Toys, Toys, Toys!

Most people who know me know that I recently left my day job to pursue a dream to own my own toy store.  After many dreary months of the old day job cutting away at every last bit of free time, it was time for a big break.  There were literally no hours left for creativity, and followers of this blog will know that for me, zero creativity equals bad news.  So as of September of 2018, I parted ways with my former employer.

As of right now, Skeeter's Toybox takes up most of my free time, but the up side is that many of those hours are spent creating.  Where I used to do ad layouts for clubs on a volunteer basis, I get to do them for myself.  I keep my social media pages for the business active, frequently with my own toy photography, though sometimes I have to rely on photos obtained from toy manufacturers themselves.  Attending graphic design school in the early 2000's is finally paying off... years of volunteering my graphics skills is paying off as well.  And even more recently, spending time on Instagram, photographing my LEGO collection is now coming full circle.

Visit my store's website.
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Charles Schulz Museum

Many years ago, my husband and I ventured to California for our honeymoon, which turned out to be his first trip to the west coast.  We've been there many times since then, but our honeymoon was special, and due to an unfortunate hard disk crash, we lost all our photos from that trip.  One place we visited, which is one of my favorite places in the world, was the Charles M. Schulz Mueseum in Santa Rosa. 

Well as luck would have it, thirteen years later, we planned a family vacation to the west coast, and luckily there were TWO Peanuts fans on this trip, who insisted on taking the day trip to Santa Rosa. I have to tell you, for me it was like coming home.  The first stop along the way was a quick visit to downtown Santa Rosa, where a bronze statue of Charlie Brown and Snoopy stands in Railway Square.  It was nice to see this little gem again.  Scattered throughout the downtown area are several fiberglass statues of more peanuts characters, painted by artists as part of a local project.  We made sure to take advantage of these photo op's while we could.  You can read more about the statues here:  http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/24523. 

The Museum itself is loaded with goodies for any fan of Snoopy, Linus, Lucy, and the artist behind these famous characters.  One of the most fascinating components of the permanent exhibit is a recreation of Schultz's studio, including his original drawing table, his desk, and his books.  Also on display in a nearby room is the legendary Nursery Wall, a section of wall from Schultz's former home in Colorado Springs, containing original artwork from his early career.  The museum also features rotating exhibits throughout the year.  When we visited in the summer of 2015, the theme was Ice Hockey, and the many references to skating and hockey in Schultz's work.

One of the more fascinating items to see at the museum was this unusual structure called a Peek-a-Boo Box.  From a distance, it appeared to be a tower-ish wall with peek-holes in it.  Burried inside the wall, and viewable only through the holes, were these beautiful 3-dimensional shadow-boxes of Peanuts characters made from cardstock.  I held my camera up to every peek-hole and captured them.  If you walked by this structure without taking the time to look inside, you missed all this magic.

As of the date I'm writing this, just two days ago was the 16th anniversary of Schulz's passing.  I cannot imagine what my life would have been like without his influence, his creativity, and his inspiration.  May he continue to inspire young cartoonists everywhere.

For more photos from this visit, please view my online album here.

Barker's Cartoon Museum

Several years ago, I had wandered into Barker's Animation Gallery and was quite blown away by their collection of animation cels and artwork, and quite frankly, by the pricetags.  It was easy to get lost in this place for a couple hours.  Of course, I somehow thought that their gallery was the actual museum.  It wasn't, and it took me a few years to figure this out.

Two years ago, I separated from my previous employer, as my job, along with several hundred others, were being sent overseas.  Luckily I landed on my feet with a new place to call "job", but before I got started, I took a trip back to Cheshire, CT, to visit the infamous Barker's Cartoon Museum.  It's taken me this long to get around to posting about it.  I'm not sure why it took me so long, but I know what made me think back on it today... I've been reacquainting myself with Disney and Hanna Barberra, so I thought it would be a good fit since this is where my brain is presently at.

The museum is tucked away to the back of the property, and from what I'm told, is NOT the full collection.  If you didn't know any better, you would think you'd have wandered into an incredibly well-stocked flea market.  It seems that the Barkers have been collecting cartoon memorabilia for decades.  You name it, they have it:  toys, action figures, lunch boxes, drinking glasses, Pez containers, puzzles, games.  If they put a cartoon character on it, they had it, at least, if it was an American cartoon, it was probably in there.  Pokemon seemed to be one of the few Asian imports represented.  No Voltron, but you didn't need him to feel entertained here. 

I was especially taken by the age of some of the items in the collection, particularly the tin toys.  Disney was well represented, as were so many others.  Here are some photos... let's let them do some of the talking (I could have taken pictures all day... I took a lot; here are some of the better ones):

If you've seenthe Peanuts book by Chip Kidd I've discussed in this blog, these will look familiar.

Tinykins by Marx.  I'm currently hunting these down.

Just a few character glasses....

When Goin' Gets Tough....

... it means it's time to hit the drawing table.  Somehow, it never fails that my safety valve, my way of blowing off steam, always, always involves a pencil, paper, and time away. 

For some reason, November always seems to be that time of year when take a moment to pause and think about the goings-on of the the period, and assess for myself, just what is really important.

In this most recent period of reflection, I've come to the following conclusions, and none of this is anything new, so forgive me if any of this seems obvious or sounds like I'm hitting "repeat".  What's different now is the clarity in which I'm making these observations.

1) Life is too short, and it's going by too quickly for me to be tabling things that are important to me.

2) I need to draw more.

3) I need to read and write more.

A year ago in November, I apparently hit this same point, or at least, I hit the drawing table after what must have been a challenging few weeks (the "new" job seems to demand a lot a this time of year).  I took a few photos of my "process" without giving too much away.  I put them up on Facebook at the time, so I'm going to collect them here because I think they're worth posting again, especially given the subject of this post.

Some ideas will start as "notebook art".

Some ideas wait until I'm at the table.  Concept art for "Battle Robo III".

Scanned lineart, waiting to be digitally colored.  From "Orionic Wars"

Coloring in progress...  from "Orionic Wars"

Some of my favorite background art is drawn directly on the computer.

It's been a long road back to relative health following that bad shoulder/neck strain that kept me away from the table.  You could say it was a bit like cutting off my left hand.  Believe me, I found enough to do with my time to make up the difference.  But given the recent changes going on in my life (which I won't elaborate on here), it is time (actually past time) to shuffle the deck.  Some decisions have not been easy to make.  In time, though, I think the outcome will be for the better, and the results I hope to share here, I hope will be amazing.

Stay tuned.... 

Animation 101

In keeping with the theme of "priorities" for 2015, I thought it was high time that I got around to one of my back-burner tasks of teaching myself some more basic animation skills.  A long time ago in a galaxy far, far way, I had my sights set on relocating to Vancouver and becoming a 2D animator.  I had just gotten out of school and was working as a mainframe programmer for very little money in a tough environment.  I was beginning to think I had made a career mistake, but then the animation industry suddenly went digital around that time, and I ended up becoming more preoccupied with paying the bills and attending to my own coming-out process.  While I was getting my life together (and off the ground),  I picked up a pair of self-study books on the basics of animation.  The books were written by Preston Blair, a classic Disney animator.  The books are "Cartoon Animation" and "Film Cartoons", which were published by Walter Foster Publishing in 1980 (pictured above).  These books have both since been repackaged and are actually used today in animation schools. 

The last time I worked out of these books, I only got as far as teaching myself character design, and tabled everything related to moving pictures due to time and technological constraints... it's not like I had a stop-motion camera or an animation stand lying around in my one bedroom apartment at the time.  Times of course have since changed... scanners are wonderful tools for bringing in hand-drawn artwork into computers; I've been doing just that  for quite some time now.  So last night, after working part of the weekend (which I'm not a fan of; more about that later), I dusted off the books and gave it a go.  Below are a couple sequences I threw together, just to see if I could do it.  They aren't perfect, but they are a good first step:

I admit there was a certain amount of instant gratification upon viewing the drawings in motion.  I immediately asked myself, why did I not do this sooner??  Well, I am sure I could spend a lot of time second guessing myself for the decisions I've either made or not made, but hell... my drawings are moving!!  So what will come next... not sure, but it's time to draw.

Wayback Machine: The Super Kids League!!

No it's not the Justice League, and it sure as hell isn't Teen Titans Go (good grief, I hate that show!!). It's not even the Legion of the Super Heroes but if you guessed if they inspired it, you'd be pretty close!  Ladies and gentlemen, dusted off for the first time in three decades, is an original drawing of some super teens that I came up with back when I was a teen myself... (drumroll please)... THE SUPER KIDS LEAGUE!!

Here they are, as they looked back in 1980-something... Wonder Kid, Inviso-Kid, Colormatic, Thundercloud, and Wombat, just to name a few... my new favorite is the one at the top, center.... Flame Boy (think "Human Torch") with his hand tea-potting on his hip with just the right amount of Fabulosity.... if that's really a word (I doubt it).

I mean, the work is all very derivative... if DC or Marvel had a hero that did something, I made my own version of it.  I actually designed two sets of heroes back then... Laughing Lad (top row, right) was in both leagues.  Of course, for all the things I loved to create, I never really took these works to the next level... I did actually start a comic for Zippy, the borderline inappropriately named boy speedster.  It was to be a secret origin tale where he (and untold others) gained their powers from a tremendous glowing meteorite that lands in the woods behind his house.  He later meets up with Inviso-Kid and become anti-bullying champions.  That book, along with many others, lay filed away and unfinished.  For years, I berated myself for having so many unfinished pieces of work, but I've since learned their purpose.  They were all skill-developing endeavors.  It was a big problem to start a project, only to find that your expertise and style were now much better than when you started.  It would have been too much to go back and start everything over... so I took them as far as I could at the time and moved on.  In the end, I became a better artist.

It just so happened the other day, that I was cleaning house, and as my mind normally does, it wandered on to something a little more entertaining than vaccuming, and it just so happened that these heroes came bubbling up to the surface of my mind.  Suddenly I was plotting out what could be the makings of my next full comic.  One never knows... this is really a good sign.  I did post recently about balance in my activities... the more these things work their way to the surface, the easier it will be for me to choose what comes next!

Oh... so that people don't think I totally, totally abandoned these kids to time... here is a rework I did a few years ago... luckily I had the good sense to file them all together so that I could find them.  I wanted to know what these heroes would look like if I drew them today.  I avoided all manner of "Hollywood rewriting" and instead just drew them with today's skills - minus the hands... I totally admit I rushed the hands to get the below drawing done.  As they came to life on the paper, the pencil nearly ran away from me with excitement to see these guys again after so many years.  I could almost see them animating themselves on the page.  It may be time to reboot Reflex Comics!!

My First Book??!!!

And so, here it is, my first anthology of sorts, documenting 20 years of cartooning the Hairyer Parts Universe.  What??  Twenty years??  Where could the time have gone??

I won't deny that the dream of being published has always been in mind, but doing the work of actually producing a book, when one sets out to do it, is actually a LOT of work.  I actually can't say it's my first book if you count that I've created a handful of comic books ahead of this publication, and I can say first hand, making those comics were a LOT of concentrated, hard work.  That aside, this really is my first softbound collection, a restrospective of sorts.  I actually started editing it about six years ago, and it got shelved for one reason or another.  It was a momentary, passing thought the other day, that I needed some kind of prize to donate to a Mr. Connecticut Bear basket raffle.  I said to myself, "Why not create a Hairyer Parts basket?"  So you know me, I can't do anything with half effort; I decided that any basket of mine was going to need products, and no product like an actual book.  So I went back to my original project, dusted it off, and looked at the date of the very first drawing.

1995.

<Momentary pause>

I first doodled the face that would become the lead character in my bearishly inspired universe on some unknown day in 1995.... which means it's totally appropriate to label the book as a 20th Anniversary Collection.  The strip that eventually became "Hairyer Parts" first debuted in the Northeast Ursamen's "Bears & Hunters" newsletter two years later in 1997, which means the series remained in development for two years.  There was a lot of trial and error in those early years.  When I stop and look at where I started, as compared to where I am now, I realized that perseverance was the key, all along, to making a good book.

It feels a little unusual to put something like this out, directly for sale, especially when I've spent most of my energies working for charitable means.  I pause to remind myself, that aside from the few cartoon prints that I sold more recently, I've never made any money off of my work.  A large percentage of it has been donated to auctions, raffles, or advertising campaigns, all of which have gone on to make thousands of dollars either for charities or community organizations (and I mean, THOUSANDS).  When you look at it that way, if I end up selling a couple dozen books and making a few bucks off of them, I guess I shouldn't feel so bad about it.  There is this other philosophy that gets into how artists need to think in terms of what they are really worth.... it's something I ought to get better at, so in that spirit:

If you've ever enjoyed my cartoons, please go buy my book here!!  Follow the link to get a preview.  Share and enjoy :-)