I 'Do Art' - Part 1?

            So I thought I'd use this blog to show people what I'm up to in terms of stuff I make. So rather than start with what I'm doing now, I'd rather give people the whole story, so I'm starting with my first drawings ever. I called it 'Part 1 -question mark-' because I think these all bring up ideas I want to elaborate on, but I haven't decided yet whether to go there. We'll see. But probably.

            And I'd just like to say: the reason this is even possible is that my mom SAVED EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF SHIT DRAWING I EVER MADE AND BOUND THEM INTO A BOOK. Parents: do this. If your child is at all a human being, they will thank you with their entire soul for as long as they live. Which I do. Thanks, mom.

            So, yeah:

My first drawing ever. The start of a brilliant career. Apparently, when my mom asked what it was, I said "monsters". Monsters. Anyway, pretty damn good, I think. I wish I could draw half as good as this now. 3 years old. I like to think that this was the day I became a person.

This is me and my dad. Notice I started a head on the left, but apparently I wasn't happy with it and started over. I've been drawing for 6 months, and already I feel the sting of dissatisfaction with my own work. Still haven't resolved that. Also, my dad keeps bugging me to do a portrait of him - apparently he forgot about this. Nice.

My mom. 3.5 years old. Apparently belly buttons were important.

I like this. The idea is that cars go in a bunch of different directions, but always 90 degrees apart.

One of my favorites. It didn't matter to me that the train wasn't sitting on the tracks, I knew that one could figure out what was going on. The tracks were probably an afterthought, and I just wanted to let people know that the train does indeed go on tracks without obscuring them, so I just put them underneath it. The yellow paint is from a painting I did in college when I was into exploring these childhood drawings and making them into big paintings. As expected, "Train Flying Over Tracks - the Special Edition" sucked. Should have just left it. And nowIi got paint on my drawing. Dumbass. Anyway, later, the image of a train flying over tracks was so stuck in my head, that it started growing into a little animation series I want to do someday. I'll tell you about it later.

Oh, fuck yes. Fucking Voltron. Look at that shit! This is one of the first things from my "robot period", which, actually, is still happening now. I'll draw robots until I fucking die.

So yeah, I started doing my own designs. Big Foot here had claws with lasers. Oh, and a big foot. I think he's just designed for destruction.


Mr. Clock. He follows you around to tell you the time. Notice how I misjudged the placement of the numbers on his clock and had to put them in a spiral to fit them all. More on this phenomenon later. Also, I put a pic up of a Megaman character design for Time Man. From 2006. Coincidence?  I think not.  Obviously, Capcom had spies looking into my ideas for a long time.

Sticky. Duh - he walks on walls. Pavelka's First Law of Robotics: robots are supposed to be able to do things people can't. While Big Foot was simply badass, and Mr. Clock was simply helpful and friendly, I wanted Sticky to be a little more mischievous. Like "Haha, I'm up on a wall! Later!" And an afterthought laser attachment, just in case. And an image from a boss in Megaman 4 that walks on walls. From 1992. But I can't hold it against them - you simply can't have a monopoly on the idea of a robot that uses suction cups to walk on walls.

I didn't show my first color drawings because I had to edit, but when first using colors, I only had a very short period of "it'll be better if there's more colors." I quickly developed the notion that certain things are certain colors. and that's that. And I thought breakfast was the best meal.

I remember this day. It was the day I found one of those pens that had the clickie things that let you change the color of the ink on the end of it. I was astounded. I had a book that showed how squids can change colors, and when I found this pen, I realized it was the perfect tool to realize this vision. I think it shows perfectly how technology can inspire ideas in other fields, like visual art, and how there's an unbreakable relationship between the two. To this day, I still get excited about how much I can do with my Wacom pad and Photoshop. More on this later.

            Fuck, this is getting long. Sorry. Just a few more:

Dinosaurs. Insane looking sharks. I had a book with shark pictures, and when I saw this megamouth thing (a real thing that's actually called that), I totally freaked. but what I want to call attention to is the lettering. Big letters on the left, and then I freak out and go "Ah, shit, this isn't gonna fit in the super huge font I'm using, and FUCK! Ok, just scrunch them in therrre..." Yeah. I still have problems with this. I have a freelance gig doing motion graphics for Nickelodeon now doing their promo stuff, and I swear, if it wasn't for computers, all my titles would still look like this. I've come to the realization that design and layout is a major weak point for me, and then I saw these, and apparently, it's been a lifelong struggle. I've talked about this with my esteemed and incredibly patient art director at Nick, Andrew Harrison. I've admitted to him that while I think I'm really good at forming compelling conceptual bases for designs, and problem solving, and learning new software to execute them, I can't lay a page out for my fucking life. This poor guy has to be over my shoulder and be all "A little left. Smaller. Too small. Turn the kerning down. There." But I'm getting better. I believe anything can be learned. More on this later.

            Ok, a lot of "more on this later". That's because I'm trying to address bigger ideas here, and how my brain is constantly processing these ideas, even back when I was a toddler.

            So that's it.There are shitloads more drawings, and it was hard to edit out some real gems, but, again,Ii'm going for the bigger messages here.

             Next time.