My old roommate from Art Center, Marc Kolodziejczyk, has created a wonderful organization called the Special Children’s Art Foundation which, for several years now, has been helping kids with special medical needs by providing art therapy by doing large-scale mural projects with them. (He asked me a while back to design their logo, which I’m happy to see they’re still using.) It’s an inspiring thing he’s doing there. Please check it out.
I just picked up a copy of Richard Williams’ Animator’s Survival Kit from Amazon.com. This book is fantastic — loaded with great techniques for fooling the eye in terms of motion, follow through, keyframes, etc. Something I can really use in making these previs animatics. Most of the information is geared toward traditional hand-drawn, finished animation, but all of it can be applied to keyframed timeline-based previsualization animation that we do with computers these days, whether it be After Effects or LightWave or Maya. Great stuff.
My friend and fellow board artist, Pete Von Sholly, has a bunch of his work featured at Palaeoblog, and an interview with him at Buried.com. Very fun, worth checking out.
Robert McGinnis is a national treasure. I’ve only recently come to realize that I’ve known his work just about all my life, but didn’t know that all of it was the work of the same man. And, as frequently is the case, the more I looked into it the more impressed I’ve become. He’s nearly 80 years old now, and the body of work he’s created over the years shines like a brilliant diamond. Everything he draws and paints has that rare combination of seemingly effortless spontaneity and technical perfection.
Some of his books:
Paperback Covers
Paintings
We spent a long-planned weekend with my inlaws visiting the galleries in Laguna Beach. A beautiful place that, believe it or not, I’ve never visited before. I saw some fabulous sculpture work by Richard MacDonald and Paige Bradley; and I was really pleasantly surprised to see some Rembrandt etchings – unbelievably inspiring. My favorite one was an etching of The Resurrection of Lazarus. Check out the image in the link. Look how casually the Christ figure exerts his powers – like “no big deal” – like a superhero but without all the self-conscious, silly superhero drama. While all the people around him witnessing the scene are freaking out. Just awesome. If Rembrandt were around today he could easily have been a storyboard artist. That’s the kind of emotion, storytelling and staging that we all strive for.
I did a little sketching which I’ll post here later, but not in the same post as Rembrandt. I just can’t follow that act.
The latest issue of American Artist – Drawing (quarterly) is loaded with some beautiful drawing and sketch work. The article on combat art from Iraq is really amazing. For me the ability to draw on the spot with accuracy and speed is a powerful, difficult and rare skill – something worthy of eternal practice. To add the life-threatening element to that mix is awe-inspiring.
A bunch of storyboard artists go to lunch together and it’s only a matter of time before the pencils come out. Dave Lowery drew this of me the other day. Even my kids say it’s a pretty good likeness.
“Byodoin Temple, Hodo”
by Kawase Hasui, 1921
One of my all time favorite artists, Kawase Hasui. Beautifully composed, carefully rendered, atmospheric stuff well worth study.
Some links that might be of interest. My friend Dave sent me these:
- Barb Dickey, aka “The Storyboard Queen” has a fun web site for her work – storyboardland.com.
- Cool site full of commercials, short films, animation, music videos, etc. – boardsmag.com.
- A wonderful, graphics intensive fine-art site called The Art Renewal Center. You can buy art prints there as well.
Anthony Zierhut 