Evolve

"Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning."
-Benjamin Franklin -

It is hard to summarize the last 5 months of absence without tuning to the profound, I been working a lot in the movie we are currently wrapping up and you would be amazed as to what a man can do when he is pushed.

It is also very hard to not consider how much a man has to travel, how little he knows and how fortunate he is. So why am I speaking in code? Becasue all things said we are only as good as the road we have paved and the one we pave in front of us. Art has become a medium of perceptual learning which lead me to the next thing. I am now mostly drawing on a table PC, which is kinda cool and takes drawing to the next geek level but in many ways miss the tactility of paper and pen.

Here are some drawings from around my life.

We had a bird for figure drawing :)

Waiting for the train

More waiting.

On the Train.

No words

The Sanguine

Plato once wrote or THE FOUR TEMPERAMENTS, Sanguine being the extrovert, talker and optimist.
I am not sure when it happened or how I evolved to be that, but deep inside, in the darkness of my soul, I still feel like the perfect melancholy, the introvert, the thinker, the pessimist :)

Anyway the reason I am talking about Plato this week is an array of reasons some that have to do with character development and story, so he is fresh in my mind but also because I been a very reflective mood thanks to a book am reading, 1491, it is about the way America use to be before it was "discovered" by Columbus.

Another reason is because I found myself doing cartoon of friends and I started thinking how my character always leads me to accept tasks that others would not , not complaining just examining.

Here are some sketches :)

me

Giggles (a friend who is studying chemistry)

Ryan a friend of a friend.

I am not sure I captured his essence I might draw him again.

Thanks for listening Mr. Void that is the internet.

The Rock

I was at church and when I closed my eyes for one of those pray, mediation or reflection times and I saw this image. What you don't day dream at church ? Alright throw the first stone.

I am not sure if I like my rendering as always I tend to like sketches better.


After thinking about what it meant I started thinking that the robot was me an the rock was all the problems and stress I carry. perhaps it meant nothing but I drew.

Big Idea

"No one goes to Hollywood with the intention of making a bad movie."
Harvey Harrison, a professor in my college, once told the class.

Hollywood wants to make marketable films and they want them to be big, hence the Big Idea concepts were developed. These are stories that can be summarized in a sentence but are massive in scope. My favorite, what if a gun had a heart? Iron Giant.

All this past week I attended a series of lectures that described the concept of the big idea and it got me thinking, what if our ideas where small and we just nurtured them to grow? Brad Bird once said that it is hard to sale a film in Hollywood because most execs evaluate concepts with charts and focus groups, because they want to be safe in their investment, but that honest stories where usually small in concept and huge in heart. Like Ratatouille is about a mouse that Cooks (He said something a long those lines, not the exact quote)

This was inspired by that concept, he is trying to catch the big idea but instead caught a small one, should he let it go or nourish it for growth?

Just a thought.

It has been a long week and it is only Tuesday!!!

Beating the clock, that is all we do sometimes.
I am now working on the next movie and although it is wicked cool, we find ourselves trying to meet deadlines and working over drive only to realize that the fun, the reason we make movies or work on them, has dimmed down. But I guess that happens with all work, and then you sleep a little, wake up refreshed and realize that you are one of the lucky ones that gets to use magic and get payed for it.

So why am I rambling, perhaps because I am tired or perhaps because even though I left work late almost at midnight I still came home and turn on my computer.

In that note I was away this weekend. No responsibilities just me and the road (hypothetically speaking) Here are some sketches from my little adventure in DC.


Sketches around DC

Sketches from museums.

Again thanks for listening oh vast void that is the internet :)

Rain, Lightning and Thunder.

Soccer in the rain

Our company has a soccer team and this week we played against IBM. Not only was this my first game with the team, due to my schedule, but we had to play it in the rain, which was so awesome. Every so often the skies would fire flashes and cheer us on with thunder, too bad I never got to see the pictures :). Can't wait till the next game.

Soccer Rules.