Pencils, Pixels & Puppets

What's goin' on?

2011-09-10T21:49:00.002-04:00

It's been a while since I posted here and truthfully, I probably wouldn't have again except that I joined a sketch blog with some friends and needed to log into my profile.

If anyone is interested, I still have my Deviant Art gallery up, although that hasn't been updated in a while either. The last couple of years have been mainly about storyboard work, which is a lot of fun but doesn't really make for a lot of nice finished drawings for posting.

The big news is on the webcomics front. I finally got my first book together! It's called Starting Tomorrow - The First Promises Promises Collection. I'm very pleased with it. Lots of comics and a bonus selection of my favourite Q&A from The Baroness Knows Best. It's available for sale in my online store and the comics are still archived on the main site. www.promisescomic.com

Going Deviant

2009-12-15T16:19:00.002-05:00

It's been advised to me on more than one occasion to put up a Deviant Art gallery. The format is nicer for portfolio display so I finally got on it. I'll still update here with new work, but here's the link to my new DA gallery if you're interested. LINK!

Tea Party

2009-08-23T22:06:00.003-04:00

A while back I made a gift for a friend of mine, it was one of those travel mugs that you put your own photos in and an assortment of loose leaf tea. Seemed kind of dumb to give her the mug without something in it so I whipped up the drawing below.

I'm kicking myself for not making a copy of the finished inks, it was really cute, all I had was this scan of the pencil sketch that I just found in a mess of files I've been sorting through. It may be unfinished, but I think it's worth sharing.

In other news, I'll be at Toronto Fan Expo this weekend pushing Promises Promises, with my buddy Brian. He'll be there with his book Lucy Legacy and a sneak peak at his new magnum opus Jim and Jenn, which I can't wait to see. I also hear we're parked beside Blair Kitchen of Possum Press again this year. That delights me, the Possum is one of the funniest comics I've read and Blair is a super nice guy. So if you're in the neighborhood, stop by and see us sketching out little hearts out in Artist's Alley.

I'm really looking forward to it.

Mardi Bras 2!

2009-07-03T21:24:00.009-04:00

On Friday July the 10^th at 7:30pm, my WEBC team will be presenting the second annual Mardi-Bras at the Ballroom of Toronto’s own Historic Gladstone Hotel!

Lending their support, more than thirty professional artisans from all over Canada have created unique pieces of wearable art from an otherwise utilitarian garment. These bras will be presented in a runway show and silent auctioned throughout the evening along with some wonderful gifts donated by artists and businesses from all over the GTA.

Guests at Mardi-Bras will enjoy runway-style fashion show complete with musical introduction and belly dancer, followed by cocktail reception, music, silent auction and door prizes, (including tickets for two to see Jersey Boys!) culminating in the crowning of the King and Queen of Mardi-Bras!

Tickets are $25 and selling quickly, to reserve yours go to the “contact us” page at www.mardi-bras.com. With your continued support we will see an end to cancer in our lifetime!

Glenn Martin DDS

2009-06-28T12:56:00.003-04:00

Well they have the official website up, so I'm guessing it's good to talk about this now.

The latest project I'm on at work is Glenn Martin DDS. It's a new stop motion show we're working on at Cuppa Coffee Animation and is the first show to come out of Michael Eisner's production company, Tornante.

It's a fun show about a traveling dentist and his family. The writers are really on the ball. It's very character driven, and funny. My favourite character is easily Connor, the 13 year old son. He's not too bright but always a lot of laughs. The crew have outdone themselves, the production is really beautiful. The highest attention to detail goes into each prop, set, costume and the lighting is brilliant, (no pun intended). The puppets are phenomenal. The nicest I've ever worked with. Sturdy, well articulated and you can get a lot of performance out of each one. The main character voice actors include Kevin Nealon, Catherine O'Hara and Judy Greer. They've done a great job and sure make animating them easy.

Everyone involved is really working hard to make it great. It never fails to amaze me the levels of skill you get in a place like Cuppa Coffee. Each person is incredible at their job, and most of them have something else on the side! Animators are also illustrators, musicians, builders are also writers, performers, digital artists, compositors, the list goes on and on.

It will be airing on Nick at night in the fall, but I don't have a date on that yet, I'll keep posting as I know more. In the meantime check out the website: www.meetglennmartin.com, there are some fun clips up from the first few episodes.

Utopia Kingdoms

2009-05-02T22:02:00.007-04:00

Finally got the Ok to post the stuff I did for Utopia Kingdoms. Pretty pleased with the project, these guys are a lot of fun to work for. I didn't do a heck of a lot on this one, just the avatars for the character classes, a male and female for each. I think the centaurs were my favourites.

Colours by Rob Ruffolo and Espen Grundetjern.

Avians

Centaurs

Dark Elves

Dwarfs

Elves
Humans

Orcs

Trolls

Legends of Zork

2009-04-05T18:34:00.017-04:00

I've been doing some work on the new Legends of Zork online. Here are some of the character profile critters I did for them. The colours were done by Espen Grundetjern and Jim Zubkavich.

Jackanape

Hoping Claw Monkey
Giant Spider

Devil Doll

Reaper Squirel

Giant Toad

Luck Sucker

Mutant Yellow Grotch

Roc

I also did some stuff for Utopia Kingdoms, but that hasn't been posted yet, so I'll have to wait.

Daily Doodle #4

2009-01-18T21:47:00.001-05:00

Theme today: Ninja Aardvarks

Why not?

Daily Doodle #3

2009-01-16T21:44:00.002-05:00

Thursday's theme was Shakespeare. I'm a little behind...and it's a weak joke. Better luck tomorrow.

Daily Doodle #2

2009-01-14T21:41:00.003-05:00

Wendsdays are always "Wild Wednesday". Draw any wild animal you want. I'm in a tucan state of mind. Figured out how to make my own brushes in photoshop...may have gone a little overboard with the leafy stamp.

Daily Doodle #1

2009-01-13T21:27:00.009-05:00

Started a daily doodle with some friends, Jett & BJ. Today's theme was Greek Mythology. I went with Artemis.

Catch-up News

2008-12-27T20:32:00.011-05:00

It's been a long, long time since my last post and there is lots to talk about.

My Friend Rabbit wrapped up season one as something we could all be really proud of. It won a Cartoons On the Bay award and as far as I know will move into a second season.

Afterward, I was moved onto another new show at Nelvana called "Willa's Wild Life".

It's a good show, great team and I'm sure it will do very well.

This summer, I was also doing some freelancing with another studio called Cuppa Coffee Animation, on a project you may have just seen, The Miser Brother's Christmas.

(this is just a you-tube clip I found, it's not all my footage by any stretch)

This was a very special project for me. My first love is stop-motion animation and one of the things that was on my "must do" list since college was work on a stop motion Christmas special like the ones from my childhood. Kind of a long shot considering how computers are pretty dominant in the business now, but I got to do it and as a bonus it included two of my favourite Rankin Bass characters ever...three if you count Santa! Another extraordinary crew, and a favourite director of mine.

In fact, I liked it so much that I ended up leaving Nelvana to go back to Cuppa full time just this month. It's a new project, won't be airing for a while, so I'm not sure how much I can say about it for now. I'll keep posting as I'm more sure of confidentiality.

In other news, I moved and the new place is a real...unique fixer-upper opportunity. It's put quite a stall on everything else in my life. Honestly, if you can live your entire life and not ever have to renovate, I strongly recommend it. Promises Promises has been on hiatus since the move, but is back up and now powered by wordpress, so we'll see how that goes. It's a lot more complicated than I'm used to, but I'm surrounded by computer people much smarter than me, so I'm sure I'll get by with a little help from my friends. Gotta get cracking on that if I want to have anything in print for Toronto Comicon this year.

I'm still helping out over at thinkpink. We've been putting together lots of new things for your 2009 fund raising needs. Lots of team gear and some new stuff for the bike-crowd. Hats, water bottles, you name it and all proceeds benefit Princess Margaret Hospital. We can customize pretty much anything you want/need so don't hesitate to contact me or Randy over at the site.

We're also starting planning for Mardi Bras 2 this spring!
2009 is going to be a fantastic year!

Word On The Street

2008-09-24T12:50:00.003-04:00

This weekend I will be volunteering at the Word On The Street Festival, downtown Toronto. If you're going, hope to see you there. If you've never been, you should absolutely come and check it out. It's going to be a great time and tons of local talent will be appearing for panel discussions at the Comics and Graphic Novels tent. Looking forward to that! (oh, and there will be a bunch of stuff not related to comics there too.)
My buddy Brian will be there signing and sketching as well as Blair Kitchen of Possum Press. I've only recently become acquainted with The Possum, it's so funny. Don't have a drink while you're reading or it's coming out of your nose kind of funny.
See you Sunday!

Promises Promises

2008-07-02T14:53:00.009-04:00

I've been wanting to get into the webcomics ring for a while and now, with a lot of help on the technical end, Promises Promises is up and running!
It's been a long time in development and I'm pretty excited about it.
Updated every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so check it out when you can!

Orphan Works Bill - Bad News For Artists!

2008-05-13T11:47:00.000-04:00

I tripped over this link on Silver's Blog.
To all of my artist friends and anyone who cares about us, PLEASE, download the MP3 and get wise to this madness they're proposing. It's not just going to effect the Americans on this one, even if that were the case, I couldn't stand to see this happen to my Yankee-Doodle-ist.

ORPHAN WORKS BILL

Still in the Pink!

2008-05-12T23:01:00.005-04:00

One of the funny things about trying to keep up a portfolio-blog, is that ethically, (and legally) I can't post or talk too much about the things I'm working on that haven't been aired yet. It can be a little frustrating, especially when you're really excited about a project, and sometimes you lose momentum talking about things you've finished when you're on to something new. I have two on the go at the moment that I can't talk about yet, but I can talk some more about the stuff I've been working on with Think Pink Direct.

It's mostly t-shirts and promotional stuff, but I also like to use some of the graphics for my fund raising site and blog.

We were bouncing some ideas around and I came up with these. Well, actually, Apple came up with the look , I just liked the campaign and everybody loves a good pop culture homage.

I'm learning a lot working on this. Photoshop, Illustrator and I are becoming friends.

Think Pink!

2008-04-22T20:57:00.015-04:00

This is an unusual post for me. As most of my readers know, (Hi Mom!) this blog is intended to be for professional portfolio, and this is a bit off the official path.

For those who don't know, I'm doing the Toronto Weekend to End Breast Cancer again this year. It's a 60k walk benefiting Princess Margaret Hospital and the Campbell Family Institute. Each participant is required to raise a minimum of $2,000.00 to participate. That's a lot of money and a lot of work to raise, in addition to the 60k walk. And it's absolutely worth every second.

You meet a lot of really fabulous people in an event like this and hear a lot of heart warming, and sometimes heart breaking stories, everybody has a reason to walk.

One of the great ladies I've met through all this is Randy Mellon over at Think Pink Direct. In addition to doing her own walk and fund raising, she runs a website that gets pink ribbon merchandise to the other participants to help with their fund raising, she also does team t-shirts, pins, buttons, water bottles, special orders, you name it. Randy rocks it! So, I've been helping out with some design stuff lately, here and there, where I can. It's a load of fun and very special to me to be able to contribute.

One of the teams requested a design update on their T-shirts and here's what we've come up with:

Front 1:

Back:

I'm also taking this as an opportunity so show off some of the other fun stuff we've been working on. As I said before, $2,000.00 can be a lot of work to raise, so many of the teams put together something special to help out. Last year, my team did the cook book, this year we're doing Mardi Bras! Some teams host sports tournaments, garage sales, casino nights, parties, bakes sales, poker and euchre games etc. Think Pink Direct carries all kinds of fun stuff to add to the atmosphere of these events. I've been trying to come up with a design for a casino night lapel pin. We haven't hit the nail on the head just yet, but some of the ideas are worth showing. The trouble is that it's hard to put the pink ribbon to a gambling theme without seeming a little morose.

Contrary to popular belief, the Weekend isn't a women-only event. Here are some ideas we kicked around for one of the Men's teams:

So if you're on one of the teams and looking to get some shirts, (or anything else you can immagine for that matter) drop Randy a line over at Think Pink Direct!

If you're reading this and want to make a difference in the lives of those in our communities effected by breast cancer, please go to the secure website and sign up or pledge on line, (here) and by all means, come check out Mardi Bras! It'll be a great time for a great cause!

My Friend Rabbit

2008-03-23T01:53:00.003-04:00

I figure since the director's been blogging about it and it's on the air now, it's OK to talk a bit about the show I'm working on at Nelvana.

I'm currently a 2-D Digital animator on My Friend Rabbit.

It's a preschool show about Rabbit and his friends based on a series of kid's books. They do simple problem solving, sing songs, it's all very cute, colourful and I like the design aesthetic a lot.

Pete Emslie actually wrote a really nice blog about the show over on the Cartoon Cave: here, (which delighted me immensely as I'm a big fan of Pete's work).

When we get our demo clips I'll post some animation. In the mean time it's on Treehouse at 1pm Saturdays.

Finishing up Design with Silver

2008-03-17T23:25:00.007-04:00

I just finished up my last assignment for the Design With Silver course I was taking. I have to admit, I'm going to miss the class, it was a lot of fun and I got a lot out of it. Silver is a fantastic teacher and a super positive person. I'm hoping to start up more regular life drawing classes in the next few weeks, just to keep up some of the better habits I've been developing.

To update with my assignment progress, I think the last post I made was about the portraits and caricature. From there we did a lot of fundamentals, good practice. Silhouettes, basic shapes and gestures, then we had to come up with an original character. I'm in a bit of a Gladiator movie phase at the moment, so I went with a "friends, Romans, Countrymen" - senator kind of character.

This character was really a stretch for me. I really pushed myself to go way more cartoon-ey than is my default and I had a lot of fun with it.

After that we talked about character rotations, posing and expression sheets. I didn't get time that week to get to fine-finished clean up, but I was pretty pleased with the roughs and I think they're worth showing.

We were also doing a lot of observational drawing. I tried to put in an hour a day just sitting and drawing people. Here's a sketchbook page that turned out pretty good over all, mainly 1-2 minute studies...I'd like a few of them to be different, but I'm keeping them on the page for the sake of my own study. After all, if we don't observe our mistakes, we are doomed to repeat them.

Along with observational drawing he had us doing memory sketching. Taking a mental picture of someone you see and designing a character around them from memory later. There was this fabulous woman in a coffee shop near where I work. Head to toe in Channel...I'm pretty sure her outfit was worth more than my car. So she was my subject for memory sketch:

I like wealthy people. I hope to be one some day.

The last assignment, was to re-visit Fat Joe, from the beginning. Truthfully, this is a lot closer to what I originally wanted than my first one. It's a simpler design, it's got a much better structure, and I'm very happy with him.

The Morning After

2008-02-15T00:10:00.000-05:00

And Happy Day After Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day!

2008-02-14T00:05:00.001-05:00

I actually did this one up for last year, but I didn't get a chance to do a new one this year and I still think it's funny.

Assignment 2 - Practice makes portrait

2008-02-11T22:25:00.000-05:00

As it turns out, my Mom is reading this now, so I'm going to have to start posting more often and really checking the spelling.

HI MOM!

This post is to do with my 3rd assignment in the Silver course with Imaginism.com. I'm really having a great time with this. It's been a long time since I flexed a lot of these muscles and it feels really good. This assignment was to take a face from a series of photos he gave us, do the best portrait of the person we could then put the reference away and using simple shapes create caricatures from memory. Portraiture has never been my strength, and it took a few more tries than I'd like to admit, but this was a lot of fun. I'll have to do more hat studying in the future.

A cure in our life time!

2008-01-22T23:14:00.000-05:00

Last September I was one of 5521 walkers in the Toronto Weekend to End Breast Cancer. It was a fantastic experience. Each participant is required to raise a minimum of $2,000.00. That's harder to do than you'd think, so my team put together a cook book to help our fund raising along. "Mammy Gram's Home Cookin' " did very well. We sold 700 copies and all together raised $8,323.55 of a record setting 17.3 million dollars for Princess Margaret Hospital.

I did the Cover and divider pages for the book, it was simple, but fun. I was kind of surprised at how much personality you can get out of one little pink ribbon.

We're back again for the 2008 Weekend. We've pretty much tapped out the cook book market among our friends and family, so this year we're putting on a big party. We're still ironing out the wheres and whens but the theme is MARDI-BRAS!

This will be on our pins, stationary, t-shirts, etc. I like it.

Fat Joe

2008-01-20T18:43:00.000-05:00

I started a design course this week with schoolism. I'm doing the character design with Stephen Silver classes. I'm pretty excited about it actually. Silver is a favourite of mine.
I've gotten out of the habit of drawing for myself and into some pretty sloppy drawing habits since I started working with the computer, so I'm taking it as a chance to re-boot my drawing system and develop new/cleaner approaches to design.
For our first assignment, we were given a character description to illustrate. Fat Joe.

It's Not Salad!

2007-11-29T13:17:00.000-05:00

I received my first Christmas Card of the season last night. It brought into sharp realization, that I haven't even started mine yet. (oops)
Last year, after Christmas I was going over my Toon Boom Solo drawing tutorials and came up with this bit of doodling, inspired by my Aunt's annual Jello Mold. I'm not a big fan of Jello, and I really resent it when these sticky little monsters lurk about the holiday table trying to pass themselves off as salad.
I was thinking of using it for my Christmas cards this year...but I'm not sure anyone else will get it.

What it's about

2007-11-28T16:15:00.001-05:00

I've been saying I'm going to post an art blog for portfolio for years...One day I'll do it.
This is the beginning.