Art Roundup!

I just wanted to showcase a few paintings and character designs and such as I haven't done so before.

Here's Birdie; a 1950's lady who was raised to think that being a great cook is the best way to score a hubby! Designed by the fabulous Deanna Marsigliese who now designs for Pixar.

This is a hand animated shot of Birdie

Here is the lucious Babette and her whiskey loving hubby

The outdoor dinner party scene

Some costume designs for Birdie

Here's a screen cap of the finished Cash rig done in Toonboom and my reference files

The cathedral

A wonderful jello mold, with olives! Mmm.

The kitchen

The dinner table

Knives in the kitchen at night

An early pass on character designs, very UPA inspired!

More painting getting done!

Hey, so this week I actually found some time to dig in on painting backgrounds! I went a bit further with background 26 and then laid down some basic colour on 27 and 29. It's exciting to make progress!

Next I'll take 27 and 29 into Corel painter for a base texture layer. I love Corel's brushes. I think I'm going to bring each of these to completion in stages at the same time. That should help me stay consistent with style, colour and brushes.

Further Work in Progress on the Cellar Sequence Backgrounds

It's been another busy week! This past weekend involved a lot of chores and file cleaning. I did find some time to get some painting done on background 26 of the cellar sequence:

This image is super work in progress. I'm going to move the pickle jar. Currently the state this background is in is like the above, but with zoodles of perspective lines all over the place as I get the new jar figured out. I think the visual flow is going to work better with the new version. As I make progress with this one I've been saving it as new versions so that I can whip up a gif of the process.

Background Painting: The Vanity

Here is a background I recently touched up! It depicts the scene Birdie fantasises about when she goes into her mind after experiencing a surge of emotions at the dinner party. She falls into the scene and struggles to swim through the air towards the vanity. When she reaches it to lean on for support, her reflection in the mirror speaks to her.

The colours I use in my film have meaning. This background is a blast of purplish pink. Pink is Birdie's innocence, personality and inner self, purple (and blue) are truth, and white is... how shall I say... shallow desire? White represents what Birdie hopes to gain in life before she is attune with her own emotions.

They call me Yellow Jello

Visual Post Friday!!!

I finished the last background painting from the outdoor dinner party sequence! This past Friday and Saturday I was painting the spectacular yellow fruit jello mold and here it is in all it's tacky glory:

As you can see I painted it beyond the frame edge, that's why there's that green stripe and all the brush strokes beyond that. It's just nice to have a whole jello. Mmm, olives in jello....

Backgrounds - The Cellar (WIP)

Work in progress! I've been painting and drawing backgrounds. Got a trillion pickle jars left to draw.

slow but steady

I'm still struggling, as usual, to balance all the aspects in my life. But since my last post I feel pretty good about the amount of work I've done on Pickled! This past weekend I did work, for my job. But the previous two weekends were all about Pickled. Part of the reason I was doing work over the weekend was because I had a massive headache on Friday and had to take the day off. And on President's Day weekend I was really sick. So with all the down time, I needed to do some catch up.

But anyway, I've put down at least basic rough paint for all the backgrounds now (well except the montage ones), I prettied up the leica/animatic enough to show to a couple friends at work and I punched a stack of animation paper.

Next time I make a film... I will definitely use a different approach. I'm dying to put together a piece FAST! (Well, not necessarily the story elements), but to just crank out some emotional stuff that's relevant to me or fun or experimental... Maybe just do pencil tests and no clean up... Something less all consuming.

2 paintings and Gertrude and Alice Cafe

Here is a little sneak peak of a couple backgrounds:

I have been painting backgrounds all day every day for awhile now. It's feeling a little weird to sit in my cave as it has come to be called, all day each day. I want to write stories and create films. I like to craft a film, to storyboard and collaborate, I like picking colours and painting and animating... But some parts of the process are not completely my cup of tea and it's easy to start feeling doubts or concerns when so much time is spent. The collaboration I crave is for the most part, missing. I have given up on exercise and exploring and I am living as frugally as I can. It's just a strange existence! I am not complaining though. Next time my project will be smaller, or more collaborative and I will focus on the elements I am most passionate about. I am glad that I am learning a lot about the whole process.

My new book!

Yesterday, Sunday, was my weekend essentially and I trotted down to Hall Street with Steve where we popped into a great cafe slash bookshop for a sippa. It's called Gertrude and Alice Cafe Bookstore. I walked by said cafe about a week ago when the evil postman forced me to head that way to pick up an electric blanket I had ordered. It was the rainiest, windiest day I can remember. So windy that it was actually harder to walk with my umbrella open. There is a post office a 5 minute walk from my house, I think the postman deliberately gave the package to a further away post office. Actually, he had buzzed my apartment and promised to leave it inside but when I went down there was no package left for me! Anyway, when I was at this cafe, Steve and I crammed ourselves into the only two available spaces in the place on a soft green sofa. The cafe was bustling with staff, book perusers and coffee sippers. The first book I saw in the $2 bin outside was a hardcover book of Ronald Searle drawings! I snapped that up. I think it was worth more than $2. As I sat with my coffee I noticed that right next to me was a wall with lots of Shakespeare and plays and scripts. Then, past Steve and a woman sitting opposite him was a wall of books on filmmaking, directors and films. Everywhere I looked there were fabulous used books! We found a book with a list of all known heavy metal bands piqued Steve's interest. There were books on medieval armor and artists and their works, a wall of fantasy novels and newspapers and magazines scattered around. It was delightfuly chaotic and inspirational to sit there for a bit. We left after maybe 30 minutes to make room for new customers and to get back to work. But I will be back...

Too much to chew

Firstly, check out the post that Deanna wrote on her blog about designing characters for my film!
The cake is not too much to chew, I mean I've taken on too much work. Since my last post I had a birthday! That picture above is a the last piece of chocolate cake Steve and I baked.

I've continued to kill myself with roughing out backgrounds since my last post. Since then I've concentrated on getting the rough kitchen shots out the door. The one I just finished today I ended up redoing 3 times after the first go and I think it's finally right. Sucks doing one background 4 times. Oh well.

I realise I have taken on too much, I always do, (but I don't like to admit that). I am making the film I want to make, but it is just taking a long time. I guess that's not really so bad... Sometimes art takes awhile. But next time I make a short film... I may just skip the bgs or have them be extremely simple. (Ha, I say that now.) I'd rather be animating. I actually love writing, boarding, timing the leica, animating, producing and directing. But drawing backgrounds... I don't mind, it's just not my favorite. Actually I've started enjoying drawing up the bg's more as I've been going along which was a surprise. It's interesting and satisfying to encompass nearly every department. I make all the creative descisions regarding the cutting, timing, composition and animation. (Being your own boss is pretty cool but also can be scary.) And then when I am working on a bg, I need to go back and forth between the leica and looking at the size of the characters and consider what they are doing. Revisions that have to go between departments and levels of approval in a studio can be frustrating.

I actually love to paint too! I used to paint a lot more especially when I was in highschool and in college. I don't think I suck at it either. I mostly preferred to paint "organic" subjects though, (as compared to buildings and vehicle, things that fill out landscapes. I painted people, plants, food, fabric, clothing, objects...

A great inspiration for me is listening to music. I love using itunes and youtube to find new artists and having a stream of music or podcasts is a great fuel. I've recently discovered a few artists I like, Dragonette, Annie and Porcelain Black.

I actually just formed an idea for an animated feature the other day. (gulp) I'd LOVE to get a team together in Canada and produce a feature. Recently that desire was reignited and I started thinking of feature ideas. There is no plot, fully formed characters or setting... but I do have an idea that I love. I'd like to write a big post on ideas sometime. People always seem to be asking how to come up with ideas and companies are desperate for fresh ones. I have my own way of coming up with ideas and harnessing them.

Below: me on the day I went out for a birthday dinner. My expression seems a little crazed, eh? I tried a look of sparkly white eyeshadow all around my eyes with no eyeliner or mascara. Kind of a La Roux type look. It looked cool in the mirror.

More Storyboard Revisions and Early Background Art

Well, I thought my leica had seen it's last revision but not so. There is a sequence where Birdie is thinking to herself/fantasizing and I think that in general it's a little confusing. More importantly I feel like I am missing out on a great opportunity by boarding something more "fantastical" as it is a sequence depicting a character's thoughts. One of my all time favourite films is Dumbo. When I was a kid I was mesmerized by the sequence depicting Timothy and Dumbo drinking the spiked water and having a nightmarish vision/fantasy of "pink elephants on parade". I also adored watching Winnie the Pooh have bad dreams of "Heffalumps and Woozles" stealing his precious honey.

I've sketched out the main shots of my film already. There are 7 main sets (aside from the unique ones, like the title, credits and simpler graphic music segments). These sketches depict the sets in angles with the most information. I can't scan them right now as my scanner is small and these are massive. I'm not ready to go through the scanning process but taking photos is a great way to get a very decent visual of these sets digitized. I'll crop them and put them here. I would love if you leave a comment! Are the backgrounds clear or confusing? Interesting? Do they have some depth? Are they informative, i.e. do you feel like you could imagine a character at home in these settings? Please take a look!

Below: chapel hallway, chapel interior, the kitchen, the cellar, the tabletop, the backyard





On a side note, I guess these Heffalump and the Pink Elephants sequences frightened a lot of kids. Looking at the comments in reply to these clips on youtube, one comment reads (in regards to the Heffalumps nightmare) "it did used to freak me out as a kid, it's still not as scary as the pink elephants scene from Dumbo... :S still can't watch that..." and another comment; "i'm tempted to get high and watch this just to make it more fucked up, though i like the music". When I was a kid I LOVED these animated segments! Parts of the Winnie the Pooh movie can be a little... slow. So getting to the Heffalumps part was definitely the highlight for me. Dumbo and Bambi were my favorite childhood films and I love them both still. I do not get why little kids are so easily frightened. I'd understand if a kid was scared at the boys turning into donkeys in Pinnochio, but other than that, nothing in an old animated Disney film ever felt scary to me. I remember having to leave the room while prisoners were getting their hands chopped off in the 1991 Robin Hood: Prince of Theives... that was too much for me at about 9 years old. And I had nightmares about Trolls for awhile after watching Ernest Scared Stupid... I guess I would have been 9 or 10 when I saw that monstrosity. Rant over.