Style of the Month: Vinyl Toonz

Basically, my Vinyl Toonz style just came naturally from my 8 years of animation experience. I started young as a trainee in animation layouts doing jobs for studios such as Walt Disney, Warner Brothers, and Hanna Barbera. It was so exciting for the young me to get my hands on drawing Mickey Mouse and the rest of the Walt Disney gang.

I'm a self-taught artist. I learned to draw from reading books. The course I took in college—Electronics Engineering—is very far from my profession that I am in right now. I learned the fundamentals of illustration, including perspective and composition as well as conveying emotions, from drawing and animating that wacky bunch of characters.

So what can I say about this wacky, elastic, dynamic and should I say "shiny" style? Well, it isn't new. The older guys invented it, but we younger generations just took advantage of it. It's the age old formula of using opposing shapes, opposing actions, sometimes opposing colors and emphasizing good silhouettes to convey actions and emotions more dynamically and effectively. It's the stretch and squash, the hot and cold. Opposite looks and feels good.

I get my inspiration from real people, events and places and just push it to the extreme. Imagination is my only limit in this Vinyl Toonz style. I am also inspired by my son, Phoenix, and some close friends who I can say are real life walking “caricatures”. And yeah, it also includes me. So what else can I say?

See yah in the toons!