new banner

Time for a new banner! No, it's not a Planet of the Apes blog. I just decided to use my ape pics as the theme.

screen shot, long shot, three shot

The top pic was something that I posted before from this project. It shows how rough the storyboard was, and how the board was done before any character designs were made. So instead of two male angels in the board, we now have a male and female. In the new pic on the bottom, the horse has been added to the shot. The animation in this scene is completed, the only thing that I might still do to it is play with background, or not.

Angel/Devil

She has a line of dialog where she talks about 'conflict' so to emphasize the dialog I have her briefly become Devilish before snapping back to her usual angelic self.

Angel heads

This character has really grown on me. Her voice acting is outstanding.

great voice acting

I am animating an 11 minute short film written by Ken Edwards. The script is great, which is why I took on this project. And if a funny script wasn't enough, the voice acting is superb, just listen to the voice acting by Steve Rimpici. He plays multiple parts in this film; in the scene here, he plays St. Peter.

wipe

One of my favorite tricks to use in animation is the wipe. If you need a quick action and don't have many inbetweens to work with, a wipe is always a good way to go. I used to do an exercise where I would watch cartoons frame by frame on the old VCR, just to see how they did the wipes. One of my favorite shows for good wipes was Tiny Toons, they were pretty extreme with some of their wipes. Here's a wipe I used on a project I am working on.

sketchy dudes

This is probably the oldest pic that used to be on website. And now it's here on my blog.

laying down on the job

A couple more old life drawings.

chef

Another old pic that used to be on my website. I got rid of the website, so I'm posting some of my work that used to be on the site here on my blog.  It's all really old work, but some of it is still worth posting, like this friendly guy ready to share his transparent sausage.

Fini

That's the last of my life drawing that used to be on my website.

Oliver Domenchini

My friend Oliver. This is one caricature I had to bring over from my now defunct website, because it captures Oliver so well.

hips

More genuflecting.

stare

I had a difficult time drawing her. Her name is Sarah, she is a beautiful life drawing model, and in this pose she was staring right at me the whole time.

pole 2

This model was drawing with us, just another artist, until one week she decided to cross over from life drawer to life drawing model. Gutsy.

pole

I like the simplicity of the lines in this one.

defunct

More life drawing that used to be on my now defunct website.

back view

Another gesture from life drawing.

life drawing with a bit of color

Just an experiment during life drawing, trying to throw in a bit of color for a change.

kneeling...

...or is it genuflecting?

mail man

I could have finished it, but I like it in this unfinished state.

gesture

An old life drawing gesture.

migrant

Yet another piece from my old website, migrating to the blog.

watercolor Nirvana

Kurt Cobain in watercolor. I did this years ago, this is another piece that used to be on my old website. I was inspired to paint something using 2 colors, blue and orange. I like how blue and orange play against each other. I was also listening to Nirvana when I got this blue/orange inspiration, and this is the result.

old dock worker

I have abandoned my website. I let it expire, it is no more, gone, vanished, KAPUTT. From now on it's just my blogs. I find blogs much easier to update. My website has been static for years, yet my blog is regularly updated.  I am going to post some stuff that used to be on my website to this blog, only the better stuff, as most of it was old and not worth posting here. This is one of my pieces that is worth posting here. It's my favorite portrait ever did.

splash

This is another scene I worked on for Ugly Americans. It was so nice to work on frame by frame, hand drawn, traditional animation (albeit digital), rather than that tweened puppet animation you see a lot of these days. The show turned out fantastic, looks great.

an unfinished scene

< This is one of the scenes I animated on a Comedy Central series called "Ugly Americans", produced by Cuppa Coffee. There were some changes made to this shot, this is one of my earlier versions, not 100 percent completed, as you see by the lack of movement in the body of the demon on the second shot with the tail. There were also some blood splatters in the final version.

Yawn

A little something I did for Sardine Productions early this year. Haven't posted in a while, been crazy busy working on a show called Ugly Americans, the best show I have ever worked on.

bird poop

So excited!!!!!

A few weeks ago I finally bought a Cintiq. I have been wanting one desperately for a long time, and I finally bit the bullet and got one. I had to purchase it for a gig I wanted. I got the Cintiq, I got the gig. I am working on a show called Ugly Americans. The production keeps me very busy so I haven't had much time to fool around with the Cintiq on my own stuff. So I finally got around to doing this sketch tonight with my new piece of equipment. As for Ugly Americans, all I can say is this; Finally, after a long career in animation, I know what it is like to work on a show that I am actually a fan of myself. I have often wondered this; what would it be like to work on Sponge Bob, or Flap Jack, or Fosters, or the Venture Bros, or any other show that I really like. Now I know, it feels every bit as good as I thought. Anyway, check out Ugly Americans on Comedy Central on TV and you can also watch full episodes on Comedy Central's website.

Old Kung Fu Master

My girlfriend and I came up with an idea for a great little animated short, it is a spoof of 'The Five Deadly Venoms." This is the the first rough of the Old Kung Fu Master. This short is going to be an educational piece to teach kids. No, it's not going to teach them how to 'climb walls' like the Lizard, or have 'iron skin' like the Toad. It is going to teach them a grammar lesson.

T-Rex walk

Normally I would bob the head up and down, but because this is part of a pan and the T-Rex will also move his mouth during a lip sync as he walks, I decided to keep his head stationary.

brontosaurus walk cycle

Elephant and giraffe walk cycle

Here's a little walk cycle I did for Sardine Productions. It's part of a short I animated for them. It is based on Mordillo, a comic strip artist and animator that was very popular in the 70's and 80's.

Vader's costume

Here's Vader with his Guyver costume.

VADER TIME!

A couple quick rough drawings. PAPA SHANGO on the left. BIG VAN VADER on the right. VADER was definitely one of my all time favorites. He was scary!

Papa Shango

I felt like drawing a wrestling character that I always liked, PAPA SHANGO. I may keep working at this, refine it, add details, that kinda thing. This rough sketch is just the start.

lightning effect

This is an example of a very easy, yet very effective, lightning effect. Step 1- Take the frame before the lightning is supposed to flash. Make it a png image and bring it into photoshop. Step2- In Photoshop; duplicate the layer. Step3- Use the Image-Adjustments-Threshold, to change the duplicated layer into a black and white image. Step4- You have two options. You can either duplicate the black and white layer and simply do Image-Adjustments-Invert, or you can duplicate the color frame again but adjust the threshold to make it look different than the previous threshold adjusted layer. Step5- Again duplicate the color layer and make a third threshold adjusted layer that is different than the other two. Step6- Export each of the three black and white layers as separate png files, import the png files into whatever program you are using, Flash, ToonBoom, or After Effects, insert the png's into frames, on two's or ones, or a combination, whatever works for the scene.
It ends up looking like THIS EXAMPLE from my earlier post.

T-Rex front view

We see this T-Rex from two angles, a three-quarter front view for most of his scenes, and this front view for only one or two scenes. I added a bit of brush work to the tree in the background.

mirrored shades

I like how I designed this angel character, with the tube-like body and simple lines. Here she is wearing mirrored sunglasses, like a cop. Call me retro, call me nostalgic, but I think mirrored shades are the coolest shades ever.

horse back ape

Everyone remembers the shocking ending of the first Planet of the Apes film, when Taylor sees the Statue of Liberty; but the film had more than one shocking moment, another being the first time the camera pans up to reveal the guy on the horse chasing everyone is an ape!

see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil

In the original 'Planet of the Apes' there's a scene where these three judges strike the classic 'see, hear, and speak-no evil' pose during Taylor's hearing. I like the scene, so I did this.

slave labor

More 'Planet of the Apes' fun, with a recycled old BG I did a couple years ago. I just changed the colors of the BG so that the red jumpsuits 'pop.' One thing I never understood about Planet Of The Apes, as kid, was if they were supposed to look like real apes or a more humanized ape? Were the chimpanzees supposed to be the size of a real chimp? Were the gorillas supposed to be big 300 pound apes? I always figured they were, but special effects at the time were not advanced enough to make that happen. So both chimps and gorillas had the same body size as the humans.

DO

I just watched all 5 of the original planet of the apes movies. In order, it goes; Planet of the Apes, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, Battle for the Planet of the Apes. The first movie was simply brilliant, written by Twilight Zone creator, Rod Serling. Of the 4 sequels, 'Escape' was the best one. The others, honestly, are not so good. And the last movie, 'Battle', is pretty awful. The cinematography is not big screen quality, the set designs are bad, it just feels really cheap, like a poorly produced 'made for TV' movie, even by the standards in the 1970's. Even so, there are some great ideas in all of the films, like apes wearing jumpsuits!

planet of the humans

A classic scene from one of the Planet Of The Apes sequels; who can ever forget the image of the astronauts coming back to Earth, only to reveal that it's the apes!

covered in snot

I could have drawn the snot covering the angel many ways, but I went with the straight palette knife look. One of my favorite shows, 'The Venture Bros." uses this look when they do blood splatter effects. When I first saw Brock Sampson covered in blood that looked like it was painted on with a palette knife with straight edges, I took notice and wanted to use the same effect. So here's my chance...except it's mucus not blood. But what the heck, it's still body fluid.

saber tooth tiger

simple goats

These characters are small background characters in a long line of animals, so I kept them simple.

brontosaurus close up

I really like the shadowy effect on her, just in her close ups.

Planet Of The Apes!

I think that's enough apes for now. This was just for fun anyway.

Chimps Ahoy!

filling the scene

Humans, Gorillas, Orangutans... it's just missing the Chimpanzees.