Sucking “UP”

A week or two ago I attended the annual meeting of my chapter of the National Cartoonists Society, which featured a bevy of guest speakers, panels and other great presentations. The featured speaker was Josh Cooley, who was co-sponsored by our chapter and the Kaneko art center. Josh is a story artist at Pixar who did a lot of work on “Cars”, “Ratatouille”, “UP” and the forthcoming “Cars 2”, and he did both a presentation of this work and conducted a workshop on “story art”… which is sort of like storyboarding but in Pixar’s case is a lot more central to the creation of the film. Josh is a great talent, an excellent speaker and a terrific guy.

After the weekend Josh and I exchanged emails and agreed to do a swap of original drawings (sucker!). Above is what I did for him, based on his gag idea. I got an email from him the other day saying he had received it, and that once he stops retching he’ll draw something for me in return. I am looking forward to getting an original Josh Cooley drawing in the mail whenever he has some down time from working on Oscar-winning blockbuster films (!!). Seriously, what an awesome place to work.

You have to love who you get a chance to meet in this profession!