WonderCon '09

I went to WonderCon in San Francisco today. I am still undecided if I like this con better or less than San Diego Comic Con overall but this year really was great. I went with my good friend Dave and saw lots of great stuff. This year was pretty easy going and one thing for sure, it's a lot less crowded in SF than down south. There were still folks who went all out to make great costumes as you'll see below but WC is also small enough (still) to get to chat with sellers and so on. Some well respected names in the animation industry were at their tables and actually had time to have a conversation. The guys I wanted to rub elbows with were the most approachable folks I've had the chance to banter with in some time. I mean where else are you going to get to talk with Emmy award winning Ben Balisteri about hockey? Or swap stories about your kids with Pascal Campion? Dave and I talked about Zoo Sketch Crawl and Sketch Crawls in general with Pixar story artist Enrico Casarosa while he and Ronnie Del Carmen were signing our books, congrats by the way, to you guys and everyone at Pixar for winning the Oscar for Wall-e.
I also spent some time chatting with the gang from ghostbot who were responsible for animating the Esurance commercials, some of the best "traditionally" animated commercials I have seen in a long time. Even better I very pleased to see my 'ol college chum Kris works there, it was great to see her again.

I always wanted to be a cylon but this guy actually was one complete with that crazy noise with red eye moving.
I've never wanted to be a big yellow bug but these ladies sure did with style.Here's Fabian Molina a former student of mine doing us proud by doing up a kick ass sketchbook and serving up copies hotter than hotcakes to lumberjacks.Here's my loot from the event, I was a strict budget this time but I still came home with awesomeness. What a great day. Only bummer was that hot dog from the cafe outside. Stay away from those, next time I bring my own lunch. If I saw you there, I hope you had a great time if I didn't let's make a point of going next year!

The Body Under Stress

I know anatomy. I've looked at flayed cadavers. But I'll admit, I don't really know the internal organs very well. So when I had to draw up the figure displaying the inner workings of the adrenal system as in the "flight or fight" response I had to crawl waay back through the dark, swampy memories of that med school class I took way back in '94. The one I stopped paying attention to once we got past exterior layer musculature. Well, I also sort of stopped paying attention because I was surrounded by all of those nursing student babes.....good times.
Ahem, anyway now I find that the notes I jotted down as far as relationship of skeleton to organ location actually helped after all.
So, as always I started with a quick gesture and ruffed in the skeleton, laid in the figure and then placed in the organs. The parts will be labeled as far as function, IE: the eyes widen, the blood vessels near the skin fill with blood, the mouth drops open for better respiration etc. I like this project!
Speaking of anatomy I didn't know before, but here's the limbic system. (I mean as an animator who is ever going to animate the limbic system?) But, just in case you were wondering where your amygdala and hippocampus live...

Figure Quick Sketches

So I've been spending a little time browsing blogs and what not and seeing all of the really great images that have been posted lately and I am feeling a little down because my own stuff is pretty blah of late. So with an apology to my four followers and anybody else who views this blog, I will make an effort to post cooler stuff in the near future. Thanks for sticking with me. Cool stuff on the way...really. I mean it. Okay cool stuff start happening....Cool stuff?

Robots In Color

The fact bots from before and in color. Fun stuff. Wee.

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The Stuff You Do Freelancing...

Hi. As you know, I'm illustrating and designing a book for high school students about emotions. There is a chapter on anger,fear, surprise, disgust,sadness and happiness and so on. I need to lay in clinically accepted photos of faces with these emotions, but have been waiting AND WAITING for my publisher to send them to me. I was forced to use myself as place holders. When they received the current ruffed version their comment was: "Oh...eww we'll get those to you."
So now I have this weird set of self portraits I thought I would torture you with. I know, I know I should have saved them for Troll Thursday.

Valentine's Day

So instead of going the easy route and just popping into the grocery store and buying some valentines for Amara's preschool peers, I decided to design some for her. I wanted to make the process fun for both of us and I sat her down and asked her what kind of valentines she would like to give, explaining Valentine's Day and so on. If you have spent any time around our house lately you'd know Amara is a BIG fan of the Tinkerbell movie which came out on DVD late last year so fairies were an easy choice. Amara and I started drawing up sketches as shown below.

Keep in mind that I was dealing with the attention span of a three year old so I had to draw as fast as I could. She liked the ones in the upper right but was a little disappointed that they didn't look exactly like Tinkerbell or Silvermist but I was able to move along.After some further deliberation and Amara changing her mind 10 more times before going back to to the fairies concept, we came up with these three fairies.Now, not everybody likes fairies (a concept very foreign to someone who watches Tinkerbell at least once a day) so I added dinosaurs and she liked the three above. We turned to the computer and started to paint these in Photoshop.Painting them was a blast, Amara sat on my knee and chose colors while I painted and talked about color choices and so on. As the images got more fleshed out before her eyes, she would giggle with enthusiasm. I had to do these quickly as she wanted paint as well. I would finish one and she would say "my turn" and grab the stylus and have a go. Below is an example of her handiwork. I felt the cards needed something on the back so I whipped this heart up. You would like this could be blasted out, but Amara sabotaged the process TWICE. Finally we got this nice little heart below.
We were ready to print them out. Here's an example of a pre-cut sheet. The actual cards are business card size 3.5x2".Here they are all printed out. That was a lot of fun, though I really didn't have the time to do it. Amara and I both enjoyed it and honestly I have worked for worse clients. Make your own and just know it's from Amara. Happy Valentine's Day!

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R2DTroll
Hans Trollo and Chew't
Princess Layer'd.
More later...

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Outdoor Doodle

Hello, We went to Monterey last Saturday and I actually found time to draw. If you have the chance take a trip to Denis the Menace Park. What a great place, I went there as a kid and now take my kids there. Pencil and Photoshop.