You guys? CTN-X was AWESOME. Though I didn't get to see any panels on account of needing to tend my booth, I did see tons of my LA friends (many of whom were so kind enough to bring me coffee and snacks throughout the day!) and met a slew of new, talented friends there. Sales were decent and the felties were a hit - I got my first commission while I was there too. Next year I'd like to have better 2D art to show, so I hope to work on that throughout 2011. I am still processing all of the cards and emails I've received since last weekend, so please be patient if you're waiting to hear back from me :)

While I was able to rest for a couple of days this week, I had to hit the ground running after the Con and work on those Nauties for the Soft Served show. I got one small ornament done though, so here he is. Also, some studies for the lollipop and bon-bon concepts.






I hope to have 5 ready to go next weekend but realistically I may only get to 3. We'll see what the week holds!

It's that time of year again... time for CTN-X! I am really burned out on Cons in genral, which is why I haven't been to APE, WonderCon or sold anything at Comic Con in recent years. However, CTN-X is just so awesome that I gladly made an exception. Think of it as the Comic Con for the animation industry, only with 1/100th of the crowds, attendees with better hygiene and you are actually able to approach and talk to legends in animation. Last year I bumped into Don Hahn, Glen Keane, Glenn Vilppu and Don Bluth all in the same day. You can't argue with that! I also met a ton of awesome new friends and am looking super forward to reconnecting with everyone there.



I will be exhibiting my wares at table 39 in the back of the main hall. I have a couple of new prints and I've finally broke down and have started taking commissions for felties. I will have a few felties on display at my booth as samples for what I can do :)

Now, it wouldn't be a true expo for me if I wasn't riding waves of self doubt, anxiety and general fussiness followed by giddiness, confidence, excitement and then back around to the self doubt, so here is a doodle I did during one of the self-doubt phases. To answer Doodle-Steph's own question, it's never a waste of time, even if I feel out-classed by the talent that surrounds me. Last year I came back from the Expo energized and inspired and I expect this year will be every bit as good :)



In other news, I have a few felt pieces in the works for the Soft Serve show at OH NO! DOOM in Chicago. Here's what I have so far (don't wanna give away the surprise, but there will be tentacles involved when all is said and done!), and the poster which features an awesome monster cone by Chelsea Bloxsom!







See you guys at CTN!

I don't really understand why my internal organs seem to act out whenever I have the most things to do in a given week. While I was hoping that this morning's distress was caused by some kind of tainted pie, be it chicken pot pie or avocado pie, it seems that none of the other party-goers are sick today, so I guess it's just another battle lost to micro-organisms. Pass the Gatorade, please.

On a brighter note, I finished that Baby Appa feltie and passed him on last night to his new owner, Bill! Bill took to him immediately and provided a warming pouch for the little guy. Appa, in turn, gave him hints about beating Okamiden on the DS.







Now, Bill is Ikumi's husband and as you know, she was given the first Appa feltie I made. There have been some strong feelings expressed about the unfairness of there now being a 2 Appa household, (right BILLIAM?! ;) so I will indeed be making another Appa feltie in good time. Actually, two Appas. Vear asked for one too. But next up is a Momo for someone who has been very, very patient, then some goodies for an upcoming show in Chicago this December, and then a Flammie for Brianne. With the exception of Flammie, all of my feltie requests have come from Avatar: The Last Airbender and I gotta say, I am getting tired of making white, grey and brown colored hybrid animals. Either I need to get new friends with more diverse tastes or the A:TLAB crew needs to get a new paint box for the upcoming series ;)

I'll check in again soon, thanks for looking guys!

So it turns out there is now a level zero for exercising.



I decided to make good on my office's proximity to the gym and start exercising for the first time in like 3 years. Since I had an ankle injury and didn't follow up with physical therapy, it turns out that my quads are really messed up from favoring the ankle and my trainer and I have had to start out slow. Very slow. Like, pre-school level slow. It's gonna be a long road, guys.

So aside from working a ton, I have found some time to felt and have a new Tampii and a nearly finished Baby Appa teaser. Yippee!





She's dressed up as Aunt Flo. See what I did there? Heh... yeah.



Now off I go to pretend like I remember how to sleep soundly.

Hey guys! Thank you for the comments about Appa in the last post there! I've been getting asked quite a bit if he is for sale, but he is already spoken for. Here he is with his new owner, Ikumi!



I can't sell pieces of fanart, given that they're copyrighted and all, so I'm sorry to say that the only future Appas will be given as gifts to friends, which is what I made him for in the first place. I'm really sorry! :x If you guys are into the felt rat I did in the last post, then you may want to check in soon because I will be making a few for the Purrcasso fundraiser in a couple months. The Berkeley East Bay Humane Society was leveled by a devastating fire this past spring, so proceeds from the auction will go to rebuilding the shelter and making a lot of wet noses very happy :)

I should also mention that I have begun keeping logs and tutorials in my facebook gallery on how to felt, so if you guys are friends with me on FB (I keep my albums private otherwise), please check 'em out! In the pipeline now is toddler Appa for Bill and a small army of Tampiis. Come on, you totally saw Tampii coming as soon as I started felting ;) Here's a shot of my workspace:



I should really be drawing more, but dammit, I am hooked on felting. It's even worth the injuries!



(Yes, that's the start of a Tampii in that pic ^_~)

Oh man. The last week or so has been one snarling ball of frustrations for me. While it kicked off to a good start with my completion of Marshall Van Druff's Animal Drawing Crash Course at the LAAFA, I find myself sweating at home trying to catch up with work while Truffles, one of my new ratties, struggles with the same illness that took Candy. On top of that, it appears that my scanner is going belly-up and, well, I need a break, peeps.

On top of this mess was the whole art thief sideshow, which, if you haven't caught up on that, there's a short version of the shenanigans here.

So anyway, the aforementioned animal class went great! Marshall is one of my favorite teachers and he's always encouraging without being insincere. I learned a lot and I hope it makes my gestures feel more solid - sometimes too loose is no good. Here are some samples from the class and the zoo alike:





I've also taken up needle felting for during those times when I just don't want to be at my drawing table or on Photoshop. I know that I'm supposed to be working on goodies for CTN this fall but, well, I rationalized that this time would have been spent farting around on the internet, so better to be actually creating something than not? *whip crack* ALL RIGHT! I'LL GET BACK TO DRAWING! ;)

This is my second ever piece, a little version of Cookie, my currently oldest rattie and Candy's still-living partner in crime. She's a character and she needed to be felted!







This should be obvious, but it's Appa from Avatar: TLAB. My talented friend Iku asked me to make her one when she found out that I was starting to take up felting and I figured this would be a great way to learn construction and felting in general.











His face still bugs me but overall I am happy with him! Next on my roster is baby Appa, Flammie from Secret of Mana and maybe a certain anthropomorphic tampon. The nice thing about felting is that I've designated it as my hobby, meaning, absolutely no rules or deadlines. It gets done when it gets done the way I want it done!

Thinking of doing some custom layouts on this dreary, black blog space but that will have to wait for another time. Talk to you guys soon <3

UPDATE: I'm done with this issue. I've talked to the blog author and to some of the people directly involved. Life is goin' on!

Hey peeps! I am sorry for the gap in updates. There has been good news and some sad news in the last month or so. The good news is that I have a new job and they let me use actual paints there. Can't argue with that! As a result, I have some watercolor/marker beasties to show you, but I can't give ya more context than that.











The sad news I was referring too before was that one of my rats, Candy, passed away this week from a sudden and aggressive onset of pneumonia. I was going to post a drawing of her, but it's not ready just yet. She fought hard and for a time I thought we would beat the microbes back, but it was just too much ._. Sometimes I wonder why I keep getting rats when I know that their life span is so short, though Candy left us before she was even a year old. I hope that now, her lungs are no longer heavy and her tummy is finally full <3.

Yesterday was brother's birthday, so I drew his dog, Moxie, was when she was a puppy. I've actually been wanting to do this for a while but I figured I had an excuse, what with him aging and all. Can you tell what breed she is?

So if you've caught wind of The Last Unicorn Art Show that's opening this week, you should totally go to it. Why? Because I can't get to Chicago and you have to go and take lots of pics and give Peter S. Beagle a big hug for me, that's why!

I was fortunate enough to be asked to do a piece for the show ;) They didn't have to ask me twice, hells yeah! I decided to try doing an *actual* papercut this time, rather than a digital one and let me tell you, they are not one in the same. Oh my God, the mess. The frustration. The do-overs and the 'it's still not quite right why isn't there an undo function?!'. But oh, the joy of having a little tangible unicorn to hold ^_^



Sadly my digital camera quit on me (the second one this year) so I do not have any decent pics in focus of the final piece, aside from what I could scrape up here. :/ If anyone is at the show, please snap a few good pics! With luck, this piece will not come back to Berekely and it will help raise some moo-lah for charity.





I ended up calling the piece "Careless Sea Foam", a nod to one of the first lines of The Last Unicorn book. Be sure to check the white caps next time you're by the sea... you never know.



Thanks for looking as always!

Remember how I said that my blog needed more color? Well, it also needs more sexy.

Here is some sexy.



Studies! I am liking watercolor more these days and cold, mean vectors less... :x


I dunno if I can give this much context but I can tell you that it's for a book that you should definitely buy this year ;) Each participant got to choose a dessert for our babe's theme and you'd better believe I chose peppermint! Aside from it being one of my favorite flavors, it means that I get to draw stripes and I love stripes as much as I love boobies. Combine the 'em and it's pretty much perfection!

Hmm, I wonder if I can use this as this year's Christmas card too...? Three cheers for double-dipping! Big thanks to Vear, Tom, Rez, Liana and Juan for lending their eyes and opinions to this piece throughout the process!

Unrelated: I am officially SOLD OUT of my art books, both Sketch or Swim and Don't Flash the Octopus. Phew! I have no plans for reprinting these titles, so big thanks to everyone who picked one up while they were available! Guess I'll have to figure out a new volume to put together...

Ok! So I can tell you about what those ghostie sketches were for. I have been working remotely with 3 other people around the country (none of whom I have met in-person yet!) to create a vertical slice demo of an indie Xbox Live game called...

Ghost Chef!



We're going to be pitching it to publishers at GDC next week, so fingers crossed for us! I only had around 50 hours to put into it over the course of the last couple of months, so though the pace was intense, it felt very productive and I think we were able to pull it all together well.

I got to have a hand in every part of the process, starting from the game designer's asset list and visualizing all parts of the game, from the characters to the props to the background and even some input with the layout of the kitchen stations by noodling with SketchUp for the first time, which is so easy to use compared to my tragic experience with Maya 5 in college. ;_; Regrettably we ran out of time before GDC to flesh out the best part, being the unlockable story vignettes, but that's for later on I guess.

So here's some process stuff and a special bonus plushie that I commissioned the always amazing Lana Crooks to create to help promote the awesomeness factor of culinary spirits!













Big thank you to Abby Goldsmith, our talented animator who busted her arse to meet the crazy deadlines and bring so much life to all characters, singing food items and tentacles of doom!

So now I catch my breath, organize my 'folio and throw myself into the unforgettable chaos of GDC. See you guys later!

Dudes, my blog needs more color. Here is some color!

I had a run of bad luck this week, so with some new found free time I whipped up Little Goku here for a character styling challenge run by Luigi Lucarelli. Normally Goku's all perky and stuff but today he's just plain sick of your sh*t. ;)

I need to do more fan art. Sometimes just restyling an existing character is like a calming cruise control sort of thing for me; just play with shapes and color and push personality!

Off I go to down another beer and hash it out on the Wii.

OMG YIPPEE!!



I was nominated for a Kreativ Blogger Award by none other than the lovely Brianne Drouhard, fellow unicorn fanatic, RPG nerdette and all-around unstoppable ball of talent. Thanks girl!



There's a catch to this of course! As part of the rules for the Kreativ Blogger award, I have to nominate the next 7 Kreativ Bloggers, and then list 7 random things about myself... right, like you guys wanna know more junk about me but, rules are rules.

So I nominate, in no particular order:

Bill Presing: You've seen his beauties, but did you know that he also makes a mean avocado pie? If a bunch of people start randomly asking him for the recipe, it will confuse him and that will be awesome. ;)

Sarah Forrester: Her work is adorable, full of life and sincerity. Look no further for some of the most expressive critters you'll find online.

Lauren Faust: This woman is on fire! Her own doll ine just launched and she's the new big cheese for the next My Little Pony line. Talk about livin' the dream!

Eric Favela: I recently met him at CTN and just gawked helplessly at his work. He's works at Blue Sky and his characters just make me melt.

Chris Vear: The only person on earth who is more patient with vectors than I am XD Be sure to check out his canyon piece


Shane Corn: An incredibly productive and inspiring character artist that I look up to!

Daniela Stijleva: Color, character and motion - her artwork has it all. I love her landscapes of the city, she really captures the light and the atmosphere of the Bay Area.

So uh, I guess now the random facts?

1. I'm a girl. I know it sounds redundant but I keep coming across blogs that refer to me as a dude. What's it gonna take, peoples?!

2. I don't mind the sound of nails on a chalkboard, but licking a popsicle stick sends chills down my spine and makes me cringe.

3. I walk all screwed up. It's sort of a lost cause at this point - I originally walked toe-to-heel, which gave me scoliosis and now my left foot sticks out to the side after a bad ankle injury a couple of years ago. That's what I get for not bothering with physical therapy.

4. My favorite things to draw are horses, boobies and fat, round animals/creatures/things. In fact, no matter what it is I am going to draw, I always start by drawing a circle, even if I never build on it. I think of it as like winding up for a pitch.

5. My favorite gaming console is still SNES, after all these years and many consoles later.

6. When I was little I was going to be a whale trainer when I grew up, then an animator, then I realized that I hated actually animating so then I was going to switch my major to biology in college but stuck with illustration. Now I draw animals and continue to love nature shows.

7. I love the smell of wet pavement in the summer and chlorine. The wet pavement makes me think of summer thunderstorms and the chlorine makes me think of the swimming pool I had growing up. No, I do not have a substance abuse problem. Now show me to the nearest bottle of bleach.

Finally, some culinary spooks. They have a reason for being, I will show you more of that after GDC in March. :)