Mice

Picked up The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under on blu-ray last week. Like many I've always had a soft spot for stories about mice and rodents. Be it The Secret of NIMH, Redwall, An American Tail, Ratatouille or Chip N' Dale Rescue Rangers. Perhaps its because their little world makes us realize just how small and insignificant we really are.

But enough philosophy, onto the pic. Here's a quick sketch of a couple of mice. I'm thinking the one in the upper right looks like a Rusty and the chubby one looks like a Russel. (I'm also thinking I rushed a bit on this one. But hey, it's all in good fun.)

Playing With Cooper's Face

I just recently got into a Character Design class that will be taught by Stephen Silver in person! As a result I found myself playing with some of the designs of my characters. I've been trying to make Cooper look a little older, but not too much older. I found myself looking at more horned owl pictures as well as some other cartoon owls for inspiration. Here's the result. He's getting a little bit closer to the high-strung, irritable, and somewhat cocky character I pictured him as.

FIRST PAID GIG! (and a doodle)

Been a while since my last post. Something unexpected happened last week. I got my paid animation gig! I'm assisting in the clean-up department for a segment in an upcoming film. Guess that means I'm officially a pro! To celebrate I'm posting...okay actually this is just a little something I did while watching Law & Order and has nothing to do with my job. But either way, here's a couple of quick doodles.

Jerry Pics

Some Jerry sketches I did a while back based on an old model sheet.

Redwall - Sir Harry the Muse

Another Redwall doodle. This time it's Sir Harry the Muse.

Rabbit In-Between Exercise

Here's one of the inbetween exercises from my Traditional Animation Basics 2 class, taught by Alex Topete. He was the head of Disney's clean-up department so I was quite honored when he approved these.

Random Characters

Some doodles from back. I'm gonna them Rooter and Django.

Muddy's A Dork

My friend's got little Chihuahua named Muddy. He's a little monster but he's also adorable.

General Ironbeak

I've become a big fan of the Redwall animated series as of late. About time I finally started reading the books. Here's a sketch of one of my favorite characters, General Ironbeak.

Albert Lupin Hershall

Here's a wolf character I created a while back named Albert Lupin Hershall. Ideally he would be a mechanic and Jasper's surrogate figure.

Jack Rabbits

DMV Sketch

One of the nice things about being stuck at the DMV is having plenty of people around to sketch. Works for me seeing as how I've always struggled with drawing people from the backside.

30 sec. Chopper Doodle

I don't need cocaine, I have One Piece.

Life Drawing

It's been far too long since my last Life Drawing class. I'll be enrolling in a new class at the Animation Guild this fall. Here are some drawings from my previous class.

NIMH Studies

Found myself watching The Secret of NIMH, one of my all time favorite films, with the audio commentary. It's fascinating hearing about how much hard work and creativity went into the animation. Anyway, I decided to do a few sketches of some of my favorite characters.

Morning Exercises

I just came back from a week long family vacation in Indio, CA. Needless to say it was really freakin' hot outside every day and there wasn't much to do indoors. So one thing I decided to start doing was writing down a few expressions during breakfast and just coming up with some faces for them. I used some familiar faces. Well, familiar to me anyway.

Meet Cooper

Meet Abeforth Owlan Cooper, the horned owl. He's my pudgy boss character. He's about as pompous and irritable as one can get. Whatever you do, don't call him Abe!

And so it begins...

And here it is, my new online portfolio! If I'm gonna get anywhere in the animation industry I need to get my stuff out there, or so I've been told numerous times by the various great minds who have instructed me over the years. So why not start off with an original character design that seems to keep popping up in all my sketch books, Jasper

Jasper is a little brown bat whose a bit of an adrenaline junkie. He's also quite prone to get himself into trouble but his hear his always in the right place. Oh don't worry, you'll be seeing more of him.