Christmas is here again Pt.02

So a few months after my designs were turned in, the folks at Renegade asked if I'd be interested doing a series of illustrations for a montage piece that super talented artist, Scott O'Brien had storyboarded. Style wise, they were looking for something in the vien of the Mary Blair's book, "I Can Fly". Yikes....talk about setting the bar high!!

Well, being a huge fan of Mary Blair's work, I knew right away that that I can never reproduce the charm and beauty of her illustrations. After a brief moment of utter panic, I decided the best way to approach it, was to not try and copy her work.... but do my own version of it. The following series of illustrations are the ones that appear in the movie. Despite all the artistic flaws I see in them now, I still think they were sucessful in capturing the feeling of her work. Anyway...enough yakkity yak. Merry Christmas to you all, and hope you guys enjoy em!!

Christmas is here again Pt.01

Wow...time flies! It was just summer the other day, and now it's Christmas. Craziness!! So to keep things in the Christmas spirit, I figured I'd post some artwork I did a few years ago.

Back in early 2005, I was approached by the folks over at Renegade Animation . They had a Christmas feature they working on, and they were kind enough to ask if I'd be interested in doing some design for them. I had a blast working with them on Puffy Ami Yumi, so I jumped at the opportunity.

The following is just a sampling of some of the sketches I did for them. A few people might remember seeing some of the rejected concepts being posted earlier on the blog. If so, sorry for the double post :)

I was lucky enough to get a sneak peek at the final product last year, and it came out AMAZING! A huge congrats to both Ashley Postlewaite and Darrell Van Critters for putting out a very special holiday movie.

If you're interested in seeing more, then check out new website...http://www.christmasishereagain.com/

Stay tuned for Part 2!!

Nominations....

Whoohoo! The Annie nominations were announced earlier this week and El Tigre picked up four:

Best Animated Television Production Produced for Children

El Tigre

Character Animation in a Television Production

Monica Kennedy – El Tigre

Character Design in an Animated Television Production

Jorge Gutierrez – El Tigre "Fistfull of Collars"

Music in an Animated Television Production

Shawn Patterson – El Tigre "Yellow Pantera"

Huge congrats to everyone on the nominations and hopefully we'll sweep it at the show this year!!

As an additional note, I wanted to mention this year's big upset......the lack of production design in an animated television production nominees. In fact....there were none!

To say there there were absolutely NO shows this year that had art direction above average is a pretty harsh statement. My condolences to all those that submitted some really high quality work and got passed over. Hopefully next year's judging results will be a little more reasonable.