PIXAR weekend

Last Friday Ed, Boris & I got a sneaky peek at the PIXAR 20 year anniversary exhibition that opened at the Science Museum this weekend.






We recreated the expressions of the Bob parr sculpts above. Uncanny resemblance isn't it?



Most reviews of the show cite the special PIXAR zoetrope below as the highlight but for me it was the 'artscape' installation. A mega-widescreen projection of a specially produced film that flies the viewer THROUGH all the concept art on screen. It's so immersive & 3-dimensional that you feel like you're IN the artwork.


Saturday morning we went along to the NFT where Osnat Shurer & Jan Pinkava from PIXAR were hosting a retrospective screening of all the 'silent' PIXAR shorts (ie. all of them apart from MIKE's NEW CAR or JACK-JACK ATTACKS). We were privvy to the British premiere of ONE MAN BAND which is good fun. Great editing, location design & top animation as usual.

Decouvrez Paris- chapitre cinq

Wow! What a week, kicked it off in Paris visiting my girlfriend, then we had the epic lunch with Oscar Grillo & Uli, & then rounded things off with the Art of Pixar Exhibition followed by a retrospective of Pixar shorts including the British premiere of 'ONE MAN BAND'. Firstly here are the pics I made last weekend in Paris.


'ASTERIX & THE VIKINGS' is released in France next week & Disney have given it a little 'friendly' competition by releasing 'THE WILD' on the same day!



Above - some interesting sights & graphics on the streets of Paris.



MUSEE PICASSO - the main exhibition was 'Picasso & Dora Maar'. There was also a 'Making of Guernica' show too.





'ESPACE SALVADOR DALI' in Montmatre is a subterranean museum worthy of the surrealist maestro.



This tribute to Delacroix is in the Jardin luxembourg.




200 YEARS OF FRENCH DRAWING at the Musee Jacquemart Andre.

One of the most beautiful & elegant galleries I've been to.



The fantastic drawing featured on the poster is by Boucher.

This hyena was drawn from the exhibition catalogue while we were there. The real thing is meticulously rendered. Gorgeous!





This is Fremiet's sculpture outside the Musee D'Orsay that I photographed on my last trip.


We saw Ken Chaige's dazzling new film 'WU JI'. It was screened in Chinese with French subtitles so I didn't know what the hell was going on but it looked damn nice! In English speaking territories this film is called 'THE PROMISE'.




Finally got hold of the latest SKYDOLL book.

Lunch 2

I thought the first lunch with Senor Grillo was epic but this one was 'MONSTROUS'! Watching Uli, Oscar & Neil together was like Clash of the Titans, Matt, Boris & I were happy to be along for the ride.









By the end of the meal/day the table cloth was covered in drawings & I wish we had a photo of it. Oscar did you keep the ones we ripped off the paper? Can you scan them & post them or are they too bad?

Life Drawing 28th March

CHARACTER DESIGN BLOG

Randall Sly has posted my interview on his excellent blog at characterdesign.blogspot.com
I'm honoured to be in the company of such fine artists & I hope professionals out there keep responding to Randall's questionnaire.

HONEYSTARS

Now HONEYSTARS has aired I can finally post some of the artwork that went into the making of the 2 new spots last autumn. The agency wanted to update the look of the whole campaign this time so I started to re-think the design of the kids first. To appeal to kids I basically thought of the INCREDIBLES crossed with Natalie Portman's white suit in ATTACK OF THE CLONES. These are my exploratory thumbnails.



Instead of the usual 'cereal kid' I tried to make them look more rounded, almost like toon-shaded CG.



I also refined the look of Captain Star & made his costume a bit more sleek. Captain Star (bottom right) poses by Dean Roberts.



The villains in this ad were fun. Robotic bird-men. I was inspired by the clockwork owl in CLASH OF THE TITANS & Woody Woodpecker.



The birdmen & the spaceships were translated beautifully into CG by Joan Cabot & Leo Sanchez.




Finally some colour keys I made to guide the production company in Malaysia. The overseas crew were supervised by Andreas von Andrian. The ad was laid out here in London & directed by Uli Meyer.



This sculpt of the boy was made to aid the animators. It was sculpted by the highly talented Cako Facioli who promises me he'll have a blog soon.

Schlingmannism

This lunatic has one of the best blogs around. Check out drawnography.blogspot.com.

Life Drawing 13th March

Drawings from last Monday evening's session. 30 second warm ups.



Then 2-5 min. short poses.




Playing around here with modified contour drawing, drawng with left hand, without looking at paper etc.




Longer studies, 20 mins. each.

Baker St.

I recently finished working at a studio in Baker St. It's an interesting part of London & at lunch times I would go on the trail of Sherlock Holmes. There's a statue of the famous fictional detective outside Baker St. tube station. 221 b Baker St. is the address that Arthur Conan Doyle gave Holmes in the books. On this site now stands the Sherlock Holmes Museum.



The museum has been made to look like Holmes & Watson actually lived there. Holmes' study is full of items that fans will recognize from the stories, including Holmes' crack pipe!



Last year one of the Eurovision Art Challenge themes was 'Elementary dear Watson'. Here's the development sketches of my image.






Not far from Baker St. is the Wallace Collection. They have Fragonard's 'Swing' & Frans Hal's 'Laughing Cavalier'. I spent a lunch-break drawing the armour collection. The Persian & Indian armour, helmets & weapons are really cool.