Rob Paulsen is one of Hollywood’s busiest, most talented, and most passionate performers. If you don’t know him by name, you will know him by the many characters he has brought to life: Pinky from Pinky and the Brain, Yakko from Animaniacs, the tough but loveable Raphael from the original animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and many more. So you can imagine how terrifying it must have been when Rob was diagnosed with throat cancer, putting his entire livelihood in jeopardy and threatening to rob the world of all his loveable characters that filled our youths and adulthoods with humor and delight. Voice Lessons tells the heartwarming and life-affirming story of Rob’s experience with an aggressive cancer treatment and recovery regimen, which luckily led to a full recovery. Rob quickly returned to doing what he loves most, but with a much deeper appreciation of what he came so close to losing. His new lease on life inspired him to rededicate himself to his fans, particularly the new friends he made along the way: hundreds of sick children and their families. Rob said it best himself: “I can not only continue to make a living, but make a difference, and I can’t wait to use that on the biggest scale that I can.”
The popularity of cartoon music, from Carl Stalling's work for Warner Bros. to Disney sound tracks and "The Simpsons"' song parodies, has never been greater. This lively and fascinating look at cartoon music's past and present collects contributions from well-known music critics and cartoonists, and interviews with the principal cartoon composers. Here Mark Mothersbaugh talks about his music for "Rugrats," Alf Clausen about composing for "The Simpsons," Carl Stalling about his work for Walt Disney and Warner Bros., Irwin Chusid about Raymond Scott's work, Will Friedwald about "Casper the Friendly Ghost," Richard Stone about his music for "Animaniacs," Joseph Lanza about "Ren and Stimpy," and much, much more.
If you’ve dabbled in digital photography but want to do more with your pictures, here is a comprehensive but nontechnical handbook that shows you how to take better photos and use your images more creatively. Mediapedia is a friendly, full-color resource that gives everyone an understanding of the creative power they’ve already got at hand, with the equipment they already own. Like an encyclopedia, Mediapedia is a classic desktop resource. Chapters on digital photography, image editing, type & layout, illustration, slide shows, and distribution are organized as a sequence of terms referring to the tools and techniques you can use to achieve particular effects. Author Kit Laybourne, an accomplished filmmaker and animator, describes scores of ways you can work with photos, fonts, Photoshop, Powerpoint, and illustration programs to enhance any personal media project—or create a new one. Laybourne writes in a friendly style that is as much about helping you figure out what looks good as it is about conveying the technical know-how you need. He includes more than 800 illustrations—photos, hand-drawn sketches, and screen grabs—that depict ideas for everything from improving your photography skills to cropping and altering pictures, creating entertaining slide shows, and adding illustration and type to cards and flyers. You’ll learn how to share your creative media in paper form as well as via the Internet. With Mediapedia in your library, you’ll have the tools, instruction, and inspiration to make your personal media projects creative and impressive. Creative tips and explanations include: Tools and techniques that are immediately usable by anyone who downloads photos onto a computer Terms, definitions, explanations, illustrations, and captions are all self-contained units, with related information on the same page Provides examples of good photography and design to help you take your own “personal media” projects to the next level Everything you’ve wanted to know about your digital photos but were afraid to ask
Warner Bros has opened up its archives for official researchers to trace the history of its most famous characters, including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Taz, Sylvester, Tweety Pie, Porky Pig and Yosemite Sam, as well as detailing more contemporary creations such as the animated Batman, Tiny Toons and Animaniacs.
This is a comprehensive sourcebook on the world's most famous vampire, with more than 700 citations of domestic and international Dracula films, television programs, documentaries, adult features, animated works, and video games, as well as nearly a thousand comic books and stage adaptations. While they vary in length, significance, quality, genre, moral character, country, and format, each of the cited works adopts some form of Bram Stoker's original creation, and Dracula himself, or a recognizable vampiric semblance of Dracula, appears in each. The book includes contributions from Dacre Stoker, David J. Skal, Laura Helen Marks, Dodd Alley, Mitch Frye, Ian Holt, Robert Eighteen-Bisang, and J. Gordon Melton.
Introducing an extraordinary new voice---a magical debut that will make your skin tingle, your eyes glisten . . .and your heart sing. Midnight Gulch used to be a magical place, a town where people could sing up thunderstorms and dance up sunflowers. But that was long ago, before a curse drove the magic away. Twelve-year-old Felicity knows all about things like that; her nomadic mother is cursed with a wandering heart.But when she arrives in Midnight Gulch, Felicity thinks her luck's about to change. A "word collector," Felicity sees words everywhere---shining above strangers, tucked into church eves, and tangled up her dog's floppy ears---but Midnight Gulch is the first place she's ever seen the word "home." And then there's Jonah, a mysterious, spiky-haired do-gooder who shimmers with words Felicity's never seen before, words that make Felicity's heart beat a little faster. Felicity wants to stay in Midnight Gulch more than anything, but first, she'll need to figure out how to bring back the magic, breaking the spell that's been cast over the town . . . and her mother's broken heart.