In an airport

Things are people I saw in the airport back from the CTN-X, except for the guy in the crown, who is the Monarch from Venture Brothers, the guy under him, who is my interpretation of Garrison Keillor from memory, and the guy to the right of him, who is Mr Howell, by 10th Grade English teacher, from memory.

the bird is not a person either, but he was in the terminal, eating crumbs that I clumsily kept dropping.

CTN-X presents John Tucker

I'm back from the CTN Animation Expo, and while I only took two pictures, both blurry, of Scott Morse drawing a space tiger, I filled many sketchbook pages with the life model stylings of John Tucker. This guy showed up every day, two costumes per day, two minute poses...It was awesome. I quickly decided I had less to gain from straight life drawing (see top) than from taking the pose and pushing shapes and lines into interesting combos. The craziest, alas, I left on the floor on the last day. There wasn't a moment at that place that was wasted, as far as I'm concerned.

Namedropping: I met Stephen Silver, Scott Morse, Bill Presing, Peter de Seve, Lou Romano, and Craig McCracken, and I glanced at Don Bluth's booth for a second, but avoided getting too close for fear of contracting diabetes, or turning into a singing kitten or something.

"we're all mad here"

Really, Fox News is so disassociated from reality, this metaphor practically writes itself.

Four different variations of the exact same piece. The second one got fudged with the clouds, so ignore the clouds. They're supposed to look like the clouds in the other ones.

The point is, which one is better. I have my favorites, other people have theirs.

Three Mile Angel

Okay. Here's the process. This first sketch, which I did in my shiny new sketchbook while eating a pizza pretzel at 10 at night in a Barnes and Noble.


I thought it was an interesting idea, so I pursued it along the avenue of, what would make an angel's head explode? Maybe their heads explode when they're mad?

Okay, not that interesting. So what? I decided Fred was not a good name for an angel, and started researching angels and saints, and other celestial beings whose might conceivably explode. It turns out that Christians aren't that keen on names Saints and angels after things like destruction and anger and nuclear holocaust. I'd have to make my own.

Right? So now I have a bottom-up angel of...Wrath? Heavy Metal? Elmer Fudd? Saint Angus, Patron of Rawk? Clearly, this whole things about the angel being mad is not working. Wouldn't it be compelling if this explosive angel of destruction (I never really left the idea) was still calm and angelic while he spread mass chaos and radioactive devastation? Let's try that. The key is to create a scene that leaves the angel as the focal point, while creating a viable and interesting setting to place it in.

It's hard, so I went the minimalist approach.


Simple, yeah?

Let's see what might be the final.



I'm still not entirely happy with it. One person commented that putting the angel off-center would make for a more interesting composition, and I agree. But I still like the simplicity of this. Any other element would potentially take away from the impact.

So I'm not going to change anything until I know for sure it will improve the piece.

Let me know, yah?

Time enough for everyone else

I was walking somewhere and thinking about the nature of time, which I do a lot, when suddenly, this visual metaphor for the way we slice up our day to deal with our various external obligations popped into my head.

I'd write more, but I'm very busy right now.