Just wanted to let you all know that I do have a great Tuesdays with TIM post for today, but I have to post it a little later than usual. You see, today at 10am Pacific time the TIM the Movie fan page on Facebook is unveiling a contest in which YOU can win an original drawing of mine!
So, all I can do at this early hour is tease you with it, and encourage you to either visit the TIM the Movie page at 10am Pacific, OR come back here to the blog at that time to check out the art and the rules of play!
In the meantime, if you are a Facebook user, you can CLICK HERE to go to the TIM fan page where you can LIKE us so you can get our official progress reports!
A couple of weeks ago I was in some slow traffic on my way to work, when I was startled to see one of my creations giving me the thumbs up on the side of a mini-van that came up alongside of me. It was as if he was saying, “Good job on your driving, Citizen!” I had heard of the Captain Traffic van before, and yet had never seen it for myself. There he was promoting safe driving on a van that was passing me on the right.
Captain Traffic giving his thumbs up approval of my driving while on the 101 freeway in Los Angeles.
Back in 2001, I was working at Walt Disney Feature Animation. One of my friends there, Brett Drogmund, was leaving to form his own company that included a fully legal online traffic school here in California. He and his business partner wanted to have a character that would be the ambassador for the business. Together we created Captain Traffic, and not long afterwards, ComedyTrafficSchool.com was born.
I was fairly new to using Photoshop as an art tool at that time. The Captain was inked by hand, and colored in Photoshop. I was beginning to teach Photoshop to the other artists at Disney by day, and by night I was working on lots of Captain Traffic drawings and other cartoons that you can see on their website only if you are a bad driver and have paid for the course (which is only $13.95 these days!).
Here’s the full drawing of what appears on the side of the ComedyTrafficSchool.com mini van.
If you’d like to see another piece starring Captain Traffic, there’s one on my website that was conceived to be like a comic book cover for Brett’s other website, TrafficSchoolUSA.com where the good Capt. also appears. You can see it by CLICKING HERE!
And if you are on Facebook, Captain Traffic now has his very own fan page which you can see by CLICKING HERE!
So, if you happen to be driving down a freeway in Southern California and you come across Captain Traffic, don’t be startled and swerve into your fellow commuters. But if you do, quickly jot down the phone number from the side of that van. You’re going to need it.
Each Tuesday of late, I have been sharing with you some behind-the-scenes artwork and information about the short animated film I have been working on with my producing partner Brian Joseph Ochab called TIM about a young boy who wishes to be like his hero Tim Burton. If you need to catch up, you can CLICK HERE to see my previous posts.
Today’s TIM report is not so much any new info about our film as it is a celebration of our film’s narrator. You see, Sir Christopher Lee was just honored this week with the British Academy of Film and Television Arts highest honor, the BAFTA Fellowship Award. The Fellowship Award is bestowed upon those for their significant contributions to the art of film making, and as such has been bequeathed to worthy recipients such as Charlie Chaplin, Billy Wilder, John Barry, Alfred Hitchcock, Sean Connery, and Steven Spielberg to name a few.
And who presented the award to Christopher Lee? Why, none other than the actual Tim Burton.
Come back again next Tuesday when I’ll share with you some more art created in the process of making TIM the movie. And be sure to visit TIMtheMovie.com to see Christopher Lee talking about our film and more info about how you can be involved in our endeavor!
Last Tuesday I unveiled to you the news about a short animated film I am art directing and co-producing (with my friend Brian Joseph Ochab) called TIM. If you missed that post, you can CLICK HERE to get caught up. The short summary is that it is a parody of Tim Burton’s early stop-motion animated short Vincent in which a little boy named Vincent Malloy tries to emulate his hero, master of the macabre Vincent Price. In TIM, the young Timothy Todd wishes to be just like Tim Burton.
Today’s Tuesdays with TIM features a piece of visual development art I created of the star of my film, Timothy Todd, dressed as his hero, Tim Burton. I believe this is the first version of him in color, and he continues to go through changes as we proceed with developing the film. I painted him with watercolors, and a touch of colored pencil. And no, the website address isn’t on the actual art. We just want folks to be aware of where they can go for more information about the film. (If you click right on the image, it will take you there.)
“He was really quite normal, but longed to be odd…”
The other news since last week is that we now have a special fan page on Facebook for TIM, and it is growing strong! In just a week’s time, almost 1000 of you have “Liked” us! If you would like to get a steady stream of updates on TIM, come join the fan page! Click on www.facebook.com/Timthemovie and you’ll go right there!
And lastly, in order for us to see this film to completion, we need YOUR help! Come check us out on Kickstarter.com to see what kind of neat goodies we are offering you in thanks for your financial support. You can see our Kickstarter promo movie featuring our narrator Christopher Lee by CLICKING HERE!
Come back next Tuesday when I plan to show you more goodies!
On February 6, 1911, the 40th President of the United States was born. After a career in Hollywood and another in California politics, Ronald Reagan was waxing poetic as he took the highest office in the land in 1981. I was busy learning my multiplication tables and the musical stylings of the flutophone while in the third grade.
Ronald Reagan was the President during much of my childhood. I looked at the office with awe and wonder, and to even a child, this particular President seemed special. Perhaps it was his warm look, and grandfatherly voice that caught my attention, but he also seemed to capture the attention of the grown-ups. When the President was giving a televised speech, we would stop what we were doing and see what he had to tell us. And what he had to tell us was always spoken with such elegance, even if I didn’t understand everything he was talking about.
Some things I understood right away. I remember him talking about Star Wars and thinking that I liked that movie, too. As I grew older and understood more, I remember his speech asking Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. I was in high school when the space shuttle evaporated before our eyes, and I’ll never forget his touching words that seemed to usher the fallen astronauts to their eternity.
Happy 100th Birthday, President Reagan.
One year my parents let me skip school for the day to see President Reagan give a speech down the street from my father’s office in Bloomfield, New Jersey. He was to speak on the steps of city hall before two giant brass doors that the city had polished up to a shine. Even though I was just a kid, Dad let me go down into the crowd on my own. I scurried through the legs of the adults standing there and found my spot right down front where I took some pictures on my little camera. To this day, that is the only time I have seen a standing President in person, and what an amazing experience for a wide-eyed kid from Jersey.
Years later, when I moved to California, my parents, my sister and I were able to meet President Reagan. At that point it had been made public that he was suffering from the dreaded Alzheimer’s disease, but I saw a news report that said he was still going to his office in Los Angeles every day where he would meet with people. My sister was about to turn 16 having been born the year he first took office. After some correspondence with his staff in which her birthday was mentioned, we were able to visit him in his office in early 1998. The ravages of his infliction were evident that day, but it is a day I will forever hold dear. It was the day I was able to thank him.
I don’t particularly enjoy engaging in political debate. You have your beliefs, I have mine and we deal with them at the polls. Today debate rages amongst the politically minded about his contributions to our country, and yet whenever there is an election, it seems as though candidates from all sides wish to have the association of Ronald Reagan placed upon them. That in and of itself speaks volumes of his legacy, a legacy that began 100 years ago today.
I know the title is corny, but it made you look, didn’t it? I suppose the only thing this critter has in common with his namesake is the feathered fur, which, by the way was completely drawn on a Wacom Cintiq tablet – my first decent digital drawing posted here on the blog!
* No wood (pencil) was harmed in the creation of this drawing, though I can’t say as much for the tree he took that branch from.
For those of you not in the know, a Cintiq is pressure sensitive computer screen on which you can draw with an inkless pen called a “stylus”. Press lightly, your line is thin. Push harder, the line gets thicker. Pretty neat stuff that has been sweeping through the artistic community within the past two years even though these tablets have been around for close to ten years now.
Back when I worked at Disney Feature Animation, Wacom loaned the studio one of their first generation Cintiq tablets. It was housed in my office where many of the artists could come down and give it a try. Most hated it back then, but technology has a way of improving, and some of those guys now not only use one at work, but they’ve bought them for use at home, too.
I’ve been using one at work for a few months now, and had a few minutes of my own time yesterday to play around with doing something more than storyboards on it. Hope you like the results!
For the past year, I have been working on a secret project in my spare time with my friend Brian Joseph Ochab. We have been so excited about this for so long, that our joy can no longer be contained!
Brian and I have known each other for quite a few years. We first met when I saw him performing magic at a local Los Angeles establishment. A wonderful magician who often performs at the famed Magic Castle in Hollywood, it turned out that Brian is also a filmmaker! He came to me with this wonderful idea to make an animated short film that parodies Tim Burton’s first short called Vincent.
In Vincent (narrated by the great Vincent Price), a young boy named Vincent Malloy tries to emulate the creepy Vincent Price. Over the years since making Vincent, Tim Burton has obviously become somewhat of a name himself. Our film TIM will be about the young Timothy Todd who wishes to be just like his hero Tim Burton.
While the late Vincent Price is no longer available, last July we were very pleased to be able to work with the legendary Sir Christopher Lee who lent his wonderful distinctive voice to the role of the narrator in TIM. Brian flew to London to record Christopher who also was happy to be a part of our behind-the-scenes footage.
My involvement in this project has been as Co-producer and Art Director. I’ve been busy creating character designs and development art, and soon will be diving into storyboarding Brian’s terrific script. So far the pre-production work has been done by just me and Brian, but we will need a crew to build our sets and animate the thing, and that can be expensive.
We discovered this great website called Kickstarter.com where people can go and donate money to help fund cool projects. Basically it is like a PBS fund drive – we promise you neat gifts for your various donations. Brian put together a great little promo film showcasing what we have been doing thus far and it tells how YOU can lend a hand! Check it out….
If the film doesn’t play here for some reason, you can access it directly by clicking on TimTheMovie.com!
Since our fundraising efforts on Kickstarter will be active for the next two months, I’ll continue to talk about it here on the blog where I’ll show you some of the art and behind the scenes moments from our journey thus far!
And if you dig what we are trying to do, please pass the word along to your friends about how they can also be involved in helping us bring this cool little film to life!
Earlier this month I shared with you the art I did for the poster of a local Burbank production of Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys stage play. If you missed it, you can refer to it by CLICKING HERE.
A couple of weeks ago, I was able to attend one of the performances that featured my friend Daniel Roebuck and Jim Roope. Danny has been an actor on the screen for many years (click here to see his credits), and was also responsible for producing and directing this production. Jim, while not usually an actor, normally spends his days as a news correspondent for CNN radio. The two did a marvelous job, and I was able to chat with them afterwards on the set where we took this shot of the three of us with one of the mini-posters featuring my art. Enjoy!
Daniel Roebuck, Chad Frye, and Jim Roope (who had already removed his prop spectacles depicted in the poster art).
