This Man Inspires Me

I Think I love this video

Toy-A-Day

A great blog I just found. "Toy-A-Day"

Video Game Art

Here's a tank design I did for the "Bolt" video game we worked on. I don't think this design got used.

Copyright Disney

Random drawing day

Here are some random drawings I found that I thought to post.


This post is at the request of some co-workers. Enjoy!



My office mate and friend, Sam Nielson.




Random zoo drawings from one of my regular excursions to the zoo.



Sometimes I'll go over to the State Capitol building accross the street on Sunday mornings to draw. The interior is filled with a wonderfully silencing quality of light that seems to provoke children to play, and which adults revere.

value study

I got inspired by some friends at work doing lunch time studies, so I thought I'd do one too. This is from Karsh's Winston Churchill portrait. I spent about an hour on this one.

Warm-ups

I'm pretty busy these days with other things so all I have to post is sketches.

Pioneer Day

On the way to work I couldn't help but stop and sketch the paraders.



This guy was part of the little convoy representing the Cowboy Poetry festival/reading.

Hoagle Zoo

Here's a couple of sketches from the zoo on Saturday. Its been a struggle to get back into it but it's starting to be less painful.


This guy was scratching his chin with a piece of straw.

Zoo

I found out I live 10 mins from the Utah Hoagle Zoo. My wife and I got an annual pass so there will be more zoo drawings to come.

Rachel

A few quick sketches of my wife as she falls asleep while watching TV.

Franny

Some more development of this character. I think this one is a little more true to character. It's been a good exercise trying to pinpoint it.

Bill Whitaker

Bill Whitaker, a great painter, came to BYU to lecture and demo for us yesterday. He is one of the most wise, kind, and passionate artists I have ever met. Fortunately, for us, he is a special individual, equally gifted as a teacher. I could really tell that he loved what he was doing, and that he was a faithful servant of his art. It was a great experience. I meant to draw him intense-which he was, but he may be coming off mean-which of course he wasn't.

Head study

About 2 hours. We had a sleepy model last Tuesday. Must be finals time. It was a bit of a challenge to paint a nodding subject but it was a good exercise in painting with a clear concept in your mind and using the model for reference only.

Switcheroo

A rough pass of a personal animation test.
So the idea here is that the yellow guy is trying to look inconspicuous as he sneeks away with the macguffin (a plot device that motivates the characters or advances the story, but the details of which are of little or no importance otherwise). The green guy bumps him and switches the object for a fake one and hilarity ensues. Enjoy!
ps
I haven't yet put in the object the yellow guy is carrying or animated the camera.

Untitled from Jason Kim on Vimeo.

Zooey

OH SNAP!

My friend Nick gave me some good pointers on how to make these better. The originals are posted bellow

Designs

Some exploration for Darryl and his classmate.

Head study

This is a study I did of my wife as a baby. It was a color photo but I reduced it to black and white in photoshop and painted it from value. This one was about an hour and a half.

Untitled from Jason Kim on Vimeo.

Here's an update on this scene I was working on. It's still not finished but they switched the last windows machine I was working on at school over to Linux and so I can't finish it and make it pretty. Oh well.

Darryl

This is an old character from a pitch for a show my friends Rob,Paul, and I were working on. I decided to paint 'em up this morning for fun.

Design Dump

Here's a bunch of design exploration for a personal project. The story is about indecision and self-definition. More to come.

Portrait

This one was last Thursdays painting. About 2 hours long.

Franny

One of the design projects I have going.

Portrait

Portrait from class. This one is about an hour and 45 min. Didn't get as far as I would have liked to in building up the color, so it looks kinda yellow still from the under-painting. I didn't get to work the edges either so it looks kinda blocky..but I think it's kinda neat.

Revised

Here's the same scene but with some revisions. Again, very rough blocking.


Revised from Jason Kim on Vimeo.

Edwards

I forgot the golden boy, John Edwards. Thanks Ron for reminding me. He always looked like he was smiling so hard his face would explode. I thought he'd do a great job with social policy and feeding the hungry, etc...but I didn't ever get the feeling like he had a strong position on a lot of other issues.

And..the Democrats

Just to make it clear that I have no partisan allegiances.

Animation Test

Here's a work-in-progress of a clip I've been animating


Mr. President from Jason Kim on Vimeo.

Presidents' Day

I was flippin through the ol' sketch book and found some caricatures I did during the republican debate a couple of weeks ago.I did these color versions in photoshop.

Stand and Deliver

I drew these while watching this movie last night. A little research for a project I'm working on. Lou Diamond Phillips at his best! So smooth

Portrait painting

I feel I had a little breakthrough with color and edges while painting this. This was probably a little under 2 hours.

Igor

Feedback from GM

Jess Bailie, a designer at GM, did his own version(right) over my design(left).
Thanks Jess

Portrait paintings

Here's a coule of head painting from my final in the class. The first one was done from life while watching an episode of the office, so about 30 - 40 mins..and the second was about the same or less done from a photo off my laptop.

Trans Design Final Poster

Here's my final poster that I'm going to present to the GM designers.
Hope the like it. It's been one of the best classes I've ever taken and I've learned a ton about vehicle design and just design period.

Concept Car Profile

Here's the last of the 3 photoshop renderings. I had to do this one pretty quick so I didnt get to finesse it.
I'll post some rough sketches and progression when I get a chance so you can see a bit of my though process.
Obviously the cars in the 3 different views don't match up perfectly..but I found that with each different view there were some proportions and shapes I wanted to experiment with. That's what's fun about design, right?

Car design

Here's my second view. I struggled a lot with this one so I build some quick geometry to work over.

The previous post was done in photoshop overtop a graphite drawing.

Final Rendering

Here's the final rendering of this view, updated with my own rims. And a couple of minor adjustments.

Concept Car

Here's one of my final renderings for my transportation design class. This was one of the coolest classes. The extremely talented Spencer Nugent taught us and it's too bad he wont be sticking around(having to graduate and all). The project was to dissect a brand identity and design vehicles using the same visual cues, value system, etc. Most of the students worked with existing car brands, and Ty and I picked clothing companies to base our designs off of. I chose ROOTS clothing and tried to incorporate some of the eagle beak shapes I saw on native American sculpture. I started with some very obvious visual cues but ended up going for something more subtle. In some ways it was harder, and in some it was easier, working with a brand that didn't established vehicular aesthetics. I'm pretty happy with it but I can't take credit for the rims. I grabbed them off the internet and did some paint touch up over top just for temp place holders. I also put em on backwards. If I have some time after finals are over I'll go in and design my own.

National Eyvind Earle Day!

So while walking to church I noticed some beautiful shapes and forms, reminiscent of the great Eyvind Earle. Unfortunately it wasn't until a few hours later that I was able to run back home, grab my camera and get back to where all the amazing-ness was going on, so alot of it melted and isn't as grand as it was in the earlier hours of the day. Maybe I'm just seeing things that aren't there..but you can decide for yourself.

Our model got sick and left so my classmate Michelle took one for the team and sat for us. This one was just over an hour long.

Personal project

From the story I'm working on.

Wednesday figure painting

About 2 hours.

For my teachers project.

Figure painting from last Wednesday. I ran out of time and didn't get nearly as far as I would've like to in this study but I kinda like it anyway.

Figure Painting

Monday figure painting. I did one I like today as well but it'll need a day to dry so I'll post it on Friday. This one's two hours.

T shirt design

I did this for a client in Japan. It says Alabama three different ways. It was supposed to have an America theme.

Head painting class

Some more paintings from class.
these are anywhere from 20 mins to an hour and 45 mins or so.
I've been trying to get economical with my brush strokes and I've been struggling to paint just what I see. The scanning process really takes them for a loop, for better or for worse.

100th post

These are a bunch of marker sketches from my sketch book. They're not at all to scale with one another since I had to resize them to make them fit together. They were done with a staedler brush pen thingy.

Visit from Sony

Some nice folks from Sony Animation, Imageworks...etc. visited the school a little while ago. This is a compilation of caricatures I drew of them.

Revised

Here's the same painting after some talented painters at work Yoda'd it up.

Personal Project

For a story I'm working on.

Some of my first car designs

So here are some of my first car designs for my trans design class. Really boring and not to concept-y. We had Jess Bailie here from GM helping us out so hopefully I'll be able to implement some of his wisdom and step it up. We were all supposed to choose a brand and base a design of the values of it. Not being a transportation design major I decided to do Roots clothing to base my designs on. I found some new inspiration so I think the new stuff will be better...I hope.

Wednesday's portrait

Last class' portrait. this one was about 2 hours.

A couple of shots of Rachel and a really cool sculpture at school..somewhat reminiscent of Alexander Calder.

My First Head Paintings

I'm taking a head painting class this semester from Don Seegmiller. I'm really learning a lot and having tons of fun. The idea is to only use 4 colors(titanium white, alizarin crimson, yellow ochre, and payes grey) We have to do 3 a week plus one a class. The first one at the bottom was painted on the first day with no instruction. I guess Don just wanted to see where we were at. (Really frustrating day). These are on either canvas board or masonite and are anywhere from 30 min. to 2 hrs. I've posted them chronologically starting at the bottom taking a few out that were really bad.(not that these are very good...I just kinda like em)I've adjusted the levels slightly because they really went chalky and grey when they dried. The light from the scanner reflected off the paintings so there's a lot of streaky grey where there should be flat colour....oh well.I didn't realize how bad student grade paints were. I got some more decent stuff now, so let's hope they get better.









My first painting

A couple of quick concept paintings for a project at school. First one's based on a photo..and i was more playing with the treatment.

This is our second assignment, which was to create some abstract compositions using design principles we learned. The parameter that we had to work with was to shoot an entire 36 exp. roll of one object/subject. These are of a staircase in one of the buildings on campus. There were some nice shots from some of the other students, and I wish I could show them.

I'm taking an intro to photography class as part of my major's requirements. These are a few shots from our first assignment which was designed to help us learn to use the camera. (f-stop, light meter, shutter speed, depth of field..etc.)



My fiance took this one of me. She never believes me but I think she has a good eye.

Here's some color studies for our senior year film. That's an upside down grandpa pointing at the boy in the first frame.

More Sat morning plein air sketches. First one is from sprinville, and the second two are from Sundance. Gouache, or maybe just the ones i'm using, goes really chalky and grey after it dries, so i bumped up the saturation in photoshop a bit.
These are done on small postcard sized watercolor paper.

These are some quick sketches I did for a project I'm helping out on. While trying to incorporate some of Gauguin's lines and shapes into them, I realized just how great the design is to some of his paintings and figures.

Some doodles from work that made me smile.
They remind me of how my friend Nick Dubeau and I once went on a sumo wrestler drawing kick in the 5th grade(i think). This has nothing to do with the title of my blog, which for me atleast, has some sort of meaning.
Also, this may not be apparent at all, but I was looking at Bruce Timm this morning and fell in love again with his simplified yet sophisticated shapes.

Here's a little more elaboration.

More bus ride inspired mountains.
I'll tighten it up a bit at lunch

BAD / CHEEZY fantasy art

Stargazer the little prince of porpoises.

This is my contribution to the new >Avalanche blog topic, "bad fantasy art."
When I was young I had this tie-dyed dolphin shirt that I thought was the coolest. So cool that I wore it to class pictures in grade 5. I like this guys echo location guitar.
It took about 5-6 hours. I know...that's way to much to be proud of on something like this.

A doodle from the Disney Interactive meeting yesterday. I threw some light value over it in photoshop to help it stand out a bit.

Here's another one inspired by the bus ride to work.

Jed and I went to provo canyon early this morning and caught the sunrise creeping over the foothills. It's the start of our weekly painting excursion. It was done in gouache on a postcard size piece of water color paper.

Morning sketches at work

At work we started to go out for quick sketching at lunch on Fridays. This is Lael who works downstairs. Thanks to the nice lady at "Skool Lunch" for the rice crispy squares.

"Flying Lesson" revised

Here's the same image but having gone through some critique by Sam Neilson and Tom Scholes at work and a little more elbow grease. Thanks for the help guys!

Flying Lesson

This was inspired by a dinosaur drawing That Jed did. It turned out real James Gurney-ish(dinotopia). It was a sort of assignment from the all talented Dave McClellan. I'm sure he'll have some good suggestions on how to make it better once he sees it.

This started out as an exercise at work we did to learn how to use value and saturation. It was originally all painted using one hue but I added some other colors to accent it. I'll post the original if i can find it.

Here's one of the initial sketches for a design exercise I've been giving myself lately.

Random StarWars caricatures and Andy Warhol?

lunch break sketch from work today

This is a little doodle I did at work on my break. I was going for an eastern woodcut feel in the composition and style.

Why We Work

I thought this was an interesting study, and relates to the previous post.

In the 60's some psychology students at Berkeley did a study to prove that money was not the primary motivator for work. What they did was hire a bunch of people and paid them fair wages. At the start of the day they told them to dig a hole and about half way through the day they told them to fill it in. Despite the considerable unemployment of the day, 40% of the people didn't return the next day. The students then doubled the wage of the remaining employees and told them to do the same thing. At the end of the second day there was lots of grumbling over their task and the workers asked why they were doing what they were doing. They were told that it was for a study and were then promised that whoever returned the next day would receive double what they were then making. Despite this incentive only 40% of the remaining people returned the following day.

I have a couple of really successful relatives and when I asked them what the key was to their prosperity they said that first and foremost is to find something that you love. The trick is to find the thing that doesn't seem like work to you so that you can always maintain that sense of curiosity and self-motivation.

A friend told me once that you can't look for a "job" but for a something you love to do.

"Life is never made unbearable by circumstance but by a lack of meaning and purpose."
~ Victor Franco

Do it for the Fat Lady: explained

"Do it for the fat lady," is actually a quote from Franny and Zooey, a J.D. Salinger novel about a young woman named Franney Glass who is suffering from a spiritual and existential breakdown. Visiting for the weekend from college she finds herself detatched and incapacitated on the family living room sofa. Her brother, Zooey, finds her there and upsets her by criticising some of her motives in her search for spiritual illumination. He then leaves the house and calls her posing as their older brother buddy. Franny figures out it's Zooey but the two continue to talk. Zooey then passes on some advice to her that he received from another one of their older brothers, Seymour. This is the summary of this part of the story from Spark notes with a couple of inserts in brackets from me to explain.

"Zooey tells her that he and Buddy saw her in a play the summer before and that she was very good. He tells her to use her crazy education to become a great actress. He believes that she, like him, wants to be remembered for something, to have an honorable skull like Yorick's (a reference to Shakespeare's Hamlet; see Commentary section below). And, he says, if Franny was meant to act, then she should act.
Zooey continues to tell her that she should not care about the stupidity of the audiences. After all, it is none of her business. After a pause, Zooey tells Franny that one time when Zooey was on "It's a Wise Child,"( a radio show that the Glass family children used to appear on ) Seymour told him to shine his shoes. Since it was a radio show and the studio audiences were stupid, Zooey did not want to. But, Seymour told him to do it for the "Fat Lady."(telling him to picture a fat lady on a porch on a hot summers day listening to the show, if I remember correctly) Zooey did and remembered the idea of the Fat Lady. Franny says that Seymour told her about the Fat Lady, too. Zooey interprets this image of the Fat Lady as being everyone. Every person, no matter how egotistical or stupid, then, deserves their respect. And the Fat Lady is not only every normal person, but she is Jesus Christ, too. After this revelation, Zooey and Franny get off the phone. Franny lies smiling at the ceiling, then falls asleep."

This book was given to me by my good friend, former film making collaborator and super talented Pixar story artist/designer,

Nick Sung

. I guess he felt that I'd like it or be able to relate to it, which I did. There was a period of about 4-5 years starting in college that I went through something very similar to Franny. As an artist and as a person I found myself uninspired and empty. I too was going through a spiritual breakdown and began a search to fulfill that part of my life. I knew that it was something I had to deal with before I'd be able to progress. I ended up joining the LDS church and serving a two year full time mission, during which, I focused on serving others and fixing the parts of me that felt broken. I didn't draw at all, save a couple of portraits of the people I met, and teaching kids how to draw in a class I taught a few times for volunteer service. After I got back I'd thought seriously about, and pursued different avenues of education and employment. I considered social work, engineering, going overseas to be an English teacher, and finally applied for and got accepted into the Universitiy of Toronto for East Asian studies. Even after that I thought about going into medicine. I've discovered that the problem wasn't that I didn't enjoy art, but that when I should have been searching for meaning in it, I mistakenly started to look elsewhere into different fields. It wasn't the subject matter but my approach and perspective that needed a little readjusting. I found work in the animation industry in Toronto again but was quickly frustrated and disenchanted by the lack of substance and meaning in the work, and also the overall motivation and driving force for the company that I worked for. I think my personal ethics and value system didn't jive with theirs. I guess I'm one of those thinking people that has to peel things away to find meaning and can't just leave it alone. I ended up working in my buddy's dad's shop fixing shoes, mostly womens' heels. I loved working with my friends dad and learning his craft. In fact, I found this job much more rewarding than working in animation at the time. I think it was about that time that I finally read the book Nick gave me that I'd been putting off for a while. It really spoke to me. The term "do it for the fat lady," seemed to encompass so much of what I was looknig for. It gave me reason and motivation to not just draw, but to enjoy life and do a good job at it. People, including ourselves just desrve our best effort. they're worth the attention to the details.
I decided to come to school down here at Brigham Young University to sorta recharge and have made many good friends and developed a healthy perspective on life. I work at a job where I can contribute and feel good about the work. I think I'm finally getting into the "groove" of things and am progressing for the first time in years, since I was in college. So although the name sounds really goofy and perhaps even offensive( I appologize), the term "Do it for the fat lady" holds special meaning and history for me.

Thanks Nick!

That was a long emotional ramble....sorry if it didn't pay off if you invested the time to read it. heh.

I recently came accross a quote book and came accross these gems


"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

Roosevelt: From a speech given in Paris at the Sorbonne in 1910


"Dictionary is the only place that success comes before work. Hard work is the price we must pay for success. I think you can accomplish anything if you're willing to pay the price."

Vince Lombardi

Sorry I haven't had anything new in a while. I've been busy at my new job. This is my first post for a drawing...thing we do at work. The subject was "hitman"..and i drew a dirty mullet with a gun.

Went to the hoagle zoo in salt lake today. I had lots of fun sketching with the other animation and illustration students, but I think I found the people more interesting than the sad animals.




These two are from the museum this morning.

these are a couple of little skteches from busts. They're about 4 inches high.(the drawings that is)

Today's sketches

The Bean Museum.
Donated stuffed animals from Monty Bean on campus.
Around 5 min each, more or less








gesture class this morning

Gesture class

Here's one I like from class today.

Figure drawing last week







This one was done waiting for class to start.

INSPIRATION FROM BILL WATTERSON


Kenyon College, Gambier Ohio, to the 1990 graduating class.
SOME THOUGHTS ON THE REAL WORLD BY ONE WHO GLIMPSED IT AND FLED
Bill Watterson
Kenyon College Commencement
May 20, 1990

I have a recurring dream about Kenyon. In it, I'm walking to the post office on the way to my first class at the start of the school year. Suddenly it occurs to me that I don't have my schedule memorized, and I'm not sure which classes I'm taking, or where exactly I'm supposed to be going.
As I walk up the steps to the postoffice, I realize I don't have my box key, and in fact, I can't remember what my box number is. I'm certain that everyone I know has written me a letter, but I can't get them. I get more flustered and annoyed by the minute. I head back to Middle Path, racking my brains and asking myself, "How many more years until I graduate? ...Wait, didn't I graduate already?? How old AM I?" Then I wake up.

Experience is food for the brain. And four years at Kenyon is a rich meal. I suppose it should be no surprise that your brains will probably burp up Kenyon for a long time. And I think the reason I keep having the dream is because its central image is a metaphor for a good part of life: that is, not knowing where you're going or what you're doing.

I graduated exactly ten years ago. That doesn't give me a great deal of experience to speak from, but I'm emboldened by the fact that I can't remember a bit of MY commencement, and I trust that in half an hour, you won't remember of yours either.

In the middle of my sophomore year at Kenyon, I decided to paint a copy of Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam" from the Sistine Chapel on the ceiling of my dorm room. By standing on a chair, I could reach the ceiling, and I taped off a section, made a grid, and started to copy the picture from my art history book.

Working with your arm over your head is hard work, so a few of my more ingenious friends rigged up a scaffold for me by stacking two chairs on my bed, and laying the table from the hall lounge across the chairs and over to the top of my closet. By climbing up onto my bed and up the chairs, I could hoist myself onto the table, and lie in relative comfort two feet under my painting. My roommate would then hand up my paints, and I could work for several hours at a stretch.

The picture took me months to do, and in fact, I didn't finish the work until very near the end of the school year. I wasn't much of a painter then, but what the work lacked in color sense and technical flourish, it gained in the incongruity of having a High Renaissance masterpiece in a college dorm that had the unmistakable odor of old beer cans and older laundry.
The painting lent an air of cosmic grandeur to my room, and it seemed to put life into a larger perspective. Those boring, flowery English poets didn't seem quite so important, when right above my head God was transmitting the spark of life to man.
My friends and I liked the finished painting so much in fact, that we decided I should ask permission to do it. As you might expect, the housing director was curious to know why I wanted to paint this elaborate picture on my ceiling a few weeks before school let out. Well, you don't get to be a sophomore at Kenyon without learning how to fabricate ideas you never had, but I guess it was obvious that my idea was being proposed retroactively. It ended up that I was allowed to paint the picture, so long as I painted over it and returned the ceiling to normal at the end of the year. And that's what I did.

Despite the futility of the whole episode, my fondest memories of college are times like these, where things were done out of some inexplicable inner imperative, rather than because the work was demanded. Clearly, I never spent as much time or work on any authorized art project, or any poli sci paper, as I spent on this one act of vandalism.

It's surprising how hard we'll work when the work is done just for ourselves. And with all due respect to John Stuart Mill, maybe utilitarianism is overrated. If I've learned one thing from being a cartoonist, it's how important playing is to creativity and happiness. My job is essentially to come up with 365 ideas a year.
If you ever want to find out just how uninteresting you really are, get a job where the quality and frequency of your thoughts determine your livelihood. I've found that the only way I can keep writing every day, year after year, is to let my mind wander into new territories. To do that, I've had to cultivate a kind of mental playfulness.

We're not really taught how to recreate constructively. We need to do more than find diversions; we need to restore and expand ourselves. Our idea of relaxing is all too often to plop down in front of the television set and let its pandering idiocy liquefy our brains. Shutting off the thought process is not rejuvenating; the mind is like a car battery-it recharges by running.
You may be surprised to find how quickly daily routine and the demands of "just getting by: absorb your waking hours. You may be surprised to find how quickly you start to see your politics and religion become matters of habit rather than thought and inquiry. You may be surprised to find how quickly you start to see your life in terms of other people's expectations rather than issues. You may be surprised to find out how quickly reading a good book sounds like a luxury.

At school, new ideas are thrust at you every day. Out in the world, you'll have to find the inner motivation to search for new ideas on your own. With any luck at all, you'll never need to take an idea and squeeze a punchline out of it, but as bright, creative people, you'll be called upon to generate ideas and solutions all your lives. Letting your mind play is the best way to solve problems.
For me, it's been liberating to put myself in the mind of a fictitious six year-old each day, and rediscover my own curiosity. I've been amazed at how one ideas leads to others if I allow my mind to play and wander. I know a lot about dinosaurs now, and the information has helped me out of quite a few deadlines.
A playful mind is inquisitive, and learning is fun. If you indulge your natural curiosity and retain a sense of fun in new experience, I think you'll find it functions as a sort of shock absorber for the bumpy road ahead.

So, what's it like in the real world? Well, the food is better, but beyond that, I don't recommend it.

I don't look back on my first few years out of school with much affection, and if I could have talked to you six months ago, I'd have encouraged you all to flunk some classes and postpone this moment as long as possible. But now it's too late.
Unfortunately, that was all the advice I really had. When I was sitting where you are, I was one of the lucky few who had a cushy job waiting for me. I'd drawn political cartoons for the Collegian for four years, and the Cincinnati Post had hired me as an editorial cartoonist. All my friends were either dreading the infamous first year of law school, or despondent about their chances of convincing anyone that a history degree had any real application outside of academia.

Boy, was I smug.

As it turned out, my editor instantly regretted his decision to hire me. By the end of the summer, I'd been given notice; by the beginning of winter, I was in an unemployment line; and by the end of my first year away from Kenyon, I was broke and living with my parents again. You can imagine how upset my dad was when he learned that Kenyon doesn't give refunds.
Watching my career explode on the lauchpad caused some soul searching. I eventually admitted that I didn't have what it takes to be a good political cartoonist, that is, an interest in politics, and I returned to my firs love, comic strips.
For years I got nothing but rejection letters, and I was forced to accept a real job.

A REAL job is a job you hate. I designed car ads and grocery ads in the windowless basement of a convenience store, and I hated every single minute of the 4-1/2 million minutes I worked there. My fellow prisoners at work were basically concerned about how to punch the time clock at the perfect second where they would earn another 20 cents without doing any work for it.
It was incredible: after every break, the entire staff would stand around in the garage where the time clock was, and wait for that last click. And after my used car needed the head gasket replaced twice, I waited in the garage too.

It's funny how at Kenyon, you take for granted that the people around you think about more than the last episode of Dynasty. I guess that's what it means to be in an ivory tower.

Anyway, after a few months at this job, I was starved for some life of the mind that, during my lunch break, I used to read those poli sci books that I'd somehow never quite finished when I was here. Some of those books were actually kind of interesting. It was a rude shock to see just how empty and robotic life can be when you don't care about what you're doing, and the only reason you're there is to pay the bills.
Thoreau said,

"the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

That's one of those dumb cocktail quotations that will strike fear in your heart as you get older. Actually, I was leading a life of loud desperation.
When it seemed I would be writing about "Midnite Madness Sale-abrations" for the rest of my life, a friend used to console me that cream always rises to the top. I used to think, so do people who throw themselves into the sea.


I tell you all this because it's worth recognizing that there is no such thing as an overnight success. You will do well to cultivate the resources in yourself that bring you happiness outside of success or failure. The truth is, most of us discover where we are headed when we arrive. At that time, we turn around and say, yes, this is obviously where I was going all along. It's a good idea to try to enjoy the scenery on the detours, because you'll probably take a few.

I still haven't drawn the strip as long as it took me to get the job. To endure five years of rejection to get a job requires either a faith in oneself that borders on delusion, or a love of the work. I loved the work.
Drawing comic strips for five years without pay drove home the point that the fun of cartooning wasn't in the money; it was in the work. This turned out to be an important realization when my break finally came.

Like many people, I found that what I was chasing wasn't what I caught. I've wanted to be a cartoonist since I was old enough to read cartoons, and I never really thought about cartoons as being a business. It never occurred to me that a comic strip I created would be at the mercy of a bloodsucking corporate parasite called a syndicate, and that I'd be faced with countless ethical decisions masquerading as simple business decisions.
To make a business decision, you don't need much philosophy; all you need is greed, and maybe a little knowledge of how the game works.

As my comic strip became popular, the pressure to capitalize on that popularity increased to the point where I was spending almost as much time screaming at executives as drawing. Cartoon merchandising is a $12 billion dollar a year industry and the syndicate understandably wanted a piece of that pie. But the more I though about what they wanted to do with my creation, the more inconsistent it seemed with the reasons I draw cartoons.
Selling out is usually more a matter of buying in. Sell out, and you're really buying into someone else's system of values, rules and rewards.
The so-called "opportunity" I faced would have meant giving up my individual voice for that of a money-grubbing corporation. It would have meant my purpose in writing was to sell things, not say things. My pride in craft would be sacrificed to the efficiency of mass production and the work of assistants. Authorship would become committee decision. Creativity would become work for pay. Art would turn into commerce. In short, money was supposed to supply all the meaning I'd need.
What the syndicate wanted to do, in other words, was turn my comic strip into everything calculated, empty and robotic that I hated about my old job. They would turn my characters into television hucksters and T-shirt sloganeers and deprive me of characters that actually expressed my own thoughts.

On those terms, I found the offer easy to refuse. Unfortunately, the syndicate also found my refusal easy to refuse, and we've been fighting for over three years now. Such is American business, I guess, where the desire for obscene profit mutes any discussion of conscience.


You will find your own ethical dilemmas in all parts of your lives, both personal and professional. We all have different desires and needs, but if we don't discover what we want from ourselves and what we stand for, we will live passively and unfulfilled. Sooner or later, we are all asked to compromise ourselves and the things we care about. We define ourselves by our actions. With each decision, we tell ourselves and the world who we are. Think about what you want out of this life, and recognize that there are many kinds of success.
Many of you will be going on to law school, business school, medical school, or other graduate work, and you can expect the kind of starting salary that, with luck, will allow you to pay off your own tuition debts within your own lifetime.

But having an enviable career is one thing, and being a happy person is another.

Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it's to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.
You'll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you're doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you'll hear about them.

To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble.
Reading those turgid philosophers here in these remote stone buildings may not get you a job, but if those books have forced you to ask yourself questions about what makes life truthful, purposeful, meaningful, and redeeming, you have the Swiss Army Knife of mental tools, and it's going to come in handy all the time.

I think you'll find that Kenyon touched a deep part of you. These have been formative years. Chances are, at least of your roommates has taught you everything ugly about human nature you ever wanted to know.
With luck, you've also had a class that transmitted a spark of insight or interest you'd never had before. Cultivate that interest, and you may find a deeper meaning in your life that feeds your soul and spirit. Your preparation for the real world is not in the answers you've learned, but in the questions you've learned how to ask yourself.
Graduating from Kenyon, I suspect you'll find yourselves quite well prepared indeed.


I wish you all fulfillment and happiness. Congratulations on your achievement.


Bill Watterson

Afternoon nap

Sketch of Rachel doing homework beside me in the computer lab

Test pilot

Pyjama Gladiator

Here's a scene I animated for the film, "Pajama Gladiator", that they're producing here at school.


pyjama gladiator scene from Jason Kim on Vimeo.

HAPPY EASTER!
Early this morning, on her way over to drop off an Easter basket for me, Rachel noticed a robin tangled up in some plastic way up in a tree. So I grabbed my knife and we ran back to the tree where I climbed up it and held the terrified little bird while I cut away the plastic. It was really freakin out but calmed right down when I cut it free. Then I unwrapped the plastic around it's neck and let it go. This little sketch is for Rachel and in honor of our brave little robin friend.

Colour Studies for Kites

Here's some exploratory sketches of a grandpa character.

Some stuff from my sketch book.

Bird sketches from the museum

DUCK AND COVER!

More nuclear inspired digital painting experiments for cloudscapes.

This is a concept for the final scene of our film. Everything is still very preliminary so I'll post the other concepts as soon as I get them done.

These days I've been working on the color and lighting for the film. Since there is so much potential for visual richness up there I've been studying nuclear test footage for ideas of cool cloud shapes and powerful lighting.

Lately I've starting to experiment with black markers. Up till now ink has sorta intimidated me, but recently I've had the desire to be more bold with my statements.

Playin with clouds

ODE to pixel art

Another view but from the rooftop. If I get time I might come back to this one to refine it.

Here's the same image with some atmospheric perspective
Thanks Andy!


A China town design for the film. YES the scale on the airplane is HUGE...but i just like how it looks.

These are some character designs I did for the film. It was originally about bridging the generation/cultural gap but has shifted to a story about dealing with loss. However elements of the original theme are still in there.

Another concept piece for the film, but done in a woodcut sort of style. It's supposed to be one of those rice fields on a hill..or in this case the top of a mountain. I may revisit this one to clarify the point...but for now I think I'll go to bed

This is an old painting that i just touched up in painter.

Here's a piece of concept art for our senior film that I did today. It's about a grandson and his grandfather and involves a chinese kite chase. The idea here is that the clouds form into various types of Chinese landscape. I had to wrestle this one at the start cause I wasn't even sure what I wanted, but hopefully it turned out. This is about a 3-4 hour painting. (slow but getting faster.) These days I'm feeling really gloomy so all my paintings seem to involve lots of shadow and clouds.

Here's a painting I started the other night and finished today. It's all painted from scratch except for the trees, which I took from an image off the internet. The whole thing took about 5 - 6 hours.

My Painter teacher Don Seegmiller showed me how to make these previous posts better. He's a really talented guy. Check out his blog and website .

Voila! here's the same image tightened up.

I went in and drew out the figure based on what i roughed in on the painting and some reference images off the internet. From here I'll tighten up the painting later on today.

I saw a couple of Halo3 trailers this morning and got excited to paint this guy

This is my version of my friend Taylor's dog design.

A sketch while waiting for a friend to go eat cheap, greasy and delicions mexican food. At school we just got a whole lab full of Wacom Cintiq monitors.....soooo nice.

These images are for a painter class i started. Our first assignment is to create 15 quick paintings using 15 different brushes and you can only use one brush for each painting. These were all done in more or less 30 minutes depending on the image and level of refinement. I did use a tiny bit of the glow brush for the top of the t-rex's head.

My Brother's Highschool Sculptures

My brother did this and the next two sculptures of the dove and baby in highschool(17-18 years old). Crazy! Keep in mind it was a normal highschool and he had no special training whatsoever.

This one was carved from wood

I'm home for the holidays and my dad drew me a map to get to the public pool, when I noticed one of my old drawings on the back. Yep it's Macross!!..or Robotech. I drew this one when I got back from a trip to Korea when I was 8 years old. I think the perspective and volume is pretty sound.

10 min pose from gesture class.

This is a 3-d image I created based on a story I'm working on.

I didn't have time to rig or pose it but I think it serves it's purpose well enough for now.

I'll come back to it when I get some time.

It was created using Maya.

Some drawings from gesture class

This is just a quick colour I did over a previous post when I was bored last night.

Here's a paint over a life drawing i did in class. The drawing is graphite on newsprint and the painting was done in Photoshop. Yeah...I realized there's a lot to learn about painting. I'll get better...

Another lifedrawing from gesture class.

Yes. It's Halloween today, and we really geeked out by dressing the model up as the Dark Knight. This is a 10 min. conte drawing on newsprint.

My first 3D endeavour. For the assignment we had to make a teapot and cups with a background. There's some problems with it but I learned a lot and Maya isn't so scary...and I even found it fun.

a stab at some horses

In the art building where my classes are there's always great stuff to draw!!

Another quick lighting study.

We're learning how to render lighting in class. Nothing special..but I'll get better. Promise.

A couple of two min. gestures.

releasing some frustration!!

Just some life drawing fun!

My website. Enjoy

www.jasonkim.ca

hey does this work