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This is a rough of another children's book that I wrote.  Originally the little girl was named Daisy, but since then I've rewritten the manuscript and renamed it Molly, By Golly! The original story is in rhyme, but the rewrite is in prose as I've been told that generally editors don't like rhyming books. The rewrite also changes some of the events to make them less intentionally bad, and more a series of well-meaning mistakes that drive the father nuts.

The redo makes for a "better" story, but I still like the looseness and wackyness of the original. And that's why I'm presenting it here in its raw, original form.

Searching for the features of the character:

It looks like this site is going to be the place for every project that I've done, but haven't had an outlet for.  Today's presentation is LITTLE FLOWER'S BIG DREAMS.

In the past I've done book illustration and interactive CD-ROMS for Mercer Mayer's Little Critter, as well as CD Read-Alongs for Disney.  Often when I do work for hire for someone else, I like to do something at the same time for myself.  That's when I came up with this early reader of Little Flower.  And since I had all the artwork done, I decided to do an online Read-Along as well.

Here are a few sample pages of the book: 

Click Images to Enlarge 

 And here's the Read-Along which requires the Shockwave Player Plugin:

Click Image to Launch Read-Along

The narrator is Annie Watanabe-Rocco, and Little Flower is voiced by Kristin Tanji. 

While spending this morning in the waiting rooms of an orthodontist and a dentist, waiting for my kids, I could have sat there reading people magazine, but I was lucky enough to find Kids Discovery magazines with pictures of rainforest wildlife. Sketching fascinating animals was definitely a better, and more fun use of my time.

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On Mark Kennedy's blog, "Temple of the Seven Golden Camels," he's posted Handouts by Rowland Wilson concerning color, light and shadow, and composition.  While I was looking over the notes on composition, it struck me that many of the visual concepts can be readily applied to the art of storytelling as well.

What follows in this post is a reminder to myself of things that I should be thinking about as I go through the creative process. In my own work I haven't always been successful at applying concepts such as these, but by thinking them through, and writing them down, I hope to improve.  If it happens to be of any help to anyone else, all the better.

Rowland Wilson's Notes on Composition as Applied to Story

The phrases in quotes are taken directly from the handouts. The indented passages are my own thoughts.

Focus

"Directing the Eye"

• Make sure that you keep your eyes on the prize when storytelling.  The elements of your story, characters, dialog, locations, events, should support the themes, emotions and ideas that you are trying to get across. Lead the viewer where you want them to go. Don't meander aimlessly, screen time is precious use it wisely.

Tie Ins

"Places where the tonal value of the character anchor him to the tonal value of the background"

• Your character should be grounded within the "reality" of the universe you are creating.  Even in a "fish out of water" story the character needs to be a part of the world, however reluctantly.

• Pinocchio on Pleasure Island being bad and starting to turn into a donkey connects him to the scene and the location more intensely than if he'd been a good boy above the goings on. The lure of the locale, and his succumbing to the temptations of that world, bring home the real danger that he's in.

Breathing Space

"Have some air or breathing space for the eye to rest in"

• In classic horror movies there is always that moment of calm, just before all heck breaks loose.  You have to give the audience room to breathe, and collect their thoughts before you take them on another wild ride. This concept is also part of both the Harmony/Contrast and the Grouping concepts.

Harmony & Contrast and Dominance

"The importance of harmony cannot be overstressed."

"Harmony is achieved by Dominance"

"Every aspect of picture-making is made up of linked complements"

"When one side of the complementary pair dominates, Harmony is created.  Only then is Contrast Possible."

"Make the objects have a definite hierarchy"

"Dominant objects are usually not the center of interest"
"Contrast gets the attention, so it assumes a major role in the viewer's mind…But it absolutely depends on Harmony to exist"

• These concepts work verbatim when related to story.

• The scenes with Stromboli and Pinocchio are most graphic examples of this. Corrupt/innocent, Big/small, Loud/quiet, Heavy dialect/no dialect, Dominant/submissive

Internal Rhythm

"After the structure is solved try for internal rhythm"

• Once you've got the overall structure of your story figured out, you need to then approach each individual scene as a mini play. Each scene or sequence has emotional builds and releases that affect the story as a whole, but the scene needs to have an internal rhythm to make it work on its own terms as well.

Grouping

"Go for a 'rubato' rhythm, uneven spaces, no two alike, visual jazz"
"Avoid mechanical "metronome" spacing.  All the same, a march beat"

• When applied to story, I think of this concept as "pacing." The pacing ot the story should be fluid and organic, not mechanical and predictable. This is where the concept of breathing room really comes into play. The quiet before the storm, tension and release, surprise turns and twists keep the audience engaged.

Style

"Avoid the diagrammatic"
"Avoid the arranged man-made look"
"Not decorative, not photographic, but an artist's interpretation"

• This concept is much more subjective, because the artist's interpretation may be "arranged" and "diagrammatic", or "decorative".  I think it's all about the intentions of the filmmaker as an artist with something to say, and getting that vision/point of view across to the audience by any means necessary.

"Use reference"
"Make your pictures 'what the witness saw.' Be a witness."

• These points speak to the believability of your story.  Use reference to add touches of reality. Research can put you in a place that your imagination alone might not.

 At lunchtime today I was checking out some art blogs, and it really got me wanting to do some life drawing.  But since I was eating at my desk I decided to do a "Search’N'Sketch!"  I did a Google search for "old man" and up came a photo of the gentleman below. 

I opened the subject photo on my second monitor, and did the color sketch on the PaintBoard page of this site in my web browser. What I call the PaintBoard is generally known as an Oekaki Board. On the PaintBoard you have different options for paint applications, and I chose Shi-Painter Pro.  It’s a great little app that gives you layers, pen, pencil, watercolor, and many other options.  Another cool feature is if ‘animation’ is selected when you start the painting, visitors can play back the animation and watch every brushstroke as the image forms right before their eyes.  It’s amazing to see another artist’s technique in timelaspse.

I really enjoyed doing this one, so I expect I’ll be doing more.  If you want, you can try out the PaintBoard yourself by clicking on the link at the top of the page, or on the sidebar.  It asks you to register, but if you’d rather not, I set it up so that you can sign in as "guest", with the password of "guest".

Check it out! 

This is Roché, (pronounced, "ro-shay").  An overly enthusiastic roach, Roché is my alter ego.  I'm in the process of putting together a 7 minute short starring Roché.  I've done a full animatic, and now I'm in the process of tweaking the story and punching up the gags.

Click Image for Sketch Gallery

The image below is one of the hundreds of story sketches I've done for this film.  If you click on the image, it will take you to a gallery with a few more of these sketches.  Eventually I'd like to post a short animatic, but I need to clear the scratch track music first.

A couple of years ago I entered this painting of my HooDoo the VooDoo Doll character in a Nickelodeon group show.

Click on Image to Enlarge

It was seen by Bill Burnett, co-creator and executive producer of Chalk Zone.  It reminded him of a character from his show, maybe as an evil twin of his, and asked me if I’d be interested in doing an "art" piece based on Chalk Zone. 
The restrictions were…none. He just asked me to come up with something cool that adults would enjoy.

I did a couple of sketches, and then came up with an idea that I liked, so I did a color pencil on black paper comp.  I presented the comp to Bill, who showed it to Larry Huber, Chalk Zone co-creator and executive producer, who said to send it on to Fred Seibert, executive producer of many a show. They all loved it, so I went ahead and did the full size piece, about 2 feet wide by 3 feet high, also with color pencil on black paper.

Click Image to Enlarge

It was a tough job getting an accurate reproduction, but thanks to trial and error, the patience of Eric Homan, who coordinated the job, and a lot of digital color correcting by myself and Fred, (who’s pretty darned handy with Photoshop, himself), we finally did.

I’m happy with the way it turned out, and I’m proud to say that it was reproduced twice in Fred’s book, Original Cartoons; once as a postcard and once as a poster.

Thanks, guys! 

So, I’m driving home from work, feeling kinda nostalgic for the ol’ neighborhood of Queens, NY, and I get to thinkin’ about the Ramones.  Being younger than they, I had only known them as part of the local mythology. (Aside from an encounter with Joey on 14th street in Manhattan, one day, but that’s another story.) Ironically I was a disco kid back then, and didn’t really come to appreciate the Ramones until I moved to the west coast.  Suddenly, whenever I heard their pep pill beat and nasal vocals it  would instantly send me back to New York.

After my drive, I put on a documentary DVD called End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones, and listening to those guys both praise and complain about each other as background noise while I worked, reminded me of my own squabbles, and laughs, with my brothers, the Roccos. There are more Roccos in Queens than Ramones, and I’m sure a couple of them are becoming part of the local mythology as well.

Anyway, I’ve finished working for the night, and decided to do quick caricatures of the Ramones.  It’s been awhile since I’ve done any real caricaturing, but hanging around Stephen Silver gave me the ol’ bug.  So hot off the scanner, here is my first Sketch’n'Blog.  I haven’t been drinking, but I still have a feeling that I’m going to regret this in the morning…

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By the way, I didn’t have room for the drummer, but if I did, I’d have drawn Tommy. 

Here are a couple of BGs I designed for a Flintstones cereal commercial.

I roughed them out in pencil, cleaned them up with a Japanese brush pen, scanned them into Photoshop and there I added the blue "watercolor" tone.

Click Images to Enlarge: 

 This ia a small selection of the more than 60 title cards I’ve done for the Fairly OddParents show.  I laid out, cleaned-up, and colored the cards under the design supervision of George Goodchild, Ernie Gilbert and Gordon Hammond.  These cards are examples of my version of the color before it goes to the art director for notes, so they do vary a bit from the final cards that are on screen, but they are closer to my original vision of the cards.

Click Image to Enlarge: 

At the 2002 Rat Fink Reunion in Vany Nuys, CA I was wandering around, checking out all the Kustom Kulture cars and booths. One of the booths was selling prints, and the proprietor, Sunny Buick, saw me carrying a black book and asked if she could see it. After checking out my sketches she invited me to participate in a gallery show that she was putting together up in San Francisco. The theme was going to be Sci-Fi Western, which sounded like fun. Of course I agreed, but beyond being flattered, I didn’t get my hopes up that the show would actually happen.

Some time later I got an update in the mail with the time and place of the show, a deadline for submissions and a deadline for transparencies to be printed in the catalog. At this point I freaked out realizing that I actually had to produce something! I got to work on an acrylic painting of a cowboy on his horse being abducted by aliens. When the time came for the catalog submission I hadn’t finished it, but I shot it anyway and sent it off.

As the date got closer for the actual artwork deadline I panicked again because I didn’t feel that the painting really represented me well. So a few days before the ship date I did a rough scribble of an idea on the back of a reciept that was in my pocket. When I got home I hopped on the computer and did up the piece in Illustrator. What came out that day was “Home On The Range.”

I was so happy with how that turned out I cranked out another piece the following day, “They Came From The West.” The following day I had 500 prints made of each, (it helps to have a friend that runs a print shop), and shipped them off to SF.

I wish I had those pictures ready for the catalog, because I think they represent me much better than the painting did. Oh, well…

Before my wife, Annie, and I went up for the show opening, I took an old Stella guitar that we had lying around the house and pinted it to match the initial prinout that I made of the image, and then pasted the image over that and clear coated it. I decided not to take it up to the show, but I did exhibit it at a Nickelodeon group show along with the matching print. The guitar is only playable as a slide guitar, but what better for Sci-Fi Western Music?

The cover image below is a link to the catalog at Amazon and the table of contents shows an impressive list of artists’ work in show. Don’t buy it for my painting, though, because it’s nothing like the pieces above. I wouldn’t. But if you like Robert Williams, Tim Biskup, Jorge Gutierrez, and the many other great artists in the show you won’t be dissappointed.

Click on Image to Enlarge

Following is a Quicktime file of an animatic that I did of a proposed 30 second spot using the Draggin' Dragon. I was thinking of doing this short-short with 3D BGs and props, and with 2D characters. Just as a sort of proof of concept I built a CG mockup of Dragon's Pagoda Wagon and combined the elements in Photoshop. The BGs in the animatic are just placeholders painted in Photoshop and the characters are really rough.

 

 Draggin' Dragon Animatic [0:33m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is a show opener that I did for the PBS series "Foto-Novelas" that was produced by ITVS and directed by Carlos Avila. The idea was to emulate the style of Latin American comic magazines. I boarded the concept, laid it out and put it together in Adobe After Effects. I hired an illustrator to do the final artwork, and unfortunately I can't remember his name, but he had a great brush line which gets obliterated in this compressed video.

I scanned the original hand inked artwork, then vectorized it with Adobe Streamline and touched it up in Illustrator. Finally I imported it into After Effects and had a heckuva time plotting out the curves for the camera move. That version of After Effects didn't have 3D space to work in, so it all had to be faked. I envisioned a shot that flowed continuously throughout, but I definitely had to cheat and throw in a couple of dissolves.

One of these days I'll go through my disk archives and see if I can find the original project file and rerender it at web resolution so that I can have a first generation copy up. I'm sure it would take a lot less time to render this time around than it did when I first did the spot. Originally it was done on a 150 mhz PowerMac. I would start the render in mid-afternoon and come back the next day hoping to have a completed shot. It was a sort of cold-sweat flashback to my years of doing motion control effects back when cameras had film.

 

 Fotonovelas Video [0:32m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download