Nine Old Men

Well I told myself I wouldn't touch this thing until I polished up Byron's knots - so here I am, Thursday of week 12 (how crazy is that?) and I have Byron looking pretty polished in the first shot. He's still a bit floaty so I'll have to work on that, but right now the second shot is what really needs fixing up. Going to work on Eddie's hands, face, shoulders, and legs, altering the posing a bit and tightening the timing. The girl will have to wait - the focus is on Eddie.

My parents and grandma arrived here on Sunday and we unpacked the whole van that night. To celebrate on Monday, we all went to Disney's Epcot. It was a fun time, and great to be there with my grandma especially. We wished my grandpa could have come, but he wasn't up for this trip, understandably. It was a long drive. Epcot was a lot of fun even though Naveen and I just went in October - we saw some things we didn't get to see then, but mostly the difference was being with family this time.

At the end of the night, after the spectacular fireworks show, we were on our way out and I stopped at the Disney art store (ripping people off since 1972, 'tm'). It really is an incredible art store with some amazing works of art - most of which are two to five thousand dollars if worth anything at all. They do have an animator's desk set up and file folders of character tracings that a 2d animator did that day for purchase - except really that's all it is, a tracing of an original cell from various Disney films, done by a real animator, yes, but let's face it, anyone with a steady hand can trace well, and I couldn't see how people could spend $40 on that.

So then I passed the book section and found Walt Disney's Nine Old Men and the Art of Animation by John Canemaker. I have been wanting to get that book but thought it was out of print. It was $60. So I called my friend Jess and asked her if it was on Amazon (which took a little while because my phone died so she had to call Naveen back and then there was all the explaining, etc)... Those Disney shop people were so mad at me! Of course they had every right to be.. I was avoiding spending $60 on a book by calling a friend and finding out that I could get it for $38 online from Amazon.com.. while these people were trying to close the store.. it was really "ballsy" of me (so I have been told). But hey, that's how I met Mel Brooks and a number of other cool people... so there!

Anyway - all right, 9am, time to get to work.