Ah, finally!. For an artist, not putting pencil to paper for an extended period of time results in a lot of, "Artistic Frustration". The digital Cintiq is close, but there is nothing like the sensation of the lead of a slightly dulled pencil gliding across the paper.
This post was supposed to be blogged months ago. Back in the Spring, there was some question at Fox as to whether or not another season of "American Dad" would be on the menu for the fall roster. When I heard the news I was telling everyone at work and most people looked at my puzzled and asked, "What do you care?. You don't work there". To which I replied, "Maybe not, but somebody does. Whenever a regularly scheduled show is threatened, all animators, everyone in the industry should band together to keep the show on the air. It might not be the food on your table, the clothes on your children's backs, or your debts paid; but, it IS someone else's. We should all care, we should all stand up for each other".
Complacency will get us into deep trouble one day.
I can tell you right now, I do care. I care a lot. So much in fact that I had planned this picture to be a much larger drawing. Originally, I desired to draw this on bristol board and to bring with me to the Ottawa ComicCon (which took place in May) with the title boldly printed: "Save American Dad!". On the back of the drawing I wanted to print one of the addresses of the Head Honchos at Fox so that people would know who to contact if they shared my concern. My "Master Plan" would have been completed by me waving the sign around when I attended the Patrick Stewart Panel on the Saturday. Surely, that would get some attention.
Alas, my "Master Plan" was thwarted by Patrick Stewart's untimely withdrawal from Ottawa's very first ComicCon. Thus, this drawing and all of it's positive intentions remained merely a "good idea", until now.
Post Script:
For some reason, these projects feel like they draw themselves!. That I can bring to life the ideas in my head and them execute them with relative ease is fascinating. I am very pleased at the combination of two of my most favourite genre's of entertainment: "American Dad!" ~ My absolute favourite of the MacFarlane line up, and "Star Trek"~ which I listened to a couple episodes while drawing this (DS9 as a matter of fact).
"Star Trek", the most magnificent thing about that show is that you don't necessarily need to watch in order to know what's going on.
