To my monstrously great Dad from his monstrously proud Grad!
I come from an artistic family, so my first artistic heroes and mentors growing up were my father, Michael, and my brother, Andrew.
One of the highlights of my career is sharing the films that I work on with my family, they're always my target audience. Which is good, because family is always obligated to tell you they're proud of your work. It's a win-win!
A card for my brother, Andy, who just graduated from electrician school. He now has complete mastery over electricity!!! Or at least, that's how I understand it.
In case you haven't met him, this is my brother, Andy. This year was his first Comic Con/Trickster. He took something like 300 pictures. Mostly of cosplay girls. Goooood times.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I have a tradition of giving my mom a decoration for her Halloween Tree (which was made by my brother) every year, for her Birthday.
This year, the card itself was a decoration. Christmas Trees have tree-toppers, so I figured my mom's Halloween Tree deserves nothing less. And what better Halloween icon than the Jack-O-Lantern?
You can see some of the previous years' decoration/presents above. It was my step-dad Steve's birthday, too, so he got some wine with a Halloweeny skull-bottle-stopper.
On the other side of the card was the limmerick:
The witches are singing from brooms in the sky
While every ghost calls with voices on high
Rather than "Boo!"
It's "Happy Birthday, you two!"
Then they dig into their pumpkin pie.
I may just use my mom's Halloween Tree as inspiration for this week's Chades Challenge: Wicked Trees!
My little letter to Willie Downs' Animator Letters Project got some air time this week on KCRW. Check out their website to listen to the whole show, which includes an interview with Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter (unfortunately not related to my portion of the show).
On a completely unrelated note: Happy Birthday, Mom (she's the one on the left)!
My mom loves Halloween, so my brother made a "Halloween tree" for her a few years ago. I've made it a tradition of getting her a new tree decoration each year on her birthday. If you guys have any good ideas for this year's Halloween decoration, leave a comment! Grazie!
Part I of II: Stars, Stripes, and Animators
It's been a whirlwind week of nerdery! Rather than dump all my Comic Con pictures on you in one mega post, I thought I'd break things up into Con and pre-Con shenanigans. It all started Tuesday with the red carpet premiere of Captain America.
Marvel talent manager George Beliard (who gave me my "I am Captain America" cover job) was kind enough to invite Ronnie, Bill, Bobby, and myself to the event. Ronnie and Bill were the first Marvel/Pixar synergy artists, contributing Iron Man covers last year, and Bobby and I had Captain America covers released this month.
Ironically, I had to ask Superman for directions to will call.
The event was a sea of stars and stripes, and these stars travel in style.
The next morning, it was on to the California State Summer School of the Arts with Erik Benson and Emma Coats to teach high schoolers a little something about animation. Erik, Emma and I all share the same CSSSA to CalArts to Pixar path, so we can definitely appreciate someone like Martha Baxton (below), who has been working to guide young animators into the industry since the Eisner era!
Another stalwart member of the CalArts staff is the cafeteria guy. Ten years since I first strolled through the lunch line and this guy is still working the kitchen! And I still don't trust his taco bar...
Being back at my alma mater to teach exactly a decade after being a CSSSA student myself was trippy because I was hit with two flavors of flashback. Like a scoop of CSSSA on a CalArts cone. It's especially weird when artifacts of my CalArts tenure are sprinkled throughout the department, like Pat McHale's poster for our Senior year Producer's Show.
I can't wait to see what comes of this new generation. After personally critiquing all of their sketchbooks, it looks to me like the future of the animation industry is in good hands!
After CSSSA, it was onto San Diego for the main event! But before rampaging into the convention center, I paid a quick visit to my grandparents in Vista to show them the Captain America cover I was bringing to the Con. My grandpa, a fellow artist, was more than happy to accept a copy!
My grandma's casserole was as tasty as ever, though I'm not sure she's as interested in comic art as grandpa.
Stay tuned for tomorrow's instalment of the Long Con where Cap and I will invade Hall H (because we know the H stands for Hydra).
My dad is a huge fan of the Cars franchise (I'm pretty sure he owns at least one of each of the Hotwheels toys), so it's been fun to share the Cars 2 experience with him.
I took him to the premier few weeks ago. Watching Cars 2 with a member of the Baby Boomer generation is the best way to see this film. They are definitely a generation of car culture enthusiasts.
The best part of car culture, in my opinion, are the pit crews. It's essential for any good pit crew to be well-rounded, like these ladies.
It's also become a tradition for my father, uncle, and cousin-in-law to come to our annual Motorama. One of the stars of Cars 2 showed up this year. A friendly bloke, shorter in person than I would have imagined.
Here I am with my cousin Kelli and her family. As you can see, thanks to Kilt Fridays, the worlds of Cars 2 and Brave are clashing today.
Her new baby, Blake, is a big Pixar fan, but Motorama was a bit much for him. Still, I sense a future animator here...
Making family films, it's important to keep family a part of the process. For me, sharing my work with the fam is one of the most rewarding elements of filmmaking!
I should mention that opening with Cars are the Toy Story short Hawaiian Vacation and the Brave teaser.
This young lady is the reason the Pixar animation department wears kilts every Friday.
Quick watercolor for a friend of a friend of a friend. Based on their kid.
While I'm on the subject of paintings for adorable kids, my cousin Kelli just sent me this picture of me with my new second-cousin JackJack.
He's the tyke for whom I did the Incredibles piece I posted a while back. Kelli's sister Tracy JUST had a baby, so it looks like I'm keeping the watercolors out a while longer.
Jack contemplates the deep meaning of his Thanksgiving card.
And just fyi, these countdowns at the bottom of my posts are links. I mention it today, because the link below is particularly groovy. Enjoy!
