With his typical eloquence, SLY STALLONE raises a lot of valid points…
Jul 162011
Jul 152011
Today I went sketching at the DE YOUNG museum, with MATT JONES and his pal Scott. For fantastic drawing subjects, we didn’t need to go any further than the “Art of New Guinea” room, where there is an incredible array of fantastic masks on permanent display. So much so that I had a hard time deciding what to draw!
Being a lightening-quick gesture sketcher, Matt didn’t have to choose; he pretty much drew everything in there in about an hour! Whereas I, in my own plodding way, found two that interested me and tried to study them somewhat in depth.
We then had a tasty lunch at a nearby Burmese Restaurant, followed by a visit to GREEN APPLE BOOKS, and ended the outing with a drink at THE BITTER END. After parting ways, I then had a pleasant hike home, as the sun went down.
Yes indeed, my Sunday was a very Fun day.
Jul 042011
A fun project I worked on a few years ago was HUBERT’s BRAIN; a quirky short CG film produced by Wild Brain (the original, San Francisco branch) and directed by Phil Robinson & Gordon Clark. Starring Peter Falk (Columbo) Jonathan Harris (Lost in Space) and Bruce Campbell (Evil Dead) the film won an Outstanding Achievement in an Animated Short Subject Annie Award for Wild Brain in 2001.
In addition to my usual role as storyboard artist, I did some of the character designs, including this one; an annoying yappy dog. It is always fun for me to design a character that is not supposed to be cute. Apart from a typical cranky lap-dog I was thinking of a creepy hybrid of pug, piranha, crab and bat as I drew him. The modelers and animators did a fantastic job bringing this character to life.
This is my fave design contribution to the project, but I have more model sheets for some of the other characters I designed for HUBERT’s BRAIN that I’ll post later.
Jun 282011
Many years ago my friend GORDON CLARK hatched an animated project about a bio-dome of cattle lost in outer space. It was called CATTLESTAR GALACTICA.
While the Sci-fi set-up is a cross between “LOST IN SPACE”, “SILENT RUNNING” and “SPACE 1999″, this story would have been largely a musical, with the bufoonish space cowboy singing lots of goofy songs to his sidekicks (a robot and a lost Russian cosmonaut Dog) as they all sat around an electronic camp fire, between whacky adventures in space. And, having been conceived by Gordon, it was bound to be a very funny show, coz he is a very funny man.
Sadly, it was long ago consigned to that ever-growing pile of “would have been great” but “never got made” projects that I’ve been involved with over the years. This marker sketch is some of the pitch art (and character designs) I did for it.
Jun 182011
Jun 132011
I can’t think of any cartoonist that I admire more than the great RONALD SEARLE. Many others feel the same about this superb satirist and stylist, including the 70 PIXAR artists who recently sent him a 91st BIRTHDAY SKETCHBOOK filled with tributes; a project which I was honored (though intimidated) to be included in.
It was the one and only MATT JONES who had the unenviable task of wrangling 70 flakey cartoonists to fulfill their promises and bring the book to completion, which was achieved somewhat beyond the actual deadline but was very much appreciated by Mister Searle none-the-less. He wrote back to say as much.
You can read his response, as well as see the birthday greetings themselves, on the HAPPY 91ST RONALD blog, established by MATT to house the well-wisher’s artwork. A new tribute will be posted every day for the next few months. Be sure to check back often; i know for a fact there are some BEAUTIES in store!
If you’d prefer to look at a blog that (mostly) posts the AUTHENTIC Searle article, be sure to visit the SEARLE TRIBUTE BLOG (which is also run by Matt.)
More from the archive; a magazine illustration done while living in JAPAN, for a story about the TOKYO CAR SHOW (in ball-point pen and water colour).
The article claimed that the prestigious CAR OF THE YEAR award was won not on the merits of the car itself but on how much money was spent in the media campaign to win the award.
I used to do illustration as a side job while still working in the animation industry and I kept it up for several years, mainly because, back then, I didn’t think my animation career was going to last. Almost from the day I began working in animation, it appeared that the business itself was done for. All the older artists said so, and it was hard to disagree when looking at the quality of the work that was being done; not just by us, but at the best studios in the world.
I vividly remember a screening of THE BLACK CAULDRON, and a slump-shouldered group of us animation youngsters coming out of the theatre to discuss it afterward. The general consensus was that if what we’d just seen was the best that DISNEY could do then then animation was indeed on its last legs. We’d had the bad luck to show up just in time to witness the death-rattle of a once-great industry.
Of course, a few years later everything turned around. We started to see things like THE FAMILY DOG, ROGER RABBIT and then the renaissance of DISNEY, which led to the founding of Dreamworks, Pixar and a host of other successful studios. But before that happened, I had to think what I would do if, as everyone was predicting, the biz was not going to last. And illustration was my PLAN-B.
I started doing small illustration jobs while still living in Sydney and continued, even when living in Asia. In Tokyo, I had a few magazines that I would do spot illustrations for each month and I really looked forward to those assignments because, as I said, the quality of the animation I worked on back then was not very good. The illustration assignments were my chance to have some fun.
These days I channel most of that extra energy into pottering about with personal projects but I sometimes think about doing some illustration again someday…
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