THE SIMPSONS NEWS –  Confessions of a Simpsons Assassin, Part 2

Simpsons Quote:

Grimes: You idiot! You almost drank a beaker full of sulfuric acid!

Homer: Acid, eh? Jeez, that would have been STUPID! (laughs) Wow, would my face have been red! (laughs again)

The first assassination job Director Jim Reardon ever gave me was to kill Frank Grimes. He just handed me the scenes and I went to work.

The sad part was, that I REALLY ended up liking Frank Grimes a lot.  So much so that this became my favorite SIMPSONS episode.

I put A LOT of myself in the acting and mannerisms of Frank Grimes and I’ll talk about that below.

BUT by the time the animatic was finished, the deed was done. The weird fat guy, Frank Grimes, was dead.

What’s that you say? Frank Grimes isn’t fat? Did I take out the wrong cartoon character?

Hmmm, well here’s the story…

The Original Frank Grimes

The Frank Grimes I killed was a fat guy. He had a body like Homer’s and had a bit of “pin head”.

The animatic had this version of Frank Grimes in it.

I was given some pretty heavy acting scenes with Frank and I was really having a good time with them.

I was really proud of my work on them.

Then…after the animatic, we found out that the writers and producers weren’t happy with what Frank looked like, so he had to be redesigned.

Every scene he was in was going to have to be reworked.

I was part of Jim’s permanent crew so I had was part of the revision team. So we folded up our sleeves and got to work.

A Peek at My Scenes

Frank, Lenny and Carl talk about Homer’s eating. Definitely my scenes. I have the thumbnails to prove it.

I don’t think I originally did the scene below but I know I revised it. Making Homer’s movement more duck like:

The scene below was a pain to layout. It’s definitely a cheat. I wasn’t able to capture the whole scene to show you but believe me when I say, it’s very odd looking.

The melting of the wall took a lot of  time to do.  I made up the weird shape the wall melted into. I just let my pencil wander and that’s what I ended up with.  I didn’t think they would use it as the final drawing:

Frank’s acting below was one of the many over the top moments I got to do. There’s my “claw” hands on Frank.  I was able to go really broad and wild with all of his expressions.  This stuff was really fun to do.

And the Emmy Goes To…

Okay, so, this is something it never occurred to me that I’d be able to do til I started writing this post.  I can ACTUALLY write about my favorite acting moments I’ve ever done on an episode.

These are it. The scenes with Frank confronting Homer and his family below, are the most personal scenes I’d ever done.  There was only ONE other moment on an episode that came close.

But these scenes with the family, are all me. I was REALLY into this:

I practically memorized Franks speech. I internalized it.  I listened to it over and over and acted it out myself.

I FELT what Frank felt. I BECAME Frank and I just went for it here.

I’d only do this one other time in an episode.

Those hand gestures and the mannerisms he has in this sequence, that’s all me when I get frustrated.

For it to have come out the way I wanted it to without me being able to time it myself, was a great joy and relief.

PLEASE go watch the show and pay attention to Frank in this section. The screenshots above don’t really show what I’m talking about.

I think it’s the best acting I ever did in an episode.

The Death of Grimes

I lOVED drawing and acting out Frank’s freak outs.  The scenes below really show how broad and cartoony I was allowed to go with him.

I mean, LOOK I even did a multiply arm effects on him:

And here, in the scenes below, you can see how I was doing multiple arms AGAIN. It’s a VERY unSimpsons thing to do and I got away with it.

I’m really surprised the goofy walk above came out as good as it did considering the artwork I gave the Koreans to work with.

I ended up working on MORE Frank Grime scenes after the animatic than before the animatic.  Mostly because we had to revise his model.

I think I worked on about 50% of all the scenes Frank is in.  The other artist who worked a lot of Frank’s scenes was the Assistant Director Mark Ervin. If you pay close attention, you can tell which one of us did what scenes by how skinny Frank is.

I tended to draw Frank much skinner. Just look at the skinny arms on Frank in the shot below:

Mark would make Frank a bit chunkier and thicker.

The scene below is a combination of both my scene and Mark’s scene.  He revised my drawings. That Mr. Burns looks WAY too nice looking to be one of mine.

You’ll notice that Frank changes in the scene from being thicker to, super skinny, to being a thicker again:

The shot where Frank stand in front of the cables as well as the ones where he grabs the cables. Where originally drawn by me with the fat Frank.  But after animatic, I revised them and then Mark revised my drawings. I guess my Frank’s where getting a little TOO skinny.

The reaction shot below was totally me though.  Just look at Smithers with his “anime acting” and Homer with his “claw” hand.

So there. Forgive me for tooting my own horn.  This is the acting work I’m most proud of.

Hamlet and Grimes

I remember when I was working on this episode, I had become obsessed with Shakespeare. Yes, I’m a HUGE nerd, so what else is new.

Anyway, during this time, I was absorbed with HAMLET (still my favorite Shakespeare play).  I couldn’t get enough of it. I started memorizing LINES from the play, for goodness sakes. FOR FUN!

And OF COURSE, working on this episode made me think how much like HAMLET this episode was.

I even went up to Jim and explained to him all the things that made this episode like HAMLET.  I wish I had recorded myself or had written it down because…I can’t remember AT ALL why I thought that.

I TRIED to remember. I wanted to share my thoughts about it here, but I can’t remember.

Stoopid memory.

From a purely superficial level, all I can think of is that they both start with tragedy, they’re both about the lead’s obsession with point out the truth to the people around him,  which leads to the death of the lead character.

Perhaps this is what I told Jim…I dunno.

“Words words words.” – Hamlet

… great…now I want to watch HAMLET…again.

Sketches in the E-mail

In this week’s e-mail, I had a special surprise.  As I was looking through my old drawings earlier this week, I found some pages of thumbnails that I had done specifically for THIS episode.

In them you saw a very small hint of what Frank Grimes originally looked like. You also see the thought process behind some of the acting I did.

There’s was also some other non-Simpsons related doodle on the page I drew. Mostly girls sketches.

Anyway, that’s what I sent out as an e-mail this week to everyone who’s on my e-mail list.

If you want to have this e-mail sent to you, put in your e-mail below before Thursday of next week and I’ll resend the e-mail to you soon after. Don’t miss out again.

WEBSITES – The Drawing Website

New post is up on The Drawing Website.

This time I’m teaching you, “How to Trace Like a Pro.”

Yes, you read right, TRACING.

What does tracing have to do with learning to draw?

Well, you’d be surprised. Go the post and check it out.

MY WEEK – Overworking myself

I’m burning myself out.

I’ve been overworking myself during my free time.

After working a full day at the studio I also write 1 1/2 blog posts a week (one here and one for The Drawing Website, where posts take two whole weeks to write), and two e-mails full of content. On top of that, I’m editing my wife’s book, AND helping to taking care of my kids when I get home. Not to mention I’m putting that “thing” together that I mentioned in last week’s post.

I’m NOT complaining, I CHOSEN to do this. One of the highlights of my week was drawing that kung fu drawing above.  I’m REALLY proud of it.  It was FUN and I learned a lot doing it.

STILL, I think I’m over doing it.  I’ve got to find a way to still provide good content on my sites without killing myself.

I haven’t quite figured out how though. Any suggestions?

In this week’s Drawing Website post, I experimented for the first time with video. I might start using it here in this site.  Maybe if I do more talking and less writing, things will take less time.  I’m not sure.

I still want the writing part of my blog though.

Anyway, expect some changes in the next few weeks as I start experimenting. I can’t keep up this pace.

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