Cut Out the Middle Man

Having kids changes everything. EVERYTHING. For better and for worse.

One example: before we had kids, when we went to church, it usually went like this:

Ahhh. A day of rest!

Now it feels a little more like this:

And we only have two kids!!!

Church used to be about worship. Now it's all about SURVIVAL.
We're hoping God gives bonus points if you and your family simply live through sacrament meeting.

With this in mind, as we prepare for church we only have two goals now:

1. Make sure your kids don't disturb the other members of the congregation so much that they get up and leave in a huff and never come back.

This means bring snacks. LOTS of snacks.

2. Make sure you don't leave a complete mess behind.

NEVER forget the diapers and wipes.

Oh, also, if you can:

3. Try to learn something from the talk.

If nothing else, your scriptures will come in handy as a shield.

One recent Sunday, in our efforts to accomplish #1 and 2 above, we decided to give our son a snack during Sunday School.

The chair next to us was open, so we set a pile of Cheerios™ on the seat and let him at it.

Now, mind you, our son has shown a pretty impressive repertoire of motor skills and hand-eye coordination, so we figured he'd be perfectly capable of grasping a few pieces of said toasted oat cereal and delivering them successfully to his pie hole.

But he's a critical thinker, so he decided to skip an altogether unnecessary step:

So much for goal #2.

Draw Me, round two

As mentioned in a previous post, I LOVE to see people caricature me. I have a lot of cartoony features (big nose, floppy ears, big bald head, beefy lips) so it's fun to see which ones an artist will pick up on and exaggerate.

So without further ado, here are a few more draw-rings of me! Enjoy.

(Whoops-- here's some further ado: Draw Me! I'd love to see your take on this stout, bald animator. Send it in, and I'll put it up with a link to your blog or whatever. rabidmilkman(at)gmail(dot)com. Thanks!)


These first three are from the amazing Jason Kim. Jason is a super-nice dude with talent oozing out of his ears (I've seen it. Kinda gross).

(Love this Sid the Sloth rendition) 

(Baby Ninja Turtle, anyone?)

 Quick story-- back before I applied for BYU's Animation program, Jason and I shared a writing class, and I was so fascinated that he was in the animation program. I jokingly mentioned, "You should email me a list of 'Everything you need to know about succeeding as an animation student'." A few days later, I got an email from Jason with a huge list of things to work on and think about and study in order to succeed as an animation student. See? I told you-- super-nice.

Next we have an awesome rendition by Matt Armstrong, concept artist at Avalanche.

(Run for your lives!!!)

This one is by Nick Beckstead, another BYU alum who has always been super-helpful-- he was kind enough to show my stuff around and give me feedback as I was applying for the Avalanche internship.

Nigel Style is always doing caricatures during dailies. He's churned out a few more of me.

(Future linebacker, if it weren't for those pesky brittle bones)

(I love the lips on this one)

 Nigel's fellow Canadian, Paul Mombourquette:

 And these two are from my trusty carpool companion, Paul Ovuoba:

(Hopefully he didn't draw these while he was driving.....)

Now all of those were great, but my absolute favorite (by far) comes from my cute little 2¾-year-old:

(She very specifically pointed out: "He has no hair.")

Thanks for indulging. Hopefully I'll have some actual artwork of my own to post soon.

DreamGiver!!!

Here it is-- for your viewing pleasure:

DreamGiver was very successful as it traveled through the festival circuit. Some of the more notable achievements are the College Television Awards "Student Emmy", Cannes Film Festival, Anima Mundi, Comic Con, Adobe Design Competition, Angelus Film Festival, Austin Film Festival, SIGGRAPH and over a hundred more!

Again, big thanks to Ty Carter for this awesome opportunity.

And yes, the DreamGiver does look like me.

And no, that wasn't intentional.

Feed the Fish

Birthday

It's fun being a poor artist-- for birthday presents, you can just draw a picture of your friend or relative, wrap it up, give it to the birthday boy or girl and call it good. (It works even better if it's a picture of them that you give.)

So, happy birthday, oh small, winged niece of mine. As always, watch out for birds of prey and bug-zappers.

Christmas Gift Tip of the day

Draw Me!

I love caricatures..... and I particularly love caricatures of myself. It's fun to see someone else capture little features or expressions of mine that I know so well. It's a blast getting a glimpse of how other people see me.

Recently at work they started a "Caricature Door" where everyone on the animation team posts all the drawings they've done of each other (but had previously kept hidden). It turns out I'm one of the more popular subjects. That means either I'm really fun to draw or really easy to draw (or both). Either way, I love it.

And I'd like to issue a challenge-- send me your drawings of me! I'm sure any of you who know me have secret sketchings of me that are in some old sketchbook somewhere. Or even if you don't know me, whip up a sketch anyway and email them to me! I'm going to be keeping a page on this blog called "Draw Me!" where I document all such sketchbookery. Send them in! rabidmilkman(at)gmail(dot)com

This might seem a little self-centered, but that's not the intent. I just laugh really hard when I see an awesome drawing of myself in all my stout-and-bald glory.

So here are a few draw-rings of me from friends and co-workers.

 The first is from Nigel Style, animation guru at Avalanche.

This beauty came from Thomas Estrada, my mentor at Avalanche.

And this of course is from the late, great Scott Gwynn. I say late because he missed our carpool this morning.

Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue!

© Disney/Pixar. For review purposes only.

Nerd.

More fishmen silliness.

This is Betty.

She's looking for a date. Any takers?

As you can probably tell from my posts this week, I'm absolutely loving being a part of the Fishmen in Top Hats blog. There's inspiring stuff from talented friends posted every day. It's a great way to motivate me to try to step it up (and have fun while I'm at it).

Anyway,  I'm gonna plug it again-- if you're not following Fishmen in Top Hats, you're a slimy old curmudgeon.

And Betty would like to meet you sometime.

That's right. I went there.