Excellent Photoshop drawing tutorial
Chris Wahl is an illustrator living in Australia who has a wonderful blog. He has some videos on his site that show (in sped-up time) him doing some great drawing right in the computer. He uses the traditional blue pencil (in this case a digital "pencil") underdrawing and then digitally "inks" in black over it. It's great to watch him "undo" stuff he's not happy with, reposition elements, and even flip the entire drawing backwards to get a fresh perspective on it, then flip it back again. It's like taking a drawing to the mirror that you've been working on a while - it's always a shock to see some glaring errors that you've just become used to, but are really apparent when the image is flipped. I've actually never thought, before this, to use the "edit>transform>flip horizontal" function in Photoshop to do the same thing. The video is here to check out, and there are several more on his main page.
Why storyboarding works - part 2
Peter Rubin, veteran storyboard and previs artist, has a beautifully written article - Why Storyboards Still Work - that tells it like it is in regard to hand-drawn storyboards "vs." digital previs. This is an especially key paragraph: So which should the director/producer choose if there’s only money for one? (A hypothetical question — it will always be cheaper to storyboard, at least until the day that video iPods come down to the price of paper. But let’s pretend.) All else being equal, animatics or storyboards? That depends, and not on technology. It depends on the personal preferences of the director, the schedule, and the gifts of the available artists. 2D or 3D, in motion or static, a previsualized sequence will only be as good as the person executing it. I would argue that if you can afford previs, you can’t afford not to storyboard as well. Beautiful. The gifts of the available artists. That's it. A lot of this silliness about 3d vs. 2d ignores the basic fact that the quality of the work is more dependent upon the quality of the artist, not the tools the artist uses. And he has this one last word of caution: All of this would be merely academic, and darn funny, if the livelihoods of some outstanding film professionals (and, some would argue, the quality of the final work) were not already being adversely affected by opinions like this. Storyboards are still widely in use — but some productions are now starting to deny it, so that they won’t seem behind the times (this recently happened to one of my ex-ILM colleagues). That should make us, artists and directors of all dimensions, just a little bit alarmed. It should always be about how to make the film the best it can be, regardless of what tools are used. This is a great article. He touched on some of the points I've pointed out, but I think he articulated it better than I did.
Happy Father's Day
 I unexpectedly got the day off! Happy Father's Day to all the dads.
Jack at work
 I'm trying some small changes, bit by bit, to this blog. For the first time I've turned on the "comments" below the posts.
Finished another sketchbook!
 This was a good one: from September '05 to yesterday. So between this sketchbook and its predecessor, that accounts for just about every sketch on this blog since the beginning. This one had fairly large square pages - which was interesting compositionally, if I decided to use the whole page; and it had slightly yellowish colored sheets, which show up more or less depending on the mood of my scanner I guess. I got a fresh new sketchbook, this time one of those famous moleskines I've been hearing about. I like the size of it, the paper, the feel, so we'll see how that goes. I think I'd like to try some different media too. In these last two sketchbooks I purposefully limited myself to a very soft, dark 2mm 6b graphite pencil and a #2 refillable Tria marker and/or a smudge stick. Let's see what happens...
Guitar at my side
 This is the nifty little Ibanez bass guitar I have leaning against the wall at my office. I love the sound and the speed of this thing - even better than my 1979 Rickenbacker, which cost four times as much back then. Playing guitar: another obsession.
1969
 This blast from the past rode by on his chopped motorcycle early this afternoon. He went by so fast that I had to close my eyes and hold it like a still photo before attempting to draw it. What you don't see is the grey beard and the grey/blond long hair coming out the back of the WWII German helmet. I think the bike had longer forks than I'm showing here, thinking back on it. It was like something straight out of Big Daddy Ed Roth's world.
Restaurant sketches
Some semi-random sketches from the last couple weeks. Waiting to be served, waiting for take-out, waiting for the bill, etc.  This man had a great profile. So when he moved I went in for another one:   Some tough-guys.    The tea...  The cook...  This woman had a very sweet face and seemed absolutely riveted by whatever the man she was with was saying.
Ghost town
 On weekends it's positively strange to be in a place normally so busy - people in production, going here and there - and now so vacant. I drew this sketch while eating my take-out ramen, sitting on the pavement in front of my office. Nobody around.
Sunday at the office
 It was a beautiful day to sit outside and enjoy my lunch, so I made this little sketch during my lunch hour.
LAX
 The night before last we all got into the minivan and went to LAX to pick up Joan's cousin, who'd just spent the last four and a half months in Paris. We overestimated the downtown LA traffic and found ourselves in the International Flights waiting area an hour and a half early. Jack and I started sketching. Jack likes to sketch from memory characters from the latest Playstation game he's working on, while I sketch stuff around me. He draws lots of long-haired mysterious looking guys with swords and strange beasts and monsters. I asked him to sketch something he saw here, which he did, and well; but that's all rather boring to a 12-year-old. I know I would have been bored with reality at that age too. He asked me why I like to draw things, everyday things, that I see, and I told him honestly I don't know. For some strange reason, the older I get the more interesting it is to draw normal reality as it unfolds. I can't say why.  This young lady next to us hardly moved - except her thumb, which was doing a mile-a-minute, text-messaging on her cell phone. Her face was without expression, but her hand was quite expressive.
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