dantat.com

Under the Weather

I've been sick for the past week which is why there are a lack of posts. I've been tired and I can't work at night like I usually do.  The fact that I have a bunch of work I'm trying to catch up on doesn't help. With that said "Oh No" is still moving right along. Here's what I think is my favorite page of the book.....

In another bit of news, the Los Angeles Festival of Books was in town and I got to see many friends from the children's book industry. One of which was Jarrett Krosoczka and his wife and daughter.

Friend and old schoolmate Peter Brown also came into town (no picture) and I wanted to congratulate him on his new book "The Curious Garden" making it onto #7 on the New York Times Bestseller's List.

Back to work.

The many faces of me

I recently did a job for Peaceable Kingdom Press up in Berkeley, CA. The job was to illustrate these fun little picture frames with reusable stickers. They wanted a rocker, a muscleman, a diva, and a hula girl. FUNNY NOTE: I had no idea what to do for a diva so I drew a woman outdoors on the red carpet surrounded by photographers with Maria Carey in mind. When I got my notes back from them they basically implied that the diva was looking too whorish HA HA)

So, I started with a goofy picture of myself to use for a template...

and these are what I came up with......

Yeah, I thought you would all get a good chuckle.

The one week painting

So the addition to the house has come a long way since we started over a month ago, and now, the wood framing is almost complete. I'd say 98% complete. We had to make some adjustments to our blueprints due to load bearing walls and thin foundations, but, that often happens when living in a house built in 1929.

So now comes the fun part of ordering all the fixtures and so forth that come with new rooms. A bathtub, sink, toilet, wood flooring, doors, windows, etc. Unfortunately, the only time I have to look at stuff is during the week when the kids are not asking to play 24/7. So needless to say, I've been busy juggling different tasks.

This is the one painting I got done this week for "OH NO"....

and here are a few details .....

This ended up turning into a stellar painting that I was really happy with but it took me almost a whole week to finish.

Sure, there are a lot of details in it, but, I've never taken a week to finish a painting.

Let's hope the house construction doesn't slow my production down any more than it already has.

CUTE ALERT! Here's a picture of me and the youngest son sleeping at the desk....

Awwwwwwww, Daddy needs a shave.

Oh, and one more thing, I got a piece into this years SPECTRUM Science Fiction Art Annual.

This piece....

Yay!

A book trailer, jury duty, some artwork, and the house gets fleshed out.

ALWAYS LOT OF HEINIES AT THE ZOO

We're about a month away from the official release of "Always Lots of Heinies at the Zoo" with that, I made a trailer for the book (I make trailers for ALL my books now)

 

OH NO!

Endpapers folks. You gotta love 'em. Especially when they're blueprints of a 120 yard tall robot built for a fifth grade science fair....

Here's another delightful image....

This book is too much fun.

CASA DE SANTAT

Construction continues on the castle and it's starting to flesh out....

JURY DUTY

I was questioned to serve in a homicide trial which featured TWO gang members, TWO unregistered firearms, and ONE dead body all for the payment of $15 a day including $5 for the first day (the gov't was kind enough to pay for my travel to the courthouse) After I was dismissed I shared my money on Chinese food with the family.

There is a fine art to getting off of jury duty. You can't seem too eager and belligerent or else the judge will call you on it and you may end up in a civil trial, but you can't be too passive or or politically correct or else you will be found to be unbiased and fair, which is fodder for the jury selection

The one main thing I found that people have trouble with is being truthful to themselves, that being, that when they are being questioned for the jury they don't really have an opinion about anything so not to offend ANYONE.

Everyone has a opinion about something, especially in Los Angeles where gang violence is a big problem but in court I noticed that no matter how hard people tried to get out of jury duty they never crossed the line of appearing racist or biased about certain things.

Even gangs.

And that seems to be the big thing people don't get. Pick a side. They want you to be unbiased. They want to know that you can be convinced of their innocence. 

Are gangs bad? YES. Go with it.....

MY INTERACTION WITH THE LAWYER:

LAWYER: Do you believe all people in gangs are evil?

ME: Yes.

LAWYER: Explain.

ME: There are no surprises as to what gangs represent. Gang members get tagged into gangs by getting beaten by every member to show how tough they are. Gangs aren't like Kiwanis doing social work for the good of the community. They're not out planting trees every weekend....

LAWYER: So you don't think gang members plant trees? (that was an actual question) 

ME: Maybe they do but THAT'S NOT THE POINT. The point is that gang members are a bane to society and there is nothing good to come from gangs or being in a gang

LAWYER: Well some people would say the benefits of being in a gang would be that it's easier to pick up women, easier to sell drugs, you have protection, etc. My question is that can you be unbiased to the defendant?

(At this point I wondered if the gang members even had a shot with this shoddy lawyer and his bizarre line of questioning)

ME: (I went on a rant but basically concluded with) If you asked me if I felt safer with two gang members behind bars rather than on the street then call me shallow. 

So now everyone in the room knows I hate gangs and gang members. 

I'm such an awful person.

I added five inches (Oh No! 2.0)

Hyperion has expressed excitement with OH NO. With that said, the editor, art director, and I have all discussed how we can punch up OH NO! to better give it the feel that I was seeking, that being, a retro cinematic movie feel.

First I showed you this....

then I jazzed it up to this.....

Complete with letterbox framing, old film dust and scratches, and an extra FIVE inches on the sides.

Oh No, indeed.

It's a tumor.

So my laptop has been pretty wonky lately. It shuts down randomly at a battery charge of 30% and lately I noticed the keyboard and touchpad mouse were acting rather strange. Things like...

The touchpad button was always pressed down.
The words I typed would suddenly disappear or my typing cursor would just jump to another paragraph and begin typing

SO I decided to open up my laptop on my own to see what was going on and suddenly realized there was a bulge in the bottom of the case. This is what I found.

My laptop battery decided to crap out on me?! It grew a tumor!

I've had a lot of problems with this generations Mac Powerbook laptop and when I went online I read that almost EVERYONE who owned these Mac products were having the same problems. First my video card died, then another component, and another, and now the battery. Needless to say I got a lemon of a laptop but I still continue to trek on.

My previous laptop was flawless. It never crashed, it never overheated. No problems whatsever.

NOW, Steve Jobs (you asshole) decide to use cheap products and attempt to delay my produciton schedule of all my projects!

AND I have to go buy a new battery you jackass!

It's bad enough it's noisy at my house all day with construction and that it looks like the Broadway set of RENT...

but if you want to continue getting my support you better step it up with the quality like yo used to!

*SIGH*