It was a long time coming to complete the 12 illustrations for the kind group of talents at Airship 27. But alas, they are now indeed done and in the hands of the ever s0 patient publishers Ron Fortier and Rob Davis. Here is a link to Ron’s Airship 27 Productions blog about the soon to be published novella and my featured artwork:
SADDLE UP FOR ACTION – Airship 27 Productions
This gallery contains 6 photos.
Once in a while, you get to be part of the design and/or conceptualizing process of a 2D animation project. When a client comes to you with an animation job, they often have a reference from something they’ve seen and … Continue reading
Just had this notion to go ahead and put up some of my art for sale. This time, I was approached by Pop-King, Inc. to have my art sell on consignment on eBay. They’ll be posting new art everyday from a collection I sent to them that consist of items from TV Shows, Feature Film, Animation and Sequentials I’ve worked on over the years. There will also be some personal work and convention art posted.
So please take a moment to browse, choose, bid & buy! Thanks!
Hi Folks,
I had hoped to get this post out sooner for friend and colleague Jamie Baker. Here’s a description from the facebook page, Animation All-Stars Auctionbenefiting artist Jamie Baker:
On November 7th, 7:00pm PST friends of artist and storyboard artist Jamie Baker will hold a 10 day auction to help with the mounting hospital and rehab bills he is facing after suffering a stroke.
The auction is spearheaded by Kung Fu Panda Director, John Stevenson, and features the work from a cast of animation and literary royalty, including Weta Workshop’s Johnny Fraser Allen and Greg Broadmo…re, Neil Gaiman, Henry Selick, Tony Di Terlizzi, and Brian Froud to name only a few.
The auction is taking place right now on eBay. Please peruse the artwork and make a bid!
http://stores.ebay.com/jamiebakerbenefitauction/
Thanks!
I’ve been busy working on multiple projects and can now post some of them. This one is a viral animation video for a Print/Marketing Company, Lahlouh in Burlingame, Ca. It was completed earlier this summer.
The fun animation we did was produced locally with a small crew of 4. Art Direction and character designs were done by Mo Moussa. The 2D animation was split between myself and Dan McHale and the CG elements were done by Luis Lundgren. Sound design by Michael Baker.
I’ll be posting more projects soon!
Okay, been way too long since the last update. I just started teaching Storyboard Design at ITU San Jose for the Spring semester. Leading up to that, during the last few months, I’ve been slammed with contract work and preparing for the class. It’s actually been good that I’ve been that busy, because previously things were way too slow.
So, the adventure of teaching in San Jose includes a two and a half hour journey on Bart and Caltrain. At first I saw it as a long and tedious commute, but really it’s been great for reflecting, writing, checking in with social media & people watching. This, of course is how I found Winter Girl this season. She was a very lovely, redhead 20 something waring a leather jacket, fluffy scarf, jeans with rolled up pant legs and boots. Now, this was a little different than previous winter girls, in that I typically sketch them from memory as much as I can. For this one, I managed to get a quick sketch on the spot, as much like a 20 minute life drawing session on Bart. The sketch that’s posted here was was started on site with sketchbook pro on an iPad and fleshed out a bit more at home on my Cintiq in Sketchbook pro. The girl sitting next her by the window was facing me most of the time, chatting and I didn’t want to be obvious (or creepy), so I tried to just get quick glances during the ride. It was just enough to get a decent representation that I could later fill in the blanks.
The more finished, gray-scale image was done in Photoshop at home a few days later. So, in a way this is not unlike cafe sketching. I may do this more often during this lengthy commute. As long as I can do it without giving anybody the creeps.
Winter Girls 2013 Bart sketch
Winter Girl 2013 BW in Photoshop
It’s time I post some new art. Well, not new in the sense of the latest, but new in the sense that it’s art I’ve done that most folks haven’t seen. Over a few years I’ve had the pleasure of doing some work for the Jewel Quest, PC Game series. Here are story sketches for Jewel Quest 6: Sapphire Dragon. From these, another group of artists hired by Iwin, Inc. finished them up in color for the adventure puzzle game.
Now, these aren’t storyboards, but rather story illustrations that are used in the game to move the adventure along after each puzzle is solved. So they are in sequence as part of broad story “moments”.
Well folks, I have had another recent adventure in animation. I was one of 4 animators that animated on a music video for American Idol 2012. Working with Paul Golden, Producer and owner of Ffake, LLC in Portland, Oregon and animators Dan McHale in San Fransisco, Chad Essley and Mike Smith, both also based in Portland, we were tasked with creating doodle-like animation of the Idol contestants for a Ford Escape product placement piece for the AI TV Show. Gordon Clark (SF) was Animation Director working closely with Golden and the Ford/Idol Director and Producers to come up with a scenario of a student opening his Math class notebook and his notes and doodles come to life.
Ford Escape Idol – Gordon Clark from FFAKE Animation on Vimeo.
My contribution was doing layouts for the opening scenes up to when the dragon exits behind the mountain road, before the bird enters. I animated a handful of bits including the Space Invader Idols high-fiving and shooting lasers at the dragon. Dan also worked on layouts and animated the falling rock scene, Chad did the opening Idol’s run to the car, the bird, the fire/smoke/dust effects at the end, as well as the cycling background doodles and Mike animated all the Dragon sequences. We all worked virtually from our homes. It made me miss working at a studio, side by side with colleagues, absorbing all the creative energy. But this experience had it’s benefits too!
A quick commission from a colleague of mine, T. Hunter McCann. He needed a color concept sketch of an exterior location. The task was to set dress the entrance to mimic a classy theater-type venue. My quick sketches helped to convince his client on the location idea/color scheme for a Lexus commercial (as seen in the youtube video below).
Thanks for the opportunity Hunter and thanks for checking in folks!
I’ve been busy off and on in these two areas of industry during last year and I thought I’d post a little about the roto animation and illustrations I created for these projects.
The roto animation was partially direct roto of live-action footage and some non-roto elements based on the said footage. I was involved in designing the style of the animation and executing the animation itself – the real challenge was changing the features of the man’s face and hair to fit the character requirements for the final video. In the live-action footage that I used, the actor had longer hair, so he needed a “haircut”. Also, I needed to change his expressions and eye movement. Here are two clips from this pharmaceutical video project for the production company, Eveo in San Francisco.
Another project that had me busy on a couple of separate occasions was creating icon illustrations of bio-tech equipment for Zymergi, LLC. The challenge for these was to illustrate the units in an elevation view; a straight-on view without any perspective. All of the photo reference I had to work with was photographed in a lab setting with plenty of lens distortion, existing lighting and obscured by other components. Not only did I need to tweak the perspective but needed to light them all from a similar light source as well. Here are a few of the units.
Both projects were interesting experiences and gave me unique insight to these industries. I surely hope to do more work in these fields in the future.
