Product Placement Fun

You see it all the time in film and television, even in video games. It's called product placement. One of the most blatant examples in film that I can recall was in Moonraker, when the cable car crashes through the station wall, revealing a giant 7UP billboard overhead. More subtle approaches are when a film shoots a car chase sequence and every car is a Plymouth or Chevy. Ever notice how one year Bond is driving an Aston Martin, then in his next film it's a Toyota, and another a Mustang? You can see it in Madden NFL and other games - cross promotions with Snickers, Pontiac and Reebok. Manufacturers will pay to have their brands advertised in your product, one way or another.
For this small film pitch, the client showed Chrysler, HTC, American Airlines, and other brands how they would be "promoted" as part of the story.

Bellator Commercial

Director Chris Stifel has done it again! His "Bellator" spot for MTV2 redefines the visual signature of this popular sport. His subjects transcend the ordinary and become superhuman, gutsy, powerful demigods of sports and entertainment. Each shot is galvanized in astonishing detail and fused with textures, motion and punch. Above are a few boards I designed for the spot. I worked with a General's Draughting pencil No. G314 on animation paper, in addition to ink studies which I scanned and painted digitally for the final boards. The full Bellator spot can be viewed by visiting Chris's web site at http://stifelnyc.com/live/ and clicking on "Director Reel 2."

Toon Boom Pipeline Fun

I have recently added Toon Boom Storyboard Pro to my production pipeline. I took advantage of the sale over the summer, and now some new projects have miraculously appeared to make the purchase worthwhile. I like that I can work in layers, and love the export options for QuickTime and PDF. It ain’t Photoshop, but then again, it isn’t designed to be a painting or compositing software - instead it is a tool for productivity, sequence creation, and scene management.
The best thing that software developers have done is to offer free tutorials to accompany their products. The Toon Boom tutorials by Sherm Cohen have been instrumental in getting me off to a running start. If you’ve seen them, Sherm’s sessions are friendly and easy to absorb. After a few chapters, I felt comfortable poking around and getting my project started, compiling questions as I go. When I am ready for the next step or if I am stuck I seek the next tutorial. Check out the link: http://beta.toonboom.com/professionals/storyboarding/resources/video-tutorials

Gang Sheet

An agency requested a gang sheet that included shooting boards - you know, those boards with arrows and camera directions and such .... . Here's what I put together.

Halloween Zombie Subway Crawl

Happy Halloween 2010!

It's Halloween, and in honor of the upcoming "The Walking Dead" premier on AMC this month (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg46DWI_fCE), I designed a few zombie frames while on the subway. If you can't get to your nearest Zombie Crawl (http://nyczombiecrawl.com/news/), the next best thing is riding the subway during rush hour.

The dour faces, the distant expressions, the myriad range of countenances that speak a former lifetime's worth of experiences, can all be witnessed on any subway ride.

And if you haven't checked out Robert Kirkman's "The Walking Dead" comic book yet (http://www.hiddenrobot.com/WALKINGDEAD/), you may find yourself addicted to the dark reality of the human drama that unfolds each issue. Pace yourself, because you may find it too disturbing all at once. As in Danny Boyle's "28 Days Later" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289043/) the real antagonists are not the zombies, but man and the test of his moral fiber, when faced with survival in a bleak landscape.

Captured here are freehand pen drawings designed with a 0.5mm fine tip Japanese pen, on Strathmore 500 Series Bristol. A perfect marriage, a bit expensive for everyday work, but the smooth surface won't kill the life out of your pen like cheap toothy paper does.

Drapery is another world for me. Drawing the wrinkles on fabric and clothes can take a lifetime to master. I love working from life in order to develop some kind of understanding of the different type of wrinkles and how they manifest themselves in various clothes, fabrics, and figures.

Fashion Show Spot

Here's the latest commercial for Optimum Triple Play... .

GlobalWorks consistently produces the greatest spots.