Buildings in Rome..A variety of Micron pigma pens, Super black Chartpak marker

Photoshop, Pen and ink, brush and ink, china marker, ...exercises..I approached the heads trying to find a stark visual look to these various musicians. Coxonne Dodd of Studio One, Phil Guilbeau of Black Heat, and others. Photo reference copyright others..

Come on out and party with us for the holidays, it's for a good cause! We're raising $$ for the Visual Arts and Media programs @ ICEF Public Schools and to send 20 South L.A. high school students to study art in Europe for Summer '09.
The fantastic Ms. Cheryl Simmons is cohosting the event at her on going party called Plei
Presale tix $20 @ www.icefplei.eventbrite.com
p.s. your ticket purchase is tax deductible! ICEF Public Schools is a certified 501(c)3 non profit organization..See you all Friday!

Editorial cartoon/cartoony illustration for a client. The idea is she's leaving a big company to set up her own shop..Here's the blue line, inked, lighting pass in Photoshop and the finish comped in Illustrator. So the process was Photoshop mock up(not posted), blue line, black pencil, inked with Sakura .0-something pen, tweaks and lighting and further hatching and cross hatch inking in PS CS w. Wacom, text in Illustrator CS.
Tradigital!!

Silverlake hillside, Italian Cypress trees. a house. a powerline
Ebony Layout pencil

Vancouver trip sketch..This was done after a great meal of Unagi and Spicy Tuna! 15 rolls for only like $8. Fish is hella inexpensive up in Canada! The sushi inspired me as I sat facing the big picture window. Pen, sharpie, photoshop touch up

West Adams house 2 in progress..line art stage...contour approach..pen and Photoshop touch up

The summer has brought a whole bunch of art related events my way. One of which included an American style "holiday" (a week) to Vancouver, British Colombia; gateway to the Pacific. Beyond being a great town for bicycling, hanging out at the beach, and mountain climbing, the Vancity, is also a hotbed of art. Some of the art related shenanigans I partook in included a visit to the KRAZY comics/animation exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery, creating freestyle comics with the fine folks of the Vancouver Sketch Jam, a pit stop at the Elfsar comics store in Yaletown, and finally a visit to Clack Clack Empire to see the fantastic illustrations of Marianne Goldin at her show LOLCats!..and I hiked up a tiny mountain, the Grouse Grind.



So the highlights..the large downtown museum, the Vancouver Art Gallery’s current exhibit KRAZY , is a survey of graphic art from both American and Japanese traditions of comics, graphic novels, animation, game design, and pop art.

Standout works for me were George Herriman’s original Krazy Kat pages, Jerry Moriarty’s Jack Survives comic pages(amazing), Art Spiegelman’s MAUS originals, artwork from Shaun Tan’s The Arrival, and production art from UPA’s animated short Gerald McBoing Boing.
Most mindblowing was Windsor McKay’s original(!!!) Gertie the Dinosaur animation drawings. From 1914. On rice paper. Hand registered. That was drawn with a dip pen. With the backgrounds drawn on..every…single..page..Animators, can you feel me?!!


(flickr jacked from 'lil)

..oh yeah and the cut out silhouette characters from Lotte Reineger’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed(released in 1926, arguably the first feature length animated film). More current work was concept and production art from a host of studios including Pixar’s Toy Story, DreamWorks Over the Hedge

On the Eastern side of things standouts include Taiyo Matsumoto’s Tekkonkincreet manga pages, anime clips of Satoshi Kon’s Paprika, Mamoru Oshii’s Patlabor ,
Katsuhiro Otomo’s seminal Akira, Makoto Shinkai’s The Place Promised in Our Early Days, and the mind blowing Mind Game from Masaaki Yuasa. I highly recommend finding Mind Game, production by Studio 4C.



Studio 4C also did the production work on Mike Arias’s film adaptation of Tekkonkincreet. Great behind the scenes article here. Genius at the highest level of intoxication.


Other notable works at the KRAZY exhibit include a sneak peek at Will Wright’s upcoming, groundbreaking game Spore and a bunch of amazing visual/fine art pieces inspired by pop culture. Here is a PDF file list of all the work in the show.

If you make it up to Vancouver, check out the show it runs until Sep. 7.

Also while in the Vancity, I also popped in to check out the Vancouver Comics Jam, a group of indie comix stalwarts who meet regularly to turn out freestyle improv comics. We met in the upstairs room of an out of the way Japanese restaurant near the waterfront like furtive comics criminals. Someone started a panel and the page got passed around till a story emerged from the panels of many contributors. You can see some of the results here along with the roll call! Thanks to Ed Brisson for extending the welcome..What up VCJ folks!

Went to the Elfsar Comics shop in the Yaletown section of the city. Good shop, lot’s of selection. Store owner Ethan is a pretty cool guy and really knowledgeable and helpful. When asked about Canadian comics artists he reeled off about a dozen names and pointed out several books. I picked up The Art of Robin Mitchell Vol 1, lots of strong character design work by this Canadian character designer who I got to meet a week later at the San Diego Comic-Con.

Another interesting place to stop off at is the Clack-Clack Empire in the Chinatown area.

The fashion boutique was hosting an exhibit called CAN’T BELIEVE WE BOTH GOT CATS:LOLCats!. The Vincent Parker curated show featured the fantastic illustrations of artist Marianne Goldin. The refreshments included a brand of beer named DUDE. Seriously. There is a Canadian beer called DUDE.



While there my paparazzi fans snapped a pic of me and Clack-Clack proprietor Erin M. Edwards. This mysteriously ended up in local paper and on the Vancouver events site UrbanMixer.com. Here is Marianne Goldin's artist statement and show listing at UrbanMixer.com.
Pic in the local weekly 24 Hours Vancouver below. I owe you a DUDE beer Raj!

and last but not least the character mascots for the 2010 winter Olympics which will be held in Vancouver! They go by the names of Sumi, Quatchi, and Miga and are so disgustingly cute I couldn’t resist taking a few pictures of them at the airport store.

Great design! Here’s their site..and wikipedia entry.

Coming soon to a theater near you..
A animation organization I'm a part of called B.A.N.D was spotlighted in the Los Angeles Wave newspaper, and yours truly got a nice quote and a pic of one of my amazing high school animation artists, Maya Solomon on the front page. She is going to be the next Disney..We make dreams into reality. This is what's coming to a theater near you.

check it out here..