Bird in the Heart

hillside overlooking center hill lake 

Over the past year I've begun learning the bird species of North America. On my dorm windowsill I place a set of 3-4 illustrated flashcards that I cycle through as I learn (and sometimes forget) the species. This whole process is really a part of a larger desire to know more about the natural world and what's all in it. In a time when logos are easier to identify than trees I feel a deep respect for people who know the woods well, and I'd like to be among their number. I also figured that if I can identify every Pokemon currently in existence then learning the birds should be a very doable side project.

I've since discovered that the number of birds you can identify seems to have a direct correlation to the total number of birds you see. Especially the birds you like. I can't remember seeing a Tufted Titmouse a single time before learning its name. I didn't even know they lived in Tennessee. But now I see them everywhere, and could even give you an estimate of how many I saw on each occasion. Of course, those birds would be there whether I knew their name or not. But knowing their names has changed (or perhaps even enhanced) my sight. The knowing has called my attention to them, and given me a love for them that I would not have had otherwise. My recent reading of John Burroughs' work has provided a succinct and eloquent description of this phenomena: "You must have the bird in your heart before you can find it in the bush."

broken walkway at the top of burgess falls

Perhaps you've experienced something similar before. You meet someone new at school or work and suddenly you see them everywhere. You ride in a friend's car for the first time and over the next few weeks realize just how many other people drive that same model. The world is suddenly more full of Kias, or Hondas, or what have you. You care deeply about certain themes or issues and can easily spot them in movies, even when others think nothing of it.

I think the reason is that we can only pay attention to a limited number of things. And therefore we can only see and remember what we really care about. I think animals experience this too - and that's why so many of them are acutely tuned to seeing quick movements (that would often signify a predator). But while animal vision is motivated by fear, writes Burroughs, human vision is honed by love. You see your friend's car everywhere because it's your friend's model. Thus the act of seeing better as a human is really an act of loving more widely and deeply. It also explains why we can each experience the same events so differently.  I recently went to a Cory Wong concert which was full of crazy solos and instrumental genius - but how much more beautiful would that concert have been to a musician who could identify and appreciate what was actually going on? Likewise, I could spend an hour just looking at a misty waterfall on a foggy day but without my love for natural mystery and its frequent companion, fog, someone else may have seen all they need in a couple minutes.

foggy cliffside near burgess falls

And that's one reason why I think being an artist is so cool. Because in art we have the ability to share our sight with other people (fear not, non-artsy bloggerfolk, for you have this same power too). In every act of creation we have the ability to nudge others towards new things to love. The things that may seem apparent to us, but are invisible to others. Even in photography, art is ordered and cultivated toward a certain goal. That's one reason why I love stylization so much - it not-so subtly guides others towards the Cool Stuff in any particular space, design, person, or dragon. Take for example this piece I did based on a recent snowfall. The trees I saw did not look exactly like this. They had significantly more branches, significantly less petals, and (rather significantly) did not exist in a pure grey void. But I liked the petals, and the way their springtime charm played against the winter's snow. I liked the funny bends in their skinny trunks. And that's what I wanted you to notice with me. 

Since art doesn't depict exactly "what is" it gives us the rare chance to see "what is" as if we were someone else.  With our art, tweets, equations, reports, compliments, baked goods, etc. we can show others new forms of the good, true, and beautiful. Which is kinda a big responsibility. And also means we gotta have real good taste.

A lot of these ideas were brought to my attention during my Biology and Literature class that I've been taking this semester. Each week we have to go out to a nearby park and journal about what we see. The catch is that we have to pick a bench and write from that same bench EVERY TIME. As you might expect, I frequently resort to describing things in exquisite and lengthy detail. But this exercise isn't just teaching me to verbally dissect the tiniest nuances in a dead dogwood flower - it's also teaching me to pay attention, to look closer, and (you guessed it) to love better. And then in class each week we read from old bearded men who describe their natural experiences in loving detail (read John Muir's A Wind-storm in the Forests). All this has made for a really beneficial course where I'm learning to see in the field and also reading specific, stylized accounts of similar places. A seeing cycle, if you will.

These thoughts that I've been describing to you all culminated in my mind on a recent trip to the Tennessee woods (where all these polaroid pictures were taken). While I was hiking, I felt like something had changed in my heart since I had last been to the forest. Like most of the esoteric minutiae about a person's experience, the feeling is hard for me to describe and probably even more boring for you to read about... But it felt like all the attention I had been investing in learning the nuances of the forest was noticeably being paid off. It look less footsteps to find something interesting to look at. Spectacle wasn't bound to the size of an object - even this tiny waterfall was captivating. 

Without really recognizing it, the birds, the trees, the water - they had all found their way into my heart. Like any relationship I'm sure it will take work to maintain and grow this love, but now I know it's here. And I'm ready to go and keep finding it in the bush. 

What do you love, bloggerfolk? What grabs your attention? As Valentine's Day gets closer it's a good question for us to be exploring. Maybe through art? Or chocolate? I've experienced a lot of both recently.

Much love, art, and birds to you -
-dh

PS: Music recommendation - Springsteen's Hungry Heart as well as the rest of The River album has been on repeat for me recently. It's the kind of music that gets me ready for summer - which is still so far away...

Dream List 2020

At the beginning of 2019 I made this big list of dozens of things I wanted to do, not necessarily in 2019 but just ... sometime. Most of the things hover just on the edge of impossibility, but I did complete "Cook something other than nachos" which to be honest was kinda a freebie. But hey, I did it! And now I can cook muffins. And I made chili yesterday. I will spare you from seeing the picture(s) I took of it but just know I'm very proud... :) I'm grocery shopping and feeling very adult - I wonder how quickly the joy of grocery shopping will fade. Hopefully never! And I did "Get an internship in 2019" but I guess I should have been more specific about the going on the internship part. But hey, I got it!! And that's still something to be thankful for. 

I decided to repost and update the list - but it's mostly the same as last year. And if you are someone with the power to help me achieve one of these, LET ME KNOW! I'm very motivated to help ;)

My good friend Sam Abner will also want me to mention that I did "Work on a project with a complete jazz score" (last year's Animation Production film), but since the film was not released aaaand I only did one background for it I think it's safe to leave that one on the list. I also came really close to "Do something old school for Studio MDHR" when Professor Bancroft signed on to help with the Cuphead DLC, but I wasn't able to help. And Prof. Bancroft quit. But not due to my lack of helpfulness. I hope. 

Anyways, in no particular order I give you -

The Dream List

Be involved in the reboot of one of my favorite childhood shows
Have a hand in redesigning an iconic character
Hold a published/released something that has my name in the credits
Make a thesis film while in college

Work at Disney TVA
And Cartoon Saloon
Showrun for Cartoon Network
Work on the Wingfeather Saga

Help with Ducktales, Hilda, and/or Craig of the Creek

Be a part of Zootopia 2 (not just an audience part)

Be on a podcast

Be paid to teach art
Tend my own garden

Do something old school for Studio MDHR
Contribute official art for Zeldathon

Work on a project with a complete jazz score

Master an instrument
Finish The Lord of the Rings

Draw with Saira Vargas or Nicholas Kole

Draw in the Outback
Visit Ludo Studio

Host a nature show

Learn another language
Table at a convention

Collaborate on a project with one of my top 8 art heroes

Work on/direct a character voiced by Jack McBrayer

Direct something scored by Michael Giacchino

Work with Louie Zong and/or Insaneintherainmusic on something

Have a character I worked on made into a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day balloon

Work on an adaptation of The Wind in the Willows
Bring Back Dreamwork's Larrikins

And go on an Internship in 2020!

So there it is! Here's to hoping I can check a few things off in 2020 - keep me accountable, bloggerfolk! I'm also trying to come up with a few more non-art related dreams, but to be honest I really just want to make cool stuff with cool people at cool places (and that stuff often happens to be animation.) And therefore - art dreams! 

Wishing you the best with your dreams (art-related or otherwise)! And thanks for making it through my lengthy new year reflection - I promise my next post will not have as much to do with the fact that we are NOW IN THE TWENTIES (woot!)

-dh

Break out More Root Beer, It's Time for the Best of 2019

WE DID IT GUYS. 

A whole year, right here at the Roost. It just seems so wild that there's now going to be two years to choose from when you look at that little archive section in the sidebar - there really is nothing like the very specific joys of a blogspot blogger :) I ended up writing a lot more last year than I expected to, and it always warms my heart when someone tells me they're a reader. Even with Google Analytics I still have no idea if/what people are visiting this little corner of the internet. But I'm glad you're here now, and if you're a longtime Roost-er then you know what you're in for: at least two articles where I reflect and prospect, prompted by our planet's great decision to orbit the sun at least one more time. (Also when I say "this year" in this post I mean 2019, I meant to write this yesterday and I'm still not in the 2020 mindset yet, sorry :P)

. . .

I've been savoring Christmas music in the dwindling moments that it seems appropriate while re-reading some of my first posts from this blog to remind myself where I was last year. As usual, it's crazy how much things change. When looking back on 2018's Best Of, it seems like I had just made a ton of discoveries when it came to my art, and was yearning to have the skills to fully realize the potential I was beginning to feel. I also seem really ... tired? Now in 2020, I feel (somewhat) more settled in what I like and want to do art-wise, and have just finished what were likely my two most relaxed semesters of college I will ever have. I've hit some real high points in my art, gone from 0 to two semesters worth of storyboarding knowledge, and met a bunch of new friends.  

But it's also delightful (and perhaps more enlightening) to see which things stick around: the art of Louie Zong & Nicholas Kole, good ol' friends (you know who you are), over-listening to the Cuphead soundtrack, drawing animals, - as much as I hope to grow and explore, I never want to forget where home is and who I am. And it looks like I am someone who likes drawing animals while listening to jazz. How I got that in the identity lottery I will never know :P

One of the biggest things I've noticed when I look back at my art from this year is I drew A LOT of fanart. This began as an intentional thing to motivate myself to do more personal work (and perhaps get official work drawing such characters) but maybe it's gotten a little bit out of control?? I just did a long post about this pretty recently, so I won't risk boring you by discussing it here, but not until writing this post did I realize how fanart has been a consistent theme throughout this whole year. I think it's because there was just a lot of shows and things that I got really excited about this year. Things that captured my imagination and needed some homage. I played Breath of the Wild for the first time during spring break which sparked a major Ghibli/Zelda phase that I hope will come around again in 2020. I already plan on playing through Breath of the Wild again in the new year - that game is just so good and may just join The Wind in the Willows in my annual "to do" list. Cartoon Network and Disney TVA's lineups were both pretty strong this year, but nothing caught my attention (and heart) quite like Ludo Studio's Bluey. It's so good on so many levels -  the art is bright and chunky, the writing & acting smart and gentle - it's a preschool show but so unlike any I've seen. And it's one of the few shows for kids where the parent characters are just as fun and interesting to watch - I'd argue that the show is nearly as much about the dad as it is about its 6-year-old title character. As a 21 year old who's largely forgotten what it's like to be a kid or even be around young kids, this show was a timely reminder of childhood. Which I'd say was sorely needed. And so - fanart! Which turned out to be some of my favorite pieces of the year. And surprisingly popular too - reaching over 618 likes and 125 retweets on Twitter, far and away the largest reach one of my pieces has ever had. And I've just realized that I never posted them here on the Roost! So ... Presenting Bluey!

bandit (dad) and bluey

chili (mum) and bingo

Over the summer I drew a ton of Zelda art to celebrate Zeldathon, but this was also the time when I did the most original vis dev work - I did a batch of prop designs for my portfolio which were the fan favorite during reviews at Lightbox. But summer was kinda a mixed bag and felt overshadowed by the loss of an internship (which you can read about here). I didn't get studio experience, or make as much personal art as I was hoping, but still stuff happened. I drew pumpkins and a bunch of horses, and a family sailing trip sparked some of nautical work that I'm still proud of seven months later. Please pray that something exciting and preferably animation related gets worked out for summer 2020, and if you work for a studio (especially CS) send me an email! I'm ready to INTERN!!

I hit a major breakthrough this fall when I was shown the art of Saira Vargas by one of the freshmen - Saira's work is just so wonderful and displays so elegantly what I was already trying to do with my art: a delicate balance of lines and shape, sense of dynamism, simple and yet profound. Stuff I'd already been experimenting with before (especially in my Bluey fanarts), but here modeled in their fullest extent. It was like I had been smashing together eggs and apples and butter but Saira was actually making an apple pie. And the great thing is that all Saira's principles blended really well with the things I liked about other artists, like Steven Sugar and Nick Kole. As well as a new favorite from this spring, Sabine Belofsky, whose draftsmanship and unique method of digital rendering (almost colored pencil-esque) is also Very Cool. So basically, all my recent art has been looking very Vargas-y and I'm wondering if that's going to stick around or evolve over the coming months. I've always worn my inspirations very proudly on my sleeve and am just waiting for someone to call me out on it - or maybe that's just ok? I've also been wondering recently if my art is and forever will look distinctly 2010's - it's the decade that has shaped my sensibilities for sure and yet hopefully my style still find work in 2040. Though if God has been faithful in the 2010s (yes) I'm sure He'll still be faithful in the 2040s (future yes). 

At school this year I learned a bunch of CG (computer graphics) animation and a bunch of Storyboarding - my fall semester was basically an advanced version of my spring semester. The only difference being I got to take Animation History in the spring with Tim Hodge, who is an animation trivia expert. I love to geek out about animation (clearly) so this was a really fun class! Tim also taught Storyboarding which were my other favorite classes. Storyboarding is what I thought I wanted to do when I came to Lipscomb and so it was kinda a relief to know that I can do it, and do it decently! I just ... really like screen composition and could go full-bore in this class setting up thirds and sweeping lines and symbolism - nothing like the very specific joys of a visual composition nerd. Storyboarding is also (to me) the fun parts of everything else that I like to do, like animation and background design, without the hard part of actually animating or designing a background. And it was especially cool that we had Natalie Nourigat, Disney storyboarder, on campus this spring to talk more about the whole thing.

And of course there's still more to talk about, but to speed things up here's a bullet list of some 2019 moments that didn't fit neatly into a paragraph:

• Made my first true portfolio
• Applied to internships for the first time
• Was offered first animation internship
• Was not able to actually go on first animation internship
• Grandma moved out of her incredibly nostalgic and familiar home
• Childhood dog (Honey) died
• Joined Nicholas Kole's Jellybots Patreon Crew
• LIGHTBOX CONFERENCE! (Where I met several of the Jellybots Patreon Crew)
• First time in California
• Set foot in Disney Animation Studios
• One year at the Roost - I said it once but I'll say it again
• Lipscomb Life Drawing Club is STILL HAPPENING and now has co-leaders
• Gave my first demo/lecture (on Photoshop)
• My hair is the longest it has ever been
• Had a fantastic Easter
• Became an RA
• Started lifting weights
• Started drawing the therapy dogs that come to Lipscomb
• Made official art for Lipscomb/recommended for first freelance jobs

And although I've already talked a bunch about my favorite media from the year, here's some that made an impact on me (disclaimer: not all were released in 2019)

Games: Breath of the Wild

Movies: So many of the big movies I watched this year (Endgame, Rise of Skywalker) were almost 100% spectacle and fanservice meaning I had an awesome time in the theater but not much to say after that. Knives Out was probably the best all-around movie I saw. 

TV: Bluey, Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart, Amphibia, Craig of the Creek

And no discussion of 2019 would be complete without a mention of the decade that brought us to this point - and what a decade that was for me! In 2010 I was 11. 11! I tried to find some art from as far back in the decade as I could manage - but to be honest, I wasn't drawing a whole lot at age 11. Or 12. My decision to pursue art has been a fairly recent one and a choice that surprised even my parents. Therefore it's been a constant worry of mine whether I'm meant to be an animation fan or an animation artist - but I'm figuring out the answer a bit more with each coming year. Nevertheless, I still drew before I decided to seriously involve myself with the cartoon business. Here's a page from the earliest sketchbook I can find, from 2012:

And here's when I started to learn from how-to books in 2013:

oh no.

I started my art education by drawing bad anime and furries - basically emerging from the primordial soup of cringe. But it got me drawing. And I feel like I've been at least somewhat reformed since then... I hope. 

Some of my favorite memories as a tween/teenager (especially in middle and early high school) were when my parents would go out on a date night leaving my brother and I to eat whatever we wanted and watch Cartoon Network on the couch until Adult Swim would come on - I think those nights were what really motivated me to become an animation artist. It was just a really special time to be watching Cartoon Network. I remember watching live the first episodes of Adventure Time and Regular Show, the pilot of Steven Universe, and the week of Over the Garden Wall - there was just so many good things that aired in the 2010s. I think Steven Universe more than anything made me want to get into animation - to draw a show that had that kind of style, and story, and music - it just felt like a real turning point for me. And of course I didn't just watch TV during the 2010s - I got my own dog, went from homeschool to a 5-day-a-week classical school, met my first true mentors, read more great literature then I will probably read for the rest of my life, went to prom, Yellowstone, Alaska, and Africa, trick-or-treated every year until college, graduated high school, chose animation, chose Lipscomb, and reconnected with my Nashville roots. This decade has been one of change and growth, but God's been there all the while. It's so incredibly provident that I ended up at Lipscomb, and I'm really praying that the next places God puts me will be similarly auspicious. To bring this much-too-long post to a close, here's the last art of the decade, as a benchmark:

I wish all of y'all the best and most thankful 2020! I'm excited to dive into the new year - really hoping for some big improvement in my art, renewed friendships, and an internship. This really feels like my big year to prepare before I launch out into the world in 2021 so there's no time to waste! But perhaps enough time for walks and pipes and kindness. 

If there's a way I could pray for your 2020, let me know at dannyhaycox@gmail.com. And pray for me! Cause I am going to need it. 

Thanks for sticking around, bloggerfolk. INTO THE TWENTIES WE GO
-dh

friends.

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