THE BUSHMILLER MUSEUM AND RESEARCH LIBRARY!

YAY!

Mo Willems 

is here in LA!

Yesterday

he visited

Vroman's Bookstore

to read his latest

Elephant and Piggie 

book:

Which,

by the way,

just won a

Geisel Award Honor

this week!

And speaking of awards,

and

this

is

BIG

...

...

Sooper pal 

Dan Santat

won this year's

prestigious

Caldecott Medal

for 

THIS:

But wait...

another friend,

Jon Klassen,

won a 

Caldecott Honor 

for 

illustrating

THIS!

That's a lot to celebrate!

So

ANOTHER 

good friend

had a party for them at the

BUSHMILLER MUSEUM 

AND 

RESEARCH LIBRARY

Which is really just a fancy name

for the home of

Tom Gammill.

Mr. Gammill

rocks beyond words.

He's been a producer on 

The Simpsons 

since 1999.

He's written many an episode of

Seinfeld and written for Saturday Night Live,

David Letterman and Steve Martin.

He's also very involved in

The National Cartoonist Society 

and has a comic strip called 

The Doozies.

So yeah.

He funny.

And yeah.

He's probably the biggest

Ernie Bushmiller

fan in existence.

He has an entire room

dedicated to the man and his work,

primarily Nancy

He even has the guy's

driver's license:

Mr. Gammill also has a 

tongue-in-cheek

museum tucked away 

in a corner:

He even made this handy video about it:

Anyway,

it was a great party for

the medal winners:

Also in attendance were

Lisa Yee,

animator/author

Bob Boyle, 

with Adventure Time artist 

Teri Shikasho,

cartoonist Matthew Diffee and his wife

and 

Mr. Gammill's writing partner

Max Pross and his wife.

And of course,

the fabulous and stylish

Mrs. Warburton!

Tom's unbelievable wife Sandy

made an unbelievable dinner

and then we

TOTALLY

drew all over the tables.

But we'll tell you about that next time!

THE 42nd ANNUAL ANNIE AWARDS

Animation award shows can be dangerous.

That's why it's best for hyper-important

visiting dignitaries to turn up well protected to

ASIFA HOLLYWOOD's

ANNIE AWARDS.

Case in point,

ASIFA-EAST Co-President

Linda Chittick Beck

who flew in from NYC

for the festivities and 

surrounded herself with a

six foot two,

large foreheaded lunk

 to throw off the targeting of would-be

snipers and assassins.

Namely,

ME:

It was a great crowd this year;

smartly dressed

and happy to be out for an evening

of recognizing the best in animation.

It started with a champagne reception

on a beautiful LA Winter night

(sorry cold weather peeps)

Huge props go out to 

ASIFA HOLLYWOOD

president

Jerry Beck and company

for overhauling the awards to make them

classier

funnier

and

(thankfully)

FASTER

than ever before!

Disney TVA

KILLED 

it this year by

winning

9 of it's 10

nominations

including

GRAVITY FALLS

winner of best 

TV Production for Children

TVA's

MICKEY SHORTS

rocked it

with a 

ton of awards

including

sooper pals

Darrick Bachman

(writer)

and

Illya Owens

(editor)

pulling honors.

Executive Producer

Paul Rudish

(middle)

has truly made something remarkable

with these films and 

voters everywhere are saying so.

In features,

Dreamworks's

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2

rightfully 

dominated the proceedings but

the crowd went wild 

(also rightfully)

for

Jorge Gutierrez and Sandra Equihua

winning Best Character Design

for

THE BOOK OF LIFE

The party afterwards was a blur of

food

fun

and

friends,

both old and new.

I wish I had snagged more pics

(i've stolen a bunch of the above off assorted social media)

(sorry) 

but here's a great one of 

comrades in cartoons

Titmouse's

Chris P

Antonio Cannobio,

the aforementioned,

Jorge Gutierrez

and

producer

John Andrews

And how happy was I to catch up with

Number Four

(aka Dee Bradley Baker)?

Yeah.

It was a 

GREAT

year at the Annies!

Especially since no visiting

dignitaries

got murdered on my watch.

THE ARTLESSNESS OF MIDDLE SCHOOL

So my oldest son is going into middle school.

And like his weirdo parents,

he's less of a math/science kid

and more of an artsy creative kid.

So we've been looking for a school that'll

embrace his creative side.

Problem is...

there are very few schools that 

push the arts.

Sure, there are schools that stress

PERFORMING ARTS...

but not

VISUAL ARTS!

Every school has a 

band

and a

chorus

and 

school plays.

But barely any art classes.

Maybe an

'art on a cart'

teacher might come in once a week.

But even that's disappearing.

WHY?

While playing an instrument 

or acting in a play is a wonderful thing...

how many of those students go on to a career

in music or acting?

I'd like to argue that more careers might come out of 

visual arts training.

Stuff like:

Illustration

Fashion Design

Editorial

Graphic Design

Advertising

Filmmaking

Game Design

Industrial Design

and let's not forget the 

poor saps who get into

Animation

Perhaps teaching visual art

is more subjective than

teaching music or acting?

Perhaps a play or a concert is 

considered more of a big ticket school event

 than an art show?

Everybody likes when their kids make art when they're young

So why are we chasing them away 

from it so early?

Anyway...

one of the schools in our area has some amazing

performing arts magnet programs and 

is just starting a visual arts program.

To apply,

kids need to present a portfolio

of their work.

There's even a place on the application

to include the URL for their online

portfolio if they have one!

LOL

I don't even have an online portfolio!

So we've been compiling some of my son's work

and having him work with an art tutor to help him 

create some new pieces to show.

And he's kinda kickin' butt.

Check it out:

Sooper proud dad over here!

LUNCH WITH VINCENT X. KIRSCH

Last week I got to have lunch with

author/illustrator/craftsman

Vincent X. Kirsch!

I first met him in NYC

where he showed me one of his amazing 

papercraft toy theaters:

He's done lots of really fun books:

Vincent recently moved to LA 

so we got together so he could show me 

some of his latest characters:

He carries a big box

with lots of compartments

that house his little friends.

Here are a couple:

And I totally scored a bunch of signed books:

Thanks, Mr. Kirsch!

Head on over to his website

to see more of his work!

He makes wonderful stuff!

THE SKETCHCARDS OF 2015

Another holiday,

another bucketload

of

sketchcards 

drawn!

And every year I forget to 

take pictures of

all them!

But here are 

some of my 

favorites from

2015:

Which are your favorites?

And while the free sketchcard offer is 

finished

over

done

and

owarimashita,

you can still get signed

prints and stuff

in the mighty

printlab!