Flip Animation "I"

I don't really have a way of describing my style. I think of it as music - songs that come from my hand; momentum, rhythm, chunks of movements, the blues, African drumming. It is kind of 2 opposites when I work- chance and planning.

When I was in high school, I went to a summer program for painting at Otis Parsons in Los Angeles. I was discouraged with that class because the teacher was a well known illustrator, and the other students were older and more experienced, and there weren't many people of color in the class... I was intimidated. Though I wanted to give up on it, the teachers told my mom I needed to slow down and give my work a chance to develop.

The following summer I got a scholarship for a life drawing class for a few weeks at the Pasadena Art Center. That was a much better experience. At the end of it I felt I had work I could be proud of and was part of a group show of student work.

I ended up at Cal Arts with the help of Disney scholarship and grants and much student aid. I was in the film and video school, but took a lot of classes in the art school as well. I still consider myself a student of the great talents of the world. I continuously study illustrators, painters, and musicians that move me.

My style has taken a long time to develop. I feel like I have come a long way around to come back to the basics that others I admire have always had working, at least 12 years to get out of my own way and stop throwing everything away. I worked for commercial clients and studios for so long, it's really been the last few years that I have more strongly felt my own voice and not one trying to cater to or conjure up the vision of others.

I work with brush pens, colored pencils, markers, acrylics, and digital/photoshop. Like with a photographer, if I can imagine it inside of a frame as a compelling image and if I can somehow place it in my own idiom, then I'll try and tackle it. These days I like a single picture to tell a story. I tend to layer my work, first starting with paper and ink or pencil and then taking it into photoshop layering it as I go.. I like the image to have emotional layers too.

There is no one way I come to a piece. Some start, as I said, with paper and ink, others start in the computer and I play with the brushes. Again it is like music, I play with the shapes like notes. I spend a lot of time not drawing, but composing in my head, then hopefully I can realize that on paper. I usually do a lot of visual research on a subject, and reading of the time or opinions on a subject, to build a context for where I am coming from. The idea is to give myself a lot of choices, a menu of ingredients I can pull from.

Sometimes things come fast. I might be working from a little sketch that happened quickly and am trying to preserve ands enhance it, but other times I have to do it the wrong way a million times before I get something that looks easy. It's the animator in me that wants to create the illusion of ease.

Aaron Douglas is a big influence, as is Covarrubias. Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, modern dance in recent years, people from the 20's artistic movement, the Harlem Renaissance. Hirschfeld. Julie Taymor. Animation-wise Bruce Smith, Joe Ranft, even Ralph Bakshi in a weird way. I had one of my first jobs with him out of Cal Arts, on Mighty Mouse. As I go back to look at my older stuff I have realized that dance has been pretty influential, seeping into the color and shapes that come from my hand. My wife (Allison Brown) is a dancer and that has had a lot to do with it.

As a director, my personal taste and sensibility get in, but otherwise the only time my actual style comes in is if I am doing the actual drawing. The animation work is often for clients and the style needs to be massaged into a place they are happy and comfortable with. I guess it has the hints of what I think of as my "style" but is not nearly as raw as the painting and illustration I have been doing over the more recent years.

I am currently working with Maverix Studio, here in San Francisco, on a short film based on one of my ideas called Oasis. A tale of the ancient future.

I haven't done a gallery show, though have been approached by several galleries. I would like to do shows, and am devoting part of my time these days to painting regularly. If I can get a handful of pieces I like enough I hope to pursue that this year..