How to Train Your Dragon

Image from the How to Train Your Dragon website gallery section.

I've been pretty busy at work lately, so I've missed my monthly post. I hope to get back to doing it soon.

It was about a year ago this month that I was in the thick of it, working with Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois on their early version of "How to Train Your Dragon".

It was a fun, challenging, and exciting project to be on.

The film has changed and grown a lot since then, and I'm really excited with how well the film has shaped up since I wrapped from the project. I've been pretty fortunate to have worked with some great Writer/Directors, Heads of Story, Story Crews, and Production Teams so far during my time in the feature animation world, and working on this project was no exception.

The film doesn't come out until March 26th 2010, so I'll post more about it in the spring of next year.

Here's a link to a page on the Trailer Addict website which has the latest preview trailer for the film:

http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/how-to-train-your-dragon/feature-trailer


There's also an interesting discussion thread about the film at one of my old internet haunting grounds here:

http://www.drawingboard.org/viewtopic.php?t=71283

Check out what fellow DreamWorks Story Artist and Animator extraordinaire Rodolphe Guenoden AKA RodGuen has to say about the film there.

Monthly Posting

I'm trying to keep the tradition of updating once a month here with a new post. Nothing too exciting, just some sketches I did of people in front of the movie theater or in various coffee shops around town.



Obviously I'm no Christophe Blain, but these are some of the best drawings I've done lately. I drew them on paper with a ball point pen. No Cinitiq or Photoshop. It's a refreshing change to use somewhat traditional media.

People sit and stand in a lot of different ways. It's been kind of fun to try and capture their poses. I've been finding that I can't help but draw this stuff more on the realistic side for some reason. When my brain goes into "observation" mode, cartooning tends to get diminished in the process. That's something I'd like to work on changing.

I've been feeling kind of down about my artwork lately, hopefully I'll be feeling better about things by next month's post.

Messing Around

After drawing story boards all day, it's nice to relax and just doodle some girls. Try to play around with some shapes

I live by a jogging trail, and I often see this lady who's really into her exercise routine running by in the mornings. This sketch below is loosely based on her.

I've also been updating my other blog Buttermilk Skies quite a bit over the past month. Please check it out if you're interested.

Koreatown Sketch

I went sketching with Shiyoon last Saturday. We went to Hollywood and Koreatown. This sketch is probably the best one I did that evening. It was really fun.

I've recently been reading Egon Schiele: Poems and Letters by Elisabeth Leopold, as well as Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes, Volume 1: The Walt Stanchfield Lectures by Walt Stanchfield and Don Hahn. Both books are great and inspired me to get out there and do some real observation and sketching again.

I'm actually thinking of starting another blog where I'd like to talk about some of the books I like as well as share my thoughts on certain things. I know most people who have tried it have tended to abandon the double blog thing after a while, but I'd like to try it out and see how it goes. Mostly because I'd like to keep this blog focused as a place to share my personal artwork, while the other one would be more about things I'm interested in or that inspire me, and maybe even my opinions on certain things too. Even if no one reads it, I think it would be fun to do.

( Update: I actually just started my new blog Buttermilk Skies, if anyone is interested.)

Hopefully you may have noticed some of my new links here to other artists as well. I've met a lot of great people since I moved back to L.A., so check out their work if you get the chance.

Thanks to everyone as well for the new comments on my older posts. I just discovered them recently and I appreciate it.

Up continued...

I found out that Disney Hollywood Studios theme park in Walt Disney World has a display on "Up" a little while ago from this website.

http://pixarplanet.com/blog/disneys-hollywood-studios-up-display

They have some pictures of some of the storyboards I got to do on the movie. The sequence was mostly done by Tony Rosenast and was written by Bob Peterson and Pete Docter, but I got to help out in a few spots. I did the part shown where Ellie pins the bottle cap on to Carl, as well as a couple other things in the sequence that aren't shown in the photo, and I don't want to give anything away.

My boards start with the shot of Ellie looking down in the second row from the top, and continue all the way into the fourth row, where Tony takes over again at the final board in the row with the funny drawing of Ellie leaning in and smiling with her crazy hair.


Seeing the final film at the wrap party a few weeks ago was great. I think this sequence turned out well and is especially charming. The animators did a beautiful job bringing the kids to life.

Special thanks to Mr. Ronnie Del Carmen for his leadership and guidance of the story crew through making the film.

Up

Coming May 29, 2009.

I was very fortunate to have had the opportunity to work on this unique, and very special film while I worked at Pixar in the Story Department. During some late nights working on story boards for "Ratatouille" I would ocassionally wander into the small "Up" story/art area, they had at the time, and stare at all the wonderful concept art for the film, thinking,"Wow, I'd love to work on this movie."

Well, luckily I actually got to.

Working with directors Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, and Story Supervisor Ronnie Del Carmen is the kind of thing I had always wanted to do, and it was a great experience to be able to actually do it. Especially on such a wonderful and unique project as this.

Congratulations to all the people who worked so hard in the story department on the film, from early development all the way to the finished movie!

To the writers/directors Pete Docter and Bob Peterson.

To the story crew and all those who jumped in to help out story:

Ronnie Del Carmen, Enrico Casarosa, Peter Sohn, Bill Presing, Josh Cooley, Tony Rosenast, Nick Sung, Rob Gibbs, Bobby Rubio, Dan Scanlon, Garett Sheldrew, Jamie Baker, Bosco Ng, Jeff Pidgeon, Nate Stanton, Jason Katz, Jim Capobianco, Ken Bruce, Erik Benson, Bob Scott, Don Shank, Nathaniel McLaughlin, Ricky Nierva, Matt Luhn, and Teddy Newton.

I hope that I am not forgetting anyone, I will edit and add to this as names come to me. I think all of these guys had drawings in the reels at one point or another, or at least helped develop the project with early gag drawings, beat boards, ideas...ect, even though some were officially in the art department. There was a great collaboration between Art and Story, long before I got on to the film.

Congratulations also to the great production team in the story department: Shannon Ryan, Brian Wright, and Veronica Watson.

And finally, congratulations and a huge thank you to the producer, Jonas Rivera. One of the most down to earth, and down right fun producers I've worked for.

There are a bunch of other people to thank and congratulate like Kevin Nolting and the other great editors along with their team, the amazing art team with people like Ricky Nierva, Bryn Imagire, Lou Romano, Don Shank, and Daniel Lopez Munoz , as well as some of my animator friends who got to work on the movie like Austin Madison and Rob Thompson, and then there's Layout, Lighting, and all the other technical departments, but this post could go on forever. Needless to say that the crew on this movie were some of the coolest, and nicest people I've had the chance to work with. Please stay for the credits and you can see all of their names.

I hope everyone enjoys the film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USpI6Jzl3No

Another Girl Sketch

How quickly time flies. March is almost over.
So much for New Year's resolutions eh?
I'm working on another digital painting, but it's taking forever.
Work has been keeping me pretty busy too.

So here's the obligatory, generic girl sketch.

Mr. Friendly

Another one of my New Year's resolutions was to post more artwork here. This a painting I did in photoshop of Mr. Friendly the cat, who's getting ready for work.

Sansho the Bailiff

One of my New Year's resolutions this year is to watch a lot more movies. Out of the twelve films I've watched since the holiday break, one of them just really blew me away.

"Sansho the Bailiff " directed by Kenji Mizoguchi.

What an amazing film.

I never really intended on making a lot of posts about movies on my blog , but this film was just too good not to mention.
I hope everyone gets a chance to see it.

Here's a great quote about the film from Wikipedia:

"The New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane wrote in his September, 2006 profile on Mizoguchi, "I have seen Sansho only once, a decade ago, emerging from the cinema a broken man but calm in my conviction that I had never seen anything better; I have not dared watch it again, reluctant to ruin the spell, but also because the human heart was not designed to weather such an ordeal.""