TELLING STORIES

Most of you that visit this often NOT updated blog are interested in story . If you are one of those people I would HIGHLY recommend this book written by my friend Brian McDonald-Invisible Ink. I was very lucky to run into him when I was very young in my career and it made a big difference in steering me. He started writing a blog that is chock full of practical advice for writers and artists who tell stories. There are alot of books out there about this medium but most of them are for analyzing stories after the fact or create confusion using highfalutin words which only make people feel stupid , some even have graphs and charts that start to look like football plays. But if you are actually creating stories I would say his book would benefit you more than most.
Brian clears away the useless and makes visible what was previously hidden , then tells you how to hide it again. But don't take my word for it listen to these yahoos

“Writing stories is hard. They are stubborn by nature. No matter how many times you master one, the next story is obligated to conceal its faults with an entirely new disguise. Your only recourse is to keep writing, while concurrently increasing your understanding of this deceivingly simple, yet highly complex, organism we call story. Brian McDonald’s insightful book does just that. Somehow, Brian has found yet another fresh and objective way to analyze how great stories function, and emboldens you to face the challenge of scaling whatever story mountain looms before you. If I manage to reach the summit of my next story it will be in no small part due to having read Invisible Ink.”

—Andrew Stanton (cowriter Toy Story, Toy Story 2, A Bug’s Life, Monsters, Inc., and cowriter/director Finding Nemo and WALL-E)

“Invisible Ink is a powerful tool for anyone who wants to become a better screenwriter.With elegance and precision, Brian McDonald uses his deep understanding of story and character to pass on essential truths about dramatic writing. Ignore him at your peril.”

—Jim Taylor (Academy Award™- winning screenwriter of Sideways and Election)

“Brian McDonald knows that underneath a good story are the difficult mechanics of plot. He offers insights into both the construction needed and the art of hiding that construction.”

—Jim Uhls (screenwriter of Fight Club)

also here

Utnapishtim

I've been incredibly busy with everything! This doodle is from a long term project that I can't seem to get to, so I thought "Why not post it?"Not the final design and just a hint of the amount of exploratory sketches done to try and find the look of a character.

More Cards

Been awhile since the last post,......a looooooong while. Working on alot of stuff thatI can't make public, sorry. Did another round with Topps. Hope you all enjoy. Hopefully have more stuff soon(relatively).

Charity Auction

Tonight at work, an impromptu auction for Breast Cancer and AIDS patients and research. This is from an idea my wife keeps kicking around about a brother and sister. The title is " My Brother is the Worst Pirate I know(thankfully his men are not!)" A.K.A. "The Key". I hope it finds a good home.

The Great Pumpkin!!

As a lad growing up in Eastern Europe. As for me, well with our show released, I have found very little time to do any fun work for myself. I try to use at least one Holiday a year to do something, this year it's Holoween/Samhain/Day of the Dead. I've always like Linus' story about the Great Pumpkin and decided to add a little history to that familiar Autumnal gourd. I hope this finds you all well!!
This weekend I will be dropping by APE to see some of my friends work (Le Tang, Jackie Huang and Derek the Monster Thompson to name a few). If you have the time please come on by and support some Alternate Press!

ORDER 66

Wow! So a few of us at work decided to do 66 sketchcards for Topps. With production being in full swing and several things on fire,San Diego Con looming, and just trying to live life, it was excruciatingly hard! But fun,..really, it was fun. What kept me going was thinking how cool it would be to open a package and find a card done by one of the crew. Some of these I feel proud of, some of them not so much, but in the end I'm honored and glad that I got the chance to do it. I am still trying to figure out what happened at the Con. I will be posting pics and musings next time.

COMICON!!

I apologize for not posting, I hope you haven't all given up. It's been really busy at the studio(more later) and it's also been really busy at home,,,,getting ready for San Diego ComiCon!! I am sharing a booth with some fellow Coworkers at Booth#1329.
I will be selling 2 prints and an anthology I did a couple years back called Babes in Space. These are some of my booth mates work

BattleMilk

-you may not have heard of them but that shouldn't stop you from drinking it in! Do it!

Who is BattleMilk?? Who indeed....
Kilian Plunkett-lead designer on the television Clone Wars, Comic book artist extraordinaire and all around fun guy
Thang Le-fastest designer in the West, silent but deadly, so very deadly
Wayne Lo-Art Director for the video game Lair,man of mystery and brand new papa
and
Jackson Sze -bringing art and style to the devil box!

Who else??

The Fantastic Work of Kinman Chan

Bosco Ng

-watch out ladies, he has x-ray eyes!!!

Le Tang

-genuinely one of the most talented and nicest story artists around, until he starts cussing

Steward Le

-Pulse pounding action Sifu and fellow Episodic Director on the Clone Wars TV series

Our sister booth over here at Table H09 . Sports such mighty talents such as

Captain Russel Chong

-You can salute if you want

Kelsey Mann

-careful, he's watching you!

Jackie Huang

-builderbot, creator and all around tinkerer

Want more? Well your in luck! The Jew Bros. are creating a talent vortex in artist alley
Benton-table EE02
Anson-table EE01
One time team member but now affiliated with another justice orginization will be defending Booth #1534

Derek Thompson

-the original Monster!

along with

Ted Mathot

-Amazon worshiper and yarn spinner

Justin Ridge-tall in stature and talent, deal with it
Sho Murase-modern day Nancy Drew modern day cool

Not full yet? You dare!? Then fill your talent void with the following....
See and hear some of the above mega talents speak about the sacred texts in

PANEL #2 10:50-11:35am Using 3D Story in The Clone Wars Series
Room 7AB

stay for all the talks and you may be deemed worthy of a reward!!!

To Recap
booth #1329 - BattleMilk,Prints,Sketchbooks,Comics
table # H09- books,gifts,portfolios,prints
booth #1534 - monster sketches,Comics
Artist Alley
table#EE02 - Raw Talent
table#EE01- Unbrideled Talent

We would love to see you, so come on by, and remember to support the little guys!

For Another Friend

Henry Gilroy is an awesome writer. Hire him! I got to work with him on a project an WOW!! He knows his stuff. He carries around a sketchbook with the theme of "Your favorite Robert E Howard / HP Lovecraft character". I just happen to love both those authors ability to create some neat visceral visuals. I was happy to do a piece, or two. Of course having the book be over half filled with Bruce Timm's homages, tends to dampen ones ability. These were the best I could do.

WHEN IS A SKETCH NOT A SKETCH

I was driving home about a week ago(the sun goes down around 8:00 right now) and I saw a hill with a window of golden light hitting it. There were hills higher around it but this one was the only one that was getting hit. I thought"Hey that would be a nice painting,...if that hill was a dinoasaur." I finally had a little time this weekend and I wanted to just do a little sketch so I wouldn't forget that hill top. About an hour in, I still thought I was doing a sketch


I had 2 versions before this, and it started flopped in the other direction. The gist of the piece is there. I have quite a few of these at this stage (and that's where they will stay). I usually stop at this point. For some reason I felt like I needed more from this image, to make it richer or more complete to me.


I added some atmosphere and foreground elements. This is where I got into trouble. Now I felt like I needed to clean up a mess that I made. I started trying to fix my mistakes in the "sketch". (the compy's looked like velociraptors and the diplodocus looked like a weird 3 legged beast) but I still thought I was doing a sketch(now 3 hours in).


Here's the semi final version.

So I think it must have been when I exported the image from Photoshop to Painter to use the Glow Brush. Yeah that was when I realized this was more than just a sketch. Still less than a "real" piece but much more than a sketch. It's important to go with the flow since you never know when the flow will come. Not my favorite piece but , there you go.
Based off of the response from this piece I am "finishing" it off and may present it in some final form later.

Far East Facetasm

Artists fall into ruts, blocks and bad habits. We do everything to get out of them once we realize we have fallen. Changing the way we draw, using new materials, looking at new things and the best, looking at life, or uh,TV. Yep that's right TV. I often use TV to do cheap life drawing(I say cheap because the brain is doing a 2D to 2D translation which is alot easier than doing a 3D to 2D translation)I was watching a neat little movie with some amazing faces and couldn't resist. I love faces! Sometimes you can see a persons whole story as it is written on there face. And their is beauty in it all.There is a Japanese story I would like to tell someday but it's far too soon to actually tell it. So as a visual person I have to draw my way through it.

See Out Loud

One of the more uncomfortable aspects of blogging is the seeming self importance and vanity that is inherit to it and art as well. So I always relish the opportunity to talk about a fellow artist and friend who's doing exceptionally well,......like my friend and fellow director Warren Fu. He just finished directing a music video for The Strokes. If you want to see more of his work check out his website over there on the side of the screen.

(If you want to check out the video click image above)

What I've been up to

The reason for infrequent and sporadic posts has been because I've been working with some amazing people on a new TV show, that takes an incredible amount of my personal time, but that I am very proud to be a part of. It won't be out any time soon but they officially announced it this past weekend. So now it's OK to let you guys know. Just doing my small part to feed the Nerds of the world(myself included).
(click on the image above if you want a sneak peak)

Todd is a Konig

I was dumbfounded when I saw this as a teen. I thought "Wow! Konig must be some sort of new curse word and man Todd really is a Konig." A few years later, questions always stay below the surface for me, I found out that I misread a very nihillistic german T-shirt. Tod ist Konig-Death is King. Uggh! The shirt also had a snappy graphic. Onto a personal Konig of mine Killian Plunket. It's his birthday this weekend sometime and I made this little card for him.

MOVING CLOSER TO THE PRESENT

Been incredibly busy of late, so I'm cheating, a little. A coworker of mine had a great idea to pass a book around to all of her friends she worked with to have a little piece of history to look back upon, before she left the company we were working for. I was so touched that she wanted me in the book, so I did this little piece. She told me I could take however long I needed, just as long as she got it back. She had about 3 other beautiful pieces before I did my scribble. I returned the book to her 3 months before she moved on to another job. Cut to 1 year later when the office was doing some Spring cleaning. I noticed a familiar sketchbook lying in the rubbish bin. Well I've been poor in my life and scrounged for any kind of paper to draw on, so I have the habit of collecting paper just in case I ever run out. Yep you guessed it. The sketchbook now had 4 drawings and the start of a 5th (another office mates who was still at the company). I was a little shocked, yeah maybe more than a little. I showed it to the office mate who had started the piece that was unfinished. "Oh, Yeah,Hmmm. Heh". He didn't even want it back to finish the piece or give it back to the original owner. OUCH!

For my 2 Friends

Some of us are lucky enough to have amazing and talented friends. I was lucky enough to be taught alot about what I do by my good friend Brian McDonald (see his Blog Invisible Ink on the side over there). He has a sketchbook that gets passed along and the theme of the book is " Your Favorite KIRBY Character". He was silly enough to ask me to do one, well that was a little problem. I don't have ONE favorite Kirby character. So I went a little crazy, cause Jack Kirby was one of my first friends, granted I never knew him, but his drawings made my life easier, and by my definition that makes a friend of a sort. So even though these are a little old (egads!! Is that really TEN years ago?!) I thought I would share. Brian's book also sports some amazing talent
William Stout-Devil Dinosaur
Rick Geary-Hulk
Bob Fingerman-Silver Surfer
John Romita-Thing
Beto Hernandez-Hulk
Xaime Hernandez-Super Skrull
Art Adams-IronMan
Scott Williams-Captain America
And many many more. It's an awesome collection and I am humbled to be part of it.

retro love

This was a throw away sketch that I can't throw away. This is from one of my favorite scenes in the original Frankenstein movie. If you haven't seen it (say it ain't so!) it's a brief moment of happiness for my friend the monster where he experiences some of the good things in life, eating, smoking, friendship and music. I went out and read the book after the movie and it fell flat for me. I realized it was Boris Karloff that made that monster so wonderful to me. The monster in the book looked nothing like the Universal version and vice versa. To this day he is one of my favorites. Not one of my best pieces but one I really like.

Keep an Eye Out

For good compositions. That was a piece of advice I got from reading about Alex Toth. Specifically

-Study films, photographs, paintings, etc. for composition! For cutting, cropping out of nonessentials, pacing, punch, economy, forceful and direct impact. But also for beauty and subtlety-tension, suspense, action, humor, light and dark, balance, line vs, mass, ad infinitum! Use it all!

Always be looking, they are out there. If you're an artist it's not about turning it on and off it's about always being aware. Over break I got to watch alot of movies, some oldies. One was a Jubal(1956). A story with Glenn Ford, Charles Bronson and Ernest Borgnine. Some really great cinematography. One shot jumped out at me, not a big story point but a great technical shot, which the film is filled with( a lot of night shots with lit barns, 1956 people!!) . It's shot at sunset where the sky is still lit but not the ground. I was really impressed that the shot actually worked. the film was shot by Charles Lawton Jr. and directed by Delmer Davies. So I decided to do a quick sketch. This is my impression of the shot more than anything else, just trying to keep loose before diving into a bunch of boards( yes working over break). Hope everyone had a great holiday and sorry about not having a Holiday card this year( see above parenthesis). We miss ya Alex! Into the New Year!!!

I Know what I'm Getting

...for the Holidays. Sorry folks it's been really busy lately. This is just a little do dad that was sitting around. Did I mention I like gorillas? Cause I really do! I like movies about them( even ones about them sniffing their own poo) I like pictures of them, I like dolls and documentaries, I like other people who like them. I like sculptors that sculpt them, I like just about everything about them. They are amazing!!If the spirit moves you check out the

Gorilla Foundation

They do good work and have great plans. And for you phantom viewers you daily surfers drop me a line. It's nice to know who's actually looking at all this crap.

Oh for the Love of the Leader

I apologize for my absence. I left the company I have been working at for the past 10 years and hit the ground running at a relatively new start up. To be honest after Alex Toth's passing I didn't feel like posting anymore of my chicken scratch, I've been dealing with alot of loss lately. But life goes on just as death and change. And as much as things can change they can be the same. For example, this new post is a going away card for one of the amazing new guys I got to work (albeit briefly) with. This card was done for one Rick Morales ( an amazing board artist). Rick and one Steward Lee started a "jam pin-up". Steward did the Hulk and Rick did the the Wolverine. Justin Ridge came in with a very round Spider Woman and Dave Bullock zinged it with a really nice Longshot. Well, now every one is picking on one of my favorite angry green behemoths. I couldn't add to this travesty so I had to remedy it. Enter the Leader!!! Now is he controlling the Hulk or the rest of the bunch, hmmm...

Alex Toth, 1928-2006

So sad. Though we all aspire to his greatness we are less with his passing.