THE MARCH 4 ROUNDUP: yee haw

Hey bloggerfolk! 

Been a while since I visited the Roost. Looks like I'm going to average about a post a month this year, and that's ok. As long as that pace is due a good kind of busy-ness rather than just slothfulness. And boy have I been busy! But since the functional animation lab on campus is currently an asbestos danger zone (one of the not-fun parts of sharing space in a 50+ year-old science building) and the cintiqs in the other lab (yes, we now have two labs!) are more buggy than an ant farm, it seems as good a time as any to stay in my room and write. Since last post was a nice venture into the philosophical, this one will probably be more life update-y and art share-y! 

First - I may have mentioned before that I'm directing a short film now?! So exciting. It's based on my storyboarding final from last semester which you can check over on that Storyboard Portfolio tab. Since my end goal dream job would be showrunning for TV, it's been a great experience to lead a team and make some cartoons. While learning to cope with a TV-length production schedule! And by that I mean that it is SHORT. We're going from storyboards to final film in about 2.5 months, to meet our nearly divine mandate to finish it for the 5 Minute Film Festival here on campus. It's been great to see the team really rally and make some amazing stuff: Aedan Peterson crushed it on the background art, and Jon/Joel/Hayley E./Lorna have been making some incredible animation. It's the first time I've seen my boards transformed into something bigger and better and it's amazing to watch! It's also incredibly humbling because I feel like most of my non-directorial contributions aren't measuring up at the moment. I've been trying to animate this one shot for the past couple weeks and am feeling super rusty :( I think this whole thing is also causing me a lot of background anxiety?? I just get this gross feeling in my stomach sometimes and I don't really know why. But I think it's because I want to make this film really good and really on time and those things don't always go hand in hand. But we will do it! And I will recover my animation mojo! And you will see this film on March 26th! I'll probably tease it on Instagram pretty soon but since you guys read the blog you're getting this info first!

Overall the semester has been really frontloaded and March is the time when things will finally start to wrap up. I already wrapped on a month long comic coloring gig (I'm doing freelance now! Yay :D) I'm nearing the end of internship applications - really hoping/praying for the best this summer. And as I mentioned earlier the short film will be complete by the end of the month too. I'm looking forward to having time for my other classes again and actually being able to do some meaningful work on my senior film independent study. I've discovered that one man cannot serve two short film masters and so my senior film has been unfortunately pushed to the backburner... 

Over the past few months I've gone into survival/going through the motions zone to get stuff done and it's not been particularly fun. I'm not opposed to a solid routine, but it's hard to make those special college memories when your weekends are filled with internship apps and long hours in the lab... But perhaps this is a season of preparation so that I can have some really cool experiences this April and beyond. Cause I can't get an internship without applying. And I can't get a short film without months of work :P And perhaps this glum pre-spring time is the perfect opportunity to get that kinda stuff knocked out. And the end of the tunnel will be here soon enough. 

Some good news - I'll doing some official stuff for Zeldathon! (That's a dream list item, in case you forgot). They put out a call for artists a few weeks ago and they like my stuff, so I'll be making a few pieces for them that you can win if you donate! I'm very excited. 

I'm now an official "Featherhead" which means I'm officially approved to talk to anyone and everyone about the upcoming re-release of The Wingfeather Saga. The new edition of the book series features the work of two of my favorite illustrators (Joe Sutphin and Nicholas Kole) supporting the epic tale told by Andrew Peterson. My feathers were initially a little ruffled by having a childhood favorite get such a significant update (I'm rather nostalgic for the old look) but after seeing the new books in person I think it's for the best! So if you like fantasy, fangs, and getting emotionally invested in the lives of characters then check it out! It's a great read aloud book if you've got a family or another group of people that you read to. And it's a great brothers story! Which means I CRY.

Also this past weekend was our big guest speaker weekend for the semester, featuring animator/showrunner Bruce W. Smith! His Friday night talk was very lively and full of great stories - he kept having to censor them due to there being "kids in the audience" which made the stories even more mysterious since we couldn't have all the details... As animation director on Space Jam he had a lot of fascinating stories about the basketball players who were on set and his infamous match with Michael Jordan. 

bruce smith

A couple days before Bruce's visit, Professor Tom had offered us the chance to get our drawings critiqued by Bruce if we did a character design based on a certain prompt. The prompt was something about a 35-year-old bartender who was losing his edge but still thought he's "got it." This was a kinda awkward prompt since I don't think 35 is really that old and also because Lipscomb students shouldn't be very familiar with bartenders (no student is supposed to drink here. No matter your age.) But I still wanted to get my drawing in front of Bruce. So I gave it a shot! ;) I tried to do a human at first but was getting frustrated with the design/pose. And I wasn't having fun. So I hopped back into my fun comfort zone and drew an animal character! I was looking a lot a James Wood's stuff here, and his spontaneous sense of linework - something I've been trying to work on since my final lines often look very dead. 

At the Saturday workshop this drawing was on screen for approximately 20 seconds. :( Most of the drawings did not get a critique (not really sure why). And mine was one of those drawings. BUT when it was flashed on screen the crowd reaction was great! And Bruce commented that he liked it. So critique accomplished? Regardless, it's given me more courage to do these kind of quick designs for the Character Design Challenge (CDC) and really get some non-fanart work out into the world. On Sunday night I was even able to get jammin' and finish a piece for Februrary's CDC which I'm really proud of! But I'm not going to post it here yet - sorry for the tease :P

Nashville actually just got hit by a major tornado two nights ago and it feels weird posting my stock of light-hearted fun-times art when social media is appropriately mourning the destruction that's happened across our fair city. I'm ok, Lipscomb's fine, and today was a beautiful spring day. But there's a lot of photos on the news that are quite sobering - including the damage to a favorite hangout spot, the Soda Parlor. And one of our dear animation professors, Eric Stars, was near the worst of the storm and while his house is ok, he's still having to sort through a lot of other details. It's just not something you ever expect to happen, even though we usually have at least one tornado warning each spring. 

So stay safe, bloggerfolk! And stay inspired! I'll be back soon with that Character Design Challenge post I promised, but until then I wish you strength for your daily struggles and victories. 

-dh



Music Rec: 
Louie Zong just released his jazz album which I've been looking forward to for a long time. I don't know enough about music to really say what it's about but... it's got all the good and complex jazz stuff with the unique Louie instrumentation that updates it for a geek like me. Hope that makes sense :P

Zeldathon Heals Art Collection

Over the past week I've been posting one Zelda-related illustration a day to celebrate the eight-day run of Zeldathon Heals, a charity livestream on Twitch. Last Zeldathon I completed just one illustration of Link, but this time I decided to up the number as an excuse to try new styles, explore more aspects of the Zelda world, and (long shot) get the opportunity to do official work for the Zeldathon team. It also built up a nice base of art which could be included in a (buyable!!) Zelda sketchbook. All the pieces are collected here. It was a fun adventure, but now that I'm at the end of it, I'm ready to rest! 

-dh

Celebrating the Fiction: Zeldathon, Comic Con, and Donald Duck

So yesterday I made a post on Instagram celebrating Donald Duck's 85th birthday. And when I was posting it, I realized that the whole thing was a little strange. Celebrating the "birthday" of a fictional duck? Not a real person, but a product of hundreds of artists and writers, owned by one of the most powerful entertainment companies on earth? Certainly, it seemed a little foolish. But not entirely insensible. I wasn't the only one celebrating Donald, after all. Other artists and photographers were joining in. People cared about Donald. As if he was a real person.

This leads me to think that Donald Duck is somehow more than lines on a page and pages in a script. He has a character, a personality that has grown over time, and can't really be thrown aside by some upstart writer. We as an audience know when Donald is Donald, and get bored or frustrated when he is not acting thusly. People love Donald (and Frodo, and Link, and Chihiro, and Janner, and Simba), and like the Velveteen Rabbit, this love grants them a kind of life. Would it be going too far to say that they are real? And for those who aren't so sentimental or poetic (which is ok), all of these characters draw from, amplify, and/or idealize things the artists took from real life. So there's still something beating in the hearts of all these characters.

And so we celebrate them and the stories they are a part of - in no small manner. This week has been full of celebrations honoring fictional victories and heroes. People gathering together, giving their full attention (dare I say worship?) to the mythologies of our day. E3 (arguably the year's biggest videogame conference) was this past weekend. Zeldathon begins today. Zeldathon is a week-long, 24/7 charity livestream wherein a crew of over 70 people come together to play through every Legend of Zelda game back to back. In my mind, it is the celebration of Zelda and the stories of Link. Why would this be successful if not for immense love of the Zelda franchise? On Saturday, I will be going to Heroes Con, my local comic con. Comic Con. Oh boy. The ultimate expression of geek love and community. A true modern-day pilgrimage.

So all this has got me thinking about how much we as geeks/fans, and for me personally as a follower of Christ, should care about all this stuff. 

One of Nicholas Kole's (you knew this was coming) core ideals that he mentions often in talks and blogs is the "permission to care." By this he means that we should allow ourselves to engage deeply with the things we care about, even if those things are incredibly nerdy. The Lion King. Breath of the Wild. Princess Mononoke. Kole invites us to set aside our cynicism about these things being "just entertainment" and be open to believing, loving, and seeking God-given meaning and truth inside these works of art. It's acknowledging the fact that nothing is truly mundane - each movie, song, or game is pushing us closer to God, or degrading us away. Here's the core of his idea:

"Theory: When we nerd out, I think we are closer to the Spirit of God- we are open to things being more, mattering more. When we pretend things don't matter, we are further away. Don't hide behind irony. Nerd hard."

I think Kole's advice is a breath of fresh air to a cynical age, and a good reminder for geeks to engage the things they love at a level deeper than mere escapism or entertainment. But I've begun to feel like the whole situation is just a bit more ... complicated than Nicholas makes it out to be.

First of all, I think that Nicholas Kole happens to have incredibly good taste in art (and one that aligns closely with my own). This is important because we shouldn't only love deeply, but we ought to love the right things. Things that aren't shallow, or corruptive, or despair-laden. This requires a high level of discernment. For example, I find modern country music incredibly vapid. Although there are exceptions, the lyrics are without substance and often glorify things I don't agree with. It's hard for me to love it, or to think of it as having much value. But my brother loves country music, and loves it deeply. Should I then try to find something admirable in the music? Or encourage him to love something else? There are worse examples than country music, even within my sphere of geek-dom. Should I be happy for people who love Doom deeply, or any other media that celebrates gore and wonton violence? It's situations like these when Kole's principle begins to break down. It's great to love deeply. But you become like the things you love, for better or worse.

Rarely do I see people rally around works that are difficult to understand, yet are incredibly profound. Works without flashy visuals, without spectacle, where "fun" is not the first word that comes to mind when you think of them. I can't imagine a con based on Dante's Divine Comedy would be very well attended. I wouldn't even go. Yet Dante's Comedy is an incredible work of art which has withstood the decay of time for hundreds of years. There's no Kurosawa theme park. But Star Wars is getting one later this summer.

Despite all this, I don't think Kole is wrong in his invocation to care. I think Zeldathon is still a wonderful celebration of a extremely good video game series. And part of our duties as people and artists is to celebrate the good. We ought to seek out good and filling food, but once we're there, let's feast! And feast with friends! There's something admirable about love for a story - unlike love of self, it is a love that compels you to go outward, to seek community, and in turn, to love others. It's a love that deserves a place in our lives, nestled in with and giving great respect to our love of Christ. I think our geek love is working best when it compels us to go out - to D&D tables, to conventions, and to those in our community who wouldn't find a place anywhere else. And as a story-crafter, I (and maybe you, dear reader!) have an extra responsibility to make sure our art is worth caring about! Let's make better stories, support better stories, and rally around the things worth caring about. Even if those things are nerdy. As a reflection of this mission, I'll be posting art each day of Zeldathon on my Instagram and Twitter - and I'll be dropping by the livestream from time to time as well! I'll also be at Heroes Con. Maybe I'll see you there! 

The first Zeldathon painting

Thanks for sticking around - this is an important topic to me and I imagine it will come back in future articles here on the Roost. I just found this piece by Joshua Gibbs that I'll have to read in the meantime.

Thanks for your readership and support! 
-dh