Undead Guys and Their Plant Girlfriends (I moved + I'm animating!)
TLDR: My life changed three days ago, and I'm drawing/animating again!
On May 31st, I packed all of my belongings up in boxes and shipped off to a brand new life.
My partner and I moved in together, into a renovated church in New Haven, Connecticut. Did I want to move? Not really. Did it line up with my current favorite cartoon, thus making it an exciting move? Absolutely. It's fun to be in Dana Terrace's hometown, complete with local inspirations for The Owl House (here's looking at you, Sleeping Giant state park). More on that at another time, though!
Leaving the arts community of Pittsburgh is really sad for me - like, really, really, really sad. Like, so sad that I told Jack (my partner) that there will be a day where I will have a big cry. He'll hear me crying the big, big, wailing, "I want to go home" cry. I've instructed him to not interrupt this cry, not ask me "is this the cry," but simply bring me the best Pad See Ew he can find in town. All will be well after my Pad Cry. It hasn't happened yet - and it's possible that it never will! I've already cried my cry in Pittsburgh. Either way, I'm gonna get some Pad See Ew soon.
But in the meantime, I'm restarting some of my arts hobbies! Not working in the arts anymore means I have some time to make it. I've leaned HARD into my nostalgic love of cartoons, and I'm drawing more than ever. Before I left Pittsburgh I:
Attended a live drawing session hosted by KillerPancake Illustrations
Went to Dobra Tea (the best tea shop ever) to storyboard for fun
Ran over 30 non-consecutive miles while listening to the Creative Block podcast
I'm especially excited to have applied to a Danny Phantom "Re-Phantimated" project, and I'm well into storyboarding my first animatic, inspired by the end of the Owl House a few months ago. (I'm one of those people who love thinking about Hunter and Willow at Grom. A lot.) I've even written an original song for it, in a '90s-love-ballad style. It's inspired by my Cheese playlist.
My hope is that I can have a sample of actual frame-by-frame animation in a few weeks, if anything just to showcase to the Re-Phanimated frame assignment team that I can knock their socks off! Right now, they don't have much to go off of besides my tumblr, and it's been a few years since I've posted much of anything 'round those parts. I'll try to dedicate some time each evening to one of these two projects.
Until then, it's all about unpacking and setting up our space. My next project, still Owl-House oriented, is to create a little New Haven/Hamden travel guide for Owl House fans! It'll get me out of my apartment, and it can be tied to my little nerdy interests. Hopefully I can get acquainted with the local urban sketching group, plus a few other creative communities!
What's that you say? Overshare? Why of course! Take a peek in our new home - prior to the move-in. You can imagine us moved-in, just imagine a lot of junk. Showing a different unit so that I'm not sharing everything with the internet, ya dig?
You can also see our house in comparison to the title screen of Thanks to Them - I'm not saying my house is in the episode, but I'm absolutely saying it is.