The show was a pressure cooker, and when it was over many of us emerged as diamonds. I’d never been in a room with that much raw talent, and what we all learned together put most of us on track for lifetime careers. Like I said at the start, this was what I got instead of college. One by one, we all discovered our super powers as we fought the ghost wars. I can’t claim we were the “best of the best,” but it felt like we had all passed the same test and found ourselves on the other side of it an elite category. We all had similar histories, drawing like crazy since we were kids, grabbing onto the same inspirations (comics, movies, anime, videogames, etc.) and distinguishing ourselves with our creativity. We had come from all over the country, and a few from overseas, to find our dream careers. Of all the people to be randomly stationed with, he was exactly the right one. He was a huge Star Blazers fan too, and already knew about the comic book I’d been working on for the last couple years. I decided to make a statement by putting up a Space Battleship Yamato poster on my side, and he practically fell off his chair. The first sign that I’d made the right move came when I met my cubicle-mate, Jeff Brennan. I was there to draw, and for the first time since my days at Malibu, I was surrounded by others who were there for the same reason. The show teetered from being top-heavy (and ultimately went way over budget), but that wasn’t my concern. Crews that size are unheard of today, partly because of digital streamlining, but mostly because production budgets have been forced downward, and nobody will commit to 40 any more these days you’re lucky to get 13. We had 40 episodes to produce (for a syndicator named Bohbot), and it required an army of over 100 people at its peak.
Because not only did EVERYTHING get better (even the commute), I found what I needed most: a peer group. I say all this to get the negatives out of the way.
It was early December 1996, and I had no idea if it would ever get better. I now had exactly the kind of lifestyle I tried to avoid for my entire career. At the end of the first week, my depression was overwhelming. I could have done SO much with that time. Up to an hour each way through some of the worst LA traffic. With a wife and a 5-year-old daughter to support, the choice was obvious. The whole comic book industry was in freefall thanks to a seismic shift in distribution, and the signals were getting clearer by the day: get out now if you know what’s good for ya! I could either take a full-time job with a horrible commute, or take my chances on having no work at all. I could take on lots of projects simultaneously and didn’t have to commute anywhere.īut…the freelance jobs were fading by this time. I really liked working from home as a freelancer. I hadn’t worked full-time anywhere since leaving Malibu Comics over two years earlier.
#Extreme ghostbusters dvd tv#
Not just the chance to work on another TV show, but signing on as a full-time crew member. All I remember about that interview is that it got me hired. In short order, my agent called me up and said a formal interview had been arranged at Sony.
My ears certainly perked up when he gave it a name: Extreme Ghostbusters (herafter, XGB). His current show was something called Project Geeker, but he would soon be hiring for his next one. I brought some portfolio pieces with me (which included Grease Monkey comics) and we synced immediately. He was a producer at Sony Animation (which I’d never heard of), and we met for breakfast at a restaurant outside of LA. But now I had an agent looking for opportunities, and a few months later, he found one.Īt some point in November ’96, my agent set up what we call a “meet and greet” with a guy named Audu Paden. When that show wrapped in the summer, I went back to comic book and illustration projects with no idea where I’d go next. As recounted in another article, my entry into the world of TV animation storyboarding began in 1996 with Wing Commander Academy.
It went out of production in 1991, and gears slowly started turning for a followup. (I also didn’t rack up student loans, which was a pretty good tradeoff.) You can’t miss what you never had, but when I learned what kinds of experiences others had in college, I did feel like I missed out on something.Īs it turned out, that something was waiting for me in a different kind of school: Extreme Ghostbusters Academy.Įxtreme Ghostbusters was a direct sequel to The Real Ghostbusters, which was a big deal among some of my friends in the late 80s. I didn’t live in a dorm, didn’t hook up with a peer group, didn’t develop relationships with mentors. Thus, I didn’t have the collegiate experience that I later heard about from others. I went directly from high school into my field (at the time, commercial art).
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