Visual Development & designing characters is one of my fave things to do:
I’m a much slower story-artist than I used to be, but random pauses at work sometimes give me chances to dabble on my pet personal project – an expansion of old Rocket Rabbit comics stories. For the past few years Rocket Rabbit has become primarily an art therapy project, as I continue to learn to draw with my left hand. [READ MORE…]
Today is the sixth anniversary of the day I almost left this mortal coil. Ever since, December 26th has become my own personal day of thanksgiving, where I count myself lucky to be here at all. This year I’d like to write about the landmark year of 2016, when I worked on “MARY POPPINS RETURNS” (in cinemas now) and began [READ MORE…]
Here are a few more visual development sketches done while working in Ralph Eggleston‘s art department on FINDING NEMO, way back in 2000. Some of my drawings of turtles and pelicans seen here (as well as designs for a moorish idol and sharks posted earlier) actually made it into the ART OF FINDING NEMO book. None of the VisDev I [READ MORE…]
This is some visual development for WALL-E drawn back in early 2005 while I worked under the great production designer RALPH EGGLESTON in the Pixar ART department, before working in the story department on the same project. In its very earliest incarnation, WALL-E started as an idea developed by PETE DOCTER, but when it went into production the director was [READ MORE…]
Here Be Monsters is a book illustrated and written by Alan Snow that inspired the animated film, The Boxtrolls. The book is a rambling grab-bag of fun ideas, seemingly every idea that Alan Snow ever had up till that point. It is a very enjoyable read, but presented a problem to adapt into a 90 minute movie. There was so [READ MORE…]
Here are some visual development designs I drew for FINDING NEMO back in 2000, when I was freelancing for the Pixar art department and RALPH EGGLESTON. This was around the time that I began doing artwork in the computer, and in fact this first colour image was one of the first I’d ever finished in Photoshop. The character was drawn [READ MORE…]
This old geezer was the crime-boss leader of the 3 thug little pigs from my last post. This was for a re-telling of Little Red Riding Hood, directed by Phil Robinson, but it never got made.
Many of the most-fun projects I work on never actually get made, like this one for example, a very fun project directed by Phil Robinson at Wild Brain in San Francisco. These sketches were done for a re-telling of all the classic FAIRY TALES where the BIG BAD WOLF is the baddie, BUT this time told from his point of [READ MORE…]
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 [READ MORE…]
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 [READ MORE…]