SEASON SIX BABY!!!

:Warning if you havent watched the season premiere, dont read this!

Well Smallville's sixth season premiere has come and gone, but man what an EPISODE! The episode opened right where the finale left off, with a trapt Clark in the Phantom Zone. We finally got to see inside the P.Z, and man was it good. Props to the crew for shooting an amazing scene. The set was a dessert like wasteland with these jagged mountains and kryptonian spikes coming out of the ground. Really cool. It was shot very Minority Report-ish, with that blue un-saturated look to it.

Clark also met a hot kryptonian named Raya, who ends up dying saving Clark and helping him escape the P.Z. Auggh, how come all the hot ones always die. Meanwhile back on earth Lex is still possesed by the spirit of Zod, and his plans of rebuilding Krypton on earth is going as planned, that is until him and Clark square off in probably the BEST tv fight I've ever seen, thus freeing Lex from Zod and saving the world.

All in all this was probably one of the best Smallville episodes ever, if not the best.

I applaude the writers and directors of the show on continuing to make a great quality program like Smallville.

Well the animation roadshow came around again, its a animation book fair for those that don't know what the animation roadshow is. Every year I tend to lay down at least 80 bucks on books there. This year I didn't spend as much, thankfully, but I did pick up two great books.

The first is Mariachi Samurai by: Jose Lopez. This is probably my favorite of the two because the style is so cool and so ispiring. This is one of those style changing books, every now and then I get a book that affects my way of drawing, this is definetly one of them. Every cartoonist should add this to their book shelves. Also look out for Jose's artwork in the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie coming out next March. Apparantly he did designs for the film.

My second is simply titled Chris Sanders sketchbook 1b. I've loved Chris Sanders' art every since I watched Lilo & Stitch, which he directed. His style has always amazed me, no one draws quite like him and he's inspired me to draw my characters differently then I would, especially my women. His lines are so lose and curvey, I just love it. So if your a big fan of Chris Sanders or are just rying to dab into different styles, this is definetly a good buy. Look out for Chris' next movie American Dog due out in 2008, It's still far away I know, but some amazing artwork is online. It's worth a look.

MALEFICENT

I was watching Sleeping Beauty and decided to dabble with Maleficent, for the very FIRST time. I can't believe that I never drew her before either!

Not as tight as should be, but still ok for a first attempt.

MAYA

The hell Begins..........

Just finished my first week of Maya, and to be completly honest it wasn't that bad. I mean It's only been a couple of days, and I only have a couple of spheres rotating under my belt so far, but I'm really enjoying this. I've heard so many horror stories about Maya and how hard it is, and how by the second day your gonna be crawling back to hand drawn animation, but I'm enjoying every minute of it.

It is difficult, I mean it is the hardest thing I've ever done, but I 'm lucky to have great instructors that are very well rounded in Maya and are very good at explaining it, so thats been really good. The other day we made a little virtual solar system, just a way how to learn to rotate spheres on their axis'. We also did some basic lighting stuff and some texturing. The hardest part about Maya is just learning where everything is, every little thing is inside a folder and then you gotta open a file. That's pretty much the hardest part.....so far.

So I'm really looking foward to the rest of the year.

Pixar I'm one step closer.