CTN Animation Expo + Life Drawings

‎"If bad things happen to you when you are trying hardest, then that means you're about to reach the next level and good things are on their way. However, you must choose to stay positive and work through it." Love the quote from "The Perfect Bait" by Bobby Chiu.

I hope everyone's all excited for the holidays, and creating some great art!

This past weekend was the CTN Animation Expo held right here in Burbank, CA. It is a brilliant time, full of inspiration, excitement, as well as tips and tricks! If you can go I highly recommend it! It mainly showcases 2D art but there is a good bit of 3D and sculpture talks. It's also great to see artists you look up to, and get their advice or opinions on art. I'll also be adding all of these artists to my links panel.

Some artist highlights:
Brittany Lee
Had a wonderful booth full of her colorful artwork, I ended up purchasing a few of her prints to decorate my new apartment

Bobby Chiu
Also had a booth, and was selling his newest book "The Perfect Bait", It's a great read, inspires and motivates you in the first few pages!

Zaruhi Galstyan
Cute art and concepts, now an artist at Pixar

Brian Ajhar
Awesome fantasy watercolor illustrations, also was part of a talk on illustrators in the animation field

Zach Petroc
Modeling supervisor at Disney, and a very nice artist. He's been working on this Zbrush comic on the side of work.

James Gurney
Part of a creature creation panel discussion with some other great artists! He did a demo of his figure speed painting, which you can see on his blog. It was nice to hear his preferred technique for watercolor pencils on the go! Definitely makes me want to visit the museum or zoo and try it!

Terryl Whitlatch
Amazing animal concept artist/illustrator who does plenty of books and concepts for movies. She was part of the creature creation panel.

Creature Box
Two great artists, who started out and still are concept artists at Insomniac Games, on the side run their own freelance gig called Creature box, they were also part of the creature creation panel.

Dominick Domingo
Another great illustrator who does concepts and 2D background art at many of the animation studios. He was part of a panel on art direction.

So much inspiration jammed into three days, it's wonderful.

Earlier this week I attended another Gnomen life drawing, this time Steam Punk theme. Tons of fun and I've been definitely practicing more in between freelance and making new work for my portfolio. (Entry position here I come)

All of these poses were 25 min, on a 11x14 sketchbook with .5 lead pencil and prismacolor marker.