So I will start the revived Blog off with an old video I just reposted.  I did the basis of this piece in Toonboom Animate, the platform I used before I upgraded to HARMONY and this was a test of using the internal cameras.  The character is based on a guy I worked with at a VW shop in Sacramento, Louie, who was a bit of a back alley philosopher and funny as a summer day is long.  The voice is me because, well I am originally from So Cal and a lot of my friends and their families sounded like this.  Since I have been an auditory chameleon all my life it just figures that something would linger.

I Took this DOWN from YouTube because I had met a woman on a dating site who told me it was racist...as well as one of my other animations of Jefe's Girlfriend Carman for which she branded me a Mysoginist. Why the hell I gave a damn what this stranger thought of my work is a conversation for another day but in the end I like the character and piece in general.

When my son Nicholas was growing up I used to amuse him my array of "Silly Voices" that I have done.  It was a skills he did not inherit directly and he envies, he asked me why I thought I could do this.  After consideration I believe it is because I come from a time where it was OK to be different, that ethnicity wasn't something to be sneered at but also something not to be forgotten. In short, it's wrong for someone in one ethnic group (usually white sad to say but which also can be from other ethnic groups) to demean a member of another group...not cool.  At the same time though it should be OK to celebrate the amazing diversity of the human community.

So what do you think?  Am I a racist or just an animator doing a video about a (late) friend to celebrate what a cool dude he was?

Comments welcome below...