CTN Expo 2014!

My second time at CTN and it was awesome! So many cool and inspiring booth artists. Here's just a couple:

I met Mike Mirandi last year at CTN right before a workshop and now he's working on this new short animated film "The Ottoman" as lighter/compositor. Check out the Kickstarter page! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1027198543/the-ottoman-animated-short-film

Eric Guan

http://ericguanartwork.blogspot.com

Maximus Paulson

http://maximusquack.blogspot.com/p/portfolio-2013.html

Bryan Wong

http://bryanwongillustration.blogspot.com

Rachel J. Kim

http://racheljkimportfolio.blogspot.com

Chloe Bristol

http://chloebristol.tumblr.com

Cheryl Johnson

http://cbjart.blogspot.com

Stanley Wong

http://stanleywongportfolio.blogspot.com

I rediscovered a couple of my old favorites this year too. Great to know they're still truckin':

Steph Laberis
http://stephsketches.blogspot.com

Cameron Davis
http://www.sleepwalkerbooks.com
http://www.cdavisart.com/#/concept-art/

Check Out Chris Legaspi's "Shading Techniques in Photoshop"

For those of you who haven't heard of the rising popularity of posting tutorials on art techniques by industry professionals on Gumroads, wait no longer. My friend Chris Legaspi just released his new course on shading and rendering using digital tools called "Shading Techniques in Photoshop": https://gum.co/shadingtechniques

Chris is a good friend, a talented artist, and an experienced teacher. He teaches at some of the top schools in L.A. including Gnomon of School of Visual FX. He's also written several instructional articles for Imagine FX magazine.

I've been following Chris's work for years. He is deeply passionate about creating art as well as sharing his experiences with others. He's given away free tutorials, videos and articles on his site www.freshdesigner.com for years and is now providing this in-depth video on Gumroads.

Check it out and support a fellow hard working artist.

In case my video link doesn't load, you can preview his video here: http://youtu.be/BJrM2eF2dkk

Adventure Time Fun!

Havin' some fun sketching Adventure Timey stuff.

The Amazing Spiderman 2 video game trailer - pitch 02

The Amazing Spiderman 2 video game

Trailer Pitch Numero Dos

The first trailer stressed Peter's personal struggle against overwhelming odds and the choice to be a hero even if it meant his life. The second trailer was more Peter Parker the sleuth, just trying to uncover the mysteries of Oscorp and discover the mysterious circumstances surrounding his parents' disappearance. You can see the thumbs I'd developed below were meant for a much longer, more involved sequence, but as I mentioned in the last post, eventually we got the time limit for the trailer and we needed to make some adjustments to fit in a 30 second window.

Focus in on the Manhattan skyline reflected in the windows of Oscorp.

Peter rifling through some files in a corporate office.

 Peter taking iPhone pics left and right of confidential info.

Alerted to Peter's presence, the Rhino breaks through a wall and a battle ensues. 

 Peter runs out of the office.

  The Green Goblin is waiting outside the offices and sprays the floor with bullets and pumpkin bombs.

 Peter outrunning explosions.

 He jumps through an office window and falls towards the streets below.

 Rubble crashes down around the pedestrians below and Stan "the Man" Lee saves a kid.

 Peter, having changed costume in midair, swings in and lands on a truck...

….which gets hit by an rpg and jackknifes, throwing it's occupants from the cab.

 Shoots a web net to catch the truck drivers.

 But gets shocked by one of Electro's electrical arcs.

 We see Electro in the distance.

 The flipped truck is still tumbling toward him, but another rpg blasts it aside.

 Saved by Kraven? (who I believe takes on a father figure role in the game, offering to take his skills to the next level, but at what cost?). We see Kraven the Hunter approach through the lens caps of Spidey's mask.

The Amazing Spiderman 2 video game trailer - pitch 01

It's funny how Marvel's incredible successes at the theater in the last decade have trickled out into the rest of the entertainment industry. Brain Zoo Studios has now created two 70 + minute animated movies for Marvel - Iron Man & Hulk: Heroes United (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r26Dl8gqlA) and Iron Man & Captain America: Heroes United (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LbjvQ98MIo). But we've also worked on a couple of game related Marvel projects too. Most recently, I had the pleasure of developing a trailer pitch for The Amazing Spiderman 2 video game that came out a little while ago. Pitches can be tricky as the projects often provide very little time to the storyboard artist and can change drastically over such a short period. Sometimes we're expected to bust out a whole set of storyboard frames that detail out the trailer as we see it, sometimes we go a step further and put them to music in an animatic to submit, and sometimes we only get minutes of the client's attention and a pdf of story beats is created and we literally stand up and give a powerpoint presentation and show/talk our way through it. That last option is the trickiest of them all. We have the least amount of time to show our client what we're thinking and we can't waste our time showing a million frames, just some of the most important story beats that we then essentially describe our story and approach and the atmosphere and camera styles. Usually, I pretty them up by drawing them a bit cleaner and with tone or sometimes textures. As much quality as I can fit into a tiny little time frame.

So here's how we started. I had two different ideas I was tasked with fleshing out. At first we were going to go with a full on storyboards to animatic approach (although that would change later…). I usually start my storyboards with rough thumbnails like below. I keep the resolution and size large so when I draw over them later, the linework still holds up as I increase magnification, but I make sure to zoom out so that I'm viewing the frames at only a few inches in width. I do like to noodle, and this approach keeps me from doing that. This method also allows me to see if I'm repeating compositions and I get a really good idea of how one action or scene transitions to the next. It's also easier for my supervisors to get a feel for what I'm thinking too. I don't always sketch every frame and sometimes I leave multiple ideas for how to handle a scene and go back later to choose to best approach.The story point was to show Spiderman as a total underdog, outmatched in a fight, but still battling on. In this idea, Spiderman is getting his tights kicked by the Green Goblin and is thrown off a building, blown up into the adjacent building and then falling through the glass sunroof of another only to create a web trampoline below that catapults him back into battle. That may not seem like much, but the pitch was for a 30 sec trailer, and with all the slow motion moments to accommodate the requested dialogue, it would have been a challenging task with what I boarded out.

As I was finishing up the thumbnails stage, details for the meeting were being fleshed out and it became apparent that we'd be having an actual meeting and discussion, so it became necessary to shift gears from delivering a complete set of storyboard frames, but rather we needed to create more polished frames describing some of the key story beats that would be accompanied by our narration and explanation.

Goblin choking the life out of Spiderman above a chasm between buildings.

We see the Goblin's fist mirrored in the mask, closing in on Spidey's face in slow motion.

 Cut to Spidey falling away from the impact of Goblin's punch.

Goblin throws a pumpkin bomb after Spidey.

Blasting him into the adjacent building.

 Spiderman falling unconscious down toward the streets.

Regaining consciousness, he fires off a web at the building and catches himself. 

But the web has snagged a window and breaks under his weight.

 Those webs are so handy. Catapult!

Cut to a later scene that would emphasize Peter's choice to live in a dangerous world, but instead of ignoring the those in need, finding the inner strength to be a hero. Our "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility" moment.

Then we'd cut to several action shots as Spidey duels various villains he encounters.

Black Cat.

Electro.

Shocker.