A Poster for Ariel

My friend Kai asked me to draw up a poster for a girl named Ariel who has been struggling with cancer. Kai's idea was to have Ariel's 'Avengers' (her favorite characters) assembled to support her. I'm glad Merida made the cut!

Here's Kai with the final poster. When I was a kid, I was always comforted by visuals of heroic figures like Superman and Luke Skywalker, so I hope this poster does the same for Ariel, who is as brave as any hero could hope to be!

23 days...

Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

 "The only way to do great work is to love what you do."

I was just saying the other day how Steve Jobs is this generation's Walt Disney. Steve may not have been a filmmaker or professional storyteller, but like Walt, he was a visionary and a dreamer.

In 1986, Steve bought Lucasfilm's computer graphics division. The Graphics Group, which was soon renamed Pixar, was just another high-end software company at the time, working for medical and government agencies. Pixar would have most likely flourished as a tech company, but Steve could see that Ed Catmull and the other Pixar founders were still storytellers at heart. He took a chance, and invested in his friends' dreams.

Thanks in part to Steve's vision and support, Pixar is now the most successful animation company in the world. The culture here at Pixar still reflects much of Steve's forward-thinking, trail-blazing attitude.

Thanks for your brilliance and generosity, Mr. Jobs. I think I'm going to go order an iPad now.

Steve Jobs' Commencement Speech to Stanford University: 

"How to Live Before You Die"

24 days...

"Persist" on KCRW

My little letter to Willie Downs' Animator Letters Project got some air time this week on KCRW. Check out their website to listen to the whole show, which includes an interview with Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter (unfortunately not related to my portion of the show).

On a completely unrelated note: Happy Birthday, Mom (she's the one on the left)!

My mom loves Halloween, so my brother made a "Halloween tree" for her a few years ago. I've made it a tradition of getting her a new tree decoration each year on her birthday. If you guys have any good ideas for  this year's Halloween decoration, leave a comment! Grazie!

26 days...

The Long Con

Part II of II: Tricksters and Conmen

I approach Comic Con like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, working each Con to improve the experience and learn from my prior mistakes. Here's the Top 10 lessons I learned this year at the big show.

1. Swag bags can be a drag. "But Austin," you're saying to yourself, "I don't want to have to lug my favorite prop from the movie Se7en around Con all day long!"

Sure, you'll need the over-sized parcel for prints, posters, and toys, so wear it for the first day while you hunt down all your favorite collectibles. After that, ditch the son'bitch for a backpack.

2. Tag your swag. Comic Con vet Aaron Hartline knows the importance of protecting one's well-earned goodies.

3. Make friends with heroes and villains alike. You never know which side will win, and it's good to be connected.

4. Avoid Hall H. Why contend with these lines when you could be socializing with aforementioned beauties? Besides, that Tintin panel will be on Youtube before you know it!

5. Roll with a minor celebrity. My friend Sam did his first panel this year for the Regular Show, and walking the floor with him was a real treat. We must have been stopped half a dozen times for an autograph and it was a wonderful reminder of what Con is about: making some extra scratch by charging for your John Hancock.

6. Know your nerdery. You may be the BSG guru where you come from, but here you're just another fish in the pond. I was nearly decapitated when I accidentally called Teela "She-Ra".

As a side-note, it's pretty much never a good idea to call a girl the wrong name.

7. Think outside the Con. Aside from the wonderful eats around San Diego (ask a veteran Con goer for their recommendations), there's the brand new Trickster event.

Mild-mannered comic shop/art gallery/film festival by day, booze-infused rock concert by night! Trickster makes an excellent break from your Con day and the perfect start to your Con evening.

8. BYOB. Bring our own book, that is. If you follow this blog, odds are you're an artist of some sort. Since you're already drawing, why not compile those sketches into a book and hawk it at the Con? Even my "I am Captain America" cover finally got some love from my new friend, Marie!

If you don't feel like going through the trouble of printing books (or can't afford the process), you can always contribute a sketch to the Comic Con souvenir book. One of this year's themes was Dark Horse's 25th Anniversary. Being a long-time fan of Star Wars, Hellboy, and (of course) Too Much Coffee Man, I decided to raise my glass to the industry titan.

9. Shake hands and rub elbows. It's easy to get caught up in the rush to the next panel or the race to nab that last Tiki Stitch vinyl figurine and forget that you are surrounded by the coolest people on the planet! I'm not just talking about the celebrities on panels, I'm talking about comic shop owners like my hometown comic mogul, Brian Peets from the world's greatest comic store, A-1 Comics; astounding artists like the legendary Doug TenNapel; and up-and-comers like Cassia Harries and Mishi McCaig.

You can also finally meet those amazing artists whose blogs you follow. I was stoked to run into Ryan Green and Fawn, along with old-time CalArts compadre Lissa Treiman, at Trickster.

And don't be afraid to stop someone for a picture! I had a great conversation with Slashfilm's Peter Sciretta about the Cowboys and Aliens screening he'd just attended. He didn't sound very excited, but there are cowboys and aliens in the film, and they fight, so I'm seeing it anyway!

10. Earn the right to go home. For some, that means hunting down that rare Mysterio Kid Robot exclusive, for others it's all about taking home a coveted Eisner award or winning best-costume. For me, it meant finding every Waldo in the joint! Achievement unlocked.

10b. (only for folks driving North after Con) Hit Disneyland on the way back home! What better way to end your Comic Con with a visit to the other happiest place on Earth? For my brother, my Dad, and I, that meant leaving Disneyland at midnight for a six hour drive back to the bay area, but I got to ride the new Star Tours and eat at the Blue Bayou, so I'm not complaining!

Heck, you might run into someone from Con! I happened to run into the CSSSA students (see my last post)!  I guess that's why they call it the magic kingdom.

I hope this unnecessarily extensive look back at my Con/Trickster experience helps you plan out next year. There are also legitimate survival guides for the real hardcore Con-goers. When all else fails, remember the golden rule: if you lose your group, don't text, just yell, "AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!"

4 days...

The Animator Letters Project

Back in May, an aspiring animator named Willie Downs sent me an invitation to contribute to his Animator Letters Project (a hand-written snail mail invitation, no less!).  Willie is planning on compiling the letters he receives into a book, and while he's only gotten a few responses (my buddy Aaron was the first to respond), they're all fairly inspiring!

I wasn't going to post the letter until Willie published his book, but Letters of Note put it up on their site, and I've been getting the most awesome and uplifting feedback from people. So here it is for anyone who needs a word of encouragement today.

If you're a professional animator, please consider contributing to The Animator Letters Project. It only takes a few minutes to hand-write a letter, but you never know who you may inspire!

And in case you can't read my chicken-scratch, here's the transcript from Letters of Note:

PIXAR

May 17, 2011

To Whom it May Inspire,

I, like many of you artists out there, constantly shift between two states. The first (and far more preferable of the two) is white-hot, "in the zone" seat-of-the-pants, firing on all cylinders creative mode. This is when you lay your pen down and the ideas pour out like wine from a royal chalice! This happens about 3% of the time.

The other 97% of the time I am in the frustrated, struggling, office-corner-full-of-crumpled-up-paper mode. The important thing is to slog diligently through this quagmire of discouragement and despair. Put on some audio commentary and listen to the stories of professionals who have been making films for decades going through the same slings and arrows of outrageous production problems.

In a word: PERSIST.

PERSIST on telling your story. PERSIST on reaching your audience. PERSIST on staying true to your vision. Remember what Peter Jackson said, "Pain is temporary. Film is forever." And he of all people should know.

So next time you hit writer's block, or your computer crashes and you lose an entire night's work because you didn't hit save (always hit save), just remember: you're never far from that next burst of divine creativity. Work through that 97% of murky abyssmal mediocrity to get to that 3% which everyone will remember you for!

I guarantee you, the art will be well worth the work!

Your friend and mine,

Austin Madison

"ADVENTURE IS OUT THERE!"

10 days...

Happy New Year!

What better way to kickoff 2011 than with a bit of iPadimation? This was doodled on Animation Creator HD, a must-have for anyone with an iPad and a serious animation addiction.

My New Year's resolution is to finish all the projects I started in 2010 (and prior). For me, creation is impossible without inspiration, so I thought I'd share my top ten most inspiring discoveries of 2010. Now some of these aren't necessarily new, but they were new to me, so lay off.

1. Comic Con
2. Scuba-diving
3. Black Swan
4. Flogging Molly
5. Nerd Fighters
6. How to Boil Water
7. The Venture Bros
8. Red Letter Media
9. The Trip
10. The Jeff Lewis 5 Minute Comedy Hour

Honorable Mention: Twitter

55 days...

Influence Map



This is a great concept created by Fox Orian. My influences (clockwise from upper left):

Bill Watterson
James Gurney
Gary Larson
Doug Henderson
Sebastian Kruger
Ralph McQuarrie
Frank Frazetta
Alex Ross

Gamers Will Save the World

TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) talks like this one are great sources of inspiration and challenging thought. If you dug what Ms. McGonigal had to say, I'd encourage you to check out these other outstanding lectures:

Sir Ken Robinson: Do Schools Kill Creativity?
Clifford Stoll: 18 Minutes with an Agile Mind
Jill Bolte Taylor: How it Feels to Have a Stroke

Aloha! Sorry for the grievous lack of posting, I just got back from vacation in Hawaii. I went with family, including my Grandpa Bill, who used to surf with the legendary Duke Kahanamoku.

I was inspired by my grandpa's stories of hot-dogging and hangin' ten with the Duke, and couldn't help but fire-up my imagination while surrounded by the tropical hillsides and rainforests of Jurassic Park. I'm definitely ready to plunge back into work, reinvigorated with my cup filled to the brim with creative juices.

There's a lot to be said about hard work, and that's certainly the only way to get better at animating. But as I heard Brad Bird himself once say, "You've got to have a life to create the illusion of life."

I've got some serious post-creating to do, but while you wait for the next Chades Challenge (I'm, what? Two behind?), here's some creative nourishment for you to chew on!

Symphony of Science

Chito and Pocho

Fellow paleo-blogger Darren Naish posted a fascinating story about a Costa Rican fella named Chito and his best friend, Pocho, who happens to be a 17 ft croc.

Not only are Chito and Pocho on friendly terms, they also enjoy wrestling together and sometimes Pocho even lets Chito win!

Darren also posted the story on his Facebook and the following conversation ensued:

Me: "Awesome! This is proof that we should bring dinosaurs back, and that they'd be completely cuddly."

Darren: "Damn right. Start with tyrannosaurs."

Mike: "Austin, for the EPB to support that would require that birds be cuddly, instead of shrieking little jerky annoyances that chew up books. (Or have I just had bad experiences?)"

Darren: "Mike, the character states you describe are autapomorphies of some neornithine clades. Everyone knows that paleognaths and anseriformes are cuddly and friendly."

I hadn't heard any of these terms before, but the comments just cracked me up, so I had to share. If you're suspicious of the stills above, here's video to prove than man and reptile can peacefully coincide.

Tim Burton Sits Down with Ray Harryhausen

Over the weekend, I ran into this cool interview of Tim Burton with Ray Harryhausen. Burton's a real hero of mine, so it's funny to watch him geek-out over basically anything Harryhausen says. If you're interested in listening to the wisdom of one of the masters of the animated craft, follow the links below:

Part I: Inventing an Artform
Part II: The Pitiable Leviathon
Part III: Monster Music

Ray Harryhausen mentions that a major artistic influence on him was the work of Gustave Dore. This was a new name to me, so I thought I'd look him up. His work is fantastic! As a kid who grew up on flat-toned comics, dramatic lighting doesn't come very naturally to me. So to see this level of mastery is pretty inspiring!

Dore's imagery is truly cinematic. It's unfortunate that he died in 1883, a mere five years after Eadweard Muybridge's experiments in real-time photo-capture, and just before the development of the first motion picture camera. Like Harryhausen says, if Dore had been alive during the age of film, I'm sure he would have been one of it's most successful auteurs.

My buddy Pen just released a new music video. Check out his sweet dance moves!

When he's not busting out his mad dancin' skills, Pen can usually be found stalking Matt Groening.

EVERYTHING PREHISTORIC
The Final Installment of The Jurassic Journals

At the end of our long week of dinosaur-digging, Greg, Chuck, Brandon, Zack, and I said our fond farewells to everyone at the Waugh dig and returned to the Black Hills Institute in Rapid City, South Dakota. Having toiled for hours in the dirt and sun for every fragment of bone, the colossal skeletons in the museum took on a whole new meaning. I can only imagine what it must feel like to find something as large and awesome as a rex skull.

Pete Larson took us behind the scenes to the BHI's fossil workshop. We watched him clean-up Greg's Camarasaurus claw and he let us go through drawers and drawers of dino-bits including specimens of Camarasaurus, Brachiosaurus, Stegosaurus, Hypsilophodon, Allosaurus, Barosaurus, Triceratops, T. rex, and (my favorite) Apatosaurus. I love how the fossil cleaning stations (seen below) could totally double as animation desks; I'm getting ideas for my future home.

While in South Dakota, we did the obligatory Mt. Rushmore trip. To be honest, it was kind of a let-down after all the prehistoric hijinks.

Our last stop more than made up for Rushmore's lameness. Matt Seney (remember the snake-handler from Journal Six?) used to work at this local attraction called Reptile Gardens. He wanted to give us a backstage tour of the joint, but due to a flash storm (more on that later) he was stuck back at the dig site in Hulett. Fortuitously, the waitress we had at lunch knew a guy who worked at the Gardens, so she hooked us up with a backstage tour anyway!

There was something poetic about ending our dinosaur trip with a visit to their descendents. This komodo dragon certainly bore a striking resemblance to his ancestors. He was pretty relaxed, but his head would perk up every time children came up to the glass.

Our tour guide introduced us to a baby alligator who quickly became my new best friend.

There was a croc handler who gave a presentation in a pen with an assortment of fifteen crocs and alligators. He'd drag em out of the water by their tail and wrestle them to the ground. Amazingly enough, he still had both arms and legs; I don't think he'd have had as much success in a pen with Deinosuchus (whose name means terrible croc). Just for reference, here's a picture Zack took of a modern man-eating croc's skull inside the jaws of the dino-eating Deinosuchus.

Meanwhile, back at the dig site...

Remember that storm I mentioned? Well, while I was cuddling up with my new gator pal, our friends at the Waugh ranch were being slammed by a massive hail storm. We had seen the storm front amassing earlier in the day, before we left camp. Since the only road out of camp was a two-mile dirt road, we said some hastey good-byes to all our friends so we could hit the road before the storm made it impassable.

A mere two hours after we sped off, hail the size of softballs began pelting the camp, smashing nine of ten car windshields.

We heard of one family who also decided to hit the dirt road before the storm washed away. They packed up their tent, their digging gear, bone fragments and dog. But they forgot one thing as they zipped away from the camp in their RV: their eight year-old son! He was still at the camp site in the hail! Everything turned out alright; they went back for him and no real harm was done. But imagine being abandoned by your family and left in this (thanks to my buddy Amar for the great footage!):

Thus ended our first great dinosaur hunt. As you can see, it was an amazing time, and we all made some fantastic friends with dino-lovers from all over the world. For any of you,who are interested in going on a dinosaur dig yourself, I highly recommend contacting the fine folks at the Black Hills Institute and volunteering for next year's Waugh Dig. You don't need any experience (heck, I'd never been camping!), just a love for everything prehistoric.

From left: Holly Barden, Oguchi Shota, Zack Keller, Amar Dosanj, Greg Dykstra, Chuck Waite, yours truly, and Brandon Hyman.

Previous Jurassic Journals
Part One: The Black Hills Institute
Part Two: Devil's Tower
Part Three: The Waugh Ranch
Part Four: The Actual Jurassic Journal
Part Five: F Quarry
Part Six: A Quarry

BRINGIN' REXY BACK

According to Science Daily, scientists have confirmed the remains of biochemical material (proteins) in dinosaur fossils. T. rex fossils, no less! This organic material has survived for sixty-eight million years; I think this is proof that God wants us to bring the dinosaurs back. I am so excited by this news, I was inspired to write a haiku.

Rain-slicked poncho blue
Primordial forest green
Stain on pants yellow

Speaking of inspirational new stuff, there's some awesome new music out there by Weird Al and Regina Spektor. Weird Al's new song, CNR, is a JibJab exclusive, though it's already on YouTube. I was shown the CNR video by my buddy Raph, who is an exact doppleganger of the ill-fated fellow at the video's 1:42 mark. Raph's adopted, so he may just have an identical twin out there!

JibJab's Alan Cook:


Pixar's Raphael Suter:

Uncanny, eh? Kudos to my friends and fellow CalArts alumni Amanda and Justin, and everyone else at JibJab for keeping up the inspiring work!

The other song I was inspired by is Regina Spektor's new single, Laughing With. I'm one of those people who would check both the box for God and evolution in my "What do you believe?" poll. So I'm greatly inspired by anything God-or dino-related.

Laughing With begs the question, why do people only laugh at God when they don't need to depend on Him? It's one of the more profound songs I've heard in a great while, so I thought I'd share it with you all (regardless of which boxes you select in my poll).

Aww, Steve, now I have to forgive you for Crystal Skull.

"Hot as a pistol!"

We finally have an answer to that age-old question of "Why did the chicken cross the road?" That answer is (drum roll, please)....42! Haha, count on the readers of the AustinTranslation to vote that one in. I'm guessing we have some Douglas Adams fans out there. There's one Adams quote that I can personally relate to, "I love deadlines, I like the whooshing sound they make when they fly by."

Thanks for your votes on this week's Oscar polls. Be sure to vote on all seven Oscar categories, if you please. Everyone knows that behind every Oscar-nominated film is a good story, but the video below proves that the movie theater isn't the only place to find an amazing drama. Some of the most inspiring tales come from the faith, courage, and down-right blessings in the world around us. Enjoy!

Williams A Cappella

I love the last lyric.

Justin Wright on Wikipedia

Someone was kind enough to set up a wikipedia page for my good friend Justin Wright, who passed away earlier this year. Aside from being one of my best friends, I owe a lot of what I know about story and filmmaking to Justin, and it's great to see his legacy living on. There are links to Pacific Union College, CalArts, Pixar, and the Make-a-Wish Foundation from his page, so I am sure his story will inspire and empower others. If you're ever on a wikipedia binge, please swing by Justin's page and give it a read!

"It's funny out there, make sure to laugh."
--Justin Wright

Forbes Fictional 15

I discovered a great list on wikipedia that archives the world's Top 15 Wealthiest Fictional Characters. Scrooge McDuck tops the list, which is complete bs. Santa Claus manages a workshop with enough employees to supply gifts to all of the capitalist children of the world. What's the average cost of a toy? And how many people are on earth? Assuming 2 billion folks celebrate Christmas, and get an average gift of fifty dollars--that's 100 BILLION dollars of annual net output! Enough to make Dr. Evil raise an eyebrow.

Arny vs. Sly
I saw this on Aintitcool and just had to share. Color correction works wonders.