www.douglefler.com

With Facebook’s impending IPO many of its employees will become wealthy. Among the potential nouveau riche is David Choe, a graffiti artist who was hired to paint the walls of the social network’s first headquarters, and took his payment in stock options. The New York Times is predicting those shares to be worth around $200 million when the company goes public. I enjoy imaging the conversion Choe might have had with his mother years before.

“You want to do what for a living?”

Although becoming a multi-millionaire by creating art with a spray can may be a once in existence occurrence, there are a lot of reasons for following your passion. If you love what you do, you are likely to put more into it, thereby increasing your chances of success. Also, you pay more attention. The world changes fast. If you are passionate about your work, you keep your eyes on what’s happening down the road, thereby anticipating trends and changes.

Following passion doesn’t negate pragmatism. Doing something you love often requires more planning, budgeting and scheduling than just doing what you’re told. The degree to which you are willing to commit to an undertaking determines whether it is a passion, or a passing enjoyment (I’ve noticed that the interests acquired when young tend to endure longer, so choose wisely).

You may never earn you a $200 million paycheck, but I believe success is more likely when you do what you enjoy rather than doing something you hate. And if you’re going to be poor either way, may as well have fun along the way.

BTW – The image posted above has nothing to do with what I just wrote; it‘s from the story I’m currently drawing. But wait – this is what I love doing, so it directly pertain to following your passion. Nevermind.

New Year, New Site

“There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

Everything I’ve done in my career stemmed from the love of drawing stories. It is a specific passion. I don’t draw still lifes, landscapes or portraits. I’m only interested in sequential images. It has led me to art school, to Disney, to storyboarding, writing and directing movies. Now it’s taken me into software development, and I often find myself asking: “How did this happen? Can’t I just work in an established medium like film or comics? Is it necessary to invent a new one?”

The answer is apparently “yes”.

Although these side trips are distractions from the serious business of creating stories I still put in time at the drawing board every day (Christmas and New Year included).

This site has been redesigned and will serve to inform people on the progress of my original projects.  Seven Extraordinary Things is still available at www.sevenextraordinarythings.com (new readers to that story should click here). Other stories like The Curious Saga of No-One and The Girl in the Moon will be available on www.scrollon.com, currently under construction and scheduled to launch by March, 2012 (and incorporating my shiny new software).

More stories are on their way.  Below is a glimpse of a few things currently on my drawing board.

(reposted from sevenextraordinarythings.com)

… died Wednesday night, November 10^th, 2010 at the age of 91.

I made a movie with him a few years back.  He was 87 at that time, producing three pictures at once and none of us could keep up with him.  He was alternately tough and charming. He forced me to stay on budget, on schedule and learn the correct way to eat pasta. Once, after meeting with two well known actors, I was telling Dino which one I thought was better suited to play the lead in our film. Dino frowned.  “If you put a gun to my head, and told me I had to choose between them,” he said. “I’d take the bullet.”

I am honored that I had the chance to work with him, and be a small part of his enormous career.

(reposted from sevenextraordinarythings.com)

He was outside a small shop in Florence, and looks the way I felt by the end of our trip.

(reposted from sevenextraordinarythings.com)

Project “Ice Cream: Italy” continues.

I’ve made it through many of the Gelaterias in Florence and have begun searching other towns.  Along the way we took some pictures:

Lucca

Barga

Volterra

(reposted from sevenextraordinarythings.com)

A photo of the most important attraction to be found in Florence.  I feel it’s my duty to sample ice cream in every shop that sells it.  This may take a while, there are a lot of them here!

And for you traditionalists, a few pictures of old buildings…

And the Arno river, from our hotel room…

(reposted from sevenextraordinarythings.com)

When I was in High School a friend said that he had recently seen one of my drawings.  “I recognized your style,” he told me.  This caught me by surprise.  I wasn’t aware I had a style so I asked him to describe it to me.

“Oh, you know,” he replied.

I told him I didn’t.

“It’s the way you draw things.”

I asked for an example.

“Like your clouds, it looks as if you could stand on them.  Or the way you draw faces with the eyes slanted to one side, and hands that look like talons.”  He continued on, but I’ve mercifully forgotten most of it.  What he considered my “style” I considered a laundry list of my mistakes.

Webster defines style as a particular manner or technique by which something is done, created or performed.  I always assumed style had to do with the choices you made, and at that point in my artistic development I wasn’t aware of having made any.  I was trying to make figures look like they had anatomy, women look pretty and clouds look like, well — clouds.

After this conversation, I set out to develop a style.  My objective was simple.  I wanted my figures to look like a combination of Frank Frazetta and Neal Adams, but with the sense of mood and caricature Bernie Wrightson brought to his work.  I wanted my line work to have the control of Charles Dana Gibson, but the freedom of expression of Heinrich Kley.  That wasn’t too much to ask, was it?

Apparently so.

Nowadays I make more choices when I draw, but I have never conscientiously chosen a style for myself.  If people can recognize my drawings I still believe it is because they have become familiar with my recurring mistakes.

(NOTE:  if you think it’s impossible to ink with the control of Gibson and the spontaneity of Kley I encourage you to look at some of the pen and ink work done by James Montgomery Flagg.)

(reposted from sevenextraordinarythings.com)

Cooper's Hawk

This one was taken (by Lynn) in our front courtyard; a part of our house featured briefly in Nocturnal Battle.  It’s amazing how much wildlife (natural and supernatural) you can find just outside your door.

(reposted from sevenextraordinarythings.com)

Having a cast on her arm didn’t stop Lynn from snapping this picture of a Cooper’s Hawk in our back yard. Call me weird (my mom always did) but I find it comforting to know there are birds of prey in the neighborhood.

(reposted from sevenextraordinarythings.com)

My wife fell, fractured her wrist and has had it in a cast for three weeks. I told Ziggy to take some time off from hunting the living dead to keep an eye on her.

One more week to go before the cast comes off and Lynn can resume her hobby of fighting crime on the weekends.  But I’ve asked her to be more careful in the future when she’s leaping from building to building in pursuit of a suspect.

(reposted from sevenextraordinarythings.com)

Like many artists of my generation I can divide my early development into two categories; before I saw my first Frank Frazetta painting, and after.  I remember the day. I was crossing the floor of the Santa Barbara Public Library near a rack of paperback novels they recently made available for check out, when Frank’s “Death Dealer” stopped me in my tracks.  I studied it in amazement. Then it occurred to me there might be other books with covers by the same artist.  I searched quickly, fearful that someone else would find them before I did. My second discovery was “The Moon Maid”, which was not only a painting of a naked woman riding on the back of a centaur (more than I could’ve hoped for already) but the story was by Edgar Rice Burroughs (my favorite author, at the time).

I checked both books out, hurried home, took out pencil and paper,  and began to copy them.  From that moment on I knew I could not be satisfied until I taught myself to draw as well as Frazetta. He had set the bar.  In my youthful optimism I sought to match him.  Thirty years later I still haven’t succeeded in this ambition, and I doubt I ever will.  But this much is certain; however well I can draw today I owe directly to Frazetta.

Frank Frazetta passed away on May 10, 2010.  There will never be another like him.

(reposted from sevenextraordinarythings.com)

“Again?”

(reposted from sevenextraordinarythings.com)

When I started Seven Extraordinary Things I told myself to establish a style of drawing and inking that was simple and quick to execute.

With that in mind I kept my initial drawings uncluttered…

…my first ink lines were clean…

…and unadventurous.  So far so good.

I added blacks to separate foreground from background…

…and thought, “It might be nice to cut some detail into the black areas with an eraser tool”…

…Hmmm.  That’s fun.  Sorta like scratchboard.  Now maybe I’ll add a bit of local texture and some shading on the figures…

…ah, what the hell?  May as well put some shading in the background.

Now I’ve managed to complicate it.  This work flow quickly led me to creating panels like this:

I remember hearing someone say it takes two people to paint a picture: the artist holding the paint brush, and someone standing next to him with a stick to make him stop when the painting was finished.

(reposted from sevenextraordinarythings.com)

Here is a shelf on my bookcase with some (but not all) of my favorite drawing books:

Featured here are the Famous Artists drawing course, Composing Pictures by Donald Graham, All of Andrew Loomis’ published books, both volumes of Walt Stanchfield’s Drawn to Life, most of George Bridgman’s books, and very old and battered copy of The Art of Animal Drawing by Ken Hultgren, Animal Drawing by Charles Knight, three books by  Jack Hamm, Stephen Peck’s Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist, Anatomy A Complete Guide for Artists by Joseph Sheppard,  An Atlas of Anatomy for Artists by Fritz Schider, Dynamic Figure Drawing by Burne Hogarth, The Vilppu Drawing Manual, The Big Book of Drawing by J.M. Parronmón, Rendering in Pen and Ink by Arthur Guptill and How to Draw Trees by Henry C. Pitz.

(reposted from sevenextraordinarythings.com)

A SERIOUS SUBJECT.

I wonder if anyone following this Journal knows whether there has been a scientific investigation to prove something ice cream enthusiasts have long held to be fact? To wit: ice cream eaten directly from the carton tastes better than ice cream eaten out of a bowl.

When my wife was my girlfriend, and the time came to meet the family, it was also time to introduce her to our desert ritual.  After the dinner table was cleared, my father took several cartons of Häagen-Dazs from the freezer and we passed around spoons. The look of alarm on Lynn’s face made me think our relationship had gone as far as it would.  This type of barbarism wasn’t tolerated in her household. But to avoid being rude, she picked up a spoon and reached for the Cookies & Cream.  It was closest.  After one bite, there was no turning back.  Next came Rocky Road, followed by Coffee and Vanilla Swiss Almond.

It is the belief of the Lefler-clan that, despite manufacturer’s claims to the contrary, the lids of ice cream cartons are not reusable. For this reason the pint containers are preferable if you’re dining alone.  Quart size if you have a friend with you, but don’t break out the gallon cartons unless there are enough people at the table to get the job done.  Letting uneaten ice cream melt would be sacrilege.

I’m happy to report that Lynn and I are still together and still eating ice cream the way it’s supposed to be eaten.  But on a sad note: The carton of Chunky Monkey that modeled for the above drawing is no longer with us.

(reposted from sevenextraordinarythings.com)

In the wee small hours of the morning…

A short time later…

(reposted from sevenextraordinarythings.com)

When we read a story, or watch a movie, we want the protagonist to do what we can’t: live in the moment.  The events of the story may, or may not be Earth shattering, as long as they are so important to the main character that they consume every ounce of his or her attention. We demand this as an audience.  If we are going to invest the time to watch, or read about a character’s life we want to feel that character is paying attention.  If he doesn’t care enough to offer us an immediate reaction to the events at hand, why should we?

Although most of us don’t live moment to moment, we’ve all experienced it.  There are times, however fleeting, when something happens that drives out all other thoughts and quiets the internal monologue in our brain.  One of the things I love about directing is that it forces me into the moment.  This is partially because of the production challenges (which are always a little more than you can comfortably handle) and partially because I have to get actors into the same state.

With Kevin McKdd, James Cosmo and Ben Kingsley

I once had a scene with three actors all speaking in quick succession (not the scene pictured above!).  I thought the scene was playing well, but during one take a cast member got one of her lines out of sequence.  Suddenly the scene was alive in a way it hadn’t been before.  The actors were off script and didn’t know what was coming next. They had to listen, and respond in the moment.  It’s an argument for always having something new to introduce to a scene, something that hasn’t been rehearsed and keeps the performances fresh.

There is a paradox in all of this.  If we are trying to create a sense of believability in our stories, why would we want our characters to behave in a way that’s unnatural for most adults?  In fact, adding distractions (often referred to as “secondary business”) to a scene is usually a good practice.  It can make us feel the characters have a life outside of the moment we’re witnessing, and that they will continue to live after the scene ends.  There have been times when I’ve given actors the direction to think about something completely different from their dialogue in order to make their performances more natural.  These are often transitional moments in a sequence.  It’s our job as storytellers to shuttle readers, or the audience, into and out of those states of heightened awareness where the characters are in the moment.

In real life, if someone says something hurtful, we often suppress our response.  It’s a defense mechanism that gets us through our daily lives.  We might not even feel the pain of it until much later.  But we won’t tolerate that kind of behavior from the hero of a story.  We want him to react with immediate anger, remorse, or affection.  We want him to punch the person who offends him, kiss the girl in public, or kill the villain who’s just done something unforgiveable.  We want to witness these emotional responses and see the consequences be dealt with.  If the protagonist will do this for us, it brings us a little bit closer to knowing what it might feel like to live an unsuppressed life.

(reposted from sevenextraordinarythings.com)

(reposted from sevenextraordinarythings.com)

One thing that amazes me about my Miniature Schnauzer, even more than his ability to rend zombies limb for limb, is his ability to live in the moment.  Animals and children do this naturally, actors practice it as part of their craft; the rest of us neglect to do it, or have forgotten how.  I have a great fear that one day I’ll look back and realize I lived exactly the life I wanted to, but forgot to enjoy it along the way.

When we’re young, living in the moment is easy.  We laugh when something makes us happy.  We sleep when we’re tired.  We cry when we don’t get ice cream (I no longer cry when I don’t get ice cream, but I’m still not happy about it).   Eventually we go to school and learn to think before we act and to not say things we’ll regret later.  We begin projecting into the future and reliving the past.

Many years ago my wife and I were visiting Disneyland and observed a party of mentally challenged adults being escorted through the park.  There was a man in his forties, with stubble on his chin and wearing a bright yellow windbreaker.  Someone had purchased him a small stuff animal, which he was staring at with wide-eyed amazement and tenderly stroking with his big hands.  It was an image both sad and wonderful.  Instead of feeling sorry for him, I found myself envious.  For him, that toy, at that moment, was the most marvelous thing in the world.

It’s interesting that this incident pulled me into the moment, and (for a brief time) consumed all of my attention.  I’m sure this is why I remember it so vividly. That and the fact I made a sketch of it when I got home.

Knowing I’m not alone in my inability to live in the moment doesn’t make me feel better, but it does bring into focus an important point about storytelling and character development. I’ll go into that in part two of this post.

(reposted from sevenextraordinarythings.com)

Or at least, the Southern California version of cold.