Now there's a place for me to exhibit all the different drawings that I do, not that the storyboard portfolio is anything less than a collection of excellent artworks representing my visual storytelling prowess, but it is extremely focussed. (Although, come to think of it, from one story to the next there is a distinct difference in style, or medium, or general approach, which is of course was intentional on my part, an attempt to display the options available.) But the variety seen there is going to seem like eggshell, off-white, bone, and ecru paint colour samples when compared to the 8 collections that comprise the new art gallery.
The first section is Cartoons, and is already stuffed with crazy characters and drawings old and new. After that is the Designs collection which consists of commissioned and contributed materials for outside use, going from a piece just completed the other day, all the way back to that first (awful) cover I drew for "Extra Extra" the Vancouver PayPal company periodical (and the other two covers which were significantly better). Gags and Jokes is the next section of art, and there's everything from silly t-shirt design ideas, to dirty sight gags I thought up in animation class. The Realistic collection has commissioned portraits as well as memorial portraits for heros of mine, and other drawings which distinctly lack my more frequent exaggerated forms. Sketches might be my favourite collection, because its got its own variety, and not only that, but it sneaks peaks at my process here and there. Life Drawings is a collection of wrinkled pages from class work done at the beginning of the year in my 2D animation program, they're great drawings, I just didn't take great care of the pages, so they're slightly distorted. Not really sure if that section will see any growth really, I suppose I could always draw clothed strangers I see in public, or I might take more Life Drawing classes, but for now, I wouldn't expect much. Backgrounds is a collection that sort of seems like it should be built into the others, in fact the Designs section is full of drawings with built in bg's, but the ones in this section are all on their lonesome, since they are all background layers for animation (or assignments from class). The top six are from my final project student film, the next two are from an uncompleted independent short called "The Brexorcist", then an assignment, and finally the last one is the end 16 field background in an independent short I did after graduating. And abstract is exactly what it sounds like, and needs no explanation rudolf turnip bunsen burner cartilage shun.

Haven't written in here in quite some time, over a month. In the month of October there wasn't much to update about. That's not to say that I wasn't working, quite the opposite actually. I found myself busy at work on a couple of commission art pieces, one was cartoon portrait, the other for a poster design. Additionally the final three Tragedy strips have been completed, 2 of them are online currently. Speaking of which, I haven't heard from Waylon in a while, which either means ALT Magazine's next issue has opted not to continue telling absurd story of Tragedy, or ALT Magazine itself is not printing... on time?
On Halloween I put together an image for my friends, it featured a seasonal cartoon and a block of text. The image was a sight gag I came up with along with about two dozen or so others, no exaggeration. If anyone needs weird, single image gags, relating to Halloween, I've got plenty: ranging from cute to baffling to morbid.
Still seeking work as a storyboard artist. I'm pursuing a couple of opportunities at the moment, and I've been thinking about doing another sample storyboard for my portfolio, something considerably less detailed than the other recent ones. It has occurred to me that often live action storyboards are valued more on their clarity and quickness than on visual impact.

Today I added another section of storyboards to my portfolio. They cover a type of storyboard art that is completely necessary, yet I hadn't really thought to include it before. That being standard, straight forward camera angles, and character dialogue and development. My portfolio had plenty of diverse storytelling imagery for scenario involving very tense or dramatic energy, or scenes of action. I had establishing shots, and a good bunch of CU expression shots, props, and even some special effect type shots. But none of them had a simple eye level, passive observer kind of shot, and I hadn't done much in the way of dialogue, I mean, I had panels where there was a line or two spoken, but not much in the way of a the back and forth kind of stuff that develops the plots and characters all so well.
So the remedy to this omission is a 18 paneled storyboard from the "Slither" script, its early on in the movie so the characters are basically giving the audience an idea of who they are and what they want, so it's a good interaction. I didn't realize prior to doing it that there's like 4 swear words in about a page and a half. Which I'm not overly concerned about, but I am conscious of. I mean, as a professional portfolio it would be wise to keep away from something that could offend a potential employer. However, I think its fairly unlikely that that would be major issue, especially since I didn't write it anyways. I also had the 18 panels all timed out and got a couple of camera moves compiled into a minute and a half video, basically an animatic of the scene from storyboards, I had to have audio with it though, so I got iSpeak and had the characters done by computer voices, its sounds terrible (especially since the characters have the worst grammar and awful accents so the digital voice sounds almost broken) but at the very least it gives structure and justification for the length between cuts and so on. It can be watched right now in the Portfolio section, it's the first frame on the left at the top of the page, or the first text link below the Portfolio greeting (which I also re-wrote).
That's all for now, but in the very near future I will make a blog post with some images regarding composition and mood, and manipulating an audience without them knowing, examples from "Slither" again. (I wonder if I will ever actually see that movie.)

I just made a bunch of changes to the "About Myself" section, there is now information filling out the design of the layout, whereas before that left side grey column had nothing up a phone number and email address. The email address and phone number are still the most important pieces of information on the page, but at the very least they're not siting of to the side like there was no where else to put them. I also re-wrote the Mini Bio, and Objective. Then I went through the Education and Work History sections and made a crazy amount of typo corrections.
After this I've got to make that Extra Stuff area worth while. On a piece of paper next to me there's a list of ideas of what to put on the Extra Stuff page, some of them are: Links, Sketch Book Gallery, Movie Reviews, and maybe videos from my stand up comedy performances. We'll have to see later, for now its just a minute video, my 2D animation reel.

So I am now the proud owner of a new Twitter account. And I've already added a widget to this page's html. So my most current tweet will appear over there at the right. I'm not sure I see the usefulness in this yet, but I'm certain that I will wonder how I ever lived without it in no time.
Also stuff is happening, I've been asked to help on a zombie film shoot happening at the end of the month. No storyboard, apparently they're using photos for their boards, I've heard of this, but I've never seen it in use, so it'll be interesting to see that while I'm... I dunno holding a boom mic? All they said is they need anyone who is willing to help, so I'll be there.
So I uploaded (to YouTube) the illustrated video I made using audio of Marc Maron's anti-Whole Foods story that he told on the first episode of his podcast WTF? and I set it as private, then I messaged Marc and sent him a link to it, and asked him if its cool if I open it up to the public. He enjoyed it and told me to show it off. Also he expressed interest in a drawing I did for the podcast, saying that if I were to complete the other half of the design that it might make a cool t-shirt, so I'm kinda psyched on that.
I already have 7 followers on Twitter, and all of their user pictures are of teenage girls. Got to be some kind of scam, I've only made 1 tweet, and it was about me writing this blog entry. Oh well, I'm going to go and eat my own head now.

This marks the official beginning to my pursuit of a career as a freelance storyboard artist. I've been doing storyboards for various projects of my own or for the productions of friends and peers for the last year or so, but I've been telling stories through sequential images since childhood. While I am new to the profession and the film industry in general I am confident that my skills are exceptionally strong, and that my enthusiasm and eagerness to learn is reason enough for any level of film production to hire me, if only for a test few pages of script.
When I say I am eager to learn, I mean that I am ready to pick up on any production specific requirements, or production designer's personal expectations. As far as learning the trade I have received multiple lessons, from a variety of instructors. I've covered the standard storyboarding toolset and glossary, and the rules of thumb and when to break them. In addition to this I attended a class in which I learned many advanced methods for scene illustrating that, I feel, potentially could be the difference between a good scene and; a scene that stays with its audience, is always effective is its intent, and draws the attention of connoisseurs.
At the moment my goals are fairly modest as I am looking to work on smaller productions, to start out with, until I get my bearings. I also intend to use these experiences to network and establish contacts that are, like myself, rising within the industry. I'm pricing my services to match my experience as well as the project. Independent productions may not have the budget to accommodate seemingly non-crucial production illustration, but that's why I'll board only pages of the script that feel visually uncertain. I'm even willing, if the project is right, to work pro-bono.
I'll conclude this first entry now, as it seems I've written well over what I had initially intended to. At the very least the index page should sit sturdy with this content filling out the repeating background image. Oh, I suppose I may as well mention that I designed and coded this website myself, and that I am available to create web-sites of a similar style, please don't ask me to design a corporate site for your home business, I can do it, I just don't want to because its really really boring work.