07/16/09

Sketchcrawl, July 11th 2009 – Part 1

I went to the latest Sketchcrawl up in SF with my good friend Mike. I usually leave from LA around 7:30 on Friday and get into SF around 2AM, then get up at 9 to go drawing. This time, both Mike and I were feeling lazy so we didn’t get to the crawl until 12:30 and by then everyone had dispersed. AND I had forgotten pants, so I was pretty damn cold in the windy Presidio.

I was so cold, we jetted before the meeting got rolling. I didn’t get to meet/talk to Ronnie or Lindsey or anyone that I knew from previous crawls. I did get to see my friend Su, who is up at Pixar now as an animator. Good times.

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Here’s part 1 of the Crawl drawings… Other parts to follow. Some of these are from later Cafe drawings.

07/15/09

Untitled

You know all those little moments in a relationship when you have to suppress your basic instincts? When you agree to yourself to not do the thing that every fiber of your being is telling you to do? When you have to desperately hold yourself back from uttering the words or taking the action that you’re not supposed to?

This film is about not holding back from those instincts.

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I’ve been going through a cycle of studying the classics in order to improve my art, then bouncing back to doing some personal work. My awesome animator co-worker Ajay Karat is going to help me animate the film. My personal goal is to have it finished by September so I can show it to people on my iPhone while cruising around the Ottawa Fest.

06/1/09

Fly, Fatass, Fly!

Saw UP this weekend. Brilliant, brilliant film. It’s pretty incredible how quickly they were able to turn a curmudgeonly character into one the audience could empathize with.

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Stieg and I came up with a theory of how UP is like LOST.

Carl Fredrickson = John Locke
Charles Muntz = Ben
Kevin = Sung (the whole separation plot)
Dogs = Smoke Monster
Dug = Hurley
Russell = Kate (both whiny to the end)
Balloons & The house = The Numbers
Paradise Island = The Island
Storm that brings the house down = The magnetic event that brings down Oceanic 815

I guess that makes Jacob… Ellie?

05/26/09

Pixel-polaroids for Charity #3

My good friend Mike Overbeck, currently living in San Francisco with his girlfriend.

Before I moved to California, I took a trip around the country in my Dodge Grand Caravan and visited San Francisco, staying in Mike’s place . Two days before I was supposed to leave, I got hit by a car while riding my bike, separating my shoulder and breaking my collarbone. Thanks to the fine folks at San Francisco General hospital, I was on painkillers that zonked me out.

Mike was so incredibly kind to put me up for a couple days before my flight back to New Hampshire to recover. He worked from home while I stayed up and watched nothing but Kathy Griffin’s “My Life on the D List”. Like I said, I was on painkillers and zonked out.


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Thanks, Mike!

05/5/09

Pixel-polaroids for charity #2

There are a couple of funny things about my good friend Dan

Number one is that, in every single formal picture that he’s in, he does this fake half-smile where he shows his top teeth, but only at the corners of his mouth. He looks like a passive aggressive Tiger, threatened but too timid to strike. It’s pretty silly.

Two is that he’s sensitive about his eyes. I originally had dark circles under his eyes as part of the caricature, but he asked me to make him look “less Night of the Living Dead”. Fine fine, requests requests…

Three is that he wanted to look less “like a douche”. I’m still not sure what that means. I fake-airbrushed his cheeks so he looks like a Hollywood star.


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As a revenge for the “notes”, I put him in the shirt that I stole from him about 9 months ago. On his wedding day. And I was a groomsman.

Here’s lookin atcha, buddy!

04/26/09

pixel-polaroids for charity

selfavatarI’ve really really been enjoying doing these pixel-portraits. Some of them have been successful, others notsomuch. But it’s all about the process of doing them for fun, right? So here’s what I’m gonna do: As a way of meeting different people and raising some money for charity, I’ll do your portrait in pixel-polaroid form for a minimum charity donation of $5. All of the money will go to charity; I’ma keepin’ nothin!

Right now the plan is for donations to go to Free Arts NYC, a non-profit that delivers creative arts programs directly to low income, homeless, abused and neglected children. I’ve done some volunteer work here in the LA area with similar programs (including one down in Compton), and I can tell you that Art & Animation are incredibly powerful tools in establishing bonds with kids. I’m open to other charity suggestions, however.

The technical details: Send me an email at pixelpolaroids@gmail.com with…

– A picture (or multiple pictures) and an idea for a background. For instance, I put my friend Phil on a picturesque Jersey Turnpike background, my lovely girlfriend Errrca on a UCLA court, and my Schoolism prof. and recent UK transplant Kris Pearn in London on a typically lovely day. Of course, some of them don’t read perfectly, so the simpler the idea the better.
– The dimensions you need. The portrait window is 23px x 22px, and the Polaroid as a whole is 30×35 including the drop shadow. I can export any format you need at whatever size you need, as long as it’s larger than 30 x 35 and in the 30:35 ratio. The portaits you see below are 300×350.  I can also export with or without the Polaroid frame. your choice.
– What name you want on the bottom. Please keep it short; I’m working with limited space here! 🙂

Once it’s done, I’ll email you back a screenshot with a watermark so you know it’s done. After that, Paypal me the money, and I’ll send you back a donation receipt from Free Arts NYC so you know right where the money went.

I’ll totally do group portraits. We’ll arrange something special for that, so email me!

If anyone could let me know if there’s an easier transaction process, I’d love to hear it. I’m doing this completely on the fly, so any help is appreciated. Here are some portraits that I’ve done…



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Me.


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America’s Favorite Uncle, Phil Rynda!


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JibJabber Amanda Rynda!


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Badass, fire-breather and all around great Girlfriend, Erica Sin!

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Storyboarder, storyteller & tremendous instructor, Kris Pearn!


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Special Bonus, Jake & Finn from Adventure Time! (see previous blog spot)

 
Thanks for reading! Hope to do your portrait soon.

04/25/09

cats are assholes

I’m taking care of my stupid friend CMoore’s stupid cat Lilly for the stupid weekend. And stupid Lilly is apparently stupidly manipulative. She’s 14 years old, and has gone through 5 large cans of $1.49 a can Purina Select Cuts for Indoor Cats (featuring Salmon and Sushi-grade tuna) since Thursday, but not touched a single triangle piece of her $5.33 per 5 pound bag dry food. I thought this was normal for her, so I’ve continued buying and opening the expensive gourmet five-fucking-star hand-prepared cat food for her, trying to keep her happy.

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Apparently this isn’t normal for her. So, it seems that Lilly has discovered that her stupid caretaker is also a major sucker for sad eyes and a meow.

If only I ate as stupidly well as she does. Stupid.