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...

MOSTLY GHOSTLY: PART 2

When I'm working on story sketches I like to keep them....well, sketchy.  I've amazingly talented friends who create the most astonishing, beautifully polished artwork for both their own projects and the films we work on at the studio.  I admire their talents greatly, but don't seem to have the patience to approach it the same way.  Now it could be that I'm fighting against my early years in the industry of working in the Clean-Up Animation Department, where all of your drawings had to be SO exact or it could just be a sensibility I picked up from studying some of my favorite artists, Bill Peet, Joe Rinaldi, Ronald Searle, Quentin Blake, Ken Anderson, etc.
Here are some character and story moment sketches from the Ghost project I posted about last week.

GHOSTS WITH THE MOST!

The first project my super talented partner in crime, Sharon and I took on was a ghost story.  We developed it in our off hours, weekends, etc and came up with what we think is a very simple yet interesting take on the classic Haunted House story.  Pitched it at Dreamworks and got great responses from development and Jeffrey Katzenberg, but Dreamworks had already been developing a ghost movie of its own, so they passed on ours, which was fine.  We were really testing ourselves to see if developing stories/projects is something we'd like to do more of and it absolutely is!  That's where optioning the film rights for the book, Torso came in.  We've pitched our animated ghost story to another studio already, as is our agreement with DW and are getting close to scheduling a few more in the coming weeks. It's a very exciting process to develop stories from their inception.  Here's one of the pitch boards from our ghost story.  It's a combo of my and Sharon's drawings. So exciting when you see it all up together.

GRAB 'EM BY THE THROAT...

...is what they say you need to do when writing in order to get the someone you hope to interest in your work to continue reading.  Here's the opening page of our treatment for, Torso.     So...

A lone fishing line drifts in a wide, slowly meandering river as rain creates ripple after ripple on the water’s oily surface.  Garbage and debris of all manner drift along in the current.  Holding the fishing line is a gaunt young man in his 20’s.  His clothes are tattered and clearly evident of the 1930’s.   Behind him is a massive, still sleeping shantytown, filled with displaced and desperate homeless. The young man is hoping to catch his breakfast before this makeshift city comes to life and the fight to survive another day begins.  While he waits for a bite, he quietly whistles to himself the popular depression era tune: “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf”. 

From the opposing riverbank light begins to flicker across the small ripples on the water seeming to set them aflame.  It is not the early morning sun casting it’s orange light across the homeless encampment but the blazing fires of enormous steel mill blast furnaces that neighbor the makeshift city.  The entire river valley is a hellish nightmare. 

Thankfully the young man’s line snags something.  He eagerly reels in his catch and drags it onto the shore, only to discover that he’s caught the upper half of a human female torso, it’s head and arms neatly severed.  The young man shrieks and wretches as other inhabitants wake to his gruesome discovery.

             

                                                Cleveland, Ohio

        -1935-  

PUSS IN BOOTS pt.2: Humpty Alexander Dumpty

So, here's the second half of the Puss In Boots sequence I posted the other day.  This was fun because I got the chance to write some dialogue for Humpty knowing Zach Galifianakis would be the voice.  So, Humpty has plummeted back down from the Giant's castle with a surprise in tow...