The Little Mermaid, A different take

I recently saw some online images of the Finnish ballet of Hans Christian Andersen's, "The Little Mermaid" and was totally floored. Everything from the costume design to the lighting and dance have a slightly dark and mysterious tone that feel just right for the classic tale, departing completely from the Disney version. It made me wonder what other cultures and takes on the tale might be interesting to see. I was inspired by the architecture of Okinawa and thought perhaps the Little Mermaid might fall in love with a Samurai. I'm not sure I really got it but it was seriously a blast to dream about.

Some initial thumbnails, dreaming about what kind of island The Little Mermaid first encounters the Samurai.

This is an establishing shot of the island I chose from the thumbnails, just before The Little Mermaid meets the Samurai she falls in love with.

I was thinking of some foreshadowing in the architectural motifs. These are a few ideas. The possibilities are endless, really. Below are a few variations on The Little Mermaid. I still feel like I want to do a few more pages of these and then move on to the Samurai, Triton and the Sea Witch.

Many more updates coming in a few weeks! Thanks for visiting.

Star Wars Comps for Concept

Earlier this year for a class assignment with Armand Baltazar at the Animation Collaborative, we had an assignment to come up with a scene or concept that currently does not exist in a movie. One of my all time favorite movies is, of course, Star Wars, the original trilogy, but most especially "The Empire Strikes Back", where we meet Darth Sidious, "The Emperor", for the first time. 

Up until that point, we feel that Darth Vader is the most powerful guy in the universe, even though we are conscious that he is definitely working for someone. When we meet The Emperor, he seems to be parallel to Master Yoda in power but belongs to the Sith and rules the Empire. However, I had always thought that since Darth Vader has unusual power, the Emperor, being a completely corrupt man, would perhaps have some other way of gaining force power than just by being himself. In addition to that, he must have been extremely peeved when Vader let Luke get away. 

I imagined that in between "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi", Darth Sidious brings Vader into his private chambers where he keeps a gigantic symbiotic parasite that he uses to not only control Vader, but also torture him and secretly extract force energy from him.

Here are a few concepts. I will bring one of these to full color soon, hopefully in the new year!

Additionally, I sculpted a bust and draped some cloth over him to create a nice working model of the Emperor's face. I've wanted to do a portrait painting of the man, and this will be very helpful for lighting. 

The Unfortunate Toad

This summer I have been working on a short story that I plan to bring to print. It is about a Toad, and is tentatively called, "The Unfortunate Toad". 

There is a cast of characters that you'd expect in a fairy tale, but in this story their roles are a little different, due to some unforeseen circumstances.

I thought I would share some of the work I've created so far. There is a lot more in the works, including many more characters, but I will be keeping those to myself for awhile. In addition to "The Unfortunate Toad" story,  in the next few months I will be posting a few more updates to "The Time Machine" and other art that I have been working on behind the scenes. It's really exciting stuff that I can't wait to share!

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Please stay tuned for more in the next two months! Thanks for visiting.

Disney's Palace Pets "Whisker Haven Tales"/Environment Designs and Color Keys

I recently had the honor of working with Ghostbot and Disney Publishing on ten 3:30 minute episodes of Disney Junior's "Whisker Haven Tales with the Palace Pets", directed by Alan Lau. Episodes can be seen here: 

www.DisneyPalacePets.com 

My primary role was to develop background "key" environments working from the approved animatics. If you aren't familiar with animation, a color key is an environment design that establishes a location, color palette, and lighting. It is then referred to by other artists on the  the team that need to create various points of view surrounding that piece of the film in the sequence. Elements like water that animate were tricky, especially bubbles. We had to take a close look at how bubbles looked under the water and out of the water. 

Time of day was a major consideration in many episodes. I created guides for blocks of 2-3 hours for each time of day so that the color remained consistent throughout the episodes. 

More episodes will be available soon via the Disney Junior Watch app on iTunes! The show is doing very well. It was a pleasure to work with Ghostbot and Disney on this exciting new show! 

Disney's Palace Pets, "Tales From Whisker Haven"/Color Scripts!

I recently worked on ten 3:30 animated episodes for

Disney's Palace Pets

, a new show on

Disney Junior

. There is also a new Palace Pets Website (!!!) which can be found at

www.DisneyPalacePets.com

. 

The show was developed and produced at

Ghostbot

, directed by the talented

Alan Lau

. It was such a fun project for me personally as I served as Art Director on environments, props and color design. The show was definitely challenging as the Palace Pets have been a successful toy line for Disney for a while now and have a multicolored pastel palette. For this reason, color scripting was necessary on several of the episodes for either a full episode or portions of sequences that were particularly tricky to work out.

Below is my color script for my favorite episode, "The Knight Night Guard". (available to watch on the Disney Junior app now!) Color scripts, if you aren't familiar with them, are a way to get a big picture take on the color design for an entire episode or sequence. It is important to focus on the storytelling as scenes move from shot to shot and sequence to sequence, and make sure the planning for the lighting and effects is consistent logistically from one scene to another. They also are very helpful for animators so they can get a big picture idea of what it is we are shooting for, and also are very helpful for the compositor when piecing together all of the various elements into one shot. Additionally, I enjoy designing color scripts since they give me a chance to think globally about how I want to approach the design of specific environments and how much work I will need to do for specific areas of a sequence, and the work load we are facing in terms of environments and props for a particular episode or sequence.

Below are some stills from Episode 3. They translated pretty closely to the color script - good planning is worth it!

Below is a partial color script for Episode 4, "Throwing a Ball". I didn't have time to do a color script for the entire episode so I focused instead on a tricky sequence that takes place with a time of day change.

Below are a few shots for the final. (Additional characters were added after I did this initial color script.)

I actually did a few more of these but those episodes are not yet released. 

Please check back for updates and be sure to watch Palace Pets "Tales of Whisker Haven" on Disney Junior! Next week I will post about some of the environments and props I designed. Thanks for reading!