Merry Christmas

Trees02

Trees01

Trying my hand at painting some trees :)

self portrait

The Sandwich

This drawing was made for my friend Cesc Font while we worked on Cloudy2 and the style was inspired by Kris Pern's amazing storyboards. The drawing has a funny story attached to it, which you can read below :)

 

Cesc was not used to the Canadian "polite" culture where we usually sweeten any criticism by first giving a great amount of compliments, then the critique, and then follow it up by another slew of "but it looks really great!".  After a while, he started to compare this method to "The Sandwich". lol

From then on whenever we would critique each others work the saying would go: "Just give me the meat, not the bread"  :)

Cafe Sketches

Hunger Games

I read "the Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins in 2012. I have to say, I'm not sure if the book is for everyone, but I learned something very valuable from reading the series.  If you have not read the books and don't want me to ruin things for you, please don't read any further :)


SPOILER ALERT

What I actually loved most about the books was the ending. This might seem a bit counter intuitive, since the  ending of the series is not very "happy". Actually upon finishing the books I felt rather unsatisfied and sad. At the time no-one I knew had read the books, so I couldn't discuss them with anyone. In a way this was a blessing. I kept thinking about the lingering feeling I had after reading the series and in the end I thought Suzanne Collins did something brilliant. I don't know if this was intended, but the feeling I was left with was something like a gaping hole. I wanted it to be filled with happiness but it hadn't been. Never having been to war myself, I can only imagine what that must feel like. I would think that even if you are happy, there is always going to be a part of you that will be touched by sadness for the things you've done, the things you've seen and the people you've lost.


The feeling Suzanne Collins left me with at the end of the books was this exact feeling.


It really made me appreciate that when we write a story, we should ask ourselves, "what do I want the audience to feel at the end of the journey?". I can only speak for myself, but I feel very honoured to have gotten this lesson out of reading the books.

Wood Fairy

Cafe Sketches

These Cafe Sketches I did back in 2012, but I never had a chance to post them

Costume

I discovered a new artist recently that has been so inspiring! Her name is Claire Hummel and you can find her artwork here
http://clairehummel.com/

It's not only her art, but also her passion for costume design and fashion that has been absolutely awe inspiring! She has an epic post about where you find out about historical fashion and what books she would recommend.
http://shoomlah.tumblr.com/post/76245310670/claires-fancy-pants-historical-fashion-master-post

I was very lucky and was able to find a few of the books at my local library. I feel like when I first got into animation and you're overjoyed because someone has opened up a whole new world of wonders to you. I don't know Claire, but I just wanted to shout out a big thank you for all the hard work that has gone into accumulating the knowledge and the fact that she took the time to share it with all of us :)

Below is an image that was inspired by one of the books. 

Galactic Fear Plant

One of my co-workers introduced us to an amazing day during one of our sketching sessions. 3 people out of a group come up with 1 word each and then you have 15 minutes to do an illustration. It was so much fun and the word combinations that came up were just hilarious.

This is my drawing for Galactic Fear Plant :)

 

Variete Show

When I went to visit my family I had the chance to catch a Variety show. I definitely need more practice, but trying to capture the fast moving poses of the performers was really fun.

The little prince

Some of you know may know that I'm currently animating on the movie version of "the little prince". I can't really say anything about the project at the moment, but working on it has been amazing!


To share something small, this is a drawing I did for one of our newsletters :)

Cafe Sketches 02

 

Cafe sketching

Cafe sketching oh how I missed thee.

Fight or Flight

 

This drawing is pretty old, but I thought I'd post it none the less :)

For Dan

Hey guys.

I finally have a new scanner!! So hopefully I'll be able to update more regularly again :)
This is a drawing I did last year for my friend Dan (http://danpozo.blogspot.ca/), who besides being an amazing animator is also an amazing guitarist!