Storyboard Study – Troy – Part 1

After getting a lot of feedback at Disney a few weeks ago, I'm ready to jump back into making storyboards. I wanted to get another look at staging and cinematography in live action, and I started with Troy. Here are four pages of storyboards I did while watching Troy (with a finger on the pause button). If you know the movie, this is the scene where Paris and Hector are being toasted by the king of Sparta, Paris all the while ogling Helen. (If you don't know the movie, then this will all look like chicken scratch).

Pen Sketches from Eadweard Muybridge Photos

I have two out of the three big books of Muybridge's prints. I did these sketches from those books. They're great! If you don't know about his amazing photographs, you can learn about them here.

Pen Sketches – Arrested Development and Stewart & Colbert

I LOVE Arrested Development. I consider it the funniest thing ever created. Next to In the Loop.

Here are some Precise V5 pen sketches/gestures done while watching AD on Hulu:

Jason Bateman is so adorable! <3 <3

I am also a big fan of The Daily Show and the Colbert Report. Here's some quick sketches done while watching:

Inspire Days! – Notes from my trip to Disney

On April 8th and 9th 2010, I went to Disney Animation Studios in Burbank, California for the third annual Inspire Days. I was invited by the director of the Talent Development Program who I met at the Ottawa Film Festival last October.

During those two days, I heard talks by Disney animators, story artists, visual development artists and many others. I showed my story and character design portfolios to many people and took notes on their suggestions. Needless to say, it was very exciting. I'm posting below notes I took on the general creative process of making a film and comments about my portfolio. Enjoy.

Sheepskin!

At the farmer's market last weekend, I saw this sheepskin and was instantly smitten. I wanted it very badly. Time was limited and before I knew it, I had bought it.

Pen Sketches at the Zoo

Grevy's zebra and asian elephant

Peccaries (and a mischievous squirrel who tried to raid my bag while I was watching the peccaries)

Clouded leopards 1

Clouded leopards 2

I went to the zoo the other day to get some exercise and drew these sketches. Last time I did this, I found it really helpful to stick to one animal for at least a half hour or hour and really work at it until I felt comfortable drawing it's form. But this time, I did my usual thing of moving from animal to animal fairly quickly.

National Gallery Sketches

I did these sketches during two trips to the National Gallery in Washington DC. When I went there the first time I thought that a lot of the artwork looked familiar ... and then I realized that I had a giant book of artwork from the National Gallery that I bought at a book sale before I moved to DC.

Gorillas at the National Zoo

The National Zoo has a really nice Great Apes section. The walls are glass so you can go right up and sit next to the gorillas. I don't know if they care for it though ... Anyway, there's a baby there! It's so cute! You can usually tell if it's visible because there's always a big crowd standing wherever it is.

Myst: The Book of Atrus Storyboards based on Japanese Text

Sometime in 2007 I was living in Japan and ordered a used copy of "Myst: The Book of Atrus" in Japanese on Amazon. BoA is my favorite book of all time and I'm studying Japanese, so it was very exciting to finally get my hands on it.

At some point, I decided to make a Japanese style manga comic book using one scene from the Myst book. I never finished the project, but I was recently preparing my portfolio and saw the storyboards I did for it.  I liked them, so I'm posting them here.

The scene is where Gehn is telling Atrus that his grandmother is to blame for the fall of D'ni. Gehn judges Anna harshly and Atrus feels confused and angry. Finally, Atrus stands by what he considers true, making Gehn very mad.

Little Glass Bottle

Wow, it's been a long time since I've had a chance to sit down and paint something. Ahhh.

I did this last night. It's based on a picture I took at the Museum of the Middle Ages in Paris.

-Painter 9
-1.5 hours