Retro-Characters

A 60's mom and little boy done for a "classic" looking animation that appeared in a Cartoon Network show (KND!); another entry in a little run of character designs leading up to posting a new Characters section on my site.

A typical moment with Faith and Mr. Floppy...

...and a look at the rough pencil/value preliminary drawing. Click on them to get a closer look...

MoCCA's Coming...

In this week leading up to the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art's 2009 Festival (June 6 & 7), I thought it would be fun to reach way back- in this case exactly 20 years- and post this corny old comic from Shithead's Book of Love, Sex, Pain, Commitment, etc., one of the five Shithead and Winky comics; it premiered at a book-signing at Buster's Newsstand, South of Market, San Francisco in the summer of 1989, thanks to "Buster," aka David Latimer, who also started The Nose magazine.  It's in color because I like the way some of the "Zip-a-tone" film shading turned yellow...remember Zip-a-tone?  If so, congratulations, you're still with us...You can see more old "SH & W" comix here.

Troubletown in the Big Apple

    Last night I had the rare and wonderful opportunity to take in a scintillating slide show by my old pal, Lloyd Dangle, Bay Area genius cartoonist/workin' man's pundit, and for twenty years the creator of the brilliant, scratchy box-strip, "Troubletown."  Lloyd wowed a small (the créme-de-la-créme) but fervent audience with slides of his terrific comics, historical (and hysterical) anecdotes, and samples of reader feedback (the stranger and scarier, the better).  For some unimaginable reason, Troubletown doesn't seem to be syndicated in NYC- a real loss, as it's a go-to must-read in numerous rags out west.  Lucky for us, we can check out his recent creations with this great Troubletown Cartoon Viewer. And don't let it stop you from ordering one or more of Lloyd's Troubletown compilations, like Troubletown Told You So, or Axis of Trouble; or from playing "Offendo" on the TT site, where you can create your own politically offensive comics!

    The show was at a place called "The Tank" on 45th at 9th, a performance space associated with Living Liberally, and definitely deserves support for their causes and great artists' policy.

    And if you ever have a chance to spend "An Evening with Lloyd Dangle," Do it!  I give the show 4 (out of a possible 5) golden tacos!

More C-H-A-R-A-C-T-E-R-S

Here are a couple of porcine characters, on the continued character thang

......and their hang-out, as a rough sketch, and a quick color version:

Tales of the Koko Lion: The Vibration of Cheese

"Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up a stone; you will find me there."

Yeshua, Logion 77, The Gospel of Thomas

The light energy that issues from the Source constantly penetrates and energizes all that we see. Our selves, and everything that interacts with us in this form we're in now, are made of light and electromagnetic wave energy "precipitating" as matter, bound in energy fields in constant motion at a subatomic level, emanating from the "Zero Point Field." Nothing new there, right? If the rules were to suddenly change, we might fly apart in all directions, or plunge right through the floor. Sometimes, I'm not sure what's holding me together. Maybe pizza. Or more likely, it's the cheese. God bless cheese (artisanal sourced, and vegan, of course).

This light of what Hindu and Christian scripture call "I AM" shines through everything, making everything perceivable within the limits of our vision. Some physical forms are more transparent, more porous to the Source, dependent on their material structure, and particularly on the density of the intellectual thought form we use to define them. An anvil's slow solidity speaks of it's purpose and symbolic nature. Source doesn't pour out of it, it oozes through. But it's there, in everything, whirring about in it's own sub-atomic composition, vibrating. Our shared consciousness allows us to agree on the form of the anvil, and our co-creative powers; discovery, intention, focus (all thought-forms), and manifestation (creation), bring the anvil into being in it's appropriate form. Some guys make anvils. In cartoons, we agree to manifest anvils in order to drop them on cartoon characters heads, while in our conscious form reality, this has pretty disastrous consequences. These are different density thought-forms.

The formation of metals is a powerful example and metaphor, inevitably leading to alchemy. The transmutation of form into Source. An example of this are words – marks with meanings we agree upon; and the forms they take. Painted on a wall. Carved in granite. These particular ideas here, as word-forms pressed on solid paper, could be bound as books and have a presence and solidity as such. But words like these that appear digitally don't manifest themselves as solidly as those that are settled on paper. Even "classic" literature realized digitally doesn't have the impact of the same thing on paper – it simply lacks dimensional solidity. The bits of agitated information don't land on the cortex so much as they jitterbug through it. That's why internet ideas are more contentious than those printed on paper, and why paintings sit much easier than TV images (more on right/left brain later...). Those forms turn to gold more easily.

In the same way, nature is always more permeable to source energy than man-made materials and environments. Illuminative energy pores through nature's delicate membrane of being with much more ease than it does through buildings or other man-made objects. (Not only is this a fundamental reality of observational mystical wisdom, but living things actually emit a measurable amount of light. Interference of these holographic waves is the basis for Magnetic Resonance Imaging [MRIs], and may account for flocks of birds and schools of fish moving simultaneously). This is why it's important to spend time in nature – to bathe yourself in the source energy of The Divine that shines through the thin veneer of nature's form.

This is also why some people seem to shine, while others seem dense and pallid. Some people are composed of denser, slow-vibrational thought-matter, while warmer and livelier people vibrate closer to the frequency of source energy. Source is the source of higher attraction. This isn't an excuse to form subjective judgments- people in trouble may shine brightly (and vice-versa), based on their surface vibrational frequency at that particular moment. You might "read" their true state through their shine, then see them later, now knowing something's amiss. Their shine has now diminished. For example, drug and alcohol abuse can momentarily cause a false shine, that inevitably (and often permanently) fades. Slower vibrational thought-forms can create lower attractions to the "like-minded" (similar thought-formed).

And so, these perceptions are a function of your own state. Life is a mirror. How you are feeling- the frequency at which your thought-forms manifest the state of your senses, actually elicits your perceptions of the world. You are constantly creating your own world. Life doesn't happen to you, it happens for you!

You can train your vision to bear witness to these differences simply by closing your eyes in meditation, and visually entering that place where all illumination emanates from. It's right there – right inside. When you return and open your eyes, you can actually see the illumination issuing out of people, through their faces usually – in personal in varying degrees, based in their karmic energy. This will also help you to recognize the wonder of source energy (which is Love!) in everything, and the world will mirror that love for you. 

"Our present world is conditioned by our present mode of consciousness; only when that consciousness passes from its present dualistic mode...will the new creation appear, which is the external reality of which our world is a mirror."

Bede Griffiths

"As you think, so you are." The Buddha

The latest book: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor is now available from Llewellyn Worldwide, and can be ordered online; and the first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available everywhere too – but ask for them it at your local bookstore!

More Characters...from Faith & Mr. Floppy

In keeping with the character designs, here's a look at Faith and her dark alter-ego, Vera; as well as the roughs for good-guy Gideon, and the magical triplets, The Claires.

Tales of the Koko Lion: 8.5, Avocado Afternoon and the Sacred Lesson

"You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough."
                                                                                       William Blake

Tommy and I entered the avocado grove from the same dusty trail each time, leaving behind the sawgrass and sage, and enveloping ourselves in the cool, deep green of the only forest we knew. The sprawling trees with their broad blue-green leaves blocked out most of the midday sun. We'd left our dog partners, Rip and Jansen, back at the house. Scrunching across the dried-leaf floor, we stopped at a welcoming tree and gave it a light shake. The avocados were ready for picking and the trees would soon be stripped by the corporations who monopolized picking the local groves, offering the avocado ranchers, large and small, a take-it-or-leave-it deal. For that reason, we felt entitled to harvest grocery bags full of our treasured teardrops to sell to neighbors for money for Mexican firecrackers, or to go the movies—maybe to see The Night of the Living Dead just one more time. We were, after all, crazy and confused 12-year old boys.

But today we had ambitions of a distinctly epicurean nature. When we shook the tree lightly, a couple of perfectly ripe, pebbly and purplish Hass avocados fell to the ground with lusciously weighty thuds. We took them up to the top of tree, and perched ourselves on the forks of the thin branches up in the broken sunlight. We pulled out our folding knives and cut around the avos longitudinal equators, down to the fat seeds, with a sweeping turn of the wrist. We popped them open, revealing their gloriously satin green interiors, and tweeked the seeds out with the tips of our knives. We reached into our back pockets, and pulled out the spoons we always carried into the groves with us for this very purpose. Just as I was about to scoop up a bite, Tommy stopped me, sporting a knowingly mischievious look. He reached into his front pocket, smiling broadly, and pulled out two of those little blue Morton's salt and pepper shakers. We laughed, and spooned up our seasoned alligator pears with the relish of secret winners. This was the food of the gods (and still, and always, is).

One day out in the canyons, Tommy and I went into a huge patch of prickly pear cactus armed with machetes, and spent our repressed rage lopping and chopping our way through the tear-paddle leaves. The slicing felt so meaty and tactile that it made my teeth stand on edge. Looking back on the destruction we'd wrought, at first I felt purged, having vented the rage I'd rightfully concealed behind the façade of our happy family life. But almost instantly, I became deeply saddened, like I imagine one feels after surviving a desperate battle—only in this victory, no one fought back. The oozing green leaves lay like tears cried for the Sacred, piled up wastefully on the ground. The savaged cactus patch had been blissfully reaching to the sun for years. I heard the canyon crying in my mind's ear. My young soul switched off...it had to, or I'd have started crying myself.

We continued the day running in the same open vein as we switched to our rifles and sat under an old Bigleaf maple, shooting every bird that landed above us. Eventually, even the dogs became as palpably disgusted with us as we were with ourselves and withdrew, leaving us to that still soul-place where we could hear the cumulative cries of all the living consciousness we'd cut short that day sink inside our hearts.

I was never sure what effect that day had on Tommy, I think he went on to continue hunting, but aside from the odd mosquito or ant, I would never be able intentionally kill anything again. Thirteen was lucky that way, I guess.

"I am the true Self in the heart of every creature...the beginning, middle, and end of their existence."

The Bhagavad Gita 10.20

Read about this and much more in: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor  from Llewellyn Worldwide available direct on this page, or online. How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for it at your local bookstore!

Characters: The Lost Dwarves, Pt. 1

Now the truth can be told - there were more dwarves working back in that mine than made it onscreen...dwarves they didn't talk about; and these recently unearthed original development artworks prove it...this is the first group of characters who "weren't good enough" for the big-time - part of a celebration of these unsung heroes leading up to a new character section coming soon on my website.

One day, I hope to color these too...

Here are three more idyllic locations belonging to a sadly suspended project...

Important Stuff!

Here's a nice spot to join in a cartoon meditation...one day I'll color it.

    April 22nd is Earth Day, so plan something earthy for Mom - a picnic, plant something, or join one of the 'official' activities planned for your area.

    Of really super special importance is Global Peace Meditation and Prayer Day, this coming May 17th, which will actually be May 16th from 10 PM EST to 12 midnite, if you want to join in this annual synchronized meditation for peace and consciousness.  What makes this so important is that it works!  Prior GPMP day meditations have been documented to have decreased global violence and increase global compassion( the "secret" force for good in the world).  Through Princeton University's Global Consciousness Project, data has been collected over a global network that indicates that the focused consciousness of a relatively small number (millions, in the case of GPMP Day, a few as 8 thousand in past experiments) of people taking part in this action has a real, measurable effect in the world.  Check the site to see the numbers.  It's evidence of the instant 'non-local' effect that quantum physics has shown us is operating in reality, and your chance to really make a difference.

    You can learn a whole lot more by reading Quantum Shift in the Global Brain, the truly amazing book by Ervin Laszlo, chancellor of GlobalShift University, and founder of The Club of Budapest.

How Animals Share Consciousness

"I am the true Self in the heart of every creature...the beginning, middle, and end of their existence."

The Bhagavad Gita 10.20

When we approach The Milky Way galaxy from "deep space," it first appears as a distant luminous pinwheel. As we get closer, it's clear that there's plenty of room to go around. Turning our focus very specifically to one area along the outside edge, we find the collection of spherical bodies we call our solar system; and there, third from the star we call the Sun is the miniscule pinprick of blue that we call our Earth.

As we grow nearer, the features of Earth become more evident; the continental land masses; the dwindling polar ice caps; the expanse of oceans and seas. And there, at times just visible through the swirling marbleized cloud cover, is a bare, grey fuzz; a scant five o'clock shadow that we call humankind. It looks like a light fungus growing on the little terrestrial orb.

When we objectively view lichen on a rock, or moss on a tree stump, do we engage on a microscopic level with each moss cell as an individual? Of course not. We just refer to it as "moss," giving no consideration to what traits moss consciousness may recognize as individual from cell to cell. It's the remarkable arrogance of man (gender specificity intended) - the pride of ego - that insists that we, as humans, are somehow all separate from one another, and our source.

Across the continents, among the races, there is little or no difference between any of us from that viewpoint in space. We all think, or have thought, more or less the exact same thoughts at one time or another. We all continuously experience the same emotions, harbor the same fears, know the exact same joys and sufferings of one another on an intimate, interchangeable level. Within certain tolerances, we are all subject to the same conditions created from within or from without. Should the earth or atmosphere become inhospitable to us, without adapting to the changes, we shall all perish at about the same time, geologically speaking.

In sharing this thing we call consciousness, we all share the singular expression of the creative source that takes place on this planet. We share what we might call "the Consciousness of Earth." Deep within us, we have a sense of the most basic elemental forces of the Earth; the deepest cold of the icy subterranean. The dense, smoldering pressure and heat of the innermost; the heedless baking burn of the unabated sun.

Deep within us, we know the natural experience of life, of the wild. We feel the elements as any animal does, and like any animal we live the play of forces that govern our needs for sustenance, for regeneration, for love in the form of the mysterious power of creation.

Look within yourself and you'll see that somewhere deep within, you understand the exhilarating speed of the cheetah, or the overwhelming seasonal sleepiness of the grizzly bear - especially on those days when it's tough to get out of bed. Likewise you can identify with the fear a young calf feels when surrounded by the slaughterhouse cries of his family; or the panic of a yellowtail tuna or porpoise as the indiscriminate mile-long nets of a fishing trawler scoop up the contents of your entire world.

It's not just humans that share the experience of this thin veneer of consciousness that tenderly wraps and energetically enlivens this planet, it's all life on earth. Despite our differences, species to species, we are all one thing: the consciousness on this earth.

"...my own true inner being actually exists in every living creature...[and] is the ground of that compassion upon which all true, that is to say, unselfish, virtue rests..."

Schopenhauer

Animals simply live their being. Their consciousness is joined with source purpose and intention, and so they attain a purity of experience within consciousness, through their senses, that humans seldom know. They have developed senses which allow them to live in a much richer world infused by light and electromagnetic wave perception that connects them to the field of being, and so they are not burdened by elaborately convoluted thinking, as are humans.

Being ignorant, and unwilling to experience or imagine the sublimely transcendent intelligence alive in the spirit/mind of a whale or an elephant, for example, the human ego denies all other creatures their true positions in the hierarchy of being, simply because it threatens human self-enhancement and self-importance. Also because it suggests a fatal assumption of human intelligence; that we have the "divine" right to kill animals for our own purpose -which is a conclusion based solely on delusion and ignorance. Some indigenous peoples have naturally found the way through The Great Spirit to respectably cycle the energies of hunted and farmed animals to meet their needs for sustenance, but this has little to do with our mass culture today. And I wouldn't suggest that a hungry crocodile wouldn't eat me, if given the chance. That's what he lives to do. Not to accomplish. Not to steward. Not to choose.

The fact is that the actual nutritional needs of the earth's entire population could be met in a much more healthful and efficient manner agriculturally, with a bare minimum of animal slaughter and consumption. (All the flavors, textures, and nutritional qualities that are supposedly exclusive to meat can be reproduced with vegetable substitutes) In this way, wildlife populations would be brought back into balance, and humans could begin to exercise their divine dominion over the other occupants of the planet.

Unfortunately, the regressive human psyche has developed an appetite for something else: the energy of fear. The collective human ego manipulates and exploits it's animal relatives, feeding on the energy of fear generated by this exploitation. Feeding on the bodies of our animal brothers and sisters while ignoring their actual place in the divine order of life, and, without properly honoring their sacrifice, failing to release their spirits with love, imbues people with a deep, negative energy of guilt and fear.

In this way, the collective human ego, the singular most destructive force in all being, enforces the separation of human individuals from the divine source of being, which is the consciousness of the earth. It also contributes to the build-up of the energy of fear at a cellular level in the bodies of meat-eaters that leads to the inability to perceive the spiritual on a personal and collective level, and provides those fear-triggers that are regularly exploited by unethical interests to elicit the ignorant and inhumane mass attitudes that so threaten all life on earth. Simply put, it's why there are far more fist fights at barbecues than at vegan yoga retreats!

The time has arrived in the evolution of humankind, to stop the barbaric and wasteful subjugation, cannibalization, and vanity slaughter of all crawling, walking, flying, swimming, thinking and feeling sentient creatures, and instead, to seek their wisdom of simple harmonious being-ness. And to stop and redirect the earth's energy and resources, squandered by this pointlessly egomaniacal vivocide, into an intuitively intelligent and sustainable (re: vegetarian) approach to being on earth, aligned with source energy, which is the consciousness of the earth. Keep in mind that mankind is not the top of the chain of being in this system of consciousness, the Earth is. As mankind continues to hasten the grievous imbalance of energies through the destruction of earth's natural systems and expressions of it's consciousness, the world will simply adjust to maintain it's harmony. We're not talking about the end of the world. The world will continue on, finding new ways to express divine consciousness, only Man will cease to exist.

"I do not see a delegation for the four-footed. I see no seat for the eagles. We forget and we consider ourselves superior, but we are after all a mere part of the Creation...The elements and the animals, and the birds, they live in a state of grace. They are absolute, they can do no wrong. It is only we, the two-leggeds, that can do this. And when we do this to our brothers, then we do the worst in the eyes of the Creator."

Oren Lyons, to the United Nations (1977)



The latest book: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor is now on sale from Llewellyn Worldwide, and can be ordered online; and the first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available everywhere too – but ask for them it at your local bookstore!

Tales of the Koko Lion: Rock Visitors

Here's the rock, and where the deer were...

"The little space within the heart is as great as this vast universe. Both heaven and earth are contained in that space...for the whole universe dwells within our heart."

Chandogya Upanishad, 8.1

One day, Koko was sitting on the rock in the river, chanting the sacred word OM. It seemed a little corny, sure. But it was working. He said the word over and over, from his root and his heart and his throat. His eyes were a little bit completely closed, though he was beginning to see things quite clearly, in a different way. After a while, he felt a presence, and cracked his eyes slightly to look. There, on the bank just across from the rock, were three young, curious deer -just five or six feet away. The young leader looked like: Is there room on the rock for me? I'd like to step across. There wasn't enough room on the rock, but in their hearts, there was all the space in a thousand universes.

Have you ever heard of The Unified Field Theory? Physicists have been working on it for a hundred years, at least. But there's one major ingredient that they keep leaving out of their formulae: Consciousness. The deer, the river, even the breeze on Koko's face (even Koko), are drifting particles, realizing their material forms in and out of wave phases. Some things just are, formed out of our shared consciousness. Some things are just for you, formed from the energy of your heart, which is like a giant light-energy top, spinning in the middle of your being. In fact you could say, it is you.

Live from your heart. Release all the expectations you have for the things you want. You're getting everything you need already. You don't have to go any where else to be where you want to be. Or try this: get on the bus, go across town, sit in a new cafe, open your heart, and be half way around the world, in the most beautiful and romantic place you've ever wanted to be. Covet what you already have.

"The whites always want something; they are always uneasy and restless. We do not know what they want. We do not understand them. We think that they are mad."

I asked him why he thought the whites were all mad.

"They say that they think with their heads," he replied.

"Why of course. What do you think with?" I asked him in surprise.

"We think here," he said, indicating his heart.

The Pueblo Indian, Ochwiay Biano (Mountain Lake) to Carl Jung,

from Memories, Dreams, Reflections

""The heart is a sanctuary at the center of which there is a little space, wherein the Great Spirit dwells, and this is the eye...by which He sees all things, and through which we see Him."

Black Elk

one of the very first color illos from the deep past...supposedly based on an actual occurrence.

Tales of the Koko Lion, Part 8: Canyon times.

"Like the grasses showing tender faces to each other, thus should we do, for this was the wish of the Grandfathers of the World."                                                                                              Black Elk  

    The sun was hot, and my moccasined feet stuck like monkey palms down on the broad granite boulder.  The big boulders were strewn around the chaparral covered hills, jumbled atop one another like they'd been cast out with some beautiful zen intention.  Golden tan no-tan.  Grasshoppers whirred their surreal, penetrating background buzz as Santa Ana winds blew the red-clay dust off the hilltop paths.  I and my dusty compadres occupied these canyons, laying just beyond the edge of San Diego, and stretching out to what seemed like forever.  Gray squirrels rhythmically chirped away in their boulder villages.  A lizard did push-ups on a rock.  The quails' call punctuated the humming stillness:  "kee KAW kaw... kee KAW kaw..."  This was where I would choose to live, if I could... and so I did.  From early childhood on, I'd disappear out the door, and across the street, on to the dusty oxide canyon trails and into the deceivingly welcoming wilderness there, to the best host a kid could have.  Later, when we moved farther out on the fringes, to the monolithic Mies Van der Rohe-inspired house that my father built, where the land surrounded us completely, all I needed to do was walk out the downstairs door next to my room, right into my scrub-brush sanctuary.  I could move free then, around the path-cut hills, out of the sightlines of the house's big windows.

    I had my rifle or my bow, and cut the knees of my jeans out, front and back, to allow the breeze to circulate; and there was always a cat or two out in the field with me.  Like Cathy, the tawny little tiger with one tooth, who retrieved like a hunting dog- bounding back over the low scrub with a lizard in her mouth.  Or Armando, the muscular white-chested tabby I'd raised on egg yolks and road work (he trotted alongside my paper route bike like the middle-weight he was).  Eventually, they would both fall prey to the coyotes' insidious gang-tactics- the heart-breakingly repetitive fate of all of my childhood cats who ventured into the canyons on their own.  The canyons seemed placid, but in truth, they buzzed and simmered with that kind of dusty menace.

    No one really seemed to see the beauty of the semi-arid wilderness back then.  It all appeared to the unconscious developers to be a lot of nothing but potential dollar signs, and everything but a few parcels were buried by bulldozers and covered with an unsustainable layer of suburbia.  But all things change.  Most of those developers are probably dead and gone on now.  All things come and go.  One day the canyons will reclaim it all-- when the water runs out, and the sun, the creosote, and the jackrabbits and horny-toads take it back.

    But for me in that evening of childhood, the big rocks stayed warm as the sun sunk.  Cathy would pull up a boulder nearby, her stripey arms outstretched in front of her, and we'd watch the dusk descending over the Pacific horizon, like the big cats do.  

The other day, I ran into an old acquaintance, the great painter and comics artist, Gary Panter , that I knew from the L.A. days I posted about last time.  Turns out, he lives just down the street here in Brooklyn.  Years ago, I bought this cool painting, Alpha Dragon, from him.  I suggest you head over to his site, and check out some of the great stuff offered there! 

   This 3-D Hed is one I did back then.  It had it's 5 minutes of fame on a wall in the movie "Slamdance." 

The Zero Point is Everything

"Who looks outside, dreams.

Who looks inside, awakens."

Carl Jung

When you close your eyes, what do you see? Most people would say that they don't see anything except darkness. But you know that's not really true. What you actually see when you close your eyes is an amazing dance of electrochemical color fields and particles, waving and surging up out of the "darkness." You're seeing the effervescent energy that enlivens everything. Here is the ether – the Zero Point Energy ("emptiness") that for some reason, the human mind wants to call "darkness." It's from this rod-and-cone wave/particle participation that our shared consciousness creates everything we see. It's a view of the electric truth that powers these chemical robots we inhabit.

Must be that darn Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge we ate somewhere along the way that makes the ego-mind constantly strive to detach us from the reality of a world so obviously out-of-balance, and from an existence of inextricable interwovenness with every other human who's simultaneously experiencing many of the exact same thoughts, fears, and joys as you are. The ego-mind wants to separate everyone by constantly telling you that you're different and special. And of course, you are. Everyone is. In that very sense alone, we are all the same thing.

Look at the reflections of the sun dancing off the surface of a lake, then close your eyes and look the same way at the performance of energy in the after-imaging inside your eyes. Now look up a bit (eyes wide shut) toward the center of your forehead, towards your third eye, as we tree-huggers call it. There you may very well find a wellspring of golden-white shimmer amongst the dancing energies. It's the door to the source, and if you can stick your head in there a while, you'll come back refreshed and energized. If you don't make it in the first time, try it again. You'll get there if you try. Everybody does who tries (and always has), if they keep it up and allow it. You might recognize and enjoy this as a meditation.

If you can, go to a gallery that has some Rothko paintings, stand in front of one and stare transfixed into the center of it. The memory of lake reflections may very well kick you into a new understanding of art as a portal to the "unseen."

What do you hear when you listen to the voices in your head? Do you just hear one strong and clear voice that is "you?" Probably not. You might hear an anxious or worried voice; an assertive, resolved voice; a poetic, natural voice. Do you hear the calm voice of reason sometimes? Next time you hear that voice, concentrate on it, and identify yourself with it. That's your intuitive connection to universal intelligence, what The Buddha, Stephen Hawking, or Deepak Chopra might call, "the mind of God."

Are all these voices tantamount to schizophrenia? Sometimes. There's not that much difference really. Sometimes. It doesn't matter if they issue from the well of Jung's collective unconscious, from the dark recesses of your own "personal" psyche, from your right or wrong functioning brain chemistry, or from extra-dimensional entities (spirit guides) – what's the difference, really? You'll still know them by the fruit they bear.

This is where personal responsibility comes in. If a thought suggests that you do harm to yourself or someone else, it's coming from a bad place and needs to be ignored. It's not the real you, just a fear-based reflection of the world as our ego-mind needs to see it (or refuses to see it). Just ask for help from your "healthy psyche–well brain–angel spirit" voice, then sit still and listen for an answer. If you don't hear one, be quieter and listen closer.

This is an explanation for both the secular and agnostic (God bless 'em). My personal truth is somewhere around here: this is the voice of your ancestors, who walked on this very ground, and breathed this very air, and whose lives were no less important than yours for their passing, because you are living it now. So pay attention, even if someone tells you you're crazy to listen to that voice in your head. You may be crazy not to. Remember, your spirit guides are more authentic than any anchorperson will ever be...

I'd done this sample zoo bg to give a purple elephant a place to dance, but the job ended before we got to him. Thankfully, this fellow showed up a little later...

Tales of the Koko Lion, Part 7: Animated Memories

   

    Many moons ago when I was 18, I sat on a planter in front of my sister's little hippy boutique, "Satin Rainbow," in the (then) sleepy seaside hippy hamlet of Del Mar, California, sketching in a pad just for fun, when a lovely blonde came by and took an interest in what I was drawing. She got her father, a prominent California Designer/Art Director named Don McQuiston to come and look. He asked me to do a group of drawings and bring them to his office the next week. That was how I got started professionally.

    He hired me to do some drawings for textbooks he was designing, and sent me to a class at a local junior college that was being taught by an up-and-coming young illustrator named Everett Peck. Everett and I became good friends, and during the course of his class, I assembled a portfolio of sorts. Eventually, I submitted it to Art Center College, and was accepted.

    After my second term, I needed work badly, and Everett referred me to a fellow named Frank Terry, a popular animation director who worked out of a studio in Venice, Calif. I walked into his studio with my student portfolio under my arm, and met Frank, sketching at a long table across from another guy, named Ed Koren. They were both nice guys.

Being from out in the coyote canyons, I wasn't really familiar with The New Yorker magazine, or with the quirky, elegant cocktail party "hairy monsters" Mr. Koren created for the comics in that august publication. They hired me to report to Duck Soup Produckions in Santa Monica, and go to work inking a pair of animated commercials that featured Mr. Koren's characters sipping Lancer's Rose. I was about to get my first big lesson in animation.

    Inking any character for fluid animation is a challenge, but particularly those dang hairy monsters – each of them constructed of hundreds of wobbly dip-pen lines. A certain amount of "crawl" was unavoidable, but the client hit the ceiling watching our first samples flutter and bristle like some kind of wild pen-and-ink mitosis. After a while, I got the hang of it, creating a series of "anchor lines" that rode the action of Frank's rough animation sketches (I got to do the pencil clean-ups first, of course). In the end, the crawl was kept to a minimum, and I had my first taste of that unique gratification that comes from seeing animation that you've contributed to up alive on the screen.

    I quit school halfway (I was getting married, and seemed to have lots of work), and for the next couple years I did backgrounds, in-betweens, and development art for Duck Soup, for the wonderfully creative Roger Chouinard, and his wise and funny partner, Duane Crowther. I didn't know what UPA was at the time, and it took years for me to realize that Duane was one of the founders of that whole school of brilliantly influential, "Cartoon Modern," that so much of my work since has been based on. I sat by an old-timer named Amby Paliwoda a lot, a veteran of Disney's Golden Age, who regaled me with stories of the Disney days, and his best buddy, Grim Natwick (a good friend of Duane's, as well). I'm afraid I drove him a little crazy with my "left wing" politics at the time. He loved him some Ronald Reagan. We worked with a great background artist named Toby Bluth, who's brother Don was just starting up a feature studio at the time. And every once and a while, a remarkable artist and character, Cornelius Cole, came into work on projects, mostly Froot Loop commercials; but I recall staying late a couple nights to help Corny with his section of Heavy Metal – a brilliant piece of "limited" animation that was eventually cut from the final picture, because it "didn't fit in" with the rest of the anthology. I understand there are versions of the film that have his section restored.

    Corny was a gas, not just because of his incredible talent or his wonderfully kind nature, but also because he was a guy who generated great apocryphal stories, some of which I know were true. He dressed kind of like Gilligan but with a ragged "Panama" hat, and carried a big broken-handled vinyl suitcase full of hundreds of pencil-ends and blobby ball-points that he'd dig through until he found just the right ones; then he blew up a big beach ball, and laid on top of it (to save wear-and-tear on his back), drawing genius stuff on the floor. My favorite Corny story was that while he was working on all those Warner Brothers cartoonys (that kept me glued to the TV as a kid), he'd lost the forward gears in his transmission, and so drove in reverse from Coldwater Canyon to Burbank every day to work, mostly along the shoulder of the road. Though I'm not sure if that one's true...

    Once, when I was doing b.g.s for a series of "Mrs. Smith's Pies" commercials, I had to lay out and paint views of Pottstown (home of Mrs. Smith) ablaze in fall colors. I was from the Southern California outback. I had never seen fall colors. So I got a National Geographic for reference, and proceeded to paint everything yellow and orange. Duane looked over my shoulder at my work-in-progress and wryly asked, "Have you ever heard of 'Impressionism'?" Of course, I said yes, but I didn't really know what he meant.

    Corny was faculty at Cal Arts for many years, from what I understand. Frank retired as head of the department there, and passed away a couple years back. Duane shuffled off this coil just after the millenium. Until recently, Roger was still at his studio (called simply Duck now), and is still wonderfully creative. I went on to many years of illustration, never looking back, or realizing how great all those people really were, until I got back into animation in 1999. 

    I was quite unconscious way back in those days. I didn't get there because I'd been such a fan of it all, I was just doing my best to pay my rent. When I look back, I know how lucky I was, and though I still often find myself "between projects," I realize that by drawing for a living...how lucky I've always been.

2D design to 3D design

Designing for 3D requires a lot of architecture. As you see here, not only for architectural locations, but also for the creation of characters. It's necessary to be technically specific even when it comes to aspects of the character's "charm." Notice how the "a" changed from the plan drawing to the color model, to enhance legibility.
...this 3/4 rear drawing is by the very talented Kevin Kobasic, who did the original turn-arounds of the cat character, as well as a lot of other characters on the show.

Here's my first take at 3D design, a couple years ago in a film I did for Herman Miller called "Purple," where fixtures came to life...