Animan on Redbubble

Now you can find Redbubble products with head shots of Coach Ben, Coach Fokker, Mr. Monsanto, Axel, Dr. Butt, Dr. Lex, and figure of Coach Ben.

https://www.redbubble.com/people/theaniman/shop?asc=u

Mexican Voices Wanted for the new Animan movie

Animan Studios is seeking Mexican voices for our next film. We are now casting:

* A baritone Animan-type
* Three normal-voiced guys

All must be native Spanish-speaking Mexicans who are able to read and speak English--actors will need to read from a script that is written in English. You don't need to be a professional actor.

Actor are required to record their voices using their own equipment and send them to Animan Studios. Fancy equipment is not needed. A smartphone or a computer with a microphone will work wonders.

If you have ever dreamed about dubbing a character in an Animan film and you have what it takes, please visit www.mranimanstudios.com/casting-call to learn more about how to apply.

Happy New Year to All My Good Friends

When I started my life as Animan and began this blog, it was 2012.I had no idea what the future would bring. Would people be interested in my vision? Or would they just shrug and turn away? Would they forget about Animan overnight? Life has no guarantees--and it feels very scary at times. But thanks to all of you, I have been very fortunate. 

I hope to continue onward as Animan, and continue creating things that are new and exciting. My only problem is that I am always trying to improve the quality in my work. I found that often, that requires a little more time and effort to make each new Animan adventure.

My sincere thanks to all of you for your patience, as you allow me to keep pushing the envelope.  Your support helps me to go onward and upward. I am very grateful! Happy New Year 2020!

Fun Frames from Jonny Quest

First of all, I want to say "Thank you" to all my wonderful friends and supporters, for making the DD6 video such a big success. Without your support, I couldn't do what I do, so I thank all of you, most humbly.

I want to apologize for letting this blog languish for so long. I tend to spend all my free time doing animation--sometimes to the detriment of everything else. I realized that there is so much fun stuff out there I could be talking about here. All animation and no blogs makes Animan a dull boy!

The other day, I was watching one of my all-time favorite Hanna-Barbera cartoon shows, "Jonny Quest", season one.  The original artwork for the show was done by comic artist extraordinaire Doug Wildey. His drawing skills were so great that the animators who had been drawing Yogi Bear and The Flintstones up to that time, had difficulty trying to emulate his beautiful style.  Often when I'm watching this show on DVD, I'll see a frame or more of video where the drawing sort of went haywire. I love to discover these drawings!

One of the first shows, "The Mystery of the Lizard Men" had a few problematic spots. My favorite hunky character Race is being held by a couple of thugs, and he pulls free, knocking another thug into a tight place. Race suddenly turns into a gooey, squash-and-stretch animation, and it's really fun to see him make the transformation. 

 I get the feeling that live models were sometimes used as a guide for the animators. Race's face looks a little bit too realistic in this frame. Notice the interesting bulge in the lizard man's wetsuit.

 Race is going to ram the villain in the old "bread basket". Making him look all blurry is one way to solve the problem of how to draw it.

I love the villain's face here! For a moment, his green wetsuit goes into full "octopus-mode". Just the bare minimum of Race's face is visible. The animation goes by in an instant, but that's what remote control pause buttons are for.

DD6 Goes On Sale Today!

Please check out the trailer for the latest Animan goody, "Bottoms Up"!

The Animan Site

DD 5 On Sale Now

Hi, Friends!
After what seems like an eternity of drawing, painting, recording and editing, Drippin' Dads 5 is finally ready for purchase.

Here's the link:
http://mranimanstudios.com/shop/

As with all the Drippin' Dad videos, there is an English version and a Spanish version available. Please make sure you click the right one when ordering.

Your purchase of any Animan video goes a long way in helping me continue to produce these animated videos. Thank you for your support!

Hopefully Coming on the 20th of April

April 15, 2019

Dear Friends,
I am still working like crazy on DD5 but I am far from finished. I haven't even had time to create a trailer. So, why is it taking so long? Well, I think I can give a few reasons.

1) In my videos "Filipino Professor" and "Uncle John",  I used a technique called "cut-out puppet". The characters are made of different body parts which are all moved independently by the computer. It is rather complicated, but I like the smooth movement it provides.
One fan of Animan said that it lacked the artistry of drawing all the pictures by hand, rather than manipulating a puppet. So, I have tried to do things the old fashioned way, to give the video a higher artistic quality. Hand-drawn animation is very tedious and super time-consuming. This has resulted in a longer, much longer period of making this movie. 

2) There are a lot of characters in this video. There are also lots of voyeurs, who only blink and don't move--but even THEY require a lot of drawing time. 

3) Some fans have expressed a desire for more dialogue, so I have put a lot into this movie. If you've ever watched an Animan cartoon, hopefully you will have noticed that the mouths are synched to the speech with perfection. I do not use the auto-synch feature of my software, because it doesn't always do a good job. So I do it myself, and it is very time-consuming.

4) I had asked several people to help provide the voices in this video, but that didn't work out. Two people who had offered before, suddenly changed their mind. Another two people had done voices for me before, but after I sent them the script, I never heard back from them. And so, I had to do all the voices myself, at least as well as I could. I did that before in the "Camp" video. I'm hoping that fans will not be too disappointed.  

Other things require time--this video takes place at the beach, so whenever possible, I have even tried to draw grains of sand, to make the movie better! Also, every character has a different style of body hair, and a few times I had to go back and correct mistakes. I get very tired--not so much from the drawing, but rather from the long hours of concentration!

I promise to do my best to finish this video on time. Thank you for your patience and kindness.

Animan

Hard at Work on DD5

I want to thank all my loyal Animan friends and followers for their interest in the next Animan movie, DD5.  So let me show you some artwork I have done so far, for DD5.

                       These are the first characters who appear in the movie.

In the foreground, we can see a towel and some men's swim trunks. Hmmmm!

The main 4 characters are shown in the top picture, but altogether, I think there will be at least 26 different personalities in this video.  One of my first Animan videos which I made back in 2012, was "Coach Ben's Big Beach Adventure". I originally made that one for an adult video contest, and so it was limited to a running time of 5 minutes. After the contest, I added some more animation to make it longer. But when I watch that video now, I see places where I could have done more things and made it more interesting. 

So, this video DD5 will have lots of improvements and be about 13 minutes long. Most Animan videos have about 100 different scenes. DD5 will have 105.  Each scene has to be imagined, drawn and animated separately. So you can see that it's a gigantic amount of work, requiring that I sit at my drawing desk for hundreds of hours.  It also takes time to record the voices and sound effects, and those have to be included in the soundtrack. Something that takes a very long time is synchronizing the characters' mouths with the dialogue. Characters feel more real, when their lips match the conversation.  

I have to make sure that the characters and their clothes (when they're wearing them!) are the correct colors. And a lot of the beach towels in this video are decorated differently, and I have to make sure those are correct, too. These little details seem unimportant, but they can often make the video more interesting to watch, and just make it more fun.

DD5 began with a slow start (all the Animan movies are that way). During this last Christmas and New Year's, I took a trip to the US for 12 days. It was wonderful to spend the holidays relaxing with my friends. When I came home again,  DD5 was waiting for me, and I've been doing my best to pick up the pace. Unfortunately, for the past two weeks now, I had a terrible case of influenza, and was sick in bed for a lot of the time, and I had my outside work to do. It's not possible to sit for hours at my computer when I feel that sick!  My Animan followers are very understanding and patient about that, so I was able to recuperate smoothly.

So, when will DD5 be finished? I cannot say exactly, but I have already finished about 1/4. During the next few weeks,  my outside work will be at a minimum, so I will probably be able to finish the video by the end of March. I will put ALL announcements about the video's release here before then, so please be sure to check back to this blog!

Christmas Greetings from Animan

A dear friend and Animan follower sent me this wonderful and very appropriate Christmas card, and so I had to share it with you!

And inside, was this:

Wishing all of you a wonderful Christmas, and a very Happy New Year!

An Interesting Twist on Disney Characters

Some time ago, I stumbled upon this site which contained some very well-drawn Disney-style art.
https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/entertainment/a10300313/alt-disney-illustrations-tom-ward/

I was first attracted to this picture, because I found it to be very affirming and uplifting.

I don't have a cell phone (I prefer e-mail), so I find these next pictures kind of funny.

The next one is a little disturbing. It's very jarring to see Ariel, the Little Mermaid, turn into the logo for Starbucks.

The fun of Peter Pan was having him fly in through the window.

I can sympathize with Jasmine, but I wish I was there with Aladdin and Genie. . .

It appears that Alice just can't get on board with her new diet.

The last ones bring up animal issues, and they're very disturbing, to say the least.

It's very interesting to see these well-known animated characters in a whole new way. 

Ending this post on a more positive note, here's one of my favorite pieces of Disney publicity art.

Removing the Loincloth

A friend and follower of the Animan saga sent me a request to remove the loincloth from the photo I colorized last time. So here it is. I've changed some of the colors.

Please note that I usually do not take on commissions or requests, because otherwise, I wouldn't have enough time to create my Animan films.

By the way, there's a new free Animan video--Animan Bonus 3. You can download it here:

Animan Bonus 3 download page

Animan Enhances an Old Picture

The other day, I had some off time, and so I got my iPad and started searching for some midcentury art or photos that I could have some fun with. I can't remember where, but I found this rather mysterious photograph.  One thing that struck me was how dressed-up the family is.

I suspect that there must have been a contest of some sort, where the winner would receive a visit from an actor who plays Tarzan, dressed in jungle attire. And of course, the photographer came along to commemorate the occasion with a photo, and he probably suggested that the lucky winner of the contest reach out to touch Tarzan's G-string. Lucky kid! (If it were me, I'd never wash my hand again...)

So you know me; the minute I saw this, my devious little mind started concocting a deliciously naughty storyline. In order to help the word balloons stand out, I took the liberty of colorizing the photo (below). For those of you who simply hate colorized anything, you may feast your eyes on the picture above, in glorious black and white (minus the dialogue).

ANIMAN, Where ARE you?

I want to apologize to ALL of you, my friends in Animan's World! So, WHAT HAPPENED?

Well, Blogspot is set up so that when new comments come in, they appear in my e-mail. Then I click on them, and approve them for publishing in this blog.

But during the past few months, I got NO comments in my e-mail. I thought, "Well, I haven't made any new films yet..., maybe that's why people aren't commenting. I can't blame them for losing interest. Oh, well......"

Then yesterday, Blogspot sends me an e-mail, asking me if I still want to receive comments for this blog. WTF?

Of COURSE! I never said I didn't!  But, I had been super busy, and neglected this blog for 6 months, and that was the kiss of death. I'm VERY sorry, Friends.

Just now, a comment for this blog came into my e-mail box, so I came here to approve it. But what I never expected to find is also here: millions and zillions (well, almost) of comments from everyone, dating back 6 months! O M G, what a lot of backtracking I have to do---I eventually want to answer as many as I can. It might take several days (or more). But I wasn't forgotten--people WERE writing to me--even if I had no idea they were. I'm so happy to find that out.

Those comments were addressed to the "DD3 is Here at Last" post. I have posted a part of them just now, but haven't answered any yet. You see, at the moment, I'm watching over the DD4 orders coming in, making sure that everyone gets their movies. Some people have problems downloading, so I go send them a Dropbox link where they can download it. I need to mechanize this process, because I have to stay up all night in order to answer them quickly, and it's tiring!

By the way, many of the comments I saw asked about where to buy Animan movies. Please go to mranimanstudios.com and check out the site!

So, I plan to:
1. Answer the comments I added to "DD3 is Here at Last"
2. Add more comments to that list
3. Finish answering them all

My deepest and most sincere apologies to all of you in Animan's World. I am not ignoring you on purpose---I just wasn't getting your comments in my e-mail, so I thought my fan base had dwindled down to nothing. I never take anything for granted.

Thank you for being patient and loyal. I am in your debt.

Animan

DD4 Big Uncle John

Recently, I have been receiving e-mails from friends and fans asking if I'm all right, or even if I'm alive!  Yes, I am very much alive!

One of the Animan Freebies is "Bonus 2"--

http://mranimanstudios.com/product/animan-bonus-2/

and it has always been very popular--especially the last half, featuring "Uncle John and his nephews, Jake and Zeke". So, I wanted to make it into an Animan movie--I made the characters a little more interesting-looking, and changed the location to Uncle John's cabin by the lake.  

So, I'm happy to say that I have just finished the newest Animan Movie, DD4 Big Uncle John. It is available at: http://mranimanstudios.com/product/drippin-dad-4-big-uncle-john/

Please review the page on downloading http://mranimanstudios.com

For some reason, this cartoon took an unusually long time to put together. I did a lot of thinking, planning, and changing before I finally got the film I wanted to make. My apologies to everyone for making it such a long wait between Animan movies. I'm hoping that this new Animan adventure will be an exciting one for you!

DD3 is Here At Last!

"DD3--The Filipino Professor" is Animan's 3rd Drippin' Dad video, and is now available for pre-order.

English Version:

http://mranimanstudios.com/product/drippin-dad-3-the-filipino-professor/

Spanish Subtitled Version:

http://mranimanstudios.com/product/drippin-dad-3-the-filipino-professor-preorder-esp/

Another Great Restaurant

This is A Bica do Sapato, a stylish restaurant serving Mediterranean dishes and sushi. It has an extensive terrace with wonderful views of the Tagus River.  My friends took me here my third night in Lisbon, and the food was just marvelous! And another reason I love this place--it's got a retro mood just like my movie "Twist Party"! No wonder I felt at home the moment I walked in the place.

Random Photos in the City

 This is the roundabout at Areeiro, just a few minutes' walk from where I was staying. It's a convenient location, thanks to the metro station here.

 Portugal is known for its "azulejos" (blue painted tiles), but these are more colorful, and rather unusual.

 Who needs poles for street signs, when you can just announce them on the corner building?

 This building looks similar to the house Rudolph Valentino lived in, in the olden days of Hollywood.

 The Portuguese have a creatively playful approach to the way they present their pavements.

Statues designed with those beautiful blue skies in mind...

Pizza at the Bullring

The next night, one of my friends brought me to a very impressive building; the Campo Pequeno bullring in Campo Pequeno Square. (photo by Felix König) After its renovation, it re-opened as a multi-event venue in 2006, designed to be used for various events apart from bull fighting. It hosts a range of live acts and has seen many famous bands perform there.
First,  we went into the underground shopping area to have a look around, especially in the bookstore.  Then, we came back up, and I found that there are several restaurants in this bullring. We went around to the back, and there was a pizzeria there. There, I had what must be the most wonderfully delicious pizza ever baked on this planet.  Even now, I'm getting goosebumps, just remembering! It became one of the top 3 dining experiences in my life!
We ate here, under the roofed area, right next to the park. Best pizza on Earth!

And here below, is a shot of the top of Campo Pequeno by Ricardo Liberato.

Another Portuguese Goody

Here's a photo of actress Vivian Vance (left) with the cast from Lucille Ball's television show.

And here she is again as a fishwife in Portugal, once upon a time.