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.