Captain Capitalism cartoon, a trailer for my Hamlet based piece, a trailer for the martial arts piece, and a short based on the Austrian anti-Claus, Krampus.

I'll try to post these projects soon.

Naked Lunch:
We are still doing the Naked Lunch sessions. If you don't know about those, and want to do some figure drawing in Central Texas...check out the Naked Lunch blog:
http://www.nakedlunchaustin.blogspot.com/

Martial Arts stuff:
I got a lot of cool martial arts toys for Christmas, one of them is this nice little Mook Jong made specifically for Mantis practitioners. It has little fists so you can practice wrist grabs. It is a lot of fun, but loud so I have not been able to use it a lot as my daily routine puts Kung Fu practice in the morning before work.

So lately I have been training at CTC (MMA), Bruce's KO Boxing (Boxing), and Del Sol Martial Arts(7 star Mantis). Jason Williams and I just re-did Bruce's website, check it out: http://www.bruceskoboxing.com/

I eat bugs:
Finally, one of my nephews favorite insults when he was little was "you eat bugs, Uncle Brad." This would be followed by furious giggling. This past weekend it turned out the little dork was precognitive. While at the Chinatown market I found "ground cucumbers." Which is a euphemism for silk worm pupae. We fried some up on Saturday night to try before a UFC. Wish I could say they were good and worth the trouble. But this is something that definitely goes on the "can say I tried it" list and not on the "would try again" list.

Excelsior,

Brad