There is a Reason they call it a DEADLINE Well, my mid-term grading is finished and once again the biggest cause of failure is missed deadlines. This is not just in school; this is all through the animation and film world. People just don`t understand the concept. People have been cutting them too much slack all through school. They think a good excuse is all that is needed to buy them more time.

I like to tell my students this story that I got from my friend and mentor the late Tex Blaisdell, the man of a thousand styles. Tex could copy any artist`s style from Orphan Annie to Prince Valiant to Rube Goldberg all of which he ghosted at one time or another.

For a long time he was the assistant to Stan Drake on the daily strip Heart of Julia Jones. The thing about a daily newspaper comic stripe is that you can not miss deadlines. There is a blank hole in the funnies and a lot of other stripes dying to fill your space.

So when Stan Drake went on vacation or when he came back from vacation he would have to get ahead or catch up. Any time off had to be paid for with a lot of work.

Stan had a trick he would do with deadlines. His wife would fix him foot-baths of hot water and ice water and he would move his feet from one to the other to keep himself awake at the drawing board while he ground out one stripe after another.

One time he was 48 hours into this hell of deadline doom and he collapses at his drawing board and starts bleeding at the nose. Stan`s wife quickly calls the editor to tell him about this physical breakdown and the editor says: He didn`t bleed on the originals did he?

In my book, the most important thing for an art teacher to do is to set deadlines and stick to them. A medium level talent with a master`s dedication to deadline goes much farther than a genius that thinks talent buys them the right to take their time. So when my students come up to me with an excuse I always say: He didn`t bleed on the originals did he?  ¶ 10:39 AM