I had fun in CA this past week!!! It was good to be back... even just to visit.

So... I went to visit LA to take my niece and nephews out to Disneyland (where I purchased something AWESOME!!!) and visit some friends. While I was there, I found some boxes in my friends garage with some of my old stuff from CalArts inside. And in one of those boxes I found this:

A sketch that John Ripa did for me while he visited my animation class! This drawing was squished between my Illusion of Life book and my Richard Williams book. Its in a banged up state... but man, I totally thought I lost this thing! What a find! (FYI: John Ripa was the supervising animator on young and baby tarzan. He also studied under Glene Keane... And is also one of the most inspirational speakers I've ever met.)

He did this drawing in a couple of minutes -but this very drawing has inspired me for the next couple of years that I was at school. Its pretty incredible when you're a student and someone that you look up to offers you a hand. Thanks John. I hope that one day I'm worthy enough to pay it forward.

Okay! Now some of my drawings!
(wow, maybe I should STARTED with mine...)

So this first one was drawn at draw night. Haha, and Alan Tew has an awesome post on what exactly happened that night. I didn't clean this image up at all, so that I can show you guys the parts that I was having trouble with. And it's the legs. And at draw nights, I'm trying to take advantage of drawing with other great artists and asking them to do a "draw over". So this time Alan took a sheet of paper and sketched over it.

And man... I learned a lot. There's so much that I learned from watching him sketch it out, rather than looking at the finished sketch. Thanks man. And the following day, my officemate Dave McClellan offered to do a sketch over:

Here I learned that the shoulder looked a bit off with my sketch. And so Dave suggested some alternate solutions. Mark Behm also pointed out that the shoulder looked questionable on my last post. So I'll be paying extra attention on the shoulders of the drawings to come. Thanks for the crit Mark! Its so great seeing other people's takes on the same sketch. Thanks Dave. I hope to revise my drawing with the paint up.

And now, back to my "Chic's and Monsters" theme!

I actually did this sketch a few draw nights ago. And this time I asked Ryan Ottley to do a sketch over. Unfortunately, I don't have that drawing at my desk to scan in, so I'm going to have to edit that in later. But he's a total Badass. I learned A TON from the way he approaches sketching. Thanks Ryan.

And last but not least... the thing that a purchased from Disneyland:

Donald Duck as Darth Maul!!!!

Isn't it AWESOME?! It stands 16" high and weighs appox. 15 pounds. There's only 600 made and I bought one of the last ones! (*cough* actually I bought 2... I'm gonna sell the other one at xmas time :) )

Hope everyone's doing well and staying warm!