Author: Chad Frye

Tuesdays with “TIM”

Post author By Chad Frye
Post date March 15, 2011

First, let me extend a hearty THANK YOU to those of you who may have given TIM a financial pledge in the past few days on Kickstarter! Over the weekend, we jumped up over $5000 in pledges!

Today I wanted to share some thoughts with you about the art that has been the face of my film from the beginning. Appropriately, it was also the first painting I did in the development of TIM. My producing partner Brian Joseph Ochab and I needed something that could very quickly say what our project was all about while invoking the spirit of the animated projects of Tim Burton.

Chad Frye Illustration Guy — Chad Frye at his drafting desk working on an original watercolor painting for “TIM”.

Anyone familiar with those Burton produced films can easily see in this piece the influence primarily from The Nightmare Before Christmas. While it may feel as though it is directly out of that movie, I was careful to put my own hand in it. Brian and I did sit and watch Nightmare together, and while sitting there in front of the television with a sketchbook in my lap, the following extremely rough drawing spilled forth:

Burton-esque Cemetary — 1. The first rough sketch. Notice the double moons? I was undecided on how large it should be and where it should go.

Drawings such as the one above are quick brain blorts of mine. It was probably whipped out in about a minute or two just to quickly get a visual idea on paper. That image mulled in my head for a few days to the point where it felt like there might be an idea there needing to be developed further. So, I grabbed my sketchbook again and did the following drawing:

TIM cemetary gate — 2. The second pass at this idea, still just a sketchbook drawing.

It still wasn’t quite right, but that was it! Later I sat down at my drafting table and worked on a large tight pencil drawing on tracing paper choosing a low vantage point looking up at the cemetery gate and moon, add in a couple of jack-o-lanterns, and finesse the whole scene. You can see that originally I intended to include even more jack-o-lanterns than what appeared in the final, but later while working on the painting, they just felt excessive.

TIM the movie pencil art — 3. The final actual size pencil drawing with all the details worked out.

From that final pencil drawing, I created the watercolor painting with a limited creepy color palette. That low vantage point was intentionally designed so that your eye is guided right up there to the title of the film, but also the use and placement of color and lighting was to achieve that same end result. Colored pencils were used to further tie things up and accent other details.

TIM development poster — 4. The final watercolored painting along with the tagline direct from our script.

When I go to a museum to look at paintings, I love getting my nose up as close as I can without setting off alarms so that I can really see the details of what the artist had done. With that idea in mind, here are a few close-ups of the final painting. Enjoy!

FRYE_cemetery_hill — The angel statue is a direct homage to the angel that “catches” Jack Skellington in Burton’s “Nightmare Before Christmas.”

FRYE_cemetery_gate — You can really see how the colored pencil was utilized in the piece from this close-up.

FRYE_pumkin — And a close-up view of a jack-o-lantern showing every gritty paint and pencil stroke.

TIM is still very much in need of every pledge small and large if we are to reach our goal by March 29. If we don’t reach that goal, then all those fine and generous pledges will not be able to be fulfilled. The fate of our film is in YOUR hands! Click on any of the images above to come support TIM!

Chuck Norris Septuagenarian

Post author By Chad Frye
Post date March 10, 2011

The age-defying Chuck Norris turns 71 today. Come to think of it, Chuck Norris pretty much defies everything.

It’s not that Chuck Norris has had that many birthdays – that’s how many times the earth has revolved around Chuck Norris.

When Chuck Norris was born, it was the doctor who got slapped – after all, Chuck Norris actually delivered himself.

Chuck Norris doesn’t celebrate birthdays – birthdays celebrate Chuck Norris.

Art: Drawings Caricature

Tues…er…Thursday with “TIM”

Post author By Chad Frye
Post date March 10, 2011

I know, I know – today is Thursday. It’s not actually Tuesday, the day on which I isolate my comments about my short film TIM here on the blog. There was just too much to share on one day this week, so I thought I’d spread it out onto Thursday as well.

We only have 18 days left in our fundraising efforts over on Kickstarter.com, so we can use all the help we can get to spread the word about the cinematic joy my producing partner Brian Joseph Ochab and I are trying to achieve! In my post on Tuesday, I alluded to an ad that we created for Stop Motion Magazine‘s website. I wanted to post that same ad here and encourage you to download it and share it on any website, Facebook page, MySpace, and wherever else you can on the web to help us spread the word!

Tim Burton — Click on the image to get a slightly higher resolution version of the ad.

In addition, Brian and I spent some time last week recording a special video update that was also briefly mentioned on Tuesday. So, it is posted here today for your enjoyment! I know it’s hard to believe, but we are completely untrained actors. Colin Firth better watch his back…

TIM Video Update from Wonder Motion Studios on Vimeo.

Come back again next Tuesday with another look at the art of TIM, and please come support us at TIMtheMovie.com!

Animals Art: Drawings Art: Inking Art: Photoshop Illustrations TIM the Movie Videos

Tuesdays with “TIM”

Post author By Chad Frye
Post date March 8, 2011

It’s Tuesday, so that must mean it’s time to share some more behind-the-scenes tidbits with you about my short animated film TIM. My producing partner, Brian Joseph Ochab, and I were recently discussing the need to have a logo that would appropriately communicate the vibe we are trying to elicit with TIM. It needs to be fun, whimsical, and maintain a creepy Burtonesque vibe that the film itself will have. In essence, something that can be the public face of our project. So, I broke out my sketchbook and started conceptualizing!

When I begin the visual thought process, often a flurry of very loose doodles tumble out of my pencil. My hand just whirls around the paper blorping out whatever it wants in the search for the right idea. You’ve heard of someone’s hand having a mind of its own? Believe me, sometimes it’s a challenge to get my actual mind to coordinate with the hand. My hand can go off on its own like a teenager who is handed the keys to the car for the first time. In this case, the hand was exploring lots of things that just weren’t working. It spent several hours involved in this pursuit until one sketch fell onto the page that caused my actual mind to say “THAT’S IT!”

After working out a more detailed pencil drawing, the next step was to create a nicely inked drawing. I do like inking by hand with brush on paper. I bought a really terrific brush pen a year or so ago and use it almost exclusively over my traditional paint brush/bottle of ink. It’s a Japanese brush pen sold by Pentel here in the States, and the ink in the cartridges is a nice solid and permanent black ink. That sucker really holds a point, too. Anyway, enough about my love for my brush pen. I also use permanent black ink pens like Microns or Prismacolor to supplement what the brush pen can’t do.

So, Tim was hand-inked, then scanned into Photoshop for some coloring. In this case, I did a kind of digital airbrushing to bring little Timothy Todd to life. The final art has all kinds of potential applications. We already made it the face of our “TIM – the movie” Facebook page (come join us by clicking here!), he makes an appearance on a coffee mug in a video update we posted on our Kickstarter page, he’s in an ad on Stop Motion Magazine’s website, and he’ll pop up in other places as well. In fact, we believe that a version of this drawing will even be the special limited edition collector’s pin that we are offering as a reward on Kickstarter!

This image may also become a T-shirt down the line. Well, it IS a T-shirt now, but only a one-of-a-kind at the moment. Just this past Saturday, Plaxico the dog featured TIM on his website. (If you’d like to take a look, CLICK HERE!) We’d like to eventually make shirts down the road, but for now am concentrating on trying to actually get the film made! But, if we do make it a shirt, it would likely look something like this…

So there you have it – the anatomy of logo creation. Come back again this THURSDAY where I’ll have a BONUS “Tuesdays with TIM” post for you. There was just too much to cram into one day!

And if you’d like to be a part of our film, come visit us at TIMtheMovie.com for more information!

Art: Drawings Art: Inking Art: Photoshop Art: Preliminary Sketches Character Designs Illustrations Random Doodles Sketchbook TIM the Movie

Always Room for Cello

Post author By Chad Frye
Post date March 3, 2011

I recently made a card for someone I know who plays the cello professionally. Thought it would be fun to put little Mickey Mouse behind a giant cello. After it was done, I realized that it could be mistaken for a bass. So, it really is a cello. Just a small mouse.

Why, cello there Mickey!

Animals Art: Watercolor Disney

Tuesdays with “TIM”

Post author By Chad Frye
Post date March 1, 2011

Welcome to another fine addition to my Tuesdays with TIM posts showing you some of the artwork created in the development of this exciting short film project I’ve been working on with my producing partner Brian Joseph Ochab!

When trying to develop the visual style of TIM in early 2010, we didn’t wish to stray from the visuals of Tim Burton’s creepy animated films. We wanted to channel the look of Burton’s 1982 short Vincent while combining it with the visual sophistication of films like Corpse Bride and Henry Selick’s Coraline. Vincent was in black and white, and had a certain economy of scenery that was inexpensive to produce yet visually compelling. The latter films incorporated color and style to their imagery that just captures the imagination.

So, with visions of the macabre dancing in my head, I grabbed my sketchbook and started to draw various scenes based on lines in the script. We chose a couple of them to illustrate, and I got to work on this particular piece.

Yes, the art below is a genuine old school painting in real life. I created it primarily in watercolor, and incorporated the use of colored pencils just a tad. I really love the watercolor medium, and use it often for my development art on this film. I think the uneven nature of it helps give a certain tactile feeling to each scene, and helps give the viewer a certain uneasiness with the creepy subject matter.

If you would like to hear Christopher Lee’s narration that goes with this piece, we feature it in our promo film over on Kickstarter. If you watch it long enough, there’s even a quick shot of me working on this very painting. You can go there right now by clicking on www.TIMtheMovie.com.

If you go to Kickstarter, please consider pledging some money to us so that we can actually make this film. We are in our final month of fundraising. I know at the $100 level, one of the things you’ll receive is a special limited edition print of one of my paintings. We have a few to choose from, so the print might even be of this particular painting.

Come back again next Tuesday for more revelations about TIM the movie! And come join the TIM Facebook page by CLICKING HERE!

Animals Art: Colored Pencil Art: Watercolor Character Designs Development Art Illustrations Monsters Random Doodles Sketchbook TIM the Movie

Post-It Parade

Post author By Chad Frye
Post date February 28, 2011

When you are in a meeting at the office, you can always look around and see that people have paper and pen in hand scribbling as other people are talking. One would assume that they are taking notes, and often that is the case. When you work in an animation studio, however, the scribbles are very likely doodles – doodles that usually have nothing to do with the topic at hand.

I first started doing this years ago. I used to sit in meetings, and would have trouble keeping my eyes open. In order to stay alert, I would let my hand wander on a blank piece of paper before me. Sure, I’d sketch something now and then that had to do with the meeting at hand, but this was my way of staying alert.

I know what you are thinking, “How can you pay attention to a meeting when you are drawing something else entirely?” Beats me. It’s something I discovered I could do back in high school. I would be doodling away on my notepaper, and yet when a teacher would call on me, I’d be ready with the correct answer. If my hand is silent, my mind tunes out.

So, all you really need is a ball point pen and a pad of Post-It notes. Then, let the parade of the imagination come forth! Here are a few such doodles that spilled from my hand in a recent meeting.

There’s no rhyme or reason to whatever spills forth from the pen in a random doodling.

Animals Character Designs Monsters Random Doodles Sketchbook

Tuesdays with “TIM”

Post author By Chad Frye
Post date February 22, 2011

Well, today over on the TIM the Movie Facebook page, we have just unveiled a contest to win the original art seen here! This drawing was inspired by something in our script that I was working on this past week with my pal and Director Brian Joseph Ochab. I created the 8.5×11″ drawing over the weekend with black and purple Prismacolor pencils on some nice textured paper, and both Brian and I signed it for whichever one of you may possibly win it!

Below the art are all the rules about how you can win this art! Enjoy!

Welcome to the first ever TIM the Movie spectacular contest!!

The prize? We’ve gone all out to create a very special one-of-a-kind original pencil drawing by TIM’s co-Producer/Art Director Chad Frye signed by both Chad AND Writer/Director Brian Joseph Ochab worth $350!* It’s a drawing of our lead character Timothy Todd dressed as his hero while gleefully holding a shrunken zombie head.

To be entered into a drawing to win the, ahem, drawing, all you need to do is to make a monetary pledge of $10 or more to our film through Kickstarter between now and Thursday night, 11:59pm Pacific time on February 24th! The contest is open to ANYONE who makes a NEW pledge during the contest period, so the odds of winning the drawing are up to how many of you participate!!

And the best part of it is the drawing will be sent to the lucky winner NEXT WEEK – you won’t have to wait until our fund drive is over on March 29th like you do for the other Kickstarter rewards.

Here are the only two things you need to do to enter the contest:

1. Go to http://www.TIMtheMovie.com and make a monetary pledge to our film there on Kickstarter for $10 or more. You will be eligible for whatever rewards package you choose from the list, plus be entered in this special contest.

2. After making your pledge, you must send an e-mail with “TIM CONTEST” in the subject line to: WonderMotionStudios@gmail.com and tell us:

• your name

• your Kickstarter screen name

• and an e-mail address where we can notify you if you are the winner.

Keep in mind that these are just pledges. You are not charged any money right away. When you make a pledge on Kickstarter, you are only charged at the end of the pledge drive IF we have raised our total amount by that time.

The contest ends promptly at 11:59pm Pacific time Thursday evening, February 24th after which time one winner will be randomly chosen from among all the new pledges. The winner will be contacted to see where we need to send the original art!

Be sure to check TIM – the Movie‘s fan page on Facebook on Friday where we will be posting the name of the winner for all to see!

Good luck!

(*By the way, the actual drawing does not include “www.TIMtheMovie.com” across it. That’s just for our digital display here on the web.)

Art: Colored Pencil Art: Drawings Character Designs Contests Development Art Monsters TIM the Movie