Last Days of Summer

More architecture sketching while exploring Los Angeles . . .

 '8 Bit' beach house at Marina Del Rey

Culver City High School

Culver City Theatre

 L.A. School of Performing Arts, Downtown

Sacred Heart Chapel, LMU campus

 Downtown Los Angeles

 Arts District

Little Tokyo

Dennis Hopper's old pad (designed by Frank Gehry)

 Vista theater, Silverlake

 Wolf's Lair compound, Hollywood Hills

 Hollyhock House, Barnsdall Park (Frank Lloyd Wright)

 Manhattan Beach

 'Snow White cottages', Los Feliz

Ballona Creek Bike Path, Culver City

'Noir' architecture L.A.

More exploring Los Angeles with paint. I had 2 architectural targets this weekend: first the 'Spadena House' or 'Witch's House' in Beverly Hills, another example of 'storybook' architecture. 

A quick sketch to familiarize myself with the architecture and figure out any tough perspective problems. I'm also looking for detail: both to include and exclude. The property has a very interesting garden but I had to pare down the detail to the fence, the bridge and some choice flora and foliage.

I've noticed the curb markers in Los Angeles and this address has an apt design.

 Leaving Beverly Hills I wound up Sunset Blvd into the Hollywood hills to find the 'Dietrichson House' from Billy Wilder's 'Double Indemnity'. "It was one of those California-Spanish houses everyone was nuts about ten or fifteen years ago; this one must've cost somebody about thirty-thousand bucks...that is, if he ever finished paying for it." - Walter Neff

I made a quick sketch of the building to wrap my head around the architecture. There are some tricky planes and decorative elements in this one. It also makes me focus mentally on the colour choices I might make; taking note of the multiple greens in the shrubbery, what colour may work for the shadow area, the accent of the painted window frames etc. 

A resident told me the house opposite was where James Dean lived before he died. I made a quick sketch before heading home. I'll come back to paint that one again. 

Original Force

It has been a crazy week with a third screening of our film in progress 'Duck, Duck, Goose' AND an official announcement to the media of the studio's upcoming slate of films. The Los Angeles based studio feels like a small 'start-up' company but its backed by the 1000 strong Original Force studio in Nanjing. I've been drawing ducks and geese for the past nine months and helping to craft a small story that we hope will reach a big audience in a couple of years.

Thumbnails

Since storyboarding is now done digitally these days I have no production sequences saved on paper. In the flurry of activity that is the day-to-day race to draw sequences for looming deadlines thousands of drawings disappear into 'the system' never to be seen again. It's not really company policy to allow that material out of the building anyway. All I have are scans of paper thumbnail sketches I made when figuring out how to approach the staging and acting for some sequences. I did some early work on the 'Abstract Thought' sequence and you'll see below that the Train of Thought passed through it at one stage. Here Joy is separated from Sadness and, with Bing Bong, escapes Mind Construction Workers by hitching a ride aboard the Train of Thought . . .

After a briefing from the directors where I make notes directly on the script page I'll start scribbling down small thumbnail sketches of any visuals or staging that spring to mind immediately.

These are more like 'beat boards' exploring a Brainstorm, Abstract Thought and the Train of Thought.

Plein Air

The fine weather and light of Los Angeles is inspiring me to paint on location more this year. There are so many beautiful spots down the coast and hidden architectural gems within the city. These are pretty quick sketches - no more than 40 mins each.

'El Segundo'

'Point Vicente Lighthouse' Watercolour sketch below and gouache study above

'Higuera'

'Poinsettia'

                                                                      

  The Lawrence and Martha Joseph Residence, Culver City

Hutchison Ave, Helms District

Two angles of a modernist home on Helms Avenue.

'Fay Street'

'El Baron on Washington'

'Baldwin Hills Oil Field'

Modern beach-front house on 'Venice Beach'

 The 'Samitaur' building in the Hayden Tract designed by architect Eric Owen Moss (Culver City).

I stopped on the way home at Marina Del Rey and found this fishing boat just returned -at least it smelled like a fishing boat. Its crew were swabbing the deck which attracted a mob of gulls and small pelicans.

The Untitled Pixar film that takes you inside the Mind!

Having lived in France for a couple of years I was aware that animated films are often given interesting new titles; 'Up' was 'La Haut', 'Brave' became 'Rebelle'. Racking our brains for suggestions of what 'The Untitled Pixar film that takes you inside the Mind' might be I suggested 'La Joie de Vivre' which the editorial team amusingly used at the head of one of the rough assembly screenings. Naming this film was thrown open to the entire crew by producer Jonas Rivera. A list was drawn up that everyone contributed to eg. 'Mind Blown', 'BrainTrust', 'Joyless', 'Out of Mind', 'Emotional Rescue' etc.

I started with a 'mood board' tracking films with similar titles to some we had in mind. I collated images with colours that suggested emotions and Saul Bass style fonts. Potential titles must be checked against existing properties by the legal dept. There are several 'Inside Out' films but there was deemed no conflict of interest with Pixar's film.

I think visually and have loved designing fonts and logos since childhood. My Dad is a sign-maker and I was fascinated by a Letraset book he had. I'd help him design signs and he had great technical pens I'd use to draw. I studied graphic design later at school and always relish the opportunity to do some thinking on movie logos.
'Life of Riley' was deemed too trite early on. I don't know who came up with 'Inside Out' ultimately but it was on a short list that John Lasseter chose from. Once again the French title is more interesting and whimsical 'Vice-Versa'.

 'HQ!' could've been fun. I thought perhaps using the name of the true main character of the film (but it looks like David O. Russell took that one).

The Story team are often tasked with generating ideas for teaser trailers.  These are very rough thumbnails where I'm just thinking my way through ideas. I love movie trailers that used to 'tease', that left the audience intrigued. I thought of something that would use simple abstract shapes animated on screen with relevant sound effects. 

I thought about Joy presenting the team in a 'Psychology Lesson'

(Above) 'The Emotional States of Riley' or even something more mysterious . . .

Pete even tasked us with coming up with graphic 'emoticons' that could be used on the control panel displays. This page above is what Pete showed to Dacher Keltner at Berkeley's Psychology lab which led to me helping them develop the 'Finch' animated emoticon for Facebook.