Happy Holidays

I know I've been absent for some time now and I will try to correct that and make more timely posts after the holidays. I'll bring you all up to date with all that I've been up to soon.

In the meanwhile I wanted to wish those of you who do still check in here from time to time a Happy Chanukkah and a Merry Christmas.

And here's a commission that I'm currently working on...

Roughing up Wonder Woman

This year I was asked again to submit original art for the Wonder Woman Day Charity Auction - it's a good cause and I'm always pleased to help. So this time I decided to create 3 pieces and color them in marker. These are the roughs I came up with. Originally I was going to ask for opinions as to which ones to use, but I ran out of time and had to chose on my own.
I'll post the final three a little later...

Something a little nouveau...

A couple more commissions. The Commissioner wanted these to be in an art nouveau type of style. I think they were somewhat successful. I have to admit that I swiped some from Mucha (always loved his stuff). Sometime when I have a little more freetime I might try to color these. Freetime? hahahah....

Wolverine in Brazil?

It's been awhile since the last post. I won't bother giving you the usual excuses (I've been busy, yadda yadda yadda), but I thought it might be worth a quick post to mention for all of you down south that apparently Wolverine and the X-men has apparently been already airing in Brazil and should be airing soon enough in Canada (next weekend, I think?)

Here's a link that shows several screen caps from the show that you all might enjoy: http://xmenfilms.net/photos/wolverineandthexmen/index.html

And just so you know I haven't been sitting still here's a finished commision that will be going into the mail Monday.

Comic-Con 08

For those of you who couldn't make it to this year's Comic-Con I thought you might enjoy a guided tour by Triumph

Coming soon...

With only a few weeks before the Comic-Con International I thought I'd use this time to mention a few of the panels that I'm going to try and watch. If you checkl out the entire schedule you can spend every minute of every day going to nothing but panels and still not see everything that you might be interested in and never have a moment to walk the hot, sweaty, cramped aisles of the display floor itself (and that would be a real shame)

Thursday
4:15-5:15 Lionsgate/Marvel: Hulk vs. Wolverine
Friday
5:00-6:00 Spotlight on Bernie Wrightson
8:30-10:00 Marvel/Lionsgate: Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow World Premiere
Saturday
10:15-11:15 Spotlight on Ralph Bakshi
1:15-2:00 Warner Bros.: Terminator Salvation
8:30-10:00 Marvel: Wolverine and The X-Men Animated Screening
Sunday
11:00 AM - NOON / Room 7AB
Remembering Dave Stevens

(I'll let any of you attending do the work and find out what rooms these will be in if you're interested)

With any luck at all next year the project that I've been hinting about for awhile (and a few of you have guessed) might have a presence at Comic-Con. We are getting closer every day and things are shaping up nice financially.

In the meantime here's another couple of roughs for commissions that I'm working on as well as a more polished piece:

Clip time again....

Just in case some of you haven't seen it yet...



They are also screening the first three episodes on Saturday of the San Diego Comic-Con (as it says at the end of the video - though it appears they got the date wrong)

Bakshi!!

Last Saturday night there was a book signing/party for Ralph Bakshi at Meltdown comics in LA in honor of the first Bakshi biography: Unfiltered (notice I said first - I'm assuming there will be more in the years to come). Since one of my sons lives in the area with his boyfriend it seemed like a good way to celebtrate an early Father's Day. We went to dinner and then walked down the street to Meltdown.

It was fun seeing Ralph again. I spoken to him once or twice on the phone in the last few years, but haven't seen him since the Cool World days - I think...but it's obvious from this photo I'm getting pretty old. Kind of looks like two old coots trying to carry on a conversation, eh? BTW that's Barry Jackson and Trish Doktor (BG designers for Cool World and lots more) and my 14 year old daughter looking embarrassed in the bottom right corner.

There's a link over to the side if you want to purchase the book .....or you could to Ralph's web-site and order an autographed copy

And here's a link to the ASIFA Animation Archive where you can find more pics from the event. If you haven't bookmarked this web-site already, you should.

Commissions....

Thought I'd let you take a look at a couple of my latest commissions - old school style with markers:

The bottom one is based on a costume Rogue wore for a school play in the episode Spykecam

Back to the norm...

Last year I participated as a seller at this event, but this year the timing didn't really work for me, but I still might try to get out there and look around. If you're in the area you should too. Here's all the info:

This weekend, The Creative Talent Network and Van Eaton Galleries are co-hosting the second Animation Book Look signing and sales event. Gathering authors and artists within the animation industry to meet fans, the event will be held from 1:00 to 6:00 PM this Saturday, May 17, 2008 at Van Eaton Galleries, 13613 Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks, California.
The festival features appearances by well known visual and literary artists along with lesser known animation authors. This unique event gives publishing and animation professionals the opportunity to promote their work to fans, collectors, and art aficionados. Over 50 artists and authors will be at signing tables, showcasing over 75 books ranging from children’s books to artists sketchbooks, illustration to fine art, and informative "How to..." to "History of…" books.
Featured artists and authors include Jerry Beck, Toby Bluth, Tee Bosustow, Stefan Bucher, Chris Buck, Jennifer Cardon-Klein, Dave Colman, Craig Elliott, Gris Grimly, Ryan Hungerford, Chris Jenkins, Mike Kunkel, Jason Lethcoe, Rik Maki, Tracey Miller, Patrick Morgan, Steve Niles, Brian and Phil Phillipson, Don Peri, Eric Pigors, Ragnar, Martha Sigall, Bob Singer, Jim Smith, Tom Sito, Marcelo Vignali, Amanda Visell, Tony White, Shigeru Yabu, Willie Ito, and more.
For more information, visit animationbooklook.com. The festival is free but RSVP’s are suggested, please call 818-788-2357 for more details.

And now for something Off Topic...

I don't think I've ever posted anything that wasn't art related or about me, but I saw this news commentary and thought it was important to let as many people see it as possible. It's a commentary by Keith Olberman on some recent statements made by our president. if you've never scen Mr. Olberman's show, Countdown, on MSNBC you should give it a try. He's one of the sharpest commentators out there.
Below is the video of that commentary, but if for some reason I can't get it to work right (I've never tried embedding like this) you can follow this link and launch the player.



Don't worry, I won't turn this into a political blog - I'm not bright enough for that, but I thought this was worth a pause from my usual self promotion...

Officially the trailer...

In case some of you haven't seen it yet, I thought I'd post the official trailer for Wolverine & the X-Men. Now you can see what I spent a good part of 2007 working on - or, at least, the trailer for it...



Start drooling now fanboys!

UPDATE: I hadn't realized that some might assume that these were my designs. They are not. I was not involved in the designs other then in the way a director normally is involved. The character designer was AJ Jothikumar.

Eye Candy

I thought I'd share a piece of art I needed to create as part of the pitch materials for the secret project that I've been hinting at lately. I think we're getting closer to putting it together, but you never know in this business. I'm hoping that I'll be able to release the info on it soon...assuming everything goes well.

I also want to thank all of you on my commissions list for being so patient and understanding. Here's a detail from one of the latest ones.

Battle of the Artists

Just a quick note - I'm really busy with several storyboard projects right now - I didn't realize that when I answered questions for this interview that this would be the result, but as long as it is I thought I could at least direct some of towards the web-site -- and maybe garner a few votes.

The web-site is called Designer's Depot and is worth a look around even beyond the voting.

If you decide to vote for one of the much better looking artists I'll understand though - thinking of doing that myself.

In the meantime, here's a rough for a commission I'm working on to tide you all over...

Also thought I'd tease you with a little more about the secret project. It's lookinhg really good and I should have some positive news in a couple of months - or not. Some of you tried guessing and were wrong while some peopel who had no idea who I was have contacted me out of the blue and discovered what I was up to. They went the around the backdoor and were researching the project and discovered I was attached to it.

Time to switch...almost

By the end of this week I will hopefully know about a new job situation as I finish off another (more or less). So I thought I'd toss another commission out there for all of you to enjoy. So enjoy...

Requiem for a Rocketeer...

Here's a few more links concerning Dave Stevens: an obituary and a pretty thorough article (though evryone seems to miss the period That he spent at Filmation where we worked in an office together along side Russ Heath and just around the corner from other great artists like Mel Keefer of Rick O'Shay fame) and a place where you can go to leave a note (or longer) at the the official Dave Stevens web-site and a place you can make a contribution to help fight Hairy Cell Leukimia - I just did.

Sad, sad news...

This morning I checked in on one of the blogs that I check daily and was shocked to read the news that Dave Stevens of Rocketeer fame had died. I'm going to post a link to Mark Evanier's blog as he is a much more capable writer than I and sounds like he probably knew Dave much better than I did. Please feel free to go read his thoughts.
Shocked doesn't quite cover what I felt when I read about Dave's death. I'd known Dave since my days at Filmation when we shared a room together while doing layouts on The Lone Ranger. Not only was Dave a wonderful guy with a great sense of humor, but I was astounded by the level of his talent and quite envious. We'd fallen out of contact with one another after I'd hired him to help with Teegra on Fire and Ice. Just recently we had got together again, about three or four years ago, after we hooked up at the last Comic-Con in San Diego that he had a booth. We had lunch and it was like we'd stayed in contact the entire time.
I had last spoken with him to raz him about not showing up to the last Comic-Con when they had scheduled a pannel with him. One of my sons and I waited in the audience of the panel before his (coincidently that panel was with Mark Evanier) for him to show and it slowly became apparent that he wasn't going to show. On that phone call we had made plans to have lunch and those plans unfortunately fell through for one reason or another. I feel bad I never got around to rescheduling.

Just a quickie...

I thought I'd let you all see how that comission of Wanda turned out.

A little bit of self promotion...

...yeah, as if this is the first time I've used this blog for self promotion. Actually I was asked to give an interview and thought that not only would anyone coming here might like to read it, but you also might like to check out the blog where it's posted. It's called the Designer's Depot.



And since you were kind enough to return here again I thought I'd let you see a commission I finished a short time ago.

Mazel tov to the Rat!!

Though I'm not completely surprised I am glad I was wrong about my fellow members of the Academy and they did make Ratatouille the winner of Best Animated Feature. Congrats to Brad Bird and everyone at Pixar that worked on it. Also congrats to the Best Animated Short Peter and the Wolf and everyone else that received an Oscar this year.

Terminated...

That's right - my gig on Termninator Salvation has finished. It was a hectic three months, but interesting as this was my first live-action storyboard job (and hopefully not last). It was surprisingly not all that different then a job working on an animated feature with some elements of TV/DTV storyboarding thrown in as I already mentioned. But that might have more to do with the writer's strike going on at the same time. At least, that's what the other board artists said. The big difference is the speed at which we had to get things done - which is why I felt it had a lot in common with TV/DTV boarding. One of the other big differences that I noticed was the fact that whatever was boarded had to have some foot in reality at all times. Whether it was due to location, the physical realitues of what a camera can and can't do, FX budgets and a host of other minor things when working in animation absolutley anything is possible and the only restriction tends to be schedule and budget to a much lesser degree. But on the other side some concerns in animation - like number of characters on screen - are not such a big issue in live-action. As time goes on I'll probably post more about the differences between live-action and animation boarding, but right now I'm still processing it all in my own head.

So now the big search for a job begins and I do seem to have some possibilities. I'll let you know where I finally end up. Though it's not like I'm just sitting around. I'm still working on a couple of freelance jobs as well as trying to catch up on some commissions (thanks again to all of you who have been so very patient).

The other thing I'm working on - the big secret project - that all of you have been trying to guess at (unsuccessfully I might add) is still a possibility, but is also a long shot though I've got great faith in the project. I've seen a lot of interest in it, but finding the right studio, company, person to take that final step has been dificult. Originally I didn't want to disclose what the project was because of some superstitions about revealing a project before it was picked up, but since that hasn't seemed to help I might reveal it after all. I'll have to think about it.

Since I still get a lot of questions concerning X-Men: Evolution I'll answer them now for everyone. I do not know when season 4 will be released onto DVD. Wolverine and the X-Men is not a continuation of the XME conituity and I do not know when or on what network Wolverine and the X-Men will broadcast. I suspect most of you will know that before I do.

And now tonight is the 80th Academy Awards and I'm curious to see if the films I voted for (especially Best Animated Film) actually win. My guess is that the film I voted for Best Animated Film, Surf's Up, will not win and that it will be a toss-up between Ratatouille or Persepolis. I give the edge to Persepolis and not because I liked it better - I didn't - but because it seems to be an important film in the way that Crash, Babel and Happy Feet did. But in my opinion none of these were important films in the way Academy voters thought.

Another thing I'd like to point you all to is a fairly new blog put out by an old friend of mine, Tina Price. She was right there at the beginning of the CG movement at Disney and has quite a bit of history to share with everyone and is worth checking out if for no other reason to see me slimmer and with less gray in my hair. It's also a place where other animators and artists can post their memories and thoughts. It's called Drawn 2gether and I think you'll enjoy it.


Well since you made it through that long 'catching up' I think you deserve something a little new. This is a detail from a commission I finished awhile ago.