It's My Day to PAR-TAY!!

So it's the one day of the year that I get more excited about than any other, yet for some reason this year it totally snuck up on me. Now I know how "normal" people feel about Christmas. Anyway, I wasn't prepared this year at all so I kinda used about an hour or so of work time on this thouroghly unproductive day of Ghostliness to bang out this horrendous little greeting. If you recieved it on MySpace then you is very special like. If not enjoy it here in all of it's color coordinated with my blog glory. :)

Total Dork

Okay, so I admit it. Sometimes I'm proud of my work, from work, and this is one of um. I actually got to animate a week or so ago and was all excited because they let me animate some bats. It's sooo cool too because not only did I animate the little grey guy, a few months ago they let me design him too!! So for once this is ALL ME!!

Work A.D.D.

Again.

Mary -- [noun]: A poltergeist sent back in time to change the course of history forever

My friend Nicole sent me a link to that quiz the other day and when I typed in my name that's what came up. I thought it was toooooo funny, but I didn't wanna put it up on myspace cause my page all cluttered with crap to begin with, so I thought I'd post it here.

I'm so getting tired of work A.D.D. I think I need to make a better effort at completeing my portfolio cause the boredom associated with this job is getting to be too much. That and on average I usually only stay employed somewhere for 2 years before I get antsy and have to see what else is goin' on in the world, and I'm almost at a year and a half.

Just a little random retarded drawing for today. I was talkin' to my homie Lisence and tellin' her how it's been bad lately cause there's halloween candy out everywhere and all I wanna do is eat it. I made some sort of comment about how I've eaten so much I feel like I can feel the little sugary monsters eating my teeth. Well of course, since I DO have work A.D.D. I had to go off and draw a little bugger to send her way. Obviously that's not to scale. :)

What Goes On at Home

So recently when people call my house and they're on the phone with me for any extended ammount of time, they usually hear the sounds of cats fighting. To which they constantly ask, "What the HELL is going on over there?" Well, here's your answer. . .

Girly Things

So I've been a little busy lately. I don't really know why or where my time is necessarily going, but I'm busy.

Also, recently, I've been finding myself smack dab in the middle of a bunch of girly stuff, not necessarily girly stuff as in shoe shopping or putting on make-up, but girly in the sense of things that have brought the fact that I'm a woman to the surface. How so you may ask? Well. . .

Last Wednesday I went to this really interesting forum hosted by the animation guild. Basically they had asked actress Geena Davis to come speak to their union members about her foundation See Jane. In short it's an organization that is working for the cause of sexual equality in media or more specifically in children's broadcasting. Her organization "commissioned ground-breaking analysis research by USC's Annenberg School for Communication analyzing the top 100 G-rated movies as well as TV created for kids ages 0-11." Basically, to save time let me tell ya this. The average of female to male characters in children's entertainment programming is 5 males to every 1 female. All they are trying to do is get the ratio to be about 50-50 so that children of all sexes can have a role modle type character to look up to.





What I found more interesting than the "cause" of the forum (which I kinda agree with, but mostly I agree with there being a good story and the sex of the character being what ever fits the character best) was the small bit of research the union did on the male to female employment ratio currently in place at the studios. Mind you these numbers are pertaining to the number of females and males CURRENTLY union members and not taking into account all the people (like me) not lucky enough to be in a union shop. (Oh, and if there's any spelling errors, which I'm sure there are, it's not my fault. I copied the ditto they gave us VERBATUM!)

Gender Breakdown of Employed Active Membership as of October 10, 2006

Producers................................ 8.0% (2 of 25)
Directors................................14.9% (20 out of 134)
Writers..................................10.8% (10 out of 93)
Art Directors............................11.1% (2 out of 18)
Visual Development.......................13.1% (8 out of 61)
Story Art................................13.8% (51 out of 370)
Layout...................................17.8% (41 out of 230)
Model Designers (characters & props).....21.4% (36 out of 168)
Background...............................25.6% (34 out of 133)
2D Animators.............................21.3% (50 out of 235)
3D Animators and Modellers...............13.0% (47 out of 362)
compositors..............................29.2% (21 out of 72)
Tech Directors...........................13.8% (42 out of 304)
Checkers, etc............................34.0% (35 out of 103)

=========================================
Industry Wide.............................17.3% (399 out of 2308)

SEE DAD!!! I'm not lying when I said that it feels like animation is a "boy's club" sometimes!! There's barely any girls in it!

On a slightly bitter note about the meeting, towards the end of the meeting the working professional women that had decided to attend the meeting were wondering where all the women were and why there weren't more now a days and that kind of stuff, and I wanted to scream "they can't get their foot in the fuckin' door with all the boys hookin' their boyfriends up!!!" But, I just sat there and told myself I needed to just work harder on my portfolio cause there's gotta be something missing from it still since I can't get a test. . .

Anyway, on to other girly stuff. This weekend I FINALLY stumbled upon some kick ass cookbooks from the 1950's. I had to post some of those for all to see. Back in the day they used to put quick little illustrations in there. Really REALLY simple ones that were only two tones. They are just too charming. In fact, they are so charming I'm going to totally let it slide that they were in a Betty Crocker cook book and that Betty Crocker is part of General Mills evil empire.

Also, were you aware that Bisquik has been around since the 1950's? I seriously learn something new everyday.

Now, if you click on all the images EXCEPT the little piggy, you can see larger versions of the kick ass cookbook illustrations. If I were you, I'd definately click on the little lamb/sheep. I thought it was kinda funny. :)

REJECTED!!!

This adorable little bundle of CUTENESS, has been REJECTED by the evil overlords of Neopia.

Naw, just kiddin', he has been rejected but his little batty brother will be making his debut in Neopia around Halloween.

Keep and eye out for him, this guy's little bro that is. Hopefully they'll let me name him Flipflap.

So Freakin' Excited!!!

This is me. . .



This is me after buying my plane tickets home for Christmas on my Boyfriend's credit card!!!



I can't WAIT until I go home. . . even if home isn't in West Seattle anymore, in a beat up little house!

Lisence, you. . . me. . . Carlos. . . and Cody. . . EMP on the 26th!!! Be there or be square! WOO HOO!!!

Nic, please don't let your kids eat me. . . I fear children.

Seattle, here I come!!!

You all envy my mad drawing skills. Save time and admit it to yourselves.

I Miss Pencils

I think, when I was a sophmore in college, my animation teacher said one day that if we were to wind up working on a computer all day we needed to keep drawing with a pencil to stay fresh. I'm not 100% positive that he said this, just because my memory gets progressively worse every year, but I'd like to think he said something like this.

Just between you and me, I think it's more like, if I don't draw outside of the computer I"m going to go CRAZY!

Recently I've been, once again, finding it harder to stay upbeat about things. I've had some upsetting times at home recently and disagreements with my boyfriend. Unfortunately the recent emotional stress has been starting to rub off on my artwork. I've become very listless as of late and I'm not quite sure what to do about it. Along with my personal work being effected, so is my professional work, and I'm starting to think that it may not just be an effect of depression. I'm starting to think it might be time to start thinking of moving on.



Anyway, I only had about 6 hours this weekend where I didn't feel completely bummed out, and most of them were right before I went to bed Sunday night. So I decided to call in sick today. I don't know about you, but I seriously feel that depression is just as bad as the flu anyday, and if the only way to prevent it is to go do something I've been dying to do now for over a month and just relax for a day, then fuck it! I'm sick!



So. . . I went to Disneyland. . . again. . . for the millionth time this year. ONLY this time I went alone and armed with a sketchbook and some watercolors. :) Thank GOD I have my annual pass, or that would have been SUCH an expensive day.



I've been wanting to draw people for a while now, but I get intimidated easily. I don't like people watching me draw, or asking to see them, because I sometimes feel like my sketches from life leave a lot to be desired. Well, when I'm drawing them I do, then when I get home and look at them again I can see improvement, or some nice things happening and stuff. Hence the reason why I'm postin' them!!

Enjoy the "Disney Magic". . . and take it from me. Disneyland is seriously the most awesome place to go draw people. I mean, everyone's on vacation, most of them are happy, and a ton of them aren't from LA, so they all have different body shapes and clothing and attitudes. Of course, you can probably tell from my sketches which ones do come from LA. Just look for the anorexic girls with the large breasts. :)