2013 & Realms Unreel Recap

In a world torn between the sirens of congressional reality shows and celebrity twitter soapboxes, thought it would be in the blog's spirit to post a brief recap of side project stuff in 2013. It was a tremendous year of my personal life (getting married, remodeling our first home, wrapping character work on The Good Dinosaur.... for now, enjoying some fantastic times traveling and among great friends), among which I actually managed to do more in side projects than ever before.

2013 was the first year where I was able to actively start protecting time to take on hobbies and side projects, and hey, it feels good! Hope to build on it more. There was a good bit of ZBrushing - I've even been able to do some of that forbidden magic at work - and a fair amount of drawing. Ended the year with a resonating thought accented by a talk I attended by pencil-sorcerer Glen Keane: It's extremely easy to get caught up in the academic or perfectionistic in creative spaces.  However, real joy and reward in art comes from simply being playful and enjoying the process, much like a kid playing Make Believe.

Easier said than done, sure, but it sets up a sort of resolution: To think more primitively, to return to the roots of What drives interests, and to simply enjoy the process itself in 2014.

That said, making the Realms Unreel hardcover with author Audrey Auden was a treat, and certainly 2013's side project highlight. We had a limited time to get the job done in a gap between home repairs/move-in and the wedding, but having never really illustrated a project like this before, I learned a TON along the way and I'm so thankful to the Kickstarter backers who let us do it! My part in the project was finished early in 2013, but I never actually posted the final key images to the blog... so here they are!

Enjoy your 2014!