Monday, June 30, 2008

Last fox for foxy monday!

This fox is easily startled. It's not his fault, though. He didn't see it coming.


This is also kind of an experiment to figure out how to get good color settings on my scanner. It's somthing that's been frustrating me. To be fair, i haven't really tried much with it, but i chalk that up to my poor computer, which over heats a lot :(
My poor computer is gettin' old. She's cute and little, though. 12" powerbook G4. 12 inches has been pretty good to me.

Figured i'd fox it up in a seperate post.

And here's some art! I was bored the other day and did some foxy fox studies (+1 bunny).


These foxes are just a little confused about things.

MOOVIES!


So, who's seen Wall-e yet? Anyone?
(looks for raised hands)
It's a pretty good time. I interned on Wall-e my first summer at Pixar. Don't let that fool you, i wasn't allowed to do any real work. I did get to participate in story meetings though, which was a truly great experience. They had a cracker-jack team of people working on that one, i tell you what.
The finished product was really impressive. A simple love story at the heart of a message film about getting your head out of your regularly scheduled programming. Definitely on the artsier side; main characters that don't really speak english, the strongest scenes in the film conducted without dialogue, a modicum of mixed media and a spoonful of social commentary. Especially in mainstream feature animation, where there is an ever-present nudge to be as accessible as possible to the entire family, i personally applaud the efforts of any film that can take it just one step to either side of that line and still come out quality.



So big ups for Wall-e! Kung Fu Panda turned out pretty excellent too. (this was originally going to be a quick post about wall-e, then some art, but i said so much about it, i thought it fair to mention the 'competition', as it were) A simple, honest story supplemented with totally bad-ass visuals! Congrats to all the dreamworks crew. You guys did a great job.

Seems like it'd also do to make mention of the work that i'm doing at Disney! I'm working on Rapunzel now, which has been fantastic. The image at the left was released at our last press conference. This thing is going to look fantastic, and we've got a really solid story to back it up. I'm sure i can't say too much more about it, so i'll leave it at that.
:)

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Updating twice in once day! Slow work days = productive art nights!

Rain-baroo?

Rainbowraffe likes what Rainbowraffe sees!

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Lissa: Journey to the Southeast

So as i mentioned a couple posts back, in May i took myself on a trip to Charleston SC to see "Monkey: Journey to the West". As described by ,Wikipedia (the sad source of most of my worldly information):

"Monkey: Journey to the West is a stage adaptation of the 16th Century Chinese novel Journey to the West, by Wu Cheng'en. It was conceived and created by the Chinese actor and director Chen Shi-zheng, together with the British musician Damon Albarn and British artist Jamie Hewlett (the co-creators of the virtual band Gorillaz). However, the original idea came from Jean-Luc Choplin, head of the Chatelet Theatre in Paris."

I'm a big Jamie Hewlett fan. When i first heard of the production last summer it was premiering in Manchester, England as a part of the Manchester International Festival. I was so bored that summer that i actually made a desperate attempt via travelocity and a variety of other websites to figure out just what it would take to get me from Los Angeles to Manchester. Needless to say i never made it out my front door that summer. So when i heard it was coming to the states (and found myself with a steady income) i had to go.


In any case, i made it and it was pretty rad. It's a chinese opera, which has a very, very different sound from a standard western musical. It was more stage kung-fu and Cirque du Soleil type acrobatics than plot line, which is perfectly cool with me. They used bits of limited animation by Hewlett as scene transitions and traveling montages which were cool to see.
All in all a good time, and Charleston is a beautiful city. I've got some pictures on my Flickr if you wanna take a peak.
The show seems to only be playing one city per country at a time. It premiered in Manchester, then went to Charleston (the only US city to have hosted it so far), and it seems to be back in England now. I'm waiting for it to come to Los Angeles, which i'm convinved it must do at some point.

And that is the synopsis of the trip i took... almost a month ago! I thought laziness would get the better of me and i'd never actually post it. Much thanks to Jenny for a little prodding :)

SNEAK.

(insert joke here about how i haven't posted in a while)
The following is a true story. It might not be interesting, and it's probably not as funny to you as it is to me (for whatever reason i found it HILARIOUS when i did it), but i can assure you that it is 100% true.
And i made a comic about it.
Enjoy.


Oreo-delivery-bunny is courtesy of cuteoverload.com. For related hilarity, see also cookie bunny.