Before and After

A friend wanted me to restore a picture for his mother.  I guess that's them at the lake.  I told him there may not be enough information left but I would try my best.  It looks like it's a foggy day but it is better than it was.

Congratulations Bent

The stop-motion special "Jingle All the Way" was accepted into the 2012 Annecy Festival lineup. Congratulations to director Chel White and the team at Bent Image Lab. This was a fun project to work on and another is planned for the Hallmark Channel with pre-production happening now.

3D Movies on Youtube

 I've just discovered that you can watch 3D on Youtube.  Look for the red 3D and by clicking on it Options will open allowing you to watch in anaglyph (red and blue glasses) or other settings.  I like the 'No glasses' approach of free-viewing where you cross your eyes and focus on the image that forms in the middle but many don't.

 I may want to start back into my 3D Flash stuff again.

Look for red 3D

Merry Christmas!

Click on image to enlarge

Reclining Nude Anaglyph

This is the latest of my life drawing conversions. I've done a free-view style of this too but you'll need the colored glasses to see this one.

(click image to enlarge)

Fab Four

I can't believe I haven't posted my completed nod to the greatest band in the world. I had offered posters and Tee-shirts and all kind of products with this image on my Zazzle store but they made me take it off. It's kind of funny because there are all kind of Disney imagery on there and I doubt the sellers are given permission to use them.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

(Caricature of The Beatles by Joel Brinkerhoff)

Jingle

Here's the promo for the Holiday Special I did some animation for. Don't confuse this with the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie of the same name!

Jingle All the Way from Bent Image Lab on Vimeo.

Anaglyph and Free-view

Its been awhile since I've done any stereo conversions so I dug up an old life drawing of mine and gave it a whack. If you have the blue and red lens glasses, you're all set. If you don't the double image is a free-view style that can be seen in 3D by crossing your eyes and focusing on the image that forms in the middle.

(Click images to enlarge)

Dark Horse

Still learning digital paint. I'm finding caricature to be pretty tough. I think it's become bad portraiture. I don't know.

(Caricature of George Harrison by Joel Brinkerhoff)

"La Joie de Vivre" influencing "Fantasia"

It’s never been mentioned in anything I’ve read about the making of Disney’s “Fantasia”, but was this film influential in any degree? Heinrich Kley is clearly an inspiration and only recently being acknowledged but what about “La Joie de Vivre” (The Joy of Living), by Anthony Gross and Hector Hoppin?

Could this 1934 film have inspired the Tchaikovsky Nutcracker sequences of the 1940 film “Fantasia”? To me the sprites of “La Joie de Vivre” looks strikingly like the fairies in Fantasia with their long legs and relationship to nature. The nude bathing scene in particular has all the proportional designs of the fairies and echoes of the ice fairy can be seen in their involvement with the lake. The sprites of “La Joie de Vivre” make flowers grow and dance among leaves. They also disguise themselves as flowers and the Disney’s fairies are introduced emerging from flowers, and have similar interactions with nature. There seems to be many parallel elements to me.

I see “La Joie de Vivre” as a viable springboard to “Fantasia”. It also reminds me graphically of what Lionel Feiniger, (“The Kin-der-kids”) might have looked like animated. I also see some “Yellow Submarine” too.

(Character designs for Fantasia)

Boris Goodenough

I did a preliminary sketch that was all scratchy and some friends like the quality. I worked over the top a little and decided to leave it loose and that this was good enough.

(Caricature of Boris Karloff by Joel Brinkerhoff)

Unka Walt

This came out creepier than Walt ever was.

(digital caricature of Walt Disney by Joel Brinkerhoff)

Mellow Costello

Caricature of Elvis Costello

(digital painting started in Corel Painter and finished in Photoshop by Joel Brinkerhoff)

All You Need is Photoshop

Okay, I've played with Corel Painter and I'm having the same trouble blending as I do with ArtRage. It just seems to swirl the colors around in a very uncontrollable manner. I know many people doing great things with both programs so it must be me. I will need to pick their brains for the proper technique. For Now I will stick with Photoshop.

Digital painting of John Lennon by Joel Brinkerhoff (Click image to enlarge_

Time to look into Corel?

I did this caricature of Tom Waits in Photoshop which doesn't have the control I'm looking for in digital painting. I have ArtRage and have seen impressive work but I just can't use it for blending. I've known about Corel Painter for sometime but only now found I own a copy that came with my Wacom tablet! Time to start playing with Corel Painter.

(click image to enlarge)

Digital VS Old School

I've been exploring the paperless digital graphic art alternatives to old school methodology and am still on the fence about the whole phenomenon. The convenience and flexibility of digital graphics is something I greatly treasure and will probably always rely on for exploratory design work. The actual execution of finished art is something I'm wrestling with. I seem to spend more time digitally trying to mimic what is pretty easy with the old fashioned pen or brush.

The example illustrations shown here are how fluid and varied Jack Davis was able to get his lines simply using a brush. The other two color drawings are mine using a digital paint program and I am not at all satisfied with the line quality. I didn't care much because they were exploratory drawings but I could not let these go as finished art and would have spent a lot of time tweaking line thicknesses.

I work with incredibility talented illustrators and they seem to have adapted pretty well to the digital revolution. I do see them spending a great deal of time laying down and deleting a single stroke until there is something they like. Would it be more efficient working old school? We still need to get that image digitized to be usable today though, don't we?

Brush work by Jack Davis (click on image to enlarge)

Digital designs by Joel Brinkerhoff (click on image to enlarge)

Trot Chart

I made this chart and movie to help me figure out which leg was passing on which side for a show that involved a little dog as its hero. This was really pretty helpful.

Nine frame trot shot on two's. Click on image to enlarge

Old School...

I came across this bit of video documenting the making of Canadian Broadcastings 1978 production, "The Devil and Daniel Mouse". It's a pretty representative example of how animation was done and the incredible amount of work involved.

Of course all that has changed with the digital age. I think there is better control and less waste today but the Zen like quality of old school cartooning is missing.

Back to Stop Motion

Okay, Hallmark has given an air date: Friday, November 25 (8 p.m. ET/PT, 7C) so I can talk about this now.

It's been awhile since I have posted anything about anything. Partly because I took a much needed vacation, and mostly because upon my returned I took an offer to do some stop motion again for a Holiday Special called "Jingle All the Way".
It's very cute and has a lot of heart and I hope it will become a perennial favorite like "Rudolph" but, oh my, I forgot how physical stop motion animation is, and I've been just too tired to do anything else afterward.

The first week had me climbing onto a table top to reach the characters for every frame, (I think it was a shot well over 100 frames too), and the first night I has a massive leg cramp that made me stifle crying out and waking my wife. I've lost five pounds so that's not bad, but I've also lost sleep worrying about how to get shots done.

I've had a chance to work with some new technology that wasn't around before called Dragon Stop Motion which is pretty cool and allows you to plot out your shots with more accuracy. I also have renewed admiration for all the talent involved in a stop-mo production. It takes a fairly sizable crew to light and build sets and keep the puppets in good repair.

It's also humbling to work with the other animators. They're all so talented and young. I asked one of the crew if they had worked on "The PJs" which was a stop motion TV series that ran three seasons. She laughed and said she hadn't been born yet! Man, I'm old.

I'm mostly looking forward to watching this with my grand-kids, (yes, I said grand-kids. I told you I was old.). I also want one of those Jingle Xmas ornaments for my tree!

Hallmarks Jingle Xmas Ornament

The Hallmark Book the Special is based on.


Read more about the production here:http://tv.broadwayworld.com/article/Jingle-All-The-Way-Premires-Exclusively-On-Hallmark-1125-20110727

Northwest Animation Festival

My film "Pop Goes The Weasel" will be showing opening night, Friday, June 3, as part of the Northwest Animation Festival. Please come see it if you're in the area.