Coloring in Photoshop

Im learning new tricks on coloring in Photoshop from a book on how to color for Comics.

Ninja, Viking and Micheal

A Ninja, another Viking and Michael, if you have been watching the show Lost lately you will know who he is and why he looks the way he does.

Creatures

Alien, Wilfred and Smirking guy

More drawings

An Astronaut, Mr Friendly from Lost and a squirel.

Over the Hedge Review

Last Monday night my family and I attended a free ASIFA screening of Over the Hedge. While not perfect I thought that it’s was really good. My favorite parts were some of the characters. I really love the Squirrel and his manically childlike way of doing things. I also really enjoyed the Opossum Dad and Daughter. The Dad was William Shatner and it was awesome seeing him go into the hammy Captain Kirk type acting through out (especially when he was faking his death). Avril Lavine was actually really good as the daughter, really good job at playing off of Shatner. The Gary Handling and Bruce Willis Turtle and Raccoon characters had some really funny things to do and say. Another favorite were the three porcupine kids. I didn’t seem to enjoy the Porcupine parents and the Skunk though.

The two characters that really bugged me though were the two main humans and not because of the characters them selves, but because they were ugly. DreamWorks has yet to produce good looking human (With exception to Princess Fiona in Sherk). Both of them really bugged me.

The story was really great except for the heavy handed anti-commercialism message. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind the message, it could have handled with a softer approach. A lot of heart was in the movie. My three year old loved the movie a lot and sat through the whole thing. Unfortunatly he was really scared by the bear and the two humans at the end. My wife commented that she didn’t like all of the nuts and potty humor. So be warned that this might not be for the really young if they get afraid of scary things or you don’t like potty humor.

Funny thing after we got home my wife and I watched the Apprentice and the prize for that week was to visit Dreamworks studios and meet Jeffery Katenberg and to do a voice recording. So the voice of the Barbeque guyis one of the Appretice contestants.

Thoughts? For these who have seen it please give you feelings.

Ben & Nathan

Pastel Drawing of my boys.

Two more dinosaurs & Rockman

triceratops

My three year old is really into Dinosaurs at the moment.

Revamped Website

I just finished revamping my portfolio website with new design. The first image is the original main page and the second image is the new and improved mainpage. Eventually I’m planning on putting in a feedback page along with other features so please let me know what you think.
www.paul-burrows.com

Mummy's Day

An early Mummy's Day drawing.

Character Inspiration

Yesterday I visited Disneyland with my family. We took our boys to see Playhouse Disney which includes Bear in the Big Blue House. This reminded me of my Disney college program and how much of a shock it was to see the characters with their heads off, a girl, in Mickey's costume or Cinderella taking a smoke break. Seeing Bear in the Big Blue House made me think of this image.

Action Characters

Viking,Samurai, Spiderman & Pirate

Ink & Color

I've been tired of just working in blue & red pencil so I've been experimenting with other mediums. I took some of my old sketches and used a prismacolor marker to ink the lines and Prismacolor pencils to add color.

Book Recomendation: Bruce Timm

This book is very inspirational and informative. Its mostly a big Q&A where he talks about starting out and going back and forth between studio and K-Mart jobs at first and how eventually landed a full time job at Warner Bros. Its also goes into detail on the creation of Batman the animated series, Superman and Justice League. A very good read. This book can be found at select comic book stores and is part of the Modern Masters Series.

Baby Beaver & Bee

I like this except for the fact that the hair on the underside and the legs make things to busy. I might try it again with the hair on top.

Beavers

I was drawing the first beaver and noticed a cool inverted triangle shape in the tail, so I decided to tweak the body shape into more of a regular triangle for a repeated theme. While I was making the changes I was watching the third Harry potter movie during the execution scene and I was thinking how cool the executioners axe looked so I created an executioner beaver.

Rhinos

Recently I have noticed that I haven't really done animals in awhile and that I’m getting tired of working in just blue and red animation pencil. I’m also trying to really branch out into different styles. I started out just doing a more realistic sketch of a Rhino to get the basic shapes and proportions. I later found out that my one year old Nathan practiced his artistic skills on it, although it kind of looks like Savanna grass. The second one is a more boxy and structured. The third one is more curvy and stylized; finally the last one is an anamorphic rhino warrior.

My toy collection

If you were to visit an animators desk at any studio, one thing that you would notice there would be the large amount of toys that they have displayed. This is a portion of my collection. I usually rotate between my Star Wars figures and my Transformers from time to time. Currently I have my Generation 1 Transformers from my childhood.

Fairy Expresions

Besides the turnaround and the action poses a studio will usually have you show the character in various close-up expressions.

Book Recomendation

These are two books that I have been reading in order to increase my skills and abilities. I would say that these are the best books that you can pick up if you want to learn Character Design for animation or even just to draw in general

Pictures

Heres some more pictures of Ben and Nathan at home and at Disneyland. Ben and I both love the revamp of the old Swiss Family Robinson treehouse to the Tarzan Treehouse.