Junk Buildings

Here are a bunch of thumbnails I did in my sketchbook for a particular building I wanted to design. I love this stage; just playing with shape, allowing the brush to make stray marks, following them down the rabbit hole. This is the best way to free myself from prematurely obsessing over details and allow for “surprises” in the design.

There is a lot of emphasis on silhouette in animation and design in general, and for good reason. But I think it’s often preached to the point of formula and gimmickry. It’s important to remember that it’s just a tool and it serves a context. It’s relatively straightforward to come up with an interesting silhouette. But when the design is fleshed out, when it’s “turned” in space, does it still work? Not always. I almost always revisit the basic shapes even after I’ve followed a good silhouette into the rendering phase, working back and forth until I find the best solution.

Remember that old geometry rule? “A square is always a rectangle, but a rectangle is not always a square.”

Well, think of it this way: “A good design will always have a good silhouette, but a good silhouette will not always be a good design.”

Giant

I wish I could be a giant, then I could lie with my head near the snows on one of the Alps, lie there among the goats, with my toes splashing below in the deep lake. So I would lie there and never get up again, between my fingers the bushes would grow, and the wild roses of the Alps in my hair, my knees would be alpine foothills, and vineyards would stand on my body, and houses, and chapels. And so for ten thousand years I lie there, and gaze into the heavens, and gaze into the lake. When I sneeze, there’s a thunderstorm. When I breathe the snow melts, and the waterfalls dance. When I die, the whole world dies. Then I journey across the world’s ocean, to bring back a new sun.

Where am I going to sleep tonight? Who cares! What is the world doing? Have new gods been discovered, new laws, new freedoms? Who cares! But up here a primrose is blossoming and bearing silver fuzz on its leaves, and the light sweet wind is singing below me in the poplars, and between my eyes and heaven a dark golden bee is hovering and humming–I care about that. It is humming the song of happiness, humming the song of eternity. Its song is my history of the world.

– Hermann Hesse

Greek

Here is some stuff that I’ve been up to lately. Taking a few cues from the Provensens with these, trying some different things out. I want to break away from some of the fussiness of my process.

It’s funny how scaling back in certain formal aspects of illustrating will shift the paradigm by which you see the remaining ones. A lot of people believe particular fundamentals–like composition, value, etc.–always rule over others in an hierarchy of importance. I tend to think it’s more of a balancing act, or a series of compromises. If you want to ignore one, another will, by nature, take prominence. But they can’t all be The Most Important Thing. I think images that are over-worked or under-worked result because of a breakdown in the prioritization of its formal aspects.

In a lot of ways, when I look at these images now, I think they work better next to one another. On their own, I’m not sure if they’re quite refined enough; they haven’t found that place of balance yet.

Secret City

So I want to try something new around here. I take a good amount of pictures throughout the week. Sometimes it’s because certain colors or architecture catch my eye, maybe an interesting texture, or something ironic. And while I don’t have any sort of secret ambition to become a photography wiz, it would be nice to catalogue them somehow, somewhere.

I think it’s a valuable exercise to take photos. It offers a nearly instant process for experimenting with things like framing a composition, observing the principles of natural phenomena like light and physics, and manipulating the perception of those phenomena. Not to mention, capturing and expressing narrative.

I thought a little bit about starting an entirely separate blog to share the photos, but honestly, when I see other artists compartmentalize their work across various blogs, it makes me crazy. There is already too much to keep track of in life, people! This is why they invented tagging. And anyway, since this blog in large part is to record and share my process, I think the photos have a valid place here. I hope you all think so, too.

So I’ll be cataloging all my photo ventures under the ‘Secret City’ tag. Look out, San Francisco.

Snow

A couple of weeks ago I got my wish and fatty snow flakes started drifting down onto Portland rooftops in the middle of the afternoon. By the time daylight was gone, the city was a wreck. It took chris more than 5 hours to get home from work. He swears to me there were zombies on the road. Later that night we walked to a nearby bar and cozied up with friends over hot food and drink. Not particularly unusual, but I remember thinking, this is a great night. I think snow is magic that way.

Childhood Art

My mom recently mailed me some art that she’s had stored away in boxes since I was a kid. This drawing of Pongo, from 101 Dalmations, I did when I was 7. The lines at the top that get cut off are where I wrote “bad drawing!!!” largely across the top of the page. I’m glad mom snatched this up before I had a chance to toss it–I wish I still drew this good!

I gave this drawing to Chris this year for his birthday since he loves nautical themes so much. There are a lot of questions I would love to ask my 6-year-old self about this drawing. Like, why does the cloud get an outline, but not the chimney smoke? Why do pirates get facial features, but not princesses? Is that a spy approaching the ship in scuba gear? The other thing I love about this, which you can faintly see, is that I drew it on the back of my (still uncompleted) math homework. Who wants to do fractions when you can draw pirates?!

Art from The Mouse that Soared: Part 2

To give an idea of what the jumping-off point for painters is like on a production, I’ll share some of the pencil layouts I was able to find. These bottle caps were drawn by Fred Gardner, the character by Chris Sasaki, and the graphic design for the cap by Lauren Bair. Let me just say that if you really want to learn how to paint something, do it eight times in a row. This assignment really tried my patience!

There is a kind of checks-and-balances that happens with painting (and ideally at every step in production). Once color went on this, I realized that the ridges on the undented bottle caps went the wrong direction in regards to the perspective. After checking with Fred to make sure it wasn’t an intentional design choice, I fixed it. Things like that happen every so often: when it’s form and light articulating the image instead of just line, mistakes and visual shorthands are suddenly apparent. A design can feel unexpectedly cluttered, barren, off-kilter, or poorly composed. Conversely, line drawings that some think are too sparse, flat, or graphic, can suddenly come to life in sophisticated dimension and shape.

This pair of images is from the same sequence. The second one (affectionately titled “The God-Light Shot” by a certain Mr. Baldwin) was initially going to be a still that the camera cut away to in hilarious Spumco fashion. But eventually that idea was scrapped and some poor schmuck actually had to model the thing.

Fred Gardner also designed the above Hero Log. The cutaway detail eventually became the background card that the end credits roll over (I knew there was a reason I almost killed my computer painting it at such hi-res!). Again, I feel pretty lucky that some of my original work got to be seen on screen.

As the production designer, Fred gave the painters a lot of room to make creative embellishments and leave their unique mark on the designs. But it is a precarious thing because animation is not about possessiveness; you can’t take off on your own terms like a runaway freight train. A good painter will always try and tap into the original designer’s true aim–even on an emotional or intangible level–as dictated by the story, and emphasize or further extract that quality out of the image with their own unique skill set. I really believe this is the X-factor for all shrewd hires in animation, regardless of discipline.

More art coming up in Part 3!

Art from The Mouse that Soared: Part 1

This is a lighting key I did for the opening shot, which was actually a bit of an addendum to the short. Andy Erekson was the layout artist on this. As a bonus I also got to paint each of the posters within the shot. It’s not very often in CG that your original touch makes it from the art department all the way through production and on screen fully intact, so I felt pretty lucky that I got to do these (though Lobster Boy was cut, and I think there were some slight photo filters placed over them in post to try and “blend” them into the shot). Below are the posters, designed by Chris Sasaki. And a bit of trivia: the Sword Swallower is a caricature of the director, Kyle Bell. Subtle (or not so subtle) innuendo seemed to find its way into a lot of the art…

The next few pieces are things that either got cut from the short, or never made it into the animatic. First up are some bugs that were designed by Ovi Nedelcu. Everyone loved these but they never really found a place in the story. I experimented a lot with different textures on these, trying to layer it in a way that would add depth to the color without calling attention to itself. There’s rusty metal, leaves, fabric, even a vinyl shower curtain pattern in there.

The image below was supposed to be a prop in a sequence that was cut. Chris did the character and I drew up the layout and painted. A lot of influence from Ren & Stimpy here. The lettering was done by hand, and our poster boy was again a caricature of a co-worker. The nipples still sort of gross me out.

Below is a paper airplane I painted, drawn up by the hugely talented Fred Gardner. Like a crazy person, I did all the lettering by hand for the flat sheet. It’s all greek jibberish, as I didn’t want it to be readable when the camera came in close on our character (painted here by Lauren Bair, by the way). Then I actually printed it out and made a Real paper airplane (office fun!) so that I would be sure the torn edge and lettering was oriented correctly according to the folds when I painted that version.

This page is a typical example of how the painters and designers would turn in work. In order to preserve the integrity of the art as it traveled through the pipeline, we made specific notes on what we were doing. Frankly, much of it would go unnoticed or be ignored otherwise. Sometimes it was still ignored. Oh well. Anyway, after all that work was said and done, the paper airplane sequence was cut from the short. C’est la Vie!

So to artists out there who preach that style is not of deliberate creation, I say, “hogwash!” Our art department went to great pains to develop and articulate clearly for all involved what our visual intentions were. Aesthetic ideologies often become like the Clash of the Titans in animation. Artists generally want to “push” the design paradigm. CG technicians become flustered trying to realize the work within the boundaries of what they believe the computer (or budget) can or cannot do. And of course executives want to make sure that in the end, the whole thing turns a profit. There is a complex web of interaction, a group psychology, always at play–not always an amicable one. The bottom line is, if you want to find any happiness working in visual development, you must have a conscious awareness for your process and purpose of design, how it fits into this grand scheme, and how to talk about it with others–especially those who may not agree. The work is not necessarily supposed to be easy, but developing those skills will help to make it worthwhile.

More art to come in Part 2…

Remembering Apollo 11

“As I walked away from the Eagle Lunar Module, Neil said ‘Hold it, Buzz’, so I stopped and turned around, and then he took what has become known as the ‘Visor’ photo. I like this photo because it captures the moment of a solitary human figure against the horizon of the Moon, along with a reflection in my helmet’s visor of our home away from home, the Eagle, and of Neil snapping the photo. Here we were, farther away from the rest of humanity than any two humans had ever ventured. Yet, in another sense, we became inextricably connected to the hundreds of millions watching us more than 240,000 miles away. In this one moment, the world came together in peace for all mankind.”

- Buzz Aldrin in Apollo Through the Eyes of the Astronauts

I have tremendous respect for astronauts. To be so empirically brilliant and yet still have that ferocious spirit of adventure–extreme sports ain’t got nothin’ on ‘em, if you ask me. Most astronauts devote their entire lives to the study of space and keep up rigorous physical training without knowing if they’ll ever get the chance to even be part of a mission. See more of these amazing Apollo images here.

“Multitasking is a Trap”

“Unfortunately multitasking is one of the surest ways to fritter away time. Our efficiency plummets when we try to juggle even two simple tasks at the same time, as Yuhong Jiang, a psychologist at Harvard University, demonstrated in an impressive experiment. She asked students to identify both colored crosses and geometric shapes, such as triangles and circles. At first, this task seemed laughably simple to the young academics at this elite university. But they changed their minds when they realized how slow they were and how many mistakes they were making. The participants needed almost a second of reaction time to press a button when they saw colored crosses and shapes at the same time. But if the students were asked to spot first the crosses, and then the forms, the process went almost twice as quickly. Other series of experiments have shown that multitasking also makes more errors slip in.”

– Stefan Klein in The Secret Pulse of Time

“The clock, not the steam-engine, is the key-machine of the modern industrial age.”

– Lewis Mumford

Galleries in Recession

If business is far quieter than a year ago, Mr. Augustine, for one, said he takes solace in collectors’ renewed focus on gallery programming, as opposed to faddish speculative buying.

“If you can’t define yourself right now,” [David Zwirner] said, “you’re going to get swallowed up, because the ones who do define themselves are going to take all of the business.”

Lisa Spellman, the owner of 303 Gallery, said: “What drives me crazy are these clichés that say only the very, very best survive. I don’t believe that recessions are Darwinian systems.”

Some interesting thoughts from a NY Times article about the economic climate of art galleries right now in New York. However, I did let out an audible snort over this line:

…With half of a dealer’s profits typically going to the artist, he said, “that doesn’t give much room to run a business.”

Evie

I love this old photograph of my grandmother from Christmas of ’75. It’s exactly how I always imagined her when my mother would talk about her–that broad smile, coffee and cigarette in hand. And how ’bout that couch, huh? My grandparents eventually separated (according to legend, because they were just both so darn stubborn). Years after she had passed away I was talking with my grandfather and asking questions about her. He simply replied that, “She was the finest lady of my life.”

Some Choice Words

“Were talent a prerequisite, then the better the artwork, the easier it would have been to make. But alas, the fates are rarely so generous. For every artist who has developed a mature vision with grace and speed, countless others have laboriously nurtured their art through fertile periods and dry spells, through false starts and breakaway bursts, through successive and significant changes of direction, medium, and subject matter. Talent may get someone off the starting blocks faster, but without a sense of direction or a goal to strive for, it won’t count for much. The world is filled with people who were given great natural gifts, sometimes conspicuously flashy gifts, yet never produce anything. And when that happens, the world soon ceases to care whether they are talented.

“Even at best talent remains a constant, and those who rely upon that gift alone, without developing further, peak quickly and soon fade to obscurity. Examples of genius only accentuate that truth. Newspapers love to print stories about five-year-old musical prodigies giving solo recitals, but you rarely read about one going on to become a Mozart. The point here is that whatever his initial gift, Mozart was also an artist who learned to work on his work, and thereby improved. In that respect he shares common ground with the rest of us. Artists get better by sharpening their skills or by acquiring new ones; they get better by learning to work, and by learning from their work. They commit themselves to the work of their heart, and act upon that commitment. So when you ask, “Then why doesn’t it come easily for me?”, the answer is probably, “Because making art is hard!” What you end up caring about is what you do, not whether the doing came hard or easy.”

- David Bayles and Ted Orland
Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking
(via the Underpaintings Blog)

iPhone Test…

This is a test for mobile posting. I heart technology.

Vintage Roadster

I’ve been going through some old family photos lately. The above photograph is of a car that my grandfather built, with some kind of registration number written on the back. He carried this around with him in his wallet for years. Unfortunately, when he was older and living in an assisted living home, one of the nurses accidentally washed his wallet along with his pants, damaging the photo.

Lately…

I’ve been hard at work in a new studio space on some pieces that I think will develop into a larger series. I’ve been experimenting with some new processes, trying to get back to traditional methods and away from the digital realm. Nothing is ready to be shown just yet. Hopefully soon. In the meantime, here is some life drawing from a couple weeks past. A 20 or 30 minute pose I think, focused on brushing up my sighting/measuring practices.