Dailyscribble

Hey so I just squeaked into the coven of awesome artists over at Dailyscribble, which is a group of seven or so artists, each posting one drawing a week, but since there are seven it's updated every day with new and wonderful art.

So I get to do some dailies over there for a while, which will be EXCLUSIVE to that site... so go over there and take a look at all the awesome artists! Tim McBurnie, Ed Tadem, Jessica Hickman, Aimee Major Steinburger, and Kevin Dalton are the veteran contributors.

And here's a monster.

Angle, dynamics, life...

Well, I've got a contract with a company to do storyboards for an episode of their flash cartoon show. While I'm working on that, I'm also redoing a sequence of mine (I don't remember whether I posted it or not back in May when I did it, but here's a link to it - just click on the picture, as the instructions say). I showed it to Ted Mathot, a Pixar story guy, at ComiCon, and he said it was flat, boringly shot, and I was drawing too big (in nicer words). He did some drawings to show variations in camera angle, pointed out which shots could be condensed into one, and so with an idea of what I'm trying to end up with, I'm reboarding it.

Moving around in three-dimensional space helps a lot... I think it makes characters a little bit harder to draw, but it gives more of a 'film' feel than a 'random drawing' feel.

Before:


After:


I watched The Incredibles last night, paying attention to angles and staging, and it kind of blew me away. I couldn't keep up with it.

Sometimes you feel like you've got SO far to go, you can't even look for landmarks, you can only keep on trudging ahead. Tonight: Yojimbo.

Sketchbooks - now available.

Comicon geekery post out of the way, here are some drawings, and an update on sketchbooks.

I have a number of sketchbooks left over from Comicon, since I wasn't quite as outgoing as I had hoped to be and didn't hand out too many of them. If anyone is interested in getting one, you can PayPal me $8 and your address... or email me if you've got one of your own and want to do a trade of some sort.

Once again, they're 12 pages of sketches and color drawings, many of them (of the sketches anyway) have never been put online in any form whatsoever. Exclusive material, and all that.

Some drawings that are NOT actually in the sketchbook:




Also, my website is up and running at www.emmacoats.com, thanks to the awesome gallery script and overall patience of Joshua.

The day before I took off for Comicon was my last day of work at my meatcutter/sandwich maker job, so now I'm out of the nest and flapping desperately around like a true freelancing bird. I've got one job that I'm working on, but I feel a little insecure without another one lined up afterwards... I suppose insecure will just be my general state of being for a while. It's a nice change from smelling like lamb guts, at any rate.

Comicon, done and over with!

I'm recovering from Comicon today. Last night we drove up I-5 for about eight hours to get back to Davis.

There was a lot of great stuff there, and I don't think I even saw a third of it. Last year was all about wandering around and looking at every single booth, but this year I ended up picking two or three areas and sticking to them. That ended up being better for meeting people, and easier on my wallet...

We drove down on Thursday, staying with a group of friends from all over, and actually got to the con on Friday. The first stop was Jon Foster's booth in the Artists' Alley, because I wanted to see if he remembered me from last year, and show him my new portfolio. He sent me over to see the oil painting demo by Greg Manchess at Donato Giancola's booth. A couple of photos of the demo are up at Irene Gallo's blog - she's the art director of Tor Books, and I had the pleasure to meet her at that booth. Dan Dos Santos was there as well, and he and Greg and Jon gave me some good feedback and pointers on my portfolio. They also introduced me to Scott Robertson and Stephan Martiniere.

It was really helpful to me to be able to go and talk to Jon Foster and Greg Manchess and Dan Dos Santos, because so much of the time I'm in the animator's mindset, and most of the people I seek out and talk to are in animation in some way or another. The illustrators who do book covers and whose work I am just totally in love with, they've got a completely different process in their approach of their work. It was amazing to see Greg's painting demo, because I'd never seen anyone actually paint before. I had no idea so much planning and finesse went into a painting (which sounds dumb, but there it is).

Jason Chan and Dave Palumbo were also at the DonatoArts booth, and they were really friendly. I had no idea what their paintings looked like at the time, though! It happens every year - last year I met Greg Manchess at Jon Foster's booth and had no idea who he was. Only after getting home and looking him up online did I realize that I very much admired his paintings... and the same with these two guys. Yeah... wow.

On the animation side of things, I found Enrico at the Flight table with his Sketchcrawl books and stickers, and his Mia comic and Fragments book (with Ronnie Del Carmen). He was really encouraging about my portfolio, and said just keep sending 'em in to Pixar because I'll get something eventually.
Also I got some storyboarding tips from Ted Mathot, since I begged him to look at my storyboards as I picked up a copy of his new book, Rose and Isabel #2. I like the new book better than the first - it seems to flow better, and takes the characters to interesting places. The first one is setup, and the second one is the meat of it. IMO, of course.

AND. In a momentous event in my life, I turned a corner, consulted my map (crumpled, torn, sweat-stained and resembling a pirate map, if said pirates had buried their treasure in the main exhibition hall) and found myself in front of the Sam & Max booth. While I have only had the opportunity to read the Sam & Max trade twice in my lifetime, it has made indelible marks on my soul. I've been hoping for years for a reprint of Surfin' the Highway, ever since I tried to find it on Ebay and discovered that it ran for $500 on the low end. Unfortunately there was no reprint, but the second thing on my list of things I must posess before I die WAS there, and that is a Max t-shirt. Also a sketchbook, which has handcuffs and 'S&M' on the front, addressing the problem that fans run into when trying to have a serious conversation while abbreviating the names... no fewer than four people stopped me at the con on Saturday when I was wearing the Max shirt, demanding to know where I got it and where Steve was.

On Saturday night there was a Drawing Board get together. I stopped by for a couple of hours, and talked with Kevin Dart and Chris Turnham for a while. We traded sketches, and Kevin has in his sketchbook a weird guy in a half crawl because I had no clue what to draw for a sketchtrade.

All in all, a very cool experience. I can't wait til next year.



Anyone else go to the con? How was it?

Sketchbooks!

Fifty-one copies of my self-promotional sketchbook for Comicon just arrived at my door. They look pretty slick, contrary to what the photos would have you believe. I've got a website to make, a business card to get printed, and art to produce in the next two weeks before I go down to SD. It's really exciting.

Sketchcrawl number TEN!

Just got back from San Francisco, drawing at Sketchcrawl 10. We went to Chinatown, and ended up at Union Square. It was a lot of fun, although Enrico and Ronnie were stuck working and couldn't lead the team of crawlers.

Anyway, here's a mom from the Chinatown playground we were at... acting as a coatrack for her kids' coats.