Easter

Today is Easter.

I haven't had my yearly Cadbury chocolate egg yet. Guess where I'm going tomorrow? Yep, discounted Cadbury eggs at the local grocery store, here I come!

This past week was an extravagance in Passover eating. My gawd, I'm fat. Need to skate more so that I can a)lose the weight, and b)be ready for our game next weekend. Which c)I think might be the first time that Fight Crew loses a game since we started having bouts again last year. As a result, d)I'd be very unhappy and would want to kick my team's collective butt. Well, some of them, at any rate.

I've been pondering on Anibator's rant about Geena Davis' call to change the view of female in animation. As I said in the comments section of that post, I find it ironic that Davis herself talks about acting out male characters from the show The Rifleman with no ill effects, but thinks that animation needs more female characters. How did she get through her childhood so successfully, but other women didn't, just based on the number of female characters in cartoons!?

Some of my thoughts: I have met a few women executives in animation. Some of them were foul, some of them were alright. One of them told me outright that my show ideas that featured girl characters would not get picked up by the studio just because of the female lead aspect of the show. She said that it's pretty much gospel that little boys won't watch shows featuring little girls. What about Powerpuff Girls and the like? Those are considered exceptions.

Lourdy.

So I don't bother pitching my show ideas anymore, 'cos they have icky girls in them. The bs involved with dealing in the studio system with trying to please executives, focus groups(a whole other rant), advertising, budgets, schedules, paperwork, potential ratings, etc. makes me itch just thinking about it.

There are a lot more female characters in animation than there ever were before. Most of them are pretty bland and stereotyped, as is exampled in Anibator's rant. Would it change if more women artists were moved up into director positions? Hmmmm...maybe. I don't know why there are plenty of women background artists, timers, storyboarders, and character designers out there but not a lot of women directors. What if there were more women animation writers?

Sidenote:
Before anyone gets their panties in a bunch about animation writers in general, I'm throwing this out there because as of right now, there are scripts in the overwhelming majority of animation and writers write them. Would I prefer that board artists were just given an outline to work from story-wise to board out? Hells yes! But that's not the reality as of right now.

So, would more women writers help bring about a change in having interesting female characters in animation? I'd go for interesting over sheer numbers any day.

I think the young crop of artists enterting the animation industry can help change things a bit if they realize the power they have. Hell, even the old farts can help change the industry if they come out of their cubby holes.

Argh. Posting this stuff after a day of drinking wine and watching professional drifters in Long Beach makes for some fuzzy thinking. Ah well.

So to end, here's some more bar doodles. Here's Jenna Tailya and Vulvarine showing off their "tattoos":














Here I am starting on Jenna's "tattoo". Poor girl. She really didn't know what she was in for when she sat next to me: