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!
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.
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.
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.
Yesterday we ended with the creation of the color comp in Photoshop. Today we dive into beginning the traditional art on paper.
To start with, the line drawing needs to be printed out on the computer so it can be traced down on the final paper. I print such things out in a light color onto 11×14″ layout bond paper. It’s thin, and it takes my inkjet ink nicely. The art needs to be blown up to the final size, which means it gets printed onto two pieces of layout bond and then taped together.
Unfortunately, there are no photos of this next step – using graphite paper I made by rubbing a woodless pencil on a piece of tracing paper, I put that graphite side down onto Arches watercolor block paper, then I tape down the printed layout bond paper on top of it. Then just using a pencil, I trace over my printed drawing to transfer it in graphite to the painting surface. It is printed in a light color so that it’s obvious as to what I have traced with the pencil. Once I pull all that away, there are extra graphite smudges all over the place, which normally I’d carefully erase, but not this time…
This time I decided to trace my pencil lines with ink, then I vigorously erased all the extraneous pencil marks. Why? Because the media this time was going to involve heavy use of gouache paint, which is an opaque watercolor, which means it’s going to cover the lines. If I left it as pencil lines, I wouldn’t be able to see through the paint to bring out the details. Ink lines will show through better, but ultimately will get covered in paint and colored pencils by the time this piece is finished.
It’s all about the little people.
The next step comes from experience in using the various media that will be employed on this painting. Watercolor, gouache, and colored pencil will all be coming into the mix, and I usually start with things furthest away moving to the foreground. So, next is the application of liquid frisket.
Liquid frisket is a white milky liquid that is really a liquid rubber. It smells bad, but you apply it to areas that you want to mask off from getting painted. In this case, deep oranges and yellows will be applied to the background, but since I’m working with water soluble paints, I don’t want those to bleed through later when painting the characters. So, liquid frisket is applied right over those elements.
You need to let the frisket dry, which can take awhile, sometimes up to an hour. Once it does, it dries slightly yellow, and will have a little rubbery tack to it. Don’t worry, once you paint all the exposed layers, the frisket will peel up leaving those areas untouched.
Kind of a dramatic angle. “RUN! Run from the giant liquid frisketed monster!!”
Today begins my step-by-step tutorial about the making of my poster for The Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles’Illustration West 59 call for entries poster. Illustration West 59 is SILA’s 59th annual art competition for professional illustrators and students, for which I am serving as Show Chair. The deadline to enter is only a few short weeks away on October 31. (CLICK HERE for entry details.)
As Show Chair, along with choosing my jury and other various administrative tasks, I was asked to create the poster image this year. While the contest is open to entrants from around the globe, SILA is based in Los Angeles, the hub for movie making. With my penchant for drawing monsters, what better way to promote an LA contest than with a monster movie poster!
Painting a happy little monster Bob Ross style!
I love old vintage movie posters, and immediately my mind went to the monster movie posters of the 1950s. In looking on the internet at what had come before, it became evident that the ones I most gravitated to were images of huge monsters with people running in abject terror, usually with a couple in the foreground really showing the emotional distress of such citywide intrusions into their lives.
In picking out my favorites, it dawned on me that most of these great posters were illustrated by the legendary Reynold Brown. Not surprising, I later learned that Reynold had been a professor at Pasadena’s Art Center college where he had been an instructor of one of my judges, famed movie poster artist Drew Struzan! Ah yes, I had chosen to be inspired by the best.
So, to begin with, I sketched a number of thumbnail sketches (little super sketchy drawings just to get some ideas down in a visual way), soon settling on a furry, alien-like octopus breaking through the Los Angeles skyline. Unfortunately, I don’t have my rough rejected ideas to show you, but I CAN show you the drawing I settled on.
After showing it around, I had gotten some feedback that maybe it should be modernized a little to steer away from it looking too fifties. The only trouble is, there are a LOT of people currently in LA who dress in vintage clothes from the ’40s and ’50s as it is, so I was reluctant. As a way to modernize, I did this sketch changing the man’s clothes, and putting tattoos on the figures. Ultimately, I didn’t care for this approach, preferring to keep it more vintage.
By the way, I do my planning sketches in Photoshop on the computer. Working on a Cintiq monitor for drawing, I draw in layers which allows for easy changes to the composition while working through it. This is how I start all my traditional paintings – working it out on the computer first.
The next step is to paint a color comprehensive sketch on the computer. This is a great place to work out issues of color, make changes as necessary, and make sure it is all working before going to the trouble of breaking out actual paint and paper. I will print this out, and keep it on my drafting table as a guide while I work on the final traditional art.
So, come back tomorrow as I show you the first steps of creating this illustration on actual bonafide PAPER! Shocking, isn’t it? Ha!
