Playing Catch-up

I almost missed posting this week. Between being sick and starting a new project at work(the super-awesome "Me and My Shadow"), I neglected the blog and nearly forgot to put anything up this week. My Dad's birthday was this week and he likes cars. I got him a few Peter Egan books and did this quick watercolor of his favorite car - 1969 Porsche 911.

 Check back later for some more "How to Train Your Dragon," art.

1969 Porsche 911 - It's been a long time since I've done anything remotely like this and I forgot how fun it was. I know I borked the proportions and I'm pretty sure my old tran viscom teachers would not be pleased with this, but I think I want to play around with doing this some more.

 Bonus - I forgot to Post up dragons work earlier this week and felt bad about that. Here's another few sketches of the town. Originally it was conceived that each "class" of vikings would live in their own neighborhoods and have different types of houses.

Crazy Cat Person

When I was growing up my family always had dogs and I always thought I was a dog person. That started changing when when I started dating my girlfriend who had a cat. A few years ago we ended up adopting another cat who firmly sold me on the idea of cats as a pet.

During my breaks at work, I do small little paintings like these to amuse myself and my girlfriend. Usually they revolve around a fantasy world where they are capable of doing anything or dramatizations of things in real life.

Snowboarding Cat - I still never got over the idea that cats were terrified of new places and wish they were more like dogs in that respect. Then again people never take their cats anywhere. How would you know they wouldn't like snow?

Shaved Butt - My girlfriend's cat is old and is uninterested in grooming herself. We took her to get partially shaved. A "Cat Brazilian" they called it.

The Party Cart - I thought he might want to help out during the christmas party. He also doesn't drink. Might be a good designated driver if he could reach the pedals.

How to train Your Dragon Art

I spent nearly 4 years working on How to Train your Dragon. It was an amazing ride and I had the opportunity to work on almost every iteration the movie took. I worked on the movie as a designer and was lucky to be able to do most of my work traditionally. I spent a lot of the time doing large graphite sketches and layouts. I miss being able work traditionally, but not the powdered graphite that seemed to get everywhere. This week some smaller Dragons sketches. I'm going to post some person work on Friday and check back next Monday for some more work from Dragons.

TABLE - Sorting through drawings on the kitchen table. It gives you a good sense of how big these drawings are. There are a few that perfectly covered my 7 foot wide layout table. Also, I'm not drinking from 4 tea cups. I stored the drawings in a tube and they fought me the whole time; each of them trying to return to their rolled state. Unfortunately my scanner isn't working well for the larger stuff so I scanned a few smaller drawings this week.

 

BOATS - Some very very early boat sketches. I believe this was from my first week working on the movie. I had my own office. I was unofficially launched and was allowed to run wild and produce whatever I wanted. it was one of my happiest times at the studio.

 

Terrain Studies - Also from my first week on the project. We knew that we were looking for a stylized terrain. I wanted something crazy and sculptural. I was strangely (or not so strangely) influenced by the shape of crumpled paper. 

 

Thor's day Thursday - Location studies from a location dropped from the final movie. Originally this was where the kids showed the village they had learned to train their dragon. It was a really cool concept. The environment was composed out of hexagonal rock shapes inspired from Giant's Causeway in Ireland.

Sci-Fi Space Business

It is rare for me to get the opportunity to do any sci-fi art outside the random doodle (either in photoshop or in my sketchbook). It's a far cry from when I was studying at Art Center and dreamt of being hired to work on the second star wars trilogy. These days my personal sci-fi work tends to veer towards experiments in design and technique. Photoshop is a great sandbox to fine tune and push your designs in infinite directions. Here are a few things from both the computer and the sketchbook.


Check back next week for some double posting action. I will scan some "How to Train Your Dragon" artwork this weekend and post it on Tuesday and will follow up with some personal stuff on friday. I'm hoping to keep up this pace. Let's see how it goes.




Line Tool spaceshapes - Some experimenting in photoshop. I use the polygon lasso tool for the big masses, refine with eraser and brush and render form mostly with the line tool set to different opacity. It liberates you from the world of custom brushes that has taken over digital painting.




Not Quite a Helicopter - Rough sketches from a project that was not quite meant to be. It lives on in another interation and was fun to work on while it lasted.


For Fun - This is an old jpeg from an older sketchbook - probably circa 2004-5. I was very excited about some spaceship sketches I had seen in Scott Robertson's sketchbook and set out to do thumbnails for 500 unique spaceships. This is a small sampling of them. I'm hoping to find the book and update this post with better scans.