Startin' something new!

A little taste of what's to come - Emily and I are collabing on a book for her company, Hedgehog Hiker. Started doing some sketches over the weekend while she was preparing (turning herself into a sweatshop) for Crafty Wonderland this Saturday. More to come...

Animated Banner For Fumbata

(Click on the image for full-res - this is a low quality preview)

I did this animated banner for one of my best buds, Clay Stricklin's website awhile back. He's a musician going by Fumbata (he happened to do the great score for my short, Chicxulub), and while he hasn't been able to update the site yet you can check his current one out (www.fumbata.com) as well as his great tumblr (http://fumbata.tumblr.com/ - a lot of stuff I'm into lately comes from the things he posts on there). He gives all his music away for free, and has before that was a business model that people followed - good stuff!

Hedgehog Hiker T-Shirt Design

My wife runs a children's outdoor clothing company called Hedgehog Hiker and we collaborated on a t-shirt design recently. I designed her logo character a few years back and while learning some new things in Flash I animated the character wandering through our hometown of Portland. She took a stillframe and re-drew the elements to make it print-ready (and more stylish) and voila! It's pretty sweet and the fabric is really soft in case you're looking for a gift for that pre-schooler in your life - you can buy it direct from the artist here. Emily will have a booth at the Buckman Art Show & Sell to benefit the Buckman Arts Elementary School, so you can see her there on April 13th and 14th. Also, we were lucky enough to have an up-and-coming fashion model showing off the shirt (my niece, Mara - you go girl!)

Three Little Pigs

Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin!

Illustration Friday - Popular

Thought this was appropriate to this week's Illustration Friday theme. Gus is "popular"! Just takes being friendly and willing to share, right?!

Aquaman/Aqualad in color

Here's the color version of the Aquaman/Aqualad drawing I did for Gus - this was fun! Apparently Aquaman's seahorse is named "Storm".

UPDATE! Here's the version Gus colored too - I dig it. Gus is very familiar with Aquaman's orange and green costume and he completely disregarded it, coming up with his own color scheme. That's my boy!

Superman/Krypto and Wonder Woman/Wonder Girl

Here's some more superheroes from Gus's growing collection for coloring - Superman & Krypto and Wonder Woman & Wonder Girl (both Krypto and Wonder Girl are major presences in the aforementioned Tiny Titans books)!

Drawing Superheroes - Aquaman/AquaLad

 I've gotten Gus into comics lately through Tiny Titans (by Art Baltazar & Franco) and a few others, and he's really taken to drawing his favorite superhero characters. I've started drawing them with him (Aqualad being a member of the Titans, both Teen and Tiny). He's been using some of my drawings for coloring, but here's one I did recently that hasn't been crayoned over yet - I may give a shot of coloring it myself if I can find some time. I'll try to post some of these superhero drawings occasionally if you're interested in seeing them!

Christmas Card - 2011

I always have grand ambitions of getting it together, illustrating and printing up a bunch of holiday cards and sending them out. The problem is that ambition usually strikes around December 15th. I printed about 10 or so of these and then it was just too late. So for everybody I didn't get one to - here you go and I hope you had a great holiday!


PS I was a little worried that Gus was going to be scared that the tree was going to eat all his presents. It only wound up eating a few.

Scarlett Johansson Gets Mad At Me For OxFam PSA

Here's a PSA I worked on for OxFam - I animated Scarlett Johansson (so yes, she's putting me down throughout the whole ad) with a bit of help from Eric Kilkenny (he also animated those great chickens and some other BG characters). She was animated in the new version of ToonBoom Harmony using their cool deforming tools. The spot was directed by Gesine Kratzner and additional animation/compositing was done by Erich Richter. It was all based off ilustrations by Jessica Hische. If you've got a few extra bucks by somebody a goat for Christmas at www.oxfamgifts.com

Green Lantern Animation Test

This is a test I did to learn some aspects of ToonBoom Harmony -  it was hand drawn digitally and all effects were created in Harmony too. Why Green Lantern? My 4 year old digs him and so do I! Did this way before I heard there was going to be an animated series, so I kinda wish that they had gone 2D (though it does look pretty cool)!

PS Blow it up to fullscreen - it's not terribly visible in this small preview window.

After Effects animation for Laura Veirs "July Flame" album cover

This is an After Effects test I did while preparing to work on the Wildwood trailer. It's for one of my favorite records of 2010, July Flame by Laura Veirs and uses artwork by Carson Ellis. She's also the illustrator for Wildwood. I knew next to nothing about After Effects before working on this, so please don't judge too harshly!

Book Trailer Animation I did for Colin Meloy/Carson Ellis book, "Wildwood"

So a few months back at my day job, we were asked to do a book trailer for the upcoming YA novel "Wildwood", written by Colin Meloy (of Portland locals, The Decemberists) and illustrated by Carson Ellis (of amazing illustration). We got a small team together and figured a way to bring Carson's still images to life using Adobe After Effects. I got to do all the character animation (and even things like the cradle rocking and leaves growing), Jenny Kincade was the art director and Photoshop artist, Karl Richter handled compositing, Michael Corrigan was the editor and Aaron Sorenson directed the whole thing. It was a great deal of fun and I took to After Effects pretty well, I was just amazed by the things you could do with it and I only scratched the surface. Since this job, I've done quite a bit more AFX including a freelance job animating an entire e-book (of someone else's illustration) that I hope I can announce here soon. Hope you dig it, there's a lot to look at - I'm particularly proud of the deer!

Chicxulub at the Northwest Animation Festival

I've got the word that Chicxulub will be seen on the big screen! For anybody in Portland, you can see it at 5th Avenue Cinemas on the night of June 3rd (sometime between 7 and 10 PM) as part of the NW Animation Festival. I'm pretty excited to see it on any screen bigger than my monitor, but to see it in a movie theater has me pretty thrilled. I'm looking forward to seeing the other films there too, I've seen a few them online over the last year, and I feel like I'm in amazing company.

Fleet Foxes Illustration Finished

In anticipation of Tuesday's release of the new Fleet Foxes record, "Helplessness Blues", here's my take on the crew. It's all hair and wood up here in the northwest, the true elements of great music! You can check out my rough sketch in a previous post here. Let me know if you like it (or not) and what you think of the album if you hear it (I'm hoping to pick it up at 2nd Ave. Records on the way home tomorrow!)