Flip Book™

One of my first introductions to the science of animation was this flip book I bought when I was about 7-8 years old. I'm not sure with whose credited with creating this art, but, I think by the time this came out, Disney had one of their 'animation army' put this together. I originally held some hope that maybe this was some Milt Kahl artwork.

“Cars 2″ is Already a Hit Whether You Like the Film Or Not

(via Cartoon Brew) An article in Monday’s Wall Street Journal deemed Cars 2 a Hit Already—in Stores. The article made it clear that the franchise earns an obscene amount of money for Pixar’s parent company, Disney, and that basically means they’re going to continue making sequels and spin-offs until the cows come home (or until kids stop buying crap related to the film, whichever comes first).
Below are some of the key facts and financial figures from the WSJ piece:

North Korea's Comics

Recently caught these from a Slate article. Pretty interesting stuff, and a sad peek into that torn countries isolation. The comics hero is Gen. Mighty Wing, who pops up in most of them, and is a true son of the People Republic.

Korean comics were printed on the cheapest of all recycled paper stock—"shit paper"—and yet they were still were too expensive for a typical person to buy. Most stories were printed in multivolume sets of a dozen or so, or at least in ha (low) and sang (high) sets designating part 1 and part 2. The ink used for the interior printing was probably recycled from the mixed waste of colored inks from other press runs—it was never quite black, but usually a shade of blue ranging from a dark navy to a baby blue.

Nineteen Eighty Five #4- Thumbnails

Thumbnails of a couple pages. This stage involves translating the script to shorthand/ thumbnail form. This helps pace the scenes and give a blueprint of how much to dwell on a scene or allow more or less page space. Once this set is finished, the pencils to page start.

Mike Mills- Beginners

The new Mike Mills movie, Beginners involves a young illustrator (Ewan McGregor), whose mother has recently died. His father (Christopher Plummer) decides to come out of the closet as a result. Haven't seen the movie yet, but, hear it's gotten great reviews.

I  recently checked out the illustration exhibit Mike had at the Los Angeles book store 'Family'. Ewan McGregor's character is somewhat based on Mike (an illustrator/ Filmmaker), and Mike as displaying all of the illustrations he'd created for the movie: Check em out.

Rough Designs

There's a few music video projects in the works, in particularly an animated one that's letting me revisit some old Flash and hand drawn techniques. Atill doing a bit of the back n forth dance on approvals but here's some of what's been drafted so far:

Gullivers Travels

Some pretty amazing photos have been floating around recently. These are of a dormant theme park outside of Tokyo called Sleepy Town. The park has a Gullivers Travels theme, complete with a gigantic Gulliver. Since it's closing it's been overrun by wear and vandalism:

Ignite The Fuse!

In 1995, a few artists and I threw an arts show, Ignite The Fuse, organized by Daniel Gallegos, who was also one of the artists. The first one I'd ever been involved with. One thing I didnt understand was that you were supposed to create new work specifically for the show. I'd always thought a show was to represent the work you'd done thus far. Little did I know. The show was a success, but I took off after and hour. My band at the time was playing a show that night, and , I was never very comfortable at gallery showings, which is why I can count the gallery showings I've been part of on one hand!

I did have a lot of fun making the flyer!And the standard method of delivery was to put it on  peoples windsheilds!!!

Santa Cruz Skateboards 2

(continued) After a couple of months, I seemed to understand the system enough to feel pretty comfortable. I had so much clerical and document style work, that I felt like I was up to some 'hard goods' as we called them. The atmosphere in the art department was really lax. Again, coming from kitchen work, where you were busy or busy looking busy, it was unsettling at first.

Also, the owner, Rich Novak, had a long standing bet with any employee. If someone could knock him out with one punch, he'd pay them $1,000 cash. If they couldn't, he could then hit the person back wherever he wanted. Needless to say, I didn't take him up on it.

Most times, we spent coming up with concepts/roughs and researching ideas we'd then present to the Art Director, Mojo. When a design was selected for either a board, wheel or t-shirt, we then set out to make it happen.

80% of the work was made 'camera ready' on the computer. Scanning in your roughs, and tracing them in Illustrator or PhotoShop. Skateboard art, for about the first two years I was there, was created using 'ruby lith'. This process employed you to cut out each color manually, with an xacto knife, and have each layer photographed and made into a silkscreen. It was a painstaking process, that took me a while to get the hang of. Ironically, once I got pretty good, we switched to doing all board graphics on the computer.

I spent about 4 yers at NHS/SC Skate, and ended up creating dozens of boards, wheels, shirts, jackets etc. Toward the end, I started to dabble in the new HTML web applications, as the company was interested in moving their retail onto the web. It was incredible experience, and looking back, was really my surrogate art school.

Jonti

Some logo and art development for the South African via Sydney based musician and
DJ Jonti. Started out with some sketches here, and eventual colored, stylized version. All working up to animated project which will have the same look and style.

 

Santa Cruz Skateboards

This job was probably what I'll always refer to as my 'big break'. It changed everything for me. I went from working as an offset press operator in the morning (I'd heard that learning printing was a good way to get your foot in the door for design work) and still working as a cook at night. I then ventured into the 9 to 5 world of silent rooms with computers. It was a strange transition, and took a little getting used to, but I felt like I was finally getting to do what I loved.

My first assignment at SCSkate. A dealership window sticker.

The art department was about 5 of us in a modest sized office. We were in a gigantic warehouse called the 'Cannery'. SC Skates parent company NHS was housed here, and home to other brands like SC Snowboards, Creature Skateboards, Independent Trucks, etc. Just being around all of this history and artwork was amazing. The production room they screened and made all of the merchandise was a gigantic, hot room, that, at first, seemed like a huge auto factory. The guys who ran that department were like longshoremen, who I learned could not STAND us art department fartsy guys,who were from upstairs.

First wheels, made my 2nd day. Skapegoats and Tetrads.

I got a few projects in my lap the first day, and mostly some office, document layout stuff. I would rush through each job as though I was still on 'kitchen time'. I was told to slow down and 'take my time' on ideas. This took some getting used to as I literally spent the first 3 months figuring I'd get fired. I was working with folks who'd gone to art school, and I had a hard time relating sometimes. I got a few wheel design jobs which were amazing. We'd get a name on print out, and be told, make a graphic for it. It'll be on store shelves withing 2 weeks! That was always a great feeling, but, the most coveted of projects at SC Skate was the job of 'skateboard graphic'.

continued.

Bummer Christmas!

After a pretty melancholy holiday season a few years back (2002 I think), I was pretty down on the state of world affairs. And I had an idea for a Christmas Card (which I used to unfailingly produce yearly). This was 2002's.

Four

Police News

I've seen copies of this online occasionally, but, became fascinated a while back when they were included in a Jack The Ripper documentary. This was the news of the day, and the paper included illustrations as to almost be a graphic novel.

It's pretty fitting that when Alan Moore and Eddie campbell created 'From Hell', they copped the illustration style from these newspapers.