Smore Arrow

Just couple of my drawings more from Arrow (courtesy of the James as well ) . Zombie (was designed by Wendy) and Arrow about to punch the zombie in the face.

Something ... fishy.

Got these from James McC, thanks James . Ears are burning apparently :) I did some tags for this thing years ago. It is the first and only time I had been accused of being a pornographer . Standards and Practice , the reichstag censorship unit that used to oppress and remove all intelligence from TV saw this promo I did of this sexy FISH and rejected it, saying her buttocks movement was too suggestive. So they had the studio remove her hip sway completely . I had nothing to do with it and was insulted they even suggested it. A pornographer, ME ???? Oh, and it is too bad they were looking at her buttocks because had they looked at her hand they would have noticed the way she was stroking the F. Too late now.

Graham Falk

Enough of my crappola. It is a Sunday night and while going through "the box" I came across a pile of drawings I really love. Some of you may know Graham Falk, some of you may not but you might have seen some of his work like Untalkative Bunny. A quiet and kind person humor springs from his fingertips at will. I have a rather large collection I will post from time to time but I thought this was a good first start. This he did many many years ago and is kind of legendary among animators . It's called "The Seven Ages of an Animator".

I can't help it, I have to post more Grahams. This is Graham looking over Dave Netherys shoulder in shock at his brilliance . The thing to note is Graham drew himself looking kind of old here, he was only in his 20's but he was trying to make the point there were all these talented youngsters . He was fascinated by other artists and in awe of talent and always felt he was somehow behind. Falk has this unique gift that is incomparable.

Ok , last one for today, it would be easy to post twenty more. Of special interest are the Uncle Limbo's or the Tea Bag experiments (yes that is correct, tea bags). Graham collected things he found of interest. Occasionally I would toss bad drawings away in the trash and one day I found some (what I consider bad drawings of mine at his desk). I said " For gods sake don't take the bad ones Graham" ! He took it to heart and drew this "The Animators right to Privacy " declaration. Drawing himself as this disgusting rat clutching his heart and swearing on the holy bible. Yeah he turned it around on me and now I felt bad for saying anything. I love the rat, it's so filthy looking.


Ok, just a few more and I can stop. Uncle Limbo's Pal .



Graham was always trying stuff. I think he heard about using teabags as media ( you thought it was another kind of teabag, no) Some dogs colored with teabags.


Ok and the very last one. People would compliment him on his cartoons but this was his response. Typical Graham.



More from the king of cartoons. Dog Boots.

High on Suess

Ok, this is from development I did for the N . Few people know that Green Ham, The Cat In the Hat and the Grinch were on the table there to do long, long, long before Opie even thought of it. It led to a trailer I got to animate for The Grinch. Worth a peak. These were trying to translate the books directly.

Stupid Production Cartoons.

Those of you who know us know Wendy animation directed/designed the Ewoks series at N with Charlie Bonifascio. I was originally going to do the animated opening (Clive and I boarded it ) but they ran out of money and decided to cut the opening from the series. During her time running it I taunted her mercilessly , it is where she got the nickname Wendor from Endor , close friends still call her that. Anyway I was always doing crappy cartons about it. Here's one. Awful , I know.

Me and my .....

Arrow. When Kroyers were doing the Arrow trailer ,the worlds most famous never seen animation trailer, we were all submitting designs. I found this among my Arrow submissions , scanned it and dumped some tones on it. It's not the final but it's in that vein ( I have a bunch of these). Later if I can gather them altogether I have my layout/storyboards from it. Pretty much all the scenes Wendy and I worked on I did the set ups for from the boards they sent. Was fun working on the trailer.

The Murder of Puffy. A Confession.

Back on Rock and Rule they had this idea to give Mok a dog. The dog was to be in the sequence where Mok is sending the boys off all drugged up and lobotomized at the bus station. It was to be an insane purebred named Puffy .To counterpoint Moks droll and quiet self confidence Puffy was to be subtext of what Mok was underneath , insane. I loved the initial design (Robins) and actually animated a couple scenes of him but it quickly became apparent that the dog was not only distracting but actually STEALING the audience attention so you would get to the end an only remember that there was this totally f'd up dog hopping all over. I begged Clive to let me drop it. not asked, begged. He finally agreed out of being harassed I think. So there you go, it's my fault. Totally mine, I killed Puffy.

Obelix on drugs !

Ob gets slipped drugs in a peace pipe. He inhales the entire pipe and passes out. The waking scene he originally exhaled what he had sucked in the night before but in the end they copped out and added a burp to my animation. Still most likely the only time he was totally stoned though he did not enjoy it.

Model sheets on speed.

I boarded this section of this Asterix film and I picked Chris Sauve in Ottawa to animate it. We never had a design so Uderzo went into his drawer of drawings and sent us a single drawing to run by. Not quite an animation model so I did a superfast rotation and sent it with the scenes. Chris is brilliant and he did a great job. Sadly in final check at the main studio they screwed up the paint separations still the animation turned out excellent.

Did you just call me "broad " ??????

One of the three Asterix features I worked on. The violence about to begin. James clean up again.

Thrashing.

From a sports film I did for the talented Dave Thrasher years ago. I have no idea what it looks like now.

A Croc and a poptart.

This is from the box of memories in honor of Open Season and those who have dangerous pets. A scribble of a kid giving a croc a poptart. I think it was draw like somebody else day.

Success or failure ? Would you like one lump or two ?

Every once in a while you do something you like and the vehicle it is in bombs mightily. Then again you do something you hated and it gets adored . It's that twisty set of values called "audience taste ". Fucile and I went to the Disney archives years ago and looked at Sleeping Beauty drawings. What strikes me now is I didn't care what film those drawings were in, I lusted for them. SB is not one of my favorite Disney films, not by a long shot because I don't think it is their best storytelling. Frankly, halfway through I get kind of bored. Oddly , Dumbo/Lady and the Tramp are absolutely my faves . Why ? A lot of the wiggly drawing in Dumbo and it was not wacked by the perfectionism that ended up Disney yet it still moves me more than any other . Leading to the conclusion that art may be great for arts sake but never for film. This character was voiced by the brilliant Peter OToole. Some totally rough thumbnails.

From the suckomatic...

A commercial I did for Quik, the liquid sugar drink that makes kids fat. I think there were birds flying around his head, he gets crushed by something, I can't remember. The most powerful and brilliant James McCrimmon clean up.

Reflections of a berry.

I found this drawing, I think kind of a rebellion from drawing cute Strawberry Shortcake for a long time :) Written on it was this:
"From my desk came a smell that I could only guess was a bunch of rotten berries. Sweet , penetrating and overpowering. Then in a blink she was there ! Pink death and her horrible cat Cujo !"

HB

Just a drawing from Hunchback . Though the majority of what I did was Esmeralda under Tony Fucile I did work with Russ on some Phoebus and his horsie :) . Found a ton of these.

Early Man

When I first arrived at Curious George they had a whole different take on what the Man in the Yellow Hat should look like. There was already a design they had in mind. There were no boots, no polka dot tie, the pants had wide flares and he was more humanistic, more fatherly . The catch word from upper management was "contemporary" . In other words, updated, more manly. It was a red herring that would go for about a year and torture the art director Yarrow and designers Shannon and Shane . I was trying to get it to lean/tweak towards the heavily triangular broad shouldered original so I Xed the flares . I tried to get it as some kind of compromise that at least had the subtext of TMWTYH in the baggie pants cinching towards the feet . This is a combo drawing of mine , the amazing Shannon Tindles going over it , a Jun mouth and Lieves clean up :) George is much larger in this and would become smaller and cuter. When Matt came on it he was totally down with the boots the tie and everything the art director , designers and I wanted so within the first month Ted was totally redone and finished. End of story.

Something you haven't seen before.

Long ago , some short time after WW2 I worked on a film called , Drats .... or was it Ring of Power... er or oh yeah , Rock and Rule. I worked under one of my favorite leads, Robin Budd. Robin was the kind of lead you loved because when they were developing the new costumes (he was working on the blimp sequence for that, I think I got to do the final head/hair rotation for that too or one of them ) he would send me off to do some experimental things. This was a long test piece (this is only a little fragment) of Mok playing at the machine. It was never used but you will notice he has just these square glasses on (he ended up with headphones as I remember) . Not much too it but worth a peek I think.





Oh yeah, I was 23 and this was my first feature :) I had just come off doing Fred Flinstone and Scooby Doo.

Groooovy

I'm going through some old stuff and I come across these photo's I took at age ten . Like any ten year old kid I thought the vehicles were interesting. Now looking at them I realize it's the time capsule and the people are fascinating. An odd thing to notice is nearly all of them have their hands in their pockets and it's a warm day in Canada.

Teds

During a feature you produce a lot of drawings besides your own ranging from thumb nails to just correcting staging . Here is some of them . I believe it's just from the first month or so and it isn't all of them, just the ones I had copies from. None of these are from my scenes, those drawings I don't have. On LTBIA we had time to pose most every scene so there were drawings to set up each but time was too short for this so everything was as you go.

Happy B day to youuuuu !

Part of a card I did for Toms birthday ( the head of Universal animation, hence the man and George ) . He bought this new car and the timing belt went south one day and they charged him thousands. I insisted he do a web search because it was too weird to be a normal event. So guess what , it turned out it was a factory flaw. He told them he found it was and they gave him a lot of his money back so he was happy. Life is good when you can make fun of your bosses though. Toms a good sport (that's a VW motor in a Jag).

The Insanity of Happiness.

This is just a pre Cintiq test piece, very rough, I did for a hobby shop in my hood (hehehehee ! They said hood ) . Ok don't make like you haven't done stuff like this. For those new to the commercial world just remember, no matter how much the character has to spend they are always INSANELY HAPPY! I know I am when I spend money.

More junk !

Wendy took over babybun.com but before that this was going to be the page intro . Done with a trackball (like drawing with your feet ) before I got my beloved Cintiq. Crappy I know but ... it cost you nothing. Just drink and forget.

3D for fun an profit.

This is one of six or seven 3D toys I'm playing with. I find it winds me down after I have been doing a lot of work. You can probably guess what this is. I only have an hour in but it kind of is starting to look ok. This is because I am too lazy to scan stuff. :) I only do one half so I can splt it an get perfect symmetry. Yes, lazy. To me 3D is like knitting, kind of something that zones you out.

LIS

Somewhere on a lonely planet our intrepid space family Robinson struggles to survive , forever Lost In Space . So what was the first thing I built for myself in 3D ? I have a fully working 16 inch version in my living room that I built during Ferngully . The Jupiter 2, the robot B9 and Robby were all from the brilliant mind of Robert Kinoshita.

http://jupiter2.freeyellow.com/kinoshita/knoshita.htm

The Resistance !

Well actually , it's just a cow refusing to be milked . Somewhere deep inside there is a deep meaning. Was going to be a painting but I got sidetracked. Such is life.

Don't ask, I dunno.

Ha, it is what it is, whatever.... it is. Big dog dragging a car with a boy riding. Hmmm.

No , the misery isn't over yet.

Oh yeah you remember when people would invite you over to see slide shows of their vacations ? You would sit in the dark and as they droned in a monotone you would fight the incredible urge to sleep . Where even if they were your dearest freinds one more shot of a cliff side would make you grab that olive fork and poke your own eyes out . Well, it's that time again. Years ago I was asked to work on this book for a lovely woman. Though I was really busy I liked the story and decided to help her by doing some sketches ( I actually got a freind of mine to do the final artwork later ). These are a few of those, really ruff and kind of unfinished.

More LTBIA

A scene I did on LTBIA. It's weird drawing Sam upside down so I actually drew him rightside up first . Does that make sense ? I'm a huge Jones fan and got to meet him several times at Warners and once at DreamWorks. He and Maurice Noble were the nicest of people.

Xmas "cards".

Cards as in , funny people , you know ... oh never mind. Years ago , long before I ever saw a computer , every Christmas , whether you were freind or foe, as long as you knew us you got the inevitable card. These cards were originally just xeroxes of a black line drawing , pantone marker bleed through with prisma color on the front to enhance highlights and tones. Doing 25 or more of them was cool cause you got so high from the pantone markers.

Later this evolved into one card that was color xeroxed (REALLY BADLY ) . It took a long while for the color xerox shops to figure out how to do this properly. Eventually they would but by that time Photoshop was out and the color xerox business was without pity killed. God I hate evolution. Our cards first started out with bears but later I began doing buns. I love buns, no secret there. Here is one of the cards from when dinosaurs ruled the earth , bread was ten cents a loaf and humans began to walk upright.

Duck in Black

Just a cartoon I did for Kathleen during LTBIA. Bugs reflecting and Daffy flashing himself to get away from having to hear pathetic sentiment :)

Solid Ted

For those who haven't seen it the Ted Maquette :)