This past weekend Steve and I flew back to Orlando to visit my little brother Ronnie, his wife and our nephew S. We hadn't been able to visit them before now and wanted to meet little S who's almost 2 now! He's a little cutie-pie and looks a lot like my brother. It was a short visit but S was a super friendly little guy and warmed to Steve and I pretty quickly. That made it such fun for us. On Saturday my brother had to do a quick book-signing event at the local Barnes & Noble. Here he is drawing for the children.
My brother's an animator. He used to work for Disney but when they shut down their Orlando Animation Department he did a lot of freelance book illustrations. This one, The Adventures of Lady, was done via Project Firefly Animation Studios. He illustrated the pictures and another past Disney employee "painted" them with Photoshop. I think if you look his name up in Amazon, a lot of his previous Disney board books come up. The newer ones don't list the artists by name anymore. They just say Disney Art Department or something like that.
It's interesting that both my brother and I ended up being artists/designers. We definitely got it from our dad who really wanted to be an architect when he was younger. I remember when he wanted to build a crew cab dually '56 Ford truck. Before he did anything with the actual trucks, he had me buy two models so that he could build it that way first. He's very visual and has a picture in his mind every time he looks at a '56 truck. And his mom, my grandmother, liked to paint, sew, and make porcelain dolls when she was a few years younger. I guess it runs in the family. :-)
