Happy New Year

Another 12 months.  Another 52 weeks.  Another 365 days.  Another year.  Happy 2014 everybody.  I've been really, really, really, really, really...sorry had to take a breath...really, really, really, really bad about updating my blog these last few months, if not the whole year.  I have been drawing though!  I promise that much.

I've been keeping pretty busy.  Did a few animated commissions for a webseries called Beverly Hoodz, check them out here if you want.  I'm tapped to animate a few more from that series too, so keep your eyes open for that.

I'm also teaching more at Vancouver Film School.  I'd already been teaching two levels of Flash for about a year and a half but in July I took on some more classes.  Now I also teach Classical Animation, Storyboarding and Comic Book Production.  That's been a lot of fun and you'd be amazed how much I love putting together power point presentations for lectures and gathering film clips for examples.  I'm a movie/cartoon/comic nerd after all.   In addition to all that my free time has been largely eaten up by my graphic novel.  Did I mention I'm doing a graphic novel?  Oh ya, I'm doing a graphic novel.  Check out some in progress shots of it on my Facebook page, here.  While you're at it, like my Facebook page too if you haven't already.  And hey, if you're on Twitter follow me there too, I post in progress pictures there quite often.  The graphic novel is almost done now but it took a lot longer than anticipated.  Started it in June and thought I'd be finished, colour and all, by the fall.  That turned out to be a pipe dream.  I was using how fast I draw Cowman comics as my guideline to estimate my timing but the truth is this novel gets a lot more elaborate in a lot of ways and I can't pump the pages out as fast as Cowman.  I'm not sure yet if I'll be getting a real publisher or if I'll be putting it out in some form myself but the story is semi-seasonal so it'll be a while before it's made available no matter how I go about it.  I will put out some official finished images to wet your whistle when it's all done though.
Hmm...what's next?  Here're some random drawings from the last few months.

Drew this after watching Mel Brooks get a Life Time Achievement Award.

Drew this on the bus, just cuz...

Another bus drawing.

Didn't draw this on the bus cuz I didn't have enough time left that day.  But I did see this woman while I was on the bus, picture her bobbing up and down to the music on her boom box.

Doing more random drawings is my only real New Years resolution.  It might not be an easy one cuz I am planning on diving into another ambitious project this year but I'll definitely be making an effort.  Speaking of ambitious projects.  Remember Pork Cops?  I posted about it a while back.  I finished it earlier in 2013 but set it aside so I could come back with fresh eyes and recut it to make it move a little faster.  Also might've made some changes to the sound mix cuz there are one or two questionable sound effects.  Long story short my computer died and I lost all my original working files so I couldn't edit it like I wanted.  So instead I just posted it as is on youtube.  In hindsight I'm actually still pretty happy with it but I definitely would've made some adjustments given the opportunity.  Check it out here!  Right here.  Now at this very spot!

One last thing.  Cowman is still going with new comics every Tuesday and Thursday.  In fact I just finished an epic story arc called "The Foolery Saga."  Here's the promo.

Cowman is now also on Tumblr too.  I'm playing catch up over there now so I'm posting daily until it catches up to it's current run and then it'll update Tuesdays and Thursdays just like Blogger.  I took a hiatus though for the holidays so I'll start posting daily again on January 6th with Cowman #187.  You astute individuals may notice that that is the first Cowman listed on the above promo for the Foolery Saga.  In other words if you want to check that out then heading on over to Cowman's Tumblr page and subscribing might be a damn good idea.  Or if not go to his Blogger page and get caught up there.

So that's it for me for now, and didn't even really cover everything.  I'll try to update more often again so I don't have to write a novel for my next update just to cover it all.  Later guys.

Pork Cops is done!

Here's the poster...

This short ended up taking a lot longer to finish than I had intended but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  Although I can't resist tinkering with the edit a little bit every time I watch it.  It's pretty fast paced so a little can go a long way with that edit tinkering.  This'll probably pop up on youtube eventually but I'm gonna submit it to a few festivals first and see what happens.

Here's some stills.

On the move!

Mid-air skunk

On the run!

Giddyup!

Stork at work

Mid-air pig

Quaint neighbourhood

Invading some privacy

Armed and dangerous

THE Pork Cops

A view of the stars

Local business

Pork Cops

I'm currently working on a short starring the "Pork Cops."  Here're the turnarounds for the cops themselves as well as the perp they're after in the short.

The idea for the characters goes all the way back to art school when I doodled the Pork Cops in a sketchbook and tossed them in the 'maybe one day' pile and then forgot about them.  I didn't have a plot or anything at the time, just the characters.  Something sparked my memory of these guys though about a year ago and it seemed like the perfect cartoon to do when I was finished with "The Case of the Midnight Murderer."  After almost 2 years of animating a black and white comedy-noir cartoon I thought it'd be really fun to do something super cartoony and bright and different.  It's taken a while to get rolling on it though.  I had wanted to jump into this as soon as I wrapped Midnight Murderer but I was a little too burnt out to dive into anything that wasn't paying me right away.  I finally storyboarded it in March and then got really busy with work and stuff and it was October before I was able to revisit it again.  October is also when I volunteer at the Vancouver Film Festival and Writers Festival so it was painfully slow getting to where I am now.  The characters are ready and so are the backgrounds.  Here're some backgrounds.

Hmm...

 The short has a very urban setting.  My original plan was to actually film and photograph parts of downtown Vancouver and have live action backgrounds.  It would've been a neat contrast to the cartoony characters.  Ultimately though when I decided on my plot and all the gags I wanted to include any amount of live action wasn't gonna work.  So I went the opposite with crudely proportioned buildings and wonky perspective.

Some undies.  No biggie.

There're a lot of these city street backgrounds.  The short moves at breakneck speed and I didn't realize what my BG count was getting to till I started drawing them.

These look dangerous.

The city is called Vanzoover.  My first idea was Zoo York and then I found out that was already taken.  It was a bitch trying to come up with something else even half way clever.  It didn't even occur to me for the longest time to consider spoofing Vancouver which is pretty funny considering I'd been thinking about actually using the real city at one point.

There's some action in a construction site too.

Last but not least the climax takes place on this grassy knoll type spot.  I'll be starting animation on this thing this week and hopefully get it done within 2 weeks.  I'm pretty sure I can keep that goal barring any unforseen events.  This'll be a seven minute short give or take and I'm gonna see if it can get some festival play so I won't be able to post the finished short online immediately but I'll probably post some stills and what not once it's all together.