Come Play With Us!

This American Life

I'm not sure if I've mentioned the show on here before, but, it's a weekly show from PRI in Chicago. Host Ira Glass introduces a general theme and has different writers explore that theme in separate stories (think Charles Kuralt's "On the Road").

Some of the shows are true classics as is this one titled 'My Experimental Phase'. Their website has the last 10 years (!!) of these archived.

James

Urban Outfitters Xmas

This has been in the works for about a week now, and is set to be delivered by the end of the month (2 days). It's an animated Christmas card/promo for an Xmas LP with some great music on it. It features James Brown, Free Design, Vince Guaraldi and a host of others.

Hopefully I'll have a full finished clip up tomorrow evening at some point.

James

Galt McDermott

Mr. McDermott isn't too well known outside of music enthusiast circles, but, his contributions include numerous soundtracks, scores, and studio work. Most notably, the music from the show 'Hair'.

I've been commissioned to create a caricature/portrait of him, and, in researching his work, I'm amazed at the long list of credits.

Take a look.

Local Architecture

A lot of the backgrounds in the GZA book involve buildings, as, the story takes place in New York City. Most illustrators I talk with shudder at the idea of painstakingly drawing every building, but, it's something I've learned to have a little fun with.



Each building involved in the story can act as another character, and , even reflect the mood of the scene. I've known plenty of other writers who've used similar methods with background elements, and have had great results.



LA has some great architecture around town, and, I've been using some of the local decor as inspiration for the artwork. We've got some great stuff around this city!

At the table

A quick shot at the table and some of the work. Mostly been working in pencil-mode, but, as I get further into this, I'm intrigued at the options that are out there for inks.

On to page 38!

In the works...

We've been asked to direct and animate the upcoming Heliocentrics track ,"Winter Song". If you're not familiar, they're a London based group whose musical style is deeply rooted in soul and funk, but have a theatrical style to them which seems meant for science fiction soundtracks.

Believe it or not, they have a collaboration with David Axelrod featured on their album which I'm excited to hear.

We're throwing around all sorts of ideas from stop-motion, to, animated still imagery, collage style. We'll see how it goes.

In the meantime, give them a listen!

Earthquakes & Aftershocks

Though it's a bit belated, I wanted to mention this show that happened a couple months ago at Barnsdall Park in Los Feliz. The park is a gallery space/ rec area that's been built to accompany the Frank Lloyd Wright, Hollyhock House. The gallery space is pretty huge, and consists of about 4 different halls with adjoining rooms.



The Earthquakes & Aftershocks show featured different poster art from CalArts students from the last couple of years. The posters used all different mediums, but dealt with the Earthquake theme in relation to Southern California.



The website for the show is here.



The gallery also had a few other shows going which have pictures featured below.

Dry Erase Animation

This is great use of a simple concept and some great animation/linework.

Check it out.

The Jackie Winter Group

As some of you know, Melbourne Australia was a bit of a second home to me, and, I was always struck by the amount of immensely talented folks who hail from there.

One in particular is Jeremy Wortsman, the man behind Is Not Magazine. His new gig is forming a collective of Australian illustrators called the 'Jackie Winter Group'. He'll be representing most of the talent down under. Some great stuff here.

Have a look!

Page 18

This is the latest page, penciled and yet to inked. The inking of these should be interesting. I've been looking at a lot of Osamu Tezukas stuff lately, to get inspired. I still consider him to one the most amazing artist/inkers.

Rough Page 18

This page involves Ason and G in the club called the Executive (I imagined it to be a sort of Disco Fever type club). This is where they spot Beary Rafferty. A large 400 pound, notorious character. In panel 2, the Ason character is scrubbing his sneaker with a toothbrush.

Final penciled Page 18

Basketball Jones

I'd never seen this until now. It's obviously a Ralph Bakshi production, but, the song is from a Cheech & Chong record. I ended up seeing this in the Hal Ashby movie 'Being There'.

The Wigflip 2

>>>>>>>update<<<<<<<<

The completed video:



So, things are finally coming together with this piece. It is a bit disjointed, but, I think that suits the theme and style. What I was really trying to do was capture the linework of the original drawings, and have them move in a consistent way.

The style is a simple, hand drawn look, so, there's not a ton of detail, but, these heavy line art animations tend to make the file size huge, so, I've had to do each segment as a different Flash file.

I'll hopefully have a finished clip to post in the next couple of days.

J