"Inside Out" themed Pixar Holiday Card: A making of walkthrough

A GRAND ILLUSTRATION JOB! I got the go ahead to design and write the card this year and what an honor it is to get that shot. I did a couple of very rough ideas and in a quick presentation to Pete Docter and Jonas Rivera they picked the one of Joy with holly in her hair. It was the one I wanted to make--whew! I refined the idea only a little further in Photoshop to get the studio buy-off. It is wise to wait until you pass that final hurdle, experience tells me.



Once we got it I had only a week and half to do it in my spare time. That meant two weekends. I have this thing about seeing colors during daytime and I couldn't do the work at the studio. The day job is about meetings, not illustrating. And I'm not set up for it there. I had to do this at home.



I lined up all my intended colors on boards and assigned colors out of the tube or make notes about mixing. I had to know what the colors I picked look like in daylight and not waver as I work with them at night under artificial light. Also with gouache you have to test the colors when it is dry. It gets tricky if you rush this.



Transferred my art onto illustration board using a projector and from thereon it was all about keeping the work area accident free of unintended smudges. There were adjustments as I went like always. Some colors still looked too chalky or not enough vibrancy. Joy's hair came out better than in the comp though the holly needed more of the contrasting gold and ochre to make it pop. Overall it was a blast to make.



Finally it was just about hand lettering. I did my fair share of hand-made fonts and logo's back in the days of camera ready art for print. Didn't know if I still had it. Lucky for me I really enjoy lettering and just enough of the old skills was there to craft the headline.



And there you have it: the 2014 Pixar holiday card! Valerie Hathaway of the Pixar Store tells me they are a best seller! So happy to hear that. I had the original art framed to display along with the printed cards. One has to share the art of the card with the studio, I think. This was the best venue for it.

Inside Out trailer
Photo walkthrough of the making of this card on my Tumblr
Ronnie del Carmen @paperbiscuit Twitter

Miracleman #7 Variant cover

No banners. Click image for larger view. With cover logo you can go here.

Supreme honor. When George Beliard of Marvel asked me to do a cover for the re-issue of Miracleman I couldn't believe my luck. I had to find a way to read those early issues and it took some hunting. I picked this issue when Miracledog shows up. I know, it's a chance to draw that monster but more than that it was the most compelling issue of them all. The most dramatic stakes--in movie terms it's your end of the second act when all is lost. Love it. If you haven't read Miracleman I strongly suggest you pick up this new, amazing re-issue. Before this there was no way you could get your hands on this continuity other than plunking hundreds of dollars for its original American run.

I thought of James Bama's covers for the Doc Savage paperbacks as inspiration. Those were powerful images. Miracleman does not have busting-at-the-seams muscles. He's more like a slender Paul Newman "Cool Hand Luke" build. Behind him I can place Miracledog who is mucho sinewy and lethal looking. Did many thumbnails but the quiet pose of an unstoppable god in front of a demon dog felt right for the story. After a pencil rough was approved I did several value and color studies. One digital and one with the actual gouache paints. Cutting the guesswork when I get to final is such a gift.



But even with all that prep I ran into some problems. My full-sized pencil when transferred to illustration board lost just enough fidelity that his face looked funny. And I only noticed that after I've already done a base color wash on him. I had to do some fixing. Maybe a lot of fixing. If his face is not right then the whole thing is a do over. In the end I felt that I needed to finish the whole thing in Photoshop--sparkles and value adjustments. It was not the smoothest of projects but overall I had a lot of fun making it. Hope you like it.

Making a Marvel Comic Book cover part 3

The final variant Wolverine/Patch cover image! Click on for a larger one.

Time to execute. After a couple of bouts doubting, hesitating and some redo's I arrived at a finished pencil. I hope I had done enough leg work for the variables that lay ahead--barring accidents and the odd thing I didn't plan on. My thumbnail had the foliage behind Logan in a light green but in the final I decided to keep all the elements in a yellow gold. A color mock-up of the composition helped me relax about applying the final colors.



The first thing on was a light watercolor wash over the shapes. After that was dry I started on flesh tones and then Logan's face. If you mess this part up then you can pack it up and start over. I had not done what the veterans would do to eliminate a complete redo. They'd pencil it in, ink it and seal it all under varnish or matte medium. That way if you falter you can scrub all the paint back to the drawing underneath. Thankfully with all the limbering up and re-draws I got the Logan face I wanted. With that clinched I went on to the other crucial face and skin tones for Jessan.



Next I had to key in the darkest values of Logan's head. I didn't want to use actual black, even for his pants and shoes. It also helps to keep the other elements from stealing focus from ol' Wolvie. I even muted the contrast of Jessan's face and dress so our hero stands out. After that the only big-ish challenge is the shawl pattern. I like intricate design but I din't want the fabric to be angry with detail. Then all that's left was defining the tux, his claws, the plant leaves and pot.

I sent an image of the cover to Marvel and they were very happy with it. To be honest, I was very happy with it myself. It was something I wanted to try out and see how I'd do and the result was not too bad. I hope I get to do this again so I get better at it. Thanks for reading this far. I hope you get a chance to find this variant cover. I should order this myself: Uncanny X-Men #7. Cheers!

Making a Marvel Comic Book cover part 2

Warm ups and research. Creating quick ideas is fun but being a feature animation guy full time means I'm not set up to make cover art. I decided that I was going to do this with actual media. No photoshop. I had to limber up. I created folders of images of tuxedos, Sean Connery (who wears it best), hands, shoes, asian models (for Tyger), fabrics from Singapore and Malaysia and tropical plants and pots.

Then I started to paint studies. Past experience taught me that I could be too casual about the job--to disastrous results). I learn from reading about other artists' process like this post from Leif Peng's Today's Inspiration where Mitchell Hooks was interviewed about his process.

On another front, I blew up the thumbnail to 125% of print size and roughed it in on tracing paper. That revealed the next problem. Without a pair of actual models I am making this up entirely out of my head. I had to hunt for poses that I can reference and draw the composition several times. Each time I found something to fix (which leg is bearing the weight, relative sizes of body parts, hand poses, etc). Next post is about painting the final!


This is just one of the full sized pencils I did. I had transferred one of these to illustration board only to change my mind after a day of staring at it. Tyger was too big, Wolvie didn't seem convincing in his pose. I tortured myself but I'm glad I did.

Making a Marvel Comic book Cover

Wolverine Costume Variant cover for Marvel. A few months back Marvel asked me if I was interested in doing another variant cover for them. I did an Iron Man one before and I was looking for another shot at a cover. What's that you say? It would feature Wolverine? WOULD I?!

They were planning on doing a set of covers to feature the life and times of our favorite adamantium enhanced mutant. I immediately zeroed in on the Patch persona. Why? I had not read those stories that was set in Madripoor so I had no attachment to it. What did it was the look. I am a big fan of the paperback covers of Robert McGinnis and Mitchell Hooks. This was a chance to try my hand at it.

A quick round of thumbnails first. I find that I solve big design problems right off that way. Once I had the ideas narrowed down I test it again in color. These thumbnails are about an inch wide. It keeps me from noodling. I did two versions though I thought I liked the first one already. I just had to make sure that I'd be happy to do either version regardless. Marvel liked the one I wanted. Yeah! That starts another round of prep and solving design problems. That's for the next post.


I mocked up the image against a Wolverine banner just to see what clearance I needed for the banner, whatever book the cover might appear in. Marvel didn't know at the time. Now we know It's for Uncanny X-men #7. Lucky! Love that book.

Spacing Out

Check out the time-lapse of how the drawing progresses on Odosketch. I like this online drawing tool. Only chalky brushes and no undo's. You gotta commit.

Dead Spaces. Well, I didn't mean to not post on my blog for almost a year but that's what happened. When I started this blog over a decade ago it felt like I was part of a mere handful of my colleagues who had a blog. "A 'blog?'" I remember hearing. Now blogs have had their heyday and gone. Where do the folks flock to these days? I'm sure I don't know. But I've been disloyal myself. I have a Tumblr and a Twitter account. Both that I've been keeping up while I've left my old pal, Tirade, abandoned and unloved.

I hope this wakes up those who still follow me here and though I will not make promises I can't keep I will try to suss out the new features of Blogger by posting as often as I can.

Dead Space. I was playing the first Dead Space as I was doing late nights finishing my first children's book, "My Name is Dug." It was my cigarette break, only without the cigarettes. It's been the one game series I've played more than any other. I'm not a hardcore gamer but I've played my modest share. This year we have Dead Space 3 and I am happy to have a new outing of my favorite lovelorn space engineer. He's got new suits and a weapon crafting bench that is loads of fun to keep coming back to. But more than that it's the closest I've come to being able to live out Ripley's vendetta in the Alien series. These creatures are terrifying and the best way to deal with that terror? Payback. Dead Space has boat loads of that.



Paper Biscuit on Tumblr
Ronnie del Carmen on Twitter

Odosketch

Moebius (8 May 1938 – 10 March 2012)

Jean Henri Gaston Giraud. I had stared at my Heavy Metal issue with Arzach in it till it wilted to pieces. "The Long Tomorrow" started to yield more of the city, around corners that he didn't show, and I knew those streets were fantastical at every turn. I studied how thick the line weights were on that story versus the ones on "The Airtight Garage." I was obsessed as I've never been obsessed and will not be again since.

I met him when my friend Sylvain Despretz introduced me to him in the early 90's during a Comic-con. We had a sushi lunch. I think I ate. I didn't say anything coherent but succeeded in sounding like every bit of fan boy that I was. The next times I meet him again I could not know (nor was it important) if he recognized me.

I worked on doing character designs for an animated Airtight Garage project being produced in Russia. The designs they did had tried to replicate the complicated hatching of a Moebius drawing. No good for animation and a dead give away that the production they hired did not know what they were doing. I did a pass on the main characters, did turns and some head shots. Preliminary stuff, things I learned from Stephan Martiniere who had mentored me when we worked on a DIC t.v. show.

As payment Jean Marc Lofficier gestured me to a flat file, "Go pick one." I didn't quite understand what our agreement was as I stood there. Money was not going to be exchanged--? Oh, I get it! Opening the flat file I see all sizes of art and comic book pages (bandes dessinée, real big). I gawk as I touch each gingerly. Overload. I tried for an hour. I came to about a handful that I can't remember now. But I chose finally. A page from the Incal.

More than the privilege of owning the piece and having worked on a Moebius project no matter how obscure and doomed, I am honored to have met him and somehow intersected with a great artist and visionary. One who cannot be replaced and will not happen on to this plane again.

You will be missed.

___

Image was drawn at Cato's Ale House with the crayons they provide patrons. Mostly to kids of families dining there. Drawn in the dark on their graffiti etched table on common bond paper. Post color in Photoshop.

"Ellie Fredriksen, Aviator" at the Cartoon Art Museum auction

How about an auction? The Cartoon Art Museum is just a Bay Bridge away from where we work and we find a constant stream of great art and artists come to the museum and visit the studio as well. Why not participate in this year's Pixar event?

The Cartoon Art Museum, the only museum in the western United States dedicated to all forms of cartoons and comics, is delighted to host its eighth annual benefit at Pixar Animation Studios on Saturday, December 10, 2011.


More info about that event if you click this link. Wanna bid on this piece of art created by yours truly? It is so affordable, ground floor action here. You can do more than think about it and head on to this location and start bidding, by gum!  Charity Auction

Hey, if you want an original Pete Docter then you are in luck! This is by far the easiest way you can snag actual hand made work by this modern movie master. Just check this out and give yourself an early Christmas present.  Check it out! 

I have something to confess. If you want to see the full image of the Ellie art (she is drawn full figure, see) go head to my tumblr. You heard me. I got one. I've been carrying on with another blog system. I have images there that are not here on Tirade.  I can wax ad nauseum here. But I'm practically mute over there.  Check it out.



Cartoon Art Museum Pixar Event, December 10, 2011
Bid on Pete Docter hand drawn Carl and Kevin!
Bid on Ellie Aviator by Ronnie del Carmen

Cartoon Art Museum


Ronnie del Carmen Tumblr "Paper Biscuit"

Aviator Ellie

Adventure is out there! Ellie has the distinction of not only being one of the most loved characters in the Pixar universe but one with also the least amount of screen time. Having had the privilege of telling her life story (the ones we showed in the movie and ones we set aside) I am especially attached. I can tell you that I still muse about their possible adventures: cross-country races, barnstorming, secret missions, cryptozoological hunts, rescuing endangered animals and ballroom dancing! A regular Indiana Jane.

I did this pin-up for San Francisco's Cartoon Art Museum fund raiser this coming weekend. Where? Why, at Pixar, that's where! Michael Johnson (who also happen to be the tech grand wizard who devised software for us to storyboard by) holds this annual get-together for CAM and a bunch of us donate lectures, tours and art. Go check it out.


Seventh Annual Cartoon Art Museum Benefit at Pixar Animation Studios

Windup Girl study

Sketchbook drawing. Muji mechanical pencil, watercolor applied with Pentel waterbrush. Fleshtone finish on Photoshop. She just showed up while having Blue Bottle cappuccino at New People in Japantown.


Because you can't choose what to draw. Haven't been able to read much of late but I did pick up Paolo Bacigalupi's "Windup Girl" in paperback after being caught by the back cover description. I'm just into the first chapters. Growing up in the Philippines and having traveled to Thailand and Japan the textures and cadences summoned by the book are fun to conjure along with.

So, sketches happen. Maybe more will show up. But I am taking my time reading the pages. A leisurely approach to casting the movie inside my head. It just won a Hugo award in a tie with The City & The City by China Miéville,

The Windup Girl is a story about colonialism, independence, mysticism and ethics, sex and loyalty, and the opposing forces of greed and empathy. Filled with complex and flawed characters who must struggle to overcome their failings, The Windup Girl has no easy or pat answers, but rather charges the reader to summon empathy for imperfect humans who fail as often as they succeed.

--from Boing Boing review

2010 National Cartoonists Society Reuben Awards

The Animation division award from the NCS Reubens for my work on UP. It's already up on the mantle. Notice the Rube Goldberg characters adorning the edges.

A wonderful honor. Last weekend I flew to New Jersey to attend the 2010 National Cartoonists Society Reuben awards. My schedules being what they are I had to make sure I could really attend before making the travel plans. The lure of meeting all these luminaries of cartooning was too great. It all worked out in grand style. Oh, and I won the feature animation division award!



I got to attend two talks. George Booth, as Arnold Roth mentioned as he presents George a Lifetime Achievement Award, "makes it impossible for any of us to ever attempt to draw a funny dog or cat ever again." Joe Kubert is a legend in comics and I wasn't about to miss hearing him speak about his career. I was very impressed at how well rounded his regard for the life of an artist, not just comics, and his love for drawing.


George Booth drew dogs and various parts of dogs and put them together using an overhead projector. So amazing to see him construct these hilarious dog drawings. Then he looks up and laughs out loud himself. What a joy!

My thanks to Jeff Keane, president of the NCS (brother to Glen, son of legend Bill Keane of "Family Circus) for welcoming me and for throwing such a grand party. Jeff is also quite the thespian. In a send up of The Godfather featuring fellow cartoonist he did a very convincing Vito Corleone.

Very special thanks to David Folkman for introducing me to the NCS. He is tireless in his support and passion of the organization and kindest of people you can meet (he is also Co-Publisher/Design Director of “Hogan’s Alley"). Chad Frye recognized me in the corridors and proceeded to make sure I felt like I belong and connected these giant names of cartooning to faces. Whoa! They were all there! Arnold Roth, George Booth, Joe Kubert, Jerry Robinson, Mort Walker...it goes on. What a night. Met so many amazing and welcoming people.


Joe Kubert spoke briefly and opened it to questions. He is a noble man and wants to talk more about the history he was witness to as a comic book artist than about himself. He has a great laugh as well. He says he draws everyday still. That's for me!

The NCS wishes that more animation professionals attend the event and I for one am sure I'm coming back. Because besides the star gazing and the great people I know that someday soon I want to be one among them, drawing from my home office, weaving my own tales of adventure and hopefully being a card carrying member. A real cartoonist.



The National Cartoonists Society
Chad Frye's Blog for a comprehensive report on the entire weekend.

Wild West Iron Man: A variant cover

I snapped an iPhone pic of the work in progress on my cintiq. Pencil illustration finished off in Photoshop.

Outlaw Metal. Joe Quesada and I almost worked on an feature a long time ago but it was not meant to be. Flash forward to Marvel being part of Disney and I get the call from Joe asking if I would be interested in doing an Iron Man cover. How fast could I say, "YES!"without tripping over myself? I mean, ol' Shell-head was THE very first super hero I ever drew as a kid (hey, no human features to stumble over like eyes, ears and such). And I am still a huge Iron Man fan (though don't ask me what happened to Tony in the last decade or so. Love the Gene Colan and Don Heck illustrated ones). So, not only, yeah, but HECK YEAH!

Those of you who are old enough can see the homage right away. Yup, "Wild Wild West" was a TV show I grew up with and loved the characters. Sure, it's silly but the opening titles looked awesome. Like an animated comic book page. They did their titles right back then.

I wanted to show the mask as it might be fashioned with the tools of the time, rivets and screws, so I needed the head to be big. It made for a more movie poster approach for the design.



If you like to see more check out Bill Presing's WWII Iron Man. It is a study in grace and metal. Check out his post in Daily Peril, his blog. My cover will be a variant for Invincible Iron Man #27, goes on sale June 9. Bill Presing's variant for Iron Man: Legacy #3 hits stores on June 23.

Marvel Sneak Peek

Tirade Oekaki has moved! Not too far.

Keeping limber with a fashion illustration exercise and a poster study. Both illustrations based on images found at The World of Kane

Whole lotta moving going on. The Tirade oekaki board has been around for a long time and a favored stop for those who tire of Photoshop (after all, a lot of you already have that as your default drawing program). The simple java applet provides a more casual tool to use even as it mimics the basic Photoshop tools. For some, like Claudio Acciari, it appears to rival Photoshop for that favored default spot.

Well, the folks responsible for hosting our board are moving servers and gave us an alert to say that they are moving the address to here.

Please make a note of it. It's all there and nothing has changed. I always make a habit of grabbing my finished image onto my personal files because the gallery holds only a fixed number and the drawings fall off as it makes room for new ones. That is, they disappear. Don't wait too long after you finish drawing and posting. Keep a copy for yourself, if you care. I have a folder of Claudio and others somewhere in my work or home machines.


A Nina lost in the scary dark dreamscape. There is also a blue study in the oekaki board.

The banner to the right has the link to the oekaki board's new location (the headline above as well). Oh, and if you want to start your very own board you can check out how here.


Tirade Oekaki
Claudio Acciari
The World of Kane

Oekaki BBS

TIRADE has MOVED! To here, actually.

iPhone snap of a doodle yesterday from a meeting. I just made the connection as I write this post. I had moving on the brain.

PANIC! I've settled with my frantic life and near impenetrable proclivity to procrastinate. So, the fact that the May 1st deadline to migrate Tirade off of FTP publishing was coming was not going to be an exception. Except it was. April 30, yesterday, evening: searching the web for a way to backup my blog. Found many clunkers, downloaded a few. I really should have just looked into what Blogger had set up. Which I eventually did.

To my relief they had it all figured out. It went rather smoothly. Had a near panic that comments seemed to have not migrated along with my ur-blog posts. But that got resolved after I got to the last step. Then there was the forwarding post to relay people from the old address to here. It was only showing up...here--where it would be useless. That fixed itself after re-uploading the entire thing again.

Whew. So it was a dread panic and would have required industrial grade sedatives after the cataclysm of losing all these years of posts. It all turned out okay.

Pass the beer and let's post something.

________________________________________



Here's an image uploading test. My home Photoshop in on the fritz.

UP opening weekend: 68.2 million!

WHOA! Not bad for an old man movie, eh? All the work and anticipation had culminated in a grand showing of love for Pixar movies and this movie's story. On Friday I was at the Disney studios signing books with Ricky Nierva and we were met with very grateful people--people who are in the same studio, and industry--thanking us for this movie. On Saturday I did a signing and talk for the public at Nucleus where I was met with the same response. I must say that this is unique for us. We usually will get compliments on "a great job" or "an amazing movie" but this is different. People are thanking us for this movie's story. I am so honored to be part of this movie.


Pete, myself and Bob during one of many recordings at Studio B at Disney. Being around where Walt made the classics sure brings out the animation fans out of us.

Amazing. There was a time when we were just figuring out how to dig ourselves out of one difficult corner after another when this day was so far in the future. It wasn't real. Now here we are. My thanks and eternal gratitude to Pete Docter who took me along on this journey and believed in what I was going to do for him. Bob Peterson for showing me where the funny was only EVERY time. Jonas Rivera for making sure I can show up for all of it and having my back.

Our story crew was unobtrusive. We worked hard and kept on the path, fought the battles. I am so very proud of each and every one of them. That deserves its own post. Be sure of it.

It's out there now. Up is welcomed into people's lives and I am forever grateful.

UP: My name is Dug

The advance copy. I brought it with me everywhere last week. Yup, even N.Y.

My very first one! I've always wanted to make one and I didn't really pursue it like I have many other career goals. Maybe because it appeared to be rather arcane. Who knows how one gets that gig?

Last year the opportunity to illustrate this book for our movie came around and I asked maybe I could submit samples. A long shot at best, I thought, and I have to draw it in as spare a manner as I can so I could--in the unlikely event I get the job--whip through it. I could only do it away from my day job, which was of course just getting into the frenzied third act. Every reason not to do it.



But got it I did. And the editors also wanted (with good reason) for me to put more muscle into it--way more than my scratchy samples. Oh, boy. But I was blessed that the author is the divine Kiki Thorpe (who now works here). She's an old hand at this and she gently guided my newbie carcass through all this. We did a rough pass and tweaked here and there (images, words, placement of the text) to make the reading experience better. Then Winnie Ho designed the graphics of the book took care of the fonts and all the other details not related to illustrating it. I have them to thank for my first effort into children's book illustration.


Oddly enough, though it took forever to do those leaves I enjoyed making them. All done in Photoshop CS3 with two customized brushes.

I hope this leads to more because I am hooked! I need to do more. I learned a lot about the way I work after making this.


I never get tired of looking at that. Not the drawing--the credits!

Now then, on to the commerce. The book is slated to release on April 14, 2009 but you can pre-order it at Amazon right now. See that sidebar image of this book on the right?

Special thanks to Kathleen Chanover, Leigh Anna McFadden, Kelly Bonbright and Nancy Intelli. They made all the publishing dreams we had regarding UP come true. They rock.



The back cover. The entire dust jacket was designed to wrap all the way into the interior flaps. They eventually decided to keep those white with some spot illustrations from the inside pages. Very professional job, I must say.



My Name is Dug on Amazon

Kiki Thorpe

Paris Gallery Images

Images link to larger version.

Different approach. I was very happy to have a past inspiration grab hold of me again for the Paris gallery show. I remember walking into the L.A. County Museum back in the early nineties to the abstract expressionist rooms and come face to face with my first Robert Motherwell painting. I walked past it actually, there was so much to gawk at: Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, Helen Frankenthaler...but I found myself coming back around and standing in front of one of the "Elegies for the Spanish Republic" series.

I kept coming back to it years later, bought some books I would leaf through occasionally. Like skimming. Or not wanting to be completely pulled in. I know nothing about abstract expressionism nor am I able to even attempt anything close to it. But it did make me want something about it.



The "Verses" series was an aspect of the Nina story and she stands in one universe and seem to converge on another. Thus the contraction from multiverses to "Verses" which also had the welcome correlation to children's book verses. I had just completed a children's story book then and still had that mode operating. So, there it goes.

I like watercolor when viewed up close so here's a link to a detail.

Three Trees at Galerie Arludik

Tadahiro Uesugi, myself and Enrico Casarosa at Galerie Arludik the night of our show. New and recent work will be on exhibit from January 27 to March 7, 2009.

Bonjour! I was happy to be back in Paris last week but especially so because we have a big show that reunites Enrico, Tadahiro and myself for a new showing of our latest work. Our hosts were the beauteous Diane Launier and her spouse businessman/adventurer Jean Jacques Launier, owners of Galerie Arludik.


A visit to Album, a bande dessinée treasure trove in Saint Germain, reveals a poster for our show. Neat!

J.J.(I believe is a nick name Lisa McLain of ACME archives christened him with and stuck)describes their mission...nay, crusade! is to present bande dessinée, comic book art, production art and animation art to be on par with fine art of traditional galleries. The gallery is on the Île de la Cité (the island cradle of the French civilization no less) and home to a host of those aforementioned traditional galleries, thus striking at the heart of that argument.



Tadahiro and Kuro had been in Paris a few days ahead of us and we proceeded to merge our schedules post haste. I don't know about you but the social event that rules my world tends to be coffee, espresso to be exact. But having the pleasure of being with good friends surrounded by the astounding cultural lushness of Paris makes for a particularly special visit.



The show itself was a blast. Diane had warned us that several hundred people had been emailing the gallery with questions and intentions of attending. "We might have more than four hundred people tonight." It ended up being around six hundred, with people spilling out into the street outside.



We met so many of the luminaries of bande dessinée fame. Nicholas de Crécy, Juanjo Guarnido , Sébastien Cosset of Kerascoet (Marie Pommepuy was not feeling well and sent her regrets) , Arthur de Pins... the list goes on.

I was especially happy to be reunited with Bibo Bergeron who looks the same as the days when we were trying to shoe horn a rockin'south american musical number into a sagging section of the El Dorado reel. So fun to talk to him again. His movie, A monster in Paris looks amazing! He showed me a clip of the unjustly beleaguered production. I wish him all the best.




It was an amazing show. Our heartfelt thanks to Diane and Jean Jacques for taking good care of us and orchestrating this grand show. We hope to be invited back soon and maybe even stay longer. But hold on, they weren't done with us yet.

Next: Angoulême!



Galerie Arludik

UP at SDCC Saturday, July 26, 2008

A snapshot of the Pixar theater screen during one of our internal screenings. That's our movie's hardworking logo.

A SNEAK PEEK! Less than a year from now the movie we've been working on now for over three years will be in theaters. I wish I can show you the sequences, the characters and the locations...Hey, wait a sec, I don't have to wait. The Con is upon us and we got a show!



This Saturday at the largest multigenre fan convention on the planet, Pete Docter, our fearless leader and director will walk you through what we've been up to.

Saturday, July 26, 2008 at 3:00 p.m. Room 30AB
Disney Pixar's "UP"

From the inventive storytellers that have taken you into the worlds of space, toys, and superheroes comes the extraordinary adventure that will take you to a lost world where anything can happen, and everything will. Meet director Peter Docter (Monsters, Inc.) as he presents the first-ever look at Disney Pixar's new animated 3D adventure comedy, UP.

It's been quite a trip. Literally. We had the grand daddy of all research trips. Easily the most adventurous, rigorous trip I've ever been involved in (and I've been in a few. They are a walk in the park by comparison). Danger at every turn: snakes, falling off cliffs, lethal bugs, spelunking under a crumbling cave ceiling...you know, fun.



Come on by and say hello. I'll be at the sidelines making silly faces and nodding a lot along with our dauntless producer, Jonas Rivera, who is no stranger to pitching a movie to thousands of people.

I'll be walking the convention floor Starting Friday. It's been a while since I've been and I'm looking forward to seeing a lot of old friends and checking out this year's crop of illustrated wonders. See you there!



Official UP Website
Wikipedia on UP

My final Story Auction piece

"Nina Light Reading" was done in Gouache on pastel board. My thanks to Ted Mathot for giving her a good home and that very generous contribution.

I love a nap. The auction was held last Friday and it was a roaring success. I've been very busy of late and yet it's a good busy--the only kind I welcome. Somehow with even less time than usual I managed to help out in the Story Auction and make pieces for it. Of course I drove Shannon Ryan mad (she's our Story manager on UP and shoots lazers from her red haired head). But that's part of the fun I was talking about. She's gonna kill me next week.



It was a blast. So much fun. It was like a fiesta and people attending were having such a great time, some even remarked that we should do this more often. If it wasn't so hard to organize alongside work we probably would. At the night of the auction this piece had the single highest bid during silent auction.



My thanks to all of Pixar Story for being the stars of the show. You guys and gals ROCK! All of the volunteers who traded in more extra hours of their free time to organize and run all the details of the show. You are all rock stars. To all who participated by buying art, appreciating it and making the event a grand success, thank you, thank you!

More details and pictures to come.