The Doodlenauts #2

The Doodlenauts & The Muppets Recap! 

Saturday March 22nd I hosted my second Doodlenauts event at Washington Square Park! I couldn't have conjured up a better day for us to be out sketching.

Lots of new faces this time around and always great to see my friends that I haven't seen in a while. We started drawing around 1pm and didn't stop until 5pm. I don't know where the time went, but it flew by! I almost wanted to extend it another hour, but we had plans to go down and eat before watching Muppets Most Wanted.

The Doodlenuats soaking up the sun!

The Muppets sequel was fun, very silly and a lot to enjoy. I am not a big fan of musicals, but this film had some great songs, one in particular called, "I'll Get You What You Want"  I Loved the song, loved the performance and staging along with all the little gags during this sequence. I don't think the film was as good as the first, but fun non the less.

Here are some photos of The Doodlenauts!

we had some pizza in the park. 

And these awesome photos were taken by Brandon Jazmin! 

thanks for the pics Brandon! 

I had a freaking blast, and it was fantastic to meet new people! Next month there will be the World Wide Sketchcrawl and that same weekend I'll be celebrating my birthday! I think I'll be spending that day at the beach. I'll test the waters to see if people want to attend two sketching events in one month. :)

Until next time! Thanks again everyone for making it such an awesome day.

The Doodlenauts!

The wha?

I would like to introduce my new group called The Doodlenauts!

Join us Tomorrow 2/8/14 

Doodlenauts & The Lego Movie!! 

So what's The Doodlenauts you ask? It's an event for artists: photographers, doodlers, painters, developers etc; to go out and 'doodle' in the urban jungle! And more importantly to have fun, hangout, meet new people and share tips and tricks all while eating delicious food.

In addition to the Doodle day event I arrange dinner, a movie (usually animated) and a place for drinks after!

I've been hosting different events for the last two years now and have been wanting to "brand" it as something other than calling it a SketchCrawl. 1. Because my events are not exactly the same as a Sketchcrawl 2. I'm tired of people asking me if certain Pixar folks will be out drawing (granted those people aren't really there to draw in the first place) and 3. I wanted something that represented what I was doing and creating.

A few of my movie night events have been so big, I now have a go-to guy at the theater in the city just incase I need to arrange a private screening. Which we could have for the film Wreck It Ralph!

I love being out and about, in a fantastic city on a beautiful day and surrounded by incredibly talented people. Then to continue that enthusiasm into the movie, and experience it with everyone and after we talk / critique/ dissect the film over drinks. And it's freaking awesome.

My goal is to share that energy and create a fun community of artists. I've also got larger goals for this "brand' as well.

I'm kind of shooting from the hip as I don't normally create a group or property without making sure I have everything created (logo, website, social media, etc) But I want this to grow and be a process I can share. One of my larger goals with all of this is to one day create my own foundation to help ensure schools across the United States have ART programs, that includes: Music, Painting, Dancing, Theater and whatever else they want! It's something that wont happen over night, but this is my first active step towards my goal.

SO! If you are ever around in San Francisco or the Bay Area be sure to keep an eye out for The Doodlenauts! :D

First Sketch Meetup of 2014!

It's a new year! Time to actually start posting again. :) I promise to blog more than I did last year. Ha

The weather had been so nice in the Bay Area I thought I would take advantage of it and host a Sketch meetup. The first of Many this year! I'm also going to work on a group name to make my events know and distinct. 

1/11/14

Once it started raining we moved inside and hovered around the tables until seats opened up. It was fun huddled up with everyone at both tables, we started to draw one another and then the caricatures started to get a bit fun. 

I kept my caricatures a bit tame this go around. 

I want to thank everyone for coming out! I was surprised and delighted by the great turn out. :D The next sketch-outing I will have a group name and create a hashtag for the events! Stay tooned! ;)

2 Years ago

Two years ago today I attended my first workshop at Animation Collaborative. Unsure what to expect, I knew I had to bust my ass if I wanted to survive in this new location. I quickly realized how freaking talented the artists in the Bay Area were.  I've always been competitive, no matter if it's entering an ice cream eating contest, running obstacle courses or trying to be the 'best' in school. Over the years I've grown to allow my competitive nature help inspire me and not defeat me when difficult times arise.

It was my goal to hopefully build a new circle of friends as I moved out here not knowing anyone. I left everyone I cared about back home in Colorado. I was motivated to learn as much as I could and promised myself to have fun while doing it! I had something to prove, I told myself I would not be returning home. I would either make it happen or die, and I was willing to do whatever it took to stay out here and stay inspired. I welcomed failure with arms wide open, lowered my head and kept moving forward. If I had to get a job at a coffee shop I would, manuel labor jobs again, fine, customer service jobs, so be it. I was going to stay... no matter what.

I've been very fortunate to meet some incredible people along my journey since September 2011 and to this very day. I'm thankful for the friends I've made.

And to celebrate and say thank you to my first class I've created this little video. Enjoy!





Along with my first class of badasses I would like to thank everyone else whom I've met along my way. Thank you for being you and thanks for being so damn awesome.

Now back to creating more awesome stuff, this is just the beginning!

SanFranLand Success

I'm super excited to post that SanFranLand has successfully become funded!! We not only reached our goal but raised a couple extra thousand! Woot! Congrats to the entire SFL crew and cast!!

I want to share a couple of links as we've been featured on some really cool sites!! If you have time please vote for us :D

Vote for us on INDIEWIRE!
Fun interview w/ the Director & Producers! Examiner

cool art work created by John Hoffman

We had our first crew meeting the other night, and you could feel the energy in the room! Most of us hadn't seen one other since our last film shoot in December. So it was great to get moving on the project again.

And again, thank you to everyone who helped make this possible. We have two weeks left of filming and it's going to be intense but fun! Oh, and check out our facebook page! Give us a LIKE! :P

Marat is going to Disney!

My friend and old roommate Marat Davletshin has just accepted a full-time job as an animator at Walt Disney Animation Studios! He'll be joining an incredible crew and one of my good friends Hobbie!

Check out Marat's demo reel below.

I put together a little going away party for Marat over the weekend in Berkeley and it was great fun. A lot of the original Animation Collaborative crew came out to celebrate. We were only missing 3 people from our Gesture Drawing class! And to get the night going we had vodka and pickles, just how they do it back home in Russia. :P

Support SanFranLand on Kickstarter!

I've been helping out on a lot projects over the last year or two and this year those projects will see the light of day! 3 of those projects will be releasing their own Kickstarter campaigns, one of them has just realsed!

Please take the time to check it out and of course if you can support us that would be fantastic!

I've been storyboarding and helping out on set for SanFranLand, and it's been great being around so many talented and motivated individuals.

I only have a handful of hours before shooting so I draw with a sharpie cranking out as much as I can.

CODAME

I was recently asked to help run the Live Drawing event at this year's CODAME!!

What is CODAME? 

CODAME is a non-profit event, run by volunteers with a passion for art and technology. CODAME's goal is to bring together creative minds, be inspired and enjoy learning from others. 

This will be CODAME's third year and there will be three floors of projects, three floors of live DJs, Fire-dancers on the roof, halloween costume contest, a Live Drawing contest with great give-aways! It's going to be sick. 

If you’re in San Francisco this Halloween, make sure you’re here.

Festival RSVP + tickets here. All Donation based. :)

We are also looking for Artists!! Email us if you would like to have your work shown at the event! us@codame.com

Expect more updates about this event soon!

Japantown SketchCrawl #10

I'm still getting use to "winter" here in San Francisco, and by winter I mean spring time. As much as I miss CO; I don't miss scraping ice off my windshield, or letting my car warmup for 30 mins, or having my nose hair freeze, or driving / playing bumper cars on an icy road with a bunch of idiots.

Out here, I try to take advantage of the nice weather. This weekend was the 10th sketchcrawl I've been organizing. It started with students from AnimC but now we have people from different schools, studios and professions. We had a really nice turn out today, 17 artists and growing. :D

And of course we ended the day with some delicious ramen. :)

AnimC Classes

I am so grateful to be apart of this new school and be surrounded with such incredible talent from all over the world. I was right, it's just like Gobelins, great artists, great mentors, the energy is through the roof and everyone is excited to help others grow.

I'll be posting some art work here and there, I still don't have my setup out here in SF yet, but I'm flying home soon, then driving back out to SF to get settled in. I'm going to push myself hard than ever, and I've created a new blog to keep myself accountable.

**1.M.D.** will be coming very soon... in the meantime enjoy a few pics!!

Shouldn't it be Lotso?

A little hike above Berkeley Campus

The Hogwarts of Tennis Clubs

Finally a view of the birdge!

From my bike ride

1st SketchCrawl!

New Chapter

2011 has been my year of learning hard lessons to say the least.

As I woke up yesterday to backup all my latest work I've created over the last couple months, my computer was humming. I didn't think much of it, I went to transfer files, got an error and thought I better restart the computer. Stupid move. When the computer was trying to restart, it was clicking, humming and practically singing to me. When my desktop loaded my main drive folder icons were missing. Luckily I have some great friends that are always able to help me with computer issues. This time however, not so lucky. Today I went to a "specialist" he opened up the drives in a clean room, came back out and said they were unrecoverable.

If he would have been able to recover them, it would have cost $1500. Which at the moment I would pay whatever to get everything back. I can't believe how stupid I was to allow this to happen, just a few months ago my only external stopped working, I just got that fixed last week. I kept telling myself over the weekend to backup. But I waited till Monday morning. Stupid move. In the past I've always been religious about backing up all my files, for some dumb reason I hadn't done this for a long while.

I lost everything, my new portfolio, the new 200+ storyboards I had been working on for a new short, and excited to show off for the Animation Collaborative, new animated pieces, 3 years of photos, all new projects for my company, all of my Tough Mudder video and animation I was creating. My library of reference folders, blah blah. I lost it all. I'm going to search for another "specialist". But things look grim.

I was also fortunate enough to land a gig animating for Idol Minds but because I'm leaving for AnimC I didn't feel right getting trained up and leaving only after a month. They felt the same way, it would have been contract work until the end of the year and a very fun game with lots of creatures to work on! :D

So now, I need to buy some new drives to replace the broken ones, consider getting a laptop, figure out if I should take my cintiq, try and find a place to live, reinstall everything and start backing things up properly. And getting my credit card approved for more money ;)  With all that shit I couldn't be more excited to be attending AnimC and starting a "new chapter".  It's almost like it was meant to happen for me to literally start over.

I'm still in great health, have great people in my life, and couldn't be more excited to learn from the best and be around incredible artists. This is an investment for me and one day it will all payoff. Look for new work to come in the following months!!

Oh - and if you are reading this, and telling yourself I should backup my work, let this be a reminder to back everything up! And not be stupid like I was. :)