Old friend, good times, great opinions?

 

I had a dear friend visit me this past weekend, I'll refer to him as Shadrak, to protect his innocents. Jodi and I have known Shadrak for a very long time and when he comes into town he always stays for a visit. He an exceptional house guest. It was refreshing to have an old friend come and share some good times with us. He's a great cook as well but he has a screwed idea of how to make Caprese, that's another story for another time. I really admire his professionalism and his integrity both, in his professional and personal life. There is much more to Shadrak, but in the interest of time I will not share more about this kind fella. I'm honored to be his friend, plus my kids love him. I think that's enough schmoozing for now, don't you?

So, I asked Shadrak if he would please start reading my blog. Oh, and I asked him to please write some comments when he felt they were needed; then I remember what a major perfectionist he was, and when I say perfectionist, I mean the ultimate in perfection. I've always admired this in him but I've never been in the path of it's scrutiny either. What did I just do? I went in and quickly checked my grammar before I let him look at my blog, of course something got messed up in the process and the illustrations I posted disappeared. " That's just great", I exclaimed with displeasure, towards my wife, who is also my technical staff. She quickly expressed with equal emphasis,"just relax, I'll fix it later, I don't have time right now". The first time the Shadrak was going to viewed my blog, and it was already messed up. Gulp! He scanned it quickly with his skeptical eye, periodically pausing or should I say studying. I'm pretty sure I heard a sigh or a humph once or twice leak out under his breath. He turn and look me in the eye, I wiped the sweet off my upper lip as he spoke,"Maybe you could expand a little on some of the comments below the drawings." Then he got up and walked away from the computer. That's it, that's all I'm going to get?

Well, I didn't get a good read on wether he liked it or he didn't like it, but I realized that he understood that my blog is still in it's infancy and that over time it will develop into a well oiled machine and it will be respected and a often referred to forum. I
am of the opinion that comments from people like Shadrak will only make this blog better and more interesting to read. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Oh, by the way, Shadrak asked me if I wouldn't mind writing something about working in a collaborative environment, actually I think he told to write about that, what ever. I want everyone who looks at this blog to understand that comments and questions are encouraged. Next post I'll talk about working in a collaborative environment.

All three of these pieces are from when I was working at Disney on "The Kingdom of the Sun" before it became "Emperor's New Groove". I liked both versions but the big wigs at Disney thought they new better and made major changes on the project. Guess what? They were wrong and the film tanked at the box office. On a different note, it is one of the most well liked films by college students, go figure! The piece above was so large that I had to Xerox it in pieces and patch it back together, hence the seems on the art work. The whole drawing was not on the screen at the same time, there was a camera move that went along with this piece of art work. It was so large because in the old days, the size of the character animation dictated the actual size of a background a lot of the time, I'm sure now that photoshop has entered the 2D film industry things are different now.

This piece had a camera move on it as well.