Drawing Squad

Officially, I'm retired from political cartooning. I admit to no longer following politics, voicing political opinions, reading, watching, listening or thinking about current events. I dropped out of the news cycle back in 2008, after Hope and Change took over.

That said, I'll occasionally peak back in to check out what's going on. I'm often amused to see that not much has really changed, and the same news events repeat themselves, over and over, just like they did during my 9 years of editorial cartooning.

Sometimes, I'd draw a cartoon sketch that would get killed by my editors. I'd throw it in the drawer and just wait six months for the news story to come back around again. Cartoons I drew many years ago could rerun today as if they were drawn yesterday.

I was shocked and disturbed by the massacre that took place on January 7th at the French satirical paper Charlie Hedbo . I feel saddened for those families and everyone affected by the horrific violence.

In the aftermath of that event, a wave images surged through the press and online of pencils; defiant pencils.





I didn't think much of it at first. But, my visual mental library kept gnawing at me, and I knew I had seen the pencil thing before.

I went digging through my own archive of cartoons and sketches, and found it. The drawing at the top of this post came from my one of my sketch books, I'm not really sure which one, because it's probably buried somewhere deep in my garage.

What could have been going on at that time in the world to prompt me draw something like this?

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/d/danish_cartoon_controversy/index.html

Here's a screen grab of the file from my desktop of when it was originally was created:



2006. Nearly nine years ago. I still haven't opened this file and I don't think I will.

New Olivia Cartoons!

Here's a compilation of my daughter Olivia's latest musings. She is a constant source of inspiration.

An Idea

One day last year I was sitting in my daughter Olivia's room while she was playing. Having learned some new songs she would sing them at random times, and in her own way mess up the lyrics and sometimes the order of chorus/verses. As she would practice more and more she got much better--and it was so darn cute.

Which reminds me of a quote:

"Repetition is the Mother of Skill"

It's hard to get worse at something if you practice it enough. Drawing is certainly that way. The more you do it the better you get. The one exception I can think of is the game of golf. One can play that game for 40 years and never get any better. Most things, however, improve with time and doing.

I began recording Olivia with my iPhone when she would sing. The recordings are surprisingly good and I got this really great take of her singing Baa Baa Black Sheep. Then I had an idea to animate her and the Black Sheep as a character acting along with her.

Here are the thumbnail storyboard sketches I did for the initial idea:



I took these thumbnails and built an animatic by putting the pictures with the audio. After roughing out the timing and then refining and more refining, I had something to animate.





I love this type of animation. The drawing above is only two frames of the short. It's going by so fast you don't see it as one image, but as a flurry of images moving together.



I'm excited and passionate about creating more character animation. It is my first love and the reason I wanted to be a cartoonist when I was growing up. And getting back to doing what you love is always a good idea.

Olivia Sings Baa Baa Black Sheep

New Things

Lots of new things coming up soon.

LA Weekly Wrap

This week's cartoon is my last print cartoon for the LA Weekly. I've been on staff since January of 2009 and it's been an amazing experience. All the best to the Weekly and all the talented folks who put it together. We might continue to work together in another capacity....creating online creating animated shorts...but more about that later. So, here's a roundup of my last batch of cartoons. Enjoy!

Big 'Ol LA Weekly Post

Well, it's been way to damn long. Time is really flying. So, let's catch up with several months of LA Weekly cartoons. If you don't get the joke it's probably because that local LA issue long gone by now...but hey--look at those funny characters and pretty colors!

LA Weekly

Mother Dough review

Here's a great review of Bez in the Los Angeles Times:

http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-find-mother-dough-20110428,0,2990547.story

September 14, 2001