Eze

The next official SketchCrawl is next month but we couldn't wait that long! Carlos, Seb, Melanie & I headed up to Eze-a medieval village perched on the cliffs high above Monaco. It's a stunning location & we had perfect weather conditions for sketching.



Similarly to St.Paul de Vence, Eze has labyrinthine narrow streets with lots of grotto-like shops to discover. I love to draw the ancient architecture which seems organically fused with the rock foundations.






Planes fly in low over Cap Ferrat in their approach to Nice Cote d'Azur airport.



This ancient, gnarled tree makes a perfect natural canopy when the sun gets too hot. It dominates the terrace of my favourite café in Eze- 'Le Nid d'Aigle' the Eagle's Nest.




We finished the day sketching amongst the cacti in the jardin exotique that crowns the summit of the town. There are great views of Cap ferrat to the West & the Italian Riviera to the East.


The others should be posting their sketches on their respective websites soon. Our next trip is to the zoo!

Imagina 2008

Last week I went along to the Imagina Computer Graphics Awards in Monte Carlo. Prince Albert kicked off the proceedings wisely escaping soon after to the bar before he had to endure sitting through the industry & architecture nominee films. A man dressed as a tea-pot compered the evening with a barrage of flat gags, unfunny in French or English.




The art department on 'A Monster In Paris' is crewed by graduates of Les Gobelins & Supinfocom schools. Their impressive short films not only secured them professional work but also win prizes at major animation/CG festivals. The guys were nominated not in the student category but in Best Animation. Carlos was part of the team that made 'Al Dente', competing against Olivier & François-Xavier with their film 'Oktapodi' which won!
The films are stunning but unfortunately aren't available online yet.


Framestore won Best Music Video for this fun spot:

My favourite nominee in that category however was this:

Stunning short 'Bolides' won Supinfocom, Arles the Best School prize.

It builds to a frenetic climax which seems almost like a parody of the trend for rapid chase sequences in French student films.

'Dji vou veu volti' from Belgium won Best Short. Extract here.


However, I was hoping to see a win for 'Dog Days', French animation genius Geoffroy De Crecy's latest freaky extravaganza:




Unsurprisingly 'Ratatouille' won Best Film & 'Pirates 3' Best Special FX.

Paris trip

Caught 'Sweeney Todd, le diabolique barbier de Fleet Street' while in Paris last weekend. It was a first weekend screening playing to a full-house on the Champs Elysées & it was a blast. The audience seemed to accept the 'non-professional' singing & were delighted & appalled by the buckets of blood thrown at the camera. It's an indulgent homage from Burton to the films of Mario Bava & Dario Argento & the audience lapped it up like a modern grand-guignol spectacle. The film seemlessly fuses all of Burton's influences & psychological pre-occupations into a very satisfying whole.
Special mention to Danté Ferreti's incredible producton design. He's been deservedly nominated for the Art Direction Oscar & his evocative, gothic sets are unquestionably the years best.




Next day Raja & I took a trip to Disneyland. We had our brains scrambled on the roller-coaster rides or 'russian mountains' as the French translates. Taking a breather we checked out the 'Art of Animation' section which has a great display of production art, notably development drawings & sculptures from The Little Mermaid and Beauty & the Beast.




Allemagne; Les années noires

To temper the jolliness of Disneyland next day I headed over to Musée Maillol to check out the exhibition of artwork made during & after the First World War from the perspective of German artists. Often I'm seduced into seeing exhibitions by eye-catching posters only to be let down by the rest of the collection. I was intrigued by the Otto Dix artwork used as the poster (above) & the exhibition did not disappoint. It's an extensive gathering of expressionist & Dadaist artists like Dix, George Grosz & Max Beckmann.


The line drawings of George Grosz were the stand-outs for me. Ronald Searle has cited Grosz as a major influence & the young Searle must have been inspired by Grosz's war drawings when he decided to make his visual record documenting the atrocities he witnessed as a POW in World War 2. The influence is particularly evident in Grosz caricatures & even the stitched linework carries into Searle's approach.


Many of the pictures were hard to stomach with images of rape, brutality, horrifically injured soldiers & crippled war veterans. But the exhibition made me realise the power of art to depict the human cost & utter futility of war.



















Raja had discovered the best expo in town & took me along to the Hotel de Ville to see 'Paris en couleurs'. It's a collection of photos of Paris from 1907 to the present, all in colour! It was literally illuminating to see the era that 'A Monster in Paris' is set in bright colour when we've been looking at monochrome images for over a year!

The shots from the 50s -60s show how vivid the street signs & advertising hoardings of the time were. Look how many great graphic cartoon figures cover the walls.

Coincedentally, next day at the BNF, I discovered an old exhibition catalogue of an artist who was responsible for some of those stylish 60s posters. His name was Pierre Fix-Masseau.


I rounded off the trip with my habitual visit to the Musée Picasso in the Marais district. I always like to kill an hour or two in this splendid building studying the works.

January 2008 SketchCrawl!

Last weekend was the 17th WorldWide SketchCrawl. The Nice chapter was formed by myself, Carlos & Sebastian from the art dept. on 'A Monster In Paris'. Carlos & I spent the day in picturesque village perché St.Paul de Vence while Seb headed out to medieval fortress town Entrevaux.


I kicked off with a study of the narrow streets that give St Paul such character.

The guitarist in the photo above showed up as I was drawing & I couldn't resist switching to another page to quickly capture him. Whenever kids came by with their parents he would put on a red clown nose & dazzle them with his kazoo skills!

Rodin's 'Thinker' contemplates the great view from the town walls, while Carlos draws on.

Here is Carlos sitting dangerously close to a fast game of pétanques.

Some gestures & poses of the old boys playing pétanques.


A local lady stopped as she saw me painting the water-colour above & asked me if I'd make one of the facade of her shop. She led me by the arm around the corner to show me her antiques shop & I was happy to accept the commission. I made a quick pencil rough for her approval then over the next couple nights worked up the painting below from photographs.

Our first SketchCrawl was a great day out in surroundings that beg to be drawn. All the drawings from the group can be viewed on the SketchCrawl forum.

Alfred Janniot

Not long after moving to Nice I discovered the huge war memorial over-looking the port, a mighty impressive edifice indeed.
A section of it has some really dynamic art-deco relief sculpture & I made this drawing above from it.



Then in October the Musée des Beaux Arts staged a tribute exhibition to sculptor Alfred Janniot. I learnt that he was responsible for the war memorial & another of Nice's prominent public sculptures the 'Fontain du Soleil'. In fact he was France's preminent sculptor during the 1930s.



There were dozens of examples of his work on show; sculptures, maquettes, preparatory sketches, an enormous carpet with art-deco style weavings. He did the facade for the Rockefeller centre, NYC & even designed decor for sea-liners.










It also dawned on me that I had encountered his work previously in Paris without realising. The frieze sculptures adorning the Palais de Tokyo were his.

These days they're encroached upon by graffiti art displays but it makes for an interesting juxtaposition n'est ce pas?

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Storyboarding full time means I don't get the chance to design characters so often but challenges like the 'Gum Or Mints' blog kept me doodling in my spare time. Above is a montage of characters I created over the past year, some professional most just for fun. My resolution for 2008 is to do more-

Joyeux Noel!

Happy holidays everyone, see you in 2008.

Hairy Norse Noses

While in Paris last wekend I saw 'BEOWULF' projected in 3-D IMAX. The film left me pondering many questions, the most profound of which was- what is with those hairy noses! The 3-D effect is dazzling & had us seduced by a golden she-demon & attacked by a golden dragon but I was distracted by the beautifully back-lit golden nasal fuzz that Beowulf & his cohorts sport (the Queen character has it too!)
Maybe it was the large screen format that emphasised these details & not so noticeable on regular cinema screens?

What's worse than the nose hair are the EYES. Most of the time the characters look drunk, blind or boss-eyed. They seem to have no focus, like they're always looking in the wrong direction or staring blankly into space. The expressionless faces don't help either. There are strong vocal performances that just aren't reflected in the faces of the characters. This is the root of the much derided 'zombie' look of these mo-cap films. There are occasions where the expressions are pushed & the eyes are focused & it works much better. Perhaps Zemeckis & his 'ImageMovers' have realised this at last, employing Jim Carrey on his next mo-cap picture 'A Christmas Carol'.

Hopefully they'll get some Dickensian caricature into the design & go broader with the acting & expressions? The most convincing character for me was Grendel's mother, but perhaps that was because I wasn't looking at the eyes?


The design of Beowulf could have been more stylish-maybe more like Frank Frazetta than Boris Vallejo. The design of Grendel is just plain ugly-but I suppose that's the point! The detailing on his skin is technically impressive but when it's right in your face in 3-D is just repellant. Crispin Glover's tortured performance makes this character.

The 3-D effect is compelling but still used as a gimmick-lots of spear pointing & things falling towards camera. I've seen the film criticized for its hugely unrealistic camera moves-mile long pull-backs, vertiginous dives & swoops aping Peter Jackson's style somewhat. But why not? Why be restricted to the limits of a physical camera? This technology seems to have allowed Zemeckis to be free & really have fun. Maybe it's a new cinematic language that we must get used to?


It got me thinking how great other films would look in this format-George Lucas is already working on a new 3-D incarnation of the Star Wars movies-the Lord of the Rings trilogy would benefit too. In the future it will be interesting to see how other film-makers deal with it-Tim Burton's 'Alice In Wonderland', James Cameron's 'Avatar' & Spielberg & Jackson's 'Tintin'.
Also, CG films with classic character animation will look terrific-Dreamworks have a 3-D 'Monsters vs. Aliens' lined up & I hope Pixar follow suit.

From Superman to Chat du Rabbin

Earlier in the week I saw this exhibition at the Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme in Paris. It traces the history of the comic book medium through the influence & experience of Jewish culture during the last century. From Milt Gross & Al Capp to Joann Sfarr via Kirby, Eisner, Kurtzman & of course Art Speigelman's 'MAUS'.






The exhibition is thoughtfully laid out with countless fascinating examples on show; vintage Kirby Fantastic 4 comics, original Eisner pencil roughs, early Milt Gross funnies, Joe Kubert rough sketches, Kurtzman's MAD covers, Pratt colour sketches of Corto Maltese. Of particular interest was a series of roughs by Joann Sfarr demonstrating how he lays out a page.





I had no idea of the extent of the influence of Jewish experience on the comic book medium. In the early 20th century the cartoon 'funny pages' reflected the day to day struggle of Jewish immigrants adapting to life in America. Then came WW11 and the second half of the century gave rise to much more serious comic books tackling the holocaust & anti-semitism.


I learnt a lot from this show; it portrays the comic medium as a profound means of expression where Jewish comic creators such as Will Eisner could not only flourish professionally but also find an outlet to create a new identity for their uprooted & abused culture.

The exhibition runs through the end of January.