The industrious and witty Kate Beaton posted an invitation to all her readers to post a conversation between them and their younger selves. I genuinely can't believe i haven't done this before. It's a good time.


(Trader Joe's sells candied hibuscus flowers that taste like fruit snacks. Little me would probably have really liked them if she would just try them!)

This was the first one i came up with, but the second one i drew. (the book is a total lie. i don't actually read.)

On frustration.

Last fox for foxy monday!

This fox is easily startled. It's not his fault, though. He didn't see it coming.


This is also kind of an experiment to figure out how to get good color settings on my scanner. It's somthing that's been frustrating me. To be fair, i haven't really tried much with it, but i chalk that up to my poor computer, which over heats a lot :(
My poor computer is gettin' old. She's cute and little, though. 12" powerbook G4. 12 inches has been pretty good to me.

Figured i'd fox it up in a seperate post.

And here's some art! I was bored the other day and did some foxy fox studies (+1 bunny).


These foxes are just a little confused about things.

MOOVIES!

So, who's seen Wall-e yet? Anyone?
(looks for raised hands)
It's a pretty good time. I interned on Wall-e my first summer at Pixar. Don't let that fool you, i wasn't allowed to do any real work. I did get to participate in story meetings though, which was a truly great experience. They had a cracker-jack team of people working on that one, i tell you what.
The finished product was really impressive. A simple love story at the heart of a message film about getting your head out of your regularly scheduled programming. Definitely on the artsier side; main characters that don't really speak english, the strongest scenes in the film conducted without dialogue, a modicum of mixed media and a spoonful of social commentary. Especially in mainstream feature animation, where there is an ever-present nudge to be as accessible as possible to the entire family, i personally applaud the efforts of any film that can take it just one step to either side of that line and still come out quality.

So big ups for Wall-e! Kung Fu Panda turned out pretty excellent too. (this was originally going to be a quick post about wall-e, then some art, but i said so much about it, i thought it fair to mention the 'competition', as it were) A simple, honest story supplemented with totally bad-ass visuals! Congrats to all the dreamworks crew. You guys did a great job.

Seems like it'd also do to make mention of the work that i'm doing at Disney! I'm working on Rapunzel now, which has been fantastic. The image at the left was released at our last press conference. This thing is going to look fantastic, and we've got a really solid story to back it up. I'm sure i can't say too much more about it, so i'll leave it at that.
:)

Updating twice in once day! Slow work days = productive art nights!

Rain-baroo?

Rainbowraffe likes what Rainbowraffe sees!

Lissa: Journey to the Southeast

So as i mentioned a couple posts back, in May i took myself on a trip to Charleston SC to see "Monkey: Journey to the West". As described by ,Wikipedia (the sad source of most of my worldly information):

"Monkey: Journey to the West is a stage adaptation of the 16th Century Chinese novel Journey to the West, by Wu Cheng'en. It was conceived and created by the Chinese actor and director Chen Shi-zheng, together with the British musician Damon Albarn and British artist Jamie Hewlett (the co-creators of the virtual band Gorillaz). However, the original idea came from Jean-Luc Choplin, head of the Chatelet Theatre in Paris."

I'm a big Jamie Hewlett fan. When i first heard of the production last summer it was premiering in Manchester, England as a part of the Manchester International Festival. I was so bored that summer that i actually made a desperate attempt via travelocity and a variety of other websites to figure out just what it would take to get me from Los Angeles to Manchester. Needless to say i never made it out my front door that summer. So when i heard it was coming to the states (and found myself with a steady income) i had to go.


In any case, i made it and it was pretty rad. It's a chinese opera, which has a very, very different sound from a standard western musical. It was more stage kung-fu and Cirque du Soleil type acrobatics than plot line, which is perfectly cool with me. They used bits of limited animation by Hewlett as scene transitions and traveling montages which were cool to see.
All in all a good time, and Charleston is a beautiful city. I've got some pictures on my Flickr if you wanna take a peak.
The show seems to only be playing one city per country at a time. It premiered in Manchester, then went to Charleston (the only US city to have hosted it so far), and it seems to be back in England now. I'm waiting for it to come to Los Angeles, which i'm convinved it must do at some point.

And that is the synopsis of the trip i took... almost a month ago! I thought laziness would get the better of me and i'd never actually post it. Much thanks to Jenny for a little prodding :)

SNEAK.

(insert joke here about how i haven't posted in a while)
The following is a true story. It might not be interesting, and it's probably not as funny to you as it is to me (for whatever reason i found it HILARIOUS when i did it), but i can assure you that it is 100% true.
And i made a comic about it.
Enjoy.


Oreo-delivery-bunny is courtesy of cuteoverload.com. For related hilarity, see also cookie bunny.

First off, a big thank you to all of you who stopped by from Scary Go Round! I appreciate all your comments, and appologise that i'm no good at replying to them (laziness coupled with a design flaw in blogger that doesn't allow for direct replies to individual comments). In any case, if you've just stumbled upon this blog be warned that it doesn't update too often. hopefully this will change in the future.
Either way, welcome to all.

Wednesday nights have been designated art nights at our appartment! Beer is imbibed, doodles are drawn and much fun is had by all.
This last wednesday became a sort of draw-eachothers-character night.
Here's Anne's character Squirt. she's part girl and part cat and has to learn to be human:


And Kelly's hipjet girl! She steers with her hips :)


Last weekend i went to South Carolina to see Chen Shi-Zheng, Damon Albarn & Jamie Hewlett's production of Monkey: Journey to the West". Charleston is (at the moment) the only city in the U.S. hosting this production, so i decided to send myself over there. A full account will follow in my next post, when i have more energy and a better grasp of good words to use to form interesting sentances.

Just a man.

Hooray for lack of posting!
Wait...
wait... that's not right.
BOO for lack of posting! :(
BOOOOOOO >:(

All of my art energy has been put into work lately. I'm boarding on 'Rapunzel' which is so wicked sweet that i want to use every bead of energy i have rockin' on it. Unfortunately this leaves me pretty burnt out on my own stuff, but i'm working on fixing that. In the meantime, here's the entry i did for John Allison's 'Feats of Strength!' contest over at Scarygoround. I may have botched the entry procedure (on top of submitting it a wee bit late) so here's hoping it actually makes it into the running. In case it doesn't... here 'tis.

Today was a slow day at work. The project we're on just got through a major crunch, and we trainees just had our final review last week (the results of which are still out) so we all got to kick back a little.
Plus i'm FINALLY starting to wrap up my freelance illustration job and clear my conscience up a bit.
This meant that i got to do some "me" art (art for me!) and nicole got to find this awesome book-case chair:
http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/chair_that_holds_books_6654.asp
We were trying to balance the chairs pure practical bitchin'-ness with how comfortable it might actually be to sit in (note lack of arm rests). I speculated:

extra update!

Found some non-work related work doodles!
Thought i'd share.

LOLlerskates

Gave someone a little guff for lack of blog updates, so lest i fall vicitm to hypocrisy, here's some previously un-blogged art!
They're from at least four months ago, but ssssh, don't tell anyone.

Gobble Gobble Gobble

Hanukkah Harry wishes everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!

About two shepherds

So i've been... "working" on this comic for a bit.
I haven't done any layouts, but i've got some story points scribbled down in a little notebook and i've drawn some characters! Nominally, it's about two shepherds, but mostly it's about one of them.

I've been trying in vain to color this but alas, my coloring skills are rusty.


Those are both relatively old. I did them over summer when i was bored, then stopped working on them when i was lazy and uninspired. However, today i found myself both inspired and motivated (during a story meeting when i should have been paying closer attention!) and doodled me some doodles!
Here're my thoughts on the Other Shepherd. I like the idea that he has a mustache but no nose. It just kind of grows out of his eyebrows.

The two shepherds next to eachother, mostly for size comparison. The Other Shepherd will probably get a little bigger.

The Little Shepherd trying to keep some kind of monster from eating his sheep. Other Shepherd will have some kind of monstrous flock, but not like this guy. He looks identical to way too much like Kingdok from "Bone", and that just won't do.

I'm doing work at work, and I've got a freelance illustration job that's been riding my back since September, which all adds up to a very empty sketchbook and not much "me" art at all this past month.
So i said to myself,
"Lissa," i says, "you've gotta do some art for you or you're going to lose it"
To which i replied "okay".
Sketch and inks that i'll color at some point:

I tried to research motorcycles, i really did. I came out with kind of a mish-mash in the end, but i'll just throw caution to the wind and call it a "chopper", because that's what this drawing's all about :)

Figured it was time to update!
Some highlights pulled from my sketchbook


I'd gotten in an argument discussion with a friend of mine about evolution and i'd been looking at a lot of T.S. Sullivant and BOOM, this quagga happened.

Demond!

So, workin' at Disney!
Only two days in and mostly it's been a whirlwind of orientation and becoming acquainted with the production pipeline. Our schedule for the coming weeks looks exciting, though, and busy!

I'll probably have some more stuff to post a little later, but for now, this is a demon i drew. I wanted a nice, simple shape to get some watercolor exercise on. Scanned on the new scanner (early birthday gift from the parents... i'm 22 in 2 days!)
rar!

My post-college plans

I made this comic as part of a thank you card for graduation gifts. I was going through the stuff on my comuter that thought i'd post it here.
Thankfully i was fortunate enough to find a job with relative ease. Disney actually called me the day of my graduation :)

It doesn't grow on trees.

Jen's been playing Twilight princess lately, and i've been spectating.
I've never actually played a Zelda game before, but i've learned one thing watching Jen play: There's a lot of grass that keeps growing back, and sometimes it has money in it.


Sketchbook fun!
A rough pen sketch all dressed up in photoshop...

...and some cats & dogs. I saw some special about shepharding a while back. I'm thinking about drawing some sheepdogs.

Horse sense

I couldn't get to sleep the other night, and for some reason all i really wanted to do was draw horses.
I don't care who you are, horses are damned tricky to draw.
One of these things is not a horse.

catCHOO!

Disney apprenticeship starts in two weeks!
I got sick last week, so i'm glad i got that out of the way.

And just for kicks, some sketchbook stuff!


(that chicks left foot is totally broken. but that's what's cool about sketchbook doodles is they're allowed to have mistakes :) )

Update! Cat Update!

Well, it's been a dry summer, both in terms of moisture and art. My Disney 'apprenticeship' (now re-named "talent developement program") has been pushed back a third and hopefully final time to Sept. 4th, so i'm still waiting around.
Went to ComiCon and that was great! I finally bought a Claire Wendling book. I've been putting it off for fear that having a tome of that caliber of talent around would give me some sort of inferiority complex, but instead it's been quite inspiring. One thing that Wendling does really well is she can see the structure under what she's drawing and that really informs her designs and poses. Good gesture is important, but good structure is something that i've started to lose sight of. So i've been drawing my room mate's cats. They're pretty lazy around mid-day so they make decent targets.
(the scan is pretty bad, but then again my scanner is pretty bad, and since i don't have a job, well... at this point my birthday will come around before my first paycheck, so we'll see what happens.)


I'm also trying to come up with a decent idea for some comics. Comicon reminded me what i loved about the format in the first place. I used to make comics all the time because i didn't stop to think about whether my ideas were stupid or not. Now i come up with ideas and i don't do anything with them because they're all stupid and lack substance. I'm pretty sure doing nothing at all is worse than doing something that's stupid, so i'm trying to work something out :)

Specs!

Spent the weekend up in the Bay Area! Saw some good friends, ate some good food, had a good time. Didn't get a chance to swing by Pixar (well, we DROVE past it, but not the same thing). Maybe next time.

I got glasses! Now i can see EVERYTHING!

Flambillo!

Uh... flamboyant armadillo, i guess.
I was kinda out of the blog-o-sphere (a word i swore i'd NEVER say, but... there you have it) this last week and got a late start on this one. I tried to do a nice hand-on-hip pose, but it's kinda hard for 'dillos to realy stick their elbows out there.

Anyway, the little guys are fun to draw, so we'll see what the next week brings. Check out the links on Austin' CharDes post (the link, again) to other brave souls who take the challenge.

Telescopic Placebo pt. 1

Submitting this one early, because i have another one in the works that might come a little late. When you balance them out, they'll both arrive exactly on time ;)

This weeks CHARacter DESign Challenge came from Adrian and Emma, or so i am made to understand. The challenge, made seemingly from two words drawn randomly out of a hat, was Telescopic Placebo.
While i understand what each of those words mean individually, it took a little time to fathom what they might mean when taped together like this.
here it is.

An impatient haiku

O Katamari.
Sitting inside the office
Where i can't get you.





I ordered Katmari Damacy off Amazon.com last weekend. By the time it arrived yesterday the leasing office (where all packages are picked up) had closed. Now it is trapped there, with many other eagerly awaited parcels.

Got some pretty dumb stuff cookin' for this week's CharDes challenge. You stinkers hatched up a wierd one this week. May we all be equal to the burden.

[EDIT]
I have retrieved the package! Katamari Damacy has been received!

Char. Des. Challenge!

Old Mermaids ahoy!
First we have ancient mermaids(men).
There's nothing more ancient in the sea than whales. I figure that mermaids (or mermen in this case), when they get old enough, must turn into whales.


Then... OLD mermaids...
... who are always young at heart.


And finally... TOO old mermaids.

Just some doodles from sick-ville. You know, being sick when you're a kid is great because you can just sit around and watch t.v. (unless you had parents that were of the mind that if you're too sick to go to school then you're too sick to watch t.v. which makes absolutely NO sense). But when you're an adult and don't have cable it totally sucks. I've... been watching a lot of 'Buffy'.
On the other hand, it give me plenty of time to get ready for the CharDes challenge!


Picked up a copy of The Rabbi's Cat when i pre-ordered my copy of Harry Potter Book 7. I first saw this at a comic book store in Berkely last summer and wrestled with buying it for a while. A month or so ago a friend of mine left a copy of Vampire Loves in Jason's appartment and one by one we all read it and fell in love with it. Once i realized that The Rabbi's Cat was by the same guy i had to go out and get it. Joann Sfar is great, i reccomend anything he's done.