BURNING OWL

Can you tell I'm scared out of my mind?


Mike Roush from RealTVfilms on Vimeo.
An no I didn't get into Sundance....next time!

Wednesday Night

So I was out late on Wednesday night walking my dog Riley. It has been getting super foggy at night so I have started bringing my Mag light with me. In the fields the fog gets so thick that the flash light beam turns into some kind of lightsaber. It is pretty fun until you decide to pretend to cut down a near by tree and get the crap scared out of you by a possum.
P.S. My dog is a complete waste....one look at the possum and he actually runs away leaving me and nine thousand needle teeth alone in the dark. Awesome.

HEY YOU GUYS a rousing success!!!

Thanks to all who came, made donations and bid on art work. It was a great time and a great cause.

Special Thanks to All Our Donors for their time and generosity:

Nickelodeon Studios
DreamWorks Animation
Consolidated Reprographics
Sean Astin
Damon Crowe
Gallery Nucleus
Art Supply Warehouse
Dick Blick Art Supply
Gus's Barbecue
Starbuck's Coffee

Much love and gratitude to the families who volunteered their time and help and in particular to our fearless leader Ryan Hernandez. Well done amigo!

"Captian Chunk says, let's do it again!" (photos courtesy Buz Carter).

The Those Guys/Donorschose Charity Auction is NOW!

So The Those Guys are holding a charity art auction, and guess what? IT'S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW! You can bid on some beautiful art and help children at the same time. So go here now and bid on some stuff...

The Those Guys art auction

And on this coming Saturday, Nov 15th at the Rialto theater in South Padadena, CA we are hosting a screening of "The Goonies", its a free movie with a small donation at the door! And check it out, if you donate at the door, you get a raffle ticket, and you can win some sweet prizes... like maybe some autographed items!!!!

Oh yeah, so the charity we are working to help is Donorschoose.org, they provide materials to needing classrooms. In this case, we are concentrating on classroom in Southern California that need art supplies. We are trying to help the next generation of artists! We need your help, and they all need our help! So if you can't make it to the movie, and don't want to bid on the art, please give any small amount you can.


DonorsChose.org, TTG's donors page

To all my friends, please help us spread the word. We need everyone's help to make this charity drive a success! Think of the children! and the art!

Goonies Charity Art Auction and Screening! Sat Nov 15th!

Announcement! On Saturday, November 15th The Those Guys are putting on a charity screening of the classic movie "The Goonies" at the Rialto Theater in South Pasadena. Admission is FREE, and we'll be accepting donations at the door. The night will include a raffle (including Sean Astin-signed movie stills, DreamWorks and Nickelodeon Animation schwag and much more!) and 80's kid movie themed art auction. It all benefits "Donors Choose" a charity that buys art supplies for classrooms around the country.

The auction starts on Monday November 10th at ttgcharity.com and will finish on the night of the event, so if you have to have one of the pieces be sure to make it out to the screening so you can outbid your competition.

Stay tuned for updates, we hope you all can make it out, do it for the kids!

http://ttgcharity.com/

http://www.donorschoose.org/homepage/main.html

Rialto Theater1023 Fair Oaks Ave.

South Pasadena, CA 91030

Saturday November 15th

6 to 11PM

Auction Artists:

Pascal Campion

Clio Chang

Phil Craven

Mike Daley

Sandra Equihua

Alex Fuentes

Ryan Hernandez

Amy Kim Kibuishi

Dana Lamb

Richard Pose

Josh Pruett

Justin Ridge

Israel Sanchez

Stephen Silver

Steven Macleod

Kellie Smith

Sean Szeles

Eren Unten

"OWL" coming to LA and SF

Hey Californians, "The Hidden Life of the Burrowing Owl" is finally coming to a theater near you. This November Mike's short film will be playing at the AFI Fest in Hollywood, and at the San Franicisco International Animation Festival. Check out these links to find the dates and times of the shows. LA SF
If you want to hang out and nerd out about animation I'll be going to both.

Tribute to Gygax Gallery Show

"Roll of the Dice"

Hey gang, come and check out a new gallery show opening this Saturday August 23rd, 7pm at Titmouse, Inc. Israel Sanchez, Richard Pose and I will all have work in the show, alongside Dave Johnson and Gabe Swarr among others. My tribute to Gygax (creator of Dungeons & Dragons) includes a nod to the Monster Compendiums, used by Dungeon Masters in the mid-eighties. I remember getting an edition as a gift with the many-eyed BEHOLDER monster on the cover. For super-geeks out there, the BEHOLDER made a guest appearance in another eighties classic, BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA.

The show runs through Sept. 27th.
Titmouse, 6616 Lexington Ave., Hollywood, CA 90038

The Great Great Grand Show

The comma free "Great Great Grand Show" opens this Saturday at Gallery Nucleus in Alhambra. The show will feature new historical themed paintings by Scott Campbell, Jon Klassen, Graham Annable, and me, Israel Sanchez. Graham is going to premiere a new animated short called "From Whence Before Times" at the opening. The night will include old time piano music to keep you entertained and free booze to keep you tipsy. Hope to see you there.

Monkey chasing butterfly pencil test

You may recognize this animation from the sketch book I sold at Comic Con called "Flip-o-scope". And yes that is good ol fashion traditional animation you are watching.

No one cares.

We still love you TTG CHICKEN!!

The Those Guys at Comic Con

The Those Guys will be hanging at booth 1033 at comic con this year. (right across from Hard 8)

wood spirit in a chair

I did this drawing last night at Sacramento's Pompsicle life drawing sessions. It is every Tuesday at 6 to 9 pm at the Brick-a-Brack gallery on P-St off of 21st. I've been going to this for awhile now and been having a blast. After not life drawing for about 3 years....yes I can admit it now....I've started back up. Feels great. Also Pompsicle is costume themed life drawing which is way more fun then plan old naked life drawing.

"The Hidden Life of the Burrowing Owl" T-Shirts

For a limited time only, get your own OWL t-shirts. These are available only online through zazzle, and will not be sold anywhere else. Come support the film you my not have even seen yet! Click here to get one!




~mike

The world looks good for Sierra!

A while back I was contacted by a woman named Wendy. Her sister Becky, has a daughter named Sarah. Sarah was going to have a baby around May. I was given the requirements of "they LOVE sock monkeys!". Well what else was I going to paint? So I did some sock monkey research and came across some very interesting and bizarre ones, but I got the general idea. So I plunkered down and came up with this. Hope you enjoy the painting Sarah and Gabe! Congratulations!

Annecy International festival of Animation 2008

So I'm back from my week in Annecy, Fr for the Animation festival. I had a blast! It is true what everyones says about Annecy. The Food,the Festival, the films, the f-scenery, and the friends are all top notch.

Mari and I got there on Saturday and went straight to our hotel after picking up our badges and the 500 lbs. of programs and advertisements. Our Hotel was paid for by the festival and was right on the Lake(such a beautiful view).

We met up with Dikki and a group of the most talented and super cool locals. Shout out to Bannister, Flo, Mathilde, Corentin, Ben, and Jean-Phillip. You guys rock. Ok so now Mari and I had a crew and we were ready to start the festival.

I hadn't really thought about it until I got there but there is waaaaay too much animation for you to see. A week is not enough to cram it all in so we dicided to narrow our schdule a bit. This is what we saw...


Short films in Competition #1:Our favorite were...

"KJFG no5",super simple but probably the funniest short of the whole festival.

"La Maison en Petits Cubes", this one won the Annecy Crystal for best short. It was so good it made Mari tear up a little.


Short films in Competition #2:I was in this one...

"Let Them Grow!", I met the director, Christelle Soutif, who was super nice. She had a really cool Clay/Affect effects technique she used.

"Keith Reynolds Can't Make it Tonight", Also met the director, Felix Massie, who is one of four directors who had shorts at Annecy this year all from a studio ,ArthurCox,in Bristol. He also used Flash and I think we were the only two in the whole competition who did.

"Chepogi", Super cool Russian folk tail with a happy ending. Beautiful with a neat cutout animation style.

"Styri", I met the director and producer to this film too. Ivana Sebestova and Ivana Zajacova from Slovakia. We ended up bumping into each other a couple times during the festival and went to the closing ceremonies together. Their short was also awesome about four womens lives that cross paths and interconnect in different ways.

"The Hidden Life of the Burrowing Owl", my film was here.

The Other directors and I before the show.

Short films in Competition #3:

"Portraits Rates a Sainte-Helene", A film about Napolean and his portait.

"John and Karen" by Matthew walker, another director from ArthurCox.

"My Little Angel", Funny short with violence toward puppies, But in a funny way.


Short films in Competition #4 :

"Kuygorozh" another amazingly good looking short from a Russian director.

"Operator" This was Matthew Walkers second film in competition. I thought this one was really funny. Good dry humor in animation hits me on the funny bone.

"Paradise" I love the way this one looked. Well done. Oh and I think Dave Foley from "kids in the Hall" did a voice on this one.

"Skhizein", This one was a french film that everyone liked. Good concept, done well, and not to long. Really good.

We also got to see a super sweet presentation of two Disney shorts and the new Pixar short. Awwwwwwesome! All three were really good. The goofy one was super funny and worked totally well in 2D. That was good to see again. "Glago's Guest", which I had never heard of before, was great! And of course Pixar knocks another one far out of the park with "Presto". What was really nice is Doug Sweetland had a really interesting presentation after about how he had to pitch and re-pitch and re-pitch the boards to the Pixar brain trust, until he got it right. I really related to his story cause I went through a really similar thing with Chris and Shannon when I was pitching "Owl". I love how those Pixar guys really open their shirts and let you see how hairy their chests are. Most companies try and keep their mistakes and process secret, but it is a totally helpful to hear how they go through making this stuff.


After that we saw a whole grip of features
"Nocturna" Good 2D!
"Appleseed: Ex Machina" CG Anime.
"Go West, A Lucky Luke Adventure" It was like a super good Animaniacs feature length episode. Funny.
"Dragon Hunters" Mari said she liked it and can't wait for it to come out in english.
"Idiots & Angels" Another weird one from Plymton. I'm glad he is back to the colored pencils.

And like a genius I missed "Sita Sings the Blues" a feature by an american who uses Flash and won the Crystal for best feature.



So on Wednesday I had my premiere in the Grande Salle(a huge 1000 seat plus theater). The theater was packed to the gills and the crowd was throwing tons of paper airplanes before the show(an Annecy tradition). I can't tell you how cool it was to sit in an audience of that many people and watch something you did on a super huge screen. It felt really good, and to top it off they cheered at the end. Aaahhh I was in heaven. After each film they brought up the lights and if the director was there he/she ran up on stage and took a bow. I ran up with Mari's camera and took this blurry shot.

Earlier that day Dik, Bannister, and Corentin, all had a comic book signing out front of the local comic book store. (french comics....drool) They seemed to have a good time. You'll have to ask Dik for more details on that since I took the opportunity to ditch them and go eat more French food with Mari.

On Thursday we all took part in the Sketch Crawl. Bannister and Dik lead about 60 artist through the old town drawing the whole way. It was a blast and I got to meet a whole bunch of artists from all over England. (really nice all of them)


All in all it was a great week. My favorite part was probably the people. It was awesome being in a place with so many people all jazzed about seeing good animation. Can't wait to finish my next film so I can try and convince Annecy to let me come back again.

Les Ces Type al a Francais

That is right, Mike and Dik are on their way to Annecy France this weekend. Mike's film is having it's world premiere on Tuesday the 10th at La Turbine theater at 2:00 pm. And Dik is helping host an international SKECTHCRAWL on Thursday at 2:00pm this Flight friend Bannister.

"One To Grow On" Show

Israel here, I'm showing new work in a gallery show called "One To Grow On" that is opening tomorrow night at Gallery 1988. The show will feature artwork by 13 artists all together, come check it out.

Power In Numbers Show

Hi! The "Power In Numbers" show will be opening this Saturday at Gallery Nucleus. "The Those Guys" team members Richard Pose, Matt Spangler,Justin Ridge, and Israel Sanchez will be showing artwork. Each painting will measure 5x7 inches and will be priced at $100 with %20 of the proceeds going to the Make A Wish Foundation. Come check it out, the opening starts at 7pm.

Mike's film now has a website

You can now explore the official Titmouse Shorts website for "The Hidden Life of the Burrowing Owl". This new website has all the up-to-date info about where you can see the film, special behind the scenes on the making of the film, and a spiffy new trailer. So check it out!

Its Official

Today I learned the my film "The Hidden Life of the Burrowing Owl"
,that I made at Titmouse,is going to be shown at Annecy International Animated Film Festival this June. I am totally amped. Still shaking a little. YEEEEEEEEE HAAAAAAA!!!!!

The Blossom Eaters

Here's a painting for an upcoming show at Gallery 1988 called "...And That's One To Grow On!" The theme for the show is artwork based on my childhood. So yes, this happened to me.

Steve is a poser

This is Steve the Life Drawing model. I like to draw Steve cause he is a poser.

Lemur for Chrystal

Chrystal asked that I create a very special painting for her sisters birthday. She approached me saying that there just isn't any good Lemur merchandise anywhere! So she asked that I create a very special painting for her special Lemur loving sister.

Coming to a theater near you.

This last weekend I finally finished my film.

It runs 5:07 minutes and was just sent off to the festival circuit. Yes, I want to show it to everyone but because of festival criteria I'm not sure when I can do that. I'll keep you posted.

Ahhhhhhhhh..... feels good.

A big shout out to Shannon and Chris Prynoski, along with everyone that helped me along the way. Thanks!