Frequently asked questions:

What's your background?

I graduated from Rhode Island School of Design in the spring of 2000 with a BFA studyting animation.

How do you make your cartoons?

I make my cartoons using Macromedia Flash. I draw all my images in the program with a stylus. I take a traditional approach to animation originating from my history in drawn and cel animation.

For sound, I use stuff from a few sound effects CD's. I also have a little Radio Shack microphone to record voices and sound effects. I tweak my sounds in SoundEdit 16, changing the pitch, adding effects and such. For music recording, I use Deck 2, a somewhat older multi-track recording program for the Mac. I've got an old DX-7 II keyboard that I just plug into the computer's microphone jack.

I take different approaches to using sound. Sometimes I do the entire animation and add sound in Flash. For Diplomacy, I did the soundwork before I did any animation and animated to match the music. For my Halloween cartoon, I had many sound layers, effects, and volume changes. I animated first, exported a quicktime video and did the sound work in Final Cut Pro. I then exported the soundtrack as one sound file and imported it back into the Flash file.

As far as programming goes, I'm pretty inexperienced. I've been able to learn to make things like preloaders and navigational buttons by reading a couple of books and shuffling through flashplanet.com, a great place to start for how-to information on Flash.

Why Kicked in the Head music?

I know them and they rock. Usually, I try to make my own music for my animations to avoid copyright infringement. But when I need something that really rocks I take a little riff from KITH because I don't think they would sue me as long as I don't use the whole song and give them credit. For Diplomacy, I used "Deep Down and Dirty", and for A Bin Laden Halloween, I used "Breakdown". These two songs are from their CD Thick as Thieves. They have a few songs on MP3.com. If you like the rockin' music in my cartoons, I suggest you listen to their stuff on MP3.com, check out the samples on kickedinthehead.com, and then buy their CD. By the way, I should point out that KITH didn't know that I was using their music in my cartoons until they came out, so if you don't like my cartoons and think they're racist, warmongering, and evil, blame me, not them.