Listen to President Pullman, it's a day for us to ALL CELEBRATE!


Have a safe weekend ever'body!

I was super proud of this thing, like, four days ago. Now I can't really stand it. I want to learn to sketch with water colors, but everyone said I should learn to sketch with an ink brush first. Well, I suck at that. Shakiest hand ever. I want to learn to use oil paints, but I thought I should try to master acrylics first. Well. I don't know anymore.

I've got several canvas's sitting around the house. Not to mention canvas paper and watercolor paper, but I never really paint anything. I go through these spells where I really want to be some kind of a painter or traditional illustrator, I feel like I should know how to do this stuff. But it only lasts a few weeks, and then I'm perfectly content to go back to dicking around on the computer. I do secretly wish I had quality stuff to hang in galleries somewhere.

This is up right now in our gallery, with copies of my digital prints, but that doesn't really count. I mean. I own the building. It's cheating right?


These are for the mural I'm going to attempt to paint on the walls in the nursery for Jack. He'll be here in September, so I really have to get started ASAP. I've nailed down these character illustrations though, so now I just need to project them on the wall, trace, and then paint. I'm going to keep them as flat colors (to better match the original reference pieces) primarily, so I shouldn't muck it up too much with the painting.



These are some background characters for the latest episode of "Colonel Deese" I finished about a month ago. It's still not up on the internet, but I hope it will be soon.


Don't forget about my prints for sale.

I'll have a couple copies of these (and two different versions of the old Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein thing I did months [years?] ago.) for sale at the bookstore next month, on display with some original sketches / photographs / painting, and accompanied by a lot of art from some rockin' local artist.

You however, can buy them online now, get it printed on canvas, framed, whatever.

Even if you aren't buying (and hey, I know, economy) please let your friends list know about them.

Personal News: Laura and Baby Jack are doing great. He kicks so hard now! He is like a utero ninja.

Spent several hours last night hunting a baby poisonous snake in our house. When I bludgeoned it into pieces with the fire poker it broke into three seperate pieces. The two ends still tried to function as a snake, the middle had given over to death accordingly.

Business News: The bookstore is doing great right now. We moved from our initial (awesome but obscure) location into the building Laura and I purchased on Main St. in February. Things have been on a gradual but great uphill slope since then. Up in this case meaning good, not like....hard to climb.

We are currently participating in a big (tiny) business association thing where we stay open late on Friday Nights. In addition we have converted a large, previously unused, room of the building into an art gallery. If you are interested in displaying some of your artwork in said gallery, you should drop me a line. I'll put up your prints and stuff even, so long as they are semi-family friendly and relatively unpolitical. This is Dickson TN. here, not Los Angeles, or Vancouver, or Clarksville, apparently. Oh, and you'll have to pay to have them mailed to me, and possibly mailed back to you should they set here for ages. Sorry. I'm new to this. You can keep all the profits from the sale though! (We will charge sales tax on it, and keep that portion, but that's just so we can pay the sales tax.)

I have started working on a television show again. I am excited, and I can't tell you anything about it. It will however be a show. On the television. It is animated.

I am apparently going to start teaching at another school (while still teaching at the first one). It's a brand new film school, and apparently they used my name (as well as other, probably far more deserving film professional) in a story announcing their new school in the "Tennessean" (big Nashville paper). Nevermind that I have no idea when or what I'll be teaching and will have to create the curriculum from scratch, and that the school apparently opens next month, it was nice to have my name in the paper.

I had the music video I recently finished in a small animation film festival a couple of weeks ago in Atlanta. It was really late on the bill, and followed a very long, very shitty fan parody about Mario, so a lot of the audience had left or gathered at the bar by then. It recieved no awards. Though several of the other filmmakers commented on how good it was to me personally. So hooray for small triumphs.

I am currently redoing my portfolio website (long overdue) and creating a real professional (meaning full of work I was paid to do) demo reel (longer overdue), so that is exciting. I'll promote that like crazy when it's done, don't worry.

Prints: I am hoping to start selling some prints online (and in person) in the next week or so. I am getting some samples made as we speak, and if my digital painting amateurishness, coupled with my lack of print(ing) knowledge does not produce absolute horseshit, then they will indeed be for sale. Just two to begin with. One is some art you will recognize from past posts. The new one, which has taken up a lot of my art time so far this month is of great interest if you have, or own, a small girl child. Two words: Hippos, Mermaid.

Tell your friends.

LiveJournal News: I don't have that many LJ friends. And a lot of you are friends with the same super popular somebodies that I am also friends with, but none of them are friends with me. Try to help me out with that, would'ja?

A quick run down of movies I've seen lately:

Up (Prescreening with the staff of Channel 5 News Nashville, thanks to Jason): Excellent movie. Touching and exciting, with some of my favorite things: Old people in movies, fat kids, prehistoric giant birds, zeppelins. It's hard to compare Pixar movies, since they are all so different. It's not my favorite one though, but it's probably in the top....four?

Terminator Salvation: Fun movie. The ending is relatively weak, but there are more than enough nods to the three previous films without being overly cheesy. Easy to follow direction and good exciting explosions. Major kudos: handling time traveling and previous storylines delicately and with reason, unlike another more successful Sci-Fi franchise film that just came out. Major gripe: Can someone tell Christian Bale to stop with the smoker's whisper? It made "some" sense in Batman, but what the hell? What happened to talking like a normal person and being a badass, ala American Psycho? Also, Helena Bonham Carter: overrated hacky actress, or the most overrated hacky actress? Discuss amongst yourselves.

Star Trek: Great casting. That's really all the movie had to do, in order to be successful. Cast people who can embody some seriously already established characters. Unfortunately, after successfully doing that they decided not to push it any further. Major kudos: Great special effects without totally shitting on the original series and other films. It's all modernized, but it still feels like Star Trek. Major gripes: I understand that the characters all embrace the idea that they are now starting on some kind of altered reality time line, which is basically like them turning to the camera to say: "okay, now we're going to be different Star Trek, but do not worry, we are in an alternate dimension from original Star Trek, do not freak out!", but the idea that Old Spock (not to be confused with Old Spice) would be so calm and collected about living his elder days out in a past where his mother is dead and his race is basically extinct seems incredibly out of character. He's been traveling through time since like, the fourth episode of the first season, not to mention going back to save Whales to satisfy a big space dildo, but the idea of just going back and preventing two entire space races from genocide is just too much of a hassle. However, making sure that alternate reality him, and alternate reality Kirk are still bosom buddies, now, that requires the up most amount of effort. I'm sorry, I liked this movie a lot. Like I said, I thought the acting and everything was really good, it's just sad to me that the plot is so incredibly weak. But then again, I'm a "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" fan, living in a "Wraith of Khan" world. Also, huge waste of Eric Bana.

I just got out of the hospital after spending six days there with pneumonia. I had been sick since Saturday the 16th.

Laura and the baby are fine.

Is now apparently being featured on their front page. I've actually had this happen a couple times in the past, but that was way back when I was in college, and when getting featured on the front page of Newgrounds was like.... the literal end all and be all of doing something in Flash.

It still feels pretty cool.

About a year ago me and another guy worked on a pitch for Adult Swim for this writer named Andrew, who apparently worked on Robot Chicken. How many pitches for Adult Swim have I been attached to? I don't know, I've lost count.

Anyway, he finally got it up on the web, and on Newgrounds no less. Take a look if your interested:

TOBACCO MAN

Vote or review, or whatever. You run your own life.

It's gotten decent scores so far, but there have been some relatively legitimate gripes about the audio quality. I just animated the first half of it, I didn't compress or upload it. I'll probably promote it a little harder once it's up on a different site.

And now, I piss you off by reposing the other cartoons I've done recently.


This thing has been getting an average of about 10 views a day, which is pretty good considering. I hope you give it a chance.

( Deese Nuts Webseries )
( Deese Nuts Webseries, More )

It's a boy!

that I actually participated in!



Surely you've all heard about the harveyjames  cat girl thing by now.

My wife and I will find out the sex of our first child tomorrow. Assuming all goes well and it doesn't act shy, of course.

By the way, how often do you guys write big long winded introspective self effacing journals and then delete them shortly after you put them up?

I do pretty often, not as often as I write long comments and then don't actually post them!

This is what I do while the kids are doing their labs....


I was thinking about working this up for a t shirt design, obviously changing around the text box position and such, but then I drew something else that I think I will do that for first. Plus, this is so topical, and dated, and all that jazz.

Did I mention there was a narwal who plays the drums? Internet, you love that kind of shit.

Don't worry, I'm not going to triple post this, unless something wonderful, or horrible happens in the next day or so.

That kind of post in which I have finished a thing, and ask you to look at it. And then I ask you to please share it with your lj lists and other friends.
Thanks.


It took me several months to complete this, of course it wasn't ever my primary project any of those months, so in all I think I probably only spent about 3 weeks to a month of actual "time". However, it feels like I've been working on it my whole life, so I hope some of you dig it. If you like the track, you can find more over at their website, vimeo page, other music video, and myspace.

I am so close to being done with this music video, but the final shots are so tedious. Not only do I have to create two different crowds, but one of those crowd sets has to do atleast one big movement. Animator Nightmare!


I drew this during lulls in one of the courses I'm teaching. It really impressed the students who were peering over my shoulder, but then they wanted me to show it to the other illustrating professors they have to kind of create some kind of "teacher who draws turf wars". Stupid kids.

Later internet.

The code to get rid of all the twitter posts in your LJ Friends feed:

1. Go to Customize Journal Style
2. Choose Custom CSS from the menu on the left
3. Copy and paste the code below into the "Custom stylesheet" box

.loudtwitter { display: none!important }

4. Hit "Save Changes."

Source: http://matgb.livejournal.com/354073.html

My source: bougieman 

Vote funny, share with your friends, blog it if you want.

They are not arts.


A few weeks ago, Jason and I went out in his FJ Cruiser for some trail riding and mud slinging. We ended up out beneath some big high tension wires. Did you know you can hold up those long flourescent bulbs beneath these things and they will light up in your hand? It's true, but none of the pictures of that have ever turned out for shit. I will try again this summer to capture that on film.
( More of that )


Then a couple weeks back Laura and I visited Fort Donelson National Battlefield (Civil War) in Dover TN. My mom worked there as a full time Park Ranger when I was a child. So every visit is relatively special, since I feel like I grew up there. She used to let me wear her big Ranger hat and greet people as they came into the visitor center.
( Some of this )


This past weekend, (Sunday and Monday for us) we went fishing on both days. The first day we were with my mom and some friends from New York. I caught this 17" 5+pd female Bass. She was full of eggs, so we set her free afterwards. It's the biggest Bass I've ever caught.


The next day we went out on Jason's boat. It was Laura's first time on it, and she really enjoyed herself. It will probably be her last time on it as well though, since the ride is a little bumpy and she is now pregnant.

( Fish 1 )

Laura is at work at the bookstore, and I'm actually teaching all day (if you can imagine), so we're missing the annual "Irish Day" carnival and parade extravaganza in our hometown of Erin this year. If you're interested in just how much fun this could be, feel free to watch the last installment over at VideoBestFriends.


Also, the new (and currently final) short for Deese Nuts I produced is up:

Please watch it, vote it funny, show your moms, whatever. I need more money.