WIP is no more

I’m shutting down this particular blog because I finally finished the big re-design of my main site! Check. it. out! So anyway, I will continue writing (hopefully way more often than I have been lately, sheesh) over there in the blog section.

So ends this little experiment. Take care!

What The...?

Just wanted to pop in and dust off the digital cobwebs and say “Hello” into this text recording device. New things are cooking. This particular corner (WIP) of my slice of the web is soon to find its place among the archives and table scraps I’m afraid. But dont you worry, I have new and improved things in the works. At least I think they’re pretty cool.

Stay Tuned…

Inspiring Story

Click here to listen to a story about a man named Hal Taussig who has a very unique idea of how a CEO should run a business. (from the podcast called The Story (iTunes link)

Refreshing to hear this interview during all the money turmoils we hear about these days.

Edward the Invincible is ready to buy!

Great news to share today – my childrens book Edward the Invincible is ready to purchase!


$14.99 + Shipping | 28 pages | Saddle Stitch

See a preview here!

Comic Con Recap

Whew. So, Im back home in Arkansas after 4 days of mayhem and geek-throngs at Comic Con San Diego ’08. Talk about contrast of atmosphere! Not only is the temperature 10 degrees higher and the humidity much thicker, but this sleepy little town feels downright uh, asleep. Its good to be home though. I can only handle so much hype and craziness.

So much happened while I was there its a little daunting to know how to approach writing about it. I guess I’ll start by talking about all the highlights and go from there.

Foot Stuff

On Wednesday night, after watching the Fringe pilot, Kirk, his friend Sid and I hit the show floor and wandered for a while, then ended up at the FunKo booth. We met all the volunteers and they had lots of nice things to say about Foot. Many of them had been able to see it already, so we talked about it and ogled the Wobblers for the first time! It was extremely exciting to see them in the box with the DVD finally.

Foot played at 1:25 on Friday and it went ok. The projector and the screen werent anything special, and there were maybe 50 people in there, plus a homeless guy in the back I think? There was a nice enthusiastic response in the crowd afterwards, thanks to the FunKo folks I think, God bless ‘em! Nobody asked any questions really, and I just stood there and said thanks a couple times at the beginning and end of Kirk and Mike’s little speech.

Before the film started playing, the guy running the projector couldnt get the dvd to start playing, so Mike ran over a copy of Foot from out of a FunKo box and the guy played that instead. This was funny because Comic Con was adamant in the fest rules that you CANNOT try to play a new version of your film and that they will ONLY play the version you first submitted months ago. This had bummed us out because the version we rushed into the fest in March isnt the final version. Anyway, it turns out the DVD that wasnt working was actually this extremely short film before ours! So we uh, sort of bumped a film accidentally – woops! – and got to play the final version of Foot. I suppose that other film may not have played anyway…

At 1pm on Saturday we went over the the FunKo booth once again to sign Foot boxes. At first, Kirk and I stood in the back and waited for people to come to us as Mike signed stuff, since hes the original founder of FunKo and all. Eventually though, people started bringing their boxes to us as well. I probably signed 10 boxes or so. Good times.

The Panels

For me, the panels were the most fun out of anything.I mean, I enjoy pop culture quite a bit and spend a good deal of my time thinking about and engaging with graphic novels, movies and video games etc, but the sheer volume of stuff on the show floor at the Con was just too much for my feeble brain to process and it became pretty exhausting just to walk through there. So I ended up retreating to the panel rooms often.

One of my first panels was a SPORE demo by Will Wright. The man is truly a genius and Im pretty sure it was one of the most amazing presentations Ive ever seen. I have seen video clips of him demoing that game a bunch already too. I felt like I was at the TED conference getting wisdom from the future. He talked about how each major entertainment medium was first perceived, and how foolish that initial reaction looks to us now – among many other things. (Heres a link to a better write-up.)

My next panel was Steve Purcell, the creator of Sam & Max. I really enjoyed hearing him talk about his roles at LucasArts and now at Pixar, and the unique jobs hes had over the years. He showed lots of rare art, even the first Sam & Max drawings from his childhood. It used to be a co-creation with his brother, but he showed the official document he wrote at the age of 9 which gave Steve the rights to the characters, heh. Kirk worked up the courage to give Mr. Purcell a Foot Wobbler, so that was cool!

Later in the afternoon I went with my friend Jamey to Chip Kidd’s Bat-Manga panel. Kidd has been collecting materials for this new book for about 10 years I guess, and it sounds really fascinating. Back in the 60s, when the cheesy Batman TV show with Adam West was at its peak, DC gave Japan the rights to the Batman license to do with it as they pleased and write their own stories. So you got these amazing and strange Batman stories with unique bad guys and Batman and Robin constantly weilding guns and lazers and such. Very awesome. Its going to be a great book for weird alternative art-lovers.

Next up: Bill Plympton. He showed 2 new shorts and 20 minutes of his upcoming feature called “Idiots and Angels.” His first short, “Hot Dog” was classic, hilarious Plympton and had the room roaring with laughter. His timing is so perfect with slapstick. His feature is darker than usual and has music by Tom Waits and such. Looks interesting, but I’d really have to be in the mood for 90 minutes of it.

I tended to get to the Con a little early in the morning every day via the trolley, and Saturday was no different. I decided to get into the Ralph Bakshi panel about an hour early and get a good seat and relax and sketch. It turned out to be a good choice because he sauntered in about 40 minutes early and sat down and started talking! He asked us what we wanted him to do, and we all yelled, “Talk!” heh. So people threw questions out and it was one amazing story after another. That was another panel along with Will Wright where I really wish I had a recording of it.

Etc and So Forth…

I bought a Jordan Crane book Ive been meaning to get, “The Clouds Above” from Fantagraphics, and later on that day he was signing stuff so I met him and had him sign it. Super nice guy. He encouraged me to push things past the limits I set for what to do for kid’s books/films etc and that was good to hear. So now Im going to add some decapitations to Edward the Invincible.

During my time in San Diego I stayed at my old friend Dave Borden’s house. It was really great to catch up. I had Korean food with Dave and his wife Jeannie Saturday night, and met her for the first time. That was really fun and it was great to get to know her a little bit. Afterwards we watched Foot and I gave them a Yeti Wobbler.

So I guess thats about it. A pretty amazing experience to say the least! Now its time to take Foot to other festivals and finish Edward the Invincible!

While Im Out

I think Im going to try something a little different during my time in San Diego for Comic Con Wed-Sun this week. Since I dont have any sexy internet gadgets for blogging and such I think I will leave voice journals/updates on this site:

drop.io | UPDATE embedded version below.

I will be back here soon with a write-up on all the happenings!

“Edward” Cover Art

Heres what the cover is probably going to look like:

Whaddya think?

“Edward” Progress Report #7

Im here to announce that I am about ¾ (8 out of 11) finished with the illustrations in Edward the Invincible! Pretty exciting to see it move along. Sorry for making you wait a little longer than planned to get your copy of the book! I can assure you its still high priority for me.

Here are some of the finished illos to tide you over:

You’ll have to wait to see them any bigger! I cant give everything away now can I?

Comments

Hey kids, Im having difficulty with comment spam and Im sick of dealing with it so comments have been turned off. Sorry about that…

Im working on a new and improved website now, but in the meantime, send me an email if you want to get in touch about a post or just want to say hi.

E-mail Me

UPDATE
As you can see, comments are back! Unfortunately I lost all the previous comments you guys left – Im really sorry about that… But, Im trying out Disqus and it seems to be working great! Test it out and let me know what you think.

“Edward” Progress Report #6

HD VERSION

Finishing up Illustration #2 in Photoshop | Music by Grandaddy

FOOT: Phantom of the Forest

This is a blog post Ive been waiting a year and a half to write! My latest animated short is called FOOT: Phantom of the Forest. It was written and directed by Mike Becker and Kirk Demarais and designed/animated/sound-designed by me. My friend Jamey Clayberg did an original score and some of the sound design for it as well.

Its a story about a boy named Monty who recently lost his father. In his mourning, he finds that his dad was in the middle of a series of discoveries – all leading to what looks like evidence of the existence of a Sasquatch in the nearby forest.

The film is about 16.5 minutes long. Its my first film to have full voice acting and an original score! Woo!

A Short History

A few years ago, Kirk would talk to me on and off about this project he had going with Mike about Bigfoot. They were writing it together and planned on shooting it as a live action short film. There were segments in the film that were supposed to have CG animated toys coming to life and talking to the main character, and Kirk started talking to me about maybe doing those portions. We started brainstorming how other parts of the film could be animated too, and Kirk showed Mike my portfolio. Well, I guess Mike liked what he saw, because after seeing The Bear Hunt he decided they should instead do a fully animated short! And I was going to do all of it! I was very excited about this and we all started talking and working out the details.

Around this same time my girlfriend Harmony and I were helping our friends Ben and Virginia move to Eugene, Oregon. Mike is in Seattle so I thought I’d let him know I would be in the area. I drove up from Portland to his house and we ate pizza and talked about the project. I signed the contract while Mike played Golden Tee in his game room and that was that! I told him it would probably take 6 months to finish and uh… a year and a half later I finally finished it. Boy, was I way off!

So, What Now?

All along, Mike had intended to do some kind of combo deal with a collectible toy and a DVD of FOOT. Well, Im very excited to announce that the toy in question will be a very awesome BIG FOOT Wacky Wobbler (bobble head) by the kids at Funko! I cant say or show much more than that at this point, but it will be a special edition deal at Comic-Con San Diego (July 24th-27th) this year! (There are other store options being talked about, but I cant say anything for sure yet.) I had the honor of doing the art for the box and the cover art for the DVD (designed by Kirk), and of course the Bobble-Head is based on my Bigfoot design, so the whole thing’s got my grubby prints all over it!

FOOT will be screened at the Comic-Con International Film Fest, and there will be all sorts of fun stuff going on to promote it at the Funko booth as well. If you happen to be in the San Diego area stop by and say hello and buy yourself a DVD/Wobbler will ya!?

“Edward” Progress Report #5

HD VERSION

“Edward” Progress Report #4

2 page spread this time. In order to be able to scan it properly, I split the illustration in half along where the book binding will be. Heres hoping it stays lined up throughout the process!

Music by Corwin Trails

“Edward” Progress Report #3

Illustration #5 Inking | Music by Davy Graham – recently discovered through Panda Bear via his amazing micromix.

“Edward” Progress Report #2

Illustration #3 Inking Session | Music by Brian Ellis (cover of “Flim,” an Aphex Twin track)

“Edward” Progress Report #1

Inking the second illustration. Sorry you have to look at my rat’s nest so much! I’ll find a better angle next time.

The Short/Long History of Edward the Invincible

Since I’m in the middle of re-writing and re-drawing my kids book Edward the Invincible, I thought it might be fun to reminisce about this story and retrace its history.

In the year 2000 I thought up a story about a kid whose loving but nervous parents gear him up for his first day of school in a ridiculous protective costume made of household items. Its an idea that stems right out of my own strict upbringing – only slightly exaggerated, heh.

The image of a kid wearing a huge helmet and knee/elbow pads stuck in my brain once I thought about it, and then embedded itself with a vengeance after I drew it a couple times. 8 years later I’m STILL thinking about it, so either Im extremely low on fresh ideas, have some sort of mental problem, or maybe there is something special in this little tale. (Dont respond to that.)

The School Project Phase

I was a senior at John Brown University when the initial seeds were taking root in my brain, and I needed to figure out what I was going to do for my senior project and internship for my illustration major. This story seemed like a good fit for at least the senior project, and at the time I really wanted to illustrate kid’s books, so I pitched it to my professor Charles Peer. He gave me the go-ahead and I set to work on it. It ended up somehow working as an internship too… I guess illustration internships werent exactly thriving in NW Arkansas at the time – but is it thriving anywhere in America these days?

Anyway, I wrote it to the best of my ability and did 6 illustrations out of 8 and turned it in and put it proudly in my portfolio. Here they all are:

Whew, those are hard for me to look at! Yikes. I remember Mr. Peer thought that my kids looked too old, and darnit if he isnt right! Of course I was too stubborn back then to realize it and too lazy to make the needed changes. I could go on for a while critiquing my early work, but I’ll spare you and get back to the story.

Around this time my friend Dan had a website (one of the very few people I knew at the time who did) and I talked to him about putting up at least a portion of the story. He designed a simple web navigation for it and posted the first 3 pages. Here’s a few words from Dan:

Thanks for sharing the memories, Dan! Here’s the link to the version we put up on PP.

Story Issues

In this early version, I had written it so that Edward starts showing off after he survives the bully beat-down because he feels like he has super powers. He does more and more elaborate stunts and entertains his class-mates and enjoys a bit of fame. After a short while they grow tired of his tricks and acrobatics and move on to other things and Edward has to decide whether to keep wearing the suit or not. His parents sit him down and tell him they love him and he should probably stop wearing it. He does as they say and makes friends at school instead of trying to impress them. THE END Heh, lame, right? I always felt like that version was missing something and had a really wimpy ending, but I could never figure out a way to make it work. I wanted Edward to ENJOY the suit, while understanding that its powers were make-believe.

Also, the early story seems to lose sight of its main theme of facing fears in life and goes off into Edward trying to impress people without really resolving the initial fear problems very well.

Blowing on the Embers

Dan would frequently mention to me that those Edward pages were his most popular, and that kept the story alive in my mind over the months and years following. My parents would often bring it up too, mentioning that they really enjoyed it and thought I should try to get it published. At one point I did send it out to a few publishers, with little to no reaction whatsoever and, as a lot of things do, it fizzled over time and I forgot about it.

Then a couple years ago I was suddenly, inexplicably intrigued by the possibilities it had, knowing that I could do a much better job of writing and drawing it now that I had a few years experience in these sorts of things. I started re-working it and got some feedback from friends and struggled with that impossible ending and how to maintain a more consistent theme throughout the story.

On May 12th of this year, after a few months of consideration, I launched a Fundable fund to raise money so that I could take time off from my day-job of animation/illustration freelancing and spend at least a solid month on Edward to finish it. I set the goal at $1,000, thinking that would get me through a month pretty well and cover some of the costs of the books I would buy for donors, etc. Well… the fund was an amazing, astonishing success, bringing in $1,200 in around 3 DAYS! That was such a resounding encouragement to me. Easily one of the most amazing and heartening things Ive ever experienced. (Thanks again to everyone that gave!)

Once the money was pledged, (theres still time to give and support the project and get an early copy if you’d like – the Fund ends June 6th!) I set out re-working the story and drawing a few pages. I finally have a version Im excited about that I think finds a healthy balance between reality and make-believe, and is hopefully a lot more FUN to read and look at too. Its still basically the same story, but there is more of a fantasy/adventure element to it. Theres monsters and space travel and all sorts of exciting stuff! I re-designed every single character, and this time around Im going to ink the lines on paper with a brush and color it in Photoshop – a completely new visual style. Heres some examples of where Im taking it:

Its been a very interesting 8 years developing this little story as my life and tastes and inspirations change. Its a really important story for me to finish I think.

The time is finally right, I can feel it.

And the Title Is...

Im preparing a big post all about the history of this little story, so stay tuned for that.

Peter and the Wolf revisited, etc

A while ago I wrote a little review for this fairly new, award-winning stop-motion short film. It used to be viewable online, but not anymore to my knowledge. I recently found out from a friend that its available in iTunes for $1.99. I bought it tonight and the quality is really quite good. A couple bones for 35 minutes of fantastic, graceful animated storytelling seems like a steal to me! You can even rent it for .99¢ if you’d rather.

Heres the link: Peter and the Wolf

In other news, work has begun on my children’s book now that Ive got such amazing support from you folks in my Fundable fund. I decided to get started even though the money drive is still going for like 20 more days. I’ll write more about it soon, but at this point Ive cleaned up the flow of the text and drawn illustration #2 in pencil. My mind is swirling with ideas and it will be nice to finally get them out onto paper once and for all.

In other other news, I made it so comments on this blog are moderated. So you may see a message saying your comment is awaiting moderation or something. Sorry about that, but the spam is coming in frequently, and the spam blocker doesnt seem to work. Any techies want to help me get spam-free?

SOTL live

Help fund my book!

Some of you may have already received an email about this, but for those of you who didn’t, Im raising money over the next 25 days in an effort to have some breathing room while I make my (7 year in the making) children’s book, Ed the Invincible.

If you want to help, follow this link and check it out!

’skine art

I recently discovered a cool new site called ’skine art. If youre a moleskine user and artist, they take submissions. Its lots of fun and has grown quite a community already. Check it out!

Heres my stuff on there.

Sketchbook #1 Full Preview

Buy it!

This sketchbook is sorta old news at this point, but I just found this great way to share it thanks to issuu, a cool new pdf viewer thingy. So, take a look and see what you could be holding in your hands if you buy the printed version.

The Jump to Widescreen

When I started making short films that were meant for TV (and web – namely, Bear Hunt and Deep Six), I stuck with the non-widescreen standard NTSC dimensions- mainly because I didnt know what I was doing and whether my computer at the time could handle anything bigger. My last film, Foot (aka Project X), was also done in this format, and I ended up really regretting it. I was kicking myself while working on many of the shots because I could feel in my bones how much better they’d be in a wide format.

I still dont claim to understand a whole lot about HD and the size differences between TVs and computer LCDs and pixel aspect ratios and the technical yadda yadda. Honestly its not that interesting to me anyway. But what I would like to talk about is my first foray into drawing sorta-HD widescreen storyboards and the stuff Ive learned in the process.

I started storyboarding my radiohead video in this little storyboard moleskine my friend Casey bought me, which has little non-widescreen TV-dimensioned rectangles you can draw in. I hesitated though, because I knew I wanted to do it widescreen from the get go. So I decided to go super fast and rough in the moleskine first, use those for the initial timing to the song, then do digital, full-size boards on the ‘puter afterwards. Anyway, heres a side-by-side comparison of 3 of the wide and non-wide versions, and my thoughts on how they translated to the big juicy widescreen. Of course, they’ve been sized down considerably to fit in my blog’s design, but you can still see the differences I think.

This one may show the most drastic difference out of all of them. Wow, look at how much more breathing room there is! The interesting thing about these is that the same amount of “story” is told in both of the drawings, but the widescreen feels open and unconstrained. Its kind of like widescreen emulates what it feels like to look through your own eyes, and the non-wide is more like viewing a world through a small window. Im glad I moved the fisherman down so you can see more of his head. For some reason that makes the scene feel more interesting. The expanse of frozen lake out in front of him looks more vast and barren with the “camera” pulled back a little. Even if I had pulled the camera back in the top drawing, you still wouldn’t get the same sense of empty landscape around him I dont think.

Honestly, in this case I think the top drawing might be a little stronger design-wise, but it doesnt evoke a quiet, lonely morning waking up outdoors like the wide shot does. I want this shot to give an almost bird’s eye perspective because it follows right after he wakes up from a nightmare and checks his hand and sees a weird pulsing darkness in his hand’s veins. So this a chance for him to stretch out all that stuff, and I want the viewer to feel like they can sort of stretch out and look at things from a fresh perspective too. I love a good refreshing stretch and I try to work them into my animation whenever I can, heh. Its good to give these moments of “rest” I think, even if theres an intensity to the story. Contrast is good.

The story at this point is nearing the end, and our hero has grown weary of walking (for who knows how long). In the top drawing, it was easier to make the trees look like they’re closing down on him as he loses his balance, so I may need to rework the wide version to better convey that. Higher snow drifts would help too I think. I like that you see his feet and legs better in drawing 2 – and that he looks closer to the camera. I should have drawn more foreground trees around him I think.

In Summary

This has been a fun process for me. I wasnt sure how much of a difference widescreen would make, but its been a real eye-opener. These are my first clumsy steps and thoughts and Im looking forward to working in this new format. Its like fresh air.

Ive been watching alot of Twin Peaks lately, an old TV show from the early 90s co-written and directed by David Lynch. It looks fantastic for an older show – they really did a great job restoring it for DVD. Its been fun to watch this show while Im thinking so heavily about composition. A lot of times characters are right next to each other in the middle of the frame, so much so that its almost comical. Im guessing thats because different TVs would cut different amounts of the edges off, but Im not sure. I guess I will have to wait for the Bonus Features disc and hope Lynch talks about the limits of working with TV back then. I know he wasnt a fan in general. (Im amazed that show EVER got on TV at all – its sheer surreal genius!)

A little housecleaning

Two quick updates regarding this site’s maintenance:

- I fixed the RSS feed. You will want to delete the old one from your RSS reader and replace it with this: NEW RSS

- I fixed comments too I think – they were very slow or downright unresponsive. Give them a test and let me know if theyre working for ya. (they are for me now…)

Thanks.

Radio_head Re_ckoner Video

My submission to the contest! Vote for it here.

Ink Painting 2 Wallpaper

Heres a new wallpaper I made from a recent ink painting. I’m considering it for a possible print too. Enjoy!

Sizes: 1900×1200 | 1680×1050 | 1440×900 | 1280×1024 | 1280×800 | 1024×768 and iPhone

New Demo Reel Up

Check it out over at my portfolio: Demo Reel 2008

Reckoner Storyboards

One of my current projects is an entry to this Aniboom contest. You get to choose any song off of Radiohead’s latest album In Rainbows and create a storyboarded music video concept for it. You can read the details on the site if you want, but basically it boils down to the most popular concepts getting narrowed down until Radiohead themselves picks a winner. There are small payouts along the way for the semi-finalists and a grand prize of $10,000. Pretty cool.

Im thinking if mine doesn’t win I’ll still do something with it on my own and make my own sound design and work with a different musician etc. I think my concept is versatile enough to exist apart from the song Ive chosen. (Song’s called Reckoner. You can listen to it on Aniboom’s contest page- linked above.)

My concept is sort of a spiritual successor to the Vapor comics I made a while ago. This time around the world is frozen and dying and one lone man is traveling with a homemade backpack that allows him to grow healthy veggies inside of it. He seems intent on reaching his destination, but stops along the way to mourn for the lost and struggles to hold on to hope.

Heres a couple screenshots of what Im doing:

Those pop-ups are in the final dimensions of the film, and it is the biggest format Ive worked with so far. Its almost HD, but not really. (more like 480p) Its at least widescreen. HD still scares the crap out of me, so Im easing into it, heh. I love the canvas widescreen gives me, and Im really enjoying creating something in that space. Ill post again about this when I have finished storyboards ready!

Burgerman Explores the Forest

Its from my on-going series of fake cel paintings.
Buy it at my etsy store!

New Prints

What do you think of these for print ideas? If I made them available to buy somehow would you be interested in hanging either of these up on your wall to cover up those nasty blemishes and thumbtack holes?

Bog Wanderer

Untitled Ink Painting

I tried printing Bog Wanderer already using lulu, but the results were less than stellar. They couldnt read my file (a .tif) and I had to upload the biggest .jpg I could! Thats less than ideal to say the least, so Im looking into other services. Theres a local little printshop a block away and I might see what they can do.

Sketchbook #1 is Available!

53 pages of (older) sketches! Buy at Lulu!

Ink Painting Wallpaper

I made a painting tonight and I like how it turned out so I took a macro photo of it and turned that into a wallpaper for different sized screens. Check it out!

Sizes: 1900×1200 | 1680×1050 | 1440×900 | 1280×1024 | 1280×800 | 1024×768 and iPhone

Recommended: Porco Rosso

Every 2 weeks or so I will highlight a product that I find interesting for one reason or another and provide an Amazon link to it.

I thought I would write my first entry in my new Recommended category about something I really really like. So I chose Porco Rosso, one of my very favorite Hayao Miyazaki movies, and possibly one of my all-time favorite movies ever.

This is funny to me because, for the longest time after becoming a Miyazaki fan, I had avoided this film because I thought it looked really dumb. Every time I looked at the cover and saw a pig-faced guy in a trench-coat I thought, ‘Come on are you serious?’ Eventually, I found it on sale (used) so I bought it just to seal up a gap in my Miyazaki collection. I couldn’t believe how great it was when I actually watched it! I suppose it may have benefited from super low expectations, but I dont know, its held up exceptionally well to many subsequent viewings.

Its worth mentioning here that I hate 95% of the anime I see. I find it extremely shallow and cold, more focused on surface and lacking heart in general. Also, the dubbing for US versions is usually unbearable. Miyazaki’s films are a stunning exception to this, however. Not only are his stories brimming with heart and warmth and some of the best and most memorable animated characters, Disney has taken it upon themselves (at the behest of John Lasseter of Pixar from my understanding, God bless ‘im) to record fantastic dubs for each of his films, using top notch talent. So all that to say, if the sight of an anime fills you with similar qualms, you can rest assured they aren’t an issue here – at least not in my opinion.

Ok, now onto the film itself! The story takes place in the area around the Adriatic Sea during WWI. The main character, Porco Rosso, (Italian for “Red Pig”) is a sea plane pilot, who leads a solitary life in a secret island hideout, taking odd bounty hunting jobs to clear the air of gangs of mismanaged and goofy pirates. He has also mysteriously been cursed with the face of a pig. The pirates, to defend themselves, have hired an arrogant American pilot named Curtis, who is determined to take Porco out, if only to become famous.

As the story moves along, we find out that Porco was once an Italian Air Force pilot, but has now lost interest in humanity – thus the private, hermit-like existence. His good friend Gina runs the Hotel Adriano, an island business thats a neutral hangout for many of the pilots. Curtis starts causing trouble immediately and shoots down Porco’s already ailing plane, and Porco is forced to travel to Milan for repairs. Curtis then starts making passes at Gina. Its up to Porco to decide how to deal with Curtis’ shenanigans, and along the way he will need to choose whether or not to fight for his honor, save a girl, and more!

Stylistically, it sways between Miyazaki’s “cartoon-realism” to a more stretchy cartoony feel, where characters take big juicy punches to the face and stretch and bruise accordingly. Its really great fun to watch everything move in this movie. The dogfights are great too, of course, and theres lots of them.

The main themes seem to be: ‘What does it mean to be a human and care for others,’ and freedom. How are those ideas intertwined and how do you find balance between them? Miyazaki paints a rich and moving portrait of a selfish, chauvinistic, cursed man who is offered a chance to care again and find his humanity and fight for something other than his own well-being.

Not bad for a movie with a dumb-looking cover, heh. I cant recommend it enough!

Coming Soon: Sketchbook #1

I’ve hand-selected and scanned in 53 pages from one of my older sketchbooks and assembled them into a book. As soon as I get my hands on a copy and see that the print quality is good, Im going to make them available in the store.

Im going to continue printing sketches like this in chronological order I think. Should make for a fun collection!

Heres a quick sampling of a few pages:

My Plans

This is my new online scratchpad / store / news / etc site! Take a look around and kick the tires. Im still testing how well it works, so if you run into anything weird please let me know in the Forums.

Ive got some cool stuff cooked up for the very near future, but for now Ive posted my 2 older videos here for your viewing/buying pleasure. I promise theres new content on its way soon! If you do buy a video, I would love to hear how your experience goes. Im using the self-publishing site Lulu for most of the products I will be offering here. Any suggestions on how to improve my methods of getting you my stuff are welcome.

Heres to the grand experiment!

Deep Six

Buy and download! ONLY $1! Higher quality and iPod/iPhone-ready!

Here are some screenshots from the higher quality version:

The Bear Hunt

Buy and download! ONLY $1! Higher quality and iPod/iPhone-ready!

Here are some screenshots from the higher quality version: