Thursday, April 22, 2010

Ed Catmull interview

There's this really good interview with Ed Catmull (co-founder of pixar) that I found very interesting, inspiring, and wonderfully honest. There are a ton of great points he makes about the film process and the success of his company, but there was one that really stuck with me. He was answering a question referring to children being 'consumers' and changing with time and technology and here's what he said...

" ...In terms of the way we think about our stories though, we don't segment them in that sense. We do make films that children can enjoy but we also make films WE can enjoy and we believe very strongly that children live in an adult world. We want things in the films they don't understand, not that were trying to do that. What makes things interesting for children is they are figuring out their world and if you make something that is all easy for them to figure out your actually having a distortion of the world they operate in and the world they like to be in."

He has a really good point when it comes to censorship and 'thought control'...something I personally juggle when making decisions about what's acceptable when I work in film or in picture books. Anyways, my apologies for the personal post...I was really inspired when I listened to it and I'm posting it hoping you all will be too. Thanks for all the comments lately! Stay tuned, more to come =]

-willie

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

'beatdown'

a moment/color piece i'm testing out...originally it was for a charity show called 'beautiful grim'. I was nowhere near where I wanted to be so decided to hold onto it and work on it a bit more.

'beatdown' - digital

Monday, April 05, 2010

Mural

digital

Above is an image I was commissioned to do for a mural in NYC. An awesome couple are having their first new born and decided they wanted to give their little guy a safari in his room. I jumped at the opportunity and tried a picture book style, which in this case worked well (i thought) for the wall... I also tried tying all the characters together in a 'moment' under a tree in the safari somewhere...

1. projecting the design and tracing it onto the wall

2. prepping... i have to thank bobby and vinnie for suggesting pre-mixed paints. you guys saved my life.

3. filling in...



and more filling in (thanks for the help babes!)

4. the line and detail came next. this took a while. if you look closely i re-drew most of it a second time, with white chalk...just to make sure my scale and relationships weren't gettin' crazy.

fin!

one of my favorite details.