Bits and pieces

Things have been pretty busy lately. Finding free time to do some personal work is proving scarce. It's ironic but I think I was more productive in my personal work before I started working at Nick. Go figure!

Anyhow, till things let up, I figured I'd post up some odds and ends I have laying about on the hard drive. Some are rejects from the freelance pile, and others are morning cintiq scribbles. Hope you like em!

Mighty B premiere this weekend!

Hey Folks...don't forget to check out the premiere of Mighty B this weekend. It's a new Nick show from husband-wife super team, Erik Wiese and Cynthia True. Not only is it a gorgeous looking show, it's funny too. Loads of great drawings and gags. But don't take my word for it...check it out for yourself.

It's a little early in the season right now, but once one of the episodes I've worked on air, I'll post up some stuff.

Oh the skeletons in my closet...

I was doing some spring cleaning in my office this weekend, and came across some hilariously awkward freelance designs that I had completely forgotten about. Probably for good reason.

Back in early 2005, I was approached by Wizards of the Coast to help develop a property called "The Irreverants". Having seen my website, they said they loved my style and I was perfect for their project. Excited by opportunity to get paid to do my thing, I immediately agreed and signed all the necessary contracts. With the ink still drying, they said "Fantastc!! Ok, here's what we had in mind......have you seen Teen Titans?"

DOH!!! So realizing that I was stuck, I decided I had to man up and give a try....even though that style was totally outside my comfort zone. The horrible results are below. My sincerest apologies to any of you Teen Titan's guys that see these. My intent was not to mock you.








Couldn't figure out what to do with this one. I like her crazy cat heels.




Added bonus.....more weird sketches.



So after failing miserably, I decided it was time to admit defeat and bring the project to a real pro, my badass designer buddy Robin Mitchell. I said "Please Mr.Mitchell...take this piece of stinky poo, sprinkle your great magic on it, and make it something glorious".

He patted me on the head, and said "It's ok, pitful mortal......where you have failed, I will rise like the mighty phoenix." And so, the rest is written in the analoges of his blog by blind canadian monks......here......here.......some here......and I think some may have fallen over here as well.

New Job!

Hey folks! Sorry for the lack of posts recently. The last coupla' months have been a whirlwind of activity. Outside of freelance, I've been finishing up on El Tigre, helping out the talented folks on Mighty B (Check it out April 26th!), and starting my new job on Fanboy.


Many thanks to creator, Eric Robles for allowing me to join his mega talented crew on the show. Designing for the third dimension is going to be a lot different than flash/2d shows I've worked on so far, so I'm super excited about it. There's not a lot of stylized 3d shows out there right now, so it's exciting that we will be breaking some new ground.

If you're curious to see more about the show, then checkout the very cool production blog over at Frederator site.

Cheers to the Z plane!!

-Steve.

Annies stuffs.....

With the Annie nominees being announced a few weeks ago, I guess it ok now to show what I submitted for the character design category. Better luck next year :)

These were for the half hour Halloween special titled "The Grave Escape". It was amazingly fun episode to work on. Everyone really went above and beyond to make it something special. If some of you were lucky, you may have it caught it the one time it aired......late ......friday night......after a "Fresh Prince of Bel Air"..........rerun.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, everyone!! Christmas was good. Lots of late sleeping , over-eating, and movie watching took place. My wife gave me lots of great presents, the best of all being this highly recommended little diddy:


Loaded with great Golden books history, behind the scenes stories, and oh yeah....AMAZING artwork.

To commemorate the new year, here's some recent freelance. I dropped out a lot of the text that was in the finals since artists hates them some readin'.

Hope you all enjoy and cheers to an exciting 2008!!

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.

Titlecard

Titlecards are fun. Here's one I got to do awhile ago for the show. Jorge was nice let me run wild with an asian concept I wanted to try out. It's not as tapestry-ish as I had hoped, but it was really cool to try something outside my comfort zone.

I'd also like to give a big thanks to all those who replied to my last post . It's been really amazing to see so much support coming from fellow artists, and fans of the show. Hopefully Tigre will find a nice big audience on Nicktoons :)

Rest in peace, mi amigo.

Time to dust off the old portfolio....

Congrats to kid brother.....

A huge congrats to my little brother, Jon, on his pilot "Kid Odin" making the front page of Cold Hard Flash yesterday.

Check it out......awesome stuff!! Sniff....they "groweds" up so fast.

Yooo Joe!!! Pt.01

Best website EVER! Memories of epic GiJoe vs Cobra battles in my parent's basement instantly came flooding back. Man...the 80s had the best toys.

As an artist, I can't help but think the illustrator that did the cards must of really loved painting explosions.

Thank to Mr. Tim Yoon for the link.

To be continued....

Books and Cds....

Every once in a blue moon on the show, there are some specialty props where I get the chance to experiment with different style choices. Here's a few of my favorites so far.

Maria character design courtesy of Mizzy Sandra Equihua.

Inspiring Artists: Fabrice Parme

A few years ago, my friend Ahmed introduced me to a french artist by the name of Fabrice Parme. Like many European artists, Fabrice is an expert cartoonist and storyteller. One of the biggest things that struck me about his work though, is his amazing sense of design. It's in his characters, backgrounds, props, and in his compositions.

He's got a very keen eye for shape, proportion, and pattern. Check out that awesome bed and toys.

I LOVE the plane in this shot. Very caricatured.

His cars are very fun as well. Especially the Number 08 car. Hilarious!

The first series of his I hunted down was "Le Roi Catastorphe" , which roughly translates into "The King catastrophe". There are nine books in the series, and just loaded with lots of fantastic artwork. Luckily enough I found a place back in Montreal, Canada where the price was very decent with the exchange (~$15 Canadian), and very fast shipping. Great store...check it out here.

Some covers and interiors:









So not to be a one trick pony, after Le Roi Catastrophe Fabrice decided to change gears a little and do a book called Venezia. The style's a little more comic bookish but still full of lush designs.


In my quest for even more Fabrice, I came across a very early graphic novel book he did called "Sang de Vampire". You can tell he's still struggling with finding his style, but the foundation is there. Still great character design sensibilities.


A great lineup of characters! Each one has a unique shape and is easily identifiable as that character if the lineup was all in silhouette.

My favorite page in the whole book ;)

So flash forward to the present! What's he been up to recently? Well at comicon, I came across his newest book, "Ovni".

In this book, he changes pace again with a sort "Where's Waldo" type layout. Each spread follows a little alien that crash lands on earths...over the course of human evolution. Caveman, Aztec, Roman..all the civilizations are in there.



So that about sums up my fascination with Fabrice Parme. Hope you guys liked it. If I get enough people interested, I'll see if I can put together another posts outlining another one of my favorite artists. Maybe some Jolly Roger Bradsfield, or Mel Crawford.