APE 2009 Recap

APE Exhibitors Mixer at Last Gasp
The Mixer was held in the Last Gasp warehouse and offices. Nothing more awesome that mingling and drinks in rooms filled with books, carnival side show art and two headed stuffed oddities. We hung out with Emily Martin and her friends from Megamoth Studio next to the Sprectrum books. I even found the YOUR FRIEND THE RAT Little Golden book from Pixar I’ve been looking for for two years.

APE
As it turned out table was in a less than stellar location at APE but we made the best of it. About 2 hours into the event on Saturday I lost my voice. Luckily I had my wonderful table mate and boyfriend Aleric to help out and make me a cute sign. Thank you to all the wonderful people who stopped by to support our studio!

We sold out of THE SEA OF IMAGINATION 13x19 Limited Edition Giclée’s we had at APE. But they are now available in the KatGirl Studio Shop.



A short list of cool people I “talked” to at APE:
Emily Martin
Der-Shing Helmer
William Groebe
Steph laberis
Brittney Lee
Llyn Hunter
Justina Kochansky
The Museum of Lost Wonder

CAM Alternative Press Expo Party: Monsters and Mayhem
On Saturday night Aleric, Erin, Dan and I catched the bus to the Cartoon Art Museum’s Monsters and Mayhem party. The party was tons of fun! Where else would you get to drink beer while sitting in a web comic’s exhibit making Halloween masks out of paper plates, ribbon and crayons? The Disney’s Sleeping Bauty exhibit was fantastic. If you live near SF the Cartoon Art Museum’s current shows are much see!

Computer Crash and Pixar Portfolio

Computer Crash
This past Saturday I went to turn on my computer and found that it had suffered a PBR 2 system boot failure. I was frantic because I was in the middle of backing up my portfolio work for my Pixar submission. I called my dad who was nice enough to spend all weekend and Monday fixing my computer. Luckily none of my files were damaged and he was able to transfer everything off so he could wipe everything. I am truly lucky to have a computer engineer as a father because now I sit here in front of my computer and it’s as if nothing happened to it. Thanks dad!

This brings up another point, I have become so computer centric in my day to day life that I really didn’t have anything else to do. So I rented and watched the entire first season of the Tudors, Twilight, the Truman Show, and Sense and Sensibility. As well I washed all of my roommates and my clothes and attempted to pack more boxes until I realized we were out of tape.

Pixar Portfolio
I’ve also been working on my portfolio submission for Pixar Studios. Some of you may remember that a few months back I had the opportunity to visit Pixar. All the work is done and mostly printed out (I ran out of ink with 2 pages left) and should be ready to send on its way tomorrow! After that it’s back to client projects and my book Stalking the Elusive Quetzal.

Here is one of the pieces from the portfolio. The original design was intended for a children’s magazine, unfortunately the company went under and the project was never finished. Since I had already done all this design work it was a shame to let it sit so I painted the character and gave her a new name.

Portfolio Work

Sorry about the lack of updates my roommate’s buying a house and so that means lots of running around looking at places. Production of Stalking the Elusive Quetzal has been halted till I finish up this new portfolio to send to studios like Pixar. However that will most likely be completed today so production on the book should begin again next week.

Here is some of the things I’ve been working on:

A Day at Pixar

On Monday I had the privilege to visit Pixar Animation Studios for a private tour and portfolio review. A friend of the family, Arun, is a programmer there and was kind enough to take time out of his day to show me around the main studio. Pixar’s main building has a rotating exhibit of the most current movie in the case Wall E and some sections of their older films. It was a great honor to be given a private tour since Pixar is closed to the public and does not give any public tours. People who know me well know I’m a collector of concept and “art of” books and so to see the concept art in person was really exciting and awe inspiring. While we walked around Arun pointed out all of Jay’s (his friend I would meet later) pieces on the walls.

After the tour we met up with his friend Jay for lunch, which was very taste. After lunch Arun had to run to a meeting so Jay, who worked on Star Wars Episode 1 before coming to Pixar 6 years ago, was kind enough the go through my portfolio with me. He offered me some insight on what the directors would be looking for in portfolios and about the hiring process. I know have a better understanding of the difference in what directors look for in book portfolios vs. concept or story artist portfolios. I would like to give a big thanks to both of them and I hope to someday work with them there.

On a different note Pixar has its one store at the studio that sells some special things. I picked up a shirt some Golden books (another thing I collect is children’s books) and this cute plushy box set that was marked at only $10.