In the beginning

When I was in college I had an idea of creating an animation studio. I was going to take the animation world by storm and make edgy one hundred million dollar films for young adults like myself. I thought that the early Disney films were the pinnacle of animation but anime was the future. I thought that Don Bluth was an artistic genius because of The Secret of Nimh and Space Ace but he was a hack because of everything else. I thought that if you make a great film the people will come.

This is what I know now.

No movie studio is going to give anyone one hundred million dollars unless they can be guaranteed to make two hundred million in return. In the current market there aren't enough young adults who will go to an animated feature to cover a one hundred million dollar budget. Styles for animation will always change and evolve but the emotions that people feel when they see movies always stay the same. Don Bluth my not have needed to be a genius because of the talent that surrounded him. Don Bluth may not have been a hack because of the forces that may have been working against his films. After my experience on The Iron Giant I now know that if you make a great film they will not necessarily come. But we are still going to take the animation world by storm.

-Ricardo

Merry post Christmas

This was a Christmas card that I had one of my artists, Robin Joseph, do for our clients. I'm always amazed by what kind of attention you can get with a simple thing like a painting. We got a job based on this image alone. The little guy on the end is my son, Maxwell.

What we do.

I created House of Cool because I didn't want to be one of those artists who say "that sucks" or "if it was my movie I would" about everything. I felt I only had the right to criticize the work of others if I had attempted to do it myself. So I got together my wife, some friends and young talent to try and create something cool from scratch. We do a lot of service work for other animation companies. Mostly storyboards and design but we are always developing our own properties because I think that is what is most fun about film and it's the future of this company.

-Ricardo

New website

House of Cool is building a new website with a link to this blog. We will start using this blog properly after we are published.

-Ricardo