Saturday, May 31, 2008

Artopia June 28th in Seattle Noon -10PM

I'll be running a creature swap booth in Georgetown for this year's Artopia event. Come on by, draw a creature and trade it for one someone else has drawn. I'll have materials for folks at the booth. During the event I will be doing demonstrations and answering questions for the curious. Creatures from the demonstrations will be given away to participants of the creature swap.

http://artopiaseattle.com
Noon -10PM
"Georgetown's Artopia is a collaborative grassroots celebration of emerging and established artists and communities.

This annual celebration, presented by the Seattle Weekly, takes place in Seattle's historic Georgetown neighborhood.

Artopia 2008 will be held June 28th. Stay tuned for more details."

Thursday, May 29, 2008

quick lizard head

Fuck yeah! That should be a rant on your blog!

My email reply in response to this link(good article too btw):
http://mag.awn.com/index.php?ltype=pageone&article_no=3649&page=1


"You know, I get kind of tired of people using the word formula to describe crappy animated movies. If the crappy movies were using a successful formula they wouldn’t be crappy! Pixar films are every bit as formulaic as the good Disney movies. What people don’t seem to get is that a good movie stems from a good solid story. All the formula is an illusion. People naturally enjoy songs and animals, but they still won’t care if the story sucks, because they can’t believe the characters, and since songs are character driven descriptions of how that character feels, people won’t care about the songs either. Of course if you have a catchy song, the song may stand on its own…but how often does that happen, especially in an environment where you hire song writers who don’t care about the story they are writing it for.

I like family geared animated musicals. I could watch the same story reinvented time after time, which is all that ever happens in all stories because there are only a few story types, as long as the writing is solid.

While I do wait around and get excited about the promise of different animation, things that stray from the norm, I’m tired of people who write about animation making me feel bad for liking Disney style films. They are fucking awesome!!! I wish Pixar would actually do a musical for once.

Also, there are tons of amazing things happening in animation all the time. Sure it isn’t a high percentage of the things coming out, but its there dammit. Avatar, Paprika, Fosters, Tekkon Kinkreet, for a few.

Guys who think animation is dead are not looking hard enough.

People also complain that there isn’t much diversity in style. I would say that most styles don’t communicate clearly and that people are drawn to Disney films and many Anime because the characters are clear and easy to understand visually. Again, I’d love to see more diversity, but it’s a hard sell because people don’t agree on style and it’s hard to attract people to work for you if it’s a style they don’t get, and then that probably means an audience would be even less willing to give the film a chance to let the story shine through.

Probably the biggest thing in animation that bugs me is the writing. A huge percent of the projects out there are for kids. Which means the people working on it don’t care, or the people hiring for it won’t hire good talent. Then the stories that are written are dumbed down, because for some reason people dumb everything down for kids, when kids are actually pretty smart and can understand complicated situations. Yes, write simply for say, four year olds, but don’t write it like they are stupid.

AND!!! I get tired of people looking for change in animation thinking that it’s going to be movies with more sex and violence in them. I think there are plenty of those now.

……..sigh……..

Rant rant rant…"


Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Sasquatch Sketches





I was trying to figure out why I was drawing so many women for awhile, then it occurred to me that they just move more and relax. The guys just tend to stand or sit or jiggle the neck a bit. I went out of my way to spot fellas dancing in the crowd. The festival was some of the most fun I've ever had. Must camp there next year I think.

Friday, May 23, 2008

Creepy self portrait

I won't vouch for the features, but I think it sums up how I'm usually feeling. You know, all intense and grim or rather "artistic".

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

click on it to see it move

Messing around with PAP. I'll be attending an animation class beginning next week and need a way to do it that is not 3D. It's literally been a decade since I was doing 3D animation. I have no idea what this is... Also, now I remember how much I hated trying to keep things on model.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Monday, May 19, 2008

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Frog character

Quick ink sketch colored in Photoshop.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Sunday, May 11, 2008

On June 7th everybody draw!

Drawing Day 2008

Yay!


Melissa took a sweet shot of me lording over my cute minions.

There's a pic of me in the PI photo blog! If I were smiling any wider you'd be able to see the bling in the back of my mouth.

Here's a list of some of the sweet peeps I met at the con:
Tom Peyer
http://aerie.geofront.com/nest.html
www.enfu.com
www.benwalkerart.com
www.cheapass.com
www.steamcrow.com
www.adrianaferguson.com
www.flyingarmadillo.com
www.little-vampires.com
www.crayonmonsters.com
www.artofkdboze.com
www.scrappictures.com
www.gutterzombie.com
www.faminelands.com

Emerald City Sketches



6x4 in
I sold the second sketch at the con, so it's a bit blurry from the photo I took. I had A LOT of fun drawing these two because of all the curly tentacle goodness.

Friday, May 9, 2008

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

quick tiel

Bah! Tonight was bleh for sketching. I tried several quickies before this guy and hit the fail button each time. When in doubt, draw birds.

Sunday, May 4, 2008

Jello Squid


-Gelatin Squid is mmm mmm good.
I'm experimenting with creating edible stained glass. This is experiment one, the cherry grape squid. However, I think I will try to dry it and see what happens. I'm expecting much shriveling.
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Glass Castings




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-Clay and wax sculptures cast in plaster then filled with glass. About 5x5 inches. These were way fun to make! The actual sculpting part for each took about an hour. Most of the work was in making the one use molds and cleaning all the gunk out. The blue thingy was very educational because the mold required that I float a plug inside in order to make a hollow form with detail inside.

5x5 quick inks from Sakuracon






-Freehand inks with pilot pens.
I found a new appreciation for people drawing at their booths during conventions. It is really hard to find enough time to do it and handle interacting with the people who walk by at the same time. You can't just let folks walk by or they feel neglected, or so it seemed to me. I think many people who come to the artist alley are also looking for some face time even if it's just for a moment.