Thanksgiving Mutant Ninja Turtles

This year we had set up a table for 21 people, outdoing the 19 people from two years ago.  That's just crazy to me, but some people think it's normal.

Spending time with a larger family allowed me to hang out with some of my youngest cousins.  Brothers Matthew and Zachary are recent converts to the clan of the Ninja Turtle fans, so we had a lot to talk about.

"Do you know Krang yet?"
"No, who's that?"

"He's a brain."
"Yeah, I know him!"

So this was an 11 x 17 bristol sheet out of my larger sketchbook.  India Ink and brush, I'd like to say it was an hour job but it may have been an hour and a half last night.  After spending so much time trying to explain graphic design and "selling yourself" to a wary and tryptopan besieged crowd, it was nice to just relax with Leonardo and Raphael.

This was actually kind of a portrait of Matt and Zach but don't tell them that!

- J.

(update):  So I've begun work on adapting this into a poster for some upcoming shows.  Definitely intend to show it at Rose City Comic-Con, and possibly as soon as Emerald City at the end of March.
Did a little "research" of the more modern version of the characters (that means I watched a few new cartoons) and found out that the kids won't know "my" Krang, but instead that they will know the "original" versions from the comics in the really early 80's.  That's cool, they're better than the goofy little guy from my childhood.  I never really liked that dude anyway.   

Scaly Job

Yesterday one of my personal mentors asked me,
"What was the best job you ever had?"

That's simply an impossible question to answer of course, but if you try to
determine which job led to the strongest period of personal growth for me,
it would be easy to suggest that my time on a processor ship in Alaska
was a milestone, if not one of the most formative periods of my life.

Ugly, nasty, horrible work.  Dehumanizing, is what one man called it.

A processing ship is anchored in one spot, and the workload is 24 hours a day,
seven days a week.  The shifts vary depending on position... my own job
required a 12-12-18-12-12-18-12 hours schedule.

When you slept, you didn't sleep well.  When you awoke, you were still
covered in the scales of the fish you had handled the day before.

Carpal tunnel syndrome?  Only time in my life I've EVER had it.  Weary.  Dreary.
 
After 2 weeks of working on the "gut line" (I'll spare you the details)
I was promoted to Quality Control.  My job became determining the quality of salmon and
to grade each fish appropriately into one of four categories.  The speed of work was literally
fish fish fish fish fish (basically at the speed you can say it out loud, that was the speed of the work).
______________________________________________________

There were no breaks.  Sometimes, when those of us upstairs did our job exceedingly well, we would back up the workload of the folks downstairs and then we would have a pause in the action.

Occasionally, my boss Ben King, whose physical presence and personal character were completely unmatched by all but a few men I've known, would halt the line and come upstairs. 

Picture this, if you will:

Every minute which passes, the company is losing MASSIVE amounts of money, if the line is not moving.
Yet this man would come up to the line, call a "HALT!" as loud as possible, and then turn on me, personally, each time, and feed me my ego right back into my ear as loudly as he could, so that 50 or more men could hear him.  It was always so frustrating, and I felt it unfair because it was my opinion that my observations and pace of work were stronger than the other Q.C. men. 

A year later, after the horrible death of a mutual friend from the ship, my friend Mike S. (who was a better expert on meat quality because he was a career butcher but never did make it to Q.C.) told me that Ben King did that to me on purpose, that there was no way to tell which of us working the Q.C. position was making mistakes but that I was the only one who could take the pressure and keep working harder.  The other guys in that position would crumple under the strain of the yelling but that I just got mad and worked harder. 

I don't know if that's true or if Mike was trying to make me feel better but I choose to believe that it's true.

This is a short story which is a true story which occurred to me upon this ship.   
It is "unfinished" because it's actually a longer story but I rushed the art to be able to present it at the Spokane ComicCon in May 2012.  I will one day revisit this piece.

- J.

The Meaning of Life

The Meaning of Life is very real.  It exists and you can see it with your own eyes if you have the strength to perservere and ascend to it.

Recently I took a short drive to the place where you can find it, and have it revealed to you.  It has been many years since I first did this, though I internalized it over a decade ago.

It is, absolutely, one of my favorite pieces of art ever, anywhere in the world. 

If you do not know the meaning of life, I cannot tell it to you.  Nobody can.  It has, however, been carved in this stone monolith in downtown Spokane.  If you can find the floating stage in Riverfront Park, you can find this tower.  Climb it, and YOU will know.

- J.

Project Management Part Two

There was a great deal of pressure on this project.  The pressure was on with multiple major projects and more of them coming in from all sides, not only for the sign maker who contracted me but also in my own personal business.  In addition to this, I had completed projects which needed reconciliation and which were increasingly overbearing on my income.  Totally a 90 hours of work sequence for several weeks, with long travel distances.   The travel was my favorite part.

You know what?  I had a cassette player in my car, and I played this same funk cassette over and over for five or six weeks in a row to and from this place to relax between engagements and obligations.

How this started out was really kind of strange.  One day I was wearing my thinking hat and teaching people how to line dance in the middle of a hot fairgrounds.  We had about 15 of us instructing a line of (oh, I don't know) 400 people or so.  Line dancing is fun.  People who really know how to do it say I'm not good at it though.  The heat was, for me, unbearable.  I had gone through four or five containers of this sickly sweet lemonade in a plastic pineapple.  When the event concluded I walked away to sit down and get ready to walk through the art hangar.  I had a message from a business owner I had never met, cold calling me to come in and work in two days at 9 am.

"You saw my work?"  "No, you were recommended."

"Ok!"

Project Management Part One

Back in the end of August of this year and through the end of September I took on my biggest independent contracting gig EVER. 

>(And that is saying something after the campaign which I built a website for, doorhung for, met with radio folks for, built signs for, and even more!)<

This local shop needed help with a huge series of similar but separate jobs which I was tasked with organizing, designing (and re-purposing old designs), utilizing and setup of the plotter, and the actual physical construction of the end products, which were gigantic signs.  Big huge gigantic signs.

The signs were all for installation in a variety of locations, and for a variety of purposes.  Some required different materials for food grade only purposes, and some were just for labeling machines and tools.

These pictures above are of the charts which I devised to maintain the project openly and so all other people in the store could tell what it was that I was doing.  The processes were all separately recorded.

Each line item on the chart is a separate gigantic pvc sign, or in MOST cases three to five of these signs.  The pieces all flow to the right which indicates completion. 

One of these line items was 37 small signs.  So the numbers above are falsely misleading.  There were probably 100 signs or so.

- J.

Bug in the Jar

This is a piece I created for trade of services for some new friends of mine, Jay and Evelyn Larsen.

Barring final confirmation of details, it's all done now.  It was back in September when I agreed to complete this piece, but the idea was solidified about a month ago, and the project time has been over the last two weeks, a little bit at a time.

This was bright, flashy, and fun to make.

Jay and Evelyn are class-acts when it comes to bargaining for work!  I will absolutely be ordering more from them in the future, in fact I already have my next idea in mind.  Check them out at www.larsengeekery.com

- J.

Lot-Zilla

This design is pretty fun. 

The client came to me with this concept, and it was fantastic to see that it was
such a well thought out description of what he wanted to see.

This design is actually VERY small, as it is specifically for a deeply-cut metal
pin with color inlays and a clearcoat, as I understand it the process.

Here is the final design.

When the pin is manufactured I will update this entry with the link to where you
may purchase it, and also a finished photo of the pin itself!

Exciting!

- J.