Growing Pains

Well this post has been a long time coming.  Crazy changes have happened and I've been physically and emotionally all over the map.  After SF fell through I thought about my options.  To make a long story short I ended up getting a spot animating on Robot Chicken in Burbank.  It's been crazy amazing and the studio is fantastic.

I've still been drawing every day and thank goodness for that.  In this time of my life that seems to be full of constant transition and change, drawing has been the one consistent thing that I can count on.  It is the one thing that after being laid off, with no job and few friends in SF, gave me a reason to get up in the morning and get out.  Every time before this time I knew when I would be unemployed and I was able to plan for it.  There would be an end date on my contract that I could prepare for it.  This time around it came out of nowhere and I wasn't prepared.  If I hadn't started drawing again so long ago I literally would have had nothing to fall back on.  If you move to a city for a job and then the job disappears, what are you left with?  A city that is indifferent to your existence.  When I am working and living in a city I feel like I am a contributing and valuable part of the community.  Anytime the work dried up in a city I've been living in I immediately feel like I've overstayed my welcome.  To stay longer in SF would have been like being the last person at a party that can't take the hint even though the host is yawning and saying "well it's getting to be that time....." as they load up the dishwasher.  I love Toronto, New York and San Francisco.  I loved working and living in those place.  But once I had no more work those cities seemed to close themselves off to me.  Every day I felt like they were saying "oh, are you still here?".  With no work I am not needed, nobody notices my existence and nobody would miss the absence of it.  This is a strange place to be in.  I had the option of staying in SF longer just to hang out but I left as soon as I could.  It became such an empty place with nothing there for me.  San Francisco is such a beautiful and vibrant city with so much to offer, but I had nothing to offer it in return and so our relationship felt like it had come to a natural (though abrupt) ending.

I suppose that is all there really is to say about that situation.  Now I am in Burbank.  A city that wants me here.  When I arrived last week it was very bittersweet.  I am in a job that I love, but I really hadn't expected to find myself here.  I don't regret anything but I feel like there is still a version of myself in a parallel universe still in San Francisco working on a feature.  And yet another version of myself in Vancouver still working on my short and living quite happily.  The past week when I have woken up it takes me a good few minutes to realize where I am and what I am doing here.

And then I get up and go to work.

I have begun experimenting with markers!  They are a more portable solution than paint.   Stay tuned for more fun experimenting with markers!!