Do you know why they're called "argonauts"? Because the ship they're on is the Argo, which is named after the guy who built the ship, Argos. I never knew that until I watched it again today!




Medea was really hard to draw in profile. She's pretty, but she's got some crazy bone structure where it looks like her cheekbones are swollen, and her eyes are always kinda twitchy and vacant. But she's still one of my favorite characters in the movie anyway. She also wears the most unbearably inaccurate costumes...the Greeks didn't have corsets, and they didn't invent the wasp waist...but what the hell! It's the sixties! Everybody is shiny and orange and it's great.

Hercules' hand is missing because the paper ended. I'm constantly drawing too big for the surface that I've allowed myself. I'll add his hand later, with a giant broach pin in it. And just to prove that I'm not lazy, here's some sketches from the movie:





Archer!

Yes, I'm starting to feel rather tense these days. Portfolio day is a very big day, and I don't want to jinx myself by saying this, but in my CalArts career I've never earned a single callback from it. It's not like my life depends on it or anything, but just the same, wish me luck.

It's not argonauts, but it's better than nothing.




The ensemble cast of Captain Scratchy Beard, compiled for the portfolio...I think they need to be a little bigger. These fine folks and the captain himself, and the sticky cat and the capn's daughter, will be appearing in the Producer's Show! If you were fortunate enough to snag an oh-so coveted ticket, then I'll see you there.

Okay, well, yeah, I didn't die or anything.


This is what's been happening: I FINISHED MY FILM!!! Hoorah!


So I'm done with that! The final thing came out to almost six minutes (longer than I had thought), and somehow I got it in two days early, by some stroke of luck or genius or timing or maybe the universe is about to implode. I thought I was going to be working up until the last possible day, as usual.

So, Captain Scratchy Beard lives. And I can't wait until the Open Show this Friday...I've seen a couple films, a few snippets, a few teasers and tests and so on, but the Open Show is where it all comes together. And my dad is coming down to see it like he does every year, so that'll be fun!

And then, PORTFOLIO DAY! Ugh. So that's what I'm working on now. Sadly, I have nothing to post, since I dare not set foot inside the labs to scan or upload anything (there's nothing worse when you are working on your film and winding down to the last hours than when someone comes waltzing through going "I'm done! I'm done!"), and I feel like I really need a little breaky-break anyway, drink some tea, read a book, paint my fingernails, junk like that.

But soon, I promise, I've been dying to draw some stuff from Jason and the Argonauts since I saw it again a few weeks ago, so expect some Neptunes and greasy sixties-style Greek dudes coming your way.

Thanks everyone for the big response for the indie kids! I like them too, they remind me of CSSSA. The one in the bottom left corner is me. I used to drink soda and wear fairy wings (dork).

Yay for life post-crunchtime!

Pink trees and indie kids.

I'm so tired.

Here, look at this:

Here's my assignment from Shane and Shannon's character design class. I liked the way this one turned out. Somehow I did this and then ran out of steam for the other two, so I'm not postin' those. They turned out yucka. But here's my Tiny Tim!





Here's what a really wanted to do: the assignment was to design Scrooge, Marley's ghost and Tiny Tim, and I thought it would be amazing to do then in 1960's style, and make Tim a big-eyed Keane style waif, holding a stray cat and crying, and then give scrooge a nappy old 40's style suit and show him walking through a courtyard full of mods and Audrey-Hepburn-in-Charade style gals, but where does that leave Marley's ghost?? Anyway, I decided to just hop into 1840's style, but in that case I should have designed some ladies too, cause hoop skirts were IN and those things are crazy! Oh well. Later I suppose.


Trying to finish animation before Spring Break, which starts on the 24th. If I can manage that then I'll not only feel like a super-duper star, but I'll actually stand a chance of getting the whole film done. It might get rowdy but I'll do the best I can.

Here's a quick post: This little guy is my first crack at coloring something using nothing but photoshop. And Neysa made these little stamp swatches of fabrics (she's a fashion student) and I used the denim one for the jeans. It was pretty fun, and you can undo all your boo-boo's. Yay!

Well, I guess this is what's happening: even though I KNOW I should be working on my film there is a big TRIBE of awesome, rad, bitchin' character designers coming to our school within like, a week of each other. So here I am spending one million hours in the lab trying to make my scribbly-poop drawings look pretty, so I can actually get advice from people who KNOW what they're doing! And construct a decent portfolio from the rubble of tiny pieces of paper that are pinned up all over my cube! Because you see, to date, as of this moment, the highlight of my career as any kind of character designer is this: eating Joe Moshier's hashbrowns and Cheny Yi Chang's coleslaw at Denny's late on a Wednesday night. That's it for me.




These are INSANELY old. They're from second year, when Alex Kirwan came and gave us a little character design workshop in Shane's class. I had so much fun!! The only redeeming quality of these two are their names: Twiggy and Chubbers. Alex Hirsch loves this junk.

And El Deatho, the villian counterpart to Twig and Chubs...


This is NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART! Submarella is a grotesque, yucky creation that was the result of a conversation between myself and Alex Hirsch. She's yucka. I know. She's a mermaid manatee, or WOMANatee, if you will. When explorers from Europe first saw manatees in tropical waters, they thought they were mermaids. How could they make such a mistake?? Beats me. Perhaps they were Adrian Molina's Spanish ancestors, which would explain his obsession with her.

WELL this isn't a boy's only post, but it's at least an equal number of boys and girls. Next one, I promise!



I colored this rather slap-dash-edly in photoshop. But I made it small so you can't see all my screw ups. I'll fix all the boo boo's for portfolio time...UGH. 18th century clothing is SO cool...the shapes that people contort their bodies into for fashion are completely exaggerated and mostly wierd (that said, I should have exaggerated them a little more now that I look at it). But that goes for the whole history of fashion, I guess. More than anything I noticed that in the 18th century people look bored and slightly annoyed. I guess that was the "cool" look, opposed to todays 'cool' look of bored and slightly drugged. I guess I'd be intensely bored and annoyed if I had to stand still for one million hours to get my portrait painted, though.



Okay, it's not Valentine's Day anymore, I know. Whatever. Here's the card I made for Sean. I think it looks like him. He said I made him look like a fat cat. "You think I'm fat, don't you? I'm FAT aren't I?!" No! I don't ! I can't say that the ginger tabby looks a lot like me but that's what it's supposed to be. I've been told I'd be a siamese. Us as cats. Anthropophormism, away!

To start out with, here's what my little plot in the char anim show looked like. Those elaborate, beautiful golden flowery branches are from my Oma's house. She doesn't know I stole them. Don't tell her! It's sideways, sorry. Oops.



So, it's been a while. I always start to feel guilty when I don't post often as I can. I don't have a whole lot to show though, because I've been hammering away at old Scratchy Beard (the film) all week! Here are some sketches which have been dolled up with photoshop, because color always illicits a more emotional reaction.

Stewardesses from my sketchbook...










This hula hoop drawing was meant to become a painting but it never made it, cause I ran out of time. Someday! It was going to be part of a triptych, which is fancy artist speak for three paintings hung up next to each other. The other two were going to be "loop de loop" and "chupa chup", like the delicious sucker.


I love historical costume...and screwing around in photoshop late at night. I wanted to give her a full color treatment buuuutt...it's late and I'm sleepy!

I think I need to draw boys more. My inclination is always towards drawing girls, since I grew up thinking boys were gross and stupid and that girls are pretty and nice. I think guys have an equally difficult time drawing girls, since they spend their childhoods trying to draw every muscle on He-man or whatever. Okay. I'll try to draw more dudes. Maybe the next post will be guy-drawings only.

That's all for now, folks. I'm taking the day off tomorrow. I'm pooped.

What better way to spend your weekend than lying in bed, sick as a dog? Ugh. I'm definitly in recovery now, but even a gentle touch of the flu pretty much knocks you on your butt. Better now than in the middle of crunch time though. To mark my triumphant return to life and school, here are the rest of the pieces that I put in the show last week!


Pink trees. The corner is missing, because I had some trouble scanning it...it's kinda big. Acrylic on cardboard.

Goauche, pencil and rhinestones. On cardboard!

Tiny self portrait...

Tiny portrait...

Tiny record player!

Now to catch up with everything that got away from me this weekend...wish me luck!

Ooh la la! A top secret post from my top secret files...this is an actual scene from my film, all colored and stuff.

I get these fine art inklings...the urge to make an image that doesn't really have anything to do with anything, but it's still pretty to look at. I've been doing that lately for the CharAnim show. These are little painting/collages on little peices of cardboard. They're not supposed to mean anything. They're just exercises in composing and messing around. I dug into my ancient box of tiny scraps of paper (I keep such a box because I guess I have a hard time letting go of construction paper scraps, old stickers, rhinestones and ticket stubs, etc.) and used some of those gems to construct THESE!

Whoa whoa whoa! It's Tokyo Disneyland!


Main St, USA (much larger than the original).

Inside the Alice in Wonderland themed restuarant! I didn't eat there. Even though I wanted to. Really bad.

The lanterns in the tea cup ride! The ride is covered in Japan, I guess because they have such yucka weather.

The Mickey Mouse Revue Theatre, apparantly designed by Eyvind Earle. It was a popular show! There was a huge line outside.

THE CASTLE! It was very gothic. I guess it's supposed to be Cinderella's castle though, which is odd because I thought that movie took place in the late 1800's...uh, I don't know. But it was a HUGE castle, makes the one here look real puny, and it had an amazing mosaic on the inside that I had a really hard time getting a good photo of (it was dark and there were people walking in front of it.)

Here's a blurry image of part of the mosaic...it was the Cinderella story, but in the style of Sleeping Beauty. Wierd. But beautiful!

Electrical parade! I was so excited I RAN when I heard it coming.



Mmmm...curry popcorn.

Inside Small World! The one here is better.

Detail of the afore mentioned mosaic. Whoever did this did a really good job.

The covered Main St. This is pretty much the first thing you see when you enter the park.



Yay! Meanwhile, back at school, I'm just flipping out as usual, trying to figure out if I should spend my time working on my film, my portfolio, my character designs, paintings for the upcoming show, my cooking skills, or if I should waste more time screwing around with my blog.

WELL, it's been a while, but I'm back! Gearing up for the last semester PLUS recovering from my recent travels. We're having a show for the Character Animation department this month, and the big opening is on the 25th. I didn't participate last year but I'm definitly in this year, so here are a couple of doodly paintings I did just for the occasion:




You know, it's Gidget and Moondoggy. Gouache on that cardboard that comes from the back of a pad of paper.

And here are some photographs direct from my camera! Yes a REAL camera, with film and complex internal mechanisms and f-stops! This is Ueno Park, Tokyo. I spent a long time wondering through this park, hungry. I was hungry most of the time I was there (Japan is, contrary to popular belief, not at all vegetarian friendly, a problem that is only further complicated if you speak zero Japanese...) But the park itself was huge, and lovely, and full of shrines and playgrounds and manx cats and museums.