Sport McCourt™

A few years ago, I was asked to comp us some ideas for a character named Sport McCourt. The idea being for an action figure, that's aged and ineffectual. I thought of making him have limbs borrowed from other figures, and basically make him a bit of a mess. The client pulled the plug on the project, but, below are some sketches from early drafts:

Graffiti

Sir Lord Comic

One of my favorite Jamaican vocalists. Sir Lord Comic was an original Jamaican DJ, one of those guys who 'talked over' the instrumental versions of songs. Pretty much the first form of 'Rap' before Herc brought it to the States.

My Family The Wolf

A pretty damn beautiful animation here. Check this guy out. They're employing classic 2D, some 3D, and probably some of the best compositing I've seen  in a long time. A real inspiration. Thanks to Cartoon Brew!:

1985 Vol. 4 On Sale Now

Awesome placement courtesy of the fine folks at Meltdown Comics!

 On the same note, I've juts gotten in touch with Ritchie, who was the proprietor of Club Culture, which is featured in 1985.  On his Facebook page , he has images of the club from when it first opened in 1984:

In The Works...

Wrapping up the prep work and starting on key animation.

Rollerball

Classic James Caan sci-fi movie from the early 70's with a strangley prophetic story. Basically companies had replaced governments , and compete in a blood sport known as Rollerball. It also boasts a soundtrack by Andre Previn which is a must have for soundtrack fans.

I've always been somewhat fascinated by the type face as these were the days when studios would design a unique typeface for a particular project. I wasnt able to track this one down, but someone  came up with a similar type face based closely on the 'Scorpions' logo type face called 'Lady Starlight':

Time Boyz

Probably one of the most bizarre projects I 've ever worked on was an animated pilot, developed for MTV. We had an awesome character designer on board named David Preston. Dave had been designer for King Of The Hill, so, it was interesting to see where he was going to take things.

We were 3 animators on he project, and our job was to take Dave character artwork, and 'clean them up', in Flash, in order to have them animate and lip synch correctly. One co-worker of mine Joe Kossuth, took this to a whole new level and made the characters even more insane.

The story involved to punk kids who get hold of a bicycle time machine, and all hell breaks loose. There were about 20 different characters they were throwing at this, and the scope of the story seemed to be sprawling at times, but offered a lot of opportunities for the animators. I was just starting to be comfortable with my abilities as the crew expanded to about 20 people or so. Most of whom came off of the Flash movie Booty Call (And who would eventually morph into the animation production company Six Point Harness).

All he while during production, the studio with whom we worked at was falling apart. Literally, people were being fired, and equiptment was being taken away. The director of the pilot left halfway during the production, and one of our fellow animators was appointed the new director. This went on for another couple of weeks, until we were all notified that the studio was closing and the project was being killed.

It was a shame that it had ended that way, but it was a major learning experience for me, and not only did I get to work with some talented people, right after it ended , I had just gotten some music video work that I probably would have turned down if it'd stayed in production.

Mike Rohde- Visual Note-Taking 101

For years Ive carried around and touted the idea of having a sketchbook (or blackbook, moleskin, etc). Here's a man who specializes in notebook skecthing, or doodling. Mike Rohde's design, logos and thoughts come in the form of neatly skecthed illustrations, that he keeps organized in his books.

 Mike's visual diary includes a whole set of random ideas and drawings, basically anything that inspires him at the time. He held a panel at SXSW on Visual Note-Taking, which can be seen here:

Pete Frame

Anyone who's bought a British LP dating from the 70's or 80's is familiar with Pete Frames work. He's the man behind the insanley detailed schematic's of music personnel.

Check out these below:

Ralph McQuarrie

I usually steer away from noting on the passing of individuals on here. I'd always hope to spotlight the artwork and the legacy, rather then the fact  they've passed away. But, I do want to mention Ralph McQuarrie and the imprint he's had on my brain since I was young.

Ralph was the concept painter of many film and industrial projects, but most notably, for Star Wars. In fact, it's reported that Lucas got the funding for Star Wars from FOX, because he'd used Ralph's paintings in the pitch sessions with executives. Ralph's paintings for the movie were great, mostly because the art is derived from rough drafts of the script. The paintings include odd elements which never saw the light of day (Stormtroopers with light sabers and shields??).

But Ralph disclosed on interviews that his visions for the strange worlds included in the movies, came from some near death experiences he'd survived in the Korean War. His paintings made a bigger impression on me than the movies did, and made me a huge fan of concept illustration. Here's some of my favorites:

Trading Cards

Though I used to hoard these as I was younger, a posting I saw regarding 'homemade' trading cards, got me inspired to come up with a few of my own.