P'blizh'd

On October 11th, I got a message from Samantha Strong of The Daily Universe. She liked the cartoons a lot and said there was definitely a way for me to be involved with the opinion page. I emailed her with the cartoons as .jpeg files and awaited a response.

In the meantime, I came up with a couple more cartoons:


Two approaches to solve our budget problems.

Senator McCain gave a plethora of shout-outs to Joe the Plumber in his last debate with Senator Obama. He claims that the Obama Tax Plan wouldn't help out Joe the Plumber. Senator Obama claims that the McCain Tax Plan would help out Joe the CEO. Who's to say?

On October 20th, this Joe the Plumber Tax Cut cartoon was published in The Daily Universe! I am now twice published in a newspaper with a circulation of 18,500.

I hope there's more to come.

Previously Published

Oh, looks like I haven't posted this one:


This is one that actually did get published in The Daily Universe, in March 2008. When I was desperately looking for a job, I made an attempt at becoming a permanent cartoonist for BYU's newspaper. Unfortunately, I was handled rather unprofessionally. I wasn't just not hired, I was not communicated with. I dropped off a folder of cartoons, and never heard from them again. The only reason I even knew I was published was because my friend Andrew Thacker happened to notice my artwork in The Daily Universe one morning. A little while after that Charlotte Carter (now Myers), another friend and a former Daily Universe employee, returned the folder of cartoons. The guy in charge of the editorial page never even called me. For all I know he never existed.

But, this semester I see the staff has changed and there's someone new manning (or, should I say, womanning) the editorial page. We'll see if I can get a reaction.

I'm Not Afraid To Get All Mavericky In There

I took another whack at The Daily Universe. I've recently been more involved in educating myself on the election, what with my Political Science 314 class, my roommate Bert van Uitert, and my own personal drive to be an educated voter. Of course, in that process, I find plenty of ammunition for satire and mockery.

This one is my favorite. It says something to all those Mormons who stand atop their no-caffeine soapboxes. (Senator McCain is drinking Surge there, shipped all the way from Iraq, in case you can't read it.)

Senator Obama's foreign policy seems to be to catch the Axis of Evil on the rebound after President Bush dumped them. I'm no foreign policy expert, but if Senator Obama does the opposite of whatever President Bush did, that's probably a step in the right direction. (Once again, hard to read who is included in that clique of girls, unless you recognize each national leader by their face. If so, I commend you for your photographic memory of world affairs. I had to look up these guys on Google. Anyway, from left to right that's Kim Jong Il of North Korea, Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad of Iran, and Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan.)

I wonder what Osama bin Laden is thinking when he watches the debates on his TV in his cave... Here they are, two candidates for the president of the United States, trying to win votes by proving that their way of killing Osama bin Laden is the best way. How interesting it must be to be flipping channels and to come across two politicians arguing about how they're going to kill you.

If only...if only...

We should have seen this coming, America...

So, we'll see if The Daily Universe decides to use these for anything.

Other than that, I don't have a lot of animation/cartoon news. This semester I'm too busy worrying about 17th century American literature, Spanish syntactigrams and progressivism in the presidency to worry about animation. Which I need to turn around before I completely forget what I want to be when I grow up.

I'm thinking that I'll take a lighter load next semester. I'll take the two classes that Ryan Woodward advised me to, and a couple others. Probably Communications 101 and Spanish 355. Not only will I be able to focus more on animation, but my job is going to go ka-razy next semester. Less homework would be nice.

Beneficial and Bolstering

I stopped by Ryan Woodward's office this Tuesday. (He's one of the directors of the BYU animation department.) The first thing I did after getting my rejection letter was email him, asking him when I could meet with him and go over my portfolio and get some pointers. He responded by saying he'd have his schedule posted outside his door the second week of the semester, and we'd go from there.

Well, I went to his door, and there was no schedule. I went to the visual arts department office and got his office hours, and found out he had open time to talk with students on Tuesdays from 12pm - 2pm. So I lugged my 18"x24" figure drawings and my sketchbook to the 5th floor of the HFAC.

When I knocked, he opened up and I could see that he was busy. I told him the whole story about how I wanted to meet with him and reminded him about my email, and he told me "You know, we have 90 pre-animation students at this school, and 70 who are in the program, we just don't have time to meet with all of them." What? Is he turning me away? But I didn't just turn around in humble defeat. I asked some more questions, when he realized that I was serious. He said, "Well, you came all this way, and got all dressed up" (I was wearing a shirt and tie for work that afternoon) "...let me see what you've got.

>Yes!<

He gave me some really good advice. He pointed out the things in my sketchbook that he liked, and told me that I basically need a sketchbook full of that stuff. He also told me about a couple of classes to take in the winter, a Drawing for Animators class and another Figure Drawing class that would focus more on gesture drawings.

So, not all hope is lost. That conversation got me more excited for April. The sun has not set on my animation chances yet!

I do think that I'll go ahead with some of my plan B stuff anyway. I think I'm going to double minor in Spanish and communications. I was doing the research...minoring in something is so easy! I only have two more classes to get the Spanish minor. Might as well minor in something else.

Biting Satire

When I was a junior in high school, I had a class called Mentorship. The idea was to go to an actual job related to my future career and basically follow someone around and learn the day-to-day life.

Mrs. Johnson hooked me up with Tom at The Dalles Chronicle, the local newspaper for the Columbia River Gorge. I typed for him, wrote some articles, even did a little reporting...but mostly I drew cartoons.

At this time in The Dalles history (2003-2004), the proposal to merge School Districts 9 and 12 was voted on and approved, and so the following year there would be one high school in The Dalles. I was deathly afraid of the idea, of basically moving to another school my senior year. After putting in my time at Wahtonka High School for three years, I was anticipating the payoff my last year. I hated the idea of starting all over with a passion.

The rest of the story is that, after a few clever but whiney cartoons during junior year, I finally decided I'd better make the most of it. Right before junior year ended we did some activities with the other school where we got to meet each other. The ASB officers (Sarah Clark, Sarah Harmon, Laurel Sprouse, Dylan Higgins, Paul Wagenblast, and myself) had the right idea in trying to include everybody. And then, once the school year started, I made so many good friends who I keep in close contact with four years later.

The high schools merging was probably one of the greatest things that ever happened to me.

Go figure.

Anyway, here are some of those cartoons.



This was my first cartoon on the subject. (My signature's highlighted because moms like to do that sort of thing when they scrapbook.)


This is my favorite. (Although it may not be very accurate. While I was whining about the school merger, most of the kids were probably apathetic or didn't mind.)

One of the downsides to this high school merger is that both high schools would jump up in the OSAA levels. Wahtonka was a 2-A school, and The Dalles was a 3-A school. Upon merging, we barely became a 4-A school. That meant playing schools way bigger than us and it would take some getting used to.

As expected, football and boys' basketball struggled (the two teams I happened to play on my senior year). But the girls did pretty awesome. Volleyball almost made it to playoffs, and softball had an impressive season as well. Way to defy expectations, girls.

One with a holiday theme.


Wow, I just flat-out said stuff back then.

Even though there is a lot to figure out in merging two school districts, two high schools and two middle schools, it seemed like the loudest problem was the new school's name, mascot and colors. That might sound silly, but I thought it was important because that was one thing that the students could decide all on their own. I wouldn't leave a school district's budget up to 17-year-olds, but the school's identity could be up to us.

There was a vote between the students...I can no longer remember all of the results but I do remember that, through my selfish and whiney point of view, they were unfair. The school colors chosen were red and silver...awfully similar to The Dalles' crimson and gray, wouldn't you think?

It didn't matter anyway, because the new school board ignored that and came up with their own solution. "The Dalles Wahtonka Union High School," "Eagle Indians," and crimson and gold (crimson from The Dalles and gold from Wahtonka). I couldn't believe it when I first read that in the paper. But it seems like everyone's used to it now. (The "Union" was dropped just as we were used to the rhythm of saying "The Dalles Wahtonka Union High School.")

Later during my senior year I remember a conversation with Maddie Priest. The year before, when she was at The Dalles and I was at Wahtonka, she didn't know me but she had seen my cartoons and was looking forward to the day when I would quit whining. Maddie, your prophecy was fulfilled.


One of the problems with merging the two high schools was that building a new campus was years and millions of dollars away. So they decided on all the freshmen in the city going to the Wahtonka campus, and everyone else going to The Dalles campus. My sister Kandis was there at Wahtonka for that first year, and it sounded like a constant nightmare, just having the freshmen all by themselves on the other end of town. But it sounds like things have calmed down.

Good News For People Who Like Bad News

...I didn't get in.

I guess, despite my love and talent for drawing, I don't quite have what they're looking for. There's more formal, academic, official progress to make. I've been able to grant any requests for drawings my whole life, but I need to push myself. Nothing's stopping me yet. I can try again next April, and I'm planning on it.

But being rejected twice now does change things. It chips away at my credibility as a future animator. Even though I have some big fans of my drawings, I'm just kind of a shmo until it actually gets me somewhere. So far I'm just a guy who likes to draw cartoons to entertain himself and occasionally his friends. It's like I'm not legitimate yet.

Man, all this just makes me look like a wannabe. Oh well. Whatever I look like to the outside world, I'm sticking to what I learned from PBS Kids and I'm following my dream. However pathetic it appears to my programmed-to-be-cynical, coming-of-age peers. (I make it sound like I face a lot of resistance, but so far I've had nothing but support from my friends.)

Until April, I don't have much else to do other than to just draw a lot. I think I've exhausted BYU's supply of resources available to me as a pre-animation major. So I'll meet with some of the heads of the department and get some coaching. Other than that, I'm on my own. :S

P.S.: Also, after being rejected twice, it calls for at least thinking about plan B. Lots of ideas are swirling around in my head, most of them exciting and all of them scary. They can all be filed under two categories: 1) get into something else that I like/that I'm good at, or 2) get into the animation program at another school.

(by the way...)

By the way, there's a lot more in my sketchbook to show off too. But the sketchbook is a part of the animation portfolio that is currently in the possession of the BYU animation department. So we'll have to hang on for a little while longer.

The Ones That Made The Cut

Last Friday was the big day. Here are the ten figure drawings that I turned in. (They were on 18"x24" paper, so they were too big to scan. The next best thing was to take pictures of them with my digital camera, but they don't look that great...pretend that the lighting is more uniform.)

So now, I just wait a couple of weeks until I hear from the animation department.

My portfolio is a lot neater and more professional this time around. I'm way more proud of it. I'm thinking that if I was close enough in April that they asked me to try again, this should be enough to push me past 'good enough.' The factor that could work against me though is that the competition is different. I'll be up against possibly 12 other students who were asked to reapply, plus transfer students from other schools. And this is for eight spots in the program.

Everybody, cross your fingers.

The Adventures of Cosmo the Cougar

This was our final assignment. It was a frustrating process (so frustrating that at one point I gave up and did an entirely different - and lame - cartoon), and there are still some flaws to be corrected (the burrito seems to float instead of fall)...but it still makes me laugh.

Walking Cycle

The first thing I ever drew that was alive!

Flour Sack

The next level up from a bouncing ball. It still squashes and stretches, but it also anticipates and arcs and follows through...and has a bit more personality.

Ball Bounce

This was my first assignment in Introduction to Animation. It's a little dark, but I promise, it's there. You may have to adjust the settings on your computer monitor.

Approaching Crunch Time

Round 2 of "J.J. Tries To Get Into The BYU Animation Program" is looking promising. I feel like I'm more ready, and even more serious about it than I was in April. It's like I'm doing it for real this time. It excites me more than it racks my nerves. (I just hope that all means something.)

My sketchbook now shows great improvement. Since April I've been virtually 100% exclusive in only drawing from real life, from what surrounds me. There was a bit of a critical/self-realization phase, something akin to asking myself at every turn in a Chandler Bing voice, "Do I even know how to draw?" I didn't let that self-deprecation last for long (as it easily and usually does). Instead I just entered another realm of drawing.

I no longer doodled characters that only exist in my mind, or laid down a haphazard array of lines that somehow met the non-premeditated goal of becoming something recognizable. I paid more attention to the forms, lines and shapes in reality. It was like bringing to light something I had always known. I mean, I always knew that Popeye's arms were anatomically backwards. I always had an idea of what the human body looks like. I guess it's just that most of my life, I skipped the academics and went straight for the cartoons. Since working on my animation portfolio more since April, I've taken a step back to actually study drawing. I guess having drawn since I was born has its backfire potential.

Figure drawings are mostly the best of times as opposed to the worst of times. Sometimes I wonder how some of my drawings ended up so bad. But usually the more academic training, forcing myself to slow down and to not finish a drawing as fast as humanly possible, and better tools and equipment have already caused a drastic turnaround in my figure drawing collection. By the time I apply to the animation program in August, I should have all new, more professional drawings that will at least be decent and respectable.

The actual animations that I made in my Introduction to Animation class won't undergo any changes. Not that they're perfect, but they do illustrate the animation techniques that I learned and they are well-done. Plus, I don't have the same access to the animation lab anymore. (Hey, I wonder if I can put those cartoons on this blog...)

The written portion of my portfolio - wherein I describe myself and my animation goals, give five story ideas, and list ten of my recent media influences - is almost updated. When I applied in April, I didn't have much as far as media influences go because I had only been back from my mission for four months. But since April I've been able to read other books besides The Book of Mormon, instead of my top ten list consisting almost entirely of movies.

Here is the current top 10 (in no particular order):
1. Wall-E
2. Ratatouille
3. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
4. The Odyssey
5. The Star Wars movies
6. Vertigo
7. National Treasure and National Treasure II
8. The Lord of the Rings movies
9. Walter Rane paintings
10. The Book of Mormon

And I'm giving my story ideas list a makeover. In my list back in April, I was really struggling to come up with stuff. Example: one of my five ideas was a Catcher in the Rye movie, which would be a dream of mine, but a) probably not a good candidate for an animated film, and b) I am most certainly not the first person to come up with the idea (there is most likely already a Hollywood team that is ready to pounce on the film rights once J.D. Salinger is gone). I've got a couple simpler ideas instead. I'm still trying to think of a fifth story idea...so far I'm brainstorming something Argentine.

Wow, I didn't know I had so much to say. Any of you who aren't really in the know when it comes to animation or drawing, I probably just gave you a bunch of unnecessary details. And for any of you who are into animation or drawing, I probably just bored you to tears and elicited under-the-breath comments of "Pfft...amateur."

Anyway, borrowing from Disney's Robin Hood, it's July 18th, and all's well.

The "Campaign Fever" Edition

So I finally figured out that if I scan my sketchbook as .jpeg instead of .pdf, I actually know how to edit it. Here come some sketches from way back in the day that I was applying for the animation program the first time. I like the swoopy lines, angles, and foreshortening of the arm he's using to drape himself. This was practice for a political cartoon for The Daily Universe. I had been gone for two years, so I had a lot of political catching up to do. You can tell how old this is because Rudy Giuliani is still in the running.

Speaking of political campaigns... This is the dynamic duo of Chayse and McKell Myers. Chayse is a friend from the mission in Argentina, and was also my roommate during winter semester. He ran for BYUSA president with his sister McKell as his running mate. The campaign didn't last for more than one election day, but it was still fun while it lasted. These are the guys I home taught at University Villa. And this guy was in the elder's quorum presidency.A couple people sitting near me one day in the front foyer of the Joseph Smith Building. The guy wasn't really that angry...but he did have red hair. And you all know what that means...Every Jamba Juice employee.If I remember correctly, these were people on the lawn between the HFAC and the Wilkinson Center one fine almost-spring day.I'm not sure where this came from. It's a lot like me on mail day during my mission. Except I never had a sofa. And I always wore shoes. And I wasn't a girl.

Mop Top

My plan was to upload my good sketches in chronological order, but I liked this one so much that it jumped ahead:This is a girl in my figure drawing class who is in the animation program. She has the sweetest mop of hair on her head and I decided I just had to draw it. So when I had drawn all I could of the girl who was actually hired to model for us that day, I took out my sketchbook and put this down on paper.

Little does she know that I was drawing her from across the room...

G-Rated Postapocalypse

Okay, so I'm still in the process of scanning my sketchbook on the computer. In the meantime...I have to let it out. I saw Wall-E on Saturday. I expected it to blow me away. And that it did.

There's a quote allegedly by Alfred Hitchcock that explains the difference between European movies and American movies. European movies start out with a shot of clouds, another shot of clouds, and then another shot of clouds. An American movie starts out with a shot of clouds, then a shot of an airplane, and then if the next shot isn't of the airplane blowing up, everyone will walk out of the theater.

Well, those "cloud-cloud-cloud" movies I thoroughly enjoy, and I imagined that one day through animation I could make a movie like that. A movie that would show that animation isn't its own genre, only its own medium. Too many people think of animation as being for kids, and involving talking and singing animals and witches and goblins. But why can't an animated movie deal with deeper issues? Why not an animated film noir? Or an animated courtroom drama?

Anyway, Wall-E makes a bold move in the "cloud-cloud-cloud" direction. There is hardly any dialogue really. The voice actor who gets top billing is a sound editor (the great Ben Burtt). So much of the story is told by nothing more than personality, Chaplinesque humor (the humor is so brilliant because it's so simple), and flawless animation. And yet it raises poignant awareness of human evolution (devolution?) toward technological dependence, epidemic obesity and tragic laziness.

Blade Runner, Minority Report, I Robot...and Wall-E? Most definitely.

The animated version of The Catcher in the Rye, anyone?

People Sitting Around the Wilkinson Center

(x-ray view through the chair here)

(I didn't draw this guy's face so well...but I like everything else)

Tan Cómodo

My favorite sitting position. So much my favorite that I risk calling attention to myself from the person whose back rests on the other side of whatever that my legs are resting on.

Plus, it makes for a fun sketch. I love the angles and lines with the legs, and the way the feet dangle.

'Scuse Me

One of many downsides to huge lecture classes. You get in people's way. Infringing on space, intentionally or otherwise.

Entering The Wide World Of Blogging

So, I did it. I gave in. I've given in to the human inclination to utterly open up to complete strangers online, as if I had anything important to say. Everyone wants an audience, even if they don't really deserve it (I'm usually in that category). Everyone wants their fifteen minutes of fame, and I'm (sorry to say that I'm) no different.

Mostly this blog will be a channel for my artwork. I cannot possibly trace back to the moment when I began to draw, because it's been a part of me ever since I was born. For Mr. Schulz, happiness was a warm puppy. For me, it's a clean sheet of 8 1/2" x 11" paper and a freshly sharpened pencil. If I have a pencil in my hand, I'm either using it or I have to withstand the urge to use it (and often I don't, hence the bottomless horde of doodled-over homework that you can find in landfills all across the Pacific Northwest, or in my basement). A pencil has even become part of my wardrobe, tucked behind my right ear as I go about town. That way I can provide a cartoon at a moment's notice.

I have dreamed about drawing cartoons for a living as far back as I can remember. It's something that I would do the rest of my life for free, so I figure it would make for a good career. I know a career in something sucks at least some of the fun out of it, even if it's video-gaming or windsurfing. But if I get paid to draw every day, I'll never complain about lack of self-fulfillment at my job. I'll look forward to work every day.

There has always been a special/large place in my heart for Disney. I always rooted for them, even when ABC was in third place or when Dreamworks came along with their entrepreneurial pizzazz and their irreverent and basely gratifying humor. I was even hanging on during the dark Eisner days. I know that Disney did it first and did it better.

My loyalty also spills over to Pixar. The two are now separate entities in the business world, but they both claim the same affinity from me. Pixar is just so good, and in the words of the Beatles, "gettin' better all the time." You won't find any presumptuous self-righteousness at Pixar, even though they are the kings of the computer animation game. They know that special effects become yesterday's news if they aren't founded on an amazing story. (They're like George Lucas thirty years ago.) Every Pixar movie changes my life a little bit. 'Monster's Inc.' still makes me cry at the end.

Fast forward to now, at 21 years old, where loving cartoons transitions from hobby and delight to degrees and majors. I'm here at Brigham Young University, six months after living in Argentina for two years as a missionary (more on that in later posts), and ready for the next milestone in life: graduating college. I arrived here excited to move on. No breaks in between milestones for me. I got all the info and took all the prerequisites and crossed my fingers and prayed for acceptance into the nation's best college animation program.

...Alas, I was not accepted. But, I was specifically told to work on some things and try again for August. So that's my master plan. Part of that master plan is to make my sketches a bit more public. I think if I have an audience (whether or not I deserve one), it will push me to eliminate the crap drawings and get out the acceptance-worthy stuff, by 1) knowing that the other people who see my drawings will be artists as well, and therefore can point out what's wrong with my drawings, and 2) it will prevent me from being lazy, and keep me drawing so as to get all the crap drawings out of my system.

Anyway, I've taken more than enough time to introduce this whole blog thing. So much for a human inclination. I've delved in so far as to be inextinguishable.

Before I babble on any longer...thanks for coming. Hope you enjoy.