Rediscovering the Road Not Taken …

It was one busy whirlwind of a weekend. I wrapped up some paperwork for an IRS audit my boss was lucky enough to draw (did I say how much I HATE paperwork!?). Any lingering doubts I may have had about moving into a creative field were burnt away along with a significant amount of my brain cells. The older I get, the less I seem to be able to do that left brain stuff. Feel like that stuff is killing me.

I wrapped up 40 hours of my internship. Still have to complete another 50 hours. That is going to be a challenge with my work schedule but I just keep counting down -only eleven weeks left, ten weeks left, 9 weeks left …. I have to do it. Come too far to lose the race now.

We went to the Museum of Natural History in Los Angeles on Saturday - that really is a great deal if you have a family. Two adults and up to four kids, unlimited access to four museums and other member benefits starting at $60 for a year.

I went to draw while my wife trudged several kids around. Unfortunately one of the dinosaur halls was closed - a bummer since I was most interested in drawing prehistoric carnivore skulls - but I did get in a few hours of gesture drawing and a few sketches of critter heads.

Here is one from a scarey looking fish that lived during the Cretaceous - Xiphactinus

Click for Larger Image!

Also had to help my son whip up a car for the Cub Scouts Pinewood Derby - not the best results from my perspective as I don’t have any wood working tools. I picked up a $2 coping saw at Big Lots! and after forcing the blade through the wood for 20 minutes, as if I was cutting granite, on the final cut it sliced smoothly through the wood and into my left thumb. I managed to slice a third of the way through the tip of my finger and nail. Lucky for me 8-year old kids see the world through different eyes and working on the car with Dad, apparently makes the car much cooler than it really looks.

Well, back to work ….

When I first started school and needed to do the traditional man lifting heavy object and the jump animation I came up with a simple character called Neckman. I decided to revist him and make a small short. I’ll post my progress here.

Here is a concept for the Lilyputians. I want them to be deceptively cute and small native characters who are really bloodthirsty little buggers.

Click for larger image

Here is a concept drawing for neckman. Andres Alvarez of Animation Design Center took my rather stiff initial ideas and in about 30 seconds breathed more character into him - he’s a talented former Disney artist. I admire his character design skills and feel fortunate to be doing an internship with his company.

Click for larger image

If you are an artist or animator I’d welcome feedback. I have very little time to do all the work I have this semester and want to produce the best product I can in this very fast paced environment.

I’ll try to post background concepts as I go. That’s it for now, off to the paperwork of the monotonous desk job that pays my bills (can’t wait to get into a creative job!).

Sort of an oblique reference to Dean Koontz’s Odd Thomas character -not that I can commune with the dead with any regularity, but I sure feel as if I have spent a life time being the odd guy out.

Growing up I was always just a little off, very creative, tested very high in school apptitude tests but performed poorly. I was always drawing, writing, taking things apart, or building contraptions of some sort, daydreaming, catching small critters, racing around as fast as I could go, sometimes pensive and sometimes chatting up a dizzying storm.

My mom died when I was two and after a few years living with family out west my dad remarried and we moved to Union City, New Jersey. This would have been about 1964 and we were the first spanish family on the block, and one of only two that I knew of in my school. You’ve heard the saying ‘it was the best of times, and it was the worst of times?’ Well, that was true to a large extent. I was a really dreamy innocent kid which earned me a handful of friends, and served to shield me from some of the racism I experienced later - sometimes being dumb is your best defense. Not to say the town was racist as a whole - there were lots of wonderful people- but there are always caveman types who want to club anything that looks different.

Some of the things I suffered will probably never be spoken but there were certainly generous doses of bullies who just didn’t like the little spanish kid - which was strange since I was born in Brooklyn and never considered myself anything other than a true blue American. Still, ignorant people judge on a very superficial scale, and on that scale I was different. I took a fair amount of lumps for several years. I soon learned that the ‘windmill defense’ -which I thought should theoretically work pretty well was useless in a fight. I also found out that you can’t learn Karate by reading books at the public library.

I finally got my growth in high school, did some wrestling, boxing and a few years of martial arts after which the bullies disappeared. I had some good friends at this time, but still didn’t fit in very well. On the one hand I scored some of the highest SAT and IQ scores at my school (just behind a guy who cried if he scored anything less than a 99%) but my grades were usually just average.

It was only 4 years ago, at the age of 43 that testing showed that I had ADD and some small memory and learning problems but a very high IQ. The psychologist running the tests felt I should have more testing to rule out other possible conditions like autism or Asperger’s Syndrome but my insurance ran out at this point, so that was that. Wouldn’t make much difference at this point -other than satisfying my curiosity- as I’ve managed to work my way through life without knowing.

In a way I felt a certain vindication at the acknowledgement that something was different about me. Many people were quick to brush me off as unmotivated and lazy over the years but I never was; in fact, if anything, I was usually doing too many things at once. I’ve almost always worked more than one job, been involved with charities and church, and owned several small businesses, often juggling all at the same time.

Which kind of brings me to the root of this cathartic post today. I was so happy to return to school last year. Being surrounded with other creatives I felt like I was finally among other odd birds like myself, and so, despite our individual differences felt I belonged. But in recent weeks I’ve come to feel that even here I don’t quite fit in. I’m not sure if it is my age, or maybe I am just too weird -even in a group full of other weird folk. Still I’d like to feel I have made some friends and positively contributed to the group.

So, I find myself where I’ve been many times throughout my life. There are 9 weeks until graduation, a pounding load of work at school, my job and my internship. I’m raising my sails and going full steam ahead. Hopefully somewhere at the end of this journey I’ll find a place where I fit or I’ll be famous enough that weirdness is considered genius.

I was doing some animation work in the computer lab today and had an opportunity to talk with Mr. Gomez (an instructor at Brooks College) over a burger.

I ruminated a bit on the issue of animation and my personal belief that as artists we need to try to do meaningful work. What I mean is that that you get one successful, rude, adult cartoon and suddenly the guys holding the purse strings at the networks all want the same product in different wrapping.

Please don’t take it as a criticism of your art if you are involved but seems like there’s a lot going on in the world today. We have environmental concerns, social injustice, war and other critical issues that could benefit from the artist’s eye. I don’t think we need to beat people over the head but an artist has the ability to give birth to film, animation, sculpture and other creative expressions that motivate, educate, expose fallacies or injustice. Instead of numbing the public with yet more ribald humor how about putting something new in the mix?

I would love to create entertaining animation that also pushes buttons, engages people, gets them to consider the larger picture, and calls them to action. I hope that besides earning enough to buy butter for my bread, I will be able to make some contribution to solving the ills of the world through my art.

An alternate title for this post could just as easily be, How’d She Do It?! Yes sir, tomorrow my wife and I celebrate 18 years of wedded bliss. Way back at the end of the 80’s, I bumped into the green eyed exotic beauty who would later become my wife. Laugh if you want, but she knocked me out when I first looked into her eyes over the top of my bacon double cheeseburger.

We met at the Coach House Restaurant on Paterson Plank Road in Jersey City, New Jersey. I had been eating at the Coach House since I was a little boy, where it started life as a small stainless steel diner run by John Pappas Sr. He was the owner and manager - he managed to do the cooking, managed to serve the food and managed to clean up - you get the idea. It was always a clean place with good food and a regular stop for us as children whenever the family could afford to eat out.

Much later the steel diner was removed and a larger restaurant built, which was expanded and modernized by his children several times throughout the years. This is the counter my wife worked at as a hostess when we met ….

It was funny she use to tell me she was a hostess, and I would always ask “

[Edit: My wife corrected me a few days after my initial post. They did sell Twinkies in Mexico (she just sang the spanish commercial for Hostess Twinkies so I believe it!) Her not getting my joke was just one of those lost in translation things.]

This is the counter where I sat so often I should have had a chair named after me; just beyond the edge of the pictures right bottom corner is the table where I first sat and talked with Patty.

I have many wonderful memories of this place, the times shared with good friends, family and finally the jewel that is my wife.

Happy Anniversary baby. You have made me happier than any man deserves to be.

I just ate my 1,000,000th burger today (ok, I’m not sure of the actual number, but it has been quite a few). I have to say I love a good burger. Few things can match the majesty of well ground beef of good pedigree, seasoned with spices both subtle and bold, caressed by grains ground and baked into pillow-like splendor, wrapped with cheeses, doused with the mashed pulp of crimson tomatoes, and accompanied by various friends - mostly Mr. Bacon, Mrs. Lettuce (we suspect an illicit relationship may exist between these two), La Onion, Pickles and rarely Coronel Mustarde.

I only eat about one a week now, but I use to make my wife nuts. If we went to a Mexican restaurant I’d order a ‘Mexi-Burger’ Hawaiian tonight dear? An ‘Aloha Burger’ for me.

I’d swear that at one point cattle would move to the far side of the pen if I drove by. Of course now I eat less meat, and occasionally substitute vegetable patties. I worry about my health, about those poor cows (I’ll be the first to try genetically altered eggplants that taste like beef!), and the possibility that I might come back as a blade of grass in a cow pasture.

There is a time, betwixt the velvety gloaming and sunlight’s first blushing rays, when I dream of castles, flying dragons and magic. In this world I roam verdant hills, and dash through ermine clouds of wildflowers, to rescue a princess of faery.

Long I seek. Fiercely I battle her cruel captor. His shape that of a dragon at times, and at others a black wizard, a dark knight or a demon foul. Always, she fights at my side, her courage and smiling face granting me strength when I waver. A young prince stands with us, casting balls of baleful fire at our common enemy, until at last evil stands vanquished by our united strength.

I awake and for a moment I fear to loose the ethereal ties of this magical kingdom. Then I glance at the sleeping form of my sweet wife. My princess. I walk to my son’s room and marvel at the happines reflected on his dreaming face. The young prince. I listen, and in the distance hear the bugling call of dragons.

I smile. The fairytale has followed into my waking world.