Cinematography by Kellie Smith, Crappy Animation and Hands by Me, Music by The Submarines.
Sunday Fun!
Hey everyone! I'm in a charity auction art show that's tonight in Pasadena. The theme is 80's kids movies and there will be a screening of Goonies at the historic Rialto Theater.
For my painting I chose The NeverEnding Story. And, if you seen the movie, you know that one of the sadness scenes is where Atreyu's horse Atrax dies in the Swamps of Sadness. But I didn't want to paint such a gut-wrenching scene, so I painted them right before, when they're walking through the swamp. Above is my first rough thumbnail for the painting.
And here is the color comp the I drew to size in Photoshop. I also nailed down the composition a bit more.
Here is the final drawing based off the color comp. Noticed I used some post-its to redraw the characters. I didn't get it right the first time.
And here's the final painting! It's 15x7 and painted in Cel Vinyl on illustration board. I am quite happy how it turned out!
I watched this awesome film Carandiru at my friend Jorge's place last night. It's a prison movie from Brazil that came out around the same time as City of God, but didn't get as much attention. It's about a doctor that goes to work at this severely overcrowded prison. He learns about the inmates and their stories of how they got there are shown to us. In the end the tension inside the prison wheals up and explodes in a riot which causes police to come and kill over 100 inmates. Oh, and it's all a true story, and it was filmed in the actual prison, right before they demolished it.So i did some drawings of the characters while watching the film. Check them out! And yes, those are the characters real names.
(The only picture of Beard I could find, but under that bandanna he's got some crazy hair!)
Hmm, on IMDB this character's name is "No Way", but in the subtitles it was "Too Bad."
This was done on cardboard with good ol pen and ink. I was just trying out the different colored inks and various nibs my girlfriend bought me. Pretty fun!
And here are some post-it studies from the Addams Family movie. I've always liked this movie. It's got great compositions, acting, color, and music!
Howdy! Here are some studies of the great Guillermo Divito. Well, studies of his cartoons, not of the man himself. 
Sometimes you just gotta change it up. So I bought a new brush pen and started drawing in an old but unused sketchbook. It's strange how you can draw so differently just by changing your drawing utensil. I also decided to finally open up and watch the Rocky and Bullwinkle set I bought so long ago. That happens often with dvds. You buy em, then don't really get around to watching them. I think these couple of Bullwinkle drawings are interesting because they show a kind of evolution, if you will. It goes from just watchin and enjoying the show while sketching, to pausing the dvd to get a better look at the design, and then to drawing your own interpretation. Interest-Study-Master. Not that I'm saying I've mastered drawing Bullwinkle, but you get the idea, hopefully.
I like Rocky and Bullwinkle even though there's not stop dialogue and hardly any animation. The pun-filled dialogue is actually clever and when there actually is some little animation, it's pretty funny. Mainly the timing is great and the drawings are fun.
Also, I think the designs are great! At first glance you'd think that they're very flat, but they're actually very dimensional and volumetric. Amid talks about this issue over at his Cartoon Modern blog, referencing some great Tom Oreb designs. I think it would be great to do a variety show like Rocky and Bullwinkle, because it seems like that's essentially what it was, a show that they themselves hosted.
So I wanted to keep using techniques that I don't often use, so I drew some girls with brush pen and colored pencil. Nowadays you can find great reference material with just a couple of clicks on the 'ol internet. It's great! I like how these turned out, especially the one with the weird expression below. Mouths are really hard to draw for me. I don't know why. They're tricky little thing, what with the lips and teeth and stuff. It's hard for me to make mouths dimensional, so something I gotta work on.
And finally I was watching the cult classic Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill! with some friends the other night and was inspired to draw the badass girls. On the left is the Italian one with the thick accent, and on the right is the leader. It would be fun to go back to get a closer look at the girls because it's kinda tough to draw em when they're moving around on screen kicking ass and running people over.
This last one's a weird one I did this morning thinking more about the movie and the Italian girl. More drawings to come soon!
Here is a collection of recent sketches for yall. Above is my super-macho friend Jorge as he talks excitedly about a crazy idea of his. And yes, he's referencing that super awesome old-school arcade game Burgertime.
These are from the ASIFA-Hollywood John Canemaker event last week. He showed his new film The Son and the Moon, which was great, and some other awesome, rare cartoons like The Fox Hunt with this funny dancing fox. Amid over at Cartoon Brew talks about the event more here. These drawings don't really look like John though because he was lurking in the shadows during the lecture, so I kinda just made stuff up. But I like em.
Here's another with Brewmeister Jerry Beck interviewing the Canemaker.
Here's some tango sketches. I love tango music (I'm half Argentine) but don't know the dance. Maybe one day I'll learn though.
Oh, lookie here, it's a whale, and I guess some pirates are using him as a ship. Oh crazy pirates...
And finally here are some really quick, rough studies from Citizen Kane done on post-it notes. There are some awesome compositions in this film and it's not even widescreen.
Here are some studies I did from Sergio Leone's epic 'Once Upon A Time in the West'. I tried to capture the magnificent compositions as well as studying the elements of light and dark. I also for the use of the 180 degree line and how it was kept and when it was broken. Anyways, just thought I'd share these sketches, which are just done in black prismacolor.
Charles Bronson's character, the hero essentially, starts off on screen right, but then when he shoots down the bad guys he jumps to screen left. But between the switch are centered shots.
The shot above through the window is awesome. Cheyene is looking on as Peter Fonda, the bad guy, and Charles Bronson, the good guy, are about to duel it out. And they're separated by the window frame! And the frame looks like a cross because one of them is going to die! Amazing!
I just purchased an official bootleg DVD of Disney's Song of the South from the San Diego Comic-Con. I'm guessing it was transferred from the laserdisc because the quality is really good and the Walt Disney titles in the beginning are like totally 80'sd-out. Man, this is a good film! My friends and I were watching it last night and doing some drawing studies from it. The character animation is so goddamn good it's sickening. Uncle Remus was really fun to draw as well. Did you ever notice how white his eyes are?! They're like totally matte white, as if someone went in afterwards and painted them out. It kinda creepy, but funny as well.
This is from the dance scene after Brer Fox and Bear capture Brer rabbit in the tar. My feeble drawing doesn't do it justice, but the poses and timing in these scenes are amazing. 
Here is a great laughing snarl from Brer Fox. They say that when doing the voice for Brer Fox, James Baskett talked so fast that the animators had a real hard time getting the lip sync straight.
This kid was trying to hide a frog in his hat or something. Comedy gold.
