Models for Modelers

Saw some incredible sculpts of this guys work on Cartoon Brew and now I can’t find them again. They were very expressive and had a lot of motion to them. I’m going to start doing that with my work. The pieces I’m posting were done for the ill fated Popeye TV special. I did the sculpts in a static pose close to the traditional ‘Jesus Pose’ used by c.g. modelers because they were going to be used as guides for the modeling department. You might notice the hands have a closed fist and an open hand. That’s because the characters hands were so different in a neutral open hand from the fist and the modeler/riggers would need to make a ‘blend shape’ to work it into a fist. You might notice too that Bluto has no gap in his front teeth. This is how the Fleischer Studio model sheets always had him. The next character sculpts I do will be more gesture action poses.

Kibble, Bits and Peanuts

It’s always amazed me that Charles Schulz did his own writing and inking on Peanuts for his entire career. Generally people work two weeks in advance with a ghost-writer and someone doing the inking. When he pasted away Schulz had enough material to run the strip for many months before going into reprints. And to think he also had time to write the feature films and TV specials based on his series is truly mind blowing. I love Charles Schulz. He made me dream of doing a strip of my own. It’s a tough market to get into.

Click on image to enlarge.

Speaking of CG

Speaking of CG, the place I worked for was hoping to adapt the traditional branded character Tony the Tiger from 2D to 3D so I did this quick sculpt to assist the CG modelers. This is the old Tony before he got all buff and strange. We didn’t get to do anything with it but I did see some TV commercials that somebody did and it just didn’t work.

Another pitch

This is another example of some pitch material for a short film. The challenge was to do something in CG that didn’t look CG. I thought it would be cool to design a piece that looked like a forties cartoon and had the shock value of Ren & Stimpy, (this was when R&S first appeared). I made a storyboard and these clay figures that tell of a dog who encounters a mirror. He thinks it’s another dog and starts pulling faces until he pulls the flesh right off his skull. Okay, not so funny.

First paintings

Soon it will be Mother’s Day. I’m going to post some of my mother’s paintings and do a little tribute to her. Until then, I found my first successful oil painting. It’s one of the prophets from the Bible. I was named after a prophet but I’m more of a non-prophet. Ha ha ha, that sure gets old fast. I remember painting the parts that interested me and leaving the rest just struck in. That explains the nude-tree being pretty well done and the background unfinished. Don’t remember what was up with cats that year.