First Ultimate Look!

If you go and get the latest issue of WizardMagazine you'll find an interview I gave for an article about The Ultimate Avengers. The interview's nothing to speak of but they preview a couple of my designs. I found these posted also on the Comics Continuum web-site and decided to post them here as well. I hope they don't mind. I'm pretty happy with how the designs turned out and can't wait to see the DVD when it's released in Febuary.

Web Update!!!

Well, I know some of you have been anxiously waiting for this update...the last two charcaters, Rogue and Spyke, have been added to the "How To" section of my web-site. The really fun title cards that were designed foir this were done by my web-master himself, Francesco Francavilla. I really like them a lot and I also like a lot of his other work too. Here's an ink job he did (apparently all done on computer) to the Batman pencils I posted below.



He's quite an artist. I'm in awe of his abilities...and he sure can improve on my pencils.

Someone was asking me if there were any good books I could recommend to help somone interested in animation so I thought I'd post these links.
Richard Willaims book is a good "this is how to do this" guide - Animator's Survival Kit. There's also Dob Bluth's Art of Animation Drawing and his Art of Storyboard and, of course, Frank and Ollie's book - The Illusion of Life is a definite must have for anyone interested in animation.
And just for books of how to draw I recommend Andrew Loomis' Figures in Action (Any book you can find by Loomis is well worth it) and Ben Caldwell's Fantasy! Cartooning and Action! Cartooning. I even bought these last two for my son.

Bad Blogger...

I know, I know...I've been negligent and not posting often...hell, I'm not even posting weekly...oh, well. All I can say is I'll try better...just don't hold me to it.
Currently, at work, we're expecting to see the color animation come in from Japan in a couple of weeks and then I can start calling re-takes and go into post. We're also waiting on the second draft of a script. In the meantime I've started the character designer on taking a stab at the characters we know (or are pretty damn sure, at least) will be in the show. It'll be nice to get back into full production and have our crew back.

In the meantime I've been working on some children's books for HarperCollins and having some fun.

Going through my PC portfolio I found this drawing of Batman I had done sometime ago and never used for anything - I'm not sure why. I always kind of liked those really big style ears. So here it is...

John Carter!!!

I don't know if everyone is as excited as I am about this film finally going into serious production or not, but I definitely thought it was worth a mention. You can read the Aint it cool interview with Jon favereau here.
A long time ago (what seems like a lifetime ago), towards the end of production on Fire and Ice, Ralph said he had been contacted by the Burroughs company about producing an animated version of John Carter of Mars, but the most that they could put together for it would be 4 million. Even in those days that was almost nothing. We had just finished Fire and Ice and no one thought it was worth pursing - especially Ralph. ralph didn't want to work that hard for so little so he considered having my friend Bruce Woodside and me co-direct the film for him. Althoug it would have been a dream project - and we might have been able to use Frazetta's designs - we weren't really seasoned enough to pull it off and for that type of money we knew what it would have looked like: Fire and Ice 2.
So needless to say I'm thrilled that technology has finally caught up with this project and made it feasable to do this film in live-action. Favereau seems to have the right attitude about the property and he even seems inclined to use frazetta's art as inspiration. Goood luck Jon!

The above image was already posted to my web-site as is, but I started painting/rendering it in PhotoShop some time ago and stopped. This might actually give me the motivation to finish it and post it here.

A face from the past...

Ever since I bought the Fire and Ice DVD SE I've had a hankering to do a drawing or two. The opportunity arose (a drawing jam at the Sketchbook Session web-site) so this is what the results were...