Welcome, Henri: a real work of art!

If it seems like there's a lot going on this September, there is. The exciting news today is the birth of our son, Henri David.

Welcome to the world, Henri!



Now there's some art for you.

15 Years and still creating together!

Following on the heals of my birthday celebration is another chance to jump and down and eat sugary snacks: Jenni and David are 15 today!

What a wild ride it's been.

We met in Arizona when we were just kids. There was an instant attraction and we just sort of stuck to each other. We spent a lot of time watching Moonlighting (it was the 80s, okay?) and being goofy. It's hard to say that we "dated" in high school, because that doesn't really describe it well enough. We connected in a different way. That's not to say I wasn't constantly trying to figure out how to get her undressed. Some things never change. We talked a lot about our futures and what we thought each of us would be doing in ten years.

Years later while Jenni was in college in Flagstaff I was in the Air Force in California. Somehow I convinced her to come out for a Christmas party in 1991. My friend and I picked her up at the Ontario airport. It's one of those open airports without jetways, so we stood outside watching people climb out of the plane. As soon as I saw her coming down the stairs, I knew we would get married. Just one of those things, ya know? I just knew it.

I spent the next (almost) year making that happen. It almost didn't, because I was leaving for Germany in September 1992 for two years and how were we supposed to plan a wedding, let alone have any time together? We carpe diem'd our way into a Las Vegas wedding chapel and spent the next two years on a honeymoon to Europe. Of course we worked and lived and bought cars and saw movies and ate out with friends, but mostly it was two years of figuring out who we were as a married couple.

One of the things no one tells you when you get married is that you don't automatically stay married because you have a certificate. It's nice to be legal and all, but it doesn't keep the juices flowing, so to speak. A favorite line of ours from a McCartney song:

It's not just a lovin' machine
and it doesn't work out
if you don't work at it

Jenni and I have survived some very tough times together over the past 15 years. We came to the conclusion that surviving them means very little if you can't look back on it together. Not to mention the times that are good but only significant to two people on the planet. It's not luck, it's work. And I don't mean work as in roll yourself out of bed and punch a clock, I mean work as in something you really, really want because the reward is sweeter than the labor.

It's been sweet, Baby! Lava!

Germany, 1992

Washington, DC 2007

Celebrating 37 Years of Random Weirdness

Today is my birthday. I am 37 today.

I started off the day by going for a run with Van Halen (stop teasing me) turned up to 11 on my iPod. Then I had an awesome fruit 'n' oatmeal birthday breakfast (you eat what you like, I'll eat I like!) made by my beautiful and very pregnant wife. Presents from the kidlets - Gwendolyn made me one of her custom cards complete with My Little Pony portrait on the inside. What's a birthday without My Little Pony?

I do feel young today.

However, I'm not going to pretend I'm 27 like those people who are always "turning 27" even when they're 50 (elbow-wink-nudge-nudge, ha ha). That always makes me feel creeped out when somebody does that, as if we're all in on the little joke but maybe there's a smidgen of a chance they're fooling someone at the party.

No way, man. I'm 37. I don't feel 37 (I don't feel tardy). I'm not even sure what that's supposed to feel like. In some ways I feel younger than I did ten years ago, like some of that anxious worry-weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I have my days, of course (ask Jenni), but generally I feel better than ever.

I was counting my blessings this morning on the toilet. I had time, I wasn't going anywhere. These are not in any particular order.

1. Toilet. Some people don't have toilets. If I was camping, I sure would want a toilet. Since I'm not camping, I'm very thankful for my little private room with a flushing toilet. I'm not even going to get into the blessings of having a magazine rack.

2. DVDs. I can watch a movie any time I want. I have over 100 to choose from, not including old TV shows. I don't even need a TV, I can watch them on my laptop if I want.

3. Keys. I only have three keys on my keyring, which means it doesn't make my pocket all bulgy and pull my pants down.

4. I don't have a car. I don't need a car right now and I don't want a car right now. So, not having a car is pretty cool. One less thing to keep track of. Don't get me wrong, I love cars. Nothing like a big, shiny red muscle car with a stripe down the hood, black vinyl seats, an engine that rumbles low and gets 3 mpg. I just can't use one right now.

5. I have a beautiful wife who loves me and makes incredible baked goods and children. I mean, she bakes the goods, not the children. She makes the children. Top-quality, too.

6. No financial worries. If you've had them like I've had, then you can appreciate how not having them is a very relaxing thing. I don't have wealth hoarded in the Caymans, but I can get a cup of coffee or some new shoes any time I feel like it.

7. I showed my kids Paris. OK, not exactly a blessing, but that was pretty cool.

8. I can do a handstand. This also relates to #3, which makes it much easier when they fall out.

9. I have the ability to create music and art anytime I want.

10. Hey. Free blog.

11. My kids are more creative, intelligent, and fun than I ever imagined them to be. They are already smarter than I am in some ways and that's a relief.

12. Free birthday coffee from Caribou today.

Plenty more of these will come to me throughout the day, I'm sure. I can't spend all day in the bathroom.

In 37 years I've lived in 21 different places, including six U.S. states and one foreign country. I've been shot, flown secret government cargo, swam in the ocean with dolphins, seen the Arctic Circle, animated for a TV show, acted in a movie with Mel Gibson, ridden my motorcycle through a building, seen original works by Picasso, Pollock, Van Gogh, DaVinci, and Hopper up close and personal, celebrated New Year's on the Champs Elysee', married my high school love, had two perfect kids, ready to have another, cheated death countless times, been on the bottom of the totem pole and the top, lived in NYC with Central Park as my backyard, climbed desert mountains, have met and count as friends some of the most creative and fun people on the planet, and having chocolate cake tonight will be damn exciting.

Thanks

Finally!

I've had this card sitting in limbo for way too long now. The Sparky Firepants card collection was only missing two of the most popular sentiments in the universe: Thank You and Happy Birthday.

So now I only have Happy Birthday left and I can unclench my jaw. At least I can say thanks now. What a relief.

This one actually took very little time to finish up today. The usual craft paper, Photoshop and a wee bit of Illustrator to sketch up the faces. I also noticed I'm continuing my purple monster theme. In my world all the best monsters are purple.

Georgetown study

With the intent of sketching something of the canal in Georgetown, I sat for a while on the North bank stone wall. My eye was drawn up rather than down into the water, so the result was a skyline rather than a canalscape.



ADDENDUM!
Jenni sent me this pic today of an equally sketchy Gwendolyn, sitting alongside me in Georgetown. What did she sketch? You'll have to wait for her to share...


Today we went to see the Hopper exhibit at the National Gallery of Art. Edward Hopper is one of my biggest influences and my favorite artist. I'll have more about Hopper and the exhibit in another post soon.

Blast from Animation Past

Sorting through files on my external hard drive today I came across some archived animation stuff. It was kinda fun looking at the progression from my first experiments in animation to actual studio work later on. I thought I would share this blast from my animation art past...

Posted below is the first animated piece I ever did that combined live video and an animated character. It's a personal project and it came about because I was itching to animate anything. It was 1998 and I was desperately trying to get into an animation studio - any animation studio - and we just happened to live up the street from one. Fox Studios was just a few blocks away from our tiny one-bedroom apartment. Anastasia had been created there and I was in awe of Don Bluth and his team. Every six months another portfolio would go out to Fox and a very patient woman in recruiting would write back and tell me that they would keep the new one on file. She was very generous and I know that because I still have the portfolio I sent and it... well, it sucks. I wouldn't hire me, either. Thanks, Helen, wherever you are now.
I wasn't exactly a hard sell on watching animated movies at the time and our 2-year old son must have thought that's just what adults do. Almost any time he picked up a Disney video or Anastasia in his chubby little hand, it was inserted into the VHS player.



More so than the animation, Jenni and I watch this video now and love, love, love Jake's little dance. We didn't direct him, we just turned on the camera and some music and he let loose. Nothing holding that kid back from being his goofy, happy little self and that's what we love about him still.

At the time I was teaching myself animation by watching films, reading books and picking the brains of anyone I could find on the AWN.com forums. I had a small light table and created my own registration system. The ironic part was that I couldn't afford a film camera or developing, so I tried to figure out how to use my computer to create pencil tests from my drawings, color them, and then assemble as a complete piece of animation. It's ironic for two reasons; one, because it would seem that the old analog method would be cheaper; two, because there were already systems developed to create digital animation and I was reinventing the wheel.

I had a Packard Bell PC with 128 MB RAM, a 512 MB hard drive, and a Pentium II processor. I also had a video capture rig from Iomega that barely ran on my slow machine. Hey, it worked. I had a borrowed copy of CorelDraw and Corel PhotoPaint, which I used to color drawings. I rigged a registration system to my scanner and sometimes everything synced up. It was shaky, but I was teaching myself how to animate without fear. I think that was important, because I wasn't bound by the conventional wisdom of "not enough power" or "that will never get screened." At the time I really didn't care, I was enjoying the process and learning more by repeatedly screwing everything up. Hell, it was just fun.

Jenni and I had a little tyke running around and one in a bouncy seat. We had a tiny apartment, complete with huge desert cockroaches, a Saturn, and not much money. It's amazing what you can do when you have so little and it makes we wonder what's changed by having such abundance now. I digress.

This next clip was done at Nick Digital in NYC in 2002. I was working as an independent contractor, animating for Blue's Clues. Dave Palmer, our animation director, would sometimes offer up side projects for animators, like promo spots and commercials. We were all a bunch of friends making a TV show together and it was great. It was a huge leap from 1998, which is the reason I'm posting these together. It's essentially the same type of animation, just a higher level of quality. This one was created on a Mac G5 using Adobe After Effects and Photoshop.



I've been focusing so much on illustration in the past few years that viewing these old animations makes me wonder if I should start a new film.

Next time I'll post Change, a film I created for the 2004 Chicago Children's International Animation Festival. It's about time!

P.S. I think my video iPod now has more computing power than the Packard Bell PC I used to create animation on. Heh heh.

Monster of a Birthday Card

I love it when an idea comes together. I've been struggling over an idea for a birthday card illustration and it finally came today. It sounds funny to talk about it like it's a package that I ordered, but technically I did. I sent out an order a few months ago and my Creative Department shipped it this morning. Delivery was swift, even if the warehouse was slow. I have to talk to those people about increasing their coffee and chocolate intake.

Oh, and more phone conferences, please. Phone conferences are fantastic for delivering new sketches.

Sparky Cardypants

When I do something really fun and cool, I like to shout about it. I recently started a line of greeting cards that I plan on hawking to the masses. Frankly, I need to get my butt in gear on the sales side of things, but in the meantime I'm really happy to have started this little collection.

Even cooler, I have a stock supply of cards to send to friends. I've been able to send out Pride and Joy to two of my friends with new kidlets. That was fun.

They are goofy, funny, totally weird, and they are mine. Before I get into the business side of hawking my cards, I am taking un petit moment to sit back and enjoy the fruits of my creativity. That's the really fun part. If I never sell another card I'll still have that. However, I plan to sell thousands of cards, so I will have both.

I have the cards posted on Etsy, of which I just inserted a swanky thumbnail link in the sidebar over there ---->.

The two cards in the midst of creation are Thank You and Happy Birthday. It's a little strange that the two most popular cards are taking the longest for me to create. I promised myself they will be uber cool, though.

So, if you have the time, please take a coffee break to visit my Etsy shop and enjoy viewing them. Sure, I feel a little cheesy taking a commercial break from my blog. I know I will get over that in time and with enough chocolate therapy.