New Groovin’ Into 20 Years!

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the premiere of Disney’s comedy feast The Emperor’s New Groove directed by Mark Dindal! This film holds a special place in my heart, for it was the first big Hollywood production on which I received screen credit! To celebrate, I created a new drawing to mark the occasion!

 

Emperor Kuzco in his llama form created in ink and gouache. The character was animated so brilliantly by supervising animator Nik Ranieri and his team.

 

I actually started at Disney on Mulan, and also worked on Tarzan and Fantasia 2000 before this, but back in those days, the studio didn’t give screen credit to everyone like they do now. I wasn’t a production artist on the films, but rather was considered “support staff” with my computer job.

New Groove was such an interesting journey. It started as a musical drama called Kingdom of the Sun, later changed to Kingdom in the Sun (that’s what all those songs were written for that are on the soundtrack), before changing to the comedy that folks have come to love.

If you are ever curious to know the sordid details of the production journey, Trudie Styler (Sting’s wife) made a documentary about it called The Sweatbox that while never having been released to the public other than a short Oscar qualifying run in theaters 20 years ago, it does pop up every now and then on youTube.

Hard to believe all this was twenty years ago. I feel privileged to have been able to be a part of it. Of anything I have ever worked on, this is the project that lights up the most eyes when folks hear I was involved with it.

So, celebrate with me in this special birthday for a special Disney movie!

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Animals Art: Animation Art: Drawings Art: Inking Disney Illustrations Random Doodles Sketchbook

Christmas with Sinatra

Never thought I’d get to say this, but earlier this year I got to work with Frank Sinatra. Well, “with” is more like it I suppose, since he is no longer among us, which is what made the experience surprising to begin with. “With.” Whatever.

The folks at the Fantoons Studio asked me to storyboard an official Sinatra music video they were going to animate for Universal Music Group who holds the rights to the Capitol Records back catalog. The song? Frank’s version of The Christmas Waltz. So, I had to get my Christmas on back in the sweltering heat of June in Los Angeles.

With a script by David Calcano, I spent a week swathed in the mello tones of Frank’s crooning as I boarded his holiday adventures in Palm Springs, California. I picked just a few individual panels from my boards to show you here, followed by the actual video made by Fantoons.

 

Ol’ Blue Eyes on the Palm Springs sky tram.
I based the shots in the house on photos of Frank’s actual Palm Springs home.
The parting shot at the end of the video of all the cards formed throughout the video.

 

 

So, it was a real treat to get to work “with” Frank. You know, back when Frank was still alive, I did get a phone call once from his secretary, but that’s a story for another time.

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Art: Animation Art: Storyboards Videos

The Barbershop

It’s okay if your barber wants to practice for a barbershop quartet, but maybe not while giving you a shave and a haircut. (I hear those cost two bits.)

 

Well, it’s a look that’ll start a conversation around the Thanksgiving table for sure.

 

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Art: Drawings Art: Inking Cartoons Character Designs Illustrations Random Doodles Sketchbook

Captain My Captain

Captain Mickey here as Steamboat Willie turns the ripe old age of 92 TODAY! That’s right, Mickey and Minnie both were born this day in cinemas in their first cartoon way back in 1928.

The mouse has held up well over the years. We should all be so fortunate.

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Animals Art: Animation Art: Colored Pencil Art: Drawings Art: Painting Art: Watercolor Disney

Villains

Last year my friend and fellow cartoonist Jeff Knurek reached out to me to see if I could do some character designs for a comic book project he was involved with. Jeff normally writes and draws the Jumble comic strip/puzzle that appears in newspapers and online, and he invents games (anyone ever hear of Slammo/Spikeball?), but he was developing this comic book that was taking on the world of electrical science with an adventure featuring twin teenagers getting involved in something over their heads.

Here’s the first comic drawn by Jeff Knurek published in 2020.

Since it was a tech story, I got to thinking that maybe the villain should take after one of the big tech bosses from the real world. So, I sketched out these three potential villains purely based on (not actual caricatures of) Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Steve Jobs (Apple), and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook). They all seemed like plausible villains, right? Which one do you think Jeff chose to draw in his comic book? If you guessed the one inspired by Jeff Bezos, you would be correct.

Incidentally, back in my early days of working in animation, I was in a meeting with Steve Jobs who was not very villainous in person. But that’s a story for another time.

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Caricature Character Designs Comic Books Development Art

The Dentist

Some jobs really have their bad days.

 

Dentistry is a delicate science.
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Animals Art: Inking Character Designs Random Doodles Sketchbook

Election Day

Well, today is the day! The day we find out which side gets to be disappointed.

 

Red and blue make purple. One way or the other, the country gets bruised.
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Art: Colored Pencil Art: Drawings Caricature Life Drawings Sketchbook

Happy Halloween

It’s been a few minutes since I last did a series of Monster Month posts here on the ol’ blog. Just been too busy with actual work the past couple of years to take the time to post a monster each day in October.

That being said, I didn’t want to let October 31st to go by without at least one monster post. And who better to depict than that granddaddy of all monsters, Frankenstein’s monster. (I’ve drawn him more than once in the past.)

So, here’s an ink and gouache sketch I did this week in my sketchbook. Don’t eat too much candy tonight.

 

This Frankie most certainly hates fire since he was created on paper.

 

Categories
Art: Drawings Art: Inking Character Designs Frankenstein Monsters Random Doodles Sketchbook