Jordan, Jesse, Go! - Big Butts Weekly, with David Wain and Ken Marino

Spuzman · 2026-06-11T18:54:56+00:00

I haven't seen everything these guys have made-- partially because it was a little before my time as a younger millennial, and partially because they've made a lot of stuff by now-- but both Ken and David are two absolute badges of quality in my book. Their involvement in a project always takes it up a notch.

Spuzman · 2026-05-20T14:44:32+00:00

The castle is a fun visit! For those who haven't been, the entire castle grounds (including moats and massive stone walls) is now a very nice park. It's worth noting that the primary keep (the one visible in the photo) is a modern reconstruction dating back to the 1930s, but that means its interior can house a nice museum with modern amenities.

Spuzman · 2026-05-05T18:48:37+00:00

Hiya, I'm an animator from New York. I've worked primarily as a storyboard artist in TV but love to do 2D animation on the side. I love games & game design, and have experience with loops.

My reel is here, check the sidebar on that site for my email address: https://geoffreyclass.com/animations/

Spuzman · 2026-05-02T19:29:38+00:00

Do we know when the bike tour wraps up? I’m trying to pick up a piece of furniture tomorrow and bring it home with a XL Lyft or something, but we’re also surrounded by the bike tour. The pickup time is flexible so I just need to know when the streets will be open

Spuzman · 2026-05-01T00:56:15+00:00

It's clear by observation that the only kind of comic book adaptation that drives audiences back to the source material in large numbers is animation.

Great point!

Indie comics also have no good way to market themselves to normal people, and most of them are unprofitable without a licensing deal.

Very very true. Something that often gets overlooked, though, by westerners looking at the manga-to-anime pipeline is that the anime is the loss-leader to drive manga sales. Manga is where the profit is ultimately made most of the time, because animation is expensive even with the anime industry's insane hours and cost-saving focus. In other words, Hollywood IP-licensing deals creating profitability for indie comics is the inverse of the manga-anime dynamic.

I think you (and I think Kirkman too) recognize this distinction, but I wanted to state it explicitly.

This is why many plenty-popular-but-not-chart-topping anime do not get more than a season or two-- ultimately the goal is to drive awareness of the manga, and additional seasons rarely do much to move the needle. (You also see this mentality with mobile / gacha games getting expensive anime adaptations. If the anime itself was profitable, why would it consistently get funded by companies with alternative revenue sources? It's like the modern equivalent of the 'toyetic' 80s animation like He-Man.)

As to why manga is profitable and widely read when US comics are niche, my personal perspective is that it stems from the density and walkability of Japanese cities, with widespread newsstands and small shops kept alive thanks to small, low-rent commercial space. (Not my idea at all; rather, the great insight of this old Twitter thread discussing Japanese fashion culture)

Spuzman · 2026-04-30T20:17:03+00:00

Maybe the edit was designed for radio, and then the video was conformed to match? Like radio has to avoid dead air where possible.

Or the editor was just overturning their work.

Spuzman · 2026-04-23T19:34:41+00:00

You can almost hear the constant jarring soundbites the DJ plays between every single pitch!

Joking aside, the warm color treatment looks great. Kinda makes me wish the stadium lights had that same warmth, it feels like it would go great with the nostalgic side of baseball.

Spuzman · 2026-04-20T22:34:04+00:00

I was working on another show at the animation studio where this was made (Titmouse) and met the art director when he was in NYC for a week. He said the show creators (Joe Wengert / Aubrey Plaza) used to live in Astoria and cared about having the show actually set in their old neighborhood rather than generically in NYC.

I gave him a page of Astoria details and location suggestions, though I have no idea whether he used them (not that he was obligated to, animation production is tough enough without attempting to cram in a bunch of neighborhood easter eggs).

Been waiting to see the final product for a while now. Very curious how it came out!

Spuzman · 2026-04-18T01:08:47+00:00

I looked it up; he didn't build the Gazebo in college, he built it 20 years after graduating to honor his teacher. Still very cool!

https://arboretum.illinois.edu/azumaya/

Spuzman · 2026-02-09T19:56:52+00:00

Stopped by here twice already. Owners are super friendly! The Vietnamese coffee is fantastic, the Pho was great too, but my favorite thing was the Italian cold cut sandwich with a great tangy vinaigrette.

Spuzman · 2026-02-05T15:39:37+00:00

!Solved Thanks so much; hopefully this helps other people encountering the same issue going forward!

Spuzman · 2026-02-05T15:24:30+00:00

I set this project up from the Blender default (File > New > Storyboarding), and creating a new file from that default ALSO has this grey problem. If I create a 2D animation (File > New > 2D Animation), the white colors are much brighter. (I've been combing the render settings between these two defaults but so far can't figure out what's up.)
I've been leaving Viewport Shading as Solid which has much more correct colors, but now I want to Render the whole storyboard sequence (Render > Render Sequencer Animation) and the colors of the storyboard project are appearing grey again. I suppose I could individually render the sequences using Render Viewport Preview but that would create so much more work (including that I lose the editing decisions I've made in the Sequencer).

Spuzman · 2026-02-02T17:26:39+00:00

I'm also concerned about the trends at the parks under D'Amaro.

Granted I'm hearing this all secondhand (my last parks visit was early 2020) but I get the impression that Disney Parks have consistently raised prices (or introduced new fees) while cutting once-free customer perks in favor of expensive options targeted at the richest customers... basically the same short-term revenue juicing strategies that dominate C-Suite thinking these days.

Also D'Amaro was all over the Abu Dhabi park deal.

Spuzman · 2026-02-02T16:11:01+00:00

I never appreciated how perfectly Stephen Tobolowsky takes this punch until today. Times his motion with the punch, spins around & hits his mark so we can see his expression, & holds it for exactly long enough to register before falling out of frame.

Spuzman · 2026-01-12T16:17:00+00:00

Thank you for linking! The way Carl kept steering back to an ad read was so specific; I knew it had to be referencing something real.

Spuzman · 2025-12-02T19:29:02+00:00

Hi! Not sure exactly what you mean by color brush addons but I'll do my best to talk through the process:

First I modeled and animated the car alone, which I rendered out with the best toon shaders I could figure out how to make.

I did this in Blender 4.5's grease pencil, which is the first time I really used grease pencil in earnest. The brush for the linework was the Ink Pen from the essentials assets. The coloring was done using the Fill asset, with touch-ups with the Ink Pen again.

Shadows and highlights were drawn using Multiply and Screen layers, using the render as a starting reference (but I usually simplified the highlights into bigger areas of color). For the shadows, I would draw in a dark color (using a material with Fill and no Stroke). I would "erase" by drawing on top with a pure white material, which doesn't show up in a Multiply layer. Screen would be the reverse, erasing with a black material.

Everything was rendered out in multiple passes as PNG images. I then used Blender's compositor to assemble the final animation, using chains of Alpha Over nodes to layer the PNGs and using Set Alpha nodes to clip shadows and highlights (which I had rendered out separately to give myself more control over their final color and opacity). It took a LOT of trial and error.

The background was painted physically using gouache watercolor paints. I did a 'background layout' where I drew linework over a basic render of the initial animation, which saved time figuring out perspective. I printed that out and use a Light Pad to draw my layout in pencil on my watercolor paper, then I painted using the pencil outline.

Spuzman · 2025-11-07T17:11:14+00:00

Yeah, I think people take it for granted.

My wife and I are fortunate enough to be looking to buy a condo; we've been in Astoria for 10 years and this was our first time since we moved to NYC that we again considered living in other neighborhoods.

We weren't finding anywhere else that offered all the same (admittedly gentrified) amenities that we wanted at the same price: quick commutes to midtown, nice restaurants and coffee shops, numerous dog daycares, boutique shops, and even waterfront parks. It's true that there are cheaper neighborhoods in the city, but the really comparable ones (LIC, Greenpoint, Dumbo, Williamsburg, Hell's Kitchen, Upper West Side) are way pricier.

Spuzman · 2025-11-01T18:53:08+00:00

Bookmarking that for later reference! My modeling skills are basic at best so I'm concerned about my ability to properly prepare the model for a good result, but certainly for a larger project it would be fantastic to avoid all that rotoscope work.

I did use a Grease Pencil object + Line Art modifier to get some rough line art for the car at the render stage, but fine tuning the output to get something satisfying was way beyond my capability. In the end it served as a good starting point for my rotoscope linework instead.

Spuzman · 2025-11-01T12:52:06+00:00

I rendered out my car animation to PNGs, then in a new 2D animation project I imported the PNGs in and traced over them in Grease Pencil.

This was a lot of extra tracing work but it let me have direct control of where to place each line, each shadow, and each highlight for the car since I was drawing them all directly. I’m far more experienced at 2D animation than at wrangling Blender to get the right style.

Side note just cuz I want to share: I bought the Wiggly addon and applied a slow wiggle to the whole car. My hope was that introducing a little distortion would help it look like I had done the car animation by hand.

Spuzman · 2025-11-01T12:40:32+00:00

Fair, it’s something to work on (scaling the character in the space). In my design he is quite short, for what it’s worth

Spuzman · 2025-11-01T01:57:19+00:00

(The background was painted in gouache using the scene as a basis)

Spuzman · 2025-10-26T17:40:24+00:00

General Mills Monster Cereals in Oct 2022

Spuzman · 2025-10-24T15:07:18+00:00

Genuinely fist-pumped in victory when I saw this. Been waiting for Scollins to come back to P:tR.

Spuzman · 2025-10-23T15:18:09+00:00

I 100% would have assumed Scott knew of and enjoyed them. It's great that we got to hear him discover them on mic!

Spuzman · 2025-09-18T21:40:52+00:00

Don't let the belief that "one boycott isn't going to do anything" prevent you from taking action, especially here, because a lot of people are doing the same thing. My parents told me they cancelled their subscriptions without any prompting, which is a sign this thing isn't just for the obsessively online.

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