Charlie in Progress

Here is another revised Charlie poster for the Oregon Children’s Theatre. I’ve pushed the coloring a bit further than I planned after discussion with their creative and marketing staff.  I think it’s a good dramatic moment and gets to the mystery of this fabulous, magical wonderland that is the Chocolate Factory.This is a pretty small, compressed version, but the final art is a little over 18 inches in height at  500 dpi.

I have another night of work on it I think. Adding in some more details, but it’s almost done. I’ll put the other posters up here as I complete them.

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Posters

I’ve been working on a set of posters for the next season of shows from the Oregon Children’s Theatre. They have five really interesting plays for their next season and I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to dive into working on images from some classic children’s literature.

I started work first on, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. One thing I clearly remember from when I was young and read the book, and first saw the original 1971 movie, was how fascianted I was by the factory itself. And I wanted the factory to play a big role in the image for the play. Of course having Charlie and his grandpa AND the golden ticket are important, and they are in there. Below are portions of  two roughs.  I’ll show the final one when it’s complete in a week or two. The staff at the OCT have been helpful and provided useful feedback to refine the images and make sure they function as posters and still work in the other  collateral they will need to be used in.

Click on the images to see a bigger version.

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Manu Larcenet

I’m not some wacky fan-boy-child-man…No I’m not. But I really admire Manu Larcenet’s work. I’ve written about his graphic novel, Lillte Victoires and I wish more of his work made it into English so I could read and not just look at the pictures. He has a great blog/site, and check out his photo section. A great way to understand his visual thinking.

I can’t read French, so as to what exactly he is saying on the site, I guess. And thanks to common language roots things like ‘Archives’ make the jump well.

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Animation Thursday

This was passed on to me a few folks now, and thanks to them all! It’s a great find.

Based on the beautiful book by Oliver Jeffers this animated short looks amazing. The character design, the modeling and lighting. Amazing. When I see stuff that looks this original and has a story that is as rich and simple (yeah, rich and simple in the same sentence) as Oliver’s book,  it gives me hope for what will be unleashed as smaller companies and individuals produce work outside the studio system.

Animated features have become less than enthralling once again. For the most part animated films have become huge, summer studio releases which must pander to the broadest audience and always the lowest common denominator to make back the 150 million that it costs to ‘produce’ one. The exceptions stand out, and Pixar almost always swims above all the others, but Cars started to smell a bit ripe by the end.

Check out the samples on this page. Studio aka’s short – Lost and Found.

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Cenozoic part 3

The final pages from the first Jerry Caveman Inventor story from Cenozoic comics published by OPP. I’m also happy I got to use the word cudgel in the story. And what’s funny without an underwear joke? Who says I don’t consider the 4-8 year olds? Here’s links to Part 1 and Part 2.

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Cenozoic part 2

Jerry,  Caveman Inventor, continues his efforts to garner appreciation for his invention of The Shoe. I’ll post the final pages tomorrow! This was all drawn in Photoshop from my typical lose pencil layouts.

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Cenozoic

This is from the first Cenozoic comic book published by OPP back in 2004-05. One of my favorite characters, Jerry, Caveman Inventor tries his best to share his newest invention, shoes, with his fellow citizens. Laughs ensue. I’ll post the rest of the story tomorrow.

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