Happy Valentine's Day

Here's to you Mr. Cupid:

Damn cough...Leave me alone!

For the last week or so I've been battling a cough of epic proportions. I made this little watercolor that somehow sums up how I've been feeling.

Monster Squad Book Dos

The last couple weeks have been INSANE. I've been trying to find time to work on my own stuff, but I had a slew of deadlines last week that have prevented me from doing so. The good news is that The Monster Squad books I've been working on are coming along nicely. Book 2 is near completion! Here is the final cover as well as some of the final interior spot illustrations that I posted a couple weeks ago as sketches. Back to work...to hit more deadlines. Ugh.

Troll

Here's a character design I recently made for "the heck of it". Not much more to say than that.

Eustace Tilley Contest

Over at The New Yorker, they're having the annual Eustace Tilley Cover Contest. I had some free time this afternoon and figured I'd throw my pen into the ring. Below is the original and my version.



Update: I woke up this AM and had a fresh eye on this experiment. I didn't love the composition and framing from the last version. Even though I already submitted the piece, I decided to play with the layout. I think I'm digging this one more:

ABP Process

The other day I was looking through some old sketchbooks and I stumbled across some concept sketches from the Animation Block Party Intro I directed a few years back. It's always interesting to see where my projects start out and 99% of the time, they start in my sketchbook. You notice how much of the original germ can be found in the final piece. Below are the initial sketchbook pages, the block faces I made in Illustrator, and the final which was animated in After Effects. Music by Brian Saia.

Playing around

Work has been slow due to the whole holiday thing. I've been drawing quite a bit in my sketchbook and experimenting with color/handmade textures in Photoshop. The process is pretty straight forward: I doodle in my sketchbook, scan the linework into the CPU, and add color/textures in Photoshop. Here are a few images I played with this week. I included the original doodle for the first image, so you can see where these started.

Have a happy, healthy, and creative 2009!

Jiggle Bells...Jiggle Bells

Have a happy and healthy holiday!

Harry House Head

At the end of each year, I look back through my sketchbooks for any interesting characters I created. This October amid the financial market collapse I created the one-and-only Harry House Head. Enjoy.

The Vault: Jingle Bell Rocks!

Three years ago, I whipped up this music video for a promotional DVD/reel I sent out. It was my first attempt at compositing Flash with After Effects. Looking at it now, the animation is minimal to say the least, but I'm still pretty surprised I was able to pull it off in a week (with a day job). Music by the very talented, Mr. Eric Schmider. This should spark some Yuletide cheer. Enjoy.

Monster Squad Continues

I've been puttering away on the Monster Squad Series for Penguin. Over the last week, I cleaned up the 3rd book cover and finished 20 interior concept sketches for the 2nd installment. Below are the fruits of my labor.

The layout for book 3...Design by Meagan Bennett:

The cleaned-up and colored cover image:

Samples of the Book 2 interior sketches:

Animated Lions!!!

I have been hired by Pileated Pictures to co-produce and direct two Between the Lions animated episodes. For the last month or so, I have been working with a great team of designers to create the look of the animated version of the show. Here is a quick style test:


The characters were designed by the mega-talented Steph Laberis and the background was crafted by Jon Renoni. The episodes have been written, storyboarded, and now we're in the thick of production! Moving along nicely...more updates to come.

Between the Lions is produced by WGBH Boston and Sirius Thinking.