Yuletide's Greetings

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERBODY!!

Just wanted to draw a little something for you as a gift and to wish you some good cheer with a purty deer. Reindeer are just so cool - glad Santa chose these guys instead of pigs or something like that. Wait - a sleigh pulled by wild boar would actually be pretty rad. So maybe pigs would have been ok too.

Also, Saira Vargas must have heard that I was drawing reindeer cause she just dropped these INCREDIBLE designs that just blow my little doodle clear away. You've just got to see them (here's my favs):

how is legal for someone to be this talented

Like these drawings are so good that my stomach is actually in pain right now. Saira has just art-punched me in the gut. On Christmas Eve. I WILL be as good as you someday, Vargas. Just you wait.

I'd love to stay and fawn over these drawings some more, but I've got to get back to watching the Muppet Christmas Carol with my family. I hope you're snug by a fire and have been good all year! Regardless, I wish you peace and the knowledge of Christ's love in these coming festive days!

Merrily yours,
-dh

Fanart. Lots of It.

Hi everyone!

I've just submitted my last final project for the term and I am now only three short semesters away from graduation (whaaaat?) For the past few days I've been settling into a consistent pattern of working and sleeping with brief breaks to eat and to Christmas party. So it's weird not to be in the art lab right now and not to have anything particular to do - I still have this nagging feeling that there's at least one more storyboard that needs to be drawn and timed out. Cause that has been my LIFE recently (well that and CG animation splining, but I really don't want to write about that. Don't ask.) Even with all the work I did before break, my final animatic for Storyboarding 2 was still quite the task to finish on time - but I'm happy with how it came out! It's a absurd murder mystery comedy, but I don't know when I'll be able share it here. There's a chance it could be made into a Actual Short Film and so I'm not sure if I want to spoil it before it's all colored and pretty. Anyways, the project is at a good stopping point and I figured now's as a good a time as ever to eat a TON of Takis and talk about the other work that I've been doing:

If you're one of the people who follow me on Instagram (a hearty crew) and you also happen to be reading this now (a happy few) then you maaaay have realized that I've been posting exclusively fanart since Halloween. I'm a little conflicted about this - I'd rather it be original stuff, but fanart has been just so fun recently. Since I'm doing original storyboards during the day, it tends to be Pokemon and Disney Channel amphibians that flow most easily onto my iPad at night. And these pieces also tend to be in color. I haven't gotten a lot of chances to work in color or make much "finished" work this semester. I'm only taking two animation classes. CG Animation, not surprisingly, doesn't include a lot of drawing, and most of what I do for storyboarding is rather rough and black and white. And DANG IT, I MISS COLOR! AND SHADING! 

musharna (pokemon)

I've also been doing some serious style studies/fusions of my favorite artists, and fanart allows me to focus on the technique/form rather than worrying about the subject/content. Studying Saira Vargas has been incredibly helpful to me, and I've been practicing her style in my fanart. I've been combining her half-lineless style and dynamism with some of my old favorites - an artsy gumbo, if you will:

yubaba (spirited away)

polly and hop pop (amphibia)

Both of these two pieces were made for contests, another reason why I've been doing so much fanart recently. I guess when it comes down to it, fanart is a happy meeting of fun and learning: fun, because you get to draw what you like and it's easy, and learning because you can absorb good design and experiment along the way. You also get to celebrate beautiful things and call attention to the good - which is kinda our job as artists and people :P 

But I still can't get past the feeling that drawing fanart is kinda like playing covers of songs - worthwhile and career building, but not something you want to be known for. I don't just want to be a fan, I want to be an artist too - to create rather than purely iterate. So although I am for sure gonna be drawing some fanart during this Christmas break, maybe it would be good to draw some new stuff too? I'd really like to do some designs of literary characters, maybe from A Christmas Carol or Lord of the Rings. I know that's halfway fanart, but I've got to have some kind of prompt to bounce off of! Or this month's Character Design Challenge sounds fun too: "Axolotl Adventurer." Who knows!

In the meantime, I plan on catching up on everything I missed/forgot to do during finals: baking, reading books & blogs, movie watching, rest, general merriment, and drinking eggnog. My Christmas spirit has been high this year and I'm hoping it stays that way until at least the 25th. I also hope to be here on the Roost more often! The end of the year is approaching and I feel a sense of reflective retrospective-ness coming on... which means we're in for a post. The Roost is about to turn one year old and I'm excited to take stock of the ups and downs, and God's constant faithfulness throughout 2019. I was looking through my Instagram today and it's crazy to think where I was just last year! 

So see you soon! And an Merry Christmas to ya!
-dh

Bright Star

I was very literal as a child.

So, naturally, it always bothered me when people started singing during a musical, because people just don't do that in real life. Cause we all know that art is supposed to be just like real life. ;) I've since gotten over my childhood skepticism about musicals, but I wouldn't call myself a musical kind of guy - still haven't seen Wicked, or most of the big pop musicals of our era. I usually like what I do watch, but I just don't watch ... very many.

So it may come as no surprise that I've never attempted musical-based fanart. However, Lipscomb’s production of Bright Star was so good that it felt like a perfect place to start! I’m already a sucker for bluegrass music and sentimental 20th century Americana, but the Bright Star builds on that with powerful performances and intertwining love stories. I'd felt this fanart brewing during the couple days following my viewing of the show and finally allowed it to spill out over the past couple nights. 

billy and alice

Perhaps due to the brew, perhaps due following a strict sense of style, or perhaps because I had real people to base the designs on - this was one of the smoothest and most successful pieces from start to finish. I wanted to follow fairly closely to the style of Saira Vargas, and borrowing someone else's sensibilities helped me to make choices more consistently and in a way, not all by myself. I find that these kind of style steals tend to end up better for me - some of my favorite pieces from this year so far (this one and the Key West chickens) were strict style imitations of other artists. I tend to feel a little guilty about this - like I always need to give credit to the other artist when someone likes my piece. Like I'm just a perpetual coattail-surfer. But maybe that's just how you learn to draw well. And it's fun to draw like your heroes. So I'm going to keep on doing that.

This month has had its fair share of ups and downs so far - this looks to be my lowest finals workload ever, but motivation to do them has also been pretty low... And with Thanksgiving break so late this year I don't have that post-break panic setting in yet. Everything that's not fanart just seems kinda bleaaugh. It's kinda funny to talk about this Bright Star piece when it's most definitely not been the norm when it comes to my work's quality recently. Personal stuff and heartache have come up and made getting to the drawing table a lot more exhausting (though usually a lot more therapeutic once I'm there).  I've been really thankful for little jobs that don't feel as overwhelming as finals but still useful in some way, like doing official Instagram sticker/gif designs for Lipscomb Admissions. Which are now live on Instagram! Which is super cool! So maybe use them sometime? ;) Here's a couple in a much more high-res version than you will find on the gram-

I drew these a couple weekends ago when I was feeling pretty bad, but something about bisons in varsity jackets just makes you feel better, you know? All in all, I think just need to get home for a week and re-center, and then come back and finish strong. I'm pretty excited about what I'm working on for finals, but it's much easier to be excited about an idea than actually putting that idea on paper with accurate perspective and anatomy... :P

What say you, bloggerfolk?
-dh




PS - Daniel here, again. I've been editing this post for over a week, and since I initially wrote this post my feelings have changed (as they are wont to do).  Starting last Sunday I decided that since I don't have very much work for finals, then it would be better to get that work done before break rather than wait 'til December. I've stuck to that plan and now I feel like I'm actually ahead on most of my projects. :) And I think getting back to work really helped with my overall emotional health - I feel more like myself, I'm getting more excited about my projects, and I'm finishing strong now. I wanted to be honest with the sad parts of this post, and leave them in there, but I also wanted to note that things haven't stayed that way! 

Thanks for stickin' around, bloggerfriends - I'll see you closer to Thanksgiving.

Late Halloween Fanart and the Not Busy Weekend

Hello Everyone, and Happy Halloween!

A few days late.

Already my mind and the mall are quickly shifting into Christmas Mode, but before the ghosts fully depart from our mortal plane I wanted to share a few pieces that I made (or at least started) in October. That one up top is some Halloween Day fanart of one of my favorite Pokemon, Chandelure. Love its color palette, its Fire/Ghost typing, and (laugh all you want) the fact that it's a gothic haunted CHANDELIER. This piece took a few extra days to complete cause I wanted to try some new things with the coloring. Just one more step in my perhaps eternal journey to capture the playful simplicity of Louie Zong's work.  These next ones are some Harry Potter doodles I did while watching the movie with some RA friends. I usually don't draw during movies, but I've seen Sorcerer's Stone a fair amount and drawing also helps me to feel a little more comfortable in new situations and friendgroups - kinda like a security blanket made of scribbles. Also I haven't drawn a lot of HP and now felt like the right time to draw some cloaks and capes.

 a dumble

a snep

I decided to keep just the initial sketch layer with some color underneath - I've found myself doing that an awful lot recently. One critique I've been commonly getting is that my clean-up line loses a lot of the life and spontaneity of the sketch and becomes too noodley. I can't see it as easily, but I agree. So the obvious solution is to ditch the clean-up line entirely, right? Right? But I also have a fair amount of construction lines in the initial sketch that shouldn't be in the final image. Oh bother. 

. . .

I'm in a comfortable calm-between-two-storms moment in the semester. Last week was crazy with RA events and Halloween socializing. If I wasn't working an event, I was attending one. There were chili and ghost stories on Halloween, and an intense dodgeball tournament in a dorm courtyard the next night. But now Halloweek is over, I've been given a time of rest, and finals are just far enough away where I haven't started to worry about them yet. Which meant that this weekend I had only ~3 hours of homework to do. An absolute rarity. I didn't have a lot of motivation to draw, so I just did nothing. Which felt very wrong, yet also kinda needed? Everything I've read from animation pros in the industry talks about their insane work ethic and willingness to hone their craft in seemingly every possible moment. And so as an animation student with a lot to learn and a lot to prove, any quiet moment feels like a wasted one. Even when homework is minimal, there's still books I could be reading, sketches I could be completing, personal projects I could be progressing - you get the idea. So to do nothing, even for a weekend, feels a little like a hit to my future career. Like I'm being lazy. But that can't be the way people are supposed to live. I believe in the importance of stillness, solitude, of things other than animation. So where do those fit into the get-a-job-in-cartoons plan? It's a balance I've been trying to discover since I showed up here at Lipscomb. 

But for better or for worse, I put art on the backburner this weekend. I spent hours talking with friends. I sat outside and looked at trees, and talked to the people who stopped by. I played Splatoon 2. Made muffins. Got kinda lost with friends in the woods after dark. Things happened, but they weren't art things. Career things. Or resume things. 

Of course, if I did this every weekend it might create problems. But perhaps those hard-workin pros have weekends like this as well? And maybe it's not just a rat race scramble out to a Hollywood job, but a journey with time for rose-smelling and side-quests? Maybe it's more like Ecclesiastes suggests, where there's a time for everything? A time to draw, and a time to not draw. 

What do you think, bloggerfolk?

-dh 

Memphis

a polaroid from the zoo 

Hi everyone. Been a while, huh? It's golden hour outside my cozy dorm room windows and I felt like it was high time to sit down and revisit the Roost. Fall is finally here and it's actually been getting a little chilly here... BUT ENOUGH about the weather. On with the post. No big thoughts or theories for this one - I've just come back from a daytrip to Memphis and wanted to share some moments and art from the journey. Seeing as my post about Mammoth Cave remains one of my most popular, I guess you guys must like hearing about my little excursions - so I'll oblige :)

One of the most delightful surprises about being an RA (and there have been surprisingly many) is the wonderful community of RAs here at Lipscomb - all very decent and kind-hearted people. It's been a nice change of pace to hang out with friends who aren't art folks, and a good challenge to come up with conversation topics that don't involve Photoshop brushes and color gradients (which is more my cup of conversation tea, but whatever). And with new friends comes new experiences - Secret Hitler, Sonic, and most recently Memphis. One of my RA friends really wanted to see the Memphis Pyramid, and although I hold no particular love for pyramids, I always love a good excuse to get excited (and travel). So off we went! The long car rides there and back were actually a favorite part of the trip - lots of good music and laughter. Our first stop in Memphis was the zoo, a very good choice in my (slightly biased) opinion.

friends.

I've recently been very inspired by Noah Klocek's Inktober drawings - they have such a pleasant looseness that isn't rhythmic nor overworked. A scribbly of the best sort, and perhaps a good inspiration for storyboard sketches. I had this in mind when doing my zoo sketches, since I wanted to draw loose and fast and not keep my friends waiting. Few things are more tedious than watching someone struggle to draw a foreleg just right. I think this pressure/speed was actually really helpful because it challenged me to try new methods, worry less, and not overwork things. Of course, like a newbie chef I did overcook this one a little...

And speaking of chefs, did I mention that I've recently started cooking things? Now that I have space in my dorm for a fridge and pantry, I've dabbled in baking - a therapeutic and rewarding act of making. But I digress - here's a couple more drawings, these more inspired by Louie Zong:

By this time in the day we were very hungry and ready for some Memphis barbecue. Afterwards we visited the art museum, and drove by Graceland (while listening to Paul Simon's Graceland). As the sun was setting, we finally arrived at our ultimate destination - the Bass Pro Pyramid. Replica of an Egyptian religious monument, built as a stadium, now a temple to all things bass and pro. Only in America. The place was incredible, the scale gigantic. There was just so much in there - hotel, restaurants, boats - all around a man made swamp (though swamp in the loosest of terms, there was no peat and minimal bog-iness, to my disappointment). The view from the top was the perfect end to our day in Memphis, just watching the sun fade away over the Mississippi River. And then we drove back, listened to Sriracha at least two more times, and went to Waffle House. What a day! 

Of course now I've completely run out of time to talk about Hutchmoot and everything else that's happened in the last month, but I trust that this is enough vacation stories for now! Just be glad I didn't pull out the slideshow. It's crazy to think that we're already so far into the semester! Since I don't have midterms in my art classes it's easy to forget exactly how far we've come. But this year's going by fast and I'm already starting to think about The End (of college). But now that I think about it, I've kinda been dreaming/stressing about future life for at least a year already, so what else is new?

Hope this post finds you well, bloggerfriends -
dh

spooky time

Hey Roost-ers,
You may have noticed that things look a little different around here! I've been wanting for a long time to do new, seasonal versions of the Wayfarer header, and Halloween seemed like a great first opportunity. It's like my own little Google doodle! But with birds and an excessive use of haunting pinks. Keep scrolling to read the post I squeezed in yesterday before spookiness descended upon the world. The scariest thing is that it's STILL JUST AS HOT TODAY. Fall, where you at.

Hope you enjoy the spookiness!
-dh

Onward, but Upward?

zoo sketch, 2018 

zoo sketches, 2019

It's fall!

Well, from a technical-calendar point of view. We're still hitting highs in the 90s here in Nashville. (Global warming? Curse of a summer witch? Regardless, it still sucks). I'm ready for fall to arrive this year, and there have been a couple days when the wind hit the hills just right, and autumn began to sing in the air... But those days have sadly been all too few for a late September. I'm ready for the seasons to change, and I'm hoping to summon up some holiday spirit this year. As faithful Roost-ers may know, last year I couldn't really catch any holiday excitement until Easter. I even didn't have a costume ready for Halloween (one of my recurring childhood nightmares, believe it or not). I expect things may be different this year. I've already started to dip into my fall playlist and listen to old-timey tunes. Cause for me, fall is a time for old things. Old farmhouses draped in decaying leaves. Dusty antiques of a nostalgic era. Ragtime and folk music.

Fall also feels like a good time to read (perhaps old books) and reconsider my modern assumptions about the world, one of which I wanted to talk about today. The idea of the onward and upward, specifically when it comes to practicing art or honing any type of craft. That the two are invariably linked. (Disclaimer: most of what I'm about to say is inspired by and an artsy paraphrase of this Joshua Gibbs article. Didn't want you to get any ideas that I'm smarter than I actually am.)

I think there's always this expectation that as long as you practice, things will get better. In vague metaphorical terms - If you are going onward, then you are inherently going upward too. And while this may be true in the extremely long term, on a daily, weekly, or even yearly basis it doesn't seem so convincing. Any of us who make something (art, homes, artisan cat food) know the feeling. No matter how much you practice, sometimes nothing (or everything) comes out right. Often this is accompanied by other events. You get art block. Your dog dies. You fall in love. You watch 24 straight hours of Ghibli movies. All of these will directly affect your art, yet none of them are practice-related. What gives? You have may already guessed, dear reader, the trick: art doesn't just flow from skill, but also inspiration, joy, loss, wisdom, luck - in other words, from life. To quote Gibbs more directly here, "If [art] has anything to do with life, the quality of an [artist's] work will be a bit uneven - just like life itself is uneven."

If you look an artist's entire body of work, you're not going to see a steady rise, where each piece is better than the last. Rather, the line on the Graph of Goodness is going to be all over the place - sporadic masterpieces, periods of drought, times of learning and breakthroughs. This pattern can be found in other areas of life - I know this process has been particularly true in my faith. Despite my efforts, my relationship with God goes through periods of stagnation, passion, instruction, growth, and stagnation again. The amount of Scripture reading, church visiting, and other disciplines do not always have a direct correlation to the quality of the finished work, my relationship with God. Here's an example from the art zone: each school year I do an illustration of me and our school mascot, a bison. But I haven't made one for this year. To be honest, the real reason why I haven't is that I don't know how to top last year's drawing. I'm worried that this year's will not be much better (or perhaps worse!) than the one I did last year. Yet I have a desire to show everyone that I'm making significant progress. Cause if I don't know how to draw a better bison after a whole year of schooling, what am I doing with my life??

Enough about me. Let's look at the example of Brad Bird. He starts incredibly strong with The Iron Giant (1999), following that up with The Incredibles (2004), which may just be the most perfect animated film ever made.  Ratatouille (2007) is good, but not Incredibles level, and I don't know much about Ghost Protocol (2011).  But Tomorrowland (2015) was a forgettable flop and Incredibles 2 (2018) an underwhelming sequel. Brad Bird, an animation wizard, still makes mistakes, even later in his career.

The point is that anything that involves some level of artistry is going to involve your life in some way. So unless your life is quickly and methodically progressing towards perfection, don't expect your art to either. Sometimes, life and art just suck. And in this fallen world, that's natural. I think that's one of the most important things for me to remember. When you see someone doing KILLER work - the kind of stuff that hits you with a double-punch of inspiration and jealousy (Saira Vargas for me recently) - that is unnatural (or perhaps super-natural). The paint and the artist's hand didn't naturally want to do that, but through mastery of nature, the artist has made it so. Although Instagram does a good job of hiding this, that art was born of struggle, perhaps years of accumulated struggle. Babies can't draw well, or make coffee well, or love well, because they haven't fought for it yet. It's a process that takes time and heartache - the combination of dutiful practice, and the experience of life. And plenty of mistakes and bad drawings. 

One of my biggest fears is that I'll slip backwards and get worse at art. But the important thing to remember is that me sucking at art is natural. My hand wants to make awful, jagged lines. My brain wants to draw everything all stiff and out of perspective. Therefore, it's a supernatural feat of will to make something truly beautiful. The real danger creeps in when you think you are above error - a straight A artist. There's a saying in the art community that your hand has 1,000 or 10,000 or so bad drawings in it that you got to get out. Which implies that you'll reach a point where the bad drawings stop. When every drawing will be golden. But as Rebecca Sugar says in this panel, it's always a struggle. No matter how much you draw, those bad drawings are never truly over. It's like running - if you're not having trouble, you're probably walking. Wow. Doesn't that just make you want to be an artist?! 

No really - Isn't that great? We're not expected to be perfect, and our art shouldn't be either. All we can do is show up every day, and try to grow in righteousness and skill. It's the showing up that's important - the practice in the midst of the hard times, independent of the final results. I think we can be more proud of a decent drawing born on a bad day than a fantastic drawing created on a great one. Cause although Instagram and studio recruiters will judge them equally, we know that it took buckets more motivation to make the former. And it's the building of good habits, of good person-age, that will likely serve us better in the days to come.

Can I get an amen, bloggerfolk?

Hope this post finds you well, wherever in life you may be. Let me know what's up in the comments.
-dh

The Right Place: A Weekend at Lightbox

Hi.

I’m back. Both here at the Roost, and home in Nashville. A lot has happened since my last post, but I’m not even sure I have time to recount that month – this past week has been crazy enough (crazy good, don’t worry). I’ve just come back from a lovely visit to Lightbox Expo, and I feel as though I’ve been hit with life experience whiplash. In short, it was a bit surreal to wake up in Central Time, see campus outside my window, and go eat in a cafeteria. My whole Lightbox trip felt very much like the journeys in The Lord of the Rings and The Wind in the Willows – a needed escape from the familiar and routine, which now at the end, are the things you’re most excited to return to. That’s the hobbit part of me, I guess. Yet as ready as I was to come back home and see familiar faces, the actual experience of it has taken some getting used to. I feel like Rat in The Wind in the Willows after his enchantment by the Sea Rat – dazed, tired, a little sad, and in dire need of a poetry-filled cure. And since I don’t write much poetry, I’m back here at the Roost.

However, this has also been a rather challenging blog post to write: I’ve been sitting on it for a day or so, trying to come up with funny quips or stellar observations - you know, typical fare here on the Roost ;) But I just don’t really know where to begin or what to say. I think it’s because I’ve had so many thoughts and experiences that they’ve all gotten tangled up in my mind - some kind of knotted yarn ball of animation bewilderment and fanboyish wonder. But if I’m not careful, that ball is going to roll away down a forgotten memory lane. I’m going to try to untangle some of it here, and capture some of what I saw and learned. This trip was too important to forget. (Also I need to ditch this yarn metaphor.)

FIRSTLY: There were a lot of unknowns in this trip. I initially didn’t know if our animation department would choose to go to CTN or Lightbox. This was Lightbox’s first year of existence too, so no one knew what it would actually be like. Even once Professor Tom did decide on Lightbox, we didn’t know where we would stay, if the trip would wreck my schedule by being a class credit, or exactly how much it would cost. While I don’t particularly like any amount of unknowns, you can’t dispute that they’re a perquisite for a good adventure. And as reluctant as I am to admit it, the unknown is where it’s often the easiest to find God. And good gracious was He there on this trip. (Buckle up – I already know this is going to be a long post).

Perhaps His first act of grace was keeping me healthy and safe during the weeks prior to the trip. You guys have no idea how much I worried about getting sick and being unable to go! I think I made some kind of idol out of this experience. But despite the sleep lost due to my excitement and anxious prepwork for the trip, I emerged ready to go Wednesday morning at 5:30am. We had a very early flight.

Landing in the Burbank airport was an especially memorable moment for me. Since this would be my first time in California, I didn’t quite know what to expect. But when I arrived it felt like I recognized it somewhat – probably due to my study of Louie Zong’s art. But what a different world from Tennessee & NC! I was thankful for the hills that surrounded the city – without rain or seasons, at least I would have some mountains to look upon. They actually were quite beautiful at sunset, too. LA also had more plants than I expected – I guess my East Coast brain assumed it was some kind of wasteland with a few animators huddling in a cave – and was thankful to find that there was still a lot of life. Talking about the weather became a familiar happening during the trip, which was perhaps fitting, since it was so different to me. Or perhaps it was because we were all awkward artists and didn’t feel like talking about photoshop brushes anymore.

Wednesday was full of joyful occurrences. I love happy reunions, and it had been a good while since I had seen my friends Naomi and Clay, who had recently moved to the area. They picked our group up from the airport and joined us for the rest of the trip. (MAJOR SHOUTOUT to them, if they’re reading, for driving us around and using up their very expensive LA gasoline). Following this reuniting, we all went straight to Disney. The Disney. The Big Dog. The Biggest Mouse. The Mouse House. Our giddiness of having just arrived in California was only amplified by the fact that we were basically standing on animation holy ground. I think this picture captures my friends and I in one of the happiest moments of the trip – grateful to be standing there, not yet worn down by the business of the expo.

When we walked inside we just happened to run into Mark Henn, Tom’s mentor (just one of many providential circumstances that were a common feature of this trip). He then took us on a pre-tour tour, thwarting the well-meaning plans of our guide, who had to find us when our tour actually began 30 minutes later. Having already signed our NDAs, Mark led us deeper into the studio where we watched the employees line up for an afternoon snack. I saw two people I thought were Paul Briggs and was pretty at least one of them was him. It was a little bit of a revelation to learn that the people at Disney were just real people, doing their job (and getting free ice cream). I had always imagined them as animation demigods, perhaps slightly glowing with talent, footsteps sizzling with drawing ability. But they were just human. The studio had been recently renovated and looked very fresh. However, the renovation had done some “spring cleaning” when it came to Disney’s hand-drawn features. Most of the art was all from Disney’s recent decade of CG films – you actually had to go to the bottom floor to find art displays from the older features. Although I love Zootopia, I missed the Bambi and the Lion King. Call me a sentimentalist, I guess.

Throughout the trip, Tom did a great job of setting up meals with animation pros – I got to dine with Bobby Chiu (creator of Lightbox; no idea how he had the time or sanity to meet us), Mark Henn, Laura Price, and Pernille Orum (which I mostly missed due to waiting in line for an expo badge). What an honor!

quick meeting with armand serrano

not actually from my instagram - credit: robert hughes

And on Friday, the Expo began.

A lot’s been said about the expo online already – and I agree with most of it. It was well organized, well executed, and well attended. I think the main highlight was that unlike other cons, this one was filled with not just fans, but fan-creators. There was a mutual fan-ship – one where an artist would say “I love your work!” to which the other artist would likely reply “I love your work too!” Even as a small artist (both in stature and online following) I was surprised by how many of these interactions I had. And to top it off everyone was very friendly.

For me, the expo was mostly about meeting my heroes – the reason why I had gone was mainly due to the deluge of “I’m coming to Lightbox” posts I had seen from nearly all of my inspirations. So I didn’t end up going to many panels (just 2) or demos (just 1), because those took me away from the show floor where most of the people were. Especially as a shy person, I wanted to give myself every opportunity to meet as many people as possible (which usually meant skipping lunch. I have since resumed luncheon-ing). Having just come from my second Heroes Con, I felt more ready to engage and not let this opportunity pass me by. So during the hours of the con, I went on a whirlwind tour of the artist tables I had marked on my must-see list (yes, I made a list - analytical left-brain Daniel wanted to come to Lightbox too). I also got to meet a few artists I knew on Instagram and had talked to before the expo: notably Luis Huerta and Karla Circe. Luis is a friend from the Jellybots community, and Karla is a fellow Bluey fan. I also got to meet Tristian Yuvienco (@trisketched), a pleasant surprise, since I didn't expect to be able to see him at the expo. And I got to (re)meet Erika Schnellert and Nicholas Kole too – and they remembered my name!?

It was wild and amazing to be in such great company for the weekend.

Lightbox was secondly about getting portfolio reviews. And while I wasn’t able to get anyone to look at my story portfolio (which was not as easy to flip through), I did get some constructive advice on my visual development portfolio. The first review I received was more cutting and negative, and while I agreed with the criticism, it made me very hesitant to show the portfolio to more people. But the next day I received a fairly positive review (some pieces were basically “90% industry level”). It was like filling a bucket up with water, realizing it has dozens of holes, but then hearing someone say “but it still holds water!” Biggest note: my recent pieces are my best ones. That may seem obvious, but what I’ve been doing recently is prop design. And a tiny, albeit cool, sword on a page wouldn’t seem to have the WOW factor that a full environment painting would. But to my surprise, I found that in both positive and negative reviews, it was the props that garnered the most praise. And they were all at the back of my portfolio. I’ve done some reshuffling since.

Nick drawing dragons on the big screen

I went to two panels – the first was Nicholas Kole’s Spyro talk. It was filled with laughter, a defense of furries, and excellent advice. The most immediately applicable tidbit was this common mistake in an artist’s mindset:

Good/positive feedback = well-meaning, but insincere lies

Harsh/negative/constructive feedback = the real stuff

I found myself thinking back on this a ton after my portfolio reviews, and it allowed me to see the truth in my good review rather than dwelling too much on my negative one. This panel was Nick his element, and likely had the best powerpoint of any of the panels at the expo. And when the lights came up after the talk I saw that it was basically the Nick fanclub/Jellybots patreon crew in attendance! So it was great to meet those guys that I had previously only known online.

On Saturday I went to the SCOOB! panel and got to meet Sara (@servalsketch) while doing so! We had a nice chat in line and got to be excited about Scoobert together :) We also sat on the front row while the panel members threw confetti and scooby snacks at us (it was a wild panel at times). The guy who gave the talk is in this visdev portfolio advice video that I have watched a lot, so seeing him in real life and not talking about “family friendly entertainment” was a little surreal.

But not everything was sunshine and well-drawn roses. RUH ROH you say – Complaining zone. Wasn’t going to Lightbox enough for you, Daniel? BE GRATEFUL, MY MAN. And to that I say heck yes, I will. It was most definitely a great experience and I have few, if any regrets. But all the other Lightbox posts I’ve read have been major gush-fests of Lightbox love and I don’t want your FOMO to get so bad that you invent a time machine or something and steal my spot in a panel line. I’m moreso doing this to have something to compare future Boxes with and to help Bobby Chiu make future events even better (if for some reason he is reading this). I’ll make it quick: Bullet Point Round!

• Unless a (well known) artist had a table, it was difficult to meet them. There were several people I wanted to meet but couldn’t cause there wasn’t any great way to approach them. It made the guest list a little deceptive, since anyone famous was listed (not just the tablers).
• Signs outside showed badge pickup times for exhibitors, not general public. Although this did lead to a nice conversation with a talented artist, that conversation happened during an hour long wait in line and I missed breakfast :(
• Saturday was packed! Most tables had a crowd and it was difficult to navigate down the aisles. I missed the relaxed, time-to-talk, space-to-walk attitude of Friday and Sunday. Also we had to leave early on Sunday to get back to class on Monday :( (not Bobby's fault)

And after every day I was totally drained! Sustained 1-on-1 social engagement with people I don’t really know yet really want to impress took a lot out of me each day. And I never fully got over my jet lag, which didn’t help. There was one night when I hung out with Clay and Naomi and I’m pretty sure that I could have fallen asleep instantly at any time if I stopped thinking about being awake. But then I would also wake up early (also due to jet lag)! And during that mini insomnia I animated this for a Lighbox dance-off contest, presented to you here in all it’s screamy glory:

It made it on screen at the event, and fellow Lipscomb friend Trea Bailey actually took home a prize!

Throughout the whole trip I felt this weird push and pull relationship with LA and the future I imagine myself having there. There were times when living in LA seemed so exciting, the prospect of a job so close, and the community of animation artists so inviting. But there would be other times when the thought of navigating traffic, moving to a totally new place, and working in darkened offices filled me with dread. I think I came away from the experience really wanting to work in LA, but not really wanting to live there. Hopefully I’ll be able to reconcile this paradox if God helps me get out to Burbank and make some cartoons.

But I do feel like LA is just “the right place” – where it’s only a matter of waiting before the right time comes along. I know Lightbox is an exaggerated example, but it just seemed so easy to make connections and meet people in what could only be described as a providential kind of coincidence. There was so much I couldn’t plan or anticipate about this trip. But God was so faithful in putting me near the right people to make it worthwhile.  I wonder if living in LA would be similar. Lightbox was definitely the right place for me to be this past weekend – and I’m glad God provided so many right times.

Hope you find your place, but thanks for choosing to be here, at the Roost, right now.

-dh