Questionable Companion

Another Cruise inspired sketch.

Vacations are for making friends

 

Something about that cruise I was on had me drawing dogs a lot. This one is running along the beach with one of the locals.

Expo Ahoy!

I'm going to the Creative Talent Network Animation Expo this weekend, so I threw together this postcard to promote my blog, and specifically my Pirate Cats.

 

Will you be at the Expo?

Glen Keane

Nowadays, it's cliche for someone to name Glen Keane as their favorite animator, however, that has been the case for me since Beauty and the Beast first came out. That's when I first found out who he was and he became the embodiment, to me, of Disney Animation. I received the signed photo below, along with a letter, in response to a very gushy fan letter I sent to him when I was about 14.

This past weekend Mr. Keane announced his resignation from Disney after 38 years. Rather than feel sad, I'm excited that he's moving on, most likely to continue to animate and do what he loves, instead of floundering in a job that no longer seems to have a use for him anymore. I only met him once, but I wish him well.

I hope he starts a blog...

Deja View

For those who haven't seen it yet, Andreas Deja, 30 year veteran of Disney Animation, has a blog. He's one of the superstar animators of the Renaissance of Disney Animation which occured in the late 80's and ended... well an end date for that renaissance differs depending on who you talk to. Suffice to say, Mr. Deja is wonderfully talented and has no doubt influenced hundreds upon hundreds of artists out there. I've been a bit surprised though, that his blog postings have been mostly, not about his own work, but about the older generation of Disney animators that he met and trained under. Great to see such stuff, and to hear that he was such a fanboy himself. But every time I read his blog, I think, why is he posting this stuff? This hero worship, that's the kind of thing us fans should be posting. So I am.

I first met Mr. Deja sometime in the early to mid 90's. I was a student at Rowland Animation and every year they had a big Open House. Students would show their work and it was well attended by professionals in the industry. The above photo is my friend Brian Kesinger, myself in the middle (and in the shadows), and Mr. Deja. I don't exactly remember the encounter anymore, but I'm sure I was too nervous to say anything very intelligent. But look at how cute we are- our best (and only)suits- we probably felt so important.

I met Andreas again maybe a year or two later. I was at an Animation Expo. I wasn't very good at promoting myself as an artist- the whole portfolio thing was still new to me, and for the most part a portfolio was something that I sent off to a studio so that they could then call me and tell me it was ready for me to come pick up again. I don't think I had ever had anyone of influence actually critique it in front of me before. So I'm at this Expo (probably overdressed in my suit again!), portfolio in hand, and over at the Disney booth I see Mr. Deja standing, watching the crowd mill around. I had been told that Disney would be holding portfolio reviews, in a room upstairs, and in fact I already had an appointment for that, but I thought, what the heck, I'm gonna ask Andreas to look at my stuff. So I did. I walked on over, introduced myself, and asked if he'd look at my portfolio. He was very nice. He went through page by page, offering comments. He couldn't have been nicer. Even when the line started forming. Pretty soon, you could barely hear Tom Sito's shouting about the Union because of all the calls of, "Hey look, Andreas is doing portfolio reviews!". Poor guy, I'm sure that he was not supposed to review portfolios, but he was just too polite to turn us down. I wonder how long it went on before someone from Disney put a stop to it. I heard a few years later that he still remembers and talked about that incident, though I don't know how true that really is.

Years later, my friend Brian (then a Layout Artist at Disney) had the Art of Animation from Mickey Mouse to Hercules book passed around the studio and signed for me as a birthday present. Most of the inscriptions are not fit to print (who knew artists were such a salty bunch? Ok, I know, we all knew that). Included was this signature (the drawing is printed on the page, not drawn):

Have I even talked about his animation? Far more eloquent people than I have praised his characters (King Triton, Gaston, Jafar, Hercules...). My favorite is Jafar from Aladdin, I think the strongest villains that Disney has had in the more recent films ( 1992 is still recent right?) What I always liked about Jafar was how skillfully Andreas played Jafar's flexibly mouth against the rigidity of the rest of the character. In other words, it's very easy in animation to forget that the things you are drawing are supposed to be made of different materials with different properties of their own. Too often, even in so called "realistic" animation, a character moves like rubber, squashing and stretching equally througout his body. Our bodies really do have squash and stretch but, for example, our femur doesn't squash nearly to the extent that our calf does, despite both being involved with the same motion. Jafar is a great example of this contrast being used to it's fullest. His mouth is in constant motion, grimacing, smiling, or weaving a web of lies, though his face as a whole is almost a mask. There are no held cels, where only his mouth moves, but his entire rigid form often drifts and tilts as a whole with his tight cumberbund and stiff shoulder pads, while his mouth runs through the dialogue, and the two never seem at odds.

Anyway I've rambled on again (which is why I usually just post drawings with little or no explanation), but the point of this whole thing is, go check out Andreas' blog. And I'm sure he'll get around to posting his own stuff eventually.

The Pups of Liberty

A few years ago, my friends Bert and Jennifer Klein asked if I'd be interested in working on an independent film that they were producing. I hadn't done much animation since high school, and didn't know what they really needed, but fortunately they were willing to give me whatever I could handle. I didn't have much time to devote to it so I only worked on 3 scenes, 2 short inbetween scenes and one where I actually got to animate, but they were both fun to do.

The film is finally finished and is making the rounds at various film festivals. There's a lot more info at their site pupsofliberty.com . The trailer below actually contains 2 of the 3 scenes I did. I animated the father and daughter dog and the crowd at the meeting, watching the Redcat speaking (didn't animate the cat, I think Bert did), and I inbetweened the shadow shown throwing the crate of teabones to the ground. Great stuff I know ;) Still, like I said, super fun to do. Someday I'll digitize my old VHS tape of stuff from animation class and wow everyone with my mad skills.

Welcome to the ol' sketchbook

Well after having a registered domain and website for about 2 years now, with virtually no content on it, I've decided to create a blog. My main hurdle with the website has been my total lack of know-how, and even less time to figure it out. As I understand it, a blog is much quicker, and while I can't customize it nearly as much as a website, it'll give me a quick professional looking way of putting artwork on display, and that's all I really want. I'll try to update often, so please check back. I suspect most of what I put up will be sketches; not only do I prefer to sketch but that lack of time I mentioned earlier prohibits a lot of color stuff. But we'll see...