If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know that I have a great interest in film music. I grew up in a musical family, but while my siblings were off having lessons and practicing their instruments, I sat at my little drawing board practicing my skills with pencil and brush. I think the first soundtrack I ever bought was John Williams’ Raiders of the Lost Ark on cassette tape when I was in high school. The collection has grown over the years, and is all CDs these days.
Back in 1995 I first became aware of composer, John Debney. He wrote a brilliant score for the less than brilliant movie Cutthroat Island, and it remains one of my favorites of his to this day. First impressions are lasting I guess. I got to meet John years later when I worked on The Emperor’s New Groove at Disney. John is really wonderful with comedy scores, and his work on that film really injected something special into the storytelling.
Well, this past weekend John’s latest work was heard by the many ticket holders who caused Iron Man 2 to bring in almost $134 million in the United States. The score won’t be available for purchase until July 7th from what I hear, and I, for one, can’t wait. So much so, I felt inspired to do a little piece this weekend.
Breaking out the watercolor paint and colored pencils, I present to you this caricature of John Debney as Iron Man (click on the image to enlarge it):
Iron Man Debney imparting some musical justice.
So, if you are the casual film music fan and aren’t aware of some of John’s work, here are a few scores I’d recommend you start with before enjoying the rest of his oeuvre:
Cutthroat Island
The Passion of the Christ
Liar Liar
Elf
Dreamer
Zathura
The Stoning of Soraya M.
To see a larger list of John’s filmography, you can CLICK HERE!
A couple of days ago I shared with you the step-by-steps of a little piece I did of Disney’s Captain Hook with a caricature of yours truly in the place of Hook’s first mate Mr. Smee (CLICK HERE to see that post). When I created that little watercolor sketch this past winter, it was only one of two pieces on that theme. While that was a close-up, perhaps you’d like to see the second piece, this time full-bodied poses.
Since I went into some detail on each step in the last post, I’ll post these three stages with minimal comment and just let you enjoy the visual progression. So, without further ado, Captain Hook and Chad Frye as Mr. Smee! Peter Pan would certainly not be the same movie had it been done this way!
This is a colored pencil line drawing on nice textured watercolor paper.The purple watercolor paint will take care of all the shading in the painting.And here is the final Capt. Hook with Mr. Shmad – or is it Mr. Chee? Well, while “Chad” and “Smee” don’t mix well verbally, pictorially they go together fine.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Back in 1999, I was working for Disney Feature Animation. Tarzan had recently come out to great success, and the studio was busy with more films such as Home on the Range, Atlantis, The Emperor’s New Groove, Fantasia 2000, Dinosaur, and the ultimately unproduced Wild Life. So much was going on, and it was a swell place to be employed.
In my early days as an illustrator, I did a few “Where’s Waldo” style books about the Bible. I thought, “wouldn’t it be neat to do a ‘Where’s Waldo’-type painting of the main Feature Animation building?” I just wanted to capture a snapshot of the whole place – kind of a day-in-the-life sort of thing. So, I set out to work on this self-induced project, little knowing that it would take up four solid months of nights and weekends to pull off.
The completed Disney Feature Animation Southside “Where’s Waldo” style print featuring over 800 employees and characters.
To start with, I was able to acquire maps of each floor of the Disney Animation Southside building (the “hat” building) in Burbank, CA. (We had another 4-story building over by the Burbank airport called “Northside” where Fantasia 2000, Dinosaur, and visual effects for live-action movies were being done.) These floor maps were great because they outlined every cubical and office with the names of each employee who worked in that space.
Secondly, I needed to know what everyone looked like. Sure, I worked with these folks, but I don’t have a photographic memory. They had an online database used internally called TIMMY where you could type in any animation employee’s name, and their photo and a short profile would pop up. I printed out many such profiles for reference.
A detail of the top right corner. Originally I had “Disney” above that title, but that was the one thing the Disney lawyers would not allow for the print since it wasn’t published by the company.
To illustrate four floors, and the 800+ people who worked in the building, the original art had to be large. I worked on a 30″ x 40″ piece of illustration board, painstakingly pencilling the entire piece, then inking it all with Rapidograph pens and waterproof ink, then painting in every little detail. It was so large that I often laid it on the floor and worked on it there. And it took so long that I even shipped it to myself on vacation so I could work on it then, too. Why? Because I had a deadline.
The studio would allow employees to sign up for personal art shows. The waiting list was two years, but I knew mine was coming up. I wanted to do this for the show knowing it would be well-received by my colleagues. It got finished in time, and was displayed with four 11″ x 17″ charts of each face with the employee’s name next to it so they could see what they looked like, then go find themselves in the painting. It went over so well that many asked for copies.
Details like Marc & Alice Davis giving a talk in the theater, Mickey Mouse entering with his security team, and even Eartha Kitt signing in at the receptionist’s desk.Roy Disney standing in his “show office” in the Hat, and the area where many of the supervising animators worked.The piano room shows a moment with John Lasseter and Randy Newman. At the time, John and other Pixar folk would come down to the studio for meetings. Now, of course, John runs the joint.
So, after getting permission from Disney’s lawyers, I had 27″ x 40″ prints made and sold them at the studio complete with a 10-page list of who was in it and a Certificate of Authenticity. Many people purchased them, and seemed to enjoy them. The ultimate compliment came when one day I had cause to go visit Roy E. Disney at his office on the lot. Roy’s office was in the old office suite of his uncle Walt. As I started down his hallway, there was a poster for Pinocchio, one for Fantasia 2000, and then this one.
I recently donated one of these limited edition prints (#153 of 850) to the Help the Hodges charity art auction run by the National Cartoonists Society Foundation (NCSF). It has gone live on eBay TODAY, and will be available for bids until March 14, 2010. If you are interested in going for it here is a link to the auction: Chad Frye’s Disney Southside Print
The lower right corner shows a cryogenically frozen Walt Disney. My office was right next door to that room. I always heard mechanical sounds and steam hissing from in there, and imagined this scene. (Walt is actually buried in Glendale, CA by the way.)This is the cover of the 10-page list that comes with the poster. Each colleague’s head is listed with their name next to it for identification purposes in the large print.The COA is hand-numbered and signed to match the print.
If you haven’t visited the Help the Hodges auctions on eBay yet, yesterday I posted another 71 reasons you should check it out. We currently have 122 items of original cartoon art, fine art, prints, posters, sculptures and books all for sale to help the family of Matthew Hodge, the teen who is presently in a coma from a car accident with a train in the Franklin, Tennesse area.
Yesterday’s posts include art by the great movie poster illustrator Drew Struzan, Wallace & Gromit creator Nick Park, Lilo & Stitch creator Chris Sanders, Glen Keane animation art, drawings from Princess & the Frog animators, so much art from former Disney artists, and even art from classic Disney films including a Mickey Mouse drawing by Frank Thomas, one of Disney’s Nine Old Men.
Towards the end of the Mickey art is a painting I did based on when I worked on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. So, if you’ve been itchin’ for something by me, CLICK HERE to go right to the piece on eBay!
To see all the art Help the Hodges has on eBay, CLICK HERE!
This painting will be available on eBay until February 7th.
Every year as December arrives, I sit and think back on the last eleven months and wonder where the time went. It has been a rather interesting year in 2009 with much of the country trying to make sense of the economy, our government is still engaged in war, there has been a lot of talk about nationalized health care, and the housing crisis has affected many friends and neighbors. The hustle and bustle of life keeps us busy, even through the Christmas season – all the goings to and fro, back and forth, here and there – it can be easy to forget why we even have this holiday.
This year, my Christmas card deals with just that. Despite the distractions of national and world events, or of the myriad of advertising from retailers all trying to solve their financial problems through you, you need to clear your way through the clutter and stop to remember that Christmas celebrates that day when God came to earth in the form of a man to offer a way for our souls to find peace in what really matters – eternal life through Him.
LOVE is a strange and wondrous thing. When one looks for that special person, they have an idea of what it is that they want, but there is always that single undefinable quality that just smacks them like a ton of bricks when two like-minded souls find each other. What these two have must be very special, and certainly something that only they can understand.
Xanquerd and Zorp, sittin’ in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G….
Come back again tomorrow on HALLOWEEN to see the grand finalè post in 2009’s MONSTER MONTH!
Who can resist looking deep into a pair of sultry brown eyes dripping with earnest, heartfelt emotion. Now do it to four pairs, and not so much heartfelt emotion as it is crazed infatuation. At least it’s earnest.
With two tongues, I wonder if she can converse with herself?
