The amazing ladies at my favorite blog, Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast interviewed me and Ayun Halliday about Heinies.
It's about heinies, Ayun Halliday, myself, giant robots, Elvis Poultry, and starting fresh.
Click here to read the interview.
Hey folks, so I haven't posted anything in weeks only because I'm being pulled in all different directions on different projects and I'm heading off for a small mini vacation starting Wednesday with the family.
I can't really share much with what I have in store for you all until next week after the big ALA Conference in Chicago. Sterling Publishing has been really getting the word out on CHICKEN DANCE, and I don't want to disappoint in terms of promotion on my end.
Here's a hint...Some of you may have remembered that I bought a Chicken Puppet...
Well, I bought some fabric, sequins, thread and some glue (Note the disgusting floor. That is the current state of my studio)
and two days later I made Elvis Poultry....
Now, I can add 'seamstress' to my resume! (I wish I had a Bedazzler)
Some folks say sewing is fun and relaxing. I am not one of those people...
AND IF YOU'RE ATTENDING ALA THIS COMING WEEKEND BE SURE TO VISIT THE STERLING BOOTH TO SEE TAMMI SAUER SIGN COPIES OF CHICKEN DANCE STAURDAY AT 3!
I even have a flyer to prove it.
Here's some artwork for Simon and Schuster I'm doing for a Dan Gutman chapter book to show you all that I'm still working away....
One last thing....
My youngest son (I love him to death) is a horrible sleeper at night
So I decided to have some fun
I bought a fake mustache from a 25 cent toy dispenser
and here is the end result.....
So the house addition project is getting to the final five weeks of construction and I couldn't be happier. No more dust, no more scratches and people walking through the joint. I can soon return to having a nice quiet place to work and be left alone. Meanwhile, the little monster you see in the picture has been a horrible sleeper waking up every hour and a half.
Awww, little monster... How can I stay mad at you?
Good news. I'll be critiquing picture book manuscripts at this year's LA SCBWI Conference. With that said some a few of my books will be sold at the SCBWI bookstore, both of which will be making their early debut's in order to make the most of the conference.
CHICKEN DANCE is one of them....
and the other is BOBBY VS. GIRLS...
both authors for these books will be in attendance at the conference so you can make the most of your experience and get the books signed by BOTH the author and illustrator (that would be me)
Meanwhile, I'm finishing up the last few illustrations for OH NO! and I think it looks great. I can't show you guys much more because I've shown too much, but.... Oh, What the hey! here's a little peek of a little smidge....
I'm also working on a Dan Gutman book for Simon and Schuster...
"Painting is drawing and drawing is painting" is what Da Vinci used to say.
Lastly, author Tammi Sauer and I have been preparing for our huge 'Chicken Dance' marketing campaign and that only means one thing....
CHICKEN PUPPET!!!
This is a big week for many schools all across the country which also include many art schools. I figured, with me being a professional illustrator, that it would be nice to give my own commencement speech, to all you graduating illustrators, even though none of you have asked for it.
OK here it goes....
Thank you very much for having me here. It is a great honor for me to be here today at (SAY ART SCHOOL NAME HERE) to speak with you the graduating class of 2009.
(crowd applauds for themselves)
Right now, I'm sure most of you have nothing more than a mound of debt, your incomplete portfolios, and the shirt off your backs and even those probably have some paint somewhere on them. Fortunately, the degree you have just earned will be your ticket to opportunity and a chance to partake on the journey of making your own mark on the world. It will now be your opportunity to work among the best and the brightest who originally inspired you to take the long road towards higher artistic enlightenment in the first place! Let me be the first one to say congratulations to you all and more importantly...
Welcome to the real world!
Statistically less than 12% of you will be able to make a living out of this profession. Less than 6% will do well enough to do it full time, and less than one percent of one percent will become an artist that people have even heard of.
It's a tough world out there! If you plan on working in print be prepared! With the rapidly changing improvements in technology and the spread of information, print is quickly dying thanks to many blogs, tweets, and news websites! Magazines and newspapers everywhere are going under and filing for bankruptcy all over the country and because of that, work for the artist has been in a steady decline over the years.
Did you know Google is offering work to a few lucky select freelance artists with no payment, but rather, a promise of 'exposure"?
By the way, Google made over 1.2 billion dollars last year. How's that for respect?
The entertainment industry isn't much better! Thanks to this recession companies are downsizing and employees are forced to work much longer hours with much larger plates of work to achieve in less amounts of time. Dozens of video game companies all over the world have been either swallowed up by larger developers or forced to close due to lack of funding and many of those remaining companies who managed to stay afloat have incurred massive layoffs.
Sadly, in a recession art jobs are the first ones to go. Right now there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of artists out there who are unemployed. They have more experience than you, they have more connections, and chances are many of them didn't pay nearly as much as you did for your degree.
Did I forget to mention... No one asks to see your degree at a job interview?
Did I crush your spirit? Do you want to give up?
Did you expect to enter the real world making a six figure income?
You should have been a lawyer like your parents wanted you to.
Did you have dreams of being famous?
You should have worked harder on your jump shot.
Interestingly enough, with all that said, you shoud be happy....
There's a saying.... "Do what you love and never work a day in your life"
According to a recent poll on MSNBC, statistically, over 70% people hate what they do for a living. No one is ever born saying "I want to sell copier machines" or "I want to be an accountant" and job security these days is not a guarantee. They may have more money than you. They may drive a better car, but it's still a job, and only real benefit to their profession is waiting for the day when they can retire and reap the benefits of their pensions and 401K.
But that's not until you're 65.
I wager that for most of you, ever since the day you were born you loved art and KNEW you wanted to do it for the rest of your life.
The fact is, if you love art enough you'll make it work, and if you're like me, you'll be happy just 'creating' art.
Nearly a dozen studies show that happier people live longer. They're also less likely to suffer heart attacks, strokes, and pain from conditions like rheumatoid arthritis. Plus, Carnegie Mellon researchers last month found that people who express positive emotions come down with fewer colds and flus after being exposed to the viruses than those who express negative emotions like anger, sadness, or stress.
Need to make ends meet by taking a part time job? There's nothing to be ashamed of. Albert Einstein was a part time patent clerk so he could have the time to work on his physics experiments and he's known as the smartest guy who ever lived.
Chances are, you won't be rich, you won't be famous, and somehow after time you'll realize that it is you who is the envy of all your friends who dabble in the 'real world'.
You may hear quotes like....
"You make picture books? Your job must be so exciting!"
"You got an illustration in Fisherman's monthly? You're Famous!"
and my personal favorite....
"I wish I could draw."
The fact is that we artists are the keepers of visual culture. We make the world a more beautiful place and it's a thankless profession. Most of your efforts will go unnoticed by name, but, if we all work together we can make a lot of the ordinary much more appealing and we'll have fun doing it.
So congratuations class of 2009! Welcome to the real world!
Now, go have some fun.
Author, Tammi Sauer, sent me this photo which was taken by her friend at this year's BEA Conference in New York last week.
Someone's finally getting a little RESPECT around here!
I swung a free E3 convention pass from an old friend and decided to attend rthis years E3. E3 is the Electromic Entertainment Expo. A nerd fest for video game developers which is generally closed to the public.
When I first graduated from art school I grabbed the first job I could find prior to launching my career into freelance illustration and children's books. My first job was at Treyarch in Santa Monica. They were known for the Spider-Man movie games, and now the Call of Duty series. I was an environment artist (someone who paints and models objects in the world where the main character exists) I had been a gamer all my life since my father got me the Atari 2600 when I was five years old. Gaming was a big reason why I got into art in the first place and to this day I associate it to how I got to where I am now in my career.
Here's a sample of my work back in the day everything you see in the bar was done by yours truly....
Here's a quick run down of the stuff I saw at E3......
SPLINTER CELL: CONVICTION - You are a former military special forces operative out to seek revenge on the man who murdered your daughter.
LEFT 4 DEAD 2: You and three others (thus making you 4 people) are trying to escape the city of New Orleans after a zombie infestation.
UNCHARTED 2: You are an ancestor of the famous explorer Sir Francis Drake out on adventure to seek fame and fortune
ASSASSIN'S CREED 2: You are an assassin in the resnaissance era using various inventions created by Leonardo Da Vinci
GOD OF WAR 3: You are Kratos, the God of War (After you killed Ares in God of War 1. Duh!) and this time you're slaughtering everything else in greek mythology to...I dunno.... not be so angry.
RED FACTION: GUERILLA: You lead a group of rebel fighters on Mars to free your colony. With guns and drilling tools and such.
You get the point.
I always thought most storytelling in games was very weak, not because the writers for these games aren't good writers (though some of them not even writer's at all) but also the fact that you have to put an aspect of gameplay into the story so that the gamer can participate in the adventure.
Let's break it down.... When you play chess. You're not concerned with the history of why the light and dark pieces are at war. They're just at war. That's the game. When you create a back story then everything becomes very convoluted. Some of the best selling games onthe market sell well because the games are fun, not because the story is compelling.
EA signed Steven Spielberg to a two game deal to create games for them. I envision Steven thinking of some grandiose storyline to grab the attention of a gamer and sadly he will ultimately fail for the simple fact that I recken he doesn't know how to make a fun 'game'. It would be like asking Alfred Hitchcock to make 'Clue'. Sure he can weave a thrilling mystery, but I doubt he would have the time or patience to create a murder/mystery board game with rules to follow. It's two completely different parts of the brain at work here. You're either a good game designer or a good storyteller. Rarely do you get both.
When I was a kid I was a big fan of video games where storytelling was essential. They were called graphic adventures! They don't make them anymore because the audience has changed into a hack and slash button mashing multiplayer experience. When I was a kid there were fantastic stories like 'The Secret of Monkey Island', 'King's Quest', 'Day of the Tentacle' and my personal favorite 'Grim Fandango'...
This E3? I rarely saw such glimmers of storytelling brilliance. Most titles were about ninjas, space marines, special forces operatives, and zombie killers. There was ONE title though, and it featured the voice of Jack Black and that was my pick for best of show....
