HAT-SCRATCH

I find that when I set out to start new projects, I get bogged down in 'style' and 'rules' and 'format' all before I ever even lay pencil to paper. It's a bit overwhelming in that sense, expecting perfection from the get go. I wanted to try something unplanned, something spontaneous and straight-ahead, basically; draw and see what comes out. The strip below is what happened to materialize;

Using this as a starting point, I'm hoping to make this a regular strip, of which I've tentatively titled 'Hat-scratch'. Perhaps one strip a week, assuming my schedule permits... I do have a lot of sleeping to do.

No rules, no style, no format, no over-thinking, just drawing.

Other stuff;
A while back, they screened the Oscar nominated shorts for us at the studio. One of the directors, Javier Recio Garcia, even came by to introduce his short 'The Lady and the Reaper'. The short is rad, it's nice to see people making an effort to infuse 2D principals/gags into CG animation. We got to sit down with Javier afterwards to talk about animation over lunch... which they insisted on filming... while we ate...
Here is video of us stuffing our faces while we manage to talk about cartoons;
(Also, holy crap... are my eyes always that buggy!?)

me with buggy eyes eating lunch with other board artists

Javier is an awesome guy, I'm glad I got a chance to meet him.

I also worked very VERY briefly on a new TBS cartoon 'Neighbors from Hell' doing board clean-up. Despite only having done a handfull of drawings, some of them managed to make it into a promo spot they released on the web;

tbs promo

The boards I did can be seen at the 1:30 mark, and were originally boarded by Rob Koo, one of the most talented board artists I've ever worked with. He does have a blog, however only posts pictures of his birds and fish.

-Hat