BI-DAILY: OTHERWORDLY

Been crazy busy boarding lately, gettin ready for a big screening. I did however take a short break from storyboards to do this little diddy below.


Today's theme was suggested by Dave Derrick, be sure to check out his killer drawing.

-Hat

Attachee BriefPack

Attachee (pronounced Attach-he) is a line of Briefcase backpacks which are painted and customized, a little side project I've been working on for the past few weeks.
Below are some mock ads I created for the line;



About Attache BriefPacks;
I've always thought briefcases were cool but was never too keen on the idea of carrying one. In my eyes It conjures up too much an image of your traditional businessman which, my lack of a college degree should tell you, I am not. Seeing as how I make a somewhat unconventional living, drawing cartoons, I thought it fitting to flip it and wear it like a backpack. So I put a strap on it. And if there's one thing I did learn from college it's that everything is better with a strap-on!

For me it was a way of saying 'I don't take myself or what I do too seriously'. I guess I probably could have just printed that on a shirt... shoot.


Almost the entire product is made of recycled and reused materials. Both the briefcases and straps were purchased from thrift stores. The screws which are used to secure the strap to the case are all found. And the paint... well that was all left over from school.

Some of the advantages to wearing an Attachee BriefPack include (and are not limited to);
-Protection from bullets to the back (this has not been tested but the logic seems sound).
-Comfortably creates better posture while sitting.
-Feels like a hug.



If anyone is interested in purchasing one let me know. You can leave me a comment here or email me; Hat.lieberman@gmail.com

There is no fixed price yet, however I am looking to sell them somewhere in the range of $35-50 (or the highest offer depending on the amount of interest). So if you'd like, make an offer and if it sounds right, I'll send one your way.

Below are just a few quick tag-lines I came up with for the company, nothing final yet.I think they echo the theme of 'not taking yourself to seriously' quite well.

Special thanks go out to Lindsey Olivares and Andy Heitz for helping me model and snap the BriefPacks. There are more pics from the shoot (and other awesome photos) on Andy's blog, and better artwork than here on Lindsey's blog.

-Hat

MORE BLUE

Sum more blue guys to add to the ones below;

-Hat

BLUE GUY

Just some poses;
I normally like writing a little blurb to accompany a post, although lately that hasn't been the case. So I thought I might write a short bit concerning the blue guy above.

The blue dude is based on a character I used to draw when I was younger, who was inspired by the show Digimon. Basically this guy was my own digimon (the champion level of my own digimon to get nerd-technical). The overall character was based on my dog, an Akita, who was huge and looked like a bear, hence the design having (at least originally) some bear characterisitics. His original head shape was based on a key... a house hold key (to be more precise, 2 keys facing opposite direction) which is the reason for the feather like appendages on his cheeks (although the row on top of his head are new because I thought it looked cool). So there you have it, the character above is a design inspired by digimon who's based on a dog who looks like a bear who's shaped like a key.

-Hat

BI-BI-DAILY

2 Bi-Daily drawings because I fell behind.

Sticks and stones:


Jazz:
-Hat

BI-DAILY: CREATURE

RANDOM DRAWING DUMP

Just some random drawings.


Oh, my friend Lindsey Olivares posted a whole bunch of drawlings she's done of me, check em outs.

BI-DAILY: COWBOY

Today's theme was Cowboys. Did this rather quick, again, don't really like it, but just wanted to get something up.

BI-DAILY DRAWING: BUFFALO CHICKEN

Todays Bi-daily drawing topic; Buffalo Chicken.

I had to do this rather quick as I'm quite busy today, but I missed Monday's drawing, so really just wanted to make sure I got one in today. Not sure if this is what Jeff Snow had intended for today's theme, but it'll have to do.

-Hat

BI-DAILY DRAWING; BABOONS ON VACATION

Today's theme was thought up by the incredibly talented Dave Derrick. My submission; Baboon vacation of the family variety



I didn't have as much time as I'd like to finish rendering the drawing. I wanted to do it in color, but lest, I must get sleep. I couldn't tell which version was funnier, with the words or without... The dialogue was funny in my head, but when I put it down on paper/cintiq screen, it became a bit pretentious. And I don't exclude myself from the portrayal of humans above... although I don't own a TV, so take that Mankind!

Wow it's late.

Oh yeah, some quick Baboon doodles I did;


-hat.

BIRDS OF PREY

Today's theme was 'Birds of Prey'... but I'm awful at drawing birds so I chose to feature a cute little mouse instead. A cute little mouse who's about to have his intestines ripped to shreds. See below;


Hopefully this still counts?

-Hat

UPDATE: Have added a link list in the side bar with all participating bi-daily drawing artists, check em out, they all have some amazing artwork up.

CINTIQIN'

So my good friend/mentor/one-of-the-sickest-artists-i-know Dave Pimentel was kind enough to sell me his old Cintiq. I've been thinkin bout gettin one for a while now, and glad I finally got around to buying one (not to mention the fact that since Dave used it, it comes with magical powers that make me draw better... at least that's what he told me when he sold it to me. I paid extra for the magic but it's totally worth it).

Just been messin around tryin to get it set up;


This here is another 'assignment' from Dave and Jeff Snow's drawing initiative; Baseball Player.


They are encouraging anyone interested in drawing along to join in and post your artwork.

Oh and also, the short I made for Cartoon Network with my good buddy Joey G has officially been released online, and is currently up on Cartoon Networks website;

Manny and Khan on CartoonNetwork.com

All the other shorts from the Cartoonstitute program are up too, check em out if you didn't have to chance to see them back when they were leaked, they are all pretty rad;

-Hat

BUDWEISER CENTAUR

So some of the other board artists at Dreamworks decided to give themselves little assignments in an attempt to update their blogs more frequently with artwork. Dave Pimentel invited me to join in, so here's my contribution to the first theme 'Centaurs'.


Check out Dave's blog to see some of the amazing drawings he did, as well as links to the other artists involved.

-Hat

HAT-SCRATCH III

Here's another little strip I did, the third now in the on-going psychological thriller Hat-Scratch.

Strip 1
Strip 2

I've got about 30 strips outlined now, not sure how many more finished ones I'll post, as I'm hoping to compile them into a comic-booklet. However I'm sure I'll post more Hat-Scratch related doodles as I continue to work on it.

-Hat

UNCLE BEAR

Quite frequently at the studio, someone (including myself) says something stupid, which almost always leads to a drawing. In this case;

I can't remember exactly how it started, but the image kept getting passed around the story team with each board artist slightly (or drastically) tweaking the image by drawing on top of it. Eventually it got;

Have a good weekend.

-Hat

HAT-SCRATCH TOO

The second strip in now what is officially being called 'Hat-Scratch'.

(Strip #1)

I'm havin a lot of fun with these. I scribbled down 12 or so ideas to keep the narrative going. I'm thinking bout tryin to draw 30 strips, and perhaps putting them together in a little book... Thats the idea anyways.

-Hat

LOLIVARES

A little birthday card I made for my good friend Ms. Lindsey Olivares.


-Hat

HAT-SCRATCH

I find that when I set out to start new projects, I get bogged down in 'style' and 'rules' and 'format' all before I ever even lay pencil to paper. It's a bit overwhelming in that sense, expecting perfection from the get go. I wanted to try something unplanned, something spontaneous and straight-ahead, basically; draw and see what comes out. The strip below is what happened to materialize;

Using this as a starting point, I'm hoping to make this a regular strip, of which I've tentatively titled 'Hat-scratch'. Perhaps one strip a week, assuming my schedule permits... I do have a lot of sleeping to do.

No rules, no style, no format, no over-thinking, just drawing.

Other stuff;
A while back, they screened the Oscar nominated shorts for us at the studio. One of the directors, Javier Recio Garcia, even came by to introduce his short 'The Lady and the Reaper'. The short is rad, it's nice to see people making an effort to infuse 2D principals/gags into CG animation. We got to sit down with Javier afterwards to talk about animation over lunch... which they insisted on filming... while we ate...
Here is video of us stuffing our faces while we manage to talk about cartoons;
(Also, holy crap... are my eyes always that buggy!?)

me with buggy eyes eating lunch with other board artists

Javier is an awesome guy, I'm glad I got a chance to meet him.

I also worked very VERY briefly on a new TBS cartoon 'Neighbors from Hell' doing board clean-up. Despite only having done a handfull of drawings, some of them managed to make it into a promo spot they released on the web;

tbs promo

The boards I did can be seen at the 1:30 mark, and were originally boarded by Rob Koo, one of the most talented board artists I've ever worked with. He does have a blog, however only posts pictures of his birds and fish.

-Hat

ME-EASLES

I think I've come down with a case of the me-asles. Not sure why, but I've been drawing myself a lot lately, in cartoon manner of course.

I was thinking about doing some comic strips to post here on my bloggy-do, so I started thumb-nailing one out... but then got distracted drawing hats.


Below; If you remove the over-alls and hillbill-ish grin, this is an exact reenactment of events that transpired at the studio.

Below; Well... the simplest way to explain this is;
1. I call my cube-mate Cubie (yes I know I misspelled it in the picture, I couldn't be bothered to change it).
2. My cube-mate is convinced my toes are going to fall off because I only ever wear sandals. He calls me nubs.
3. Somebody said 'The Nubs and Cubie Show'
End.
Hmm... so maybe I'll get around to doin some of those comics... maybe.

-Hat

TRAINING

I am very fortunate to have had an opportunity to work on 'How to Train Your Dragon'. Dreamworks was kind enough to grant me an internship with the Dragon story team, and it was an incredible experience.

I learned a lot during the internship, about story/boarding and production. It was the first feature I had worked on, and am so thankful it was on a killer movie with an awesome AWESOME crew. I owe much of my success to the guys I worked with on Dragons.


If you havn't seen it, you should check it out. It's pretty darn cool.

There is no way you can walk out of the theater not wanting one of these guys...

-Hat

CUBIES

I felt bad for drawing my cube-mate as a hillbilly, so I drew this to even out the universe.


Although, he told me 'you can't replace old hurt with new things', so I punched him in the head until he forgot about the other drawing... needless to say, the Universe is resting comfortably in equilibrium.

-Hat

NEW CUBICLE

I moved into a new cubicle at the studio today... with this guy.

WARM UP DOODLES

some quick sketches to loosen up a bit.

HACKIN' STYLES

These are some quick little doodles inspired by the work of Rex Hackelberg. I love his stuff, and I don't know that I've ever seen drawings that look like they were more fun to draw.
See for yourself;

http://rex-h.blogspot.com/






I tried not to get too bogged down in the design of things, and just let the doodles flow. It was fun. Not sure who these characters are yet, but I like drawing them, so will probably do some more with em.

-Hat

WORKIN

We had a very important meeting at the studio today. Here are my notes;


-Hat

HELLO TWO ZERO ONE ZERO

Well, it's been a while... Happy 2010

I know it's a bit late, 11 days to be exact, but if god got 7 days to make the earth, it's only fair I get eleven to say happy new years to the few people who check my blog. I'm only human after all. Plus he rested on the 7th day, slacker. I slept for the first 10 days so I'd be ready to go on the 11th, I think these things through.

But I digrest.

So, haven't posted in a while, but have a good excuse. (well if you read the above paragraph closely you'd know it was because i was sleeping, but I'm gonna make up a better sounding excuse). I've been working on a few big things for 2010, that I am hoping very soon will be ready for the web. Stay tuned for those.

So... for the time being, this is just to say hi. How are you doing?

PS, one of those BIG projects WAS going to be the whole 'yeti december/draw-a-thing-a-month' blog, but I realized with work, and the other projects I've been involved with, I wouldn't have enough time to maintain something like that.
But, anybody interested, by all means take the idea and run with it. E-mail me if you are interested in starting that up.

Anywho, should have some new things up soon.

-Hat