As we head into this final weekend before Christmas, just thought I’d share this little colored pencil and watercolor piece I did for the back of my Christmas card this year. It was such a pleasure working on Warner Bros.’ Green Eggs & Ham show earlier this year (currently showing on Netflix), that I wanted to do a little winter piece of Sam I Am and Guy Am I.
Do you want to build a snowham?
I hope you all have a wonderful time over the holidays with family and friends. If you take a road trip with a good buddy, though, leave the Chickeraffe at home.
Thought I’d do a sketch in my li’l ol’ sketchbook based on the latest big project I’ve been working on. Since this past August, I’ve been freelancing on storyboards for the Alvinnn!!! and the Chipmunks show that airs on Nickelodeon.
When I was a kid, I had the Chipmunks’ Christmas album. It’s kind of fun to get to draw them these days, especially since I can relate to Alvin in that I never did get that hula hoop either.
Sure, they’re cute now when they aren’t getting into trouble.
At the risk of sounding monotonous with the third post in a row about emerald colored chicken orbs and porcine meat, it really was a privilege to have worked at Warner Bros. on the traditionally animated Green Eggs and Ham series that currently is streaming on Netflix. It’s encouraging to have been reading so many great comments from fans on various posts online who have been enjoying the labor our team near and far put into the show.
These were just a few of my practice drawings created to get a feel for the character of Sam I Am when I started on the show back in 2018. It was such a treat to get to draw for an adaptation of my favorite Dr. Seuss book, and I’m now a hero to my nephews and niece.
I did not draw them in a house, I did not draw them with a mouse.
One exciting thing that helps the Green Eggs & Ham show leap from the screen is the magnificent music of composer David Newman, a veteran composer of many movie scores over the years (Galaxy Quest, The Sandlot, Hoffa, Ice Age, etc.). I had the pleasure of watching him work his magic with an orchestra in the recording studio one day, and afterwards felt the urge to Seussify him.
David Newman is quite musical, Making melodies that are Seussical.
Later in the year, I snapped this second image of David onstage at The Hollywood Bowl where he conducted a concert of John Williams’ music. Film music royalty.
That night, John Williams spoke of his friendship with David’s father, Alfred Newman, the great composer and former head of music for 20th Century Fox (he wrote the fanfare in front of all Fox movies!)
Have any of you Netflix subscribers been able to catch any of the new Green Eggs & Ham show that unfurled last Friday? Did you like Green Eggs & Ham? Would you, could you watch them in a house? How about watching with a mouse?
Perhaps I haven’t talked much about it here on the ol’ blog, but I spent the last half of 2018 and the first half of 2019 working at Warner Bros. Animation on this terrific series in the story department! It was a blast to be able to work on an adaptation of my favorite Dr. Seuss book from when I was a kid.
I can’t show any of my actual work on the show since what I worked on hasn’t been released yet, but here’s a quick little ink & watercolor piece I did as a prize for our GEAH crew’s Friday night game night. Each Friday night after work, those who could would stick around for a game. One night I decided to contribute a mystery prize in an envelope for whoever the winner would be that night. It happened to go to Reem Aliadeeb, our show’s character designer!
Back in 2009, I did a little series of watercolor paintings of characters I had become familiar with having worked on three seasons of the My Friends Tigger & Pooh television show.
Lumpy the heffalump, introduced in The Heffalump Movie, was a sweet character and was friends with Roo. The paintings weren’t done for anything official for Disney – just something on my own.
I’ve enjoyed drawing the Pooh characters ever since that show, and still get requests from kids from time to time.
When I was working on the Green Eggs and Ham show at Warner Bros., I was chatting with some colleagues who shared an office with each other. Lorenzo Martinez was joking that he and Sarah Arakaki were Batman and Robin, to which Sarah commented that she was Batman in that equation.
I thought that image seemed funny in my head, especially since Sarah is a bit short, and Lorenzo is overly tall. So, when I had a moment, I decided to turn that into a real image. This was the result.
The Dark Knight and Boy Wonder instilling fear in the hearts of their enemies.
Hopefully you’ll find the image funny on its own merit since you all probably don’t know Lorenzo or Sarah. What you should know about them, though, is that they are brilliant animation layout artists. Those are the people who design the environments – the sets – in animation.
Lorenzo is a veteran going back to films like The Little Mermaid, and more recently was the layout supervisor for the animated sequences of Mary Poppins Returns. Sarah is new to the business with Green Eggs being her first show. She’s got a very bright future ahead of her! Together with Tyler Gentry who I worked with years ago on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, they make up the layout department on Green Eggs & Ham coming soon to a Netflix near you!
