120 [m ] : South west Animation Conference & Expo

SWACE Banner art
Blue and black pencil on paper
38.1 x 20.32 cm (15.00 inch x 8.00 inch)
2008

Here is a piece of freelance where the assignment was to draw and draw and draw some more for one night. It's also an example of what you can get for $100 and a good story. The catch is this: with the job's initial specifications as the client's only input, I delivered just the drawing with no inking, no coloring and definitely no vector work or fancy Photoshop® layering of elements.

The art was intended for the top banner of the SWACE web site an event celebrating all sorts of animation. The art is intended to reflect that. Most of the characters are intended to represent or be reminiscent some animation character, show, short or style without infringing on those copyrights. In regards to that last part, I may have overstepped that line in a few places.

Without going over the whole piece, of which I haven't even counted the characters, here are some highlights:

- Bunny the Birthday Squirrel in an early WB shorts style (McKimson-ish maybe?).

- Little Tuffy with over-sized mallet in a simple style a la "The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy".

- "Time Flyers", a fourteen year old idea featuring time travel in a cardboard box.

- A baby oyster which I used to hide as a signature in occasional Disneyland work.

- Walt Disney.

- Lots of Shmoo-like characters inspired by Hayao Miyazaki's work.

- Cowgirl with giant revolvers. Not a specific character, but just because I wanted to draw a cowgirl with giant revolvers.

- A sky scraper which was a very obtuse reference to the Tom Hanks movie "Big." I think now I should have at least drawn in "Transformer" like arms. No, it has nothing to do with animation. It spilled out in the whole free-association process.


http://www.swace.net/

120 [m ] : I Think I Shouldn't Like To Be Around Mad People

Early 2009, let's say January, I was asked to lend my artistic talents to design a mascot for a then upcoming event for kids. The character was the Mad Hatter, and the theme, of course, involved Lewis Carroll's "Wonderland" characters. The event was put together by The Young Audiences Arts for Learning group, a part of Atlanta's Woodruff Arts Center which also includes the High Museum of Art.


Mad Hatter concept sketches.
Black ball-point pen on paper.
21.59 x 27.94 cm (8.50 in. x 11.00 in.)
2009

Of course, even with copyright laws preventing me from merely copying either the popular Disney design or the John Tenniel designs from the original books, this was an opportunity to see what I could come up with.

What I came up with was an amalgam of those influences, plus a little bit of caricature of actor Ed Wynn who provided the voice in the 1951 Walt Disney Animated Feature.

Mad Hatter
India Ink on paper
2009

Besides adding color to what you see here, that would have been the end of that bit of weekend pro-bono work.

However, Dennis, who was on the Y.A. Committee Board, asked if I might volunteer to do sketches at the actual event. This request was predicated by the fact that Dennis had worked at Cartoon Network and was familiar and impressed by my ability to draw decent sketches of cartoon characters from memory.

On the Saturday of Mother's Day weekend, there I was drawing Alice, the Hatter, March Hare and other Wonderland characters while Queen Glitter read 10-minute stories of Wonderland. It wasn't a setting where I did request, although I've worked those types of events too which in my Disney days were called "chat and draws". Actually I did draw one request that day, a Princess Jasmine for Dennis' daughter.

This year, I again volunteered, however, the setting was more like a how-to-draw session where participants, both kids and parents, got to follow me and draw and color their own pieces of art. It turned out to be almost two-hours of non-stop drawing and talking about drawing.

More about the High Museum:
http://www.high.org/

More about Young Audiences:
http://www.yawac.org/

120 [m ] : Disneyana Fan Club

Back in December 2009, I submitted some designs for the new logo of the "Disneyana Fan Club", re-named from the "National Fantasy Fan Club" (NFFC).


Here, the first logo features Mickey Mouse's gloved hand which was transferred from a piece of signage c. 1930.

Admittedly be tastes run fairly conservative. Maybe they couldn't trademark and copyright it. I like the combination of character identification (Mickey's hand plus the nod to the "Mickey Mouse Club" logo, 1955) and the the sense of nostalgia with Disneyana collectibles going as far back as 1929 with posters and lobby cards for the early Mickey Mouse short films.

Here's the second which is as basic a distillation as I could make it and convey the essence of the club. Is the "f" to difficult to see?

Maybe these look a bit too much like branding for the next high-end coffee house. Primarily, I was designing something to be identifiable as a 100 x 100 pixel icon.

And here again, my choice of desaturated colors for that nostalgic feel.

And here is the winning design by Mickena Guillaume.

http://www.nffc.org/

120 [m ] : Ben 10 Alien Force posters

"Ben 10" is now into it's third series, "Ben 10 Ultimate Alien," plus "Ben 10" has also spun off two live action movies.

The first, original series was created "Man of Action" whose site describes itself as "a Development/ Production House dedicated to writing, conceptualizing, and developing work of exceptional quality, commercial viability, and explosive creativity." If you're familiar with comics of the 1970's, it's a bit like "Dial 'H' for Hero" - a young boy has a device with which he may turn into any number of heroes with unique powers and abilities. In "Ben 10", 10 year old Ben accidentally gets the Omnitrix of alien origins and can turn into any one of ten aliens - well ten to start with.

The second series, "Ben 10 Alien Force" was turned over to Glen Murakami to helm, and it has a slicker design and slightly darker story line. Oh and Ben is five years older.


Poster concepts for "Ben 10 Alien Force" premiere
Pen and highlighter marker on paper.
2008


Poster concepts for "Ben 10 Alien Force" premiere tease
Digital over scans of pen on paper.
2008

How do you market and advertise what is in essence a sequel series - particularly when the licensed product line doing well (meaning that the importance of continued success is... important to a lot of people) . What do you show to get the audience excited? What do you tease or not show to leave as surprises in the watching? What about this will get the attention of an audience not already watching the original?

When the answer is dependent upon with how much money you have for marketing, you either run simultaneous campaigns of high conceptual teases and exciting reveals or you revise, revise and revise some more one or two key images. With the latter, you often end up with big heads and smiling faces - or in the case of an action adventure for kids, the ever-elusive and subjective "determined and fun-loving."

http://www.manofaction.tv/index.html

120 [m ] : FusionFall Calendar Page

monotonae is not the place for up-to-the-minute information and peeks about what I do at work at Cartoon Network (CN) - what with it not being my stuff ultimately, competition and confidential goopity goop.

That said... About two and a half years ago, I was working on a page (one month) of the Cartoon Network's 2009 calendar. The subject was FusionFall, the CN's Masively Multi-player Online Game (MMOG) mashed up with the network's On-Air mascot, a generic bowling pin headed doll a la Kid Robot. Like the collectible vinyl art figures that inspired it, the mascot is wrapped in any of various skins to take on the colors and details of a character on the CN.


Digital color over scan of color pencil and pen on paper.

In the creation of FusionFall, the game is infused with plenty of boy appealing stuff like fighting, explosions, ooze and monsters. Your avatar's evil opponents are associated with toxic green ooze. This concept plays like a PSA against the dangers of green ooze.


Digital color over scan of color pencil and pen on paper.

The logo image for the game is a massive clumping/fusing of different planets. Keying in on the figures' round heads, they're used in the same manner replacing the planets.


Digital color over scan of color pencil and pen on paper.

This a pop-art idea requiring the replacing of the enlarged dots with tiny silhouettes of the mascot figure.


Digital color over scan of color pencil and pen on paper.

This is yet another PSD idea (I'm gonna continue pitching these "Loose Lips Sink Ships" posters until some one bites). I must have had some bit of dislike for the little mascot figure.


Digital multimedia
2008

This is the final image. The figures were drawn with shading with pencil on paper. The scanned drawing served as the basis for the digital art, and provides a bulk of the shading for the final image although recolored on some parts like the green center mass. The colors including stripes and craters for each figure were drawn digitally flatly. Then for added form, highlights were added.

The logo is pretty much the same as the final official logo for the game.

Clint Carruth came up with the head line.


http://fusionfall.cartoonnetwork.com/splashpage.php

all images Copyright © Cartoon Network.

TAGS January 16, 1994

01/16: New year, new format.

January 16: Monster is already tired of the new year and Checkov (dragon, fifth appearance*) is amused by it, at least for the fifteen minute break.

If you're going to practice making a daily comic strip, then you MUST do an expanded Sunday edition. There was no question about it for me at the time. The unrestricted layouts that I would use for the Sunday editions, were inspired by the work of Bill Watterson on his strip "Calvin and Hobbes" which was inspired by the likes of Hal Foster's "Prince Valiant" and Windsor McKay's "Little Nemo in Slumberland."

These Sunday editions were drawn at actual size on letter typing paper. The comparative larger format meant more drawing and less words. It's funny how that works.

So, what cookies are in this first Sunday edition?

Panel 1: "24601" is the prison number of Jean Valjean from Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables." The trash bin says "High Ho" based on the Dwarfs' song "Heigh-Ho" for Walt Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs."

Panel 4 (in the center): on of the few time a managerial "Suit" is depicted in TAGS. The bucket Monster is holding is/was full of hot gravy.

Panel 6 (to the right): Monster drives the family station wagon. Also note the geographic icon: the Palm tree.

Panel 7: (L-R) Mr. Flops (puppy, not an official TAGS character), Murray (Cheetah, 6), Barron (9, stuffed bear), unnamed platypus, unnamed Muppet (based on a crittature of co-worker Troy), Vern (horse, 2), Matt (originally created as a mascot for an animation club), Monster (monster).

I can't remember what's up with having Monster rubbing his ear.


* Only Checkov's fifth appearance? Really? I'd have thought more.

San Diego in a Flash

"Supergirl vs Kid Flash"
Carmine red Col-Erase pencil on Bristol Board
27.94 cm x 43.18 cm (11.00 in. x 17.00 in.)
2010


"Supergirl vs Kid Flash"
digital art
4636 x 6000 pix.
2010

After month of working on the stories, art and layouts of "Unstoppable Tuff-Girl" No. 01, I discovered that I had one more weekend before the deadline for submissions to contribute to the San Diego Comic Con 2010 souvenir book.

Oh well, I'll sleep when I'm dead.

This year, to celebrate DC Comic's 75th anniversary I chose to update the cover of one of DC's tabloid sized "Limited Edition Collector" magazines, "Superman vs. The Flash". For the most part, I replaced the heroes of the original cover with modern, young counterparts. I do admit that I've fallen behind on current DC Universe continuity, so I wouldn't be surprised if I'm actually depicting out of date costumes, a deceased hero or two or worse yet, some one who has turned to villainy.

Through the online resource The Comic Book Data Base I learned that the original cover art is attributed to the talents of José Luis Garcia-Lopez, Carmine Infantino and Bob Oksner, top talents all. Bob Oksner was a fantastic inker who apparently specialized in drawing cute girls. Infantino was a long time artist on "The Flash," whose work I didn't appreciate when I read them as a youngster (which may or may not have been the fault of the inkers). Garcia-Lopez's trademark solid rendering of the human form is as admirable as Neal Adams', but it is probably his work teamed with inking artist Dick Giordano that nearly makes him arguably the quintessential DC artist of the 70's when he worked on the licensing style guide of the time.

But now back to my take on the composition. The style I chose is similar to some sort of animation styling. It's definitely NOT a style friendly to television animation. It has more volume like Disney feature animation.

If chosen for print, the color image will have a bunch of type across the top and bottom, but you get to see it here clear of that ubiquitous well-wishing.


For more information about teh San Diego Comic Convention International:
http://www.comic-con.org/cci/

The Comic Book Data Base:
http://www.comicbookdb.com/

That About Covers It

Cover, "Unstoppable Tuff-Girl", No. 01
Digital mixed media
3,975 x 6150 pix
March 2010

Matthew Crouch designed this second logo after I decided that the book title needed a modifier and his first "Tuff-GIrl" logo with its stepped outline proved to be too much of a pain to simply stack the long and by nature very horizontal "unstoppable". He kept the typeface of the first and explored different envelope shapes and different treatments for "unstoppable".

Merrill Hagan "captioned" the illustration with dialogue after the art was done.

The illustration was hand-inked and colored digitally. For the most part, the colors are mixes of cyan, magenta and yellow of the standard CMYK printing process with only a gradient of black behind the masthead. Last year I thought that I might use a colored version of the art I made for "Tuff-Girl" sketchbook No. 2 for at least the main image if not the whole thing.

The Wichita logo is a temporary (so I say) design I put together loosely based on the kilted lettering of Mickey Mouse title cards.

The Tuf Gurlz logo is just Cooper typeface mashed together similarly to the "Beach Boys Pet Sounds" album title.

Is it "fantastic", really? Yes. Yes it is.

Gary Albright

In typical fashion, the time I planned to devote towards the completion of my "Unstoppable Tuff-Girl" comic book, got diverted by another project, a going away card for Gary Albright, Sr. V.P. Trade Creative Services, Cartoon Network.


2010
in the style of Al Hirschfeld
* * * * *

More or less I had the idea of a Hirschfeld caricature of Gary for several years, ever before I had done one of my boss, Ed Murrieta, but I needed the right occasion. Two weeks ago, he announced that his position at Cartoon Network was going to be eliminated, and his group, Trade Creative (TCS) of which I'm part, would be merged with the On-Air creative group.


c 2002
in the style of Hanna-Barbera's "The Flintstones"
* * - - -

Part and parcel of the Hirschfeld caricature was for it to be comprised of the names of past and present TCS staffers. If you're familiar with Hirschfeld's work, then you probably know that he would often hide his daughter's name, "Nina", in his work. Infusing the Gary drawing with the names of 92 staffers, temps and interns plus 58 Cartoon Network characters isn't exactly hiding things, but mixing in there 11 "Gary"s is.


c2006
in the style of Jim Davis' "Garfield."
* - - - -

Gary plays the harmonica, whose rows of little square holes are the perfect motif to be replace with the network's logo. It was especially fortunate, because being undecided about what to do with Gary's hands, the design cycled through black berries, whiskey bottles and other property.


2003
* * * - -

On Gary's last day, he received a gift from the company, a memento commemorating his 15th year with the company.

Cover Girl

Cover, Unstoppable Tuff-Girl, No. 01
Carmine Red Col-Erase pencil on Bristol board
25.1206 x 38.862 cm (9.89 in. x 15.30 in.)

Now this is starting to feel like progress.

I'll follow this up later with a montage of the thumbnail drawings done leading up to this composition, and at that point it will make sense of my thought process.

Here you can get a sense of the pleasure I get from the DC Comics covers from the late sixties and early seventies that, unlike the mini movie posters on modern comics, had tantalizing outrageous imagery like more playful pulp novel covers. It may be especially evident that the multiple panels motif is borrowed from their 100 Page Specials which contained multiple stories in a "something for everyone" sort of way.

This first issue promises adventures of this new hero against a bounding man-lizard, a befuddled pup impossibly fitted in a magician's top hat, and a little pig-tailed girl enjoying the California waves.

Sound like fun?

I can hardly wait until I can fill the top with the official logo. Oh, but I must.