LIES!!!!!!!!

Taco Bell PSA


This "PSA"(Public Service AGENDA) really pisses me off. How can anybody else tell you how you're supposed to live your life?

First off, this PSA equates success with "playing in front of thousands", so by it's own insinuations only a handful of people on this planet could be considered 'successful'. Also, the implication "then I dropped out of high school" is left unresolved. Are we supposed to believe if she finished high school she would have gotten a record deal?
By it's own demeanor this PSA is implying that wanting to be a musician/artist isn't a "real job".

Secondly, I don't see anything wrong with this picture? Clearly she's doing ok for herself, i mean, look at those stylish threads. She gets to do what she loves, which is more than 95% of this country can say, and that is the definition of success.

Thirdly, if you listen closely to the lyrics of her song, she clearly states "lucky to be where I am"... quite a juxtaposition to the paradoxical message its unsuccessfully trying to convey.

Fourthly, dropping out of high school to pursue a career in music is incredibly courageous, and shows a level of ambition and character unmatched by any high schooler I've ever met. I would pay to hear what she has to say.

Taco Bell believes it's more respectable and appropriate for you to work the cash register at one of their restaurants for minimum wage than it is to pursue something you're passionate about.

Success is doing what you love, whether that means (in this case) playing for 2000 people, or playing for strangers on the street. Don't ever let anybody else tell you how you're supposed to live your life. Society wants you to fit into a cookie cutter mold of a mundane existence because it fears the 'different'. Make your own path.

MANNY & KHAN; WE LIKE BAD DRAWINGS!

Sum of the Manny and Khan artwork I've been workin' on. These 2 pieces I made for my mom, she's awesome.

I think our character designer Danbob Thompson ruined my life. I can't draw anything now without having all the lines overlap on top of each other... it's a really bad habit.

Below is a piece of artwork from Danbob's portfolio that both Joey and myself saw and instantly said "we need to steal that style for Manny and Khan!"

Property of Dan Thompson

The folks at Cartoon Network, specifically Craig McCracken and Rob Renzetti, really liked the youtful energy of the short and it's childish nature. So we tried to capture that "charm" in the art direction, and Danbob capitalized on the philosphy by implementing a "crude" stylistic approach to the character designs. The overlapping lines and jagged/uneven thick-and-thin linework really enhances the characters' personalites simply in design. Danbob did an incredible job capturing the energy of the short by making the characters appear they'd actually been drawn by kids. The short wouldn't have felt the same way without his masterfuly "poor" drawings. (Danbob is one of the most talented and diverse artists I've ever met, and this is in no way a stab at his abilities. In fact, it's actually harder to draw "poorly" than it is to draw "good" which is a testament to Danbob's skills!)

Everyone we brought on to help us out with the short, we always told them the same thing, that the feeling we were going for is "you should be making sound effects while you're drawings."

BEACH

Beach drawings.

MY BLOG-CENTENNIAL!!!

100th post!!! My Blog-Centennial.

In honor of this electronic occasion I thought I'd post a collection of some old artwork, a time-line of my artistic endeavors. (Also because I'm taking some time off, and traveling, so I don't really have a scanner... or anything new to post anyways).

1998; (11 years old) I remember drawing these on my Dad's laptop with Microsoft Paint and a mouse.

2001; Some early caricature type drawings I did for some family members.

2003; Spongebob came out when I was 12 (1999), and that show pretty much changed my life. I'd always liked cartoons, but seeing Spongebob was really the first time I said to myself "that's what I'm gonna do."

I sent Stephen Hillenburg (creator of Spongebob) a letter with this picture below and also a whole bunch of cartoons I drew. He was kind enough to write back and even gave me an autographed Spongebob drawing. I didn't care as much about the autographed pic as I did the letter he wrote, encouraging me to keep drawing and studying old animation. That letter is a great part of why I am where I am.


I like that on my desk I have a textbook right next to a 'how to draw cartoons' book. The textbook was just for show. PS; I was kind of obsessed with Spongebob.

Some cartoons I sent him;

2004; This was a pretty significant year in terms of my animation career. I got accepted to CSSSA (California State Summer School for the Arts) held at Calarts. This was my first formal education in animation as well as art. I never really took art classes in high school, I would just spend most of my time in other classes doodling in the back of my note books. Because I had no formal art training, I was pretty far behind the rest of the kids, and struggled with life drawing. These are some of my first few figure drawings ever (albeit from the drawing session a lot closer to the completion of the program). The first few sessions were pretty rough...



2005: I graduated high school and, if it were up to me wouldn't have gone to college, but my folks made me (which was ultimately the right deicision (although I only spent 2 years there and dropped-out, I think 2 years in general is enough for anybody)). I was putting my portfolio together to send to CalArts, and realized, with the exception of a few figure drawings, I had absolutely no 'artwork', just a whole bunch of cartoons. I remember doing these drawings all in one day basically, hoping I could trick them into thinking I could actually draw... it didn't work.


Deep down I pretty much knew I wasn't going to be accepted, and the funny thing is, based on the portfolio criteria, I still probably wouldn't be able to get in. So I ended up going to SCAD, the only other school I applied to, and the only school I got accepted to.

Here's a drawing I did based on a novel I wrote;

2006-2007; College. I was pretty miserable at school, all I wanted to do was make cartoons. The first year or so of any art school is going to consist of primarily 'foundation' classes, where you have to take all sorts of broad art classes. I definitely learned a lot, and wouldn't change those 2 years (and although I despise the school I had a couple really great Professors), I was just frustrated a lot.

Self pore-traits;
Some shitty piece I did for 'color theory' however, there's too much color and not enough theory.
Below is probably one of the most 'artistic' pieces I've ever done. It was a study of a Michelangelo sketch I had to do for one of my drawing classes.


2009; Now I get paid to draw on post-it notes



Hopefully this post also proves that you don't have to be able to draw to make it in the industry. At every phase of my career I've always felt as if my passion for animation greatly outweighed my talent, and continue to believe so to this day.

I'm gonna be starting a new gig at Dreamworks soon, doing storyboards for an upcoming feature. Other than that not much going on at the moment. I'll try to post some new stuff soon.

FORGOTTEN CARTOONS

I was cleaning my room and uncovered a dusty sketchbook I had forgotten about. I found these drawings of Manny and Khan that I totally forgot about, but they made me laugh, so I thought I'd post them.


Below; Manny & Khan 9 to 5


I wish I knew when (if ever...) Manny & Khan will air. I'm not sure anyone knows what's going on anymore... not even me, and I'm close enough to watch the action-live.

THE CLOSING CHRONICLE OF MANNY & KHAN

Well, me and Joey are officially done with "The Awesome Chronicles of Manny and Khan". I can't thank Cartoon Network enough for the opportunity to make a short for them. Everyone involved with the Cartoonstitute has been amazing, and it was a pleasure to work with all of them. We were very fortunate to have so many talented people come on board and contribute to the short, each adding their own personal flavor and leaving the project better than it was at it's previous stage.

I can't even begin to sum up the amount of knowledge I accumulated over the course of production. I learned so much from the guys on staff, McCracken, Renzetti, Dave Smith, Derek Dryman, Chris Reccardi, all of whom were eager to assist us with any questions we could concoct. Their most significant contriubutions came in not answering the questions for us, but adressing the problem, and leaving it up to Joey and myself to figure out what was best for the short. This truly allowed us to harness our artistic energies and excersize our creative muscles. However, the guys were always there to make sure we didn't vere too far off the path.

Below; A little something I made and gave to Craig McCracken for all his help and guidance with Manny & Khan.

I'm not sure what they're doing? Free meals maybe? Manny and Khan don't think that far ahead, all they knew was;
1. Disguises
2. Infiltrate the house...


A whole bunch of random Manny & Khan stuff;

Joey did this, it's awesome;

A couple pages from the original board we did before Dan-Bob redesigned our characters. This scene was eventually cut due to time.

Old-timey Manny and Khan;

Random Khan's;

I leave you with a post-it Joey drew, the BEST KHAN EVER!

Awesome & Out.

MANNY AND KHAN THE MUSICAL

We're pretty much done with Manny and Khan, all we have left to do is the music (score!). We were lucky enough to have Jim Venable come on board to play his heart strings for us. We previewed some of the music he came up with for us and its great. He's really added a whole other dimension to the short, with his music playing as it's own character.

No clue yet when you guys will be able to see it, but as soon as I know I'll post it here.

Below: Many Manny's



Below: A cacophony of Khan's

POST-IT POST

Flap doodle post-its from work



A post-it I left for Joey... when I left.

Manny & Khan update soon.

THE AWESOME UPDATE OF MANNY & KHAN

Well... actually not too much to say, but thought I'd post a couple post-its.

I got Joey cookies one day and left this drawing on them.



Also, somehow in the midst of disheveled mounds of crumpled drawings, these two unrelated post-its below found their way to one and other, and stuck. The combination, I think, actually sums up our short pretty well;

lightning bolt... IN COLOR!

CHECK OUT DEESE NUTS

A while back I did some rough character designs for deese guys over at Deese Nuts. They premiered their first short this week "The Lifting of Deese Nuts". Check it out.

The Legend of Deese Nuts - Episode 4 "The Lifting of the Nuts" - watch more funny videos

You can actually buy Deese Nuts!

They also have shirts which are quite hilarious.

WE'VE HAD OUR FUN

I had fun doing this, but don't want to draw any more attention to this page. There is no room left to put additional information. It's too loud anyways, I think it'd be better if things were a little quieter.


Hope you enjoyed it.

HOW MANNY AND KHAN CAME TO BE

I had completed my internship on Foster's Home, and was visiting CN, saying hi to peoples. I went to see Joey, who had recently been promoted to a well deserved artistic position. When I walked in he was doodling this little guy below. He had never animated before, and wanted to learn Flash, so he was working on some characters for his first ever short. The short was "Big Foot and a Gnome". I thought it was a great idea... considering the first short I ever animated in Flash was oddly enough Sasquatch and Elf Boy... about a Sasquatch (Big Foot) and an Elf Boy (a Gnome). We knew it was a sign, and decided to team up.

Below; Screen cap from my first
Flash animated short Sasquatch
and Elf Boy
We started doing a rough storyboard, writing gags, and figuring out who these characters were. Production was shaky, as Joey was busy on Foster's, and quite frankly we didn't know how to work well with each other. After a month or so away from the project, CN announced the Cartoonstitute and both Joey and myself felt like Big Foot and Gnome was a good fit, considering the type of shorts they were looking for; character driven, minimal background/props, and an ability to be turned into a series. We were fortunate enough to be able to book a time to pitch, and went back to work developing the short.

We pitched on June 5, the exact one year anniversary that I had moved out to LA to intern at CN. We went in with a few drawings and a short list of episode ideas, which we presented to Craig McCracken and Rob Renzetti.

(The B.F.F stands for "Best Fucking Friends")

They liked the set up and relationship between the two, but wanted to see if we could "change" what these guys were and make them more unique, a re-casting of sorts, keep their personalities in tact just change the exterior. So me and Joey went to work re-designing Big Foot and Gnome.

First up to the plate was Gnome, and it was either hit or miss with him.
We liked the pairing of a humanoid figure with an animal/mythical creature, so we tried to keep that balance. Joey came up with the idea of a Merman or a Mer-Monkey (1/2 Merman 1/2 Sea-Monkey), which I thought was hilarious.I don't remember exactly who suggested a leprechaun, but basically we just took Gnome and put him in a Leprechaun's outfit, and it worked. And that (in part) is why Khan is not actually a Leprechaun, just some guy sporting the outfit. Since we had a human figure established now we knew the Big Foot character would continue to be of a creature nature.

It was very straining (at the time) to come up with various "beings" for Big Foot. I had known him as Big Foot for so long, that nothing else seemed right.
We tried things like; land-sharks, dragons, but the character needed to be soft and lovable. I've always liked platypi, and since we didn't use the platypus design for Khan, I tried it for Big Foot. It was ok... but he had to be mythical, so instinctively, I made him half-man. The same way a Big Foot is of essence half man half ape, this guy would be half man half platypus, and at that point "Man-O-Puss" just popped into my head. I didn't really think much of it, but Joey liked it a lot. It was also an easy fix for Big Foot, it was basically the same design just with a duck-bill instead of a nose. Rob and Craig were cool with it, so it stuck. So after a lot of pushing, Manny and Khan were born.

So you see, although it may appear as though a Leprachaun and a Man-o-puss are a completely random coupling, there is actually a quite logical explanation for the odd-pair (except for the half man half platypus part).

DECODING CARTOONS

Below is a little card I made for some of the guys who helped bring Manny and Khan to life.

Joey put some pictures up on his blog from various points of production, and this one below makes me laugh. We got bored one day and made this poster. We tried to turn our cube at CN into a super awesome tree fort, to replicate the one our kids live in, and this poster is definitely something they would have nailed to the wood paneling. We also had a paper-cup attached to a string hanging from the outside of our door, so people could page us. But that's pretty much the extent to which the fabrication of our cube fort reached.

During production we sat in the same area as a lot of the other creators, and I learned so much from just talking with them. Greg Miller was always a highlight of my day, I highly recommend you check out his blog; http://fuzzybotom.blogspot.com/

I leave you with a very special sketch, I think this was the first post-it that was ever passed between Joey and myself. It was either number 1 or number 2?

TOON info for fans in different time ZONEs.... ( .net)

Production on Manny and Khan is going swimmingly.

(I don't remember exactly why I drew this)

Now despite what you may think, Khan is not actually a leprechaun, but in fact a small man who dresses like a leprechaun because he thinks its cool. And Manny, who's been refered to as "a giant platypus", is actually a Man-o-puss; half man half platypus.

During the heat of production Joey and I would leave each other friendly post-it notes, as if to say "I was here" or "hey buddy what's up?" or;


Stay tooned for more post-its and updates on Manny and Khan. And for further research check out Joey's blog.

One individual at Cartoon Network who really helped mentor me and Joey through The Awesome Chronicles is the incredibly talented story-master Derek Dryman. He was more than willing to tackle any of the questions we could come up with, and always had a brilliant and sensible answer. In addition to his wealth of knowledge, Derek is also one of the nicest people I've ever met.


Below; Random Flap and K-nuck doodles I did during work.