Action poses model sheet

Another thing that studios require are model sheets with action poses. This helps the animators to be able to visualize the character as they put them in various situations.

Fairy Turnaround

A lot of times when you design a character for animation or for a toy they want you to draw a turnaround (which is usually the front, back side and 3 quarter views) for a reference guide for the toy sculptors, animators etc.

Walt Disney's Determination

It's been a week since I last posted, my wife and kids have been in Disneyland earlier this week. I always get inspired by that place. Monday night after the kids and my wife went to bed I went back to the park to ride some of the big rides that the boys can't get into yet like Indiana Jones and Space Mountain. Anyways on the way back I stopped at the little theater on Main Street that shows six different black and white Mickey Mouse cartoons, including Steamboat Willie. It reminded me about and article that I read on-line recently on a Disneyana website www.jimhillmedia.com about Walt Disney's wife and what a support she was to him. What stuck out in the article was how she was quoted at saying that Walt had started out animating in his garage and eventually he started his own studio, but because of his passion for animation even if all his pictures failed and the studio was shut down he would still go back to animating in his garage. His love was that great for his art. It also mentioned along with that how he never feared failure he always made the movies that he felt passionate about and things usually turned out all right. While watching those shorts I thought a lot about how they were created in a garage and what love went into them.

The next evening I watched the 50 years of Disneyland movie in the Lincoln Theater. It spoke about how Disney used the same artists and animators who had worked on the animated feature to design a lot of the movie themed rides. You can really tell by the quality of craftsmanship.

Emergency Medical Registration

A few months ago I was approached by someone to create a logo for the city of Thousand Oaks for an Emergency Medical Registration program. In this program people with disabilities would register and put the logo outside their house. That way emergency officials would know during an earthquake, fire, etc that to get extra attention to these individuals. Most of it was pretty straight forward and dictated by the patron, but I did have some artistic license, like I added energy waves around the cross to symbolize an earthquake since we live in California and the placement of the city seal.

Multicultural Day

Recently I took a Graphic Design class at Moorpark College. One of the assignments was to create a T-Shirt design for their Multicultural Day event. I decided to have the flags of various countries and the words Multicultural Day in various languages in the paint stroke. This piece was created in Adobe Illustrator.

Star Wars Vehicle

I created this in back in art school. I combined pictures of various car and star wars vehicle parts and assembled them using various Photoshop techniques.

Character work in progress

This is a character that I have been working on for a few weeks. He's ultimately a good guy, but you never quite know what side he's on. I patterned him after the character John Locke on the TV show Lost. Locke is a very mysterious character who believes in the whatever power is over the island and will often go to great lengths to follow this power. At times to the peril of the other castaways. I modeled the outfit by the Emporer's various robes and outfits in Star Wars Revenge of the Sith to ad a greater level of mystery.

Small World/ Mary Blair

Last Saturday we went to Disneyland for a family trip and being able to go through Small World was a great inspiration to me. I know that people get annoyed at the attraction. I once heard a stand up comedian say that he wished that they would provide balls to toss to see how many dolls you could knock out. But I really like the ride, it was designed by the great Disney artist Mary Blair who had ago designed Alice in Wonderland and many other Disney Animation classics. Of all of the rides at Disneyland I feel that Small World have one of the cleanest and most pure designs. It always inspires me.

Spikor

Back when Mike Young Studios was doing the Masters of the Universe He-Man remake I decided to take a character that they had not done yet in their style for my portfolio. This is what I came up with.

Richard Scary Gorilla

A few months ago I received a call just out of the blue from a lady at Determined Productions. She had found my website via a link on the Academy of Art College's website. She asked me to take some Richard Scary drawings of a Gorilla and his banana ca and make a simple turnaround for use in the creations of a stuffed animal. I believe that he will be sold at Kohls in the near future as part of their rotating stuffed animals with book series. I cleaned it up and colored it in Adobe Illustrator.

ASIFA Hollywood

I just wanted to point out again what a wonderful organization Asifa Hollywood is. Besides all of the cool animation programming and free movies during voting for the Annies they are also creating a wonderful Animation Archive that will be available and a great resource to the public. http://www.animationarchive.org/