Category Archives: Color

Hotwire!

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So, I’ve had to hold this one back for a while, but now I’m able to talk a little bit about the artwork I’ve been doing for the past few years on this Hotwire campaign. I’m not going to go into too much detail- other than to say this a rare scenario where I worked directly with the advertising agency and the production company.  Usually it’s just one or the other.  It’s really amazing to watch over time as a concept germinates and survives and evolves and eventually is born into the world.  It was a blast working with the creative teams on these.  I did many, many, many more drawings than what I’m able to show, but I’ve got permission to show a few things, so here’s some of the work I did and a few of the final videos.

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And here’s some of the spots!  I’m proud to say I worked on ALL of these, and all the older ones as well.

 

K-Pow!! Zing!! Baff!

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More comics!  So, this month (December) my artwork will be included in Heroes of the North: CODA – Omnibus #3!  It’s a collection of stories, with a bunch of artists contributing, and I’ve done a little two-pager for it.  I’m excited to finally be in real print.  I poured my skill into the work and I’m stoked that I’ll have a chance to show it off.  Here’s a peek at the cover (not my artwork):

HON Cover

 

A little background, Heroes of the North is a Canadian superhero comic book title/film series being produced by Christian Viel of Movie Seals.  I like the characters in this series mostly due to the badass modern looking costumes they wear.  Its a fresh look for superheroes and reminds me a bit of the costume redesigns they used in the Watchmen movie.

Christian is an old storyboarding client of mine (from the days of Recon 2022) and a very good customer of my Dad’s special effects.  He saw the work I did on Three Minute Max and thought it would be cool if I drew couple pages for the upcoming Omnibus.  So I cranked ‘em out, and we’ll see how they look in print!

This particular two pager features the heroine Fleur-de-Lys kicking the asses of two hapless criminals who were robbing a comic book store.  Well, I know my artwork was good!  Here’s a taste:

 

 

I used a new coloring technique on this project, building on what I used for Three Minute Max.  It’s a little quicker, and frankly, I like how it looks better too. So, go me for experimenting.  I’ve been reading a lot of books on color theory lately and attending lectures when I can find time – I have a long way to go with color, but I’m definitely improving.  Now I can take this new knowledge and apply to my own comic and storyboard projects too.

So, if you’re interested, maybe order a copy or something!  Shipping in December 2012.

 

 

Caveman!

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So here’s a commercial I worked on back in April.  I usually like to wait a while before I consider it “safe” to discuss a project on this blog, because, well, it’s not a good thing to release production artwork before the commercial airs!  And even though I didn’t see this one air, I know its fair game after so many months if my own clients are posting the finished commercial on their website reel.  So, here we go.

Here we see a Caveman, clutching the original hand-held device, a stone wheel.  He’s amazed with his creation and sets it to roll … ah, the beauty of it.  As it rolls, we track along with it, until it bumps into a wooden wheel, which takes off in turn.  And as it goes we see the “evolution” of the wheel, as it were, from stone, to wood, to iron, to rubber, to… what else?  The digital scroll wheel of the new Superpages app!  Naturally.

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And now I’ll discuss some of my artwork- First off, cavemen are fun to draw, and very forgiving, since they need to look all scraggly and ugly anyway.  And I loved drawing that brief glimpse of his facial expression- like watching his baby take his first steps.  But you know what are challenging to draw, and you wouldn’t suspect it necessarily, are wheels!  Wheels are tricky to draw because they are so regular and round and perfectly geometric. A wheel consists of no less that one perfect circle nestle concentrically within a larger perfect circle- and if there’s a spoke or hubcap involved, you must add even more circles.

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Most artists would either just draw a crappy circle, or use a “shape” tool to make an absolutely perfect circle and substitute that for a drawing.  Using shape or pen tools is useful but I personally feel that they look too computer generated (since they are) and are therefore unsuitable in a otherwise hand-drawn image.  So that’s no good.  Luckily Painter (the program I use) has a nifty “align-to-path” stroke feature that allows me to essentially trace the circle shape in a single stroke – kind of like using a compass or protractor to trace circles in geometry class.  It gives me the perfect roundness and also the variation in line weight and stoke feel that I need in my drawings.  So that’s how I make my wheels look so good.

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You’ll also notice that the spokes of the wooden and iron wheels are blurred when they are spinning.  That’s super important and a lot of artists make that mistake- if the car is moving, you don’t draw the spokes on the hubcap, nor the tire treads, since they both will blur when the wheel spins!  If you can see the spokes on a wheel, that makes the wheel look like it’s stationary.  Anyway you can tell when a storyboard artist just traced a picture of a car when he doesn’t bother to attend to details like that.

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It’s a goofy little commercial but my boards on it were great.  I can say that because they match the final product so well.  That’s usually the best indicator that I did a good job.  If you watch the final video you’ll see what I mean.  Click the link below to view!

http://www.brandnewschool.com/assets/videos/0000/3318/thewheel_dir_cut_02_pro_720.mov?asset_id=3318&page_id=25827&id=e007924146980bdd15959aeb5a7eeaec

For my part, I’m kinda over drawing iPhones, iPads, and Facebook this-n-that.  They all feel the same to me.

Something New:  I’ve decided to remove generally commenting on these posts.  Just getting wayyyyy too much spam and it was discouraging me from even doing this blog.  Jesus christ, over 4,000 posts advertising Ugg boots of all things.  Rot in hell you spammers.  I might bring back commenting someday but for now it’s gone.  If you would like to contact me, you can email me (if you know my email-its not hard to guess), facebook me, or click the Contact button on the upper right , you can even leave a reply there or contact my agent.

 

Not Just Commercials…. “Race at Target Field”

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Many of my motion-graphics clients produce shorts and promotional materials as well as broadcast commercials.  A few months ago I storyboarded a sequence to pitch a kind of animated short that screens at Target Field, home of the Minnesota Twins.  Part of a larger campaign featuring a handful of characters that typify the kind of wildlife Minnesota is known for:  The Ox, the Loon, the Mosquito, and the Fish… as well as Bullseye, the ‘mascot’ in this case, for Target.  This particular assignment was the latest continuation of that campaign and was a lot of fun to work on, as it really got me back to my classical animation roots.  These boards were part of a pitch, that, in this case, was so successful, that they basically produced it as-is.  This is a great example of how you can really use storyboards to hone in on a directors vision- please compare my boards to the finished product in the link below.

To give a little explanation… the purpose of this animation is to provide an “intro” to the live-action mascot race that happens before a baseball game at target field.  So this introduces the names of the characters, and their individual personalities, as they “race” to get to Target Field.  It’s slapstick humor and it’s supposed to get the fans excited before the game.  So, you go to the game, you see on the big Jumbotron this animated intro, and then the real life mascots pop onto the field and do their live action comedy race.  Check it out!

And here’s a link to the finished product:

http://www.brandnewschool.com/Projects/ArtAndDesign/RaceToTargetField

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Hotwheels “Immersion” Pitch

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So, these are some great storyboards I did for a Hotwheels bid, the concept being that at first, we don’t know that this is representative of a toy car fantasy, rather it appears to be a real car in the most extreme adventure scenarios, and at the end it is revealed to be the work of children’s imagination.  The sheer volume of the boards, along with the quality, and the tight schedule (had to pull this off in under 5 days), speak to the immense effort and personal accomplishment and pride that I have for this work.  At this time I consider it to be quite the achievement, and it was well received by the clients who were very impressed.  Unfortunately, they were not awarded the job, which was disappointing, but at least I still have these awesome samples!  Toy company projects are extremely sensitive, so I had to wait a while for me to post these, but now that the final commercial has aired, I can show them off!  Please enjoy.