The Grinch Who Left an Easter Egg

In May of 2014, my wife Donna was a patient at Sloan Kettering Hospital in Manhattan, being treated for complications from the cancer she'd been fighting for 3 1/2 years.  The doctors were treating her aggressively.  They were the best in the country, so we were confident she would beat it.  As she rested, I sat next to her bed with my Cintiq, doing storyboards for Illumination on "The Grinch".

Tara's Lasting Impressions

Last May, I was having lunch in the new courtyard at Nickelodeon (where I work) with writer Andrew Blanchette.  There were some guys sandblasting cartoon characters into the concrete benches. Working in the midst of them was a model-pretty woman - not the type you would cast in a blue-collar role, unless it was a "Flashdance" remake.   I told Andrew. "We need to go talk to her."

 "We need to go talk to her."           

And so we met Tara Tarrant, owner of LaJolla Stone Etching. She was putting the finishing touches on a very impressive Ninja Turtles etching that wrapped around a bench. So how does a gal like her find herself sandblasting for a living?
Tara gave FLiP the scoop:

"I come from a long line of artistically gifted individuals, mainly on my mothers side. My grandmother and mother are amazing oil painters and my mother is a muralist as well. I believe I must have picked up any artistic talent that I possess from these amazing and talented women. I do not have any formal art schooling, but I have always loved art and being creative.  It's in the blood!"

Short of Expectations

Chief, Your Butt's on Fire from Steve Moore on Vimeo.

Two years ago, I finished a short film called, "Chief, Your Butt's on Fire".  I wrote about it in FLiP as my wife, Donna, submitted it to umpteen film festivals.  Thousands of dollars in entry fees later,  we had what can be only described as a flop.  Only two festivals picked it up.

Was the film that bad?

When I started working on this short, Disney still did hand drawn animated features.  By the time I finished, chipping away at it in my spare time over many years, the animation world had changed completely.   Festivals were not even accepting film anymore.

So maybe my little film was too old fashioned for today's scene.  Or maybe it just sucks.  At any rate, here it is, decide for yourself.

-Steve

Remembering Donna

Remembering Donna

Readers of FLiP may have noticed that Steve, FliP's founder and the authentic voice of this blog, hasn't posted much lately. Steve lost his wife Donna to cancer earlier this year, and blogging hasn't been high on his list of priorities since then. Donna may not be with us, but she is certainly not forgotten. Steve recently unveiled a memorial to her at the skate park that she was so much responsible for - taking on the burden of mayoral office in a small town to try to make things better for her local community.

Losing Donna

On May 16, my wife, Donna, lost her life to cancer.   She was first diagnosed in December of 2010, and over the past three and a half years overcame every obstacle.  I wrote about her fight in FLiP.  But two weeks ago the obstacles became too many, too steep, and too overwhelming.  I was with her at the end, and she died peacefully.

Wide Mike in Pharmacy

Wide Mike by Steve Moore

"This tells me nothing."  he said with a groan, gently flicking the paper back to me from behind the pharmacy counter.

My wife was getting her bi-weekly chemotherapy, and she sent me down to pharmacy to answer a question they had regarding her new insurance carrier.  She did not yet have a new insurance card, so she gave me sheet of paper with all the information printed on it, with the instruction, "Show this to pharmacy."  The pharmacist, a wide, miserable sack of paste named Mike, wasn't in the mood for my sheet of paper, and dismissed me with a passive smirk, avoiding eye contact.

Chief, Your Butt's on Fire

Trailer for "Chief, Your Butt's on Fire" from Steve Moore on Vimeo.

I am pleased to announce the completion of my brand new short, Chief, Your Butt's on Fire.  I decided to make it the old fashioned way, fully animating the whole thing myself, by hand, like in my student days.  The only concession to technology would be scanning the drawings, and painting and compositing digitally.  It took 13 years to do.

The SKaB or How I Got Involved in a Community Project

In the small town where I grew up, things haven't changed much.  It's a safe town to grow up, a place where you can still walk or ride your bike to school.  Being an economically depressed area, there are very few recreation programs, so kids have to entertain themselves.  They ride skateboards and bikes that go vertical as well as horizontal, but without a designated place to do this, otherwise good kids end up riding where they should not - on the handrails of church steps, on public benches, and even on the roof of the post office.  And when church ladies,  township officials, or the postman would yell at them, these little smart asses would say, "Build us a skate park."

Cheeky, yes.  But they were right.  They are the next generation of the town's citizens and this is what they do for recreation.  And while the township had parks with swings and ballfields, there was no skate park, at least not until a small group of citizens, including my wife Donna and I,  took up the cause.

Steve-O's Tiki Lounge

Two years ago, Donna and I bought a house, our dream house on a lake. It's built on a berm, making the basement rec room level with the lower end of the yard on the lake side - perfect for entertaining.  At first sight, Donna said, "We should make this a tiki room."

Months went by before this idea went from the wish list to the planning stages.  I started out by re-reading an old FLIP article about Alan Smart's tiki room.  He took a room much like mine, with white walls and grey carpet, and completely transformed the space.  I contacted Alan, who gave me a few links for places to go to for materials.  I also did a lot of Google image browsing on tiki rooms.

Universal Security and Why I Love Kristen Wiig

Donna at he DM2 premiere yellow carpet, under close scrutiny from security.  

I have worked for Illumination Entertainment from the get-go. When the first Despicable Me had its studio premiere, my wife, Donna, was in the throes of chemotherapy and we couldn't go.  On The Lorax, my Dad was ill and we couldn't go.  But on DM2, we made it.

Donna has heard my stories of Hollywood life, and was keen on experiencing a big time Hollywood movie premiere, walking the red carpet, meeting movie stars and being on the list to an exclusive event.  She was thrilled to get the official invitation in the mail.  

A month before the event, Donna said, "Do you think we'll meet Steve Carell?"

A week before the event, Donna said, "I hope we meet Steve Carell,"

The day before the event, Donna said, "We're going to meet Steve Carell!"

The Best/Worst Father's Day

My Daughter, last Father's Day

Last year, I spent Father's Day in the Intensive Care Unit at the Atlantic City Trauma Center.  Not as a patient - my daughter, Megan, had been in one hell of a car wreck two days earlier, coming home from a movie matinee, and now here she was, with vining tubes and wires connecting her to a menagerie of medical machines.

My wife, Donna, had received the call, the one parents fear most, from the State Police.  Megan had driven her 1998 Buick off the highway and into several trees.  Her brother, Chris, was in the passenger seat and escaped with a mild concussion.  Megan took the worst of it, broadsiding a tree right at her door.  The EMTs had to cut the roof off the car to get to them.  They feared she would bleed to death, and called for a helicopter to airlift her to the hospital.   Chris told us while they waited, he told his sister to hold his hand, that way they would know the other one was there.  Pretty heads up stuff for a 20 year old who was just in a serious wreck.

Final Touches and the Forever Rule

Finishing a film is a great big pain in the ass.  All the wild enthusiasm for what the film could be has yielded to a mottled view of what it has become.  By the end, you've spent so much time with every little nook and cranny of the film that you can't tell if it is entertaining anymore.

First released still from Steve Moore's  "Chief, Your Butt's on Fire".

I am experiencing this right now on a short I started in 2000 (!) called Chief, Your Butt's on Fire.  It's a cautionary tale based on my life in animation.  I animated the entire five minutes, full on, on old-school 20lb punched Cartoon Colour stock in my spare time.  It took years.  My wife, Donna, scanned it all - rough, not cleaned up - and figured out a way to paint it in Toon Boom in her spare time.  It took years.

Taking Care of Dad

Oscar H. Moore, a.k.a. Dad.

I spent the first 19 years of my professional career living in an industry Never Never Land, a place where my life could be all about animation.  My troubles were cartoon troubles.  I knew that heavy, grown-up problems existed in the world, but I had somehow dodged them for twenty years while pursuing  animation glory in Hollywood.

Happy Birthday, Donna!

Today is my wife's birthday -  a milestone, but I won't say which one.  With her seemingly boundless energy, she is a constant source of inspiration.  Last year, when she was very sick from cancer (see this earlier post),  I made this little video. This year she's doing great, so I thought I would share it with a wider audience.


For Donna from Steve Moore on Vimeo.

About the video: it was done in Flash, very quickly, shortly before Donna's birthday last year.  I animated a walk cycle on a Cintiq, then found a dozen settings in which to use it.  It was very much improvised - no storyboarding, just  the song by Steve Earle to cue me visually.  I picked this song because it resonated with both Donna and I during the hard days of chemo.  Its sentiment still rings true.

I urge you to sing along in a Steve Earle voice, preferably to someone you love :
"I love you with all my heart / All my soul / And every part of me."

Happy Birthday, Donna!

Love,
Steve

ObamaCare and Me

Yes, I'm weighing in on health insurance.

My wife, Donna, and I did not have health insurance when she was diagnosed with cancer last year. (see earlier post.)  She had left a job with insurance, and was looking into buying private insurance when it all hit the fan.

Thanks to the Affordable Health Care Act (a.k.a. ObamaCare), we were able to get insurance even with Donna's pre-existing condition.  If opponents of this law had had their way (and they eventually may),  we would have been denied insurance, and would have faced severe financial stress while trying to fight a life threatening disease.

There's been an awful lot of nasty rhetoric being tossed around, decrying this law as unconstitutional. An invasion of privacy.  An attack on our freedom.

I thought they were talking about Facebook.

This is about health insurance.  Not Communism.  Not the Taliban.  Not gay whales.  Not Mo-Cap.   Health insurance.  We are being forced to get insurance. Insurance companies are being forced to insure the sick.  That's the deal.

Some gnash their teeth in panic, imagining that their fears and prejudices come to life and gang-bang them in the name of ObamaCare.  Donna and I experienced this law in the real world, first hand.  It helped us.  That's not a Democratic thing nor a Republican thing.  It's a human thing.
-Steve

And now, a cartoon.....

Bimbo's Initiation

Not unlike getting a law through Congress.

A Lorax Anecdote Not from the Publicity Dept

I started working for Illumination Entertainment four years ago, when they were just starting out.  I work from my studio in New Jersey, in my hometown of Port Norris.  I used to live in L.A., worked there for over 20 years.  What a hell-hole.  With my wife, Donna, I bought a 120 year old commercial building, which we renovated and set up shop.  I have a half-mile commute to work.  I do storyboards on a Cintiq, which are uploaded to Illumination HQ in Santa Monica.

I started on "Despicable Me", then rolled right over onto "The Lorax", and now "Despicable Me 2".  Some California colleagues have bad-mouthed Illumination for not giving Americans jobs.  Because America ends at the San Gabriel Valley.  

"The Lorax" director Chris Renaud and me near Mac Guff Studio in Paris.

A Pixar friend who's drunk on the company Kool-Ade accused Illumination of using sweatshop labor.   He's referring to Mac Guff, the CG studio stuck in that horrible third world city of Paris, a stone's throw from the slums of the Eiffel Tower.  I visited it with my family in 2010.  They pay their animators in cigarettes!  Well, they smoke a lot, anyway.  

Right after our Paris trip, my wife started having stomach pains.  She was running for local election (and won!) and figured it was a stress-related ulcer.  At the end of December, after a series of tests, she was diagnosed with colon cancer.  It was bad. 

In January 2011, she began chemotherapy at Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. Every other week, we would make the fifty mile trek northwest to the city .  At a cubicle-like infusion station, I would plug in my Cintiq and do Lorax storyboards while my wife sat in a recliner for six hours, having toxic chemicals fed into her bloodstream to save her life.

At first, nurses would stop in their tracks, fascinated by what I was doing.  "Are you drawing?"  they would ask.  "Amazing!" they would say.  My work never saved anyone's life.  After a few months, they got used to seeing me.  Now I'm just "that Despicable Me guy".  Donna has the same nurse each time, Annette.  I can't understate how incredibly kind she had been.  Beyond administering chemo, she will sit and chat and make a stressful experience not so stressful, all while getting her own work done.   That's a whole different kind of talent. 

Nurse Annette and me with my Cintiq at Infusion Studios.

We kept Donna's condition quiet for a long time, because some people FREAK OUT when you mention cancer.  But I did tell Illumination.  Dave Rosenbaum, the story supervisor, and Chris Renaud, the director, could not have been more understanding and supportive.  We were in the midst of production on "The Lorax". With all the production madness going on on THEIR end, they never had a problem with my wacky schedule.  That meant a lot to me.    

So when I see trailers for "The Lorax", I think of Jefferson Hospital.  Parts of every sequence I did were done during chemotherapy, in what I now call "Infusion Studios".  That big, sweeping shot when we first see the Truffala Valley? Infusion Studios.

The massive animal exodus?  Infusion Studios.

Ted's escape from Thneedville?  Infusion Studios.  

Ted visits Audrey and gets flipped?  Infusion Studios.

And so on.

Two major surgeries and a year of chemo later, Donna's doing great.  I couldn't board a better ending.
-Steve

Donna loves Paris.

Return of the Hunched & Goofy

Last March, I got an e-mail from Alex Williams.  He had a proposal - that we should team up and relaunch my e-zine FLIP as a blog. This is it.  

Alex lives in London.  That's a picture of us during my family vacation there in August 2010.  He took us out for some spectacular Middle-Eastern cuisine.  It was Ramadan, so we had the place to ourselves until dusk.  I had just posted my final issue of FLIP as a webzine, and we talked about it a bit that night among a myriad of other things in the rambling conversation you have with someone you see once every four or five years.  My wife, Donna, was running for local office, and Alex introduced her to the poster that would become her campaign mantra:

  

This was something Churchill had posted around town when the Nazi's were bombing the shit out of London.  Donna co-opted the slogan and would win the election, beating our own local version of Boss Hogg.

I first met Alex in Los Angeles in 1998 - a cool, sophisticated cat but not in the phony L.A. way.  He's very intelligent - was once a barrister in London (or was he a solicitor?).  Besides being an animator, he does a comic strip for The Times in London called"Queen's Counsel".  When he proposed teaming up, I thought he'd offer a great counterpoint to my South Jersey tactless manner.

For you readers, expect to read more of the types of articles done in the original FLIP.  Bookmark the page if you like it, and join our Facebook page too!  We're not posting comments as they tend to be inane and give my site viruses, but if you have something valid to add or contribute, send us an e-mail. And please - spread the word!

- Steve