Category Archives: Females

DSW & The Fox House

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Last year, on Halloween, I boarded the DSW commercial that is airing right now (early March, 2013):

This commercial was a lot of fun to work on, and also very different, because I was up close and personal with the production, and in this case, it was a real treat.  I received the scripts via email and a meeting was scheduled at the London the following morning.  The London is a fancy hotel in Hollywood and I’d wanted to check it out anyway since I heard Gordon Ramsey runs it.  So I was excited.

Although not asked to, I did a bunch of rough drawings just so I would have something to show them.   I remember the last commercial I did with the DSW folks, I had to meet them totally unprepared at Chateau Marmont (another fancy Hollywood hotel), and that was so stressful, because I had to do rough drawings, in pen, in one of those goofy huge comfy chairs while eating a fancy lunch and ten people looking over my shoulder.  Nightmare.  This time would be different.

The commercial would both be shot at Fox House, which is a famous house that I had never heard of until then, which also happens to be down the street from my parent’s house in Chatsworth, where I grew up.  I did some research, and it has this cool 60′s vibe, and is the former home of Frank Sinatra.  Very cool!  The plot is: a cool couple arrives at a birthday party and everyone dances.  That not a lot of storytelling but it was easy to grasp the visuals- so I got to work.

Next day I met with them at the London.  The producers were all familiar to me and I remember them from the last commercials we did.  I presented the rough boards… and everyone was pretty happy.  I was expecting a slaughter and instead I basically hung around and got complimented.  I made a couple of rough changes and then was invited to lunch at the rooftop restaurant.  That’s about all the work I did that day :)

Feeling good today!

Feeling good today!

Rooftop @ The London. Lotta smog that day!

Rooftop @ The London. Lotta smog that day!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next day I met them all at Fox House.  I followed the directions and arrived at a house I had always been aware of, since I grew up so close to it, but never knew anything about and never suspected I would visit someday. The house is stunning.  The pictures don’t do it justice.

Walkway to the House

Walkway to the House

Everyone reviewing my storyboards

Everyone reviewing my storyboards

 

And everyone loved my boards.  No changes needed yet.  Was invited to lunch again, but politely declined and instead surprised my Dad at home, and took him to lunch instead.

Then headed back to the London, base of operations for the production.  Their meeting space had expanded will all kinds of wardrobe selections and actors were being cast next to production assistants scrambling to put together the pre-pro book, which is a binder for each member of the crew, which contains my storyboards paired with the script, among other things.

I set up my station, made about an hour’s worth of rough changes, and that was it.  Even though all of my drawings were very rough, they were happy with everything and were done with preproduction.  They were shooting the next day.

Job well done.  Pat myself on the back.  And on the way home, I saw one of the best sunsets I’ve ever seen.

Nice

The End.

 

Old Navy Funnovations Inc!

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screen-shot-2012-12-21-at-6-31-28-pm

 

Well well well, Its been almost a year since I worked on these Old Navy spots and so it’s probably ok to talk about them now.  For those of you who don’t watch TV (the only excuse you might have for not seeing these ubiquitous commercials), these Old Navy commercials were for their early spring sale offerings and they are, as you might expect, kinda kooky!  As all good Old Navy commercials are.  What’s interesting about this project is that, with 5 spots being shot and worked on simultaneously, the line between pre-production (where my storyboards are made) and  production (when they actually shoot the commercial) started to blur.  It happens occasionally, but it’s not ideal, since its kind of like planning the battle while you are fighting it!  More on that later.

I started work on these storyboards sometime during Xmas season in 2011.  I remember working (while sick with a cold!) on roughs for these on Xmas day.  I’m sure my dedication was appreciated but in the end almost all of that early work went into the trash can.  While this was the biggest job of my career, it was also the most stressful.  There are always outside factors that necessitate storyboard revisions, but the most damaging factor is the script change, and this job had many script changes, making it very hard to show passion for my work.  I love to make sure my boards are lookin’ good, but if you know the boards are likely going to be changed the next day, what’s the point?  Pride, of course!  But it really only goes so far before you have to start just cranking them out.  Hence, you may notice, that some of these frames don’t have my usual finesse to them.  The other major factor with that was our telescoping production schedule- everything was due yesterday.

It got to the point that pre-production for one spot had abutted with the production on another spot. Meaning while we were planning and storyboarding the next spot, the directors were at the studio shooting the spot previous!  So we production artists had to move onto the set itself and make our own little workstations so that we could be near the directors while they were absolutely too busy to give us more that a few minutes each day.  Very stressful, because communication is so important, and there was very little to be had.  But we persevered and relied on our experience and instincts and we did a great job in the end!  Its funny how you can look back fondly on a job that, at the time, drove you bonkers!

Here’s a bunch of photos I took from the set:

 

And here’s the boards for each spot, and to finish off, at the bottom is a link to where you can find all the final videos. Enjoy!

Shape Chute

New T Machine

Jeanvestment

Dealert

Bee Bots

And here’s a link to the final vids:

http://www.brandnewschool.com/Projects/LiveAction/FunnovationsInc

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.

 

 

One of my commercials airing now… NASDAQ OMX CENTURY

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So, I’m sitting at home watching Mad Men, one of my favorite shows, and during the commercial break I see one of the commercials I worked on recently!  For those of you who don’t work in commercial production, it’s really a treat to see a commercial that you worked on, aired randomly, when you are watching TV.  To see it while you are watching one of your favorite shows is a double treat.  So when I saw my NASDAQ commercial air during Mad Men, I was over the moon.  I worked on these boards in February 2012, and saw them air in May, I think.  They still run sporadically, and you may have even seen them if you watch AMC at all (I haven’t seen them on other channels yet).  That’s the thing, had I not been following Mad Men on AMC (as opposed to Netflix) I wouldn’t have ever seen my commercials air!  That’s why I pay for cable, basically :)  To see my work in it’s natural finished state.

So these NASDAQ commercials were a little challenging but fun to work on.  The challenge was, we were advertising a company whose business involves listing other companies in their stock exchange.  Each of the two NASDAQ commercials featured 3 well known brands, so that’s like 3 mini commercials in one overarching commercial, times two.  Each brand needed equal screen time and presence, but needed to be subordinate to the main brand, NASDAQ.  Between two commercials, that’s 7 total brands, hard enough, but then you must realize that we need to also communicate with these 7 “clients” to make sure their needs are met.  So it was very challenging to keep a balance with it all.  As a result, the concept details were refined many times, and so the boards do look a little rushed, despite putting about three days of work into it.  What you see are about 12 frames per spot; however I drew upwards of 60 frames for the project.  So there was a lot of editing and refining. But I’m very impressed with the final outcome.

The first spot features Smart Technologies, Zipcar, and Hasbro.  These companies all list on NASDAQ, hence their presence in the commercial.  The story follows a day in the life of a young businesswoman/mother who relies on these companies to keep her life running smoothly.  The link under the boards goes to the final commercial.

Click here to see the finished commercial!

 

This second spot features Tesla, LPL, and Zynga.  Same deal as before, only this time with a businessman, fairly typical day, running smoothly, thanks to the before mentioned brands.  Click the link below the boards to see the final commercial and compare.

Click here to see the finished commercial!

 

Saw one of my commercials on TV… DSW “Where’d you get those shoes?”

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A couple of months ago I met with a new client and worked on their DSW commercial for a couple of days.  It was rainy then, as it is now… good day to write about it.   So anyway I worked on this shoe commercial and it was actually pretty hard!  I did like 60 frames in 2 days…  almost 40 on that first day!  So consequently, they are a little rushed (no shading or finesse) They needed a wide shot and a closeup shot of shoes for every scene and they had 3 spots to shoot.  I did all three spots but only posted one of them here, they are basically the same commercial.  I was happy to see these commercials when they aired a few days ago.

http://www.dswinc.com/tv_commercial.jsp

British Red Cross – PSA

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Here’s some storyboards for a PSA for the British Red Cross, about … not drinking?  Drinking but not to excess?  Don’t leave your friends when they’re blackout drunk?  Or when your friends are blackout drunk, turn them on their side before you abandon them so that they don’t choke on their own vomit…. that’s it, that’s the one.  Anyway, this time the director used a split screen technique to show the girl’s fate play out in alternate universes.  Girl on the right lives and the girl on the left is worm food.  Too bad for her.  Storyboards turned out pretty decent though!  The director put the boards into an animatic and that looked pretty good- and the slideshow below should come pretty close to that!

 

Quick Little Post- Target

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I’ve fallen out of habit on updating this site, but I’m gonna try and get back into it. So here we go!

In early 2009 I would sometimes go out and do storyboards for a company called Schematic- another motion graphics company.  These places are full of designers and normally places that are full of digital artists don’t outsource their storyboards- but sometimes they do!  Usually if it involves drawing freehand stuff that isn’t easy to photoshop, like certain poses of people, or environments.  So they’ll hire them out to guys like me.  Schematic was in Culver City, if i recall, my least favorite place to visit, but they’ve shut down by now I believe, so I don’t mind talking about it.  Kind of a neat place they had, but a little too stuffy for my tastes.  I’ve seen some of the schematic people since move on to other studios, so it’s nice to see that things go on.

Anyway, this assignment was for something like a Target fashion show- probably just a pitch, looking back on it. They only need a few drawings, so it wasn’t too hard.  They were pretty happy with these if I recall.  I think I did a good job.  This is just a little bit after I started using my latest drawing tools – more on that later.

 

McDonalds Tuscan Salad

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"Wheeeeee!"

So this is a storyboard that was fun to work on.  This production company uses a lot of new visual effects in their storytelling, and in this case, they used a projector to display the images of Tuscany on the walls.  Not looking for realism, it’s a very whimsical approach and it works well.  Here, a cute young woman enjoys a bite of her McDonalds Tuscan Salad and  envisions herself in Tuscany, on a voyage of joy and liberation. It’s always fun to draw cute girls.

I also love Italy and Tuscany in particular, and have been there more than a few times.  So I was, in this case, able to draw from personal experience, and I hope that came through a little bit in the background details and other nuances of the landscape.  It’s very important for a storyboard artist to find every bit of inspiration he can.

And this is the final commercial, via link to the production company’s website:

McDonalds- Tuscany

 

PacSun – “Dress Irresponsibly”

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"Lets jump in the pool!"

Here’s a great commercial that I storyboarded a few months ago- I figured it’s no big deal to post it since it’s already come and gone on the air.  Worked at home and just uploaded the boards directly to the client.  I was fortunate to have a director that really had a cohesive shot list and vision for the project.  That always helps.  I had to bust these out pretty quick so there’s no real shading or finesse at these- in fact I didn’t even rough these out, I just drew them straight out and turned them in, and after a few tweaks they were good to go.  Good thing too, because I was triple-booked and didn’t have a lot of time for back and forth.  Things go really smoothly like that when you take the time to really get in the director’s head and can “see” the project clearly.  Then the drawings draw themselves.  Here’s the slideshow “animatic:”

And, lets see if this works, this is youtube upload video of the final commercial.  I love it when the commercial looks just like the boards!

 

 

“Freschetta” Storyboards

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Here’s some boards I did a while back- a competitive pitch for “Freschetta,” a neat new frozen pizza product.  Our heroine struggles to find the right frozen pizza, and is magically whisked away to a land of fresh ingredients.  At the tail end are some random alternate frames that I included to give the director some options.  Directors like options.  Enjoy!