TOTAL D

The Pixar Brave Rotation

2011-11-29T18:01:00.001-08:00

This rotation was my end of my weeks on Brave. I had one up previously but that was just a rough for this final that I sent . Amazing what you can forget in 5 years. I was sure there was a final somewhere and tonight I came across it accidentally. Now it looks just like her. And some additional roughs never used.

Brave

2011-11-16T12:34:00.000-08:00

I waited 3 years to post these. Now Brave is coming out.

Years ago I spent a single week doing some expression work for Pixar long distance. I had just had a serious operation and the story was brand new so I had no script. I tried fast so after a week I begged off. Worth a peek since it is coming out this week.

I had been working off Carters sketches to that point and then I got Steve Pilchers painting of the lead character. I loved it so much I took it and did a quick rotation before I left the project. Now looking at it I see a bit of the Queen from Prince of Egypt in it. It was only a week but I realized I didn't know anything about the character so I made he decision to leave

Oh god, shades of the past.

2011-08-12T14:39:00.000-07:00

We were finishing Rock and Rule at Nelvana n 81 and Robin Budd, out of the kindness of his heart gave me these , the final Mok death scenes to do. He did the very last tiny one ( I think he wanted to do the very last scene and he did) and I did the 3 previous. He had so much stuff to do. And so imagine my surprise bt Nelvana had my drawings up.

http://nelvanaarteditions.com/media/g/productioncell/default.aspx?tgs=Animator:%20robin%20budd

It's under Robins name but we know who did them. These last scenes were done on the porch at 159 Roncesvalles Avenue. In the hot sun. Wendy Perdue had just finished and she as a favor did the clean up. The best clean up I'h had done the entire film.

2010-08-22T19:38:00.001-07:00

A design for a group I belong to.

SUPERMAN TO SUPERWOMAN

2010-07-14T14:17:00.000-07:00

A rough from my faux Superman cover. It's in color now but I have to take a few hours to tweak it.

Doodlez

2010-05-13T01:01:00.000-07:00

I have a cold but I have to start warming up for a commercial next week. A really crappy doodle between my nose running and such.

Character Layout

2010-04-10T00:18:00.000-07:00

Just more stuff.

2010-04-03T01:55:00.000-07:00

Design Rotation.

2010-04-01T03:50:00.000-07:00

I went to CalArts the other day and I wasn't able to draw for them in that particular classroom so I am making these video's. I don't like drawing at a severe angle , I need a desk so I shot myself working out this design for Wendy's film on the Cintiq. Next I will film how I work out the acting and how I break it down.

You are never far.

2009-11-09T04:21:00.000-08:00

I thought I would stick these early roughs up. For the Family Guy Road to the Multiverse we threw in ideas even before we got the job. I took it as being more Sleeping Beauty but the director Greg really wanted to keep the cartoon proportion. My first pass at Brian with Tony Pulham's color and BG. A more Fox and the Hound version of Brian then I started messing with a Baby Weems version of Stewie ( in the same run for "Look how gayly we run "). A Briar Rose Lois with a Prince Phillip Peter. The big Stewie was a month before we got the final design but other than his larger final head proportion is almost exactly what we used.

A wonderful day for pie !

2009-09-29T02:36:00.001-07:00

As some of you might know this was the project a finished a couple months back. It was the Disney sequence for Seth MAcFarlanes Family Guy. Multiple characters, low budget and limited time but that was offset by having a good company as my liaison ( Mainstreet Pictures ) and a terrific art director Tony Pulham. Because of cost the cleanup was sent overseas so while not perfect most survived. Not bad considering this is not the kind of work they do.

Nap time !

2009-06-15T11:50:00.000-07:00

In honor of the end of our 3 month project I decided to make a clock , something that reflected my exhaustion.

2009-02-07T04:50:00.000-08:00

I did this nerdgirl for my nerd group.

Girls of Different Sizes

2009-01-01T12:54:00.000-08:00

A rough sketch I did one morning in TO . It was so cold ! I will tie it down more.

Doodlin

2008-11-05T01:51:00.001-08:00

A World Without Hero's

2008-09-12T02:51:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite comics when I was young was the Green Arrow / Green Lantern "Snowbirds Don't Fly " set that Neal Adams did with Dennis O'Neil in 1971. DC comics did the impossible, they matched real issues with superhero's.

I loved it because , I mean how many times can you have these characters fight the same formula villains . It was a huge milestone to me and one of the few comics that felt honest. I wish these guys would do it again so ....

Quentin Tarantino said in Kill Bill that Superman was our modern mythology . That Superman uses Clark Kent as a critique of humanity and that Kent is a dope because Superman sees us as weak and cowardly. So to me Superman is the American ideal , our Jesus in a way . "Truth , Justice and the American way ". There is such a contrast in our "mythology ideals " and our actions. I did a rough a couple days back because I wondered if Superman was real how angry he would be over what we have done.

"T'WAS BEAUTY KILLED THE BEAST "

Remember when Eisner refused to leave Disney and Roy had to take him down like King Kong ? Yeah thats the Disney Animation building.

Some sketches for a graphic novel song sequence I was doing. It probably wont make sense without the words .

Some quick costume scribbles .

Ok, many of you have seen Jamie Hewlett's incredible version of the Monkey King. He is producing a stage play and has done an incredible Gorillaz style animated trailer. Well hard to believe but in 2003 Dave Smith came up with doing the Monkey King himself and asked for some character sketches. While nowhere as good as Jamies these were my first shot.

My version of Rupert Murdoch , puppet master ! Media dictator Rupert hires insane attack dogs like the Michelle Malkin to run propaganda sites like Hot Air Dot Com . This peice only makes sense if you have seen hotairs own graphic .

1979 ? And here we are at the beginning of my career ( well pre-career ) . My first color film done on acetate with a grease pencil. The bg is a color card.

Stone Age 3D

2008-06-10T06:11:00.000-07:00

Before it became the "soup de jour" I had planned a film in 3D . I had figured that I could do it by matting and layering 3D elements in After Effects ( I think it was like version 2 or 3 ) I modeled in precambrian Hash for Mac and imported the DFX files into a program called Specular3D (a freebee to do logo animation as I remember) . I got some really terrific effects and it actually could do some simple animations layered in. I lost some really wonderful tests in a drive crash ( ah the days of Seagate and their ultra expensive and deliciously unreliable 10,000 rpm drives ) . All lost like teardrops in the rain ....... except ..... I found one jpeg extracted from the original mov . This ship is tumbling away from this Super Nova of a explosion after some ridiculous and goofy thing happens in their lab, I really don't remember the story but I'm sure it was melodramatic and overblown. I'm like that. To ghosts of the past that can never live again.

Mr Dippity

2008-06-09T04:08:00.000-07:00

Years ago when we first got here, in the few moments Wendy and I had between jobs , we put together a one minute short. She boarded and laid it out with some minor input from me , I cut the reel together , came up with the color models and bg styling . Wendy animated half of it in her off hours waiting for me to get to design and animate the male character but I got so busy I never got back to it . It's a nonsense film with no deep message or hidden meaning beyond the mystery of man confused by woman. I found the reel again and thought it was just as charming as it was when we first did it so I really should finish it so here I go. It won't be in the "new hip " style but it will be fun. I just finished some CG animation for it and I'm doing his character layouts. The it will be like a week or 2 animating . The ruff design I finally finished.

Passing

2008-04-11T12:06:00.000-07:00

It's out there now. Andy Knight died in Paris. It's still hard to believe and I'm still trying to grasp it . Though I worked on a lot of his stuff I cannot say I knew him well. He was this super talented mystery really and I regret that . I had an apology to make I think and , I never really got to say it. Most of our working together was on long distance projects, Asterix or commercials and that is hard because you are under such terrific pressure . Even so I think he was one of the best , if not the best board artist I have ever known and I know he was just a terrific person . He did many things , directed , designed , storyboards , layout , produced and owned his amazing company Red Rover with his beautiful wife and partner Linzi . His talent was not lost with his incredible diversity , he was good at it all . Our sympathies, Wendy's and mine , to his family and his real friends .

A wonderful tribute to Andy is here at Amid And Jerry's terrific Cartoon Brew

Cartoon Brews Andy Knight Article

Fund memories follow by so many people I know like Claude Chiasson ,Robin Budd , Pascal Blais , Ian Hastings , Jamie Oliff , Greg Tiernan ,Paul Bolger , Dino Athanassiou and Kaj Pindal. And of course super animator Ken Duncan's blog on Andy , his co-worker (Asterix in Britain) .

Ken Duncans Blog about Andy

Scribblies

2008-04-11T04:17:00.000-07:00

A rough , just messing around in PS after talking with friends about female superhero's.

Entertain me !

2008-03-31T12:32:00.000-07:00

The great thing about blogging is it forces you to look at your work again. Something it's hard to do in the work a day world of animation. Some of it works , some of it doesn't but it's just nice to see what you were thinking at a given time in your life. Most of these are recent or within the last year or two. Sorry ,I'm a bit burned out on scanning.

Trust me Mr Soxs ....

Space Rangers. Done before my cintiq it was just a scribble based on some stereotypical Flash Gordon idea.

"Now hand over the X Beam ranger or your life is over".

Cell.

Ahhh , more cow. Ok this is a bit hard to understand as it was rough comic for a freind who loves cows. Trying to get cows some respect. Very loose scribbles.

Swim . Just some early PS playing with simple reflections and color.

My first CG bg test attempts . The program has a very simple light systems so I tried to keep everything as flat as possible to match the drawings I was going to use. The type was done in Elephont .

Another CG bg . This was playing with the morphing tools to create beaches and such. I was going to go in later and do a huge projected set of toners for the sand so this is just a crappy repeated texture for now.

A test sketch for a company logo.

A singer design for another project.

Buns , what else ?!

2008-03-28T16:37:00.001-07:00

Bones from the yard.

2008-03-25T00:36:00.001-07:00

Hi everybody ! Hope everything is ok . This is just more junk from the archives. The pic below is a test from a project . The design of the girl is actually one I had done for another project as a secondary character that I really liked and thought would maker a good main character. The story is about a cat who is in love with a human.

Occasionally you meet other beginning artists who are struggling with design work. One was trying to do a Batman design so I roughed this out for them.

One of the girls on my web group just loves cows. She was a away for a while but missed everyone so I did this cartoon for her.

Someone gave me this card for a "gentlemen's " club. The art on the card was really primitive ( and one part was exaggerated beyond all reasonable human ability for a woman's back to support something that heavy , guys ) . I told the person it was not really anatomical but I thought the basic pose was interesting so I did my own version of it.

A love Anarchy graphic I designed for another project.

Long before Pixars Cars I had my own version of an anthropomorphic car film ,

A female rock singer design.

A car scribble.

A drawing of the two prop girls on LTBIA . Strangley both named Lisa.

I used this for an icon for a while.

A melodramatic appeal to the moderator Roxanne on my women's group.

Horton Hears a Who !

2008-03-19T06:24:00.000-07:00

And flying monkeys too !

As some of you may know I did the Anime sequence (yes, now infamous as you either love it or hate it ) in Horton Hears A Who . Ricardo Curtis , owner of HOUSE OF COOL gave me a shout and asked me if I was interested in doing a sequence for Horton . Hmmm, work for Ricardo, one of my favorite people on the planet ? Gee , I just don't know ????? Of course silly ! And it was a lot of fun :) All the key clean up on the Anime sequence were done by the most talented and elegant woman I have ever known , Lieve Miesson . The mystical Michel Gagne did the main FX with Joey Mildenburger . Oh how I suffer !

Now just to add this , what I liked about the doing sequence was the cutting and anime stereotypes (the boards are what you see ). I'll make no stance to defend it within the Dr Suess context as I loved doing it and though I haven't seen the final it was a bold move by Blue Sky to do something unusual. The movie is doing really well and I am just delighted for them . Upon first seeing the lieca reel (b&w) that contained just a bit of the Horton 3D I was really impressed how beautifully Horton moved. Facially and physically. Quadrupeds are a bitch and they made it seem effortless. I couldn't put anything up till now because of non disclosure. The link below is for one of the flying monkey tests but until I see it I wont know what ended up in the film. Thangs change that way in film .

FLYING MONKEY CLIP

Thingies

2007-11-14T08:26:00.000-08:00

Just a drawing.

This was a to a girlpal who tortured me over my love of pigmy marmosets . She would make little flash things of women in marmoset fur swallowing live mamosets coming off a converier belt. Posting recipes for cooking marmosets anything that would upset me . I put up this sketch of furry revenge.

Just a sketch of Betty Davis I did in marker. I hate marker , it takes away your freedom to make mistakes.

A lovely friend of mine went through an operation that didn't go perfectly and so I did her this card.

Oh , this was a character named Buber , I was going to use in Produken , Train of Death. I wanted something Mickey yet not. The film involved a lot of blood and terror.

This is just anotyher throw away design for a commercial that never got used.

Tatts

2007-11-12T19:05:00.000-08:00

A girl from my group was trying to design a tattoo for herself so I gave her a hand. It's really rough and it needs to be refined but I liked it.

Furless

2007-10-23T05:17:00.001-07:00

Don't adjust your set.

2007-08-28T01:25:00.001-07:00

Lol, ok I trust you got through that, back to fricken art =)

Done!

2007-07-22T12:47:00.000-07:00

Well here we are in Sherman Oaks. 8 days of deconstructing and reconstructing. I am totally wiped out but it looks really good. New tables couches and chairs on the way.Hope to be posting soon.

We are moving !

2007-05-12T15:39:00.000-07:00

Well it seems our Burbank days are over and it is Sherman Oaks for us. For 13 years we have sat here in the worlds worst valley full of pollution, the fires , the soot , the car exhaust. Our apartment building was flipped three or four times which each speculator wanting more in rent because as you see Burbank is not rent controlled and now they want 2000 a month rental for a rat trap. I had dinner with a friend and mentioned it and she told her landlady and we got an apartment in a better building, better location , rent controlled area, right off a park in a really nice community for what we are paying now. Oops! Half our building has moved out and the cost of renovating our apartment here after we leave will destroy any profit for the owners for years to come. Dumb, very dumb. But that is real estate in America today.

This year two million home owners will go bankrupt and have their homes foreclosed on by banks/lenders that tricked them into loans or refinancing they couldn't afford . So now the apartment renters are trying to gut what is left of the American middle class and turn them into indentured slaves for the New World Order living hand to mouth. Capitalism with a capital A (for assholes) .

And all this started because Bush needed to fake the GNP so in league with the Federal Reserve (a conglomeration of banks that run America) they removed credit checks and standards for home purchases. And it worked because construction rates went up and inflated the GNP. Neocons and war mongers pointed to the numbers trying to pretend that out president isn't anything but a sock puppet. End result ? 90 % of the applicants lying about their income and getting homes without the slightest ability to repay them. A market made up of 25% speculators. Massive consumer debt and bankruptcy laws put in place to keep you paying till you are deep in the ground and buried. Who was stupid enough to believe the housing boom would never end or that a 120,000 house is actually worth 600,000 ? LOts of people. Everyone who didn't buy in should feel like a million dollars. And while we are at it how about the loan industry targeting old poor black women for personal loans . How about that for kindness ? For every poor older black lady you see on the news getting help to save their home from bastards who tricked them into poverty there are ten who just gave up and lost everything they had.

Quiet Moments

2007-04-08T03:31:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't posted much but like you all things are crazy busy . Some more of the early rough developement for MTP.

Also Googles buy out of the blogger team has consolidated it's empire and this blog is on new software. They offer it as a choice then they force you onto it so you have to have a Google account . You then find you have all these messages you didn't know you had because , well you didn't have a Google account. Arrrgggh. Sorry if I missed a bunch but blame mother Google. You will also notice your avatars might be missing because of that.

A little more of it...

2007-02-26T17:47:00.000-08:00

..... yeah.

Ok...... with that out of the way ...

2007-02-25T22:58:00.000-08:00

...... one of the rough studies for the new project MTP.

Things as they are :)

2007-02-24T15:10:00.000-08:00

Well I think this post has served it's purpose so back to just art . Thank you for the (hundred +) emails and all the phone calls. (pretty close to 2000 profile views alone in two weeks , yow ! ) The support has been ovewhelming and I really do love you all.
Thanks everyone.

D

Megan Brain

2007-02-06T02:47:00.000-08:00

Ok, shameless plug. One of my favorite sites on the web belongs to the incredible Megan Brain. Her paper sculptures are just amazing. The designs that are the basis for these sculpts are just terrific.

http://meganbrain.com/

Getting ready for launch.

2007-01-24T02:00:00.000-08:00

Ok so I have been working for the last year on this project. Hopefully to launch within a month. There are still things in the works so things are changing but I built the bgs all in 3D . Should be fun. We shall see. :)

The Circle

2007-01-11T19:57:00.000-08:00

As many of you know , Iwao died. Sad but yet still beautiful in a sense . A happier ending we should all find because as many of you know he was active to the end. I was lucky enough to get to actually work with him on my last job at Warners. You know I was so blown away I forgot to blame him for my career. Name it he did it and he was drawing right there while I talked to him. I'm sure 15 minutes after we met I blended back into the crowd like the millions of my fellow geeks. Still, it was Iwao. He talked a lot about being Milt Kahls lead key . About Milts sarcasm with him and their interesting , almost adversarial relationship. I wish I had written it all down because it was fascinating. It's sort of like seeing the martians and forgetting to turn on your camera. Oh well, he was terrific and though I didn't get to work with him directly after that he still worked on The KarateGuard as did , doing a couple scenes for Tony and Spike.

All this and Joe Barbara dying too. It's been a bad year that way. These people were so nice. Bill Hanna used to talk to me when ever I ran into him in the elevator . He was like that, relaxed and friendly. It never was a disappointment meeting these people because animation people are actually often exactly what they seem (not all , but most).

Now the pic of Scoob is not on model. I doubt any of us ever really got him on model because to be honest , the only person who could draw him right was Iwao. He was both simple and incredibly complex. Incredibly. Luckily we were guided by stock footage from greats like Irv Spence Ray Patterson and Ed Barge. They could move just about anything . This is probably the last time I will ever draw Scoob for a reason and it's fitting to draw him my way. God , it has been since 1980 that I really drew him and this is totally from memory so it joins the honored roll of the thousands of off model Scoobs . How amazing that a character that wasn't even supposed to exist (he was not in the original script) could turn out to be TV's historical champion for longevity. No small tribute to virtually the father of almost every HB character . I think Milt would have been very proud to say he worked with Iwao Takamoto. And that is fitting because who wouldn't.

BLACK TRAIN OF DEATH RETURNS!

2007-01-04T17:19:00.000-08:00

Ok, because Matt asked for it I am going to put it up again in two editions. The Maners Edition featuring the original Produken , BLACK TRAIN OF DEATH title and the child friendly happy go lucky BLACK TRAIN OF DEATH clean version.

NEW LINKS

MATT MANER MEMORIAL TRAIN OF DEATH T'S

REGULAR HAPPY GO LUCKY TRAIN OF DEATH T'S

Oh, just so you know this is a close up of the number of the train.

Send me a pic of you in your BLACK TRAIN OF DEATH T (or whining Btatty Bun Shirt and I will feature it here.

Commercial MADNESS!

2006-12-31T18:25:00.000-08:00

During your career you do a lot of things. Doing commercials is kind of interesting because while they have brutal deadlines and don't always pay great they do offer you opportunities to try some different techniques and see the effects. Powwow Worldwide ( Dave Smith ) offered me a set of three commercials for an insurance company. The first one was just around a week to in actual animation production , the rest ended up around a week and a half.

The interesting part of it was we had another artist who would go over my drawings an put an ink line to it. So basically I could animate the way I wanted and it would be put through that filter, dropping whatever detail they felt they didn't need . She would straight ahead the ink line so it would be whatever came from that. The first one was fun because I got to do a few set ups. Wendy did a scene as did John Williamson (the car backing up ) .

The second was interesting because it had some weird ideas to it. This pic kind of shows the kind of translation. Oh yeah the jacket lines were dropped and they had me make the online phone guy look more threatening and evil. Anyway the first two went quick and everything got approved. Fast fast jobs.

The last one I have to show because something funny happened. It was going to be the one with the most time and all of a sudden the ad agency decided they wanted to do the board. The concept was .... well odd. It was called "Cover you ASSets". Get it, ASS, cover your ASSets. Uhuh, this was going to be a weird one. On top of that the characters were male and female and they were .... uh .... naked. Oh boy, nudity, and crude humor in one job. How fun !

Ok, so the agency took ten days to come up with the boards (eating a week off our schedule and leaving me just 6 days to animate it. Not horrible but it's 25 seconds. Long shot , cut in, cut out , cut in , cut out, cut in. Honestly, that was like something anybody could have scribbled out in a half hour. Also , the boards weren't in any way reflective of the designs being used . They were the most cartoon proportion and indecipherable movements . Totally confusing. So ok, I do it and I have just days before I start LTBIA . Next I hear they want a scene change , ok so I go in ( like a week later, they were dragging their feet ) and the ad exec gives me this big long spiel on what he wants for this little scene redo. I began to get confused because , well what he was asking for was a lot longer than they had time for. I asked him to act it out and we would time it . But the way he acted it out was 10 seconds or so. I was honest and said "this will gut the center and you will have to lose some other scenes to do it". They weren't happy with that .My problem was that I had no time now and had to start on LTBIA in like 4 days. So we hear nothing, I get paid in full ( Powwow works like that because they are very specific with clients beforehand about what's being done so there are no loop holes). I hear nothing and so off I go to LTBIA and I'm done.

So, like 8 months later it airs, they apparently got someone else to do the revision only, just as I said, they had to lose a couple of the scenes around the middle ( yes , I think that they had a block and tried to make their ideas work by torturing another company, good , as long as it wasn't me ). Not that my animation was great but , this was really pretty stiff. It still didn't do what they wanted . At least they got finished ...... nearly a year later. I feel sorry for who ever they got to do it , I have no doubt they made it a bad time and rode them around like a prize pony. My scenes are at the beginning and end but .... hmmm. It's actually funny but for the wrong reasons. Life huh.

Anyway , just for fun here is the original pencil for "Cover your ASSets". Most likely the strangest concept for a commercial I've ever worked on (oh well there was these two Shreddies torturing a small boy, Michel Gagne was my inbetweener on that one and always reminds me of it) . Oh ignore the contract, that was just rough placement as it was to be CG'ed in later. Hmm.

ASSets

Oh , please notice they have wedding rings on, this makes them being completely naked A-OK !

Happy B day to youuuuu !

2006-12-31T15:26:00.000-08:00

Just a character I did for a Callies birthday card =)

Logo

2006-12-29T10:55:00.000-08:00

A company logo I just did for my friend Pam's company Roadkill . It doesn't have the rest of the text, address and stuff but I liked the idea. Actually, I had a blood spattered road but, she thought it was a bit much =) . Ok , well yeah I guess stores might question that. I enjoy doing this stuff because we never get to work with color, do we. S'fun.

BRATTY BUN !

2006-12-27T03:40:00.000-08:00

Ok, I know I know, a train of death might not be your style so I decided to do a new drawing based on my own character . I had done a ruff for this last december but never got around to doing a final till today. Yeah, I can still draw a little =)

Its a different shop and more for women and kids because I know none of you macho male artists would dare to wear a little pink bunny. Not that you would admit to :=) Back to animation after this .

BRATTY BUNS HERE ! TOTALLY BUNS

http://www.cafepress.com/totallybuns

Bits

2006-12-25T13:01:00.000-08:00

More ...... um .... crap. Ok, this is a smattering of random scenes, some were either in my old reel but got dumped long ago or never made it in at all. From low budget to SUPER LOW budget =). I thought it would be good to include a few that were actually here on blog like the Rover/Asterix scenes so the drawings will now actually make a little more sense. Warning, it's 7 and half minutes long and an mp4.

Click the link to see the mov. It is a step down for size so it may not play properly at the right frame rate . Best to just pause it while it loads then get it over with quick. All the scene captures from below are from this one clip.

BITS

Had to reupload. I think it got corrupted . Hmmmmm.

So, Rover, then a bit of tin soldier from Nutcracker. I don't think many people saw that film and while I only was there a few months I both animated and posed (mostly the end sequence where the mouse king attacks Clara, the finals of my Claras were done by the brilliant Chris Sauve, I'll talk about him more later ) . The voice is Peter OToole and the mumbling he is doing is something he said was a typical British military officer standard. I love when actors do that , it's so much better than a perfectly clean voice track. You can hang things on it.

A couple scenes from Rocka Doodle. Yeah I know you haven't seen that but they were there . My last film with Bluth ( I did Land and ll Dogs) and I left early because my mom got sick and I went to Disney right after. Loved working with Pomeroy, such a positive person , as many people discovered working on George awesome person to work with. I think he is on the Simpsons movie now. It was funny watching him act out the Chanticlar dancing , he actually is quite good. He had the Elvis thing down.

Ok, the green flying superhero, Weedman. Lol, oh you are thinking weed as in pot right ? No, real weeds and dandelions. Ok , it was a commercial I did (oh, and it's grease pencil on cell by the way, try that some time if you want to go insane, (this is why I had assistants with beautiful line ) and I thought it was weird so there it is. Obviously I was going through a wipe drawing phase ( known as the 3 drawing blur ) . Really tacky in grease pencil , aggh. Ha, enjoy the little transformer thing at the end. Yes , they were big then and the client ..... wanted .... kid appeal ? Oh god, I have no idea. None. Zip , zilch, nada. Whatever it will be like one of life's great mysteries like UFO's. Commercials are viciously fast and this was no exception. I think it was like the very first one I ever did. Yeah it i really hard to look back , I think I had to do it in week.

A couple scenes from the Grinch promo I did (no sound) . Sorry folks , that is all I could find,I think the original is on U-matic , somewhere. I am pretty sure I coped out on the final scene too and didn't take it far enough but I have no way of telling , live and learn. The premise was about just how long the Grinch could maintain his new found love of humanity with all the awful things that happen to us every day. Oh , what you think this is a terrible idea to do to a classic AGAIN ? Oh Bambi 7 is ok though =) You ain't seen nothin hunny buns. Working commercially is the test of just how much of that you can take. Anyway, I tried to stay as close to the original drawing wise as I could. Ok, the birds suck because they aren't Suess like. It was a test so, you get to do everything wrong there. I think the Grinch translated well for not having been copying the Jones/Karloff thing (though if I'd had a chance I would have loved doing that design, Jones was brilliant ) .

Next one you saw the rotation on the house mom earlier, I did his out of my house for Pascal Blais in Montreal. Roger rabbit was big so it kind of has that Benny the Cab thing going. I'm not including every scene I did just to keep this all small or er ,... smaller.

A little All Dogs, I did a lot of Charlie walking ( read A LOT 0 WALKING ) and while the crowds were roto based (thank god) the doggies weren't. My only secret for animating quadruped is do the front legs first, everything else follows ,mine suck but they got passed so shut up ok. Love the coat scene (I called it the chest bursting Alien scene) , was both painful and fun. You can hurt your brain trying to figue it out threee characters riding each other. Don't belie me ? Go on, try it ! Dan K did the layouts for that section and kept telling me to get Charlies mouth open wider for this one vowel . During the one word he wanted his jaw flat against his chest , I look at it now and I still didn't do it enough. Funny looking back. The horror, the horror.

Some Zack/ Crysta FG scenes. A few Batty scenes , I boarded that rap section with Bill as well.

Hunchback, I only got a chance to do Clopin . Well plus Pheobbie, the horses and all the soldiers, my first official scene after sitting in solitude for 8 month as they reworked the film, a good time to pick up a heroin addiction don't you think ) . Now I wasn't to find out later but James Baxter (who totally LOVES drawing horses) thought that I should do it because he thought I would enjoy it (yeah James , one horse would have been excellent, four with riders , well how much enjoyment can one person have, well then it is Spirit precursor ) . I believe I walked by his room, stuck my head in and mumbled my curse of revenge. Sadly, I loved doing it , it took a while though . Sickening business, isn't it ? And no, thats a fraction of the scenes. The Esmeraldas there too.

Some Pink Panther for Kroyers

A little ELD Miguel (James did the Tulio) .

Osmosis mayor , Shatners voice, yes , before Over the Hedge. Oh and that's my OJ too.

Asterix in America , the reason I included the water sequence we did in our apartment in TO is that before Mr K's "tradigital" statement we had all long since working with cg and 2D combinations ( Bill Kroyer was giving us cg plots back on Ferngully in 91) . I believe this was the first time water had been done like this and it was done for Gerhard Hahn studio's in Germany. Got a lot of press ........ over ... in Europe =) I like the fact they were trying to make the water fit the cartoon and not the reverse. Gerhard is an amazing man. Very forward thinking, was cutting tons of series while we were doing this simultaneously. Oh, and I had one of the other satellite studio's attack me to the company for PAYING MY CREW TOO MUCH MONEY ! I feel guilty over that but , well, I will live. And ... uh .... so will my crew.

I did Obelix, Asterix , the Indian princess (got to do yet another power up from drinking Getafixes exlirs), Getafix , the medicine man and a whole lot of bg characters, boarded and did some series designs while doing that . Animators on it were Chris Sauve , Jamie Oliff , Wendy, Jamie Mason , Morgan Ginsberg , Dave B and myself Chuck even did a scene later . The bear in the Obelix drug sequence is exclusively Chris Sauve except for one scene Jamie O did where he is rounding the corner ( boarded that entire seq as I remember ). Now that is a bit of a strange one as it did not exist in the books, not for more than a panel or two. I just thought it would be funny to have the bear land on Ob's shoulders.

The Indian village being destroyed was John Williamson . Oh yeah the second scene (of the Buffalo) hallucination is the amazing Mark Koetsier. Probably one of the most under rated animators ever he is boarding at DWs. Beautiful timing. Oh speaking of, must include his website for Jet Pack Benny . http://www.jetpackbenny.com

Ok, last but not least , the football game, my first Asterix. Sadly the animation director at the time wanted it more economic so he just pulled out every other drawing whenever he found ones. I mean you are doing an action sequence right, two's are for losers I say =) Screw them !

So that is it for the moment. Please no one rip out your eyes , it's not my fault. You were warned beatch !

Oh and if you click the tinybun.com sign at the top it will take you to some LTBI stuff. Like you want to after this.

Arrow Clip

2006-12-08T17:47:00.000-08:00

Ok, I have a really small flash clip of some of what I did for Arrow. It's in B&W and no sound because the colors are so burned out that it is hard to see and the size is better that way . Should give you an idea though. Zombies , voodoo and black magic. Tony Fucile, Doug Frankel, Bruce Smith,Dan Jeup, Anne Marie Bardwell . Krystal , Wendy and Steve Markowski all did sections. This is just a clip of mine .

ARROW CLIP

Oh I should mention RALPH EGGLESTON did a scene as well. He art directed it with Sue too I think as well. Whatever, he will correct me. =) Ouch.

OMG !!!!!!!

2006-12-06T22:49:00.000-08:00

I have this funny feeling .... there .......... is .......... MORE!!!!!!!!!!

Crysta and Zack. It is the fighting that makes a relationship real.

Look out! I'm such a bad driver !

No respect !

A birthday card for Patrick Lou-bear--------- T

A developement Grinch BG.

Little bears in costumes . So cute.

A racing logo !

I love fashion drawings. Experiments with brushes.

A cool goth girl I did for Char.

Some developement I did for Paul.

A drawing I did for Dave

Some Jason cleanup on my Queen scene.

A cat from one of my paintings.

A chrome hood ornament bird character for Paul. Had never done chrome before. Interesting.

Kitten and Muffkin from a story I'm working on. She is an Einstein like genius and can't get anyone to listen to her.

And last but not least, you know that logo at the end of Nelvana shows. The one with the bear ? That's right, I did the bear. It was much longer as the bear rears up than comes down on it's paws but they tried to FX it in a million ways. They actually took lke a year to decide how to do it and as you can see there wasn't much of it left as it slit scans in . That in a nutshell is the animation life. Enjoy.

Ok, I'm stopping now for real. No more lies. I am sorry for fibbing. Now I'm done. Really. You think I'm lying but I'm not. I am stopping. Trust me.

The Last Blog...

2006-12-05T19:35:00.000-08:00

... well till after Christmas. Hi folks. I reached the magic "100 scans "in one day yesterday . I am sunburned from the Microtek scanner and so as much as I love it it must end for now. I'm going to put up what I can and hope there is something that entertains momentarily.

My fave man developement drawing. George with a marble.

A funny bun drawing.

A couple more unused Arrow designs.

Hhhmmm, another Mok. My scene in the pit. Sniff sniff, I smell ebay on this one, do you ? Yes I do.

More LTBIA outs.

How I feel about directors and their power to destroy you .

Pirates ....

... and Parsons.

Tony and Gian.

Some kind of cave kid design . I don't know.

A drawing did for Wendy on Rock and Rule.

Miguel dressed as an old man from El Dorado, the sequence was dropped .

Me trying to convince my lead key cleanup the scene had eye problems.

A cartoon of the amazing Kay Sales. LKCU.

The birthday police.

A little color.

A rotation of an Andy Knight based design for a Pascal Blais commercial.

A spacegirl.

Sue Kroyer is the coolest person I've ever met. I thought she and her dogs Digitha and Fraser deserved a series.

I thought Sue used mind control on Fucile and Frankel. No one could ever get ahold of them.

Scientist heads ..... um, I think.

Looks like a waiter but I think it is a magician. Hmmmm.

A hobo, and I think it had something to do with us doing this god awful cheap film in Ottawa.

Oooo, Charlie Bonifascio and I did a promo for a Rome-O and Julie-8 series. Ha ! Will probably never see that again. Down the hole of waste of time with you. This is from a Fastbinder scence I think. I loved animating Julie 8 , wish I had some of that . Charlies scenes in the original film were what got me into animation. He is brilliant.

Just another man and George. I love the whole moment of staring at each other.

This is a good one to end on. After working in Ottawa on the magic flying canoe of Hiawatha , trust me it was even a bit dumber than it sounds ....

Have a great holiday folks. Merry nondenominational holiday.

God ... please let it end.

2006-12-02T17:31:00.000-08:00

Developement for Clifford the Big Red dog feature. Sorry they are just xeroxs but N lost the originals and I never got proper copies of them. I think this witch shrinks them and this witch who has this pet badger .... ok I'm stopping now. It deserved to die ok.

A T-Rex design for some cartoon that didn't get made.

What was Obelix exhaling , got turned into a burp.

A pretty horrid cat design. Was for some series, said they wanted is softer and cuter (yes I actually did a design for it and I think it got used). Who knows or cares . This version never went past the really rough stage.

Did this for a friend who ran an RC car body company. Very Power Puff Girl's only in 1985. He got all bugged because he thought it was too kid market and he was trying to sell to adults because REMOTE CONTROL CARS ARE FOR SERIOUS ADULTS. Yeah, whatever, in the trash.

Ok, this was during my Tissa David worship days ( which should end any time around my death ) . A note to a friend in Ottawa using Raggedy Andy as me. Ok, I am pathetic. I know it was around 1980 because it says I'm working at Canimage. I remember Ol Colin Baker coming to my desk when I was animating the famous Fred Yabba Dabba Doo, ripping my drawing off the pegs and yelling something about me making it too full. It was though, glorious. Cel counts , remember those ? I F'ng love this business ! Memories , like the corners of my mind , what's too painful to remember .... oh screw it.

Super K

2006-12-02T05:24:00.000-08:00

My impression of an early Superman done for All American Bill Kroyers birthday. Note the stars and words are done with White Out. I think I was addicted to White Out. My assistants would often have to try and draw over the stuff. Oh and it's opaque under an animation table light :( Sorry folks.

Strawberry Years

2006-12-02T04:42:00.000-08:00

One of the first series I did at Nelvana was Strawberry Shortcake. And I was the lead on Strawberry. Her head was massive. Anyway this is a poster I did for the Halloween party. It got reproduced in B&W but I did it in color.Prisma and pantone. Imbalanced and kind of weak but it was perfect for it's time. We were making a massive 18 dollars a foot in those days.

More from the BOX

2006-12-01T23:24:00.000-08:00

The Sharpie Tootsworth Award. Ahhhh, , the halceone days ! I used to give awards out for the most devoted assistant . The one who spent endlesshours doing insane overtime for little pay.

Another early rough submission for Kroyers Arrow.

I loved the old Mad superhero parodies. I was always drawing things like Batman. Here he wipes out Robin while tossing the batarang.

This was a scribble I did on a Hunchback rough up in the corner . Esmeralda reveals her secret. I think I called it the Crying Dame.

Hi Folks!

2006-11-27T18:20:00.000-08:00

Hmm, apologies for the lack of blogness of late but I have been crazy busy. Which is unusual because I'm just doing my own work. I'll try to get back in there and post some more Falk stuff but there is one more in the post of Falkness worship called "Dog Boots".

Now for those who came here to laugh at me and make themselves feel better about their own work here are a couple more of mine. This first is a frame from a film I started a few years back called "Creep" based on the Radiohead song . I started it because I loved just trying to do virtual inks . Like water colors I love the lack of control. This was done with a mouse by the way.

The next is of Wendy . I would often call on her for a sensitive critique of my work because she loved me I could count on her honesty .

The last is a cartoon I did for Jeff Johnsons birthday when he was doing George . Jeff, like all eccentric animators , has a fetish for mechanical things. In this case the Toyota Land Cruiser. I tried to combine the moments.

Smore Arrow

2006-10-24T19:41:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-10-24T19:16:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-23T02:54:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-19T21:06:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-10-19T20:49:00.000-07:00

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 .....

2006-10-19T20:27:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-10-19T14:53:00.000-07:00

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 !

2006-10-18T17:59:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-10-18T16:29:00.001-07:00

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 " ??????

2006-10-18T15:56:00.000-07:00

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

Thrashing.

2006-10-18T14:21:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-10-18T14:10:00.000-07:00

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 ?

2006-10-18T13:51:00.000-07:00

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...

2006-10-18T00:29:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-10-17T19:49:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-17T12:39:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-17T12:22:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-10-16T18:02:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-15T12:50:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-14T18:19:00.000-07:00

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 !

2006-10-13T15:58:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-10-13T15:37:00.000-07:00

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 !

2006-10-13T05:09:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-10-13T03:43:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-08T21:46:00.000-07:00

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 !

2006-10-08T21:34:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-10-08T17:06:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-10-06T01:21:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-05T23:55:00.000-07:00

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".

2006-10-05T22:36:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-04T15:39:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-04T15:17:00.000-07:00

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

Curious

2006-09-29T03:13:00.000-07:00

As some of you know Curious George was my last project. It is my last time animating on a feature . I have been animating since 1979 and as 2D was being battered by bad choices and bad timing I decided years ago that I had maybe one more film in me , but that was it . Animating is incredibly time consuming and supervising is more than that. We went in with our eyes open though. The film was in the process for 16 or more years before we even set our eyes on it which, is not good. Managements changed , what seemed like hundreds of writers trundled through and even we lost our beloved director Jun in what seemed to be a 2 year battle.

In the end we lost the war to keep it in North America , they had spent so much on scripts and our time had run out ( they had absolute production dates linked to marketing contracts they would have been penalized for ) so we lost the entire crew at Universal (some went to Mikes outside the union border to be paid non Union wages ) all of the LA cleanup was sent to Asia. That meant that everything we had done would be put through a process of disassembly so that it could be churned out by a system that produces the most base and mediocre of animation. What we got back was devoid of the original ruff inbetweens, they threw away our lipsync (probably couldn't understand a non ABCDEF mouth system , I envied Tony's George team, ha, no lip sync ) and put in inbetweens that were only called inbetweens because they fell somewhere relatively between the major keys.

Our new director Matt told me near the end not to look at the animation coming in , it would only make me angry. I admit, I looked and it did but ..... I didn't worry about it. I realized that the story worked ( thank god for Matt , Darrell head of story and Ken the writer ) and there was nothing to be done. I didn't go to the premiere but that was because I wanted to put off any upset I might feel. Normally a film in animation production takes a year and a half but we only had seven months. We fixed what animation we could under the table even though we were told not to. Strangely enough our management knew ( Bonne and Mary Alice were and are the best and every cutback was as much a blow to them ) . The Imagine/Universal management themselves came in and , knowing we were hurting , asked point blank how much more they could hurt us. It wasn't really a question, it was a statement of what was coming and we all knew it.

Our American outsources like Fat Cat , Firefly , Yowza , Mikes July Films, the guys in France and James Baxter did the best they could under ridiculous conditions and really , as uneven as it may seem , without them it would have been probably the ugliest animation ever produced . Our strengths were the art director Yarrow Cheney (who is just awesome) , the designers Shannon and Shane , our producers Bonne + Mary Alice and our final director Matt (who will tell you the basic story was there but , I know and he did a hell of a job). Tony , Jeff Franz , Steve and John the leads were great to work with and that really is all animation is about. I know I should feel bad because it lacked perfection , it has a million different Ted's but , I actually have gotten over all that and can just enjoy it now. It was a great film to end on that way and I have no regrets. I probably like it more because no matter what we had done it was going to happen the way it did.

Mmmmm , the art life :)

2006-09-28T11:31:00.000-07:00

Who doesn't love buns.

Vroom

2006-09-28T10:56:00.000-07:00

I did this for a garage that did my cars :)

A LTBIA drawing.

2006-09-28T10:08:00.000-07:00

TOTAL D

Funny but never got used in the film . I have tons of these. Things change fast :)

My first PS drawing

2006-09-27T20:35:00.000-07:00

TOTAL D

This was the very first thing I did I PS. Kind of scary :(

BG building in CG

2006-09-27T20:12:00.000-07:00

Some background stuff I'm doing.

Time to begin !

2006-09-27T19:45:00.000-07:00

Shane came online so it's time to start an artblog :)