Things. And more things.

History Channel Hyundai Spot - Edison's Laboratory

2012-06-29T22:56:00.001-07:00

Check out this stop motion spot I worked on in the winter. I was a model maker on this, fabricating the goldenrods. Unfortunately, I can't embed it, but if you click the image, you'll be able to view it in its full glory.

2012-06-05T13:53:00.002-07:00

I am going to watch this dancing chicken gif forever, in order to maintain my waning optimism. (PS it works really well when you play 'Fembot' by Robyn)

ParaNorman

2012-06-05T10:40:00.001-07:00

I'm becoming impatient for this one. Not until August! Unfair.

Morris Lessmore WON the Oscar!

2012-04-20T17:30:00.000-07:00

I'm really late in updating this... but! The gist is this: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore won the Oscar for Best Animated Short. The studio had a viewing party at a local restaurant. There was an open bar, which really helped with everyone's nerves, and definitely contributed to the celebratory feelings after we won! Here are some photos that I've been sitting on from that night! First, the obligatory and ultra-glamorous red carpet walk. Mindy and Kim. John and Nicole. Even a Moonbot-shaped cake! Which... actually I never got a bite of this. I can't tell you how it tasted. But look: Thin Mints for eyes! This is when they actually read Morris Lessmore's name while listing the nominees. My friend Mindy grabbed hold of my camera just a few seconds before, and started documenting the moment, which is fortunate because.... .....BAM. This is it; the actual second they announced it. The room exploded. Three-way hug! Actually I got a little squished on this one. Afterwards most everyone headed downtown to our favorite local bar to, er, continue celebrating. Photos of that turned out as blurry as our collective memories of those hours. But it was fun. A couple of days later, Bill had returned home and brought his statuette (each director got one) in to the studio; Joe called me and I drove up after hours so I could hold it. The verdict: it really IS heavy. I'd pulled a muscle in my back and for a split-second, I feared I'd let it slip out of my hand and it'd topple to the ground and Oscar's head would pop off but.... that didn't happen.

Morris Lessmore Now on the Oscar Shortlist

2011-12-04T10:10:00.000-08:00

So the short (which I referenced here) I was a scenic artist on has made it to the Oscar shortlist for nominations! A sea of about 300 shorts were eventually pared down to this list, and from this list, members of the Academy are going to pick what will actually be nominated.

It’s exciting! I’m friends with not just some of the people in the set fabrication stage but also most of the animators at the studio.

Click here for the trailer, if you haven’t seen it yet! It’s available for purchase on iTunes… alternately, if you have an iPad, purchasing the Morris Lessmore storybook app (which, again, my boyfriend was a creative director on), you’ll get the film as part of your purchase.

2011-12-03T19:21:00.000-08:00

I wondered if I could needle felt a narwhal.

The answer is yes!

Etsy!

2011-11-24T08:04:00.000-08:00

While I'm updating my actual website, I set up a redirect here, to my blog. I realized I needed to direct people to my respective Etsy shops though, so here we go:

TerribleFantastic, my needle-felting Etsy

7Seventeengallery, my illustration Etsy.

2011-10-19T13:17:00.000-07:00

So, recently, I've gotten into needle felting.

I personally cannot sculpt, which is why I had to have someone else sculpt Binkus from my design when we were working on the resin toys. I'm somewhat clumsy and apply too much pressure and I have slight hand tremors when I try to apply gentle pressure, so needless to say, all my efforts with clay come out total messes. I'd seen pictures of people's felted sculptures on Etsy though, and it seemed like something I could try to pull off. Now, what it is, is you're taking wool and a barbed needle, and you are poking, poking, poking that wool and manipulating the fibers until you come up with a shape. It's essentially sculpting with wool. So here are a few things I did recently:

It's really kind of fun to zone out in front of the tv and just needle away at some wool and a few hours later, voila, you have a little soft creature in your hand. But, mind you don't zone out too much, or else you stab yourself with the needle. And those things hurt.

Here's my Etsy shop for my needle felted work: TerribleFantastic.etsy.com
Maybe check it out!

Behind the Scenes of the Morris Lessmore Shoot

2011-08-29T17:42:00.000-07:00

'The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore' is the animated short my boyfriend's studio has released, and is the same short that has been snatching up awards left and right at film festivals across the country. It's 3D animation, paired with real sets, built in miniature at 1/12th scale. The sets were filmed first, in January of 2010, and the rest of the year the animation and tech departments were hard at work making the real life environments mesh seamlessly with the animation.

I was a scenic artist, on set for the shoot, and while I took a number of photos, I realized I hadn't posted them here.

So, here we go.

First, the books. The majority of the action takes place in a library. Each individual book was hand-painted. I never did find out how many hundreds we actually painted.

The set, early on.

This is the kind of detail that went into painting each individual buildings, most of which are on screen for mere seconds. I spent hours simulating water damage all over this building. I was just one of several artists tasked with painting these buildings; I can't speak for anyone else on how long they took, but generally one day of work seemed standard.

A maquette of Morris stands in for his animated counterpart in the library for size reference.

And here is a 6'6 man in the library, for size reference.

The city of New Orleans is slowly coming together.

Filming.

Aftermath of the storm.

Me, wallowing on the filthy set after we finally wrapped.

Check out the trailer for the completed film. It's available on iTunes.

2011-08-09T12:02:00.001-07:00

SUPER is out on DVD & blu-ray today!

There was a really good article/interview at Art of the Title with Puny Animation's Shad Petosky about the animated title credits. While I didn't animate on that part of the film, they did try to base some of the character designs on the crude and childlike style I'd adapted for Frank. It's an interesting article, and furthermore, an interesting site. Clicky here.

2011-08-01T10:16:00.000-07:00

Little niche Tumblr I started based on some warm-up character designs-- Rad Chicks in Fancy Dresses

Just a doodle of a pretty fierce Halston dress from the 70s.

SXSW Premiere of SUPER

2011-03-17T16:35:00.000-07:00

While it's true that I do have other things in my life going on, the one thing that I've been thinking the most about for awhile is, of course, SUPER.

We went to the SXSW premiere last weekend in Austin.

December 2009 is when I read the script, and did like, a zillion drawings for the film based on some very precise outlines given to us by the director. And I was impressed with the script then-- impressed in a way, because the sick sense of humor reminded me so much of my own. I put it down at the end and told my boyfriend that it was totally something I should be working on, because it was so gleefully twisted, with a big dose of pathos. Just like the inside of my brain!

The audience ate it up; this was exactly the type of crowd I wanted to see it with for the first time. They were eager to see it--the line had wrapped around the block--and the laughter was uproarious. It was the most fun I'd ever had at a movie, and having worked on it was just icing on the cake.

We went to the afterparty, and I got a photo with James Gunn... which I now realize is actually the third time I've posed with a director (Joel Schumacher and Joss Whedon being the others). Who's next?? Harmony Korine? Vincent Gallo? Man, who knows. I'm blowing up. I'm Hollywood now.

I've become quite a cheerleader of this movie, to a point verging on being a fangirl, but it's just I think that much of this movie, and the production. You gotta understand, it was made for next to nothing, and the level of interest in it thus far-- the longest line for ANY screening at SXSW they say-- is an entirely grassroots, internet-based thing. I mean, there wasn't a trailer until a few weeks ago. And I think that's a great thing, because it started off as such a personal project for its writer-director, and it in turn became very personal for the people who worked on it.

And I wanna be real here for a minute: another part I am so excited, is because sometimes, it's not that easy to be an artist. Sometimes it's not that easy to get work, and as a result, you find yourself doubting yourself or abilities, and you lose motivation. A lot of people's art blogs, I find, are just self-aggrandizing or blatant networking attempts and... I can't do that. I'm too self-deprecating. And while that may be a great tool for getting ahead, I find that stuff insincere, and I just can't do it. So that's why I care about this movie: I got validation. I felt incredibly proud, and you know, just grateful, because the thing an artist needs most in the world is just to be given a chance. And I got it on this! Sometimes chances are few and far between and I'm just glad to have gotten one on something that was so important to all of the people who worked on it.

So go see it when it comes out-- but... you know, only if you are awesome, because it's not for everyone (a dude explodes).

SUPER Trailer

2011-03-07T16:47:00.000-08:00

It's finally here, the trailer for SUPER:

The animation you see in the trailer are clips from the credits, and was done by the neato Puny Entertainment. I will admit to a little bit of envy there; once upon a time I was going to be involved in that aspect of the film, and while I did contribute some animation elsewhere, I didn't have anything to do with the credits. You'll still see my gloriously bad artwork in the movie though.

This Saturday, March 12, SUPER will be screening at SXSW and I've been told we are going to be able to get in to see it. So that's... that's pretty cool.

Click the poster for release dates! It is a very small film, that's relying largely on word-of-mouth. The good news is, the word-of-mouth from early screenings has been rad.

More to come later this week!

Binkus REDUX

2010-12-03T10:07:00.000-08:00

So we have a handful of Binkuses (Binki?) left over from Comic Con this past July. While we intended on getting them online for sale, a stray dog rescue followed immediately by a move, followed then by my sculpt-making-partner being slammed with deadline after deadline as the studio raced to finish The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore coinciding with the fact that in the new place, there was no room for a poly resin pouring workspace..... needless to say, we were swamped.

But. We have a few left over. Our intention is this: pour a few more for a second run of Binkus, while simultaneously working on a new Binkus pose. The studio is still a mess, but no fear; I'll kick stuff out of the way.

I'm also working on a couple of custom Binki (Binkuses?) for some far away friends! Pictures will be up!

In the meantime, if you want a Binkus, stay tuned!

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore

2010-12-03T09:49:00.000-08:00

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore from Moonbot Studios on Vimeo.

This looks awesome. Also I'm dating the character designer. Also I am a scenic artist for it (I GOT MY OWN IMDB PAGE GUYZ). Still, looks very awesome.

2010-10-18T13:47:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to boil down my sketchbooks to a more cohesive mess than a messy mess. I'll have 6 dozen pages of nonsense, or directions to a store in Brooklyn that I wrote down 4 years ago before my iphone, or a watercolor doodle like this

or my name written like 700 different times, presumably done in a fit of boredom while I was on hold with customer service. I need to pare down what I've got.

SUPER off to a rollicking start

2010-10-14T15:30:00.000-07:00

I'm really remiss for not mentioning this before, but the James Gunn film I worked on, 'Super', debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival last month and positively blew the roof off the place.

I blogged about it last year-- in this entry-- I more or less wedged myself into a freelance endeavor with a studio in town that was doing some production work for them. Without giving much away, I did a lot of drawings, and did initially contribute some work to another portion of the movie, which ultimately was taken over by a very talented studio in LA & Minneapolis named Puny.

Anyway, the film killed at TIFF, and IFC picked it up. It is currently at the Stiges film festival in Spain, where, at least according to Twitter, it is doing very well. It's not everyone's cup of tea-- my mother certainly will not be able to watch it. But I read the script and dudes, I loved it. It's depraved but has heart. I think that was why I really liked what I did on the film so much; reading through you really began to empathize with this character. So when it came down to drawing the things that he was supposed to draw, things that had meant a lot to him, you kind of wanted that to come through onto the paper. Even if he was really terrible at it. It was a great experience, and I'm glad it's being so well-received. I haven't seen it but am dying to; a friend in Toronto was bowled over by it. Gunn also directed the hilarious PG Porn shorts--

and 2006's 'Slither', starring Nathan Fillion and Elizabeth Banks. Which... if you haven't seen it, and it turns out a lot of people didn't, it's worth checking out. It was promoted badly and looked like a straight-up horror. I didn't even see it when it came out. But as it turns out, it's hilarious. I like me a sick sense of humor, and this guy has it. So to have gotten a little bit of work into the film is pretty gratifying; I'm glad it's doing so well.

2010-07-31T15:37:00.000-07:00

This was one of my favorite paintings I brought to SDCC; I've forever been into drawing and painting animals with anthropomorphic attributes--but I am compelled to stress I am NOT a furry-- and I dunno, a rat in a hat just seems adorable to me. I feel a little hokey admitting that yeah, I did like this thing I did... I'm not trying to toot my own horn. I just sometimes surprise myself-- I'm a huge critic of my own work.

A girl bought him along with 2 or 3 other pieces, much to the detriment of a guy-- from Baja California, if I remember his badge correctly-- who came looking for it literally an hour later. I sold him a print I just happened to have made of it for a chunk less. He said he would like to see more like it, and I said, "Sure, check my website and blog". So maybe he's seeing this now.

So if he is-- hey dude! I'll paint some more stuff quite soon and put them on my etsy shop! So check back. Now that SDCC is over, I have a loooot of free time on my hands with which to focus on projects and artwork.

No rest for the lazy, am I right?

I'll recap more thoroughly later...

2010-07-28T15:26:00.000-07:00

....as it stands right now, my brain is incredibly fogged up. It's no secret that every year I go to Comic Con, I leave with some sort of cold or sinus malady. I guess it's going from a hot, humid climate (NYC and now Louisiana) to a dry and more mild one. And then sitting in stale, freezing air conditioning for the extent of the con. This year was no exception but somehow along the way I also developed a helluva allergic reaction. It started on Saturday and I basically itched through the end of the show and a plane ride until I went to the doctor, who declared I'd come into physical contact with something.

I've come to the conclusion that it was one of those scratchy, blue, cushioned chairs I hijacked from the concession stand to use at the table-- I did in fact touch it on Saturday. It's really the only thing I can think of. With the thousands of people coming into contact with those chairs I wouldn't be surprised if Freeman sprayed them down with heavy duty germ-killing chemicals.

So anyway, I'm totally hopped up on industrial strength antihistamines and prednisone and we came home to discover the AC was not working so... let's just say I'm out of it.

But I wanted to say, for any of you checking in, that Binkus will be going into a second run soon enough. We were a couple dolls shy of selling out completely but had a lot of interest online before the show, so we're going to be putting information up soon enough on how to buy one. Just FYI.

Binkus Featured Elsewhere

2010-07-21T14:57:00.000-07:00

The designer toy website, Plastic & Plush has a little blurb on Binkus in advance of SDCC. So that's awesome. It's cool to be featured elsewhere... and while I admittedly was not 100% familiar with the site before, I've come to realize it's a pretty great resource, especially to the collectors updating their "Must Get" list for San Diego.

Sculpting Binkus

2010-07-15T22:13:00.000-07:00

I've about had it with polyresin today. I got it all over my pants, got it all over my leg, my arms, my fingers, maybe on the dog, and it kind of smells like a musty basement while the liquid is curing.

I mean, that said, it's awesome to be learning a new craft, despite the learning curve. Despite the hideous, off-putting feeling of a thin layer of plastic surrounding your thumb that you just cannot scrub off. I think I'm going to stop at 30 plastic sculpts. This will be a Comic Con ~exclusive~ if you will. Each one takes 30 minutes to cure (harden) in its mold, then you must meticulously break each one out. Then comes the dremel fun, the sanding, the priming, and the painting.

This is not to say it's not fun. It is! Mostly! It just is time consuming. Limiting the number of sculpts makes them a little more special. I will perhaps, after Comic Con, continue to produce them, but between now and Preview Night, I'm unsure if I can really breach the 30 mark. I also have mini paintings and cards to paint/print/etc.

Cramming for San Diego is like having a freelance job with a breakneck race to a deadline, which I appreciate. Since I'm totally unemployed.

Anyway, here's a grainy iPhone pic of most of my sculpts of the little critter.

I'm already thinking about my next possible sculpts, and other designs I could possibly work from. It's.... it's pretty rad.

When we have a nice, finished, painted one, I'll post that. So you have a better idea of WTF you're looking at.

2010-07-14T15:14:00.001-07:00

If they weren't so alienating and profane, I'd have half a mind to do a bunch of decorative prints with the Mel Gibson hate rants on them to sell at Comic Con, but I think I'd have to apply for a special "Mature Content" card or something.

Project Time.

2010-07-12T00:18:00.000-07:00

not my (big beefy) hand

I make no promises about the outcome of these photographs. I know what I am aiming for, and I have a fair amount of faith in that outcome. But I also know that jinxes exist so therefore I shall not get into the details.

But I'll know more about how it's turning out in say, 48 hours.

In related news, I have a LOT of stuff to do for Comic Con. Just over a week left. Yoinks.

4th of July, 2010.

2010-07-11T02:37:00.000-07:00

Whatever you did on the 4th of July, I think we will be able to agree it probably wasn't this epic.

The 4th of July is a big deal to some people down here. This year's theme was "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots"-- an homage to Flaming Lips.

Basically we just blew stuff up. No one died or was maimed.

Horned... Blue.. Thing.

2010-04-28T18:04:00.000-07:00

I dunno, but it's cute.