John Bell painted a great piece for Billetproof. My first glimpse of it came as we unloaded the van, and I claimed it before we were done setting up the booth. Now, all I have to do is find a frame and hang it in my office – along with the millions of other things I need framed.

Yesterday, I hitched a ride with John Bell over to Billetproof in Antioch, California. John sold his wares while I darted around the show, camera in hand. Man ‘o man, with over 800 cars, I was in rat-rod heaven. I took around 350 pictures with my tiny Sony DSC-P100.

Speaking of cameras, I have been looking at “pro level” cameras lately because I’d like to get a better digital SLR someday. Perhaps something like the Canon EOS-1D Mark II. I’m a huge fan of full frame image sensors, and that camera is all bite in that regard. Either that or I’ll just go for the Red One HD camera. That thing is sweet. I already have a nice set of Zeiss super speed that would be a perfect fit. Uncompressed 12 million pixels is nothing to sneeze at, especially if it’s running at 60 fps. Yes, I’m a camera nut. Cameras and cars go hand in hand with me. You better believe I’d be at the starting line with this camera.

Anyway, my tiny Sony  DSC-P100 is actually really nice for what I like to do because I can squeeze it into engines and wheel wells. You can find my artsy-fartsy examples from the show here.

We had a great time and afterwards we had dinner with one of the show’s founders, Kirk Jones, artist Jeff Allison and his buddies, Billy and Nate.

I was taking a break from writing today and notice that my blog is turning into wall of text. So I thought I’d share the most awesome antique store find that Gary was kind enough to share with me last week. 

It’s a snapshot of what looks like an old 1920’s road race through the country side. I seriously, seriously, love those cars. It makes me all warm inside.

So last week I posted, “First Draft Treatment Done (1 of 3)!“, which is, I’m sure, a bit out context. So let me explain.

The flashback: A producer friend of mine has 3 film projects burning a hole in his schedule, with production groups and other producers waiting for him to hand over scripts. He called me 2 weeks ago to enlist some help, and I, for some inhumanly odd reason, said yes. Why not? The projects look fun; a music film, prison film, and a horror film. What a crazy mix, huh? Also, I had written an outline for the prison project a few years back and I really loved it, so this was a chance to finish up those efforts.

I outlined a schedule of finishing a 1 treatment per week. Normally an easy thing to do, but I have a day job, and I only write about 1.5 hours a day – my personal daily writing regiment. Needless to say, this work is going to take up that precious time. I don’t want to burn myself out, and also make my day job suffer, by taking any more time than that.

So now we return to the present day, and we’re at the end of week 2. The prison treatment is going along great, when the producer called with some notes on last weeks music treatment. I spent an hour on Wednesday and came up with some solutions to his notes and sent them off. They were approved, and this morning I set out to include them into the music treatment.

Did you get all that?

So, I know what you’re thinking, “Screw the sob story, are you throw’n down the work?”

Yes. But it’s one day late. Luckily, I expected all this, and I gave myself some overage time. Frankly, I think it’s all going way too well. Knock on wood…

I put a call out at work for local public figure drawing classes. I’m listing it here because I’d like to have this close, available, and ready to roll at a pencil’s notice. The Palo Alto Art Center on Tuesday’s is already on my weekly calendar.

I finished up my daily writing regiment and thought I’d post a picture of my Comic Con loot. Nothing fancy, just the books and doesn’t include the way cool toys I nabbed. More on that later…

The list from top to bottom:

• Chris Sanders Sketchbook (signed) 225/750
• “Derekmonster Annual 2006” Derek Thompson (signed and pic)
• “Rod Racer Sketchbook” Toby Cypress (signed)
• “The Art of Animal Character Design (Little Brother Edition)” David Colman (signed)
• “Blind Faith Bonus Sketchbook” Vaughn Ross (signed)
• “The Age of S & M” Steve Purcell (signed and pic)
• “The Waywoard Traveller Sketchbook” Louie Del Carmen (signed and small pic)
• “‘Cano Scribbles” Octavio E. Rodriguez
• Frank Espinosa Sketchbook (signed and pic)
• “Bits & Pieces Vol 2” John Nevarez
• “Art Blog” Bruno Werneck (signed)
• “The Uninvited” written by Del Stone, illustrated by Jon Foster (signed), story by Dave Dorman (signed)
• “Dave Dorman’s Rail” written by Del Stone, story and illustrated by Dave Dorman (signed)
• “Unmentionables (part 1)” written by Michele Harrell (signed), art by Dan Scanlon (signed)
• “The Tourist” written by Brian Wood, art by Toby Cypress (signed)
• “Bizarro and Other Strange Manifestations of the Art of Dan Piraro” (signed and pic)
• “The Alex Toth Doodle Book” by Alex Toth & John Hitchcock
• “The Amazing Joy Buzzards” (Vol 1 trade) written by Mark Smith (signed), art by Dan Hipp (signed)
• “LA <> SF” by Christian Schellewald
• “Mariachi Samurai” Jose Lopez (signed) 754/1000
• “Massive Swerve” (plus DVD!) Robert Valley (signed)
• “Grande Finale Artworks” Ashley Wood (blog) (signed)
• “Steven Silver‘s Sketchbook” (signed and pic)

I threw my filmography, and gameography onto my bio page. What a pain in the keister. It’s all my fault. I wanted to have fancy table formatting, and man was it wonky to build. I should say that WordPress’ html work-flow has much to be desired. I do like how it converts the html it doesn’t like to code it does like. I don’t like the fact that if the conversion really borks the page, you can’t undo. I had to rebuild my tables twice. Perhaps there’s something I’m missing.

There’s always something I’m missing.

At least I’m done with that page for awhile. Good riddance – on to more important things.

I just sent off the first draft treatment for 1 of 3 treatments I’m working on. Phew! 1940 words in 5 days. Might not sound like much, but I wrote it all during my morning writing regiment – about 1.5 hours a day.

Working out the structure and the 14 scenes came very easily for some reason. I usually have to really pour some brain power into it. It helped that the client loved the direction I was going in when he read through my early drops. Smooth sailing.

It turned out nice, I believe. Hopefully, more later.

Next week I’m onto another treatment, different genre, subject and tone. I have some reading homework this weekend.