Nope. Not dead. I moved back to New York after 7 months of freelancing in Florida. It's kinda dry down there for guys like me. SOOOO i came home and started working part time as a janitor like i did in college. It pays some expenses for now. However, I AMMM in the midst of illustrating a book with a friend of mine. He wrote it (he is a professional writer) and I'm painting it on the cintiq.

We are hoping to get it published when I am done. It is a hard process. I am not so experienced with backgrounds so I'm just sorta learning my way around the spaces my characters usually find themselves in. Its a little different when someone else is always drawing the backgrounds for you, like it was in the studio i worked in.

Anyway, i just got a new computer and all my files are on the old one. I can't post anything from my book up here anyway...so not an exciting post. Just one to let you know that I will be coming out with a book in the future, God willing. And i haven't given up on making all this stuff a career...just taking a while to blast off. Later.

That's what she said.

I am in love with this show. It is the funniest thing I've ever seen. By "thing" I mean, show, movie, whatever....this is funnier than anything I've ever seen and I love it. Anyway, this is something i just drew in my sketchbook. I wanted them to look like they could belong in the same universe, something that is difficult to do when you do caricatures or cartoon versions of people. I don't usually do caricatures or think that I'm particularly good at them. I just drew them cuz i had the dvd case next to me and was inspired. And I remembered my friend Kacey did some of her own versions of Office characters and I was like "maybe Ill post this too". Check her work out too.
ttyl.

some sketches

hey all. (all two of you who read this)
here are a few sketches that i did probably a month ago, during my blogging hiatus. one of them is a creepy old guy...theres a post a few entries down with a really funky profile of him. this was me trying to flesh him out a little at a 3/4 angle. the rest are just-for-fun drawrins i did. the dog is on crack..hes super ruff obviously. notice how they all face right? lol old habits die hard. im trying not to be afraid to admit my flaws. but man...i need a job. if disney doesnt hire me, im going to become a janitor again haha.

Post about my new profile picture-but read below for my last huge post

hey, in case you hadn't noticed, i just changed my avatar from "no avatar" to "an avatar". lol. its a charicature of me drawn by the amazing Rebecca Sugar. I linked her on my sidebar. I went to school with Rebecca at SVA. she is super talented. when i was in school, i was always extremely structured (still am somewhat) with my drawings. Rebecca is kind of a natural draftsman who i think draws intuitively rather than over-structuring her work like i do.
So one day in storyboarding class, she decided to do some mock drawings in "my style" (using facial construction lines for everything) and called it "Tim style". She did some Pocahontases (cuz i was drawing her) and then she did a few of me.
I noticed recently that i havent had a profile avatar for my blog and decided that one of her "Tim style Tims" would be good. Its a pretty whimsical style in my opinion, and i like it. She probably cant even believe i saved them.
Also-gotta mention another person i recently linked, Jake Armstrong. He's a guy I attended SVA with, and his thesis film, "The Terrible Thing of Alpha 9" is getting some hype lately. It really is a special little film and if you have 5 minutes, check it out. i think it's posted at cartoonbrew. (can't say im the hugest brew fan, but i'll endorse it for this). I'd say that both of these artists subscribe to a wildly different brand of design than I do, but it's great and it's fun. Check it out!

THERAPY-note: this is older work

WARNING: before i go any further with explanation, i have to say that this work is copyrighted. It either belongs to myself, 3dh Entertainment, 3dh Communications, or some permutation/mixture of the aforementioned groups. okay...PLEASE READ...for me : )


from june 2007-february 2009, i was working at a small store brand studio in central florida and i couldnt really post the work i did there online. i mean...i probably could have, but i wasnt going to risk any sort of legal problems. since then, ive decided i dont care. im not making any money off this stuff. im just showing everyone here a part of my life that happened.

first there was the artistic part. every day that i went to work was kind of magical internally. they actually gave me a really big amount of freedom. i got these characters very loosely described to me, and then i could go in any direction i wanted to. i researched...i drew....i researched...designing....experimenting...pushing myself to my limits. it was the most intense artistic growth period of my life. the accompanying pictures on this post are some of the works that i did during that time.

my boss said that he wanted me to "give [our shows] thier 'look'". he made me the primary character designer. once in a blue moon, hed do a design, but usually hand it off to me for development or polish. sometimes, my story team supervisor might do some designs. but no one could argue that about 85-90% of the designs were done by me. there wasnt usually anyone alongside me with it. my supervisor (who is an extremely talented guy in his own right, especially as a storyboard artist) did his best to supplement the visual development, but i was usually on my own. it was wierd. i did a LOT of research and learned a lot. for instance, sometimes i had to learn how to draw an animal--like a dog. so theres some painful dog drawings up here. or learn about the costumes of hairdos of a specific time period. the poses werent great..i had a lot of stuff to design, so i didnt always get to develop the characters toooo much....i didnt alway know the best direction to go in.. but i really did try my hardest. one show, "the leaky bucket" had this southern little boy in it. posted here are some earlier drawings of him and his grandma, and then some later ones which are on a model sheet. he evolved a bunch. i guess i was kinda proud of the work i did on that. it was a small win.

but while there was this amazing growth going on inside my artistic mind, there was a lot of turmoil going on in the studio. the company was deteriorating at the top, and our director/boss was doing all sorts of very (at best) unethical things that infuriated me on a daily basis. he had no idea just how miserable everyone was because of him. so every day when i went home, i decided i wanted to forget about work. i just wanted to play nintendo. or watch movies. or eat pizza. i put on 15 pounds. not posting on my blog could definitely be added to that list.

months after our studio was shut down and we all were laid off, i got into an argument with my former boss. he told me i was a " first class rip-off artist of other peoples design styles", along with some other nasty comments. i dont have to put up a front here. i know that i often use a design language thats been written by other artists. but DO give them credit, as i have in the past. i think every designer needs a foundation. somewhere to grow from. i was just doing my best to understand what the masters were doing. its funny, cuz every day he told me that he loved my work. imagine that. every day you go to work, and your boss lies to you.. he tells you that youre doing a good job. and then one day he basically tells you that you have no real talent, that youre just a rip-off artist. i guess im no better. i lied to him a lot by pretending that every word that came out of his mouth wasnt completely retarded. so i guess we're even.

anyway, this last few months, ive been laid off...just kinda barely getting by with freelance and waiting from a number of places for a response. i wasnt able to collect any unemployment because of the wonderful way our company treated us---in every way like a real employee, except in compensation, benefits, and tax payment. whatever. as i was looking through these old drawings, i was thinking about the purpose of my blog...i started it (way back when) to try to get better...not to show off my best work, although sometimes ive done that. (looking back, that "best work" for the time is pretty pathetic to me now). SO these designs are not all my best work. a couple i thought were pretty good. but they represent a time in my life where i was very depressed. and simultaneously exploding with artistic growth. do what you will with that. and thanks if you actually read this dissertation.

PS-im going to post my portfolio under a different blog, if anyone cares. that IS my best work. for what it is.

Gimme the Funny 2: the return of the crap sketch

welp. nothing too hot today. just some good ol' fashioned fun.

I know, but whatever

Recently, I've been having myself a little watercolor adventure. I really, really wish I knew how to use watercolors, but obviously, I don't. I want to learn how to use them to paint backgrounds. Apparently, the key to using them (and to all color/composition) is contrast....something I have clearly have trouble with. But I want to keep working at it.
I was trying some exercises to paint backgrounds and thought it might be fun to try painting this geeky character design I've been fooling around with. It was a lot of painting layers over dried layers. I don't think this is how real watercolorists do it, but whatever. Some of it I'm okay with. I just need to get more contrast in my paintings. I ended up using a colored pencil to pull some of the highlights out, but it's not enough.
By the way, I kind of intentionally put my weaker work up on this blog, hopefully to get advice. My portfolio is filled with just about everything that ISN'T on here. I might put up my portfolio on a separate blog, but it's out at some studios now and I want to keep it sort of special for them.
Oh well. I scoured the library for every watercolor book and DVD I could find. So here's to research. Cheers.

trial & weakness

I'm such a young designer and i have a lot to learn. i find flaws with all of my designs-the ones that stick out to me the most are-1.) my lack of gesture and posing (2.) proportions that don't quite work well together (3.)-wishing i knew how to make lines relate to one another in a more pleasing way-(4.)-coming up with unique character designs, (which is hard to do when i'm being mindful of the cohesiveness of the universe of characters im trying to create.)

when i read these things, im like "what do i even know about design?" there is so much missing. i think that's why i started noodling with animation-i think it will help me with gesture and expression at least. sometimes, i do a little kind of "animation" by sticking post its on the faces and then seeing what kind of expressions i can make.(like with that little boy drawing).

not to make excuses, but also, i think i keep the poses stiff at first so i can design the character clearly, and see all of the parts, and not have anything obscured by objects or an appendage or something. poses are sweet, but i think i usually start my designs like the way i started the pimple faced cashier kid-just kind of a dumb pose. (my characters face right a lot too...not all the time, but sometimes..all of them do in this post lol). then after, i try some different poses. i didnt get into any other poses on these characters tho. cuz im lame.

i think my work is going through some growing pains right now. kind of a depressing post. but on a lighter note, i got the x-men volume 1 dvd (the cartoons from the 90's) and bolt finally. ahh, tax refund. i love thee.

gimme the funny...

Sometimes, I like to do lazy gag drawings. I've never shared this side of my art work before on this blog, but I thought it would be funny. I don't measure my drawing/design ability by them. But they make me laugh.
I did all 4 of these in about 15 or 20 minutes. Two of them, I had previously drawn when I was working at the studio, but the lettuce and hoe ones I just thought of. This kind of visual humor cracks me up, dawg.

ps-i dedicate "the door is ajar" to my friend, Larry Danielle.

in progress?

i tried some animation today. i ran out of paper..its been a long time since ive done animation. IT IS SO HARD. what the heck? how do these disney people do it? Its really fun to watch once it starts moving tho.
So as i was comping this, i noticed that my timing was off and i wanted to have the accent on "saint" more on the "AY" part but instead (like the idiot i am), i planned it on the "NT" part...so i moved the drawings back in after effects a few frames and will fix the mouth shapes later. Im not that great at them anyway.

Plus, theres tons and tons of problems with it...but i guess it was something to do while i have no job. i have no idea if i will finish this, especially since if i want to, id have to order more paper. do you guys think its even good enough to finish? whatever. no one reads my blog anymore anyway lol.

I have officially applied to Disney's mentorship program for visual development. I know I'm no good at animation yet. Matt Williames told me that if I wanted to do animation, I'd probably have to practice/learn for 2 years. I guess that's why i tried it today. I started reading the illusion of life again. Reading that thing is like reading The Bible. There is like 100 more things to get out of it in subsequent reads than you realize in prior ones. I read it through like 3 years ago-and its like either i didnt remember anything from it, or didnt understand it, because suddenly more of it is starting to make sense and its like im reading it for the first time. anyway, enough jackassery from me. maybe i will complete this animation. maybe.

I don't even like cats.

Cats. Kinda had an idea to use them for something in the future, so thus the watermark. I'm going to put a warning on this page about stealing. I don't know how far this orphan works thing has gone, but I guess it won't hurt to say you can't have my stuff without my permission. As for my posting, it's been an odd week. But thanks for looking!

i dont know why i drew this. it was for fun. i have been depressed because i lost my job and it sucks. its horrible to sit at home all day with no money. so although it doesnt make sense, i dont even feel like drawing that much. i manage to do a doodle every day or so just to keep loose. anyway, i wish i could animate too. im no good at that, because i dont practice. i think i should study more of it...i dont understand movement well. thats what i decided. i dont know why im rambling like this. but heres a girl with an apple who id probably go out with if i was a cartoon.

just to let you know...

in case anyone cares or still looks at my blog, im just writing here to let you know im alive. i havent posted on blog in forever because i have been a little stressed, work and freelance-and just the stress of living and taking care of normal things.

im sure you can probably all identify with that. heres a picture of me after ive spent most of my saturday in front of my cintiq working on a freelance project. being an artist is a lot of work sometimes. i wish i could post my stuff, but i cant because other people own it. so i rarely get time to do my own thang, you know? i hope to return to blog soon, but until then heres just me dropping you a line-what does that even mean anyway?

humble pie.

Woah...two posts in the same month. You win universe. anyway, this is just a little drawing i did sitting here at my computer at home...i did it on notebook paper, cuz thats what i had in front of me. i guess im trying to break my design mold a bit, and just get better, but its hard. yall know how it is.

anyway, im here to take some humilty. i have always had trouble drawing a person walking towards us in perspective well..its just hard. so if any of you think you can one up me on this, grab my drawing and draw over it, the way you think the legs should be. i want to see some different perspectives (pun not intended-think about it..there is a pun in there).

anyway, im working away. work is fun, yet challenging. theres a lot of BS that goes on there, but thats probably true of most places in this market. im finding myself having to do freelance to stay afloat. here's to working in the animation industry...may our silly drawings keep us all from hanging ourselves. cheers.

1BAT4U

remember that penguin episode of batman: the animated series, where at the end, penguin is in prison working on a liscense plate assembly line, and he gets one that says "1BAT4U", then he gets pissed and breaks it? haha i loved that show like crazy. anyway, heres a half finished drawing i did on my lunch break the other day. the thing is, im not even a batman fanboy or anything...i just liked the cartoon bruce timm did in the 90's.

sign of life

ok ok ok. man i know its been a while. i have a lot to say so if you want to read you can. if not you can just look at my drawings.
i havent stopped designing!!! in fact, i design all day at my job and i believe i am showing improvement, but this year has been crazy. it has been a HUGE adjustment. in june, i will have officially been employed for a year and getting here has been a huge change of pace. i went from being a hopeless student living with my parents in new york to a working artist on my own in florida...so i guess after working 8 hours a day and sorta adjusting to life where i have responsibilities blog falls lower on my list of priorities. when i started at 3dh, i was just tying down storyboards that were drawn by my supervisor. then, i did a show or two of boarding some sequences, but that was pretty much terrible..i am so green at boarding and frankly i am not a fan of it because i love to draw so much and when you board (or at least when i do), the drawings are not as important as like the gist of the picture. i guess thats partially why i LOVE designing characters. because you can work the drawing out more and really improve and study design elements.
in january, i got shifted into character design and it was pretty much a dream come true for me at my job. it meant that i could actually SPEND time on the drawings and research stuff at my job. sometimes, i look at milt model sheets for a while and then get super inspired to do some new designs. and so doing this at my job has sort of made me less motivated to do it at home after work..i mean i am finally getting paid to do what i used to do on my own time. the problem is ( i guess its a problem) i cant post anything that i do at my job! so its rare that i come home and sketch something just for blog. although i would like to start doing that again. anyway, its not an excuse its just how it is at the moment.

that aside, i want to talk about milt, james and tony and my drawings above.
first of all, i would like to point out the flaws with my drawings: the hands are wierd, my tie down is strange, i have trouble designing hair well, i use the same body pose all the time and my drawings could have more expression if i pushed more(theres probably a lot more than that but i guess i didnt want you to think i was naiive and posted a picture that i thought was amazing.)
i point these things out because they are my tendencies and i want to improve on them. and so, i look to my favorite artists--milt kahl, tony fucile, and james baxter--for advice. i am COMPLEtEly aware of how milt like my drawings are--and i mean that not in the way that they are perfect, but rather in how influenced they are. and i think that james baxter and tony fucile are also influenced heavily in their design style by milt kahl. in baxters recent podcast, he talked about how he and tony bounced back and forth on thier designs during hunchback: tony would draw a design, james would kinda move it around and express it, and then tony would take those drawings from james, rework them and then theyd be model sheets. james also talks about how when he tested scenes initially, they would become model sheets. milt's test scenes would also become model sheets.
i think to be a great designer, you should probably be an animator too. james says his best model sheets come from animation scenes becasue of the range of expressions and actions you MUST do in the scene in order to acheive the desired result. but when I am drawing a character design, i am not thinking of the character in the course of dialgue. i just tend to draw him standing there, with one or both of his hands out for expression and a stance that is indicative of his personality. but wouldnt one of my drawings be more interesting if the character was like pulling a book off of a shelf or whistling his favorite song? i dont know..its just a thought. regardless, i know i am limited here, because i essentially do not animate. i get afraid to do it. i am afraid of failing and making bad drawings and having volume changes. so i pigeonhole myself into making these stock drawings. and so i guess i need to work on that.

tony fucile--man that guy is amazing. he can draw so stinkin well. i love his animation and his designs so much. i am saying this because i am not going to deny it. if someone looks at my work and says "hey that guy is ripping off tony fucile" i cant really deny it. same with milt kahl. i dont know what it is about these guys-but i know that they are a standard for me and i have never ever seen designs that are better than theirs. its my opinion. i know that somewhere out there, john K. is punching holes through the walls at how close minded i am, but i just figured id say it.at least thats how it is right now. i design after my favorite artists and i am trying to break bad habits. so there is an update for everyone who thought i died. i love you all and hopefully ill be around more. :)

To LA n back

Ok. well. i went to LA for the first time. and it was amazing. jeffrey took me around the disney studio, the old building that he worked in...he showed me milt's door and i kissed it! seroiusly i did. he also showed me the "hat" building..which i freaked out in. we were steps away from glens door and i started hyperventilating. i thought about the moment that i would meet glen keane about a thousand times. in my head, i always cry. well i didnt cry...and i didnt meet glen keane. he wasnt in his office sadly. but the good news is that i met ruben aquino, dick zondag, and duncan marjoribanks. i mean seriously...HEROES. they are so nice and humble, man. respect.
ALSO...i met roy disney, the elderly man in yellow. also, respect. i took a picture of my boss and me in the parking garage at disney because although he is my boss, friend, mentor, etc.., i respect him just as much as the other guys. he was a supervising animator at disney, bluth, amblimation, and probably a bunch of other places i'm forgetting...oh yeah, how could i forget the blockbuster hit, eight crazy nights (he hates it when i tease him about that...i made him sign my dvd of it lol).
in the background of my picture with ruben and dick, there is a woman on the right. that is irma torre. she was a color modeler at disney and now works at our company. irma is also a disney hero, or heroine i guess. her sense of color is phenominal and i like to think that she's helped me understand color better. she also showed me around the studio with jeffrey, but she got pretty tired of walking in her high heels, especially cuz i made her walk to every place i could think of.

lot of crazy stuff going on in my life right now, but i plugged this little drawing out last week and liked it so much i actually signed it...which i never do. its okay tho, cuz that just means ill hate it in one month instead of the usual two to three days that it takes for me to hate it. enjoy the LA pix.

Friends!!!! i am back from the dead! haha well i have been busy, travelling, life drama, work. you know the drill. there is no excuse. but anyway ive been doin a lot of designin' at work lately and learning a ton. one thing ive learned is that once i do a design i almost kinda like, the next day ill hate it. so heres some sketches that i JUST did but hate already. a couple of squirrel drawings and a guy with a turban that i saw on my roomates map about evangelical christianity in the world. by the way, i just wanted to say that i am a Christian and i believe that God gave me any skills i have. so thankyou to him for that. anyway, i am again sorry that i have not posted in ten years. i will be surprised if i get any comments at all...i mean if i regularly looked at my blog, i would think that i died. cheers.

Production "Notes"

So i've decided to re-post a coloring tutorial. I have the legal permission to use images from a freelance thing i did as examples for the tutorial, which is good cuz i didnt feel like retyping it (it was long). there are also a couple of things that i amended to it that i learned from my story lead at work. very handy tips indeed. but that is not what this post is about!

I havent done any finished work lately, but i would love to get to some as soon as possible. When i do, i will post it. but for now, here are a few "production meeting doodles". one recognisable old friend and a few of my own creations. im ADDICTED to 24 and periodically design my own "CTU" type agents. i think theyd be cool in an animated feature. i can dream can't i?

sorry for lack of posts.

hey everyone. im sorry for not posting lately. ive been pretty busy, and also a bit lazy...its kinda like when you get burnt out at work or something and then come home and you dont feel like doing anything...that's how its been for me lately. i want you to all know, (especially my overseas bloggin buddies), that your work inspires me...specifically wes, maarten and timbo. good stuff.
heres a quick question for you all too...i posted a blog about how i do color in photoshop a little while ago, and then removed it. ive learned a little more since then so i can append more information onto that tutorial... i wanted to know if anyone A-found it helpful and B-if any of you want it back up.
let me know in the comments.
-tim