Mini-Vacation

My good friend and fellow illustrator, Julien Alday is here, and I've been enjoying a mini vacation as a result. You can see in this cartoon what a lovely time we're having.

Speaking of screaming girls and hanging out with talented artists, I met with good pal Dice Tsutsumi, who introduced me to the legendary Katsuya Terada over lunch last week.... the awesomely talented Derek Thompson also joined us and gave us a tour of Pixar's Wall-E gallery, which he did story work on. Oh, and the "screaming girl" part is in reference to me, which is what I was when Terada-san tore a page out of his sketchbook for me.

Actually, he tore it out of a tiny spiral notebook, full of incredible, spontaneous doodles. This inspired me to go smaller and thinner as well. Carrying around my wide format heavy bound journal is not always convenient (maybe I'm just not 'core' enough). Here's a few doodles from the new notebook.

Penguins at the newly reopened California Academy of Sciences.

Alex rocking out on Rock BandMy bro-in-law doing the same. And yes, the bass pedal is missing. Give him a break. He's just a squirrel.Absent-minded noodling about while watching Ocean's 13 for the umpteenth time (it never gets old).

One more tangent, this time on the topic of inspiration - I attended the Alternative Press Expo over the weekend and was overwhelmed by all the stuff I wanted to buy. I burned through my reserve pretty quickly, but picked up a number of things that I think you should pick up too... I'll try to put together some sort of list later on. For now, I need to get some more work done!