Given the opportunity most everyone will rise to the occasion.

If given the opportunity most everyone will rise to the occasion that has been presented them and they will perform to the degree that is expected or even better than expected. When given a chance people can do things and achieve things that they didn't even know they were capable of. With this being said, I want to thank all of my teachers, friends, bosses and most importantly my family for believing in me and giving me said opportunities, at the same time I want to say I'm sorry for the times I have failed you. You know who I'm talking to and what I've done. I also want to give thanks to God the Almighty for being patient with me and giving me opportunity after opportunity.

I have been and I am very blessed. God has unconditionally grant me grace and has blessed me my entire life, even though I've acted like a spoiled child through most of it. In the past I was trying to run my own show (life) without his guidance, walking in the dark inevitably things got messy. When those times happened, I had know problem turning to him and begging for help, even though it was my own doing. Time after time he has shown the utmost integrity and patience and picked me up, straightened me out and off I ran without even the decency to look back in gratitude.

More than once I've said jokingly to my wife, "I'm God's favorite ya know?", You might say that was my way of flippantly saying that God has always taken care of me (blessed me), and has even pampered me to a certain extent. He has practically given me or allowed me to accomplish everything I have ever asked for.

Recently, I had an epiphany, God has been consistently and continually giving me opportunities throughout my life, allowing me to take my own chosen path, whether it's a good direction or bad, not so that I can have things, or to achieve things or to go places. God is giving me opportunities to shine as an individual, he grants me things I've asked for to give me the opportunity to become the person he knows I can be, great. He wants us all to be great, great friends, great neighbors, great fathers and mothers, great sons and daughters, etc... It was easy to see that God has blessed me with the talent to draw, but he has given me more. I chose not to recognize the other things he has blessed me with as well. For so long I have walked my own path in life and I have no doubt passed most every chance that God has put in front of me (I say most, I would hope that in 46 years I recognized God working in my life occasionally, probably not as much as I think I have) to shine as bright as only he knows I can. How disappointing and sad it makes me feel when I think of all the times in the past that I have not performed to the degree God knew I could. I'm sure that many people have been hurt or damaged while I chose to walk blindly though life, for this I ask forgiveness.

So here is a little advice for living a wonderful life here on earth: recognize the opportunities presented to you and present others with opportunities when you can. As for me, I'm trying to keep my eyes and ears on God now and hopefully the next 46 years of my life will be different, hopefully this time God will be smiling.

This is a concept design for Lilo's bed. It was a little to dark and too bizarre for the bosses in charge at the time, nowadays it's probably just right or a little light.

This is an old fairy character sketch, I thew together a quick background for it to give it some....some....I don't know what, I just did it.

This is just the OL/UL level, the actual piece had more elements. The background is missing. This is piece with matt reg. lines on it, a field guide and a blue sketch of one of the characters. There is also a little bit of effects water indicated.

This is one of my very first layouts for Disney. I was training under Mitchell Bernall (I may have misspelled his name) while working in Animation Services on an animated piece for The Land Pavilion in EPCOT. It was to mimic "The Lion King" look and it had Timone, Pumba, and Simba in it. The piece above is an overlay/ underlay, mean it was art on top of animation and under animation. The background is missing, who knows where that's at. The middle one has a blue sketch of where the character might have been and a possible field guide size. the original piece was fairly large about 24 inches across. The bottom one has an indication of where the effects, water, was going to be. I think the show is still running. The portfolio I built from it was what got me hired into layout.

This is a rough drawing, truthfully it is a to little clean and worked-up for a rough but I was really into this drawing.

This was an opportunity given to me by Bob Walker, he asked me to draw up a dog kennel as a concept piece/moment. A "moment", is an inspirational piece that captures a possible moment in the film. I got to design it from start to finish, freedom is awesome. The one on top was the rough and the one just above is the clean-up drawing that was sent to the background department to be painted.

This was another moment that Bob asked me to do. This is a rough drawing/ sketch. This was one of I think six attempts, I did finally get it right.

To freelance or not to freelance?

 "Why don't you just become a freelance artist"?  I get asked this all the time. To freelance or not to freelance, that is the real question.  I don't get much freelance, but when I do it's always problematic. It's either at the wrong time (I'm busy at work) or they are just crappy jobs. The ones that are missed timed are usually awesome jobs and I really want to do them, but they are very inconvenient and usually pay less than the crappy ones. The crappy ones, well, I always try to over bid them (so the client will say no), but then I end up trapping myself because no matter how crappy they are, they end up paying so well I can't not do them. Freelance is usually feast or famine anyways. I think I'll take them as they come, who can say no to extra money in this economy, but I like my steady job in the studio for sure.
These pieces are from the same drawing, I tried two different approaches. I think I like the one above better.
This was a freelance job, they needed some drawings of rope bridges. I did a bunch, as you can see, I don't think I ever delivered exactly what they were looking for. I still got payed though.




I still have a few more drawings of rope bridges somewhere, I'm sure I'll run across them sooner or later.

 

Tossing out old stuff is hard, maybe just one last look will ease the pain.

 These drawings have been hanging around for way to long. It's time to say goodbye. The greatest thing about this blog, is that it is allowing me to let go. I know if I had to, I could redraw any of these again, but I'm somewhat insecure about throwing them out anyway. I catch my self saving drawings for different reasons, sometimes it's the idea that makes me keep a drawing that I would otherwise give away or throw out. Sometimes the history of the situation of when I drew it makes me keep a drawing, whether it's good history or bad history. Sometimes it's because I intended to go back and fix them or redraw them, I hardly ever do that. I think, because they get to see the light of day one more time on this blog makes it easier for me to toss them out. Look, I even talk about them like they are alive, my babies.

 The little sketch at the top was one of the first drawings that I did at the Blue Sky Studio, this looks better here than the actual piece, I fixed it up a little in photoshop, what ever, it's got history but now it is history. The poster drawing has my children in it, but the finished piece was pretty bad so bye bye kids. It's also was montage piece, very dated, so, so long to the actual drawing, I threw it out right after I scanned it. You can see why I threw out the mirror drawing, no explanation needed. I like the mail box piece, I added the squirrel in the piece via photoshop, I think it needed something, maybe a bird would have been better, I'll keep this one and go back later and work on it. Ya see, I did it again. 

This was a tiny concept drawing that I did on a piece of grayish green card board. It was an idea for the giant log boat thingy at the end of of the movie. "Ice Age II"
I just graduated from Ringling School of Art and Design and I was working for Mike Peter's Creative Group as a subcontracted artist, I advise against that strongly. I was making eight dollars an hour, but after I put my Social Security and FICA tax money aside, I didn't have much left over. I made somewhere around eight thousand dollars that year. That's below poverty level. Granted, I didn't work an entire year there but if it wasn't for Jodi I would have starved. I asked for a dollar raise and they said no, when I took the job at Disney my boss actually got angry with me. Really!? Anyway, this was a freelance job I did on the side to try and survive, it ended up being a poster for some event. For the record, I really liked that job even though I got paid diddly squat. 
This was an idea for a mirror frame, the cherubs were suppose to each have a season. I don't know why I drew this, sometimes I do things for know reason at all.
When I lived in Sarasota I would go running everyday, back when I was full of enough energy to waste some. I would run by this mailbox that a tree had grown around. I was inspired to draw this illustration. I'm hoping someday to suggest it as a design in one of the films that I'm working on. 

Variety is the spice of life and variety is what you get.

Here is another blast of different pieces. My wife and daughter both suggested that I post less piece at a time. They feel that it would be better to have less up at once so that people could really appreciate each piece. I agree. I informed them that this was the initial kick off of my blog and I wanted to spark some interest. I put an enormous amount of work up so that I would have a substantial base of work for people to look through. In the future, I will be putting fewer piece up on a daily bases, but I will be choosing stuff that I can talk about in depth.  I will try to post similar things and possibly explain how I did the piece in a step by step instructional. I did not anticipate the amount of time it takes to post this stuff, with that being said things are getting busier at work, so, I will have to slow down. I have a ton of stuff to show everyone, some good and some not so good but I will keep posting until I run out of stuff. I hope in the future some of this work will spark some conversation. I will also be posting more pieces that I've done while I was employed by Disney and Fox (Blue Sky) studios. More workbook pieces, more visual development, more character stuff. I hope that my first week has been interesting and enjoyable. Posting more soon, have a nice weekend.
This is a simple drawing from a sketch pad, I draw on pads more than in my sketchbooks lately.

A little bit of character from my sketchbooks. My grandfather's favorite animal was the owl, I find myself drawing them a lot more since he pasted away. I love drawing animals, one of my favorites is the turtle.
This is a rough sketch done for a workbook on "Mulan" it's the village that was discovered by the good guys after Khan burned it to the ground. Shang also finds out his dad was killed in this sequence, heavy uh.
Just before Disney shut down the studio in Florida they gave the green light for a small crew to start exploring an idea that some the artist came up with. We called it the bunny project. I was asked to do some of the concept drawings for the project. This was the lead characters room. 
This a piece I did for my daughter Eden, it was inspired by a story I wrote for her. She loves her blanket (Pink). I tried to sell some angel pieces like this one recently at an auction that Pixar held, they went over like lead balloons. On the other hand, they bought up all my centaur and pan sketches and quite a number of my figure drawings. Naked chicks, bunch of heathens! Just kidding.

This was a piece I did for my youngest daughter, Arianna. She saw me bring home the piece for Eden and jealousy took over, I threw this together to appease her. She can be extremely tenacious and very persuasive, if you get my gist.
This is a very old piece, I told you I like to drawing turtles. I'm sure my wife is gonna let me have an ear full when she sees this old drawing again. I informed her that these pieces weren't for her, then I got the look. You know what I'm talking about, the look.  I'm not really scared of her, well, maybe a little.

These are completely digital pieces. I was fooling around with different brushes and textures in photo shop and this is what came out of that meaningless experiment, I can't even repeat what I did to make these. They're groovy man.

 

Revisiting the past, out of the box and onto the blog.

A simple water color piece, nothing special, I call it a nice bathroom painting, what else do you do with these.
I drew these from magazine photos, they are color pencil on colored paper. I did these as example pieces for a children's art class I was teaching back in college.
This is a watercolor sketch from one of my sketch books. I drew it on location and colored it later. This old water tower, was in Orlando, Florida just off the road in an abandoned orange grove, I'm pretty sure they built a condo there by now. I pitched it for the design of a water tower in "Lilo and Stitch", I can't remember if they used it or not.

Back when I was in Animation Services we got tasked with helping to design the Lion King Stage Show. We were brain storming ideas, hanging animals, yeah, now there's an idea, what if different animals swooped in as part of a backdrop during one of the songs? Well? It sounded good at the time! I remember that we started with a sizable budget on this project, in the it got cut to a third of the original projected cost allotted, which in-turn removed a lot of the bells and whistle that were planned for the show.


I love doing these little environment pieces, there is know right or wrong with them plus they are very relaxing for me to draw.

Back in 1993, Jodi (my wife now but girlfriend back then) and I were renting an apartment in Sarasota, Florida. Back then there was still a lot of undeveloped land. Next to our apartment building was a creek. One day when Jodi came home from work she noticed the neighbor's cat was batting at something, she investigated and discovered a newly hatched south florida softshell turtle. She rescued it and we nursed it back to health. It was the cutest little thing you ever saw. We named it Cooter. I would catch minnows from the creek and hand feed it. We kept for a long time, as it grew it became more and more work. Turtles are dirty animals and they eat a lot, so one day I decide to let it go in the creek, when Jodi found out she was not happy, not happy at all, do I need to say more? I was thinking of doing a comic strip at one time, using Cooter as the main character, it never happened.

I draw pigs a lot, I like pigs, pigs are funny.

It's a hodgepodge from the past. A little of this and a little of that.

Last night, while my wife was on the computer I mentioned to her that I posted some new drawings on the blog, I asked if she would take a look and tell me what she thought. A few minutes later she chastised me for putting such amateurish stuff on the blog. "Listen", I said,"I like to look back occasionally and see where I've come from, is that so bad"? Like I said yesterday, they were at the bottom of the box. Well, This morning my daughter commented on maybe I could post some stuff from the films that I worked on, she would really like to see that stuff. Real subtle, I get the message, but I want them to know that I'm gonna be putting more old stuff up whether they like or not, besides I like some of the old drawings, they just need a little sprucing up that's all. Anyway, here's a hodgepodge of drawings from way back and some not so way back. Are you happy now?

This drawing was the first drawing I did with the idea that I was drawing a layout drawing. When I showed it to the head of layout, Bob Walker, his reply went something like this, "where's your field guide, and your character levels, what is the the aspect ratio for this drawing, where your focal point, etc...? I told him I didn't know what any of those things were, he reply, "look this is a nice illustration but it's a terrible layout background, when you have the answers to all those questions come back and see me." I eventually had the answers and went back to work for Bob, he was one of the best bosses I've ever had, tough as all get out but as fair as the come. He helped me a lot and gave me many opportunities to shine. Thanks Bob, you're a gentleman and a good friend. The rest of graphite drawings below are not layouts either, I was working on my technique, light on dark, dark on light, my mom likes them just fine. 



The drawing below was done on velum, it is an over sized background drawing that I did for a "Lilo and Stitch" workbook. It was very common for me to draw out the entire background even if we didn't need the whole drawing in the shot. This came in handy when we were required to reuse at least 10% of our backgrounds in later productions, to cut costs.




These are value studies and workbook drawings from "Mulan". Sometimes I would work out rough value sketches for my workbooks. Late in the "Mulan" production we were only doing little five by eight value drawings to accompany the full size line renderings of each shot. Normally, you would do a full size value drawings that incorporate the line and that is sent to backgrounds to be painted. It just goes to show you if you have a well oiled crew and everyone is on the same sheet of music things work out very well. Every production is it's own unique monster with it's own demands and solutions.


I worked on "Kingdom of the Sun" for six months before Disney shut the project down. They started over, somewhat, and renamed it the "Emperor's New Groove". I never got credit or even a thank you for working on the project. I'm not bitter! Above are some sketches from that fiasco. I loved the style of the film, it was fun to draw that way. By the way it had one of the best production guides I ever worked with.
This is a drawing of Gantu's ship from "Lilo and Stitch". I did a design pass at what the interior would look like, I didn't do the original design pass (rough drawing) of the interior. I went in and tweaked stuff like the lights and the instruments, etc... I was trying to get a Retro or fifties style to it.
Lastly, this was a drawing done while I was assigned to Animation Services, a department of feature animation developed to do animation projects outside of feature animation but to maintain the integrity and quality of Disney's films. It was challenging to say the least. This was for a "Pocahontas" Computer game. Well, that's it for now, I'll be posting again soon..