Characters

It has been many moons since a real post--for this I apologize. Our family has been very busy fighting a life or death battle (more on this later).
In big news, we've made a major life change, moving from our home in Utah to California. I get to draw cartoons all day at work and we're a heck of a lot closer to the beach, so it's basically a win-win.
Below are some characters from recent sketch adventures. It's always fun to go to new places and see new faces. Hopefully we'll finish moving in soon, so I can get back to a regular posting schedule.

Dudes from church. Yes, that guy's name is seriously Ziff.
To me, nothing says "super powers" more than an onomatopoetic name.

My pal and coworker, one Matthew Braly.

Other partners in crime: John Sanford (our fearless leader)
and Javier Recio Gracia

A dude I spied at a recent Ray Harryhausen exhibit.
Just the sort of guy you might expect to find frequenting a
Ray Harryhausen exhibit.

Some dudette I saw cruising the hallways at work;
her origin remains largely a mystery.

Everything is an Experiment

Dear Everyone,
Please pardon the paucity of postings in the recent past. I've been busy with work and animating (but mostly work)--which is good, because I'm trying to make sure I don't have to work during the school year.
I notice it's been about a month since I posted last, so I'm posting highlights from last month's sketchbookery. Think of it as an apology with a gift. Can we kiss and make up?
(In lieu of posting a million individual images, I've put a lot of little sketches into larger compositions--just click on any of the images below to magnify and get a better look.)
Thanks for stopping by!

Sketch-o-rama: commemorating the recent death of my last sketchbook

It's been a busy several weeks, but here's what I've been up to (amongst other things like school and work).

Some 20 second gestures from around campus.



A meditative tree.

A lonely dude on a bus to nowhere.

Some cool dudes at church.

People in the animation program at BYU (and some made up stuff).

Dudettes blowing kisses to themselves in a headwind.

A dude blowing as though his life depended on it (he was being chased by a shark that was afraid of trumpet sounds).

Dudes who aren't even afraid of sharks.

Ragtime dudes.

And Fergal Reilly, who is the head of story from Sony. He came to visit our school--it was groovy to hear him talk about telling compelling stories. Here he is pictured with some birds that also attended the lecture.

A sketch walk...

So, we are kind of an exercising family; and tonight, when Allison went on a run in scenic, shady Rock Canyon (away from the scorching Utah sun), Sawyer and I walked through the adjoining neighborhood. Of course I had my sketchbook on me.
Although, I hadn't really calculated how short a sketch has to be before a baby starts to freak out, so these are pretty quick (5-ish minutes).

A house in the hills of Provo, where--quite unexpectedly--there are a lot of large and extravagant homes. We also walked by what I thought was a local community center/park that I found out is probably the house of Franklin Covey (a rich guy). This is one of the smaller but cuter houses in the neighborhood.
We also caught this cool view from our scenic sidewalk.

Out of the corner of my eye, I happened to see this strange shadow moving across a wooden fence...upon closer observation I realized that it was me--and that I must have looked pretty funny pushing a carriage with a baby strapped to my front-side, while sketching the mountains.
"Why would you have a baby strapped to your front when there's a perfectly good carriage to put him in?" you might ask (and you'd be justified in doing so). Well, Sawyer is very particular about his orientation to the ground, and he doesn't appreciate going downhill in a stroller...yep.


On a separate note, here are a few sketches from church.

Stuff...

When there's this much of it, I don't know what to title the post.
First, a new comic!


Then, approximately one million sketches.
These are from church and Cub scout day camp.
More sketches from church, in my fancy new Fabriano sketchbook with tone paper...even though I haven't gotten around to capitalizing on the coolness of the paper yet. I wanna do some washes with white highlights, but we'll see when I get to that.
Here's the last stuff from the most recent sketchbook I killed.
And some sketches from Comic-con and Sea World (which I had never been to before). We (not just I...since I was part of a larger group) got to meet basically all of my favorite artists from Disney and Pixar (except Enrico...but that'll have to wait till APE, I guess). Also among the comics/animation industry people we got to meet were Powerpuff Girls and Foster's creator, Craig McCracken and Understanding Comics' Scott McCloud--radical!! In additional news, our comic, Peep Show, was really well received by all the people we traded with (and, lucky you, it's still available for purchase in the sidebar of this very blog). Scott Morse and Paul Briggs even traded their totally rad sketchbooks! Thanks, you guys!
As if there weren't enough going on, Jake and I started playing an eye-spy sketching game. Basically, you pick a person out of the crowd and then make up a story about them. Here are some of the results of our game.


Then, while I was on the plane, I was pretty excited about the game so I played all by my lonesome--it was still pretty fun, though!

Family and (mostly) Dry Media

I can only imagine that this is what Allison thinks every time she sees me with Sawyer.

And in this week's installment...strange gestures...
Finally, some sketches from this week at church. Allison and I are on a rotation schedule where she attends one meeting and I attend the other. I've been going to the 11:00 and she's been going to the 1:00, but this week we switched so I got to see some new faces. I also thought I'd switch it up by trying out some color pencils. I hadn't touched my Prismacolors in forever, so I dusted 'em off and gave 'em a spin around the block.

Somehow a Kelly Loosli look-alike was attending church at this building today...
And a little inkwash...you didn't expect all dry media, did you? Well, I mean, I did drybrush, if that counts.

Sketches from Churches

Some more sketches from around the world (my world...which happens to be pretty narrow at this point--school, home, church on Sundays).





Today we had a church meeting at the Provo Tabernacle. I liked the line drawring so much that I didn't do a wash over it. This one was done with that same Signo Bit pen with the .18mm line. It's fun...