Toy Story 3

Now that Toy Story 3 has been released, I thought I'd post some of the character design work I did on the film. Working on the film as a character designer was a dream come true for me. I came on early on the project and had an opportunity to work on a whole bunch of different characters which was a blast. I also had the chance to work with a great art team on the film ( Bob Pauley Production Designer, Dice Tsutsumi & Robert Kondo as Art Directors, Craig Foster Graphic Designer ) just to name a few. And I also can't leave out everyone else on the art team all of which were some of the most talented individuals I've ever worked with, and lucky for me, the crew for the entire film was just as awesome.

Daniel Arriaga, Tom Gately, Dan Holland, and Daniela Strijleva rounded out the character art team with me, and they all were not only inspiring to be around, but brought so much enegry and creativity to the character design process of the film, that it was just exciting to be around. Lee Unkrich our director was awesome as was our Producer Darla Anderson. I also have to tip my hat to the entire TS3 story team, they really paved the way for us character designers to have a ton of fun and really succeed. I can't remember all their names, but their team really set the tone for the movie, and their creativity and character/story concepts are behind every character you see in the film. They all did a spectacular job.

While I worked on more than you'll see here, I thought I'd post some stuff from the characters that were not only new original characters to the franchise, but ones I had the most influence on. Below is a collection of some of the work I did for the film.

Mr. PRICKLEPANTS

Mr. Pricklepants was one of the first characters I had the chance to work on. When I first came on to the show, I was assigned to begin working out the designs for Bonnie's toys. Pricklepants being the esteemed actor and thespian that he was, he was hilarious from day one and he definitely stole the show in the story boards which made my job as a designer pretty easy. As far as his design goes, I thought of him as sort of a stocky little bean bag toy you might find in an airport or something. Below are a few other sketches I did while exploring his bean bag/gum drop shape, style, and outfits.





BUTTERCUP



Buttercup is another one of Bonnie's toys. Most of the work that went into Buttercups design was to try and make him the cutest little unicorn the universe had ever seen. One thing I thought that was really helpful in working out his design was referencing pictures of real horses to see how they moved. And using that reference to help figure out how much of that natural movement would translate into the movement of a little plush horse. Below you can see some of those sketches I did to help figure out his movement and shape.




I included the sketch below as it was the first sketch I ever did of Buttercup, at one point we thought he might have long flowing hair.



DOLLY



Dolly is another one of Bonnie's toys, and from the first time I started designing on here, Lee always thought of here has a flat little home-made looking doll, so that's where we started. In the early stages she looked as she is above. I wanted her to be the perfect definition of a cute little girl, so I referenced pictures of my wife when she was little (as she was seriously the cutest little girl their ever was) and put a lot of her into my design. I always thought of her as having cute little pattern dresses and her hair parted to one side with stylized little bangs and maybe a bow or bumble bee hair clip. Below are a few more variations I did on working out differences in her hair style and dress patterns and colors.



CHUCKLES



Chuckles was another character that really stole the show in the story boards. The artist who boarded him, really nailed the "worn out clown toy" look, so I just followed his lead and tried not to screw up his concept. Chuckles was a blast to work on, because in the film he's so broken, so down, and the fact that he's a clown just always came across as so dark to me and I couldn't help but fall in love with his character. Below are a few sketches I did on his movement, which should really just be called a "waddle." And a few other early concepts of his look.

One thing that was particularly challenging about working on him, as were a few of the other bad guys was, these toys weren't made to look evil, creepy, or mean, so we had to design them with the concept that they were made to look cute and fun as you would buy them in the store, but could have the proper look that could give them the dark edge they would need as characters.





THE ROBOT



The Robot was a character that was originally in Bonnie's group, but didn't end up making the cut. I worked on him for a while, and the concept behind his design was that he was a cute little battery operated learning robot. Below are a few other takes I had on him.



OTHER BONNIES TOYS CONCEPTS

For a while, we played with the thought that Bonnie might either be making some of her own toys, or simply just have some hand made toys. These were particularly fun to work on as I just had a blast drawing a whole bunch of funny little hand made characters. I thought it might be particularly fun to play up their hand made feel by making them noticeably un-even in their design which I also thought played up their charm and silliness.

We also played with concepts of her having toys that were possibly shaped as veggies, fruits, or deserts.


Two characters I pined for were the tooth and the Popsicle. I thought of the Tooth as maybe something she got from her first visit to the dentist and the Popsicle just a funny little hand made craft guy made of felt and Popsicle sticks. To me they seemed like the perfect odd couple, the Tooth disliking the Popsicle for his carelessness when it came to health and sweets and all things responsible, and the Popsicle just being the sweet life of the party with not a care in the world.


Below are a few other quick sketches of hand made/craft toys Bonnie may have either made or just had lying around.



STRETCH



Stretch was one of the first characters I worked on in Lotso's Gang. It was fun to get to design a bad guy for a change, and it was also fun because his design evolved for a little while thought the process of finding out what type of character he would be. I originally thought it would be funny if he was some sort of water toy 9 thus the silly little sailor hat above ) but we ended up ditching that, and pushing him to a creepier design as seen below.



below are a few other sketches and passes at different variations of his face both happy and mean.


THE LIBRARIAN

Below are some sketches I did as we were trying to figure out what type of light up worm would he be. I have a painted final design and quick sculpt I did which I'll post tomorrow once I find them. But for now you can see the beginning part of the process with him.





THE "METAL HEAD" GARBAGE MAN

I didn't really get a chance to work on any of the humans in the film, except for the bad ass head banging garbage guy. Not too much work went into his design process, we tried to keep him pretty generic, but accessorize him with everything a metal head would need to be jamming out while picking up the trash. For a short assignment, I had a fun time sketching him in his head banging ways.




ANDY'S ROOM GRAPHICS

One of my first assignments on the film was to begin to develop some stickers / posters that teenage Andy might have in his room. Not sure if any of these made it into the final design of his room, but none the less, I had fun making some skateboarding stickers and graphics so I thought I'd share a few.

J.C. Leyendecker

I was recently asked to participate in the new blog Illostribute.com . Illostribute is a new collaborative illustration blog, conceived and edited by illustrator & artist Toby Thane Neighbors . The idea is to honor master illustrators (and occasionally fine artists) by seriously investigating their work, through interpretation.

The first master artist that was selected for this project was the amazing J.C. Leyendecker. His work is beautiful and elegant, and you can read more about him HERE , and below I've posted a few of his pieces which I referenced for my inspired painting.


As for my piece inspired by Leyendecker's work, what I focused on was his bold graphic concept of letting everything in black fall away, only relying on lighter objects in the piece to tell the story in the painting. I love how limited yet very descriptive this technique is that he occasionally used and so I thought I'd explore that concept in my piece inspired by his work.

Drinks With Leyendecker
Acrylic & Paper Collage
8" x 10"
2010

Guilty Insomniac

Here is my contribution to this weeks Chades Challenge hosted over at Austin Madison's Blog . I like to think of Racoons as little insomniacs, and clearly he's been up all night, and caught red handed

Skeletor Vs. Sock Monkey

Here is a piece I recently did for an up coming art show "It's not a Doll, it's an Action Figure!" at the Bear and the Bird Gallery in Lauderhill Florida. The show opens this Saturday the 19th with an opening reception party that night from 7pm - 10pm. This was a fun and outrageous piece to paint, it was nice to finally get to illustrate stuffed animal guts with pink yarn...it's been too long. The concept behind the piece was basically when an action figure reaches his breaking point, how would they handle their anger when it boils over into a fight with a doll.

Skeletor Vs. Sock Monkey
11" x 14"
Mixed Media
2010

The Moonlight Roller Boys

Over the past few months my wife and I have begun going to this local rollerskating rink in Burbank know as "The Moonlight Roller Rink" and while I can say roller skating to a bunch of random music with your friends is fun, what clearly makes the night is getting to check out all the local talent polishing up their skating skills. So with every trip to the rink, I'm gonna start chronicling the trips with a few sketches of some of the awesome skaters we've encountered the night before.



"The Ref"
This guy is the police of the roller rink hardwood. He doesn't mess around with making sure people obey moonlight protocol and keep it clean and fun in the rink. His attire includes an xx small ref jersey, extra tight jeans featuring his bulging crotch, two cell phones and a blue tooth head phone devise to keep it hands free on the hardwood. He provided us with the quote of the night which my wife over heard him saying to one of his buddies (no joke):

"People think my job isn't serious, but guess what, I take is very seriously, if there is a dropped sweatshirt or a spilt beverage in the rink, that could be a death on the floor!"



"The Punisher"
Dressed in all black and red in the face and covered in bulging veins, this guy skates with the heat intensity of a thousand hells. He never smiles, never laughs, doesn't enjoy the music, only punishes him self to get better by skating until his soul bleeds and forces him to stop. No quote from this guy, because he doesn't speak, he just skates and creeps everyone out.

More to come following the next trip to the rink...

New Original Paintings and Prints in the store

So I've been so busy that it's been a while since I've had the chance to update the Store , so I've finally taken the time to remedy that and now there are a few new original paintings and signed prints available. I've got a lot of new pieces I'm working on that should also make their way into the store sooner than later. If you haven't checked out my artwork and print shop you can either click the link above, or click the yeti Icon over on the right side of the page.

More stuff coming soon, seems like this is fast becoming a busy month here on the blog.

Totty

I've been going through a bunch of older stuff that I haven't gotten around to posting yet, so here is something from the pile. A long time ago I designed a Tater Tot Elf for Sonic Drive-In Restaurants, so here are the fun and wacky drawings I did... above is the final design, below are some rough concepts and a BG to place the character on.

It's Alive...& Dangerous!

Here is a piece that I recently contributed to a Sci-Fi podcast/website, once it's featured I'll post a link to the site. It's a piece I created a while back for a gallery show I was a part of in San Diego. The original is Black and White and all Acrylic & Paper Collage, but for this submission, I thought I'd use a little Photoshop magic and add a little color and a few highlights just for fun. In the end it's just your average brain in a robot suit, living and breathing in a lab by day, only to terrorize the city by night.

It's Alive & Dangerous
10" x 8"
Acrylic / Paper Collage / Digital

Chades Challenge - Patriotic Chinchillas

For those of you who don't know, my good buddy Austin Madison runs a bi weekly character design challenge over on his blog. Every two weeks there is a new concept for a character to design, this time around the challenge was to design Patriotic Chinchillas! And being that my wife and I own the coolest Chinchilla in the world (his name is Wicket) this seemed like a challenge I had to jump in on. Above is my serious contribution to the challenge, it's Wicket showing off his true patriotic spirit, which as my wife can tell you he displays on a daily basis. Below is my stupid contribution to this challenge, you see when my friend Austin creates a stupid hero, I have a strange urge to create an even dumber villain. Austin's contribution to this weeks challenge as seen over on his blog was a "Chinchilla Captain America" and so I thought to my self, what's Captain America with out the "Red Chin-Skulla!" Clearly the bar has been lowered as this is simply an evil brooding Chinchilla with skull face paint, but none the less here's to creating lame super heros Austin!


Patriotic Chin & Red Chin-Skulla
Digital
2010

Good Bye Lost...We'll Miss You

Unless you live under a very large rock, then you probably know that the amazing TV Series "Lost" has come to an end. Well, it was about two years ago that we got really into the show and needles to say, we have been hooked ever since. It was sometime during last season (season 5 ) that my wife Crystal surprised me with one of my favorite drawings of all time, an awesome sketch of Hurley! As the season went on she gave me several more sketches... John Locke....Miles.... and so with the closure of the show, she gave me a few more sketches for old time sake, I guess as a final send off ....Sawyer (which best illustrates how I feel about the show ending)....



Ben Linus aka Henry Gale aka Snake in the grass .... and who better than "chesty" Frank Lipidus. These are amazing babe, hopefully I can get some more if we ever re-watch the series!

If you haven't seen Lost, check it out!

"Sad Sawyer"
"Ben Linus"
"Chesty Frank Lipidus"
Colored Pencil
Crystal Wragg
2010

Austin Madison Yeti

One of my good friends Austin Madison (animator extraordinaire) recently contributed this awesome wampa/yeti illustration to my yeti themed home art studio. Since moving into our new place, my wife and I have begun to transform my art studio into our very own yeti cave. I'm beginning to fill my studio space with yeti & sasquatch themed work from some of my favorite artists that inspire me. Austin is a friend who has inspired me from our days back in school at CAL ARTS and probably will continue to do so until the universe explodes.

5:17pm, Tuesday : No Wind & No Friends

Busy, Busy, Busy...while finishing up a bunch of paintings in the works, here is another painting illustrating another isolated afternoon for Sasquatch :(

No Wind & No friends
40" x 6"
Acrylic & Paper Collage
2010

Artwork For A New Book - 3x4

Here is a piece from an upcoming book I'm contributing to. I'm one of 4 artists involved in this small little side project known as 3 x 4. 3 paintings by 4 artists, and all work inspired by the theme of 3, thus explaining the three eyes on the love hungry space creature above. As for the book, you may have heard of the other guys who are contributing to this project ... Scott Morse, Don Shank & Lou Romano? Well, they are amazing, and the book is shaping up to be a lot of fun. More details and release date info to come.

On a side note, there are still plans for release of The Ancient Book of Monsters and Magic, just not this year. We're all still plugging away at it, and should have it out sometime next year, more details on this in the future as well.

As for the piece above, here are the details:

3 Eyes
10" x 15"
Acrylic, Aluminum Foil & Paper Collage
2010

Toy Story 3 Character Design

As one of the lead character designers on the up coming Toy Story 3 film, I had my hands full with designing a whole bunch of new toys for the film. Once the film is released I'll post some sketches and go into more detail on the fun I had working on the film and all it's new characters, but for now, since I can't post and sketches yet, I thought I'd post one of the posters that was released for one of the characters I designed. Mr. Pricklepants was probably my favorite character I got to work on and design, here is the poster / render of him that's been released, and I have to say, he pretty much looks exactly like the drawings I did back when I was working on his design. More to come once the film is released.

Space Swingers - Commission Piece

A few months ago I was asked if I could create a piece much like a previous painting I had done before, it's not something I usually do, but it's always fun to riff on something you may have already done, just to see what you can do to build of a pre-existing concept. So I revisited a piece I did for the "Ancient Book of Sex and Science", the piece was titled "Space Quickie" you can see it HERE on my blog. Basically I ended up just trying to build off of the concept of some people enjoying some sexy time in Space. So above you can see the finished painting, it's a space ship full of astronaut swingers celebrating the discovery of a new alien planet, unfortunately, the alien that they landed their rocket ship on was not invited to the celebration. And he doesn't seem to be too pleased about it!

Space Swingers
10" x 20"
Acrylic and Paper Collage
2010

Flip The Bird - Oregon Art Show

In April I will be one of four artists teaming up for a bird themed gallery show at The Lunar Boy Gallery in Astoria, Oregon. The show will be titled "Flip the Bird" and will showcase artwork from Ben Adams , Ben Burch , Lou Romano , and my self. The Brains behind the show are two amazing artists by the names of Ben Adams & Ben Burch. It's a show they have both helped put on for the past couple of years and I'm really excited to be apart of this years showcase. One thing that is gonna be really cool about this particular show, is each artist was given one of four seasons to create a layout / sketch for. Then that design is passed out amongst the four other artists, and in the end you have four different takes on four different seasons, each designed by one artist, but painted differently by everyone else participating. The season that I was given to design was Winter, and here is my painting of the layout and bird I designed.

The show is gonna be really fun, and the other artists participating are amazingly inspirational, so if you aren't busy on April 10th, Saturday evening, and you are in and or around the town of Astoria, you should come by the Lunar Boy Gallery and check out the show.

Ice Crane
12" x 12"
Acrylic and Paper Collage
2010

Two Paths - Commission Piece

Well, I'm swamped with all types of work right now, so I thougth I'd take a quick moment to post one of the more recent commission pieces I've finished. This particular piece was inspired by a poem. The poem describes the choices we all have in life, and in many ways, how some of our desicions can be simplified down into the option of choosing between two different paths to follow.

Two Paths
9" x 15"
Acrylic 7 Paper Collage
2010

Ronald Searle Tribute

I was recently asked to contribute to a little thank you / tribute book for the amazing cartoonist Ronald Searle. Like most people in animation and cartooning today, Ronald Searles work has had a profound impact on myself as an artist. He's simply one of the best artists ever, and to have a chance to say thanks with a little tribute drawing of my own, I jumped at the chance. Anyways, below is my contribution to the tribute book being put together for him.

If by chance you haven't seen is work, or have never heard of him, just google his name ( Ronald Searle ) and be prepared to be blown away.

Sasquatch & His Bad Habits

Here is a painting from a series of paintings I did for an upcoming art book I'll be in. More info on the book and it's release date in the future.

Sasquatch Squaller
5"x 12"
Acrylic and Paper Collage
2010