A Blackwing Experience at the Chuck Jones Center

This must be from "The White Seal".

Tonight I'm participating in a swell shindig down in Costa Mesa, "The Blackwing Experience", arranged by Palomino, the people who've brought back the title character of this blog, the redoubtable Blackwing 602, in new and elegant versions. It's taking place at the Chuck Jones Center for Creativity in Costa Mesa, an apropos venue as the 602 was reputedly Chuck's drawing implement of choice.  I'll be part of a panel discussing the "evolution of the creative process in animation". Quite a subject, and should be fun.


To mark the occasion, here are the two drawings by Chuck that I own, bought for a few bucks at Collectors Bookshop in Hollywood in the late 70s. I believe a Blackwing figures prominently here.

Detail of a layout from "Rikki Tikki Tavi"

The larger layout. It's been a long time since I watched these specials, and I'd like to look them up again. 

Dave Pimentel published a lovely book: "Evoke"

I've written on these pages several times already about my colleague Dave Pimentel.

Dave is a story artist who's probably the loudest cheerleader I know for drawing, drawing, drawing--at all times, in all places and with all media--and he's got the tweets, posts and sketchbooks to prove it.

He was lucky enough to be in the late Walt Stanchfield's gesture drawing classes at Disney. Stanchfield's philosophy and approach had a profound effect on him (as on so many others), and in the spirit Walt embodied he loves to share with and encourage other artists. He genuinely gets a charge out of not only creating his own work, but by seeing what everyone around him comes up with, whatever their take might be.

When I first started working with Dave I'd seize the chance to flip through his sketchbooks. He always had at least one in progress and a stack of what he'd just filled up on a shelf in the office. Each page was fun to look at, and each page was drawn from life. In fact, it was on those pages that I got to know his family before I'd actually met them--from the beautifully observed and executed sketches of them at the park, the bookstore, the beach, in the car...just engaging in ordinary everyday pursuits, but made to seem lyrical and alive on paper. The same was true of the anonymous passersby in his world, caricatured just enough to be recognizable as unique individuals. They all contained stories.

I hoped he'd self-publish a book of his drawings, and he has--he's also made it not only good to look at but to feel; it has a tactile, hard cloth binding with one of his ink brush drawings embossed on the oversize cover. He wanted it to resemble like the kind of 1950s-era books that all artists are drawn to(in my experience anyway) and it succeeds.

In addition to the many sketchbook excerpts he wrote a about a dozen pages containing the tips and ideas he uses in his gesture classes and applies to his own work. It's 100 pages of a very handsome and inspiring call to the pen, the pencil, and the sketchbook. Looking at it will make you feel good. And you'll really want to draw.





You can buy it from him here: EVOKE: The Art of Dave Pimentel

There is only one Glen Keane...

As long as he's been working and as great as he is, he always seems to get better.
From the page about his upcoming Paris exhibition Nov. 10 through Jan. 8th, 2011 at the Galerie Arludik, here's a sketchbook drawing done in 1999. Click to see it properly.

Toby Shelton

Toby Shelton's cintiq sketch revisiting his design for the title character in the Disney series "Darkwing Duck" and his story panels from "How To Train Your Dragon" and "Princess and the Frog" from his blog. CLICK to enlarge.

In an industry full of talented people and myriad styles the work of story artist Toby Shelton remains unique.

His facility with line is something else--form, weight and gesture beautifully employed. The guy can draw. But to leave it at his technical skill would be missing more than half the picture. It's the sincere appeal of his characters, their acting and his cinematic staging that give his stuff its impact, as well as an intangible something that's just terrifically likeable. Recent credits of his include "Megamind", "Princess and the Frog" and "How To Train Your Dragon".

In another life (as he puts it in his blog's profile) Toby worked for Disney feature animation as an animator, and in 1985 was one of the first to work at Disney's new Television Animation division, where his superb designs for "Rescue Rangers" and "Darkwing Duck" became well known and were traded freely, even by artists who'd never met him. He's posted some of that original character design work on his blog. For the requirements of this era in television in particular, sheets like these leap off the quality meter.





Everywhere he's worked has benefited immensely from his skill, and the influence and inspiration he provides to other artists is palpable. He's a thoughtful artist and a generous one.

Toby Shelton: Stuff I Did--be sure to visit it often.



A Toby Shelton rough story panel from Disney's "Princess and the Frog"-borrowed from a post by the great Paul Briggs on Paul's blog.

Toby's exploratory sketch of Mama Odie from Princess and the Frog. His design remained through the story process and animation.

Walt Stanchfield Lives

It would be a safe bet that anyone working in the american feature animation industry has either known, heard of or seen the influence and artwork of the late, great Walt Stanchfield.

Stanchfield was a longtime animator at the Disney's from the postwar era through his retirement in the 1980s, but what made him famous beyond the walls of the studio were his handouts-his notes from the classes he taught in gesture drawing. Using a model in quick poses, the task was to capture the essence of an idea-to distill as economicallly as possible all the life, weight, and story the observer could find in the pose.


I really can't say much about Stanchfield that an old friend and student of his couldn't say much better: Dave Pimentel. Dave was an avid student of Walt's and took his lessons seriously-retaining enough to teach the "Stanchfield way" himself in recent years. I'd seen some of the notes and had the odd mishmash of 100th generation xerox copies passed on to me over the years, but sitting and doing it was something else again. There's no substitute for drawing, drawing, drawing, and the enthusiasm of a true believer like Dave really revs up the motor.

As you can see from Dave's post, the notes from his legendary drawing classes have been compiled into book form in two new volumes edited by Don Hahn. These are an absolute must for any artist-forget about their importance as "animation only"; there's gold there for anyone. Frankly, for someone who simply thinks idly of drawing for their own pleasure but no clue how to go about it, I'd point them to these books-but the contents are also bedrock for the most serious draughtsman. As Dave points out, this guru of the pen was also full of life lessons. He must have been an incredible person to know. I wish I'd been able to meet him as well as take his classes, but at least there's a benefit of these new books. A lot of thanks are due to Don Hahn for getting them into print.

Dave P just for fun

For no particular reason than that I hadn't checked his blog for a while and found this there when I did.

Podcast and Post alerts

A quick heads up to let readers know that Clay Kaytis has just posted a new episode of his Animation Podcast, this one an interview with Disney veteran Dale Baer. He's a man with a long and distinguished history as well as an enormous amount of goodwill in the industry; I've known dozens of people who worked with or for Dale and not one had anything but very happy memories.


an example from the pen of Dave Pimentel
And on Drawings From a Mexican there's some very good tips about drawing an uninspiring model. Dave Pimentel has been even busier than usual lately, so an update from him is always welcome.

And one more [technical] thing: although I like the "new" template that you currently see here(in particular its organizing sidebar that directs the reader to just how obsessive I am about Fred Moore and other subjects), the interface for adding links is a huge pain; they must be done one at a time, laboriously. Anyone who has a way around this, give me a tip, won't you? I cringe at losing all my links to blogs I love and want to point the reader to...but this one-by-one thing is for the birds.

Learn by doing--and looking

I've mentioned his new site before, but here I go again--because today's post on Dave Pimentel's blog, "Drawings From a Mexican", features not his own work but that of a few of the attendees in Dave's instructed life drawing class here at Dreamworks. Most of these folks are story artists, and all are tremendously talented colleagues of mine, I'm proud to say. Most of us have been on the same project(s) lately as well...but here we get to see how they differ in style and how strong they all are as draughtsmen.

I just fed on studying this kind of "rough" drawing as a teenager, and it was pretty hard to find back then in books(Bridgeman was one, Kley another). Thank goodness for the internet now. Just looking at these quick gesture drawings is an education for all of us who love the line. And Dave, an animator who did story a favor by becoming a story artist, learned plenty from Walt Stanchfield as well as setting a standard for keeping one's eyes and ears open as an artist all the time. If his site's not on your list yet--add it!

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tags technorati : life drawing, animation, sketching, art, cartoonist