Merry Christmas

'Arthur Christmas' was a difficult show to work on but the movie turned out great!  It looks quite different to other cg movies released this year and its British humour gives it a unique charm.

Back in 2009 I was at Aardman in Bristol storyboarding the opening elf 'invasion' and several other sections throughout the picture.  I'll post some more in the New Year.  Happy Holidays!

(All material copyright Aardman/Sony Pictures Animation)

Occupy San Francisco!

Despite intense work deadlines lately I've managed to do the odd bit of sketching in this fair city. . .

Out drawing with Mark Stanleigh on Nob Hill. See Mark's sketches here 

The Mark Hopkins Hotel on California
(Here I tried out a nifty Pilot 'Parallel' pen-it's like drawing with a chisel!)

Huntington Park

The Hyde Out bar on Hyde & California

In the Mission for Day Of The Dead 2011

Some of San francisco's unique residents

 Of all of  the city's colourful neighbourhoods the Castro District must be the wackiest-drawing the famous theatre we got caught up in an 'Occupy' demonstration! A 'pop-up' free life drawing session occured in the street! Naked ramblers, trannies & dogs of all sizes make it a fun place to draw.

Over Thanksgiving I drew the enormous Grant Tree

The soul of drawing

Photos by Heather Dresbach

Back from another great CTN animation expo.  The presentation Alex Woo and I gave seemed to go over very well- we had an enthusiastic reception and I was pleased that several folk approached us afterwards to tell us it had inspired them.  Apologies to our marvellous model Daniella who I turned into a hippo!

Crookie, Mo-ris, the Grillos and Jonez by Jamie Bolio

I caught a couple of great seminars- Andreas Deja did a live version of his Deja View blog with musical accompaniment by Richard Sherman! The mighty Oscar Grillo made an impressive presentation of his animation career and an inspirational slideshow of his personal work and artistic influences.

I promised to post some photos from Alex's Gesture class at Pixar so here they are.

Terry Song, Manny Hernandez and John Nevarez pitch their gesture story sequences

Diagrams by Alex Woo

 Holger Liehe

 Matt Jones

 Terry Song

 Terry Song

 Terry Song

Terry Song

Domee Shi

CTN-X 2011

This weekend I'll be heading down to L.A. to attend the CTN-X animation conference, now in its 3rd year!  Sunday morning at 10 am Alex Woo and I will be talking about our approach to Gesture Drawing.  See you there!

30 sec warm ups

1 minute

1 minute

Back to the UK!

I went home to the UK recently for the first time in a year since moving to California. That time flew by! I had the pleasure of catching up with old friends, meeting new family members and re-acquainting myself with England and Wales . . .

I met up with my three favourite draughtsmen Matt Cruickshank, Phil Warner and Oscar Grillo down on the River Thames at Hammersmith.

We swapped stories over glasses of stout at riverside pub The Dove.  Dating from the 17th Century the Dove has the smallest bar in Britain (4 ft. 2ins by 7ft. 10ins) and is said to be the site of secret rendezvous between Charles 11 and Nell Gwynne.

In all the time I worked for Uli in Camden I never drew the Lock

Waiting on The Strand for Aardman chum Ash Boddy to go see the Spanish Drawing exhibition at the Courtauld.

I went to the christening of my brother's gorgeous baby daughter in Derbyshire. The ceremony was at this ancient 13th century church in Weston-on-Trent.

Enfin!

The Galerie Arludik in Paris has a special UN MONSTRE A PARIS exhibition running. For a taste of the incredible artwork created for the film check out the online gallery


I'm so excited that the release of A MONSTER IN PARIS is imminent! It hits cinemas in France on October 12th. I'll miss the crew screening although I hope to see it soon after.

Here's the first interview with Bibo (en francais) with some new footage, behind-the-scenes work and some of my storyboards. I hope to post more boards once the film is releasd on dvd, until then I'll post officially released artwork on English and French blogs dedicated to the project.

Un monstre à Paris - Interview de Bibo Bergeron Vidéo Excessif sélectionnée dans Animation

A new clip has surfaced online too . . .

One of my old favourite Parisian haunts, Galerie Arludik, will soon be hosting an exhibition of some of the amazing artwork that went into the making of the film. The poster features one of Aurelian Predal's superb colour keys painted over a Story sketch by moi!

Bad Habit

Arch Story Man Bishop John Hoffman commissioned me to make a pin up for his 'Nun With 2 Guns' comic book, which I graciously volunteered for free.  John has spent way too many long & lonely nights pencilling, inking and colouring this 600 page tome due to debut at APEcon next month.

My protracted research process included committing the New Testament to memory and a fruitless consultation session with an order of nuns under a strict vow of silence. This left me with very little time to actually develop a good idea so I just drew zombies.

Once I had finalised the highly detailed composition I applied an experimental and unorthodox colour theory-

Et voila-the final piece-I had to beg John not to use this as the cover for his book so it will be in the fine company of Padre Jamie Baker, Father Scott Morse and Rev. W. J. Caldwell amongst others. . .

Line of Action

In Gesture Class I've been advocating capturing the line of action/basic shape in a broad colour stroke then working in on top of that with a finer pen.  It seems to generate more spontaneous interpretations of a pose.

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