Comic Con and Billie's Ancestors

Comic Con 2011 was exciting.  It was great being able to meet up with friends, the yearly San Diego summer break for nerds are always a chance to see old friends.  I still missed a lot of people, the floor is just too big, and with other events happening in the city I wish I could just clone myself.

I picked up a ton of beautiful new books, along with meeting new people, and new opportunities.

Thank you to all who took the time to visit our panels and stopped by for the signing Sunday.  The children's book panel on Saturday was full, and I hope it was helpful to those who came.  Making a book and project of your own can be a daunting task, but it's a wonderful feeling to have a completed little collection sitting in your hands.  Good luck to those who attempt the journey!

On Sunday I was signing at Tr!ckster, and was very happy to trade art with many talented people who came by.  I have to really thank the kind people that were running the pop up store.  I'm so very grateful to have had the chance to sign books and meet people from around the country and the world.  I had the lucky chance to meet an animator and artist I truly admire.

Yo Yoshinari stopped by with a copy of Billie, it was the high point of a week that was already amazing.  He was nice enough to give me sketch of Canti and Gurren Lagann.  I gave him a small sketchbook, but it was left accidently during the confusion of the signing.  Anyone out there have a way to contact him so I can send him a Thank You?  I hope I wasn't embarrassing, I was just very happy to meet him.  :)

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Now onto some old art that I showed at Saturday's panel.  Sorry I was a mumbling mess, I was really nervous.  Luckily everyone else had their game together!  Major thanks to Mike Collins, Eric Haeger, Eric Gonzales, Beth Sleven, and Steph Laberis!  Go bother them if you want to see what they presented.

Billie grew out of my 4th year film from college, in 2002.  The year I graduated wasn't a great time for 2D feature animation.  I was fully aware I'd probably never get to animate professionally, but not sure which path I should take once school was over.  I tried my best to learn all I could, and attempted to go into illustration.  I also had no idea on how to prepare a portfolio for TV animation, or even what type of jobs were available. Worrying about all these things was physically exhausting and I was burnt out before I graduated.  "Ooney Corn" suffers from severe Senioritis.

These crude scribblings were from 2001, first semester, when I was planning and trying to figure out what I wanted to make for my last film of my college life.

After graduating, I was one of a lucky few who found a job.  It was at a 3rd party video game company.  I think I acquired an ulcer there, it was extremely stressful. After nine months, they laid off most of their animators.  I didn't have any family or friends close by, and was feeling pretty lonely. So I decided to dump all my new free time into figuring out what my senior film should have been.  Felt it would be the best to make something positive of the situation.

In 2004 I was fortunate and found a job on "Teen Titans".  My coworkers at the time suggested I put  sketchbooks together for Comic Con.  Stuart Ng Books was nice enough to carry "Banana Cat", and Immedium contacted me if I'd like to make a children's book. I had an idea for a Scarecrow Princess, but I couldn't get the story to work.  It felt really forced to me.

About the time I figured out that I couldn't draw that story for 36 pages, I drew some unicorns for "The Unicorn Show" at Gallery Nucleus in 2006.  They were too much fun too draw, and they merged into all the drawings I had made after school.  

I wanted to make a book for my family and friends who'd stuck with me for so long, and I also wanted it to be for anyone who loves unicorns.  Young and old.

I made thumbnails and a script to pitch to my publisher.  These aren't part of the final pitch, just thumbnails.

I stopped working on it when I was unemployed 2008-2009.  Taking tests to find a paying job was eating up most of my time, and I also tried pitching to the Cartoonstitute.  I actually made a full animatic with music from The OneUps.  Even though I didn't get that final approval, it forced me to try story boards again, and it was enough to help get storyboard freelance.  Michael Chang was nice enough to let me try storyboarding on "Batman: Brave and the Bold".  Once I was working and learning new tricks, I redrew the layouts on Billie.  I had about four pages fully markered, but had to push the book back another year.  I was in two of my close friends weddings, and Batman was a high maintenance guy.  My publisher was very understanding and rescheduled my book.

These are all the colors I used just for Billie. I had a set of colors for each character figured out to keep them consistent.  I tried anyway.  XP

Not sure if I touched on any of this during the panel.  I blocked out what happened -_-.  I was also going to show a WIP trailer I had been working on for Billie.  The trailer was put aside last spring when some interesting events happened at my job.  It's all very good news, I'm just going to extremely busy these next few months.  Happiness!!!

In the meantime, here's the trailer I hope to get back to some day.  I drew the boards quickly in photoshop,  edited them together in premiere, and used the movie file as a guide.  The scenes that are animated are still rough.  I used the paint brush in flash, a rough pass, and a clean up pass.  I want to try coloring it in photoshop, but it's time consuming.  Maybe someday.

The music is WIP by Mustin and Kunal Majmudar of The OneUps and The Bad Dudes.  Please visit them and tell them you love them!!!!  

Sorry for the wordy post!

Romance and Hotdogs

Since this is the week of romance and I forgot to draw anything anti-romantic, here is something old.
It is from the year 2000, and involves romance, hotdogs, and a date at the movies. It was drawn in pencil and crayon (oh I thought I was being a clever 19 year old! Ha.) It is horrible, horrible, horrible, but appropriate for Valentine's Day!



I tried looking for my old storyboards and sketches, but thankfully they are mostly hidden away in a dark basement in Washington State. I found some xeroxes.
A drawing full of tangents!!

Hamsters drawn on a Wendy's napkin!!

A calendar I made for myself and friends so we'd get our films turned in on time! (I totally finished on the 15th, but worked thru spring break missing a trip to Japan. Stupid, stupid!)

The film was colored with crayons I stole from restaurants in Valencia, CA. Mostly the macaroni and cheese crayola. I got this one when a bunch of us went to Macaroni Grill for Easter. They have fancy crayolas there. And diarrhea.

I kept them in this fancy Elmo tin my Grandma Pat had sent me full of cookies!

I had to pull the film from an old VHS. I'm pretty sure my Jaz drive still works, I dropped the stupid thing down the stairs multiple times. I think it's a vampire. Alot of people had to buy multiple drives because they kept dying. Even if mine still works, the technology is outdated. I don't know how to get the files off, they're Targa anyway. The CD I had of everything burned on just confuses my computers. I have a couple of DVD rams sitting around too. Hate those things

Here is my stupid maquette I made in Ranjo's class. It is dirty.

Skippy finds him delicious.

My sophomore year, one of the seniors was leaving fake tickets for people on their desks. I found this with all my crappy xeroxes.


Current stuffs. Been drawing mostly large muscled men at work, so I don't feel too bad about doodling a bunch of stupid girls.



I drew the angel in the middle while listening to Origa's version of "There Must be an Angel"

Corny Cole

1997, the insanely talented Corny Cole. The young lass in the bottom photo is the sweet talented miss Destiny Wood.

Alot of people know Corny, and many know of his situation at the moment. He has been an inspiration to many, a helpful mentor, and friend. I've known him since 1996. He was my first figure drawing teacher and I took some of his fantastic painting classes. He's always been very supportive and would often bring artwork from various periods of his life to class. Sometimes it would be old books of his favorite illustrators, a beautiful painting, a relief made in sculpy, layouts from "Little Nemo", the epic animation he made for "Heavy Metal". Alot of these were lost in the fires last week, along with his pets.
I know this info can be found in many places already, but just a reminder if anyone would like to help Corny out during this rough time, here are some places to donate and contact:
Creative Talent Network Paypal Corny Cole donation account

Also you can snail mail:
Checks payable to Corny Cole
California Institute of the Arts
ATT: Trish Patryla, Office of the Provost
24700 McBean Parkway
Valencia, CA 91355

There also maybe an auction fundraiser, but I'm not sure who is in charge of it or running it. If anyone knows, please contact me. I'd like to contribute.

Fly me to the moon

I drew these for a friend's recent birthday. She collects some of the toys, so I thought these might be nice for her depressed children collection. Staying up drawing these brought back alot of memories from art school. It's funny, alot of people assume all we watched were "The Jungle Book" and Nine old men animation, but we were introduced to "Evangelion" end of our freshman year in 1999. A group of us borrowed the complete series from a friend and watched all the episodes in less than a week. The next fall, we watched "End of Evangelion", and the nerds debated what the whole thing meant. One of our story teachers used to bring clips in from the anime for various examples. There is some amazing animation in the show, and alot of media references it nowadays.
Gainax is producing four movies retelling the story, the first one was released in Japan not too long ago. Here is the first trailer and the second trailer for "Rebuild of Evangelion". I think WETA may still be working on a live action movie based on "Evangelion". Good luck to them if they are, they have a huge task in front of them.



Banana Cat!

March 1996..........wooo!!!!!!!!

New year!!! Every budday! Every budday!! So here is a 10 yr old drawing from the first sketchbook I ever kept and finished. It's from xmas 95'-March 96' Like a lot of people who like to draw, I'd been drawing since I could hold a pencil, (or keep me from running around and having asthma attacks) but I didn't start keeping a lot of them in book form until sophomore year in highschool. It does help being able to look back and see how much was learned and how much there is left to learn. Sketchbooks are great, they are like little file organizers for your brain, and would probably be beneficial to any artist who kept one, which a lot do!
So I officially feel old this year! Yay!!! Summer 1996 I went to a thing called California State Summer School for the Arts (CSSSA, renamed recently to Innerspark). They take out of state students also, so that was why I was able to go. At the time, the teachers there for animation were Christine Panushka (who now teaches at USC, sweet, inspirational gal!), Gary Shwartz, Ruth Hayes, Corny Cole, and Leo Hobaica. It was a neat program where young aspiring artists could meet other young aspiring artists from around the country, take crash courses in animation, including it's history and many forms, tour studios and meet professionals, guest speakers, and meet artists of different discipline. Art college was a bit different, we had so much work to do, it was hard to mingle with students in different programs. I'm still friends with many of the people I met there. Some are married with cute little babies, others have found different careers that float their boat, and some have blogs too. So 1996 was a cool year for highschool students who had been bored out of their mind knowing what they wanted to do, and finally knowing what needed to be done to get there. And it'll never be done, there are so many cool things to see or do. Yup. Down below is a schedule from the first week of CSSSA 97' (I went for one more summer). They had us go to a screening of Renee Laloux's films "Fantastic Planet" and one about some space time travelers. He was there and told us the difficulties of getting the movies made. I don't remember going to the Leonard Nemoy thing, sadly, I was probably WORKING on an assignment or something. Other than CSSSA, 1996 was spent drawing, jogging, and playing Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 3. Sweet.