Kicked in the Punch Pants

You better run.
After visiting my usual blogs today, I ran across this posting on Ronnie del Carmen's Tirade. Basically the top story artists from Pixar have simultaneously launched themselves out of a nuclear cannon with their self-published comics in one hand, and links to their blogs about each of their comics in the other. Unfortunately for everyone else, when they land the explosion is going to blow us meager bystanders to smithereens. I'm still in a tizzy from being exposed to so much talent at one go. This is how to do it right, folks:

Mark Andrews (Colossus)
Sanjay Patel (Little India)
Louis Gonzales (Dumping Grounds)
Ted Mathot (Rose and Isabel)
E-Ville Press (Afterworks)
Jamie Baker (Rocket Rabbit)

and of course Ronnie del Carmen himself (Paper Biscuit).

Run and check out their blogs. Then run and hide under a rock.

Death comes in all sizes

Death Jr. is a very slick PSP game due out in the summer by the fine folks at Back Bone entertainment. Fellow Ghostbot Arvin Bautista did some work on the PSP game. It looked great at E3! We'll keep you posted when it releases.

A comic based on the video game characters has just been released. Fellow Ghostbot Rhode Montijo did this two page cover for the comic with fab colors by Jenny Hansen.

Howl's Moving Castle

This weekend I caught Hayao Miyazaki’s new film Howl’s Moving Castle. For those who haven’t heard about it, here is a brief description I pulled from Anime News Network:

A plain young hatter named Sophie has her life changed when an evil witch transforms her into an old woman. Unable to face her family in such a condition, Sophie runs away in search of a way to become young again. Along the way, Sophie helps a turnip headed scarecrow, who repays her by leading her to the moving castle owned by the dreaded wizard Howl. There she befriends Howl's apprentice Markl, Howl's fire demon Calcifer, and eventually, Howl himself. Sophie then becomes the castle's cleaning lady in an effort to not only find the solution to her problem but to save Howl from his own terrible secrets as well.

It has a lot of the classic Miyazaki motifs we’ve seen in his other films, yet still remains fresh, compelling and endearing. I think this is because of his amazing storytelling ability backed by a redunkulous Studio Ghibli crew. The blend of digital and traditional animation is really tastefully done as well.

Don’t take my word for it. Check out the trailer here!

After the movie, I heard a couple of disgruntled gomers complain behind me that it wasn’t Miyazaki’s “best” work for which I can only reply: It's better than......(insert any crappy American animated movie here).

Anatomy of a BG: Part 2

After many great distractions, I'm back on track with this post (to be honest, I almost posted something else before this one). Where was I?... oh yeah...

For the first batch of roughs of the cityscape, I chose the thumbnail I was most satisfied with and enlarged it to about 12-field animation paper size.

Next I used a light table to draw on top of it with a new sheet of pegged paper. This stage I'm focused on refining the shapes, correcting perspective (or faking it better), and adding details thanks to a lot of reference. On this particular spot, I had the luxury of taking my backgrounds to a finished pencil state. Sometimes because of the crunch of a schedule, I might take the roughs straight into Flash and do the refining process digitally. But I've found that my strongest designs are the ones that are totally figured out on paper first before even touching the computer (go figure).

You can view slightly larger scans of the images by clicking on them.

Help Winn win!

Here's another worthwhile reason to sidetrack my upcoming post:
One of our pals, David Winn has a film competing in the 2005 Annecy Internet Competition. Dave is another great Flash animator who we've worked with on numerous projects. He redefines the term "workhorse" and has personal stock in the beverage, Rockstar.

Go watch his righteous film Fleeced and vote before Friday evening (France time)!

Drawn!

I'm prepping the next bg image to post but I had to put this up first. To my shock, inspirational site, Drawn! just blogged us. Their site is one of my daily hotspots to visit on the web, full of great links to a wide range of artists and "Save Image As" goodies. Contributors include talented artists in their own rite - John Martz, Patricia Storms, Matt Forsythe, Jay Stephens, Scott Thigpen, Claire Robertson, Jared Chapman, and Ward Jenkins. Check them out. You'll be distracted for hours...oh wait...it's Thursday?

Anatomy of a BG: Part 1

Keep your eyes peeled for our new Esurance commercial on tv. It's called "Lost Reel" and it's definitely one of our favorites to date (I think whichever one we're working on usually is).

Here are some rough thumbnails I sketched to try and figure out basic composition for two money shots - the opening city shot and the main interior shot. For reference I was looking at the almighty Blade Runner and photos of cheesy, retro, bachelor pads ("Yeah, bay-beeee!"). I'll post up the next stage soon...