Summer '16

It was a long, hot summer in Los Angeles and a creative one for me. I got out and about and kept up the plein air painting. See dozens more videos of me painting and drawing on my You Tube channel.

At Home With Monsters

There's an incredible exhibition on at the moment at LACMA. 'At Home With Monsters' is Guillermo Del Toro's collection of macabre and ghoulish paraphernalia and artifacts from his movies and those he loves. Animation fans will find some treasures too including visual development work for Disney's 'Sleeping Beauty' by Eyvind Earle and Paul Julian designs for UPA's 'Tell tale Heart' an adaptation of the Edgar Allen Poe tale, a favourite author of Del Toro's.

Here's a quick cut of the artifacts OI found most interesting (among hundreds!)

405

Memory piece from a sighting on the LA highway.

Finding Story

The sequel to 'Finding Nemo' is released this week! I part of the early story crew for a year between October 2012-2013 so it's interesting to see how the film evolved since then. The overall shape of the film remains and the themes of Dory 'finding herself' and learning to live with her disability and accept it have been refined. 'Destiny' the whale shark replaces the orca that was reconceived after we viewed the SeaWorld documentary 'Blackfish'. Hank the 'septapus' was always there from day one although his 'hot sauce' addiction has gone.
The marine park and especially 'quarantine' always had great potential for humour with traumatised and sick sea-life. I was pleased to see in the trailers that the 'touching pool' sequence was still in the film. I suggested this environment in the first weeks of story work as a 'gauntlet' that Dory and Hank could face. From the fish POV with all those kiddie fingers poking through the surface I thought it ripe for a Pixar set piece akin to the Day Center toddlers in TS3. These are the beat board sketches I made back then as suggestions.

A few of my boards from early pre-production are featured in the art book.

Melbourne

A wonderful town, I saw a lot of it but would love to return to draw more . . .

Teaching Down Under!

I've just returned from a 2 week trip to Melbourne, Australia to teach story-boarding to a select group of industry locals. They were a dedicated, hard working bunch eager to learn and absorbed my lessons and assignments with aplomb.The enterprise was arranged by veteran animation director and producers Peter Viska and Colin South with support from Film Victoria.

We had a whole day of gesture drawing exercises which was exhausting for all!

(Photos from Jacquie Nguyen's Instagram)

One evening I did a 'live story-boarding' demo for an invited group of Melbourne animation pros. I was given a page of script fro ma 'Fatal Attraction' type scenario and talked through my process as I drew.

. . . and, of course, mean caricatures ended the affair!

The team made this terrific thank you card for me

Legend

'Living Legend' - caricature for an old friend who left Pixar #meancaricature #caricature #likeness #cartoon #living legend @yetterama #Sokolgirls

A video posted by Matt Jones (@matt_jonesart) on Apr 12, 2016 at 8:59pm PDT

A Monster In Paris animatics

I found some old animatics of my boards from 'A Monster In Paris' (2011). There are enough clips online to compare them to the final film. It's pretty lose to what I conceived but it's interesting to see where the film departs. Back when I did these I was working on paper with pencil and ink, scanning elements to composite them and heightening tone in Photoshop.

Here is sequence 3350 - the big musical number with Vanessa Paradis and Matthieu Chedid's song 'La Seine'.





I remeber Bibo had staged a workshop with dancers who worked out a routine for the animators to reference. Rightly the film focuses on the characters' motions and dropped the stage elements with cut-out 'flats' I proposed (background elements by Sasek!). Once they step off the stage and enter the fantasy realm then the decor becomes flat- smart decision.

The Big Island

Painting trip to Hawaii's Big Island. . .

End of another year

This is the end of another year- here are the highlights of 2015 from my Instagram feed . . .

SantaCon is on!

It's that merry time of year where young Americans dress up and fill the streets with drunken Santas from morn 'till night. Here are some of the revelers I observed in San Francisco a couple years back. Happy Holidays everyone!

Joshua Tree

1. 'Hall of Horrors' 9"x5" gouache on water colour paper

2. 'Dawn at Twenty Nine Palms' 9"x5" gouache on water colour paper

3. 'Desert Moon' 9"x5" gouache on water colour paper

4.   'Simian Rock' 9"x5" gouache on water colour paper

5. 'Hidden Valley' 8"x8" gouache on water colour paper

6.  'Sentinel' 9"x5" gouache on water colour paper

7. 'Intersection Climbers' 9"x5" gouache on water colour paper

. . . and here's a short film I cut of our trip

'A Monster In Paris' deleted scenes

'A Monster In Paris' long panning storyboard cut from the film. Fun market characters. #storyboard #amonsterinparis #animation #drawing #character #pencildrawing

A video posted by Matt Jones (@mrlemonhart) on Nov 6, 2015 at 8:19pm PST

'Paris 1910' another panning storyboard dropped from 'A Monster in Paris'. I did this as a proposed opening shot to set the scene and pick up on Maude & Emile's picnic in the park. As soon as I'd finished drawing it we came up with something better! @bibo_bu #amonsterinparis #unmonstreàparis #umap #animation #storyboard #camerapan #layout #drawing #Paris #1910 #inondèe #CGI #europeananimation #VanessaParadis #leoiseaurare #parcdesbutteschaumont #butteschaumont #vintage #oldparis #colonnemorris

A video posted by Matt Jones (@mrlemonhart) on Dec 1, 2015 at 11:26pm PST

Inktober 2015

That's it! 31 days of 'Inktober 2015'. Until next year . . .

Sweet Emotion

This is a very early rough pitch I did late 2010 trying to figure out the 'interface' between the Emotions and Riley. I placed the E's stationed at a central console, an emotional 'well' where they could control physiological responses and view memory balls. Even at this early point Joy, Anger (Ira) and Fear (Freddie) were pretty well defined as a yellow wisp, a red block and a skinny nerve. The green character was Hope and the purple one Pride (Preston). Sadness (Hap) was like a big, blue mattress and was still male at this point.

I cued off a scenario where Riley has been sent to her room after sulking at the dinner table. (I think maybe Ronnie had even done a pass on the 'dinner table' sequence by that point.) The E's are all doing their job making Joy feel left out.

This view was tricky: I figured Riley is looking in a mirror hence the E's can see her through her POV.