Category: Animals

Memorial Day 2017

Here in the United States, today is our Memorial Day. It is a day we honor our fallen warriors who gave their lives in the service of our country no matter which war over the course of our country’s history. We are grateful to all our veterans and heartily applaud them for their service today and especially on Veterans Day (which will be November 11 this year), but today is the solemn remembrance of those who gave their lives in service.

When I worked for Disney Feature Animation a few years back, our country entered into war after the events in New York and Washington D.C. on September 11, 2001. It was a scary time, not knowing if other parts of our country were also going to be attacked. We had received word that possibly the movie studios in Hollywood could be attacked, and security got really tight for a while with bomb sniffing dogs, checking all employee cars for bombs in trunks and underneath, and etc. We were appreciative of the troops that were being sent to the Middle East to try to prevent such a thing from happening again.

During that time, the studio put forth an effort to have employees draw, make cards, and participate in care packages being sent to our troops. I was asked to create a poster in support of these efforts. This Goofy image is what I came up with, and it was on display in the lobby of Feature Animation in Burbank, CA, for a while.

 

For those of you who are interested in art creation, Goofy was painted in gouache paint with colored pencils. Tanks and helicopters were inked on paper, then the rest was painted and assembled in Photoshop.

 

I was extremely honored to be asked to do it, and did so with an eye on the old posters for World War II. It was my goal to stir folks into helping out by hearkening back to the sacrifice many Americans made during that daunting time in our history. No one knew how long our latest efforts would take. Unfortunately, those efforts continue today, but we also continue to SUPPORT OUR TROOPS!

 

A little close-up of Goofy.

 

Two years ago I was fortunate to visit the Middle East and Africa with several of my cartoonist mates as we traveled with the USO to bring a few smiles to our soldiers. We visited with many of them listening to their stories while drawing for them. We brought to them a little piece of home, and they brought to us the realities of war. It was a sobering time that I shall never forget. (CLICK HERE to see previous posts of that trip here on the ol’ blog.)

I mention that because I brought this Goofy along with me on that trip. The USO printed up cards that each of us could give to the soldiers as a little memento of our visit, and this was the image that graced my cards. The cards brought many smiles to the folks overseas, and hopefully reminded them of all of us over here in the States.

 

One of the posters in the Middle East advertising the arrival of we cartoonists coming to visit with the soldiers.

 

On this Memorial Day, thank you to all the soldiers who have given the ultimate sacrifice, and I wish comfort to those they left behind. I thank our veterans for their service, thinking especially of my father, David Frye, who served during the Vietnam War. And thank you to the thousands of you serving today in some pretty rough places in this world. After having spent just a few days in some of those places with you, I came away with a greater appreciation for what it is you do and where you have do it.

No matter how tough things get in life, I always try to keep this passage from the Bible close to my heart:

Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”

Categories
Animals Art: Animation Art: Colored Pencil Art: Inking Art: Painting Art: Photoshop Disney Illustrations

The Noble Fireman

Any time someone tells me they are a fireman, I don’t believe them unless they look like this. C’mon! THIS is what a fireman is supposed to look like, right?!

 

His strength lies within his mustache.
Categories
Animals Art: Drawings Character Designs Random Doodles Sketchbook

An Open Invitation

Spent some time doodling in my sketchbook this week. Went back to the well of one of my favorite things to draw – bears! Here’s a bear excited for the accidental meal he thinks he’s about to have. How this ends is probably not in the bear’s favor.

 

Now this is what we call an open invitation!
Categories
Animals Art: Colored Pencil Art: Drawings Character Designs Random Doodles Sketchbook

Ethel Mermaid

There seems to be a lot of mermaids showing up on the social media sites I frequent. That’s because of the efforts of my pal Tom Bancroft who started the #mermay hashtag a few years ago encouraging artists to post mermaid art each day in the month of May.

Now, while The Little Mermaid was the film that first influenced me to consider animation as a serious career choice, I am not actually a fan of mermaids. They creep me out. Half woman? Half fish? Yikes! I’ll take my women with legs thank-you-very-much. So, you haven’t seen me posting mermaids left and right here on the ol’ blog, or on Twitter, or Instagram, or Facebook.

However, I DO like puns, and the other day while perusing the latest batch of mermaids from everyone, a pun came to mind inspired by my all-time favorite comedy movie It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (which itself was full of puns). Made in 1963, it featured many of the nation’s best comic actors, and had cameos of the rest of them. It was truly epic. One of the featured players was Ethel Merman who played a loudmouthed brassy mother-in-law to the beleaguered Milton Berle.

So, here is my one entry for #mermay, Ethel Mermaid as she would have appeared in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Seaworld.

 

I think she is part of the loud mouth bass family.
Categories
Animals Art: Painting Art: Photoshop Caricature Character Designs Illustrations

The Search

When you are on the hunt for your pal who appears to be missing, it’s always good to have your trusty dog on the case. Although, in this situation, having the “dog on the case” be quite literal may not be a good thing.

 

See, this is why I don’t care much for big dogs.

 

This actually is a new take on a previous idea I sketched a few years ago. I just find situations like this funny when a big dog is just too big for its own good. CLICK HERE to see my older sketch dealing with a magnitudal problem.

 

Categories
Animals Art: Drawings Art: Inking Art: Painting Character Designs Illustrations

Cat Scratches

Some cat scratches today made with just a pencil and paper. Crazy that those tools still work in our digital age.

 

Lots of different cats, and not one of them cares if you like them or not.

 

As a character designer for animation (which I do from time-to-time), it is important to be able to really explore the needs of the story with your designs for just a single character. Often you will have to play with head shapes, attitudes, expressions, fur, teeth, eye shapes, etc. There is an endless amount of combinations out there. (I once did over 60 designs for one character to try to satisfy a client!) These cats were not specifically for any project, but just a personal exercise in my sketchbook to try different things within the same species.

Also, when designing a character, it isn’t just about what the character looks like, but what the character looks like doing something. In animation, the character obviously has to move, hold things, talk, emote, interact with others, and even just walk. If you design something that looks good in a held staged pose, but really can’t move or bend in a simple walk, then you have a character that is non-functional.

Believe me, I’ve had this problem when working on projects for clients who don’t understand the design properties necessary for movement. I won’t get specific, but one project I worked on had characters that the client had first developed to a certain extent for print, not animation. In their drawings, appendages never were drawn bent, and their characters were always drawn from a front view. When I introduced elbows and knees to the designs, they panicked. When I made the thumbs slightly bigger than their initial nubs so they could hold things, that inspired a slew of discussions. When I drew an accurate side view, the sky caved in.

So, when designing, don’t just draw something static. Draw it doing things. And if you are drawing for other people, don’t fall in love with what you came up with, because they will always want to change it for good or bad.

This kind of turned into a lesson! Sorry about that. Just enjoy the rough sketches of cats!

Categories
Animals Art: Animation Character Designs Development Art Random Doodles Sketchbook

Drawn & Quoted: Soup’s On!

“A truly elegant taste is generally accompanied with excellency of heart.”

– Henry Fielding (1707 – 1754)

 

Needs more soul.
Categories
Animals Art: Colored Pencil Character Designs Drawn & Quoted Random Doodles Sketchbook

Bernie Wrightson

This past weekend, the legendary Bernie Wrightson passed away after a lengthy battle with cancer. He was a true master of the macabre with his monster work for comics and movies, with his take on an illustrated Frankenstein in 1983 being a benchmark that few have ever achieved with ink and paper. His work was simply inspirational.

I first met Bernie at the first comic convention I had ever attended back in the mid-90s. It was HeroesCon in Charlotte, NC. I was brand new to the business, and was spending the day with my friend Jim Scancarelli, artist/writer of the Gasoline Alley comic strip. We attended a dinner for all the invited pros (of which Jim was one) hosted by the convention coordinator Shelton Drum. Jim and I sat with Green Lantern creator Marty Nodell and comics legend Dick Giordano. Bernie was there, too, and I was thrilled to meet him. He was very gracious to the new kid in the room.

While my path did not take me down the road of comic books, animation called me away from the east coast to the sunny San Fernando Valley in the Los Angeles area. A few years later, Bernie also moved to the area where it was a thrill to get to know this giant a little bit better at various local industry events.

At one point, I became the president of the local Comic Art Professional Society (CAPS) where it was my duty to bring in guest speakers for our group of professional cartoonists. Bernie graciously accepted the invitation to come speak one night, and once in a while would drop in as a spectator for some of our other meetings just being one of the guys.

Perhaps the most fun I had around Bernie was at a dinner party we had been invited to. It was an anniversary party of some mutual friends of ours, and I got seated at the best table because Bernie and his wife Liz were there, too. To my right was movie director Ryan Schifrin and his wife Theresa, on my left was Frank Darabont, to Frank’s left was Bernie & Liz, amazing designer Greg Aronowitz, and I believe writer David J. Schow and his wife were sitting there, too. You may be wondering what a table full of creative people talk about at dinner – just about anything and everything would be the answer. It was such a pleasure to be in the company of these folks eating, laughing, and telling tales to each other late into the night.

While I had always hoped a little of Bernie’s talent would rub off on me, especially since I love drawing monsters, I will just have to settle on being the humorous cartoonist that I am, and remain in awe of Bernie’s greatness. (If you don’t know his work, do yourself a favor and Google him NOW!)

Feeling a little inspired yesterday, I thought I’d sketch this creature in Bernie’s honor.

 

Thanks for showing us how it’s done, Bernie.
Categories
Animals Art: Inking Art: Photoshop Character Designs Monsters Random Doodles Sketchbook