The Silver Surfer trailer is now up on the Apple Trailer web site and it does look cool!
http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/fantasticfourriseofthesilversurfer/
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Joe Barbera dies at 95 causes Jeff to wax nostalgic
Some of you know Jeff Jonas, one of our talented artists here at SOE. Here are his remembrances of working at Hanna Barbera in the early '70's. The "Jayne" that Jeff mentions is Joe Barbera's daughter.
Wow 95, everybody goes sometime. Joe Barbera was a harsh taskmaster but a good businessman... most of my childhood was spent as a child of H&B... much longer than the time spent as a Disney-kid. My Dad, Homer Jonas, worked at Hanna and Barbera studios from about 1964 until his death in 1979. My dad disliked a number of folks that hired out back then, he was not fond of Chuck Jones, he hated the guys at Filmation (although Filmation was right down the street in Reseda), and he had a grudge against going back to Disney's after he was canned along with the whole crew that worked on "Wind Wagon Smith."
He hated H&B more than the rest of them, but they paid him better.
I worked at H&B in the summer during college, as a copy boy in the copier room, under "Tiger" West from 1972-1974. My job was creating copies of scripts storyboards and art, and sometimes using the big Xerox cameras that made cels to be painted. Joe Barbera gave us our Reseda* suburban lifestyle, and eventually kept my dad onboard during the periods of lay offs that always happened between November and March as the TV productions had to be in the can by November, and the new ones did not gear up till March. So I owe allot to Joe Barbera, he put me through college. (Yes the same town featured prominently in both "Boogie Nights" and "The Karate Kid")
Joe Barbera's passing made me reminisce on my goof ball memories as copy boy in "The Studio."
One day, Joe Barbera fired me for sitting on the stool and putting my aching feet up on the copier.... he said I was ok since I told him I was on break.
I guess he was impressed when I didn't piss my pants. I didn't take breaks in the copy room any more, but that meant mingling outside with the crazed women cannibals , and whacky artists.
I hated it when we got stuff too late to copy and it had to be delivered to a board meeting in progress, usually we had a 52 page script and thirty copies needed by 3:15, of course the original was handed to us at 3:00.... so off we went cachugging the the copiers, hoping that there would be no jams, or worse no breakdowns that we couldn't fix. The worst case was when the 11x17 copier overheated and jammed- it would catch on fire, we had to douse it with the fire extinguisher then clean the drum, what a chore. Usually at 3:15 they would come in asking for the job... we would say that we only have 12 copies done.... they would take them. I'd carry in the other 18 and pile them up on the table.
Sometimes the board meetings would be bizarre, studio folks I would know with some stars (like Paul Winchell) and maybe the Banana Splits would be in the exec area. There was a standing rumor that one of the Banana Splits took off his mask in the hallway- Joe saw him and sent him packing.
Joe Barbera was on the first floor so I often had to run into the exec areas... Hanna had almost the whole top floor penthouse for his office. Hanna was hardly ever there but had a nice June Cleaver secretary. Nobody hung out on the third floor.
Barbera once asked me who I was... " I said Homer Jonas' son." He said "Jonas eh? I like the tack of your jib" (no I'm lying.... I don't recall what he said, or grunted :)
Normally my interactions with the boss were short. "Here copy this".... so I would put it in the the priority rack in front of everybody else's stuff. I liked the sense of power when others would frown as there important storyboard got pre-empted by Barbera's rush job (only the bosses ASAP or rush would get credit)
We had ASAP stuff and ASAP!!! stuff and ASAP NOW! stuff, sometimes we'd get due for meeting at 2:30 (which was logged in at 2:45 :)
Jayne was scarier, she was the "real" boss in the joint I always tread lightly around her because she would fire folks for looking at her sideways.
I also was scared of the women in the office because some of them were really foxy and my dad said I had to be careful because if I got too close to them they might "chew me up and spit me out sideways"..... this was enough to make me terrified of the ladies that were in anyway curious. (You see my dad was a big flirt so it was difficult for me to take the needling some of the tough talking gals could dish out.. plus the fear of cannibalism). Some of the tough gals (read lesbian.. or bi... I didn't know.. jeesh ...lay off I was 19ish and a geek) were always coming on to me to make me copy their stuff first, since they could tell how embarrassed I was .... I think I turned beet red every time... it always worked too because I would get their stuff done so I wouldn't get eaten or needled anymore.
The ink and paint ladies scared me even more. My dad said they might jump me up there and lock me somewhere so they could have their way with me, "it had happened before". This made me rush out of there as soon as I dropped off their stuff. I think my dad specifically set them up to harass me. They would call me Homie's son... come over here and pick this up... take this to your dad (it would be a folded note saying "Homer you are a shithole" inside a heart) ...gosh working with your dad is so much fun!
I remember I had to loiter (while waiting for a pickup) and was kind of drawn to my favorite cute Ink & Paint cannibal. I liked one of the big bottles of rust color cel vinyl paint they used for Scooby Doo. I gathered all my courage and said to her I like the color called "Carole". She giggled allot, so did the other tribeswomen. Later my dad told me HER name was Carole, and obviously he had already gazed at her... or more.... yechh. It is really unnerving to gawk at women that your dad had already pre-gawked. This gave me a real queasy feeling about high school.
I remember a big fight broke out in the Layout area.... shouting and screaming. Somebody was shouting at Bob Singer and he was yelling back. I walked back to see the ruckus but it was over. Miss Becky walked by and told not to bother, my dad had intervened and offered them both jelly beans which calmed the situation. Miss Becky looked liked the gals my dad drew cartoons of.... oops she WAS some of the gals my dad drew.. oops. I never ran from Miss Becky, in fact, I had one kind of uncomfortable moment when I couldn't actually get myself to leave her cube.... I was frozen by her .... tension mounted.. I think she said "shoo" and giggled... that broke me like the French at Waterloo.
Sorry these reminiscences are not politically correct, but the world was not PC back then. They smoked and swore and cursed. Some of the tough gals would call me Homer's puppy, they said I needed a collar and leash.... all this through the cigarette smoke. Yikes... run away! I remember a cute Japanese lady liked me. She was in the Xerox dept. She asked me to her party in Burbank. I immediately had visions of a dark Turkish setting with everybody smoking opium with S&M going on all over the place. I told her I didn't have my driver's license (because I was a geek). "Maybe Homeh, bring you?" .... Oh yeah have my dad drive me to a party with Turkish opium smoking and wild cannibalism going on all over the place.... he would have left me in the car and gone in himself as I curled up into the fetal position.
I remember some funny conversations... this guy that looked like David Crosby would come in and just start talking to me about this big eyed waifish looking female artist. I had no idea why he kept confiding in me. He would just start telling me how horny she made him.... and how he had to figure out how to get to her.... even though he had mild regrets about being married. He wanted me to slip a note into her stack of copies that I would deliver. I remember telling her clearly... "That note is not from me!!!"
Phew! Avoided getting eaten again.
Lots of famous folks came into the copy room to talk to us... well er.. use the phone since otherwise they had to use the pay phones since we had the only open outside line outside the exec offices! I met lots of cool folks too many to name, but Scatman Caruthers, Don Adams, Ross Martin, Ted Cassidy, and of course Mel Blanc, Tom Hatten.. among many others were forced to use our phone.
I once spent the whole afternoon putting cels and background art into the chopper downstairs. A lot of it was soiled and bent and ruined... but I stacked aside the good stuff. I gave away most of it...(mostly to impress girls unsuccessfully), over time I got tired of it and sold it all at the ComicCon in 1981 for $780.00! Woo Hoo! (to put things in context over the summer my H&B 1973-74-75 copyboy job would earn me about $1800.00 each summer which was my " books, fun and pizza money" when I was back at college at SDSU).
My only actual contribution to a film was on Charlotte's Web. I helped shoot some of the stock animation sequences of the big parade ending scene.
Charlotte's Web had another funny moment. I was copying the storyboard song sequence that had Fern holding Wilbur and spinning around and dancing with the pig. Soon I noticed that the whole storyboard had fern not wearing any clothing. It was very funny. I mentioned this to Mr. Nichols, he wasn't amused, later on had to re copy all those boards, but now with a fully clothed Fern.
Sometimes I would read the scripts. Often we would get the network censor's version. Stuff like "Make sure screech of Pteranodon is not too scary" would be written in red ink. Anybody that knows H&B knows that there is only one Pteranodon screech and it is the same one from Jonny Quest used over and over. The most PC show ever was "These are the Days"... and "Valley of the Dinosaurs" man were they ever edited by the sensors!
(My dad hated the fact that the dog in "These are the Days" was named Homer... he often would note that it was deliberate. Luckily TATD was not a hit :)
Once my supervisor, Dennis Matthews and I were talking about Othello while mindlessly copying stuff. One of the layout artists commented.... "You copy guys are in here discussing Shakespeare, and I work all day drawing talking dogs"...... Yes the copy room was the intellectual hub of H&B.
Enough!
Jeff Jonas
Wow 95, everybody goes sometime. Joe Barbera was a harsh taskmaster but a good businessman... most of my childhood was spent as a child of H&B... much longer than the time spent as a Disney-kid. My Dad, Homer Jonas, worked at Hanna and Barbera studios from about 1964 until his death in 1979. My dad disliked a number of folks that hired out back then, he was not fond of Chuck Jones, he hated the guys at Filmation (although Filmation was right down the street in Reseda), and he had a grudge against going back to Disney's after he was canned along with the whole crew that worked on "Wind Wagon Smith."
He hated H&B more than the rest of them, but they paid him better.
I worked at H&B in the summer during college, as a copy boy in the copier room, under "Tiger" West from 1972-1974. My job was creating copies of scripts storyboards and art, and sometimes using the big Xerox cameras that made cels to be painted. Joe Barbera gave us our Reseda* suburban lifestyle, and eventually kept my dad onboard during the periods of lay offs that always happened between November and March as the TV productions had to be in the can by November, and the new ones did not gear up till March. So I owe allot to Joe Barbera, he put me through college. (Yes the same town featured prominently in both "Boogie Nights" and "The Karate Kid")
Joe Barbera's passing made me reminisce on my goof ball memories as copy boy in "The Studio."
One day, Joe Barbera fired me for sitting on the stool and putting my aching feet up on the copier.... he said I was ok since I told him I was on break.
I guess he was impressed when I didn't piss my pants. I didn't take breaks in the copy room any more, but that meant mingling outside with the crazed women cannibals , and whacky artists.
I hated it when we got stuff too late to copy and it had to be delivered to a board meeting in progress, usually we had a 52 page script and thirty copies needed by 3:15, of course the original was handed to us at 3:00.... so off we went cachugging the the copiers, hoping that there would be no jams, or worse no breakdowns that we couldn't fix. The worst case was when the 11x17 copier overheated and jammed- it would catch on fire, we had to douse it with the fire extinguisher then clean the drum, what a chore. Usually at 3:15 they would come in asking for the job... we would say that we only have 12 copies done.... they would take them. I'd carry in the other 18 and pile them up on the table.
Sometimes the board meetings would be bizarre, studio folks I would know with some stars (like Paul Winchell) and maybe the Banana Splits would be in the exec area. There was a standing rumor that one of the Banana Splits took off his mask in the hallway- Joe saw him and sent him packing.
Joe Barbera was on the first floor so I often had to run into the exec areas... Hanna had almost the whole top floor penthouse for his office. Hanna was hardly ever there but had a nice June Cleaver secretary. Nobody hung out on the third floor.
Barbera once asked me who I was... " I said Homer Jonas' son." He said "Jonas eh? I like the tack of your jib" (no I'm lying.... I don't recall what he said, or grunted :)
Normally my interactions with the boss were short. "Here copy this".... so I would put it in the the priority rack in front of everybody else's stuff. I liked the sense of power when others would frown as there important storyboard got pre-empted by Barbera's rush job (only the bosses ASAP or rush would get credit)
We had ASAP stuff and ASAP!!! stuff and ASAP NOW! stuff, sometimes we'd get due for meeting at 2:30 (which was logged in at 2:45 :)
Jayne was scarier, she was the "real" boss in the joint I always tread lightly around her because she would fire folks for looking at her sideways.
I also was scared of the women in the office because some of them were really foxy and my dad said I had to be careful because if I got too close to them they might "chew me up and spit me out sideways"..... this was enough to make me terrified of the ladies that were in anyway curious. (You see my dad was a big flirt so it was difficult for me to take the needling some of the tough talking gals could dish out.. plus the fear of cannibalism). Some of the tough gals (read lesbian.. or bi... I didn't know.. jeesh ...lay off I was 19ish and a geek) were always coming on to me to make me copy their stuff first, since they could tell how embarrassed I was .... I think I turned beet red every time... it always worked too because I would get their stuff done so I wouldn't get eaten or needled anymore.
The ink and paint ladies scared me even more. My dad said they might jump me up there and lock me somewhere so they could have their way with me, "it had happened before". This made me rush out of there as soon as I dropped off their stuff. I think my dad specifically set them up to harass me. They would call me Homie's son... come over here and pick this up... take this to your dad (it would be a folded note saying "Homer you are a shithole" inside a heart) ...gosh working with your dad is so much fun!
I remember I had to loiter (while waiting for a pickup) and was kind of drawn to my favorite cute Ink & Paint cannibal. I liked one of the big bottles of rust color cel vinyl paint they used for Scooby Doo. I gathered all my courage and said to her I like the color called "Carole". She giggled allot, so did the other tribeswomen. Later my dad told me HER name was Carole, and obviously he had already gazed at her... or more.... yechh. It is really unnerving to gawk at women that your dad had already pre-gawked. This gave me a real queasy feeling about high school.
I remember a big fight broke out in the Layout area.... shouting and screaming. Somebody was shouting at Bob Singer and he was yelling back. I walked back to see the ruckus but it was over. Miss Becky walked by and told not to bother, my dad had intervened and offered them both jelly beans which calmed the situation. Miss Becky looked liked the gals my dad drew cartoons of.... oops she WAS some of the gals my dad drew.. oops. I never ran from Miss Becky, in fact, I had one kind of uncomfortable moment when I couldn't actually get myself to leave her cube.... I was frozen by her .... tension mounted.. I think she said "shoo" and giggled... that broke me like the French at Waterloo.
Sorry these reminiscences are not politically correct, but the world was not PC back then. They smoked and swore and cursed. Some of the tough gals would call me Homer's puppy, they said I needed a collar and leash.... all this through the cigarette smoke. Yikes... run away! I remember a cute Japanese lady liked me. She was in the Xerox dept. She asked me to her party in Burbank. I immediately had visions of a dark Turkish setting with everybody smoking opium with S&M going on all over the place. I told her I didn't have my driver's license (because I was a geek). "Maybe Homeh, bring you?" .... Oh yeah have my dad drive me to a party with Turkish opium smoking and wild cannibalism going on all over the place.... he would have left me in the car and gone in himself as I curled up into the fetal position.
I remember some funny conversations... this guy that looked like David Crosby would come in and just start talking to me about this big eyed waifish looking female artist. I had no idea why he kept confiding in me. He would just start telling me how horny she made him.... and how he had to figure out how to get to her.... even though he had mild regrets about being married. He wanted me to slip a note into her stack of copies that I would deliver. I remember telling her clearly... "That note is not from me!!!"
Phew! Avoided getting eaten again.
Lots of famous folks came into the copy room to talk to us... well er.. use the phone since otherwise they had to use the pay phones since we had the only open outside line outside the exec offices! I met lots of cool folks too many to name, but Scatman Caruthers, Don Adams, Ross Martin, Ted Cassidy, and of course Mel Blanc, Tom Hatten.. among many others were forced to use our phone.
I once spent the whole afternoon putting cels and background art into the chopper downstairs. A lot of it was soiled and bent and ruined... but I stacked aside the good stuff. I gave away most of it...(mostly to impress girls unsuccessfully), over time I got tired of it and sold it all at the ComicCon in 1981 for $780.00! Woo Hoo! (to put things in context over the summer my H&B 1973-74-75 copyboy job would earn me about $1800.00 each summer which was my " books, fun and pizza money" when I was back at college at SDSU).
My only actual contribution to a film was on Charlotte's Web. I helped shoot some of the stock animation sequences of the big parade ending scene.
Charlotte's Web had another funny moment. I was copying the storyboard song sequence that had Fern holding Wilbur and spinning around and dancing with the pig. Soon I noticed that the whole storyboard had fern not wearing any clothing. It was very funny. I mentioned this to Mr. Nichols, he wasn't amused, later on had to re copy all those boards, but now with a fully clothed Fern.
Sometimes I would read the scripts. Often we would get the network censor's version. Stuff like "Make sure screech of Pteranodon is not too scary" would be written in red ink. Anybody that knows H&B knows that there is only one Pteranodon screech and it is the same one from Jonny Quest used over and over. The most PC show ever was "These are the Days"... and "Valley of the Dinosaurs" man were they ever edited by the sensors!
(My dad hated the fact that the dog in "These are the Days" was named Homer... he often would note that it was deliberate. Luckily TATD was not a hit :)
Once my supervisor, Dennis Matthews and I were talking about Othello while mindlessly copying stuff. One of the layout artists commented.... "You copy guys are in here discussing Shakespeare, and I work all day drawing talking dogs"...... Yes the copy room was the intellectual hub of H&B.
Enough!
Jeff Jonas
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Will it Blend?: iPod
Hey I'm back from Hawaii!! Pics tomorrow! Thought you might like this in the meantime:
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Trouble Coming? Or Aggravation anyway.
Here's the doodle I meant to put on my other Blog. It wouldn't allow it without creating a GOOGLE account. While I digest whether I want to have a Google account or not, I'll post here. I wonder if this one still works because we have multi administrators. All the rest of you bloggers see if your other accounts force you to get this Google account.
Sketch inspired by a job interview
Check out my other Blog for another group of doodles.
This one was inspired by an interview with John Naverez
http://john-nevarez.blogspot.com
We'll hopefully have him for some design work. The big idea came from just asking what he was using on one sketch. Just a pencil, BUT, starting with the flat side of the pencil and doing a lot of loose shading, THEN thinking about line work after you have a nice smokey generalized gesture and fun composition of light and dark.
So I tried it but I really didn't have a big enough flat for my pencil. Just something to try. I seemed to have been getting a lot of info lately about very good artists looking for happy accidents to build their drawings from.
Sunday, December 3, 2006
Gnomon Workshop Experience
The painting at the top was done by Craig Mullins. Done for a very impatient group. Only later do you realize how much Mullins has shown you.
Remember where one guy does a scribble and a second guy has to make something out of your scribble. That's Mullin's process. taking stuff , color photos, composites of stuff, getting blendey and filterey, and then doodle sillohuttes within. Make up an appealing composition and build.
The second photo shows Tom Carrol passing through solid matter, which I didn't know he could do. I wish the photo had his foot still half way into the wall, it would tell the story better. It was just dumb luck I got the shot at all.
Friday, December 1, 2006
More drawings for disappointed groomsmen.
Per Jeff's request here are some more drawings from the "What, all I get is a lousy etching?" groomsmen gift collection.
Monday, November 27, 2006
Too many kittens.
Hey,
Here's a quick pic of Cat Woman. A friend of mine is getting married so he asked me to create 7 drawings as gifts for each of his groomsmen, which I thought was a pretty cool idea. The Cat Woman drawing was actually a mistake because I was supposed to draw a Black Cat instead. In fact, I'll throw in the Black cat picture as well.
The others were the Hulk, Thor, Hardcase, Snake Eyes from G.I. Joe, Nova, and some character called Goku.
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
San Diego Reader picks up on Twonks & Plonkers
Hey, San Diego Reader fans ...
Through Mark DeCerbo, the song writer I've been collaborating with recently, J. Allen Sanford, a writer for the Reader, picked up on our OJ Simpson song and graphic and emailed through questions for an article about Web comics in general and ours (Twonks & Plonkers) in particular ... I think it will be the next issue that comes out, but I'm not sure when it hits the streets.
As a writer myself, I can't wait to see what he cobbles together to fit the pub's free space.
I've posted yesterday's Web comic to go with the posting ... Today's uses the animated .gif that I worked on with help from Ellis ...
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Fun Site Alert!
Creepy Star Trek Alien
A whole planet half filled with these guys. Then the other half with the black strip on the other side. Now we're talking creepy
Monday, November 20, 2006
I win the Star Trek challenge.
Here it is. My take on a Star Trek alien. I don't like to toot my own horn, but I feel that I've really captured the horror, the cunning, the sheer freaking creepiness of an alien invader. I would have put fangs and tentacles on it but I felt it would have detracted from the other worldliness of it.
Brrrrrrrrr. I just gave myself the creeps.
The Star Trek alien challenge!
So from time to time I try to come up with what I call "Star Trek" aliens.... they don't have anything to do with Star Trek except that, like the vast majority of ST aliens, these aliens start out with a human frame... in other words I'm sketching out alien make-up ideas.Oh, and I threw in one of my kids in there as well. Can you guess which on is my daughter?
my own animated .gif test ...
Following in the footsteps of the master ... I hope this works!
well ... it did work, and Ellis helped a "playah" out by posting it on his Web site so I could grab a URL to post with. Yaaaay, Ellis. I'd like you even if you didn't Win the Star Trek Challenge ...
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Animated Gif Anatomy
Like the caption says, if you have CS, ImageReady isn't necessary.
All you need is a PSD with layers that have animated elements.
Correction on the wording when you click the right corner of the animation window. It is MAKE FRAMES FROM LAYERS
There is some way to use the same background and use the alpha to just animate over the same background but I donb't know how to do that.
I always have to duplicate the background and merge the changing animating element into it.
If you figure out how to make the back ground always show with a sprite overlay. let me know .
Update
I figured it out. You select the base layer and then click MATCH FRAME ACROSS ANIM
Friday, November 17, 2006
"Juiced" Caricature ...
Here he is ... in all his gory ... (not a misspelling). This comic will be posted at 1pm at Twonks & Plonkers ... with a new song by Mark DeCerbo. Check it out, it's well worth a listen!!
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
The Comic I Went To Drunk Duck For In The First Place ...
Hey, y'all ... Here is the painting (comic) page I posted at my comic Web site ... If you want, go there and check out the song that I wrote with the help of my friend Mark DeCerbo ... It's called "The Neo-Conservative Blues" and I wrote it a week ago today in the heady wake of the mid-term elections. Have fun (and I hope I haven't pissed anyone off ... inadvertently or otherwise).
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Tuesday GIF Robot
I like the graininess of pushing the color down and pushing the lossiness slider way over. The actual painting looks quite a bit different.
Monday, November 13, 2006
I Got My Copy Of NEGADON The Monster From Mars
No review yet. Just wanted to show Rick we both made it into the extras portion of the DVD. Showing the menu and how it leads into the fade in / out slide show of the art gallery and how the credits look.
Genesis Flashback
Since there are a few Bluesky alum that come to this site I thought I would point this out....
http://www.mania.com/52760.html
I noticed Vectorman and Vectorman 2 are on there... it's nice to see that those old games live on!
http://www.mania.com/52760.html
I noticed Vectorman and Vectorman 2 are on there... it's nice to see that those old games live on!
Friday, November 10, 2006
Starting a panel comic on Drunk Duck dot Com
I've begun a new venture on a thing called Drunk Duck, the Web comics side of Platinum Studios. Over the next month I'll produce a comic a week under the banner of "Twonks and Plonkers," each of which has an audio or animatronic component (or maybe both).
The first one , located here, is just a test and is actually very confusing, but everything is when you're just starting out. I stitched a rough illo of the Gun Nosed Man and put in buttons for playing an audio sample and stopping it ... and then just posted the rest. We'll see where this leads, but the process is fun.
There is a contest specified in my comments at the bottom of the page. Identify the Scot in the audio clip and win my Chip 'n Dale DVDs ...
BTW: Rick Schmitz might consider posting some of his comic strips here (starting with the earliest to keep from having to make 'em faster, etc.
I'll post again when the first "official" comic is posted, probably mid week next week.
The first one , located here, is just a test and is actually very confusing, but everything is when you're just starting out. I stitched a rough illo of the Gun Nosed Man and put in buttons for playing an audio sample and stopping it ... and then just posted the rest. We'll see where this leads, but the process is fun.
There is a contest specified in my comments at the bottom of the page. Identify the Scot in the audio clip and win my Chip 'n Dale DVDs ...
BTW: Rick Schmitz might consider posting some of his comic strips here (starting with the earliest to keep from having to make 'em faster, etc.
I'll post again when the first "official" comic is posted, probably mid week next week.
Gouachey Paintings
Work has been S-L-O-W. So slow that I got the chance to clean up my room, dust off the gouache and play a little. I haven't painted in three years so I'm a starting out simple. Mmmm. Love the smell of gouache. (it tastes good too!)
In both cases I started with plain illustration board and no preconcieved ideas. Just laying down the paint and seeing what happened.
Tuesday, November 7, 2006
Working with Marty
I added a new one by an animator named Tod Ammmons. I think Jeff knows him. He used a digital toshiba notebook. I wouldn't mind pressing the undo.
Now I've added more Marty Caricatures
New Scribble Face ...
I have new assignments in for San Diego Pets Magazine (art and writing) and Computoredge (writing) that I'm plowing through while enjoying some new music from Scotland's Radio Forth One (http://www.forthone.co.uk/, press the "Listen Live" button at the top; very UK Top 40 oriented pop stuff) and some old (Prefab Sprout's "From Langley Park to Memphis"). I'm also absorbing Bob Kato's other two Gnomon Workshop DVDs on drawing and painting the human head ...
Just got in what may not be new news; Platinum Studios bought out www.drunkduck.com, which is a place where you can sign in and post your comics so people can read 'em (and so you might make a few dollars if Platinum takes a shine to your stuff and decides to merchandise it) ...
More as it happens.
Here is a new face ... like him; he looks like he is keeping a droll secret ...
Friday, November 3, 2006
For Scott with LOVE
Hey Scott (or anybody else)
Here's a series ofBobby Chiu YouTube How-To videos . They might help you with the coloring of your stuff.
Here's a series of
Thursday, November 2, 2006
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Happy Halloween!
EDIT: Wow I didn't realize that DMD just posted a similar greeting! I think hers is WAY more demented than mine.
Halloween Greetings!
Here’s a little something for Halloween. I hope it’s not to scary (or disturbing). If it is then all you have to do is keep posting until it is pushed to the archives.
Friday, October 27, 2006
Tentacle Robot as Village Idiot Babysitter
Taking a break from LOD model work in Maya.
I did more linework on the figure.
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Mr. Mittens the Halloween Cat
Here is the front of my Halloween card for this year. It looks better printed than as a jpeg.
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Scott Check This Out
Info on another Carlsbad outfit....
John Rowe is a honcho of some sort. I believe the prez. You always got on well with him. This is basically some sort of party where pros are invited. May be a golden moment.
http://www.highmoonstudios.com/blasts/lesscrunch.html
I'm ready with more outside the box thinking. Tell that to the money men.
LEEJA and Her DAD and a Book Recommendation
Leeja's Dad is furious that Magnus has brought Leeja home late again.
Also
I scanned a great page from the new Scott McCloud book. Making Comics.
This section on expression is great. I was drawing that Mexican Wrestler mask of muscle and thinking about it and having light bulbs go off. Even if it isn't showing in my work yet.
Character sheet from "Pirates of Venus"
Here's another drawing from "The Pirates of Venus" pre-production files. He's Carson Napier, the hero. You can tell he's the hero by the jutting jaw and absence of nipple-piercings.
I'm also including the logo I put together for them. Have no idea if they'll use it. Maybe one of you guys can pay me for it!
Friday, October 20, 2006
Nightmare Character: The Eggplant King
New picture ... the one I'm going to submit as soon as I've formalized the background write-up.He is tall because he is a new rival for Jack Skellington ... and his one enduring trait is that he believes the lowly eggplant can aspire to pumpkin-like status. He slinks through the night replacing pumpkins with similarly carved eggplants, then observes people's reactions to his creations. He is undeterred, however, even when they don't immediately love them as much as he does. Secreted away behind high walls is a rambling, cobbled together shack where the Eggplant King lives. The building also contains his organic laboratory; the open fields outside are devoted to eggplant growing in advance of All Hallows Eve. Like pumpkins, these enhanced eggplants grow much bigger and have a distended appearance that makes carving of them easier to imagine. The wall is patrolled by sleek, purple weasel-nosed minks who howl out a shrill alarm whenever a stranger approaches.
Evolving Mural
The hypnotic time-lapse recording of a mural that was done and redone in the course of a week.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Take 2
So here's my refinement of what I did before... what's funny is without even trying, the Pilgrim now has the silhouette of a turkey.
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