CTN-X was a BLAST!

It's been a bit since I last posted.
About a week ago I was in Burbank for the first CTN-X Animation Expo. It was exciting, inspirational, educational and best of all it was a great networking event and a good directional tool for my future endeavors as an artist.
I don't want to bore everyone with a text heavy post, so I'll make this quick and hopefully painless.

1. I will be uploading photos from CTN-X to my Flickr account hopefully in the near future.
2. I am setting up a blog that is STRICTLY for my portfolio. This is just so all my images are in one happy place.
AND THE BIGGEST NEWS TO POST UP HERE
3. I am proceeding with my career goals, and the only way to attain that is to relocate. So January 11th will be my last day living in Minnesota, and I will be relocating after that. When it is two weeks from that date I will fill in as much of the blanks as I can.

If there are any questions I can be reached quite easily at cosmicpencil@yahoo.com
There are a lot of changes happening for the new year and I hope the few who view this blog will be able to bear with my more than likely lack of posts...
-matt

Caricatures 006

Here's another caricature for the drawingboard.
Done in the same manner as the previous five. I think I am going to try a few either in Painter or Photoshop and see what I can get out of those two...

I know I keep on mentioning it, but now it is about 28 hours until I fly out to Burbank for CTN-X.
I am quite excited for this event, and am looking forward to attending, learning and growing hopefully!!! (Not height-wise though, because I think 6'4" is tall enough). There are some 'fun' things I am going to try and develop post-CTN-X so I can only eagerly say to please check out the blog next week sometime for hopefully some really exciting news AND hopefully some at least 'decent' art to accompany some of it too...
-matt

Run Ernie! RUN!

I remember doing run/walk cycles while in college and enjoyed doing them. I think when I was doing them though, that I was more worried about secondary movement, whether it was how the clothing moved or whatever the case was. My run cycle had Sergeant Sourpuss running away and I did the initial run cycle and then added secondary movement with his tail bouncing up and down, his ears stretching further back and his arms bouncing up and down with the impact of his feet hitting the ground. The more I now think of it the more I should re-attempt it again.
Nonetheless, this run cycle is dedicated to my Boston Terrier, Ernie, who likes to run around outside. Was trying to play around just slightly with the squash/stretch. I am pretty sure I'll try to figure out how to animate something in Flash and see how well it works out.
That and I thought it'd be nice to post something other than a caricature up here, although I do have more of those to come (which includes a 12 part series on the TOP TWELVE artists who have inspired me and shaped me to who I am today).

And now come to think of it, with CTN-X Animation Expo coming up this weekend I figured it'd be good to post something animated related in honor of the event that I am HIGHLY looking forward to.
-matt

Caricatures 004 and 005

Holy Toledo! I was so excited about Don's caricature that I went up and started working on the next batch and before I knew it not one but TWO were finished!!! If you click on them you'll get a more detailed account on what went behind the scenes on these two as far as what was going on in my head.
Oh, and there should be some more tomorrow...YEAH CARICATURES!
sigh....I'm addicted now.
-matt

Caricature 003

I like the smaller image links from Flickr. If you want to see it bigger you can just go to either my Flickr account OR by clicking on the image and then selecting a 'larger' image view.
This is the third caricature I've done for the drawingboard caricature deal. I had a couple others I did, but wasn't completely happy with them. I like this one, even though I fudged the head angle, but other than that I am happy with it. There are a few other people from the drawingboard that I'd like to caricature and I'll probably get around to them sooner or later.
Probably the most enjoying part about doing these caricatures is it's helping me to loosen up a bit. I think early on in my period of doodling I was so animate on trying to get my work to a certain level that it lost all sense of what I truly enjoyed doing. I have a few sketchcards that I had done of some comic characters that is using a similar process to what I am doing here, but also has the same mindset where I am not trying to look like a comic artist but just sitting back and enjoying the ride.
-matt

Caricature 002

Okay, here is the second sample caricature done in the same method/manner as the first one.
Not much else to say except possibly more to come this way within the next 24 hours.
-matt

Caricature 001

My first attempt at a caricature.
Done in my moleskine with markers and colored pencils.
This is for the Drawingboard forums' 'Caricaturist's caricatures' thread that has some amazing people participating in it.
I am just hoping to learn as I go...
-matt

Happy Halloween

Hope everyone had a Happy Halloween. Just a photo of me from this year for Halloween before heading out...

UPCOMING EVENTS
1. CTN-X Animation Expo in Late November
I honestly cannot sum up the words of how excited I am to attend this expo. SDCC is a great convention, but it's a HUGE fight with the crowds so a smaller specialty convention will feel wonderful. Or at least I hope it will, as I haven't attended this before.
2. Legendary Anthology
Still pushing this book around. I'm sure it'll get picked up, but it's just going to take time and patience. If all else fails, I will probably publish it through lulu.com. as I would rather it in some shape or form be available for purchase.
3. The BIG MOVE
Still planning to head out to California. Although it'll probably happen sometime after the holidays, but I have been packing up everything and eventually I'll be somewhat living out of boxes.
-Matt