Category: Art: Preliminary Sketches

…From the Flat File: 2006 – Dick Van Dyke

Post author By Chad Frye
Post date June 14, 2011

Two weeks ago at The Writer’s Guild in Beverly Hills, CA, entertainment legends Carl Reiner and Dick Van Dyke had a conversation on stage on the occasion of the release of Mr. Van Dyke’s new autobiography. Hosted by Writers Bloc Presents, these two legends swapped tales and memories before a rapt audience of which I was very happy to be a part.

Carl Reiner & Dick Van Dyke at the Writers Bloc Presents event on May 31, 2011.

As a child, it was quite easy to become a fan of Dick Van Dyke due to Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, only to further appreciate his talents with The Dick Van Dyke Show, and many other projects all the way up to the fairly recent Night at the Museum. When first arriving in California in 1997 to work for Disney, I was hoping that would be my ticket to finally meet Dick Van Dyke. Turns out that ticket was a wee bit elusive.

Every now and then, I would hear that friends of mine would have met him at the computer convention Siggraph that I would also be attending. Others would meet him on the Disney lot now and then, even once making a planned appearance with Julie Andrews at the renaming of one of the Disney soundstages in Ms. Andrews’ honor. Where was I? Foolishly working.

A few years ago, the charity group Actors and Others for Animals [click here to see my previous post on this group] were having their annual fundraising banquet in honor of Dick Van Dyke. Mary Willard, the very funny wife of the very funny Fred Willard, called and asked if I might be willing to draw their personal ad for the program book. How could I resist an opportunity to draw Dick, Fred and Mary? Better yet, the job came with an invitation to the event where one would certainly have the opportunity to shake the hand of the rubbery master of mirth himself!

This was my initial rough sketch to show the Willards for their input. After incorporating their comments, the final art below was produced.

After completing the whimsical ad for the Willards, my anticipations for meeting Mr. Van Dyke were growing exponentially each day. In a cruel twist of fate, those same precious anticipations were frigidly dashed yet again. The banquet was being held at the same time I was scheduled to be on the opposite side of the country on vacation with my family!

This was the final ad that Mary and Fred Willard placed in the black & white program book honoring Dick Van Dyke.

It was beginning to feel as though Dick Van Dyke was a myth that parents made up to tell their children about on cold winter nights. “Twas the night before movies, when over the lot it happens, a tall lanky sweep appears, that guy from Mary Poppins….” Seriously, I was beginning to wonder if I needed to hang a plate of tea and cakes from the ceiling at night to see if he would appear. Or at the least, add an ottoman to my office decor.

Well, Virginia, there really is a Dick Van Dyke. Last year, several years after parting from Disney myself, I was attending a private reception when I turned around and there before me was the man behind Bert, Rob Petrie, Caractacus Potts, Dr. Sloan and so many others. I finally was able to shake his hand, and thank him for being a part of filling my own head with imagination as a child that indubitably continues within me today.

Chad Frye with Dick Van Dyke at the Hollywood & Highlands complex in 2010.

Tuesdays with “TIM”

Post author By Chad Frye
Post date March 28, 2011

Yes, I know. It’s Monday. Our fundraising effort for TIM ends in the wee early hours (12:42am to be exact) of Tuesday morning for some of you, so I thought I’d post this week’s Tuesdays with TIM column today to give you one final look at some of my art created in the development of this short film before donation time runs out. For my Pacific coast friends, our fundraising on Kickstarter ends at 9:42pm TONIGHT!

Today I offer you an insider’s look at one of my illustrations showing Timothy Todd moping about in a cemetery dressed like his hero Tim Burton. The purpose for this development piece was to show the dichotomy of Timothy’s world. On the right, you can see the world he actually lives in. It’s a bright, cheery, and very straight-laced version of suburbia not unlike that portrayed in Burton’s Edward Scissorhands. The cemetery reflects the imagination of little Timothy Todd – an imagination that sees a dark, muted and skewed environment such as is common in a creepy Burton world.

Tim Burton kid — Timothy Todd ponders his youth well spent, while sitting atop the grave of Vincent.

In looking at the evolution of this illustration, you can see that I hadn’t quite figured out the two worlds. In the first drawing below, both the world of his imagination and that of his real life were depicted as eerily creepy. In looking at Tim Burton animation projects, it is hard to find a straight line anywhere in the creepy scenes. I had my “eureka” moment when watching The Nightmare Before Christmas – in the “real life” world where Christmas is celebrated, straight lines abound!

Tim Burton tribute — This was the first drawing that made Timothy Todd’s home look too creepy.

Having a different look for the “real life” world is necessary for our story not only to create the separation between Timothy’s life and his imagination, but it also helps you as the viewer to relate. Even though Timothy’s real world is cartoony, by having it be more straight and suburban, it reminds us of the suburbia we all see around us. So, in this next drawing, the house is made a bit more boring, and the picket fence was changed to define the yard. The car was just in the way.

Tim Burton parody — This second pass worked much better in showing the difference between the two worlds.

And then we get to the final watercolor & colored pencil illustration. Really, the only changes here are the addition of curly branches in the cemetery trees (which was always the plan), and a little dog in the yard. While it may be tough to tell in these scans, the tombstones all reflect past Tim Burton projects. Of course, little Timothy is sitting atop the tombstone for Vincent, the short animated film Burton made in the 1980s that we are parodying with TIM.

Tim Burton tribute parody — You can almost hear the voice of Christopher Lee, our wonderful narrator, speaking over this image.

This is your LAST day to lend us a hand by pledging some money to make TIM. To make this film become a reality, we need to hire professional puppet builders, miniature set builders, animators, and many other creative people. Stop-motion animated films require many different talents pooled together to make something special. You can click on any of the images above to go right to Kickstarter. Here is our promo video one last time:

Thank you so much for taking the time to look at these Tuesdays with TIM updates over the past two months. Even though our Kickstarter fundraising ends tonight, I’ll continue to have these updates periodically should we proceed with making TIM.

Art: Colored Pencil Art: Drawings Art: Preliminary Sketches Art: Watercolor Development Art Illustrations TIM the Movie Videos

Tuesdays with “TIM”

Post author By Chad Frye
Post date March 15, 2011

First, let me extend a hearty THANK YOU to those of you who may have given TIM a financial pledge in the past few days on Kickstarter! Over the weekend, we jumped up over $5000 in pledges!

Today I wanted to share some thoughts with you about the art that has been the face of my film from the beginning. Appropriately, it was also the first painting I did in the development of TIM. My producing partner Brian Joseph Ochab and I needed something that could very quickly say what our project was all about while invoking the spirit of the animated projects of Tim Burton.

Chad Frye Illustration Guy — Chad Frye at his drafting desk working on an original watercolor painting for “TIM”.

Anyone familiar with those Burton produced films can easily see in this piece the influence primarily from The Nightmare Before Christmas. While it may feel as though it is directly out of that movie, I was careful to put my own hand in it. Brian and I did sit and watch Nightmare together, and while sitting there in front of the television with a sketchbook in my lap, the following extremely rough drawing spilled forth:

Burton-esque Cemetary — 1. The first rough sketch. Notice the double moons? I was undecided on how large it should be and where it should go.

Drawings such as the one above are quick brain blorts of mine. It was probably whipped out in about a minute or two just to quickly get a visual idea on paper. That image mulled in my head for a few days to the point where it felt like there might be an idea there needing to be developed further. So, I grabbed my sketchbook again and did the following drawing:

TIM cemetary gate — 2. The second pass at this idea, still just a sketchbook drawing.

It still wasn’t quite right, but that was it! Later I sat down at my drafting table and worked on a large tight pencil drawing on tracing paper choosing a low vantage point looking up at the cemetery gate and moon, add in a couple of jack-o-lanterns, and finesse the whole scene. You can see that originally I intended to include even more jack-o-lanterns than what appeared in the final, but later while working on the painting, they just felt excessive.

TIM the movie pencil art — 3. The final actual size pencil drawing with all the details worked out.

From that final pencil drawing, I created the watercolor painting with a limited creepy color palette. That low vantage point was intentionally designed so that your eye is guided right up there to the title of the film, but also the use and placement of color and lighting was to achieve that same end result. Colored pencils were used to further tie things up and accent other details.

TIM development poster — 4. The final watercolored painting along with the tagline direct from our script.

When I go to a museum to look at paintings, I love getting my nose up as close as I can without setting off alarms so that I can really see the details of what the artist had done. With that idea in mind, here are a few close-ups of the final painting. Enjoy!

FRYE_cemetery_hill — The angel statue is a direct homage to the angel that “catches” Jack Skellington in Burton’s “Nightmare Before Christmas.”

FRYE_cemetery_gate — You can really see how the colored pencil was utilized in the piece from this close-up.

FRYE_pumkin — And a close-up view of a jack-o-lantern showing every gritty paint and pencil stroke.

TIM is still very much in need of every pledge small and large if we are to reach our goal by March 29. If we don’t reach that goal, then all those fine and generous pledges will not be able to be fulfilled. The fate of our film is in YOUR hands! Click on any of the images above to come support TIM!

Art: Colored Pencil Art: Drawings Art: Preliminary Sketches Art: Watercolor Illustrations Sketchbook TIM the Movie

Tuesdays with “TIM”

Post author By Chad Frye
Post date March 8, 2011

It’s Tuesday, so that must mean it’s time to share some more behind-the-scenes tidbits with you about my short animated film TIM. My producing partner, Brian Joseph Ochab, and I were recently discussing the need to have a logo that would appropriately communicate the vibe we are trying to elicit with TIM. It needs to be fun, whimsical, and maintain a creepy Burtonesque vibe that the film itself will have. In essence, something that can be the public face of our project. So, I broke out my sketchbook and started conceptualizing!

When I begin the visual thought process, often a flurry of very loose doodles tumble out of my pencil. My hand just whirls around the paper blorping out whatever it wants in the search for the right idea. You’ve heard of someone’s hand having a mind of its own? Believe me, sometimes it’s a challenge to get my actual mind to coordinate with the hand. My hand can go off on its own like a teenager who is handed the keys to the car for the first time. In this case, the hand was exploring lots of things that just weren’t working. It spent several hours involved in this pursuit until one sketch fell onto the page that caused my actual mind to say “THAT’S IT!”

Tim Burton — This is the rough blue sketch of TIM that became an “eureka” moment.

After working out a more detailed pencil drawing, the next step was to create a nicely inked drawing. I do like inking by hand with brush on paper. I bought a really terrific brush pen a year or so ago and use it almost exclusively over my traditional paint brush/bottle of ink. It’s a Japanese brush pen sold by Pentel here in the States, and the ink in the cartridges is a nice solid and permanent black ink. That sucker really holds a point, too. Anyway, enough about my love for my brush pen. I also use permanent black ink pens like Microns or Prismacolor to supplement what the brush pen can’t do.

So, Tim was hand-inked, then scanned into Photoshop for some coloring. In this case, I did a kind of digital airbrushing to bring little Timothy Todd to life. The final art has all kinds of potential applications. We already made it the face of our “TIM – the movie” Facebook page (come join us by clicking here!), he makes an appearance on a coffee mug in a video update we posted on our Kickstarter page, he’s in an ad on Stop Motion Magazine’s website, and he’ll pop up in other places as well. In fact, we believe that a version of this drawing will even be the special limited edition collector’s pin that we are offering as a reward on Kickstarter!

This image may also become a T-shirt down the line. Well, it IS a T-shirt now, but only a one-of-a-kind at the moment. Just this past Saturday, Plaxico the dog featured TIM on his website. (If you’d like to take a look, CLICK HERE!) We’d like to eventually make shirts down the road, but for now am concentrating on trying to actually get the film made! But, if we do make it a shirt, it would likely look something like this…

So there you have it – the anatomy of logo creation. Come back again this THURSDAY where I’ll have a BONUS “Tuesdays with TIM” post for you. There was just too much to cram into one day!

And if you’d like to be a part of our film, come visit us at TIMtheMovie.com for more information!

Art: Drawings Art: Inking Art: Photoshop Art: Preliminary Sketches Character Designs Illustrations Random Doodles Sketchbook TIM the Movie

2010 Monster Month: Day 24 – Dinomime

Post author By Chad Frye
Post date October 24, 2010

Today’s monster has kind of a strange yet short backstory. At my current animation day job I was working in a large room with several other artists. Somehow we got to talking about dinosaurs in museums, when the thought was brought up by someone about dino bones in France. Then our imaginations got the better of us, and we were wondering what a French dinosaur might have been doing when he was trapped in the earth. Naturally, he had to have been a street mime.

I know, I know – it was a VERY strange line of thinking, but we were all storyboard guys after all. Of course, I had to stand up and mimic how a stubby-armed tyrannosaurus mime might have performed in silence on a quaint Parisian street corner. To further illustrate my point, I quickly sat down to my Cintiq tablet (a computer screen you can draw on with an electronic pen) where I banged out this quickie sketch in about a minute…

He’s performing the classic “trapped in an iceberg” routine.

The sketch, while certainly not anatomically correct, has such an energy to it that I thought it’d be fun to share it with you. One of these days I’d like to turn it into a full-blown watercolor illustration. Perhaps that will make an appearance in a Monster Month of the future!

Oh, and if you ever run across a real Dinomime, be sure to toss him a tip if you value your life!

Animals Art: Photoshop Art: Preliminary Sketches Character Designs Monsters Random Doodles Sketchbook

2010 Monster Month: Day 16 – The Red Scare

Post author By Chad Frye
Post date October 16, 2010

I tend to draw in my sketchbook often. It’s a place where I can go to get all the bad drawings out of my hand, and hopefully get some decent visual ideas on the page, too. Often I’ll look at that blank whiteness that mocks me without a specific thought as to what I’ll be drawing. Even as I put the pencil to the paper, I’ll begin a nose and let the face organically materialize around it making the design decisions along the way. This unstructured method really allows for random experimentation.

For those of you who regularly follow my blog, you know that from time to time I share a drawing here and there from the sketchbook. I try to select a decent sketch to show while shielding you from lesser ones that may share space with it on the actual paper. Once in a great while, a whole page in the sketchbook just clicks and is worthy to be unveiled. This is one such page…

All I knew at the start was that I wanted to draw some monsters. While they aren’t masterpieces, they each have a little something interesting about them, don’t you think? If you like to draw, PLEASE buy yourself a sketchbook and fill it with the random musings of your mind!

Well, to continue the creative process, tomorrow I will have a more fully developed full-bodied drawing of one of these fellas that just started here as a random red monster head. Come back to see which one I picked!

Art: Preliminary Sketches Character Designs Development Art Monsters Random Doodles Sketchbook

Play Ball!!

Post author By Chad Frye
Post date August 2, 2010

Over the course of what feels like a very short career despite having been a member of the full-time creative field for 16 years, have drawn in many styles to please many clients. That is what a freelance illustrator/cartoonist does. You always bring a little of yourself to the table, but if somebody needs Yogi Bear, they don’t want him to look like Mickey Mouse. You need to work cohesively with the other players. I get that.

Over the past number of years, the animation business has adopted the philosophy that if an artist’s portfolio does not look like their product, the artist must not be able to draw their characters. And if they think there is a glimmer of hope in the pencil wielder, the studio will require a remunerationless drawing test that usually is a good week’s worth of work. In essence, they make the artists try out for the team.

Perhaps these ideas came along because artists would lie on their resumès, or maybe it’s because hiring is usually handled by human resource agents that don’t truly understand the drawing process. I don’t say this as a slam on them by any means. With budgets being slashed, with many animation jobs leaving our borders, and with a local workforce greater than the amount of available jobs, companies want to know if you can draw what they need. I just wonder why, when a resumè has legitimate claims of having drawn things as diverse as characters for Disney, Pixar, Warner Bros., Hanna Barbera, Mercer Mayer, Fisher-Price, and superheroes that one would assume that artist cannot draw new things? Just last year I was turned down for a job with the stated reason that they didn’t think I could draw their characters.

So, that being said, when I apply for a new job in animation, I try to find out a little of the style of a show and see if I can quickly add some drawings to my portfolio that would key the bosses to the fact that I can draw their characters. They need to know that I can play ball with them.

The following is an example of just that. You’ll notice that this baseball boy is not exactly like the style of my other personal work here on the blog. He was created as a part of my portfolio customized for a job application earlier this year. Started as a rough sketch in my sketchbook, he then became an inked drawing with some color added in Photoshop for good measure. I didn’t get that job, but I did have fun trying to broaden my horizons a bit.

This baseball boy is a rough sketch taken directly from the pages of my sketchbook.

And here's a more finished look at the sketch. Click on the image to see it larger! — And here’s a more finished look at the sketch. Click on the image to see it larger!

Ironically, despite what I wrote above, I didn’t have to “try out” for a character design position I currently hold. Based on the reputation of my past work, I am grateful to be helping bring Zhu Zhu Pets toys to life in the animated realm. Sometimes the resumè and a good pitch from colleagues alone can help get the game play going. Then you have to step up to the plate and prove you deserve to be swinging the bat.

PLAY BALL!

Art: Drawings Art: Inking Art: Photoshop Art: Preliminary Sketches Character Designs Random Doodles Sketchbook

Captain Hook & Smee – Part 1

Post author By Chad Frye
Post date May 4, 2010

I thought I’d share with you a couple of paintings I did this past winter. I got into a Disney’s Peter Pan mode of thinking and envisioned myself as Captain Hook’s first mate, Smee.

Well, while they are technically paintings, I tend to call these “watercolor sketches”. Each of these took maybe an hour or two to do from start to finish, so they aren’t my typical full-blown watercolor illustrations. This is what I do if I’m making a card for a friend, or doing quickie pieces for fans. There is a certain spontaneity to them that gives them a real energy. Everything is fast and loose and hopefully pure fun.

I’d like to show them to you step-by-step, which is something I haven’t done in awhile. Since there will be a few images for each, I’ll show you one of these today, and I’ll post the second one on Thursday.

So, as with any art I do, it all starts with a rough sketch. I don’t have to please anyone but myself, so it can be as rough as I want it to be. As you can see, the rough sketch for this one started with blue pencil, then I finalized my lines with regular lead. Captain Hook is always fun to draw, and it just seemed with my own body type that I was a shoo-in for Smee.

Hook_Frye_Smee1a — This is the initial rough sketch of the pirates!

Next, I took that rough and put it on my light table and created my final line with colored pencil onto a rough textured watercolor paper. I didn’t want to get too tight with the drawing, so you can see even in this phase the line work is sketchy in places, and not all the shapes are closed.

This is the final pencil line drawing of Capt. Hook and Chad Smee.

Next will be the tones. I often like putting the tones in purple. It looks nice when working with bright colors, which I will be for this piece. The purple seems too bright and dark right now, but later when the final paint is placed on top of it, the purple will get muted a little, and even somewhat blend in to the wet medium. And so that all my shadows don’t have a hard edge, I was careful to have it fade off in certain places like on Captain Hook’s face, and even his hat.

Hook and "Smee" get the purple tone treatment in watercolor. — Hook and “Smee” get the purple tone treatment in watercolor.

Then lastly, I painted in the final colors. You can see that some of the purple shadows got absorbed into the final colors, while in other areas it served as an enhancement. Then I ended with flicking some blue specks on with a toothbrush (preferably NOT the one you brush your teeth with).

The final piece bringing Hook and "Smee" to life. — The final piece bringing Hook and “Smee” to life.

Come back on Thursday to see the second Captain Hook and Chee (or is it Shmad – thanks to my friend Jennifer Hobson-Plattner for the name) full-bodied watercolor sketch!

Art: Preliminary Sketches Art: Watercolor Caricature Disney Illustrations Self Portrait