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sent from: El Barco de Avila, Spain. destination: St Germain-en-Laye, France

Since we arrived in Spain last week I've spent most of the time looking up, up, up. The skies feel big. Montana big. Old West big. Vast across the plains and rolling hills big.
The clouds stack on top of each other like floating cities, and drift. I was trying to capture some of the detail, and the result is, if I may say so, not too bad.

sent from: Esher, Surrey, UK. destination: Santa Monica, California, USA

I drafted this comic a couple of weeks ago, before the recent round of company closures and layoffs. I struggled for some dialogue for "Friday", so I left it blank in anticipation of new inspiration. In fact, I think it's funnier without any words, so yet again happy accidents beat inspiration. Hurrah!

sent from: Esher, Surrey, UK. destination: Los Angeles, California, USA

Another watercolour pencil experiment that is more on the "ahh my eyes! my eyes!!" side than that "hmm okay not bad" side of things. The lower left quadrant shows a little promise.

Still for me, I see something. Sun on the grass, the start of a new season. I know I'll look at this in years to come and remember looking out of the window and spy on the birds and foxes and squirrels.

sent from: Esher, Surrey, UK. destination: Shenstone, Staffs, UK

When you spend your career blessed to be working with supremely talented artistic people, it is inevitable that you regard your own scratchings with a critical eye. But, part of this project is to experiment, to start from somewhere, wherever that may be, and to try again, fail, learn, improve and hopefully with time make something I am not embarrassed by. It's not that what's on the front of this card is bad, but it's not particularly good, either. I'm trying to introduce colour into my sketches, and in a way that I can take with me wherever I happen to be. I'm using nice watercolour pencils with no clue of how to really use them. This is part of a piece of concept art for the entrance space to a small Egyptology museum in London that we worked on in Birmingham earlier in the week.

sent from: Esher, Surrey, UK. destination: Long Beach, California, USA

Yesterday was the VFX Town Hall, bringing together hundred of VFX workers throughout the world, though because of the timings Western Europe [largely] missed out, but that's ok. Last night I met with a few VFX people and a representative from BECTU in a London pub to discuss UK VFX unionisation efforts. Anytime you gather people around to discuss anything, even something on which there's broad consensus, people are people so there will be a lot of differences as we, like the blind men touching the elephant, come to different conclusions about the big picture.
The anger and frustration, however, is shared; at the poor project management, the vast amounts of ruinous unpaid overtime that everyone is expected to work, the destructive effects of such hours on the ability to have good health, a family, how it saps the passion from an industry that has otherwise been a labour of love. We have allowed this to happen, we have allowed the downward pressure exerted by the studios to push us further - because of course we will never allow anything to stop us from putting out our best - not schedule, not budget, nothing.
Individually, if one of us says "no", we are replaceable; together, we have power, we have leverage.
"You can blow out a candle, but you can't blow out a fire."