Yes, We Have Thought About a TV Show

Next to “Do you guys use flash?” (no), the most common question fans of the For Tax Reasons cartoons ask in either the comments section or private emails is “Have you thought about doing a television show?”  That’s usually followed up with, “You guys should totally have a television show.”  The generosity of those comments is never lost on me.  To think that people out there want to see more of your work, so much more that they’d sit through 22 minutes of it, on a weekly basis, is incredibly flattering and humbling.  I’d like to address those people today.

Yes, we have thought about a TV show. Extensively.

IM IN UR MANGER was supposed to be a one off.  Mark, Barry and the forgotten musketeer David (whose irreplacable vocal talent Zach Steel moved to the other side of the country some time ago) weren’t even characters yet, so to speak. . . in the script and artwork, they were referred to as Casper, Melchior and Balthasar.  We had a whole other idea for the cartoons we were going to do next, something completely removed from the world that became Ronin Dojo.  But the short clicked with people, and clicked with us even more, to the point that Ben and I would randomly mention to each other ideas pertaining to these characters: their backgrounds, stories we could do with them, funny cosplay we could put them in. . . until eventually there was a lot more to Ronin Dojo than anyone watching the cartoons on the internet was aware of.

Mark.

We eventually got organized and put it down on paper.  Hidden on our personal hard drives exist a show bible for Ronin Dojo Community College DX, a complete pilot episode script, and a 13 episode season breakdown.  I’ll always remember the night we wrote every story idea and joke we would ever want to do on individual index cards, laid them out on a table and asked ourselves “What is the show we want to do.”  It felt like some kind of weird school project the laid back media studies teacher would give you when he ran out of stuff to teach.  It was the most fun I’ve had doing this independent animation thing yet.

But wanting a show and getting a show are the beginning and end points of a super twisty path that takes a very, very long time to walk.  And at any point on that path, things can just shut you down and end your journey before it is completed.  Ben and I haven’t done enough to warrant a television show.  We’re young and relatively new to the industry. At this point in time, when it comes down to finished and polished product, we have one idea to sell: Ronin Dojo Community College DX.  You can’t go around selling one thing and one thing only.  Even Vince, the ShamWow guy, shills other products.

People may like Ronin Dojo, but it’s not necessarily something a network would want to put on air. That’s totally understandable. If a network or studio likes Ronin Dojo, we should be able to come at them with a few other ideas that still reflect our sensibilities but are ideas that, frankly, more people are going to watch. We’re working on building a portfolio of pitches and scripts, and when we’re ready, we’ll hit the streets hungry for another venue to make jokes and tell stories. But that time is a ways off.

Barry.

That said, don’t come away from this feeling down about your dreams of seeing Mark, Barry and David on the small screen. The pitch for the show, which we’re not ready to publicly post. . . it’s out there for the people who need to see it. Maybe someone will dig it, and we’ll be allowed to take the first step on that path, beyond just wanting it. I throw out a lot of self-deprecation whenever I talk about my work, but honestly. . . I think Ronin Dojo is an awesome idea, and I’m very invested in where it goes from here. We can do so much more with these characters, and it is so awesome that you want to see what those things are. But we need to keep at it if we’re to go to the next level, and YOU need to keep at it, too.

Keep being fans. Keep watching, keep commenting, keep sharing the videos with your friends, your WoW guild and your local anime club. Blog about us, post about us on forums, email your Uncle Turner and tell him he should give these For Tax Reasons guys a shot. We’re perfectly happy with where we’re at right now, doing shorts for the web completely for free, but, in the brief moments of respite from late night animating, we allow ourselves to wonder what the future might hold. It’s rad beyond words that you think we’re ready for that future, but we know we’ve got to earn it.  If you’ve liked what you’ve seen so far, just wait until we get to the top.

David.

What I would want more than a television show, though, would be seeing some Ronin Dojo Community College DX boys’ love doujinshi hit the web.  That’s when I’ll know I’ve made it.

RDCCDX: Parking Garage Diplomacy

The anonymous source stands revealed!  A weekend of figuring out how to get our new copies of After Effects  CS4 to run has given life to this, the latest episode of The Digital Pirates of Dark Water Saga!

Tim Martin and Emily Tarver provide all the voices for this one. . . the first For Tax Reasons cartoon ever to not feature either my voice or Ben’s.  It’s probably better because of it.  Enjoy it!  Episode 3 is coming soon!

Let the guitar riff of freedom ring.

I’ve let it linger on my coffee table for over a week now, untouched, and I think it’s time to slip it back into the sleeve and send Call of Duty: World at War back to Gamefly.  What a bust.

Oh shit, ASIAN WITH KNIFE!

I don’t know where I am in the campaign, and I don’t really care.  I think the last thing I did was drive a tank around, shooting other German tanks.  This game had to have to done something colossally wrong to warrant getting the early return.  I marathoned all of Band of Brothers over the holidays and put the game in my rental queue immediately.  I was looking for a Band of Brothers game, and World of War is so far from it, it’s frankly offensive.

KILL IT WITH FIRE.

Everything about World at War strikes a tone that overall I find inappropriate for the material and the setting.  And it’s not in the way one would expect, given the early crying foul a number of people did over the portrayal of the Japanese.  They are demonized, yes, but that’s expected with the genre.  It’s the modern, graphical cutscenes that feed into every mission, whipping a camera over a vectorized, animated map with MTV bravado.  It’s the casualness with which you can run around a level with a flamethrower, panzerfaust or radio to call in rocket strikes whenever you feel like.  It’s the totally discordant heavy metal guitar licks that kick in during the middle of a firefight in 1940s Russia.  It’s all just. . . wrong.

FIRE, motherfucker. . . DO YOU SHOOT IT?

And I don’t understand why it was neccessary.  World War 2 isn’t exactly inaccessible material when it comes to video games.  Treating the setting with respect still gives you the “Oorah!  Get some!” attitude that caters to the lowest common denominator.  Putting in something like a rock soundtrack just smacks of making it cool, making it extreme.  And since I just finished up Generation Kill today, I don’t think I’ll be looking for a way to experience the cool side of war anytime soon.

Watch this show.

The End Result of a Lipsyncing Day

done

Clearly, not what I was aiming to accomplish.  But something is seriously borked with my copy of After Effects.  Like, I can lipsync about 10 frames of audio before it totally freezes up.  No word on if this will affect the next cartoon, which is supposed to come out Monday.  Hopefully it won’t, I’ll be going to an office tomorrow to work on a computer with a legit copy of AE.

So other than the angry scribbles on the sheets of scrap paper laying around my computer, the only art I did today was this little run I roughed into Flash, intending to retrace it later into a sprite animation.  It’s not done.  He sticks to the ground for too long, and should have more hangtime in the air.  But it’s a different kind of run, and it was fun to start to think through.  I’m sure it won’t be fun to sit down and make it right.  But that’s animation.

Can’t blame the controller any longer.

I used to draw up my Christmas list with a passion and fervor rivaling that of our forefathers when they wrote the words that founded America.  A hand written document carefully drafted many times over, bullet pointed in an imitation of Mom’s grocery lists, complete with visual aides cut from the annual Sear’s Holiday Wishbook.  It was a work of art, and its sad that now, that list is reduced to a cold, terse email sent to my mom with four copy and pasted Amazon links.

Memories.

I guess sacrificing artistry for efficiency is worth it, though, when it insures you get that Hori Arcade Fighting Stick for your PS3 when you ask for it.

Thanks, Mom.

I really, really want to be great at fighting games.  I keep buying them up, and I just keep tanking.  Playing against computer opponents is tough, and the small pool of players I can get over to play are even worse.  Ben has literally undergone some kind of secret, Maryland-basement training to beat face at Capcom vs. SNK 2, which is the only game he’ll ever play.  I got myself a real arcade stick to give myself not an edge, but just a simple chance against him and another avid Street Fighter player I know who can pull off that crazy screen-goes-white-and-you-die Akuma move.  And it’s not working.

My man.  So strong!

I’m pretty focused on Super Street Fighter Remix HD right now.  I’ve been told I need to pick a character and stick with him. . . I’ve come to settle on muay thai master Sagat over the last few days.  I will say this: the arcade stick has made it much easier to pull off special moves.  I can almost throw out a tiger shot or tiger knee whenever I want to.  But obviously there is another level to this game, these TYPES of games, that I’m not connecting with.  And in the case of Street Fighter Remix, I really want to blame the game.

Is it just me, or is the AI in this game particularly brutal?  I’m ashamed to admit that I was getting so thoroughly stomped the first few weeks with this game, I’ve ratcheted it down to Easy mode. . . and the difficulty curve has hardly softened.  A few opponents into a game, it feels like the computer gets MAD at you for winning, and can’t stop itself from showing off some Hard mode moves in the middle of an Easy match.

I miss the days when Udon wasn’t the official fanart company of Capcom.

For instance, the last few games I played this week, my fifth round opponent has been Ken.  There’s usually one fair fight upfront which goes either way, but in the second match, the computer controlled Ken will just spam 3 or 4 consecutive flaming shoryukens the second I find myself near a corner.  It’s chaining special moves at a speed I did not think was possible in the game.  I suspect that the game, a labor of love by hardcore players for the hardcore fans, a game that was scrutinized in the context of the existing top level Street Fighter competitive scene, reflects the abilities of the hardcore player too much in the single player game.  I’m not going to starting pointing my finger, chanting “Cheap! Cheap!” over and over again.  But I feel like I’ve hit a wall, and it can’t be because of my natural shortcomings.  I can’t be this bad at Street Fighter.

Can I?

I suck at video games.

Iceman

Today was laundry day, and after I ran out of quarters on the Marvel vs. Capcom at the mat I do my wash, I did some sketching. And of course I hated everything I drew. But I guess that’s part of this project. . . I’m doing it because I suck, and I need to get better. Here’s a page I doodled once I got home and put on the final episode of Generation Kill. I’m happier with it than the bad Sagat poses I did, even though the left sketch has a serious case of tiny face.

Yoo-hoo, runnin’ crew!

Keeping in line with my promise, here are some Final Fantasy inspired sprites I did this morning of the Ronin Dojo boys, in magi attire.

I’m just starting to mess around with pixel art, and it’s requiring a lot more thought that I anticipated, especially at this small scale. Figuring out how to handle diagonal lines is an art unto itself. . . there is a surprising range of style you can impose on just a few square pixels of canvas. A Ronin Dojo video game is something we’ve always joked about doing as part of our meta campaign to build up a fanbase, but I dunno, I think we’ve taken a renewed interest in it. SCUMM engine graphical adventure to the mall to find the Red Dwarf boxset, anyone?

I did some doodles tonight, but nothing worth posting, since I did them idly while recording with our fantastic voice acting team of Tim Martin and Emily Tarver for the next Ronin Dojo episode (due out Monday). Seriously, those two rock. Emily especially, because she helped come up with my next new favorite line. Tune in after the weekend to guess which one it is. And if you’re in NYC and troll the improv comedy scene, keep your eyes peeled for them. They’re always popping up and being hilarious.

Ok, the fatigue of talking about time travel for two hours is setting in. END OF ENTRY.

The Pinnacle of 70’s Food Science

Earlier this month I took a trip down to North Carolina to visit my girlfriend’s family.  Little did I know the area surrounding Raleigh was a market in the midst of a fabled, almost forgotten fast food treasure.

THE MCRIB WAS BACK.

Boom, baby.

It’s pretty popular to demonize McDonald’s and the fast food industry lately.  But I try not to let that deter my interest in the history of this world and its products, which is simply riveting once you start getting deep into the Wikipedia links.  An easy, simple recommend is Ray Kroc’s biography. Kroc is the man who put McDonald’s on the map, and then duplicated it hundreds of times over until it covered the map. Read it if only for the similes dependent upon McDonald’s product references. (Example: “I have a saying that goes, ‘As long as you’re green you’re growing, as soon as you’re ripe you start to rot.’ And I was as green as a Shamrock Shake on St. Patrick’s Day. . “) This interest is probably why I will watch Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives for hours despite every bad feeling the sight of Guy Fieri conjures in me.

Turns out he’s a decent dude, but you gotta get past that hair.

Introduced the 1981, the McRib failed to earn its keep as a staple of the McDonald’s menu and lost its spot as a permanent item, except in Germany.  A boneless pork patty MOLDED into the shape of a rack of ribs, as if it HAD bones in it, the McRib is just weird.

A good look at this offense to God.

It’s become steeped in an even weirder cult mythology as it sometimes returns to restaurants for a brief period of time as part of a McRib farewell tour, never to be seen again.  The Simpsons paid homage to the phenomenon in an episode.

Now without lettuce!

But until 2009, I had never had a McRib.  I don’t think the Northeast was ever a market where the farewell tour rolled its greasy, artery clogging wheels through. If it was, it must have been at a time when I was putting on the appearances of a healthy eater to impress a girl. But thanks to a McDonald’s in the Triangle Town Center Mall, I was able to taste a piece of food legend.

People, the McRib is terrible.  You can’t taste the ridiculous shape when you eat it.  All you can taste is the BBQ sauce the thing has been drenched in.  BBQ sauce that has the distinct tang of cheap BBQ sauce.  That tang that’s there just so the sauce isn’t a darker colored ketchup.  It also has raw onion slices and a few pickle chips on it.  I guess I tasted those, too.  They added nothing but confusion and anger to the party in my mouth.  The sad, sad party.  In my mouth.

Fast food is supposed to be bad for you, no doubt.  But the reason you keep eating it is because, typically, it tastes awesome.  It was probably a bad idea in high school to make the Spicy Chicken Sandwich a dietary staple, but at least I was being welcomed to flavor country with every bite.

The McRib is, at best, food porn.  Something titillating to look at and lust after, but something that, in person, it would be best not to put your mouth around.  Because it is some seriously nasty shit.

Deal with it, Cate Blanchett! A new era for MCBurnett.

I suppose resolutions are to be made and stuck to from day one of the new year, but the first days of 2009 weren’t inspiring enough for me make a change in my life, which I’ll admit has been stagnating in light of unemployment and my own laziness.  But as each day of these first 19 ticked by, I started to find my inspiration. These guys, laid off from 1Up and EGM, hit the ground running. I haven’t even been speed walking in the last couple of months. And I need to change that.

So, on this day of change in America, I’m announcing my candidacy for productivity. Allow me to outline my very simple platform.

- Monday through Friday, at least one blog post a day. Posting on weekends when possible.

- Monday through Friday, one piece of artwork, even just a sketch page, will be posted daily. Hopefully this will turn into a means to an end, getting more on the ball with For Tax Reasons work, but at the very least I need to be drawing, daily.

That’s it. I hope that publicly putting that out there and on the line places the gun to my head that desperately needs to be there to beat my natural procrastination and start progressing as an animator, a writer and whatever other role I need to take on to make it big in this town. . . this town we call the Internet. Because no one in Hollywood will ever care about a good Final Fantasy joke as much as the Internet does.

I maked pixel arts. First try.  Ben did text.

Second experiment.  Copying helps me learn!

So this is my post for today. . . my inaugural post in this experiment. I’ll let it stand alone for today, and then tomorrow, the real work begins.

Like we needed more things to do on the internet.

I’m on Twitter now. If you look fast, you can watch a three post meltdown regarding today’s NFC Championship game. So come follow me and watch me. . . is it tweet? That’s the verb, right? I’m not trying to be facetious. . . I don’t know what the verb is.

Significant post coming on Tuesday.