I've been watching Disney's Robin Hood lately. I love that film. There's alot of great character animation in it. Yes there was some re-use, and the story definitely has it's critics.. But some of Milt Kahl's work in this picture just continues to amaze me each time I watch it. And I love the anthropomorphic designs. Especially Ken Anderson's original concept art for the characters. It always makes me want to draw animal people after I watch it... Only I'm not very good at it.. .
So they start out innocently enough... But then they start to sprout horns for some reason....And eventually turn into... The Wolfman??? I dunno.... Maybe I shouldn't watch Robin Hood that often.. :)
Chloe told me an awesome bedtime story last week about a girl who loved to sing, and the troll that lived under her bed. It was really cute and had it's climax at the top of a volcano. George Lucas would be proud. :)It prompted me to do a little sketch of the girl and troll. Now she wants to make a book out of it. We'll see if her lazy good for nothing dad can do anything about that..
Chloe and I sat down the other night to do some drawing and she started drawing these cool characters and it gave me an idea. She would design characters on one half of the page and I would draw my interpretations of the on the other. So she wrote our names on our respective sides and away we went. Little did I know she'd be giving me revisions. And lots of them.. For instance.... I got revisions before I even started on this one. She wanted the little round girls pigtails turned into "valentines" And when I was done she told me I drew the mouth wrong. It wasn't supposed to be open, just smiling.. So she drew the mouth for me again by her character. That's what that U is beside her drawing.. She then had to erase some of the cat things whiskers because they were on her side and berated me because I made it's tail black and white instead of just white.
This time she drew a big divide down the page, just so I wouldn't draw on her side again. And she started naming the Characters. This one is Gadqd. I didn't get many revisions on him. Other than the fact that I drew his pose wrong... :)
Good Ole Yge. She told me that the lines on the top of his head represent each time he's had a heart attack. Poor Yge. I fear he's not long for this world. :) We now present to you... The iPig.... I'm not sure what it does or if she cleared the name with Steve Jobs but there it is. :) Then Mom got into the action too.
I heard her giving revisions on these too. :) She quite picky about her work. She had a thing for hearts that day. I guess it was shortly after valentines. I quite like Yod. He's got a strong arm. :) I sense that there will be many more of these drawing sessions with Chloe. It was quite awesome. And I enjoy interpreting the simplicity of her designs. Great job Chloe! :)
Here's an Eggo Waffle ad that I animated for Chuck Gammage a while back. I just found it on vimeo today.:) It was an interesting project. I animated the Eggo and his phone traditionally in flash with a video of the live action hand and props for reference. Then the phone and body were replaced ,or cleaned-up, with 3-D animation. I believe by the talented Seamus O'Keefe. I'm not 100% on that but I'm pretty sure he did it. I cleaned the limbs in flash and they were all composited together for the end result. It was an interesting mix of flash,3-D, and live action.
There were 2 other Eggo spots that I animated as well. One was a re-mix of this ad and another involved the Eggo with a paddle ball.. That was fun. Translating a traditionally animated paddle ball with lots of smears and blurs into 3-D. I don't envy the person who had to do that. :).
So.... I've been dry lately. Both on the work and creative fronts. And it shows. It's been forever since I've posted anything. Here's a little self caricature I did the other day. It looked OK... And then I decided to ink it and... Well.... You can see the results. I'm not much of an inker, but I was inspired by another artist whose ink work had such life and spontaneity to it. I just had to give it a try. Mine just looks sloppy :).
And eventually turn into... The Wolfman??? I dunno.... Maybe I shouldn't watch Robin Hood that often.. :)
