As many people that follow my Blog and my Deviantart know, I have not posted in a very long time. Much of the reasoning behind that has to do with some serious frustration with depression and dealing with family issues and unemployment issues and so many other issues i just wont get into.
Lets just face it. Life has been sticking its foot up my ass over and over for a while now and it basically put me down for the count on an emotional, physical, and even a artistic level. I felt like I was watching the quality of my work drop out the bottom of the floor for a while now. Not to mention the pace at which i work slowing down to the equivalent of a snails crawl.
Outside doing sketch cards i just had not had the ability to be consistent on anything for a while now.
Well the official announcement is that a great deal of things have started to turn around for me finally!!
I am so freaking happy about this. A lot of things have a long way to go to be fixed but I honestly am starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel and feel a new level of creative energy growing.One of the things that helped spawn this is my recent move to LA.
I started working at Universal Studios Hollywood as a caricature artist! I am having way to much fun! This is probably the best thing to happen to me in like 5 years. I am sad to be away from the family but it was a necessary move if I were to ever start picking myself up off the ground.
I had been freelancing and looking for work for a long while in MO and just was not having any luck. I was at the point of wanting to just settle on working fast food and being a part time substitute teacher. Not to mention, dare I say it, I was very close to letting go of my art career and never drawing again.
I had reached a point of depression and frustration that I no longer wanted to be an animator or a comic artist or a artist of any sort at all. I simply was done drawing. The idea made me sad, but the idea also gave me some relief. Stop being an artist and just do anything to get by seemed way more logical than the constant struggle of trying to sell a couple of drawings for $50 every once in a while. Art just stopped making since as a career choice and I honestly felt like my abilities were no longer desirable enough to get me anywhere.
My last effort to turn this around was a complete overhaul of my living situation. I closed my studio in downtown KC and applied for a caricature job and got it. So here I am starting over. I have an awesome roommate and I am actually feeling pretty damn happy. Plus I get to see some cool ass shit out at Universal on a regular basis.
So check out some of the pics. They are too cool! Thanks to all those that have been sticking by my blog over the years and following me even when I had not updated for a very long time.
I really enjoyed this sermon. One thing I have been thinking about lately is how do you tell the difference between when you are being attacked by Satan and being loved by God.
I friend told me the way you can tell the difference is by how you feel. God does not give a spirit of fear or worry, nor does he encourage bad habits or bring stress.
Satan works on us bringing us worry fear nervousness, and many other negative emotions and we pray and pray and hope things will get better. Many times when Bad things happen in our life the first thing people do is say GOD why have you dont this to me. But we forget. God has not done any of these things but it is satan and sin that is working against us.
The entire world is perverted by sin and when horrible people do horrible things to innocent people people automatically think something bad no one ever stops and wonders if they are under attack.
Look at how much Christ suffered as a Man. He knew he would die. God did not kill His Son. People and Satan worked crucify Christ. Yes God knew He could reach down and save him but at the same time God also knew he could save us all and that for Christ there was no death but only life. But unfortunately that life came at the price of suffering.
There is a interesting scene where Christ is talking to his deciples in the bible and He rebuke Peter after Peter tels him that he should not die. I think the importance of this seen is shown well in that it is brought to our attention more then once in the bible.
"Jesus Predicts His Death and Resurrection Mark 8:31-33
31 And He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 He spoke this word openly. Then Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him. 33 But when He had turned around and looked at His disciples, He rebuked Peter, saying, “Get behind Me, Satan! For you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.”
"Jesus Predicts His Death Matthew 16:21-28
21 From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
22 Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”
23 Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For whoever wants to save their life[f] will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. 26 What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? 27 For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done.
28 “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
I think that this speaks volumes in that here we see people that are considered men of God and disciples of Christ being influenced by Satan. It is like Satan manipulates us like his little toys.
Have you ever questioned your thought? You ever have a thought or strong emotion that seemed out of character to you and questioned whether it is really coming from your.
I have tried this experiment before. Around the time when I first got saved. I was having some really dark and frustrating thought and for some reason I was lead to rebuke Satan right in the middle of feeling really Down and oppressed. I spoke outloud, in the Name od jesus satan I rebuke you."
It was a very strange expereince. I had immediate relief!I had been feeling depressed for days and suddenly my head felt completely clear. To this day I am not even sure what lead me to do this but I did and I felt instantly better and my mind felt light.
I am curious if anyone else has ever felt this. Trust mem though Satan is relentless!! There are times when I feel like I am under constant attack. Like my thoughts are so heavy I cant even speak. it is overwhelming. That however was the day I learned to question the things going into my head.
"Ephesians 6:12
12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age,[a] against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. "
I have come to the conclusion that Satan will do everything he possibly can to hurt us or turn us against God. I mean seriously imagine the most evil peron you can think of or that you may even know and then think of how Satan is influencing that persons life and leading them astray and how he does it to every single one of us if he can.
Look at what is on T.V and how every t.v show and often even cartoons try to steer people away from knowing an loving God. When you can see that in our society. Then you can know for sure that sometimes we need to question exactly what is going through our own heads. I remeber when a friend showed me this a while back. one person in particular in this test refered to the game as a mind altering demonic weapon.
Not that I am trying to be a prude or anything cause I grew up loving horror films. But games are on another level to me cause they place the individual in a situation that can tie them emotionally to what is happening on the screen. God tells us to be careful not to be decieved. Satan attacks the mind in many ways. Not just through media but even through personal experience.
"Little children eat your bread" ~Lauren Hill "Mystery of Iniquity"
Voice of Mickey Mouse attends gala to raise money for KC Disney project: Disney and art lovers thronged to a gala Friday night held to raise money to restore the Kansas City building where Walt Disney first met the rodent that would inspire Mickey Mouse. The man who is the current voice of Mickey Mouse attended the event.
Romans 6:15-23
King James Version (KJV)
15 What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid.
16 Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?
I have been spending more time in the word of God lately and I saw this scripture that jumped out at me and I felt like looking over it thinking about it and really trying to internalize what it meant to me.
What! Should we sin cause we are not under law but under grace. well the first things that come to mind are the questions, what law is the Apostle Paul talking about and what is grace. As a baby christian I have been confused many years about the bible and understanding it but I think I am finally beginning to see.
When Christ died on the cross he dead so that we could be forgiving for our sin. Sin is basically breaking the law. its like if you Robbed a bank and then had to be punished for it in a court of law. For God the wages of sin is death. God puts to death all those that Sin.
To understand the severity of that death you have to see that by death God means when you are dead you are dead. there is no after life or now souls roaming the earth. you are put out like a flame of a candle is blown out.
To God sin and disobedience are not acceptable in his kingdom so by sinning we make ourselves an acceptable and separate from God. When Christ died he payed the fine we would other wise have to pay with our lives.
Anyway so what is the law. Well we all know it. we been hearing it our whole life. If you are still confused i will lay it out for you here,
Exodus 20 3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me. 4 Thou
shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing
that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in
the water under the earth. 5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord
thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the
children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; 6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. 7 Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. 8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: 10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord
thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy
daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy
stranger that is within thy gates: 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. 12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. 13 Thou shalt not kill. 14 Thou shalt not commit adultery. 15 Thou shalt not steal. 16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. 17 Thou
shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy
neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox,
nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.
Ten commandments is a moral Law that God commanded we live by. Just because Christ gave his life and paid for our sins doesn't mean that we are free and clear to sin and do what ever we want cause we are saved and the fine is paid.
There are several definitions of the word Grace, many referring to something being beautiful or a kindness but the ones that stood out to me were:
This passage talks about the laws of God being laid down and Us not following them because we are saved by Christs sacrifice. I think though the other thing being emphasized here is that there is more then one law. the second law comes from the serpent in the garden. When Satan approached Eve and said to her "you will not surely die."
Satan encourages us to do what ever we want to do as if there are no repercussions to the choice to just do what ever when ever where ever and to who ever we choose. When Paul talks about yielding yourself to the servant you obey he is saying that the things we do in our actions reflect who it is we actually serve. Satan told us to sin and God told us not to sin. either way we are faced with a choice that will reap a reward whether good or bad.
The idea of the truth setting us free, you know that old statement you hear thrown around comes from the bible. when you listen to the lies and manipulations of others it leads you in a downward spiral where the sin begets more sin. like a virus being spread from person to person to person. And trust me sin is addictive. it give temporary satisfaction in every manner of the word.
Christ says that he came to bring life and not death. We show our love and devotion by following the law. and when we sin we show our devotion to Satan and that is how it goes. so if a person gets saved and they continue to sin are they really saved?
How do we stay saved once we are saved? We follow the law and we read Gods word so that we can know exactly what the law is. Its not burdensome and it is not hard. It might however require a whole new set of friends from telling people "NO" all the time. Educate yourself and know Gods word. pray for truth clarity and understanding. God is good and he will give it. otherwise sin will darken your heart and you will be given over to it so that you will drown and die in it.
He can you treat other people well and be a good person if your sin over takes you. Think I think of the fact of how we hurt each other for our own selfish desires to be filled like having sex with a women even though you know you have AIDS. Or killing someone to still the rims off there car. I ask you this. What good has sin done for you lately? Was it a temporary benefit? The commandments are about respect and love of ourselves, other and of God. How can you demand respect when you don't give it?
Respect comes easy when you follow Gods law and the reward is ever lasting life. Ans trust me Satan HATES that!
I think any smart person will know exactly where this is going. It is bad enough that many times artists are underpaid and undervalued. People saying things to us like, "well don't you like doing this stuff", "I am doing you a favor", "if you work on my project you will get a lot of exposure for your work!"
Well I am sorry to hurt all you people out there working so hard to get me exposure for doing what I love for a living, but believe it or not most people get paid for the work they do as well as get exposure at the same time after they get there pay check. Doesn't matter what field you are in. You get paid to do a job, you do an awesome job and the person that paid you tells all there friends and shows off your work and thus you get more work!
People forget that doing art for a living is really not much different from doing anything else for a living. I use my materials and time to create something for you that you could never create yourself and you pay me for it. End of story. Its part of the reason I never really liked the idea of a paid internship cause I always felt like something was fishy about them. Students get out of school and go work for a company for free for six months and then from there jump from internship to internship all along begging to actually get PAID!
I think we are being victimized here. I mean when is the last time a student took the time to actually look at the law and see what it really means to be an intern. According to the NewYork Times,
" Ms. Leppink said many employers failed to pay even though their internships did not comply with the six federal legal criteria that must be satisfied for internships to be unpaid. Among those criteria are that the internship should be similar to the training given in a vocational school or academic institution, that the intern does not displace regular paid workers and that the employer “derives no immediate advantage” from the intern’s activities — in other words, it’s largely a benevolent contribution to the intern.
In 2008, the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that 50 percent of graduating students had held internships, up from the 17 percent shown in a 1992 study by Northwestern University. This means hundreds of thousands of students hold internships each year; some experts estimate that one-fourth to one-half are unpaid. In California, officials have issued guidance letters advising employers whether they are breaking the law, while Oregon regulators have unearthed numerous abuses.
“We’ve had cases where unpaid interns really were displacing workers and where they weren’t being supervised in an educational capacity,” said Bob Estabrook, spokesman for Oregon’s labor department. His department recently handled complaints involving two individuals at a solar panel company who received $3,350 in back pay after claiming that they were wrongly treated as unpaid interns.
Many students said they had held internships that involved noneducational menial work. To be sure, many internships involve some unskilled work, but when the jobs are mostly drudgery, regulators say, it is clearly illegal not to pay interns."
In other words, it is illegal for a company to have you do work for free on any form of production work that benefits the company. Internships are intended to be opportunities to learn a job not help the company make more money while they keep their costs down. On top of that, it is not just happening in animation, it seems to be happening everywhere in the US. Internships are intended to be almost like apprenticeships. People should be learning how to do the job they are interested in doing not getting coffee and sweeping floors cause no one wants to be bothered with the intern. Nor should the intern be working like crazy and not getting paid anything for being there.
What is to stop a company from hiring nothing but interns and swamping them out every 6 months with more replaceable free labor? I have always had my issue with internships cause personally I couldn't afford to go 3 - 6 months without actually making money at a job that required me to work for 8 hours a day. Increasingly, when I go to apply for a job somewhere there are always openings for unpaid interns that are just graduating from school.
But even worse then that is the idea that a company might choose to work side by side with a college so that the college can provide them with employees that will be paying tuition and working full or part time for free. In other words, students paying the company to work for them.
Rebecca David Social Media Ninja over on http://www.blogger.com/goog_1485907152 made some really good points about this issue in her article about the Digital Domain Institute. Since I really can't say it any better than here I thought I would post a piece of the article here.
"Let’s name a thing that you should never say about the work you do: I pay someone for the privilege of doing my job.
That sounds pretty ridiculous, doesn’t it? I mean, the whole point of a job is that it makes you money. In exchange for your services and time, you are compensated. Now, around here we have opinions on unpaid internships. I don’t like them. To be specific, I do not like it when eager students take positions where they do work that is part of actual production that then goes on to turn a profit. I get all shake-y and incoherent just thinking about it. Now, let’s turn things up to 11.
This is happening down in Florida, where it’s being portrayed as a magical happening. And it sounds fantastic, doesn’t it? Go to Florida State University, pay them all the money you don’t have for tuition and then some extra for food and shelter while you’re there. Then go meld yourself into a workforce at Digital Domain, where they let you work to your little hearts content on Ender’s Game or some other project (they apparently have many). Think of the opportunity! The connections! The work experience! The projects you can put down on your CV! The goddamn EXPOSURE you’re going to get.
This is not okay. It’s not okay at all. Now I’m going to tell you why.
1. You’re taking work from people who want to get paid.
If you’re paying to work, then you are a taking a seat from someone who would like to be working to get paid. That could be someone who has been in the industry for a decade, or someone who just graduated and is looking to pay off their student loans with their brand-new skill set.
2. You’re teaching ‘the suits’ that they aren’t required to pay you.
Business folk are business folk, it is their job to make as much profit as possible. If you remember junior high math:
Profit = Revenue – Cost
Cost is things like rent for the building, the rights to whatever content you’re producing, the software for the production, the hardware for the production, and the crew that makes all the wheels spin. That’s you. You are part of the cost, so if they can pay you nothing they will. Except now you aren’t just free, you’re counting yourselves amongst their revenue. So now the equation looks a little more like this:
Profit = Revenue + Your Tuition + Government subsidies – Cost.
3. The education system will indoctrinate you into thinking your work is not worth any money.
In fact, it’s teaching you that you are worth negative money. You are in debt to these people for being permitted to work for them. We exist in a market where people are constantly trying to undervalue our efforts. They think because you’re doing something you love that money doesn’t matter. They don’t understand the process of the work, so it must be easy, why would they give you a living wage? My teachers were wise, they told me never to work for free, to always get a contract (even though that won’t always save you) and many other things so that I would be prepared for when someone tried to screw me out of money I deserved. Instead, this program will teach you that you aren’t worth paying for. They won’t tell you directly, but it’ll be there, under your skin. So when you graduate, you’ll hop on over to an unpaid intern-ship with the promise of paying work in the future, only maybe they forget to pay you ever.
4. You’re skewing the curve for the rest of us.
The one thing that could be said for this program is that I guarantee you will learn mighty fast. They can coach, lecture and tutor you all you want, but in an industry like this one they aren’t lying when they say that nothing beats hands-on experience. I learned more about ToonBoom Harmony in my first 2 weeks of work than I did the 2 years they taught it to us in school. It has nothing to do with the competence of my teachers and everything to do with the fact that if you do something every day for 8-16 hours a day and it has to be done right because it’s going to be shipped somewhere else, you’re going to pick it up quick because there’s no other choice. So you’ll graduate with all these skills, and a studio will pick you up for a (gasp!) paying gig. You’ll be great at it, but they’ll pay you half of what you deserve because you’re a fresh graduate. You will take the job, because you’re a graduate and you like eating. As a result, maybe that studio won’t hire a graduate from another school, and their skills go un-nurtured. They go work at EB Games for 10 years. The notion of what a graduate should be able to accomplish is hiked up, so an industry already wary of investing in the fresh-faced and shiny will lean even further into their rut of hiring only people who’ve already been working for 5+ years (and you, they’ll hire you. And they’ll pay you. A bit.)"
One of the things I really feel here in her article is the consistent rise in standards that people have to meet in order to get a job. I have felt like this has been going on a long time I see it more and more on job boards where people are expected to have not just a BA in there field of work but they also have to have already gotten 3 - 5 years of experience before they will get considered for a position.
Where are all the entry level jobs going.
If you get out of school and are ready to start looking for work you cant even begin to do so cause you don't already have experience. You know it use to be people got paid training to do what they wanted to do for a living. You cant even get a job as a janitor now a days with ought some sort of college degree and some work experience. A person would think that with all there years of schooling and interning to get the required experience that it would mean you would get paid more but truth be told you get paid just as little as all the other inexperienced worker bees.
In the end it seems like all this is becoming more and more of a scam to get desperate people in deep debt cause of student loans they were told they had to have in order to get an education and to get a job, to basically settle for doing more and getting less. This can not continue.
I grew up hearing about the people in this film but never really experiencing there greatness and now I have. As an artist myself I have been going through the exact same experience of being pushed and pulled to the point of deep depression by the people I love and who think they know what is best for me.
Nat's character literally went blind from stress and just not being able to bare seeing the people he loves be so unhappy with his personal choices in perusing his passion in life. I hate to say it but this has probably happened to many a creator. Only recently I myself took a teaching job cause my family wanted me too even though I have never wanted to teach.
The movie teaches a great lesson about finding joy in your life though the talent God gives you to do so. I am glad the movie had a Happy ending but the truth be told when you chase a dream there are rarely happy endings where suddenly every one is so proud and happy to see you be successful.
This movie is made with dignity and pride non the less. I cant remember the last time I saw a Black film like this. That has happened to the culture. Have people forgotten how upstanding and dignified we use to be.
Instead of Nat King Cole and Eartha Kit people look up to rihanna and lil wayne. Its disgusting! A real tragedy to see musical talent be squandered on music samples and bad lyrics that disrespect women instead of lifting them up.
Special thanks to all these amazing actors and actresses that proudly showed the world what real talent looked like and how to use it.
Why is that so important you ask? Cause I am animationg again silly! I am teaming up with my friend tiana and we will start doing some a
nimated shorts. I still plan to post illustration stuff here though. I am kinda getting back in the swng of things after some month being down cause of having so much to do. Anyway drawing tom and jerry. Enjoy and see you soon.
last in the series. Really want to focus on doing more quality artwork. even if it is fan art. things that can go into a portfolio I can be proud of. I dont feel ike i have been doing enough of this.
the real question is. Is harley being thrown off a building or is she being saved from falling? you decide.
Part of the reason I rarely do an 11 x 17 piece is cause it takes so long and they use a lot of supplies. this took me like 6 hours. the rogue and storm took 4 and the Harly and batman took like 6hours as well. I
