Moosen

Hey guys! I have been doing a lot of drawing lately; designing for my friend Foster, storyboarding with my friend Eric, and I started a new art blog called The Weekly Sketchbook with my friends! Crazy fun. Check it out here. All of these drawings here are for that blog. And actually the last two drawings, if you haven't figured it out already, are essentially the same one. Using the animation desk that I showed you last time, that has a lightbox, I drew that first red one up, then turned the light on, drew the blue one, and turned the light off, finishing with the graphite one. Traditional animation stuff. Sounds complicated, but it isn't really, except that the red one is done a different sheet of paper than the blue and graphite one.

The first one is Bullwinkle. When I think 'Moose' I immediately thought of him. There is no more famous Moose character in television to date! I remember when my parents first showed me Rocky & Bullwinkle as a kid. Now, when I watch it, I am surprised at how little cartoon there actually is. But, an amazing show nonetheless. You can pretty much watch all of the episodes on Netflix streaming now... and what could make Bullwinkle more memorable than a funky coloring job? Exactly. That's why I did it.

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day everybody!

Look at what I got...

Pretty sweet, huh? I have been waiting for this for a while. Now, there went my savings... and yet, totally worth it.

Some quick sketches

Hey everyone! Happy New Year! Man, it is such a blessing to be on winter break, otherwise I wouldn't have drawn these little fellers here.

For Christmas I got two amazing books, The Art of Tangled, and a Disney Archives book on Animation. Both have been extremely helpful to look at and learn from, mostly because I am terrible at drawing females and animals. So, that's what I drew! Actually the first sketch I have up there I drew today as I was working on animal character designs for my awesome friend and brother in Christ, Foster. He's the guy who got me Photoshop! He works at Adobe, and on the side makes iphone/ipad apps. I have had the privilege of working on some characters for graphics that are going to go into one of his games! Don't know if this lion will be in it, but it was fun to draw so I thought I might as well put it up here.

One of my family's other gifts this year was The Lion King on blu-ray (I know, heavy on the Disney gifts this year, right?). The film is just as awesome as it has always been, blu-ray or not. Last night my youngest brother and I spent something like an hour and a half looking at the gallery while I sketched which really helped me figure out this drawing.

I am also working on storyboarding a short film with my friend who was the Assistant Director of another friend's short film which I helped storyboard way back when. Maybe I will actually get some storyboards from this film up here.

Happy Syllabus Day to all you who are starting school! And to the rest of us, Happy Rubbing in How Long Our Christmas Break Is Day! God bless!

I was going to say something about this...

...but now I can't think of anything.

Happy New Year!

I've always wondered...

When in doubt, ask Google. More Christmas stuff on the way!

Do you recall?

Context? "You know Dasher and Dancer, and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid, and Donner and Blitzen, But do you recall, the most famous reindeer of all?" Wow. Wow. How stupid do you think we are Bing? Do you think we remembered the names of the all the obscure reindeer forgetting the name of the most famous one? This is a duh moment, and thus needed to be preserved in comic strip style.

Christmas songs have a lot of der-moments: Do you hear what I hear? No, I'm not you. Shall I play [my drum] for him? (Par-um-pum-pum-pum) First of all, you're already playing it (duh-duh-duh-duh-duh). And secondly, heck no! The child is shivering in the cold and probably trying to sleep! Do something useful. There'll be scary ghost stories and tales...that's enough. What family were you raised in? Ya, let's scare the kids on Christmas. Instead of opening gifts (which it doesn't mention in the entire song) let's freak out the children. What a good idea.

Not to be repetitive but I talked a little bit on this last year.

More epic der-moments to come as my month long Christmas posting continues.

Got some 'splain'in' to do!

Christmas time is here again, so settle down for story time with Ben! If the big sign I'm holding isn't self explanatory, let me clue you in on how much I love Christmas, and am not a Scrooge. Can't you see my big, otherworldly, and cheesy smile I have pasted on? Not to mention my loving and totally wanted one-armed side hug? Since I know you do see 'em, let me explain the sign a little bit...

Four score and back in July ago, my brother had the crazy idea to start listening to Christmas music *eh-hem* six months in advance. This I would be totally fine with me except for the fact that it's six months in advance. After having to put up with this in years past, I voiced my opinion, as in years past, and got some lame excuse about how Christmas break was the next break he had to look forward t-anway...it was lame. Thus our "family feud" continued into October but wasn't accompanied by Al from Home Improvement or that loud buzzing sound, and I decided to take my argument of playing Christmas music during Christmas time to the next level. The Internet. I informed the public of my brother's ill problem, but to my surprise and dismay, everyone supported him. Thus began a continuous, down word spiral of my beautiful name being soiled by the same crotchety one as Scrooge. That's crazy! Me in line with Scrooge? That's like putting Justin Bieber in line a good musician. It just is not right... I am only here to inform you folks how much I am not a Scrooge and how much a just looove hearing the songs of Christmas, all twelve of them, throughout the year. Can't you tell by my smile?

And just to show you how much I am a Ben (and not a Scrooge), I will be posting Christmas stuff all December long! Remember, I love Christmas!