Jon Pinto

I first met Nelson outside the library on the Ringling campus early in my sophomore year. My roommate Alberto introduced me to him. I don't really know why I remember that. I can't say we were friends in the true sense of the word back in college. We were always friendly to one another but our paths never crossed much in our major classes. I knew he could draw and I knew he could paint. I envied his natural talent in drawing the human form and his mastery of sketching on location. Like me, he was always looking for new ways to express himself and try new things in the classroom. I am sure some of it was being creative due to lack of funds for real supplies! I vividly recall him bringing in a wall to figure painting class in our junior year. A FREAKIN' WALL!!

Right after graduation we were both hired by Funnybone in Connecticut along with another handful of classmates. Something went wrong with his living arrangements so I invited him to crash in my apartment for a time. Th…

I probably should have been too old to watch Inspector Gadget when it was first on TV. But I did watch it, and I had to keep it a guilty pleasure and didn't reveal to anyone that I watched it until my friend Rob told me he watched it. Now I have no qualms about admitting my love of cartoons and toys and anything else geek related. I came out of the geek closet many years ago.

I have not seen Gadget in a long time. I try to forget the live action movies and I have not seen the direct to DVD offerings. I am curious tho. I came across the intrepid Inspector in my iPhone app store! They had a free game and I downloaded it. The next thing I knew I was drawing Gadget! Well,......... sort of.

I was waiting on feedback on a project at work one day and I had been curious to explore an aspect of Illustrator I had not used before. The week before I needed to revise some art that was vector based and instead of making a jpeg and drawing in Photoshop or on a printout, I drew directly in Illust…

Y'know, I just thought, as I finished typing the title of this entry, that it sounds like a reference to Spinal Tap. Alas, it is not. It's the card that Joe wanted for his birthday this year. He wanted himself as the 11th Doctor and he wanted a dalek as well. You can see the dalek as the looming shadow that Joe is horrified at. The entire dalek was only visable on the back of the invite that I am not posting here. Sorry. This was, obviously, really fun for me to do and I got to explore a bit more of the look I gave our last Christmas card as well. I was happy with the result and Mindy and Joe liked it too.




...and just for fun, here are the reference photos that I took of Joe.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOSEPH!!!!!!!