HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA: 10 YEARS IN THE MAKING, or thereabouts...

So, everyone knows animated films take loads of time to make, some much more time than others.  I worked on Hotel T, back in 2007. Other directors had been on before the version I got to work on and numerous other directors came and left other iterations after.  All in all, I worked with 2 different creative teams on the project.  It was always fun because the concept is genius, "Where do monsters go to get away from it all?"  I'm looking forward to seeing the finished film when it comes out next week.  Here are some images I created for the second round of creative leadership's story beat pitch for their version of the film.  I'd made a total of about 130-150 of these full color story sketches over a couple weeks for their presentation to the studio.

Coming Soon...HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA!!!

WILLY WONKA MEETS PETER CUSHING

I love to watch favorite movies while working.  It motivates and inspires. The Willy Wonka drawing is a section of a larger piece that I printed out on canvas for a charity auction.  The sketch of Peter Cushing was  done while watching one of his classic Hammer Horror films and because Peter Cushing is awesome.   (=^>

DREAMWORKS DRAGONS: THE EARLY YEARS

The first version of How to Train Your Dragon was very faithful to the book; Hiccup was young, Toothless was small and the dragons talked.  That's right, they talked.  Here's some more exploratory sketches based on this early take on the characters/world.  The dragon/viking pages were drawn with pen and water soluble colored pencils. The moments with Hiccup and Toothless and the Green Death were drawn and colored in Photoshop on a cintiq. Fun times!

 

STEALING THE tiny GOLDEN GOOSE

The Giant in, Puss in Boots was originally suppose to be a human, until I pitched the idea for the Giant Goose.  They were modeling the look of the Giant on super funny story guy, Mike Bell.  In the first sequence I was assigned, Humpty has managed to find the Giant's regular sized Golden Goose pet and runs into a bit of trouble trying to get to it.  I loved playing with the insane scale difference between all the characters.  And yes, in the transition section of Humpty trying to scale that ridiculously tall ladder, I did hum the Lawrence of Arabia theme music aloud when I pitched it...