One down

This one's done. I tried scanning the whole thing by laying the scanner upside-down over it, but you can see the wrinkles of the paper. I'm gonna have to rescan it again the -right- way, so the paper is pressed nicely, and patch it together again.

On to the foreground elements...

Havin' a beer before bed.

This watercolour paper is taped onto my drawing table, so I just put the laid the scanner upside-down on the painting to scan this. Making progress, still lots to do on this painting (this scan is about 1/6th of the whole painting). Not sure if I'm going to ink it yet. Then I have to paint a tonne of foreground elements on seperate sheets - Devil's Club and Salal.

pencils talk

About 1/12th of a big watercolour painting of a rainforest I've just started tonight. It'll be the far background to a shot I'm working on. Just pencils now. Tomorrow I paint!

withdrawal

i need some wilderness pretty bad.

napkinster

Collage of drawings-on-napkins and drawing-on-flyer from a restaurant dinner tonight. The game was "draw the animal upside down, and guess what animal it is using a british accent."

cinematheque

Saw an amazing collection of animated short films at a theatre tonight. I saw the future.

dude

This is one of my favorite characters. I can't tell you what he's all about, because one day I'll use him in a comic / film, and you can see his full awesomenosity then.

welcome to the terrordome

Yesterday's 'drawing'.

I didn't post anything yesterday because the only page I drew was terrible. Today I sucked it up and cropped the crap out of the page, flipped the image upside-down and added a pretty purple border to try to make something out of it.

Welcome to the terrordome!

No' much

Today I created an animatic for an animated sequence I'm doing for a documentary. It might seem slow, but there will be narrration over top, so it should work well.

red faces

Tell yourself this every morning and you will go somewhere, child:

I want to continue to learn and grow as a real-estate developer.

hands

I like this guy's hands.

I is wonderbear

Lots of laughs coming up with creepy hallowe'en costumes tonight.

La Chambre

Welcome to my stinky Den of Creation.  This is the smallest "studio" I've had in a decade, but I like it.  Doing so much computer work that I don't need a lot of space.

I have a lot of different projects on the go for the next few months, so there should be a good variety of stuffs to post.  I plan on posting Quicktime movies as well, as soon as I can figger that out.

b rainstorm

Drew lots today, here's one page.

b(l)og

I like comics.  Someone write me a freakin story that I can make into a comic.

Food Court

One of the best things about cities are Food Courts.  Lots of people to draw, from all walks of life.  And if you're lucky, there might be a place that sells Butter Chicken.

thise is blod

Whenever someone I know goes to Italy, I say "Git me a leather bound sketchbook!  I'll pay you back!"  Soft leather sketchbooks make me feel like a wizard, or an ancient scholar or something.  And who wouldn't want to pay a little extra to feel like a wizard?

I like the scribbley drawing the best.  It's harder for me to to draw ugly / out of control than to make things pretty and controlled.  I'd like to get to the point where ugly drawings look good, somehow... but I have to do a hell of a lot more ugly drawings before I get there.  I'd also like to get uglier with my animation.  Maybe "loose" is a better term for it than "ugly".

rain out the window

Yesterday's image - waiting to fly out of Whitehorse Airport.  I learned a lot on this trip - about myself, art, people... and shooting in front of a greenscreen.

On the long road south again

Another farewell to the Yukon.  From "The Spell of the Yukon" by Robert Service:

"... There's the land. (Have you seen it?)
It's the cussedest land that I know,
From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it
To the deep, deathlike valleys below.
Some say God was tired when he made it;
Some say it's a fine land to shun;
Maybe; but there's some as would trade it
For no land on earth - - and I'm one."

Next Film

Finally got some downtime last night.  Watched a movie, got inspired and went out to Diamond Tooth Gertie's (a bar/casino in Dawson), had a beer, and wrote wrote wrote!  This is the page with the most drawings on it, so I scanned it.  The idea for my next film is taking shape.

Drunken Goat

Nothing fancy here.  Scratched-out thumbnail storyboards over a late night greek dinner with the director, and wine.  All I've drawn in the last few days is pages like this.  Might not look like much, but these pages have been very helpful.  Way easier to jam out camera angles on a page than by actually lugging a camera around with an actor / stand-in sitting there and everybody waiting around...

trenarae said:

"what is the project you're working on?"


Hi, sister!

It's a feature film called "True Fantasy", centered around a woman's sex life.  It's based on the writer / director's own story (she's in her 60's now, I think).  It's really about trying to forget the past, and the slow process of healing.  I like the story a lot. 


The backgrounds and many other parts of the film will be animated / painted - my myself and probably an assistant.  For now the creator has funding to experiment with the look of the film, and create a small sample (~2 minutes) of the film.

feel my eyeballs

Today was setting up for the shoot - tomorrow and Thursday are both going to be looong days with 10 hours of shooting.  Before and after shooting I'll be testing to make sure my visual effects are going to work.  It's 12:30 am right now and I'm working away, my eyes are burning, but I have at least 1.5 more hours of work before sleepytime.  I need to make sure we're lighting the actors right for me to composite them well, etc etc

Maxwell's Instant Coffee and a big glass of water and the thumps and clicks of an old house cooling down.  Is it the thumps and the clicks that people mistake for ghosts?  This is an artist's residence - maybe it's people who've never stayed in old creaky houses before..?  The huge temperature changes of the Yukon also make for mucho creaking... it can change 30 degrees between day and night. 

Back to work..

monday morning

My workspace for the next week.  I'll be spending evenings in here animating, colour keying, painting and compositing.  We're setting up a big greenscreen down the road today - that's where we'll be doing all the filming.  Auditions in this room tonight.  Be there!

First day of snow in Dawson City

The house.  The top right window is the bedroom where people see stuff, that's where I stayed last time I was here.  I chose to sleep in the other bedroom this time.  The neighbour's daughter saw a lady standing in the backyard (lower left) once. 

"What are you looking at, daughter?"
"The lady, right there, daddy, can't you see her?"

Okay, I'm not going to relate any more stories because I'm creeping myself right out.  (I'm typing in the top room with the lights on right now.)

Andrew, good to hear from you, man!  Can't wait 'til next time we get together and talk, or even better, work on something!  I still read and enjoy John K's blog.  I've started doing more classical animation lately, I think I'm moving in that direction.  Word!

Travel Day - Part Deux

I didn't take this photo, but I experienced it.  Close enough.  Six hours of sky and road and good conversation with Lulu, the writer-director of the film I'm working on.  She took the photo.

Lulu took this photo too, and she thinks I should post it as well.  If I look hung over, it's because I am.

sheesh

nothing fancy tonight.  this is a motel room.  this is where you live when you are on the road making projects.  tomorrow night:  haunted house.  seriously.  but it is a good haunted house that i have stayed in before, and i can't wait, as long as i don't have to stare into that mirror or go into that closet.

Travel Day

This is yesterday's drawing - cafeteria at the art school (university?) where I teach.  Going up to the Yukon for twelve days - not sure how often I'll have access to a scanner, so I'll bring a digital camera just in case.