LOS ANGELES – Welcome to my blog, and thank you for visiting. This page is sort of a Behind the Music version of my resumé, if that show were written by the profiled stars themselves (and if I were a star). Please turn off your cellphones and take your chewing gum out of your mouth and stick it under the seat of the person in front of you. Ready? Okay.

I am a Creative Director + Graphic Designer, Illustrator, and Motion Graphics Animator, and I live in Los Angeles. Although I’ve worked on very serious stuff: Effects Artist on Star Trek: TNG, Lead Effects Artist on The Outer Limits, Advertising Design for Kodak, American Express, and IBM, Network Promotion graphics for NBC, CBS, E! Entertainment (and others), Music videos for Michael Jackson and others… my heart is in comedy. I think that even my most serious work is informed by my sense of humor.

As of August 3, 2009, I have found work with a great group at CBS Television City here in Los Angeles. I might get into more specifics later, but I’m sure you’ll appreciate my cautious attitude vis-à-vis the employer/blogger relationship. I’ll be taking baby steps for now (this restriction is my own and does not come from CBS). What I can tell you is that I’ll be able to put my skills and talents to use doing what I love doing: graphic design and motion graphics. This B.L.O.G. and the opinions expressed herein are my own and are in no way meant to convey the opinions of CBS or any of its entities.

Speaking of this B.L.O.G., there are a few things you should know. I am not a writer per se, but I do know what makes a funny image. No one knows better than I what I am capable of. I can suggest (and have suggested) ways to portray a situation that wouldn’t otherwise be thought of. The posts on B.L.O.G. are graphics intensive. I am showing my graphic take on current topics in the news, or silly stories that happen to me or my friends, or views of my world. I will get sidetracked occasionally, the way a real show might get sidetracked with a recurring character you wish they wouldn’t use so much. The graphics are done fairly quickly (for the most part), and are really meant to be shown for a minute or two at the most, sometimes even less than that. That is, if they were on TV. But they’re not; they’re here, on a blog. They will become Google-Glued® to the past, present, and future. As a result, they are slightly more refined than what you would find in an “over the shoulder” graphic on TV. But they are done quickly, with the other things I have to do in my life driving my deadline. The object is, to paraphrase a late night TV writer friend of mine, not to have someone say “Oh my gosh. That man is sleeping next to a polar bear!” But the man-with-polar-bear image also should not look amateurish. There is a fine line between looking too good, and not looking good enough. I think I have a handle on the middle-ground of mediocrity, thank you.

As I go on, I find my writing is flowing more freely, the images are naturally finding their rightful place in the quality continuum, I’m slowly finding my voice. I never know where the next spike in hits on my statistics page will come from. Daily page views are usually between 8 and 40. Occasionally, I see a spike to 100 or so. In June, after I posted a gallery of my set elements being built for The Price Is Right, I got nearly 1,300 page views in one day. I don’t obsess over the figures, but am nevertheless amused by them.

I hope you’ll come back occasionally and perhaps weigh in with a comment now and then (though it’s not a requirement).

Your maker of graphics with a comedic slant – turned blogger,

Michael Brown

P.S.: On June 4, I added a Resumé page and you can see it by clicking here.