Cravenomena

Well... as Burns said, "The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley," and boy, Craven's schemes for this site gang as aft agley as schemes can gang. Thanks to presidential elections, unemployment and emotional ennui, Craven has been uh, less than diligent in keeping things going here. But thanks to some new developments, I am hoping to get the proverbial ball rolling again... starting with an upcoming post regarding the competition which existed between hot rod designers Ed "Big Daddy" ... Read More

It's been a bit more than a week since I've updated the blog, which owes to Craven's increased activity as a volunteer for the Obama campaign here in the Grand Valley. This work has been a very interesting experience, and I actually would like to blog about it some, but I think my thoughts on the matter will be more appropriate after the election. Anyway, know that I intend to keep this blog updated on a more regular basis than ... Read More

On the day of the dinosaur attack, I scanned the skies nervously. The forecast was for scattered showers, and already it had sprinkled a few times that morning.  There was also a capricious wind brewing, and I knew that would play hell with my makeshift bluescreens. I was standing in the parking lot of the Dinosaur Journey Museum in Fruita, waiting for my small crew and cast to arrive for the shooting of a commercial to promote the annual "Dinosaur Days" festival.  I had ... Read More

Craven is in the process of adding some new posts to Cravenomena during the next week -- including his dinosaur attack and the first entries on the making of SHOCK! SHOCK! SHOCK! -- but there probably won't be much activity this weekend, since he is out canvassing for Barack Obama. I did want to draw your attention to an interesting conversation in which Craven's "The Stooge That Almost Was" (which discusses the fact that Mantan Moreland was considered as Shemp Howard's replacement in ... Read More

Fifty. When you're counting pennies in your change jar, that's not a very big number.  But when you're Craven, fixed and quivering like a fly in agar as the big five-oh barrels down upon him from the realm of What-Was-Once-Distant-Old-Age, it seems impossibly large. Perhaps it would be closer to our experiential reality to measure our lives in seconds -- in which case, my age is around 1,539,529,440 as I write these words.  It is surely true there are moments nowadays that I feel ... Read More

One of the more challenging concepts I ever had to animate came when I was hired on a freelance basis to produce a spot for Unifirst Mortgage in Grand Junction, Colorado. For a number of years, Unifirst had been using a cute yellow duck in their advertising -- internally, they called him "Howard," unaware, I think, of Howard the Duck, a Marvel Comics character created in 1973 by the late, lamented Steve Gerber -- before Unifirst president Ken Rabideau approached me ... Read More

Here's another commercial Craven produced during his tenure as a staff producer for KKCO-TV, Grand Junction's local NBC affiliate. While not perfect, there is much which tickles Craven in this spot. The assignment was to produce a 30-second commercial which would promote KKCO's in-house production department and the station's advertising efficacy. I think it was my idea to create a STAR TREK pastiche, which led to delightfully ridiculous notions like a space-going retail store and alien "paying customers." The spot required more ... Read More

As you may have noticed, Craven continues to tweak Cravenomena. The changes are mostly cosmetic -- for instance, I've restyled the contents page thumbnails and gussied up the headlines. I also implemented gravatar support; if you have a gravatar, it will now appear at the top of your comments. If you don't have a gravatar, you can get one easily enough at Gravatar's homepage. Just have an image and an email address handy. (If you don't even ... Read More

[Note: This is the first in a series of essays on illustrators who were very influential on Craven as a child.] To know a little about the soul of children's illustrator Robert Lawson, you have only to look at the traces he left in graphite and ink in his drawings, which adorned almost 50 books during a 30-year career. Although the physical body it occupied died more than half a century ago, that soul still sings in the gentle washes and intricate ... Read More

Here's another spot Craven wrote, directed, produced and animated for the Cabaret Dinner Theatre in Grand Junction, Colorado. My local readers know the Cabaret closed its doors this year, after a decade as the Grand Valley's primary theatrical outlet. During most of that time, it was up to Craven to produce all of their television commercials, and here's one he did for their first production of ALWAYS... PATSY CLINE. The Cabaret commercials often posed interesting production challenges, and this spot was ... Read More