About brainwagon...

The name "brainwagon.org" came after a discussion I had with former Pixar colleague Tom Lokovic. He had registered the domain called monkeyspeak (still around, incidently) and I thought the name was great. I asked him how he came up with it. It was still the early days of individuals registering domain names, but many obvious and easy ones had already been staked out. His reply was entirely brief and quite useful. "I just took two common words and jammed them together." By the time another 15 minutes had gone by, where I briefly considered various works with "K" sounds (which are naturally funny) I had stumbled into "brainwagon". Hence, my long use of that name as my personal blogging and web presence on the Internet, as well as several logins on social media sites.

I've had a bunch of fun playing around with "brainwagon" as a theme.

Back in 2011, I read about word squares and decided to try to write a program to try to find them based upon the brainwagon theme. Length 10 squares are effectively impossible (not quite, read the Wikipedia article) but I thought that two five letter squares might be worthwhile. Using the streamlined 12dict which has mostly common words, I came up with this pleasing design, with some words (IRATE, OVOID, and NERDY) which apply to me rather well.

Over the years, I've used a number of different avatars to represent the website.

Some I have attempted myself. Using some principles of cartooning that I read from some book I have long since misplaced (I believe it was Cartoon Cool: How to Draw New Retro-Style Characters) I tried to do this simple self portrait. I didn't use it very much, as it is largely devoid of character, and it pales compared to what is to come.

One of the most flattering was gifted to me by the great artist and director Domee Shi who I had the honor of working for during the production of her short film Bao as well as her film Turning Red. During production, I celebrated my 30th "Pixar Anniversary", and she drew this caricature of me on a poster which the crew signed, which was enormously flattering. It remains one of my most cherished gifts from my time at Pixar, especially since it would prove to be the last major milestone.

Perhaps the most successful and pervasive was the gentleman that I've begun to refer to as "blue mark". The great artist and graphic illustrator Len Peralta at the time was accepting (inexpensive) commissions via a project that he called "Monsters by Mail", and was doing zombie art at the time. I sent him a vague request for something along the theme "the brain wagon", and he sent back the original artwork that I've used since, as well as a Youtube video of him actually drawing and painting it.