This is the most difficult sentence I will write for this blog.

There!  The first sentence.  There’s nothing so full of potential, and yet so paralyzing to me, as a blank page.  Even when my brain is near to bursting with ideas, the blank page never fails to trip me up.  So, a goal reached–the first sentence is out of the way.  Now for the fun stuff:  The blog.

I’m lucky.  I get to be creative for a living.

I’ve been drawing and painting for what feels like my whole life.  I think I became interested in writing when I was in the sixth grade or so.  I’ve been animating professionally for fifteen years, and directing for thirteen, give or take.  I’ve worked on small projects for little or no money that were seen by very few people, and I’ve worked on high profile, big budget projects seen by millions of people.   I’ve been credited as a designer, a writer, an animator, a director, a supervising director, and a storyboard artist.

But what I really am is a fan.

I love art and books and music and comics and movies and animation and well-told stories. And because I’m a fan, being able to write, and draw, and direct for a living means a lot to me.  I love what I do, I take my work seriously, and I really strive to make the work I do today better than the work I did yesterday.  

I want to be great at what I do, of course, but I try not to think about that too much–mostly because I rarely think any of my own work is great. Instead, I just try to focus on writing and drawing, and writing and drawing. And writing. And drawing. I’m sure at some point I’ll look back and judge the work, but right now, all I want to do is keep creating.

So, back to the blog.

I’m setting a challenge for myself:  a drawing a day.  Simple.  A more accurate name for the blog would probably be “A drawing a day unless I get the stomach flu or something and I probably won’t post anything on Christmas”, but lets go with brevity over accuracy this one time.  And mixed in with the drawings, I may talk about a film I’ve seen, or a project I’m working on, or an idea I had about directing, but I’ll always come at these subjects as nothing more or less than a fan.  A lucky fan, who has stumbled his way into a pretty great career.

Thanks for reading.