Welcome to Dragon Training

Hello readers! Much time has passed since the last post, for many things have been occupying my time. The purchase of a Condo being one of the biggest time consumers, but also because in the past year I've been enjoying a position as a Final Layout Artist at DreamWorks Animation working on the next upcoming film "How To Train Your Dragon".


The experience has been incredible to say the least. It has been a continuous challenge, both in artistry and stamina, but the rewards have been invaluable. The amount of things I am learning about stereo, cinemetography, camerawork, staging, and visual storytelling make the job well worth the efforts alone, besides of course all the fantastic benefits that the company itself provides us. It is awesome to get to work at a union shop and experience what The Animation Guild has to offer. I'm nearly finished with my dues, I'm sure I'll have a celebratory post when that day arrives!

There is simply too much to say about the amazing things I've been able to experience, accomplish, see and learn in the past year in just one post, and I'm sure I'll be posting more updates that are relevant to the adventures in layout, but in the meantime I shall say that this movie may be the most amazing things I ever get to work on in my entire professional career. Seeing final renders from this movie are astounding to absolutely everyone on the show across the board. I truly think people are in store for images they have never seen anything like before. Check it out everyone!! Just 2 months away!

Sparty On, Cat!

My friend applied to Michigan State University for the Music Education Grad Program this summer and recently just found out she was accepted! So I drew this as a gift for her, a faux movie poster to get her excited about her adventures-to-come this summer! Congratulations, Cat!!

Happy Birthday, Cat!

This past Wednesday was my friend Cat's birthday.  She's a music teacher at several schools in the area, and in addition, every so often she does music performance gigs.  The week of her birthday, she's going to be doing percussion with the Beach City Symphony, which is sweet, but also means she has to spend her evenings at rehearsal all week, even on the night of her birthday.  When she told me this, this image came to mind.  At any rate, Happy Birthday Cat!

Big Bad Voodoo Drawing

Last night, Eji and I went to see Big Bad Voodoo Daddy's holiday show at the Lancaster Performing Arts Center. The show was fantastic as usual, but my brother had somehow arranged with their client-relations person for me to meet the band personally before the show. Knowing this, I went ahead and drew a caricature of the original 7 band members, who will be celebrating their 15th year together in April 08, and gave them this picture before the show started. They seemed to dig it, so that's good! I totally worship these dudes, so I was pretty excited to meet them!

Me and the band, before the show. Look how cool their shoes are!

Joshua Levy (piano) and I. This guy is like, my musical hero basically.

Suddenly, braaap!

This is a little piece that I made for my brilliant illustrator friend, Eji. She was telling me one night about how she has these surprise burps sometimes, and chose to describe it to me in ascii-language as follows:
( '3')
( 'O') !!!
( '~') ...
Which, basically demands to be drawn. So here was my chibi-interpretation! Click image to see full-size version.

Celebrity Sketch

A friend of mine recently wanted me to create a one-page comic involving actress Ashley Peldon for a favor I owed him. And so, for a few days I was researching many headshots and photographs of this gal, and created many horribly executed caricatures of her. I thought I would post the only remotely successful one here.