THE AWESOME CHRONICLES; PART 1

Wow haven't posted in for-ages. I've been crazy busy at Cartoon Network working on my short with Joey. It's going real well and hopefully I'll be able to post some artwork soon. We've been really fortunate with 'Manny and Khan' to be able to work with some incredibly talented people, all of whom have helped plus the short in their own unique ways. Most recently, we had the opportunity to work with two incredible voice actors; the hilarious Keith Ferguson of Foster's Home fame (Bloo), and the brilliant Adam Paul, an untapped goldmine of voice acting goodness who has a masters degree in acting.

Above: Keith,Joey,Me,Adam (he has a masters degree in acting).
Above: Joey and Keith eating?
Above: Our awesome voice director Kris Zimmerman. (She gets a thumbs up!)

Both Keith and Adam came in and breathed new life into the project. They really added a lot to the characters and re-energized the entire production. Can't wait for people to hear their performances. Oh yeah, and did I mention Adam has his Masters in acting!

Below: Random doodles.





I'll try and post more stuff soon. Stay tooned.

CAMP JOHNNY

GETTING PAID TO MAKE FUNNY DRAWINGS

I was fortunate enough recently to have Cartoon Network give me and my good buddy Joey Giardina the greenlight to make our own short for them. The guys over there have been incredible from day one, and I'm honored to be able to continue my career with them. The short is going to be a 7 minute pilot for what was once 'Big Foot and Gnome' and now tentativley titled 'Manny and Khan'.

I also just put the finishing touches on a freelance animated short I'd been working on for the past month, I'll post that real soon.

HOLY CRAP I'M ON YOUTUBE!

So somebody just emailed me a link to an animation I did back in High School for my senior project. This is both really awesome and embarrassing at the same time. I'm stoked that someone would actually take the time to put this up, I don't even know who it is, but thanks; You've made my week!
Embarrassing however because it's really shitty. I made this 3 years ago, in about the span of 1 month, and (despite the crap-fest it is) I'm actually pretty proud of it. I got to make fun of a whole bunch of people from my high school, they were all cool with it... i think. I got a lot of them to actually do their own voices.



Fun Fact; While imitating a scene from my animation, some kid actually pulled one of the showers in the science lab, flooding the classroom. So I guess cartoons really do have a bad influence on kids.

COMIC-CON PANEL: THE AFTERMATH!!!

Hey, so thanks to everyone who came out to the 'Intern' panel at comic-con this past weekend, especially those who came prepared with an arsenal of questions? You guys really fired us up and made the panel worthwhile. Hopefully you were able to pick up something insightful in between our ramblings. We got a really good response and great feedback so perhaps you can look forward to a sequel.

Here's a little video for those of you who weren't able to make it, or for those of you who were able to make it but slept through this part;



Mike Collins works on Foster's Home right now doing character clean-up. He's a great guy and an awesome artist. Check out his blog; http://creativeaces.blogspot.com/

Also, if you haven't already, check out Ben Balistreri's new book "Seaweed". The book is amazing, I guarantee you get tangled in "Seaweed's breathtaking artwork.

Peace out from the Con-08

COMIC-CON PANEL

Hey anybody who's goin to Comic-Con this weekend, I'm gonna be on a panel discussing the 'Do's and Dont's' of interning for a major animation studio.

Friday, July 25

5:30-6:30 Intern Etiquette: The Dos and Don’ts of Interning for Animation— Josh Lieberman (Dreamwork’s How to Train Your Dragon), Mike Collins (Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends),—Sean Cole (Dreamwork's How to Train Your Dragon), and Alana Bubis (Madagascar) are prepared to discuss all aspect of interning for a major animation studio: how to secure an internship, the dos and don'ts, and ultimately how to turn them into work. Room 30CDE
Categories: Animation | Anime & Manga | Seminars & Workshops

If you're around come visit, we'll be answering questions and talking about our experiences.

Stop by and say hi.

DARE DOG RE-INVENTED

I was recently rummaging through the dusty folders in my digital attic when I came across a file, a novel I wrote when I was 13 called "Dare Dog". It's the story of a group of animals who are turned into super heroes (via some sort of radio-active awesome laser) to protect the world from invading aliens...
I like the characters a lot so figured I'd take a stab, 8 years later, at re-drawing them. Hopefully they're not as crudely drawn as they were back then.


I did a quick thumbnail line up just to figure out the shapes and size relationships. I didn't quite hit the mark on all of them. I've been really into this project over the last few days so I'll probably do some more drawings. Here's the thumbnail line-up for reference;

Below is the first pass I did of the Buck character.

Some rough Dare Dog doodles. I'm not entirely happy with his design yet, I want him to be more unique;


This is the original design, I did this in Microsoft Paint when I was 14 or 15.

An excerpt from the novel Dare Dog:
"Dare Dog woke up and found himself in the middle of a forest, (unaware he was inside the dome). He looked around and saw a river. In thirst, he went over to get a drink. The water was raging, and he saw what seemed to be a giant rock, fly by his face being pulled down the river by the current. When it passed by his face he realized that it’s an animal. He dove into the river to save him.
“Hold on, I’m coming,” he yelled. He caught up with the large animal, and jumped on it’s back. He tried to pull it out of the water. As soon as he made contact, the large animal jumped up and grabbed Dare Dog. Being held out of the water, Dare Dog looked up looked up, and saw a huge bear, staring at him. The large animal stared at Dare Dog and growled.
“Hi,” Dare Dog said.
“You’re not a fish,” the bear said as he placed Dare Dog back on land, and then he stepped out himself.
“I thought you were drowning, I was trying to save you,” Dare Dog said.
“Actually, I was trying to catch some fish, but oddly I can’t find any anywhere,” the bear replied, “I’m Quake, and you are?”
“Dare Dog, I think?”"

The suspense is killing me!

FORMALLY GNORMANDY; THE FORM OF GNORM THE GNOME

Below is the model sheet for Gnome we put in our pitch packet. His design stayed relatively close to the first few concept drawings I did, and over a 6 month period of re-drawing and tweaking, it was boiled down to the economic state seen below. I was lucky enough to have Andy Bialk, a very talented artist and super nice guy, look at the first few passes of Gnome at which point he made some great suggestions, specifically on ways to unify the overall graphic/flat style of the form.

I think Gnome's probably the best character design I've done to date.


Earlier design (for reference):
The short formally known as:
PS: The 'BFF' stands for 'Best Fucking Friends".
We also did a few little vignettes, scenes from some of the episode ideas we came up with, to give the guys a feel of the show.

THE NOT-SO BIG FOOT ANYMORE

This is a rough model sheet I put together for the original Big Foot design we pitched with. However after some advice from Craig McCracken and Rob Renzetti, Joey and myself chose to go a different direction with the character.


There is no denying the foot print this character has left in the back of my head, as it was incredibly hard to have to let go of him. This being my first official pitch, there have been a myriad of new circumstances/check points I've had to face all in the path to creation. Chopping off Big Foot was one of the hardest things I've had to do as an artist, having developed something to a point of supposed perfection, to have someone tell you to change it. Thankfully, it came from two people I have the utmost respect for, and their advice and reasoning was entirely genuine. I can say now (after a week of creative straining trying to come up with a new character) that I am ultimately happier with the new approach we've taken. I can look back now at the footprints I left behind and, despite them getting smaller, know that I've grown.

HOW TO PAINT YOUR DRAGON

So I was sitting outside a coffee shop in downtown Burbank, as I often do, drawing, when a nice chap, the old milk-man type a' guy came up and said he'll pay me to draw him a logo for his hockey team. I said sure. We didn't really talk about what it should look like, just that; 1. It's a dragon. 2. Hockey sticks. and 3. He should have pectoral muscles.

So here is my Ice Dragon, notice the peck juice.

GNO MORE GNOME

I recently had a chance to pitch an idea to Cartoon Network with my good friend Joey Giardina for a shorts program they are currently producing. We were able to pitch directly to Craig McCracken and Rob Renzetti, two people who have already had a long lasting impact on my so-far short lived career and of whom I have the utmost respect for.

They were very receptive to the idea and very genuine with their feedback. They liked the general tone of the short, the personalities and the relationships and offered some insightful suggestions that both myself and Joey are taking to heart. We are in the process of retooling our concept and pushing ourselves creatively to give the short as much potential as we possibly can. With that said, here is a small sample of the rejected rethinkings of what was once Big Foot and Gnome.









I'll be posting a lot more of BF and G related artwork in the next couple weeks.

BF ALT_1 (IT'S CODE)

This character is based on an old Big Foot concept design i did, that I recently re-stumbled upon. I like the design so I started doin some drawings with him. He suits himself well to actiony poses, which is fun cause I normally don't get much action.




Also I need to give a shout out to my main man Jabari Phillips; Dreamworks Script Coordinator extroidinaire for getting me in to the premier of Kung Fu Panda. He's an incredibly down-to-earth person with a good head on his a shoulders and even nicer hat on his head.

Kung Fu Panda is awesome, it's a must see as far as I'm concerned. Best looking CG film to date and some of the best action scenes I've ever seen.

MY WRITING DEBUT

My computer-screen writing debut!
A very talented friend of mine, Eric Pringle, runs a super incredible funny online flash cartoon Prophet Buddy. A while back I pitched him a couple ideas for some episodes, and he was nice enough to take one of my ideas and make it a short! So here it is...


Now I may be biased, but I'm pretty sure this is the best episode yet. The animation is perfect and the facial expressions and acting are hilarious. Not to mention they've really nailed down the voices now heading into season 2, and there's a lot of comedy purely in the delivery and phrasing.

He also posted some storyboards I did for an alternative episode, you can see them here.

If you like it you should check out the website, it's got a ton of great animation, some of the best stuff on the web. And if you want to look cool, buy a Prophet Buddy T-Shirt.

FAMILY TRY

Lordy I haven't posted in for ages. Sorry to anyone who's been checkin, but keep your ears peeled cause I'll have some new stuff to post in the next few days. Meanwhiles, here are some excerpts from a Family Guy board test I did. I think the episode has aired already, not sure. But I worked on the test right before I got the gig at Dreamworks, so never actually got around to turning it in. I was fortunate to have one of the directors, Brian Iles, take a look at it for me. He gave me a lot of great feedback and I reworked the test a few times.







This post is for Jib Master Jabs the FG Clip-master.

I MET A HERO OF MINE

Today (technically yesterday) I got an opportunity to meet one of my heroes. This man's music has had as much if not more of an impact on my artistic and writing style than any visual artist. His music and lyrics are simply genius, and not to mention he has the voice of an angel, or so I hear. It is partially because of him that I chose to drop out of school and move to LA to pursue my dreams, and I could never thank him enough for it. He is a Mraz among men, I'm talking of course about Mr.A-Z himself, Bushwalla... I mean Jason Mraz.

Notice I look like I'm going to throw up, I didn't, but it would have been exponentially disastrous considering Mraz wears sandals.

He was kind enough to take a few minute to talk with me, and we discussed some philosophies on life and chasing the dream. He said a whole bunch of brilliant things, I think, I was kind of in shock and don't really remember exactly what he said, but I'm sure it was smart (like everything else that comes out of his mouth). He was so genuine and down to earth, one of the coolest dudes I've ever met. He came out before the show to play the line, and performed an improve Mraz-terpiece "kinda sorta" in which he sang a verse about me... which is something I will never forget for the rest of my life.

At about 1:02



The show was amazing, and even afterwards he came over to shake my hand and even remembered my name... this man is amazing.
For your enjoyment;
The best rendition of the best song every written;

You find me another artist who would perform a duet with a homeless woman on the streets of France:


Jason Mraz you are truly an inspiration, not only through your work but also through the type of person you are and the life you choose to live.

A VISION OF MY QUEST

These are a couple designs I've been working on the past few days. I discovered the 'smudge' tool during working on these... and used it for pretty much everything; hair, fabrics, feathers... hands?

This ones not quite finished yet, I gots a bit of tweaking to do.

DOCS AND DAVE P.

Freelance designs I recently did. Don't really have much to say about them... I don't really have time to talk about them, been sooooooo busy lately.

I want to say thanks again to Dave Pimentel for being one of the coolest guys in the universe. He has a great blog up with some very important handouts on storyboarding, I advise anybody interested in the subject to check it out;
http://drawingsfromamexican.blogspot.com/2006_11_01_archive.html

I can feel myself learning just looking at Dave's work.

TOUNG IN CHEEKS

This is a quicky T-Shirt design I did for an event my sister is holding. I guess they're taking a whole bunch of kids to a museum and talking to them about healthy eating and the digestive system... I bet they'll be a lot of giggles towards the rear end of the tour. I don't know if they're making the shirts for the kids, but I hope they do!

I ♥ HORTON!

I just saw Blue Sky's Horton Hears a Who, and it was absolutely incredible. By far the best movie I've seen in theaters over the past couple years.
It's the CARTOONiest 3D movie I've ever seen, and I think Blue Sky is going to carve out a real niche for themselves in the market with this kind of stuff. It was pretty funny and had a lot of great 2D oriented gags which was awesome to see in 3D. There is also about 3-4 minutes of 2D animation in the film which was a great surprise, and they made it work. Originally I wasn't too keen on the voice cast, but as the movie progressed they actually fell into place really nicely.

Taking a kids book like that and adapting it into an hour plus film will surely have its difficulties, and it showed. There was some filler bits, but I think they kept a great flow to the movie that was entertaining enough to distract from the fact. I think one of the reasons it succeeded was because it treated its filler sequences as animated shorts; the whole bridge scene for example, could stand alone as a short (if you remove the spec from the scene). A giant elephant who has to cross a thin decaying old rope bridge. That's a great gag short. They did not fill the extra time with irrelevant dialogue or scenes in which they establish characters/relationships that ultimately have no significance in the movie's entirety.



Does anybody else smell a sequal...

LIVE NUDES

Drawings from another class at Dreamworks I've been sitting in on. I never really like my figure drawings, so I don't really look at them. After each class I'll just put all the drawings in the back of my car, and that's where they've been the last few weeks. But I finally looked at them, and was quite surprised to find a few that I actually liked.

I WAS GONNA TITLE THIS POST "GO FIGURE", BUT THAT'S REALLY CHEESY. I'LL THINK OF SOMETHING FUNNY IN A FEW MINUTES...

This is an assortment of not-so-terrible drawings from a class I've been sitting in on at Dreamworks. The class is run by Dave Pimentel, an absolutely incredible guy and artist. He's been so kind as to mentor me through the wacky world of feature animation, and I've learned so much from him already. The most recent session was probably the most fun I've had drawing in a long looooooong time.

These range from 1-2 minute poses.

TUNNEL VISION

This is another Mock poster I've been working on for the past 72 hours straight. I'm really happy with how it came out (I've still got a few things to tweak). But I think this is one of the first times where I was actually able to put down on paper/computer-screen what I actually saw in my head... or at least pretty close.

It's the most extensive piece of digital art I've ever done (topping the poster 2 posts down), and I learned a lot doing it. I used to hate photoshop because I didn't think it was very user freindly, but now I'm starting to Dig it.

BLOG TIME NO SCENE

I haven't blogged in for-ages. Sorry about that, (the appology is assuming there are actually people who care?) I've been rediculously busy lately, I'm working on so many different projects they're all just starting to blur together.

But for now, enjoy (or don't) this random assortment of drawings, mostly copied poses.


This is a horse I designed, I really like the shapes, I like the style actually more. I might try to do a line-up exploring the style.