Maquette In The Works...

The scene this is based on is in my opinion still one of the most perfect pieces of acting in animation. I don’t think I’ve caught the abject horror but I tried to pick a moment that had some movement to it. I’m not finished yet and may be able to fix this thing.

Life Drawings

There’s something about the quick gesture sketches that I just can’t seem to get into my longer poses. I think it’s the sense of movement that is lacking. Also the longer poses look labored where the quick sketches are more free and flowing. I’m working on it.

Click on image to enlarge.

Bill Peet and Me?

Pamela Camel belonged to the Brinkerhoff Brothers Big Top Circus a long time ago. So starts the story by the famous Disney story-man Bill Peet. After helping craft many classics like 101 Dalmatians, Sword in the Stone and Jungle Book, Peet parted company not on the best of terms. He quickly started a new career as author/illustrator of many beloved children’s books. Now my question is who did Peet know from the Brinkerhoff family? It’s not a name one just thinks up. Thanks Jim for bringing this to my attention.

Maquette Also

I’m a little frustrated by my crappy pictures. This guy is about six inches high.

Maquette Continued

This is the finished piece. From planted foot to the top of the flying ear, it’s about 6 and a halve inches tall. Next, something with cloth.

Maquette

Okay here is my first action piece. It’s not finished yet and will be sprayed a neutral grey. I should use a harder base because it was hard to lock it down without it wanting to pivot on that foot.

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.

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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.

Something old: BTM continued

These are screen-grabs from a three minute demo in Flash that I tried to sell to Cartoon Network showing Dr. Smartnik with his robot Hawking (like in Steven). I thought Dweasle the dog looked too much like H&B’s Oggy Doggie Daddy so I added a wool hat like Mike N. in the Monkees. Dweasle’s personality is Ringo Starr. Sir Bop the donkey is Barry White. Slats the cat is a smoother Wolfman Jack and Chicky the rooster is Little Richard. Try to picture them as reluctant crime-fighters. Now if you’ve read the previous post on this you know Doc Spartnik lives on an observation satellite along with his robot Hawking. If this sounds suspiciously like the short smart glasses wearing red-haired kid with the bulbous head and the sarcastic robot that dwell on an observation satellite in Cartoon Network’s Time Squad, I can only say my demo preceded it.

Something old: BTM

Here are some character designs for a pilot idea I had. Apparently not too many people are familiar with the old German folk tale The Bremen Town Musicians. I wanted to do The New Bremen Town Musicians or BTM. The idea was for these guys to try and form a band. But for some reason their vocal harmonies create frequencies that recompose matter. It’s physics, it’s fun. Anyway the frequencies are picked up by Dr. Smartnik and he beams them aboard his observation satellite and tried to write music for them that will produce dependable results forcing them into reluctant superheroes. Silly but I’ve seen worse.

Frog sculpt

I wanted to see if I could mass produce some of my pieces. I did this frog and made a mold and cast it in resin. Between that and the painting I will never get the man hours back. I’ll be lucky if I make my material cost back. They are for sale if you want one.

Click on image to enlarge.

Paintings and sketches

I seem to be in an African mode. These are watercolors and a pencil drawing.

Elephants

An opportunity came up to do some children’s book illustrations.
These are very rough sketches trying to find the characters.