ROAD TRIP - SUN...

We started our day with a hearty American breakfast. Sure it was $8.55 but well worth it when you take into consideration that they hand place every onion into the side of your chili for you - yummy!


Then we took a jaunt up to Bronson Canyon and stole some authentic BATCAVE rocks.

If you run through the Batcave like Pauly here you find a perfect spot to take a picture of the Hollywood sign.

We drove an hour out of LA to visit Burt Ward at his ranch. He lives in a very surreal neighborhood where people walk their pet lamas down sidewalks made of dirt.

Burt and his daughter Melody took us all out for lunch to the CHINA STAR - "a Chinese buffet with the best french fries you'll ever eat". We all talked business while Melody entertained us with Rodney Dangerfield impressions.

We ended the day at the Universal City walk. It's a cool little tourist trap with all sorts of great things to look at.

Big thanks to Andrew and Tracy for leading the way.

A DAY WITH STEVE LAMBE - SAT...

Started the day just wanting to check out a bunch of stuff and maybe pick up a few goodies for the folks back home.

Didn't want to show off in front of the poor dudes - but they had it coming.

We hung out in front of the IVY hoping to see Lindsay Lohan spill out of a limo - but no luck. The only celeb we saw was George Stroumboulopoulos, a dude from Toronto. Not cool.

We met up with Steve Lambe at Kidrobot and to check out his stomping grounds.

He took us over to the 8-bit show and we got to see his and a tonne of other artists 8-bitty goodness.

Steve drove us over to an AMAZING shop called WACKO. In my opinion this is by far the best shop of its kind. It had everything from stellar original art by well known artists to a huge variety of illustration books, vinyl and t-shirts - highly recommended if you ever get down there.

He took us to SALOMI, a favorite Indian restaurant of his for dinner. I of course impressed everyone by eating the hottest dish on the menu - THE VOLCANO.

Ended the day at this sweet little spot Lambe took us called CASTAWAYS up in the hills with this wicked view of LA. Thanks for showing us around Steve! If you're ever in T.O give us a hollar!

Incidentally, I erupted about 3:30 in the morning.

GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS - FRI...

George Barris' office

We started our day with a trip to see George Barris' workshop. The shop was closed but Andrew snuck us in the back door to check out some of George's sweet custom cars.

Later we met up with Steve Lambe and Gabe Swarr for lunch and talked about the state of the industry over pad thai and beer. Basically we just tried to teach them a little bit about how animation works - you can tell from this picture that they were very impressed with our knowledge.

Steve brought us back to Nickelodeon and gave us a tour of the joint. Man they sure are doing it right over there. We got to see where they're making El Tigre and met some of the talented crew putting it all together.

Although we really enjoyed the tour, we still had to show Steve who was boss.

Mark, Paul and I met up with Eric Homan at the Frederator Studios for a little business meeting. There is so much about this studios that we at Neptoon appreciate and we're looking for ways that we can work together.

Eric gave us a great tour and we ran into Melissa Wolfe who we had met at last years OIAF.

Wally Wingert and his dog Sassy

We ended our day at Wally Wingert's and he gave us a tour of his totally rad pad (AKA - WALLY WORLD). Wally is a very interesting guy but wow, can you believe this dude actually lives here!

3 ANIMATORS 2 BEDS - THURS...

We walked down to San Fernando Blvd and had some killer bagels and coffee at this place called Noah's - this became a morning ritual.

The one thing about coming in so late is that you can't see a damn thing on the drive up to Burbank. All we could make out were the street signs, very cool street signs mind you - Sunset blvd, Santa Monica blvd, Mulholland Dr. - and for 3 guys who'd never been to LA, I gotta say, it was still the shit.

When you're down in Burbank all the studios are on Olive St. (where we were staying) so we couldn't pass up the chance to go check in on Cartoon Network. It was strange though cuz the doors were locked and we couldn't get in. Guess they didn't recongnize us - weird????

We met up with Bob Boyle for lunch over at the Disney Studio and he gave us a wicked tour of the whole place. We worked with Bob on his series Yin Yang Yo and did some animation for his other series Wow Wow Wubzy... it's always nice to hang with Bob and to see our work hanging on the wall of the Disney Studio.

We met up with Tracy and Andrew at McCormick & Schmick's. They had gone to the Tonight Show taping earlier that day and although we had to bail we still got a chance to have some drinks with John Melendez (AKA Stuttering John) and some of the Tonight Show crew.

We payed a visit to Ruben Procopio, who was kind enough to have us in his home and even kinder to show us around his amazing studio. Ruben may be the nicest person I've met to date and it was very cool to get a chance to meet up with him in person - oh, and we walked away with some stunning sculpts he did - I'll post those later. - Thanks Ruben!!!

We ended the night with some directorial notes for the boys back home - please take note that I'm the one in the single bed ;)