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I normally don’t do a post on exhibits and stuff but if you live in the Bay Area or plan to visit San Francisco in the next 3 months, go visit Asian Art Museum for their Samurai Exhibit!

The curator of the exhibit, Yoko Woodson, who was one of the biggest supporters of the Totoro Forest Project auction, generously invited TFP committees and their significant others, plus James Jean and his wife Wen to the exhibition gala. (James was also invited because Asian Art Museum bought his painting from the Totoro Auction and they added a few other pieces from James to their permanent collections! whoo hoo!)

Anyhow, it is a great show! You can see the wood swords used by Musashi Miyamoto!

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I have not been able to post anything new because it’s been so hectic at work!
And I keep saying I’ll organize the section of my Horton concept work on this website but it just seems impossible to find the bulk of time to do it all.
So i have been slowly uploading a few at the time.
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So here are some more random work I have done for the film!
Also, I have been writing this whole post about colorscript. You can see my colorscript for Horton in my next post! Stay tuned!
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More early visual development illustrations—at this point, it is very much like children’s book illustrations. Images to tell a story.
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another early visual development illustration—famous clover field shot in the film.
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yet another one…
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Although character design isn’t my strength, I have done character design explorations until my favorite Sang Jun Lee joined the team! I wanted to bring a bit of an interesting anatomy to the legs like how Dr. Seuss created it but in the end, it became a bit more like a real elephant.
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Characters are hard and that’s why people like Pete DeSeve and Carter Goodrich never lose their jobs!

So sometimes, I question…”can I really do all these?”
I have a tendency to take too many things on my plate.
I have just so much in my hands mainly my responsibility at Pixar along with freelance work and other duties.
But I had to do this. Where else do I get this opportunity?

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Yes, the pastel class from Bill Cone
that is!
It is a pretty intense course where he teaches twice a week for a few months at Pixar. As soon as they announced this class as a part of Pixar University, I threw myself in. There were over 80 applicants and I somehow made it to the lucky 15 or so students!

Bill Cone is one of the reasons why I pursued colorscripting for a film. I attended his lecture back in ‘98 where he showed his colorscript work for A Bug’s Life. He is one of the people who know about light and color better than anyone i have come across. I became obsessed with his work over the years.

Since I do colorscripting myself, there is probably little chance for me to work with him on the same project at Pixar(I hope I am wrong!) but here it is! He is teaching a pastel class! With my meeting filled schedules these days, my coordinator raised her brow when I told her I was taking his class. But when do you get these kinds of opportunities?

Life is all about learning, right?

this is my first full on plein air painting in Pastel…. man, it’s soooo harrrrd!! Not like oil or watercolor that I’m used to! But hopefully i will get better each time I do it! Wish me luck!

First of all, thank you all for sending me many warm messages regarding my eye injury. The comments and emails will be returned, I promise! My eye is almost fully recovered. Still has a slight fracture waiting to be healed completely but I have been working and talking like a normal person now. (I only got to wear the eye patch for 2 days because people looked at me like I’m nuts more with it than without….)
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Anyhow, I wanted to post a quick note about Pixar’s upcoming movie, “Up.”
I normally don’t do movie reviews on my blog and I hate to look like I’m advertising for a company I work for. But I just want to make an exception for this movie that made me feel like I was watching one of those special movies I used to watch when I was a kid. I won’t hesitate to say that this is one of my favorite animated movies of all time.
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I don’t think I’m biased because I had nothing to do with this movie. I even didn’t go to the in-progress screenings for this film. As a matter of fact, I saw almost nothing except for some beautiful concept art done by rare talents like Daniel Lopez Munoz and Lou Romano. So I just have no attachment with this film.
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This movie is a classic story fully taking advantage of the cartoon media. It’s a cartoon with a human story that everyone can relate to.
It’s all about characters and the emotions. And it was what the filmmaker Pete Docter wanted to make.
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My buddies Enrico Casarosa and Ronnie Del Carmen are both behind the story of this film and you could tell. They both are masters at emotional story telling.
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Anyhow, I won’t say much more.
I just wanted to humbly congratulate my colleagues for this film.
People are worried about this movie because they say, “who wants to see a grumpy old man and a chubby Asian kid?”
Well, hope people respond to the content.

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Here is A video clip from Festival de Cannes
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These are random sketches from the past. Pretty amazing performance by Japanese jazz pianist, Hiromi.
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If you have seen her performance before, you know. She’s quite animated!

Some of you who know me well know that I’m a die hard baseball fan and I have always played in amateur leagues all these years.

A few days ago, I took a bad hop off a grounder right into my eye and fractured my eye socket bone.
That got me scared quite a bit because without an eye, what would artists do? My panicked brain managed to think that I at least get to wear one of those cool Captain Hook eye patches.

A doctor initially suggested surgery but in the end, I avoided it after thorough evaluations and it seems like I’ll get my eye ball back eventually. It was a big scare but seems like it is going to be OK.

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One of my painting instructors lost one of his eyes and shifted his medium from oil to watercolor because he saw less dimensional space and more graphic shapes. His art was quite amazing that way. It was an unfortunate tragedy that he lost his eye but he made the most out of it.

Anyhow, since I’m no use at work with my eye area swollen up like a mini balloon, I’m staying home. But I feel fine. I am a bit bored and thought I’d share this horrible story on my blog..
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A few more in progress images from my kids book. All the stars in the BG are silver flakes. Do they look like stars??
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kani-san kani-san…