A Sketchy Past, The Art of Peter de Sève

Deep Reading

2011-12-26T00:12:00.000-08:00

And to all a good night.

2011-12-20T11:42:00.000-08:00

Lobster Tale

2011-12-13T21:13:00.000-08:00

A picture is worth a thousand words,

which is fortunate, since I have nothing to add.

Merry Christmas to Me

2011-12-06T22:08:00.000-08:00

I just learned that I've been nominated for an Annie Award for my work on Arthur Christmas. It's very exciting indeed but I would be remiss if I didn't insert a reminder here about the process of bringing these characters to the screen. Getting a workable design on paper is just the beginning. After all the off- the- cuff doodles are created and culled, the real work of sculpting, modeling, furring, surfacing, rigging, animating and lighting has yet to be done. Overseeing all of that on Arthur Christmas was a fellow named Tim Watts, who I'm been told is a great guy and who did a really wonderful job of translating my scribbles into something animatable. So win or lose, I have Tim and the rest of the crew at Sony/Aardman to thank in getting this far.

And as they say, even if I don't win,

it's an honor just to be animated.

"Go Ahead, Open It!"

2011-11-23T12:24:00.000-08:00

Once again, I have a rejected New Yorker cover on my hands. This time I had decided not to leave anything up to chance and submitted a finished piece, but to no avail. The New Yorker obviously doesn't appreciate the gift of a dead mouse.
But maybe you do.
While actually catching a mouse in your teeth and presenting at the feet of your loved one is not practical, perhaps giving this print would be the next best thing. If you know a cat owner with impeccable taste, just click the image to the right.

"Go Ahead, Open It!" is a signed, limited edition of 250.

• Printed on acid-free
Canson Infinity /
Arches Aquarelle
Rag Fine Art Paper

• Approximate size
13" x 15"

• Shipped in an
archival print
protector

HUGO (Cabret)

2011-11-22T07:07:00.000-08:00

We just went to see the NY premiere of Martin Scorcese's HUGO (Academy member perk!) and I have to say, it's a beautiful film. Watching it was a little bittersweet for me though, having been briefly involved with another film version of the same story a couple of years ago. That one was to be directed by a good friend of mine but for reasons I may never know, it was not to be. And while I am certain his Hugo have been absolutely wonderful, I have to hope the very best for Scorcese's. It's a children's film that doesn't pander to current trends in this genre. No sidekicks, wisecracks or fart jokes. Magic and Wonder serve just fine here.
HUGO is also a love letter to cinema and it's easy to see why Scorcese was drawn to it. At the story's center, is the early twentieth century film pioneer, George Melies, who is credited with being the first director to recognize the inherent power of film to create truly fantastic imagery. The image of a rocket crashing into the eye of the man in the moon from his "A Trip to the Moon" is one of the most famous icons in cinema history.
My job on the unfilmed version version of Hugo Cabret was to design the automaton in the story; a nineteenth century mechanical man made of metal and clockwork and magic.

By the way, before running out to see the film, first do yourself a favor and get the original story written and illustrated by Brian Selznick. It's a gorgeous and unique hybrid of text and illustration which in itself is a very cinematic experience. Not a novel or a graphic novel-- but something in between.

And finally, if you want to learn more about George Melies and the restoration of a recently rediscovered color print of Melie's "A Trip to the Moon" take a look at Serge Bromberg's fascinating documentary, The Extraordinary Voyage.

Chicken Run

2011-11-14T14:14:00.000-08:00

Arthur Christmas

2011-11-10T09:26:00.000-08:00

Arthur Christmas is a combined effort from Sony and Aardman Animation. I haven't seen it yet, but enjoyed shifting gears and drawing characters without fur for a change.
Or at least, not a lot of fur.

Not so intelligent design

2011-11-02T20:51:00.000-07:00

Apparently, scientists have unearthed fossils of what CNN has rather dubiously described as a saber-toothed squirrel.
If they can use it for their blog, I'm damn well using it for mine!

Edward Sorel, a Retrospective at the School of Visual Arts

2011-10-25T05:58:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to tell you about a retrospective of one of my true heroes, Edward Sorel, that is now hanging at the School of Visual Arts in NYC.

As an art student fresh out of high school in the late '70's, I was slowly becoming more and more aware of artwork outside of comic books and paperback covers. Before too long, I found myself introduced to the work of Ed Sorel and began a long and successful campaign of studying and stealing from him. There was an energy and fearlessness in his line work that was irresistible to me. How could anyone draw so loosely and yet so sculpturally at the same time? His pictures looked as if Giacometti had discovered spectacles and a sense of humor.

In so many ways, Sorel's work has been a kind of life raft for me. As I groped to find my own style and fought the temptation to render things to a rigor mortis finish, his illustrations were always a reminder to me of the beauty in errant lines; the ones you have to put down on the page while you search for your subject. I have always loved drawings that reveal that process. You can see it in Kley and Rowlandson in their finished work and of course in Daumier's ,but you will find it in just about everyone's preliminary drawings. The difference is that too often, those beautiful mistakes are sandblasted away in the final product. I always took the presence of those lines in Sorel's work as an act of bravery and it took me a long time to forgive myself and embrace the imperfections of my own drawings. In truth, I am rarely satisfied with my finished pieces but if any of them do actually retain a heartbeat, there is a good chance that I had pulled a book of Sorel drawings off the shelf to help me find my way.

If you are in New York City before November 5th you have a unique opportunity to see a huge retrospective of Sorel's work. I think you will be dazzled by it and hopefully emboldened, too. You may discover that there is a lot to be said about working with real pen and real ink without the dangerous luxury of "command z". Working on the computer has its endless advantages, of course, but it can sometimes make things just a little too easy to fix.

As a wonderful extra to the show, Leo Sorel, Ed's son and a great photographer in his own right, has created a short film about his father's life and work. Apart from interviewing a handful of artists who both know Ed and admire his work- Milton Glaser, Jim McMullan, Jules Feiffer and myself (I was honored to be asked) we also get to see Sorel actually composing a piece from start to finish. Even for such a longtime fan as myself, it was astonishing to see him working up there without a net and without so much as a preliminary pencil sketch to guide him.
Just the pen, the ink and the paper and whatever came next.

For more info, go here.

iHeaven

2011-10-07T19:55:00.000-07:00

iRejected.

John Kascht

2011-09-23T07:48:00.001-07:00

I've always had some difficulty with the term, "master class", as it is often a little too liberally applied to instructors who might not be quite so masterful. Well, for once, I can use the appellation with utter conviction when I talk about John Kascht and his film,"Funny Bones". It's a short, incredibly incisive deconstruction on the art of caricature. In it, Kascht diligently analyzes every peak and valley of the topography that makes up the face of comedian, Conan O'Brien. And while it has plenty of delightful time lapse sequences of John sketching, painting and even sculpting, the piece is not about technique per se. It's really a rumination on the art of capturing a likeness and more importantly, the essence of a subject. He reminds us that caricature is not distortion for distortion's sake, but rather an amplification of those features that reveal what is unique about that particular person. There is plenty to marvel at in Funny Bones and if you are trying to learn something about capturing a personality on paper, go here.

Old Photos

2011-09-21T07:22:00.000-07:00

As I thumb through books of old photos, I can hardly resist a quick drawing of some of the long-gone faces I see in them. This time I didn't resist at all. The sketch is based on a fragment of a larger scene depicting Londoners enjoying an afternoon on a merry-go-round, sometime during the 1920's. She's having the time of her life.
I wonder how the rest of it went.

Ms. Havisham and other studies.

2011-09-15T07:49:00.001-07:00

Scrooge

2011-09-11T14:38:00.000-07:00

Here's another peek at the Dickens series. It's not much, but it does mean I don't have to post anything for another week, and that's good enough for me!

SKETCHTRAVEL!

2011-09-09T07:29:00.000-07:00

Two smart guys, Gerald Guerlais and Dice Tsutsumi are chatting one day and think: Hey, let's have a beautiful blank sketchbook made and then send it out, artist to artist, country to country until the whole damned thing is filled with beautiful drawings! We'll call it Sketchtravel and go to a top flight publisher and have them publish a limited facsimile of the book! Oh, Oh! Then let's auction the original sketchbook at some high dollar auction house in Brussels and GIVE ALL THE MONEY AWAY TO CHARITY!!!
They're very excitable guys, but when they have an idea, they get it done.
Check out their website here and take a look at the fabulous roster of artists they wrangled to appear in the book. Here's a sampling off the top of my head:
Carlos Nine
Carter Goodrich
Ronnie Del Carmen
Rebecca Dautremer
Hayao Miyazaki
Follow this link to a snappy little video about the adventures of the book itself!

Not so Hard Times

2011-09-07T11:41:00.000-07:00

Here's one of eight pieces I am working on, showcasing the main characters from some of Charles Dicken's most famous works. They will appear on new paperback editions being published by Random House sometime next year. It wouldn't be quite truthful to call this work, given how much I am enjoying doing them. And although the drawings will be used rather small in the context of the cover design, I think the whole package will make a handsome series.
Above is Josiah Bounderby from Hard Times.

Filler

2011-09-06T15:41:00.000-07:00

So sue me. I was on vacation!

That Nasty Baggins

2011-08-21T21:58:00.000-07:00

I had forgotten how much I loved The Hobbit. This weekend I picked it up again and was transported back to the very first time I read it as a teenager. My sister, Paula, had loved Tolkien's books ferociously and from time to time would try to get me to draw an accurate hobbit. She would give me a detailed description which was deeply engraved in her memory after multiple readings and I would set to the task, determined to dazzle her with my genius. She loved me very much and was a staunch supporter of my work even back then, but I never could draw a hobbit that she liked. I'm certain if she were to see this drawing, it would be no exception. Sadly, she passed away a few years ago but I think of her as I read every page and it's made this visit to Middle Earth that much richer for me.
That's the beauty of this book and all books, I suppose. When we read them we paint our own landscapes and cast our own characters and woe to any fool who thinks he can just whip out a sketch and say "here's your hero!"
It's doomed to failure, really.

On the other hand, I did promise a sketch a week.

Wallflower

2011-08-10T19:26:00.001-07:00

I began this sketch as I often do, with the eyes, and it led me here.
Where exactly "here" is, I'm not sure.

Jabba the Husband

2011-08-03T12:10:00.000-07:00

As I've said before, I am not a Star Wars geek.

But this just came to me and I thought it was funny.

I could be wrong.

The Ugly Fisherman

2011-07-27T16:07:00.001-07:00

I wrote a tiny little fable called The Ugly Fisherman, and someday I may just illustrate it. In the meantime, here is the drawing that inspired it.

Once a week. There, I said it.

2011-07-26T07:49:00.000-07:00

I've been pretty lazy about posting in the last several months, so in an attempt to keep me honest, I am going to try and post something at least once a week. For the most part, I'm sure they will just be sketches, but even that will be a vast improvement over my track record of late. So here's a sketch, "Brought Low" because to quote Dylan, "the first one now will later be last".

Always a good thing to keep in mind.

Updates

2011-06-24T06:27:00.000-07:00

Despite my best efforts to push through the limited edition of "Easy Being Green it is Not" it looks as though the print may never see the light of day. According to my contact at Acme Archives (the folks who would handle production and distribution), LucasFilm is reluctant to grant permission for it's release. It might have something to do with the fact that Kermit is in the scene and he is not part of the Lucas Empire, which I suppose could be a copyright issue. It makes no sense to me, since THEY HAVE ALREADY PUBLISHED IT, but there you are.

So please accept my apologies for letting this drag on so long and if there are any positive developments, I will surely let you know.

****

The second edition of A Sketchy Past is now available from Stuart Ng books or directly from the North American distributor, SCB. Apparently any number of copies can be ordered, from a single book to a thousand.

Buy a thousand.

****

I will be speaking at the Norman Rockwell Museum on Thursday, July 7th at 5:30pm about my experiences working with Blue Sky Studio and about my work in animation in general. This is part of a series of talks that will be given as part of the ongoing Art of Blue Sky Exhibit.

The Art of Blue Sky Studios at the Norman Rockwell Museum

2011-06-01T14:18:00.001-07:00

Despite the fact that it has produced some of the most successful animated films of all time (the Ice Age franchise, Robots, Horton Hears a Who and Rio), Blue Sky Studios has toiled in relative anonymity compared to it's giant cousins, Pixar, Dreamworks and Disney. For whatever reason, 20th Century Fox, Blue Sky's mothership, has chosen not to showcase the Blue Sky "brand". But maybe with the advent of a well deserved retrospective at the Norman Rockwell Museum, they are finally changing their minds.

The show will include samples of work from every step of the process that goes into making a digitally animated feature, from the early sketchy stages of development to the highly burnished, finished animation that appears on screen. On the walls and on monitors throughout the exhibition will be examples of early character designs, sculptures and watercolor studies many of which were created using traditional materials. And of course, the technical wizardry will be on full display as well, deconstructed for the viewer to help convey both the imagination and complexity that goes into the epic undertaking that is an animated feature film.

For me though, the main purpose of a show like this is to finally reveal to the public the individual geniuses that contribute to make these films what they are. For instance, by the time the film appeared on the screen, the gorgeous watercolor story-moments created for Robotsby Greg Couch (see above) three years before, were only a fleeting memory and only to those who were directly involved in the production. But anyway, it's a slippery slope for me to try and list the individual talents because virtually everyone who works on a Blue Sky film is indispensable. And though they may be lost in the all too brisk credit scroll, at least now there will be a chance to freeze the frame and savor their work at your leisure. Bewildering as it is, there has only been one Art of book dedicated to a Blue Sky film and that was for Robots. Short of that, this will be the very best way to get a true overview of what makes Blue Sky the great animation studio that it is.

Incidentally, the Norman Rockwell Museum is well worth the visit even without the lure of a Blue Sky show. It is situated just outside the town of Stockbridge, Mass., an absurdly picturesque hamlet that Rockwell made his home and which was the subject of many of his paintings. The museum is a world class venue and has a constantly revolving display of many of the finest paintings and drawings Rockwell ever created. And though not in it's original location, Rockwell's original studio/barn has been transplanted to one of the rolling hills that make up the estate upon which the museum sits.

From the Ice Age to the Digital Age-The Art of Blue Sky Studios opens on June 11th. For more info, go here.

Small Growers

2011-05-23T11:17:00.000-07:00

I was certain that the End of Days was going to prevent my finally having another New Yorker cover published, but in a case of divine non-intervention, I get to blag about it after all.

A little chat

2011-05-05T13:06:00.000-07:00

Next week at the Society of Illustrators, my friend Chris Wedge and I will be joined in a conversation about our careers in animation by a fellow named Joe Strike. Chris, as I'm sure you already know, is one of the founders of Blue Sky Studios and director of the animated features, Ice Age and Robots. Joe is a journalist with a particular obsession for animation. He is both connoisseur and geek and a pleasure to chat with. If you're in town, please join us next Thursday, May 12th at the Society. Go here for further details.

Meanwhile, I've been meaning to post this Scrat film for months. Though it's ostensibly the teaser for Ice Age 4, Continental Drift , I think it holds it's own beautifully as an individual short film.

2011-04-15T16:25:00.000-07:00

Above is one of many designs I created for the recent animated/hybrid film, HOP, which has been enjoying some success at the box office lately. The drawing is also decidedly European which makes it doubly useful as an announcement for a talk about my work that I will be giving on April 20th at the Utrecht School of the Arts (HKU) in the city of Utrecht.

Miracles do happen.

2011-04-13T06:38:00.000-07:00

After many, many years of haranguing by me and virtually everyone who knows him, my good friend, Carter Goodrich, has finally launched a website. I am personally relieved, because this will save me the time searching through my own files to steal from him.

Enjoy!

The PrintShop

2010-11-30T07:32:00.000-08:00

I just recently realized that I hadn't even posted a link to my website here on the blog, so it's no surprise that there were other things I forgot to mention as well.

I now have a section called the PrintShop where one could go, if so moved and select from a handful of limited edition prints for purchase. Go to the Store section and take a peek.

I also forgot to mention that the first edition of my book, A Sketchy Past, has been sold out for a while now and my link is sending you to places that are selling it for upwards of $100. Very flattering, but if you want to hold out and wait for a more affordable copy, the second edition is in the works and will hopefully be available within a couple of weeks.

Happy Holidays, so far!

Randall in the Spotlight

2010-11-26T05:04:00.001-08:00

Here is a quick reminder to anyone in the Northwestern Connecticut area to come and meet Randall de Sève, my lovely wife and collaborator on The Duchess of Whimsy, tomorrow, Saturday, November 27th. She will also be signing other children's books she has written, illustrated by other people.

I know. The nerve!

Leftover Turkey

2010-11-24T11:18:00.000-08:00

Or rejected, I should say.

Happy Thanksgiving!

"Easy being green, it is not."

2010-11-08T08:04:00.000-08:00

I'll confess right here that I grew up a Star Trek fan and if you let me, could bore you with an endless stream of Trek trivia that would make you squirm with embarrassment. Hell, it would make me squirm with embarrassment, but it's my gift and my curse, I guess. That said, I did enjoy the Star Wars films. Well the first two, anyway. Especially The Empire Strikes Back, which is one of the best science fiction action adventures ever filmed. (Really though, have there been that many?) Anyway, I was invited to be a part of Star Wars, Visions, a truly wonderful collection of Star Wars images created by a wide variety of artists from many genres. No art direction was given whatsoever and the artist was left free to create whatever homage, reinterpretation or visual joke he or she felt inspired to do.

Whenever I get an assignment, especially such a wide open one, I begin to free-associate and see what connections my frayed synapses can make.

Below is a short ride on my train of thought:

"hmmm ...

Yoda...

he would be good to draw... and he was actually a puppet, wasn't he?

No, he was a muppet! And he was green, too.

I love muppets.

I wonder what I'll have for lunch...

Wait a minute! Wasn't Kermit the frog a muppet, too?

Wait! Wait! He was a GREEN muppet!

And they both lived in swamps!

What if they knew each other?
What if they actually hung out together??!!

Maybe I'll have a tuna sandwich..."

Strike while the irony is hot.

2010-09-22T02:38:00.000-07:00

As you may have noticed, I've been in New Yorker mode again and have submitted a fair number of sketches in recent weeks. Many of them have been ideas I put down on paper months ago and have decided to revisit. Such was the case with Bedbugged. By the way, for those of you who do not live in New York, it is my sad duty to tell you that a scourge of bedbugs- parasitic blood sucking insects that can infest your bed and furniture and are almost preternaturally impossible to kill, have been in the news now almost every day.
The time was certainly ripe for a cover on the subject.

Here is the sketch I submitted.

And here is the OTHER sketch which after careful consideration, I DID NOT submit.

And here's what ran this week by Barry Blitt.

PS: My time machine is still broken.

Beasts of Burden

2010-09-07T04:03:00.000-07:00

Finally, another New Yorker cover.
This piece was a long time in gestation since submitting the first sketch many months ago. Francoise [Mouly] and I agreed that there was something to my initial idea but it wasn't quite there yet and would need refinement. Looking back on the original thumbnail, it's easy to see that it was in dire need of some serious editing.

Below is a little bit of the process I went through on my way to the finish:

My very first impulse was to show many kids on their way to school, each with a different variety of pack animal. Ultimately, I realized that I was letting my desire to draw oxen, camels and mules get in the way of telling a simple joke.
I began to throw things out.

Next, I did this sketch which felt right to me, both conceptually and compositionally, but for some reason, never elicited the response I wanted from my test viewers ie: anyone unlucky enough to be strolling past my studio. By the way, I find this random sampling of test subjects is the most reliable. Don't expect to get an unbiased, totally objective reaction from your artists chums. They know too much.

I made two major changes in the next version: First, after Randall's suggestion of making the school kid a girl, I decided to draw my 10 year old, Paulina. Second, I realized thanks to another random survey, that the child needed to look burdened and thereby communicate the essence of the idea a bit more immediately. Once done, everything fell into place and I started to get the reactions I was looking for.

I must be frank and confess to not being entirely happy with the final piece. I am almost always disappointed when I see a drawing reproduced for the first time and this was no exception. In that dreamy period between shipping the artwork and going to the newsstand, much delusional, mental re-painting happens and the final printed piece rarely measures up. Why does it always take having something published to finally see it clearly?
If my time machine were working, I would go back and keep the paint and brush work a bit fresher and finesse the composition and perspective. I think my palette was not quite as organized as it should have been and so I'd edit my local colors a bit more. I would probably show some stress in the strap connecting the girl and the donkey and might spend some more time making the main figure look more like my daughter. However, I will add that I instinctively resist going for a specific likeness on these covers so as not to confuse the viewer into thinking he should be recognizing an individual personality.

Having so many things bug me in a piece is usually enough to send me hurtling into a deep depression, but for some reason I'm not too troubled by it this time. I have some other cover ideas in the bank at The New Yorker and I'm confident that there are at least a couple that could yield something worthwhile.

I'm looking forward to nailing the next one.

The Duchess gets a Nod

2010-07-22T21:43:00.000-07:00

It looks like our book, The Duchess of Whimsy has been named as a finalist for the Library of Virginia's Whitney and Scott Cardozo Award for Children's Literature. The Cardozo Award recognizes excellence in children's literature published in the previous year. The winner is determined by votes cast and I would be remiss if I didn’t put it out there and use this platform to try and crush the competition. If you did genuinely like the Duchess and feel inclined to vote, please proceed here and thanks, from both Randall and me!

I know what you must be thinking...

2010-07-14T13:59:00.000-07:00

Doesn't he actually draw anymore?
I do. Really. But as I've said before, most of the work I am doing lately is on films that won't be released for awhile.
In the meantime, I am once again going to do a signing of my book, A Sketchy Past and what better place to do it than at the black hole that is San Diego ComicCon, which begins today. Surprisingly, even to me, I have had only one other signing in the U.S. for A Sketchy Past. I am in discussion with my publisher, Akileos, about whether to print another edition of the hardcover or go on to produce a paperbound edition. If that is the case, the hardcover edition might soon become extinct, though I don't like the idea. So if you haven't got a copy yet, I will be perched as usual at Stuart Ng's table where I will be signing two or three times throughout the weekend. I'll also be selling some original drawings and even a few high quality prints of my work (see the 11X14 print above), just to test the water.
See you there?

PS: I just installed a snappy new flipbook preview of A Sketchy Past in the "store"section of my website-
peterdeseve.com

Annecy, third and final chapter.

2010-06-16T13:54:00.000-07:00

I did several signings of A Sketchy Past in and around the Festival and met some really enthusiastic young animators. It was a pleasure to be so warmly greeted so far from home. I believe I must have drawn the Scrat about a thousand times. At one point during an interview, I made a mock complaint of how many requests were made for Scrat, while all the other Ice Age characters were virtually ignored. At the signing that followed, a young woman came up and declared proudly," I would like a Sid, please!" but then sheepishly added, "could you put the Scrat next to him?"

Andrew Ruheman of Passion Pictures, soon after receiving the Cristal Award for best animated short film, The Lost Thing. This strange and beautiful film was designed and written by Shaun Tan and captures his unique sensibility perfectly.

Nick, Juan Pablo and I were regularly beset by young animators eager for a sketch, but it’s safe to say that Nick out did us both with the volume of quick portraits of his famous duo.
Like many of us artist types, he seems to live in his head and the swirl of motion that is Annecy can swallow you whole if you aren’t prepared. Luckily, he was more than prepared in the person of his assistant, Angie Last. Unflappable, English and rye, I took to her immediately and instantly became dependent on her navigational skills and utter grasp of our schedule. She was the sanest one among us and during any given situation, all I needed was to glance her way for a secret flash of a grin or an eye-roll. Meeting her was one of the high points of the festival for me.

Snails are so cute.
And delicious.

Above is Serge Bromberg, the jovial and unassuming president of the festival and it’s master of ceremonies, in Odd Couple mode with David Silverman, a great guy who I am learning has had his hand in everything- from The Simpsons to Co-Directing Monsters Inc.

It is no wonder that Mr. Bromberg is the president of a festival celebrating the cartoon.

My ubiquitous pal , Bill Plympton and his friend, Sandrine.

Some French copies of The Duchess also appeared, but mysteriously, the publisher himself seems to have disappeared.

David Silverman and me.

A soiree at Hotel Menthon.

Drawing Scrat for the Mayor of Annecy. That’s right, the mayor. To my left is Ron Clements (co director of The Princess Frog among other things) and screen right is David Silverman.

The animators from Argentina were the special guests of the festival and a party was held in their honor, complete with bowling and tango. Above clockwise is Juan Pablo (the latino Harpo Marx) me, Gwen _____ (our jury’s guardian angel), and frighteningly talented Igor Alban Chevalier, aka Le Grenouille Noir (The Black Frog). Not pictured from our group is Maggie Stagnaro from Expotoons, a fairly new animation festival in Buenos Aires.

My pal, Michael Defeo, sculpteur formidable and me, enjoying beers at the Argentina thingy.

Annecy, 4am

Annecy, part deux

2010-06-15T15:51:00.000-07:00

I had every intention of updating the blog as the week went by, but that, along with exercising and breathing, fell by the wayside- all victims of the frenetic schedule of films and feasts, that is the sad lot of the Annecy judge.
Each day was packed with more delicious food than you can imagine and every meal was served in the most absurdly picturesque spot, each one more beautiful than the last. I'll ask you to forgive the postcard pictures peppering my commentary in these posts. Annecy is as much about the films as the setting in which they are shown.
There are three judges assigned to each of the four categories and friendships were quickly forming as the days flew by. I for one, am coming away delighted to have been able to share the whole thing with two genuinely nice human beings who happen to be incredibly talented as well. I mentioned them earlier, but now, many screenings, many meals, and many glasses of wine later, I feel in a much better position to introduce them.

I confess to not having been aware of the work of Juan Pablo Zaramella, before meeting him at the beginning of the festival, but since then I’ve been introduced to his many talents, but probably not all of them. He is famous for his short films, most recent among them, Journey to Mars, a sweet and atmospheric stop-motion fantasy about a rural farmers’ promise to drive his young grandson to the Red Planet in his pickup truck. This warm and charming tale is a perfect reflection of Juan Pablo. He has a rock solid artistic sensibility, which is coupled with a kind and gentle demeanor. As the week unspooled I was also to discover that he is a masterful illustrator as well, with a truly inventive graphic sense and a surprising sense of humor. As I mentioned before, Juan Pablo, Nick and I were responsible for judging the work of students graduating from animation schools around the world and Juan Pablo was selected by the festival to represent us on stage in the closing ceremony. After revealing the fruits of our labors, he surprised us all with a hilarious film he created in the space of four hours on his iphone with help from his pal, whose name I will add when I find it.
I couldn’t find time this week to finish a sentence and he somehow found time to make a movie.

If you met Nick Park without knowing anything about him, you would probably say, “he reminds me of that animated guy who loves cheese”. He is of course, the creator of the classic series of stop motion films starring Wallace and Gromit and the connection is impossible to miss . He has the habit of saying “cheese” whenever a photo is taken of him and his voice comes straight from that universe. Trust me, when hearing it for the first time, it is almost surreal. No one can say the word "cheese", like the guy who made a catch phrase of "Wensleydale".

After viewing over forty films and debating the merits of each and every one, here are our results:

The Lighthouse Keeper (Best Graduation Film)
is the wordless story of a lighthouse’s lone inhabitant, dozing to the tapping of insects against the windows of his beacon. Things take an unusual turn when one of the bugs that appears from out of the fog is gigantic.
The color, lighting and mix of traditional and cg animation is a wonder. And from my perspective, the character design is top notch. I love this piece and after having watched it several times still find new things to appreciate in it. For example, that moment when the keeper decides he’s had enough of his unwelcome guest and flips his broom to become a weapon. A quick tap of it’s handle on the ground signals his resolve.
The conflict, the climax, and an unexpected act of grace, create a satisfying story, all in the space of a few minutes.
David François, Rony Hotin, Jérémie Moreau, Baptiste Rogron, Gaëlle Thierry, Maïlys Vallade
France
GOBELINS, L'ÉCOLE DE L'IMAGE

Sauvage (Special Jury Award)
This darkly comic film begins with a man running through the streets, naked and howling. Les gendarmes stop him and demand to know what he is up to. He explains that he wants to live in the woods and finally become a wolf. The cops haul him off and to our surprise, drop him off in the woods. From this point, I was hooked. In the forest, he meets a veteran wolfman who obliges our hero by biting him in the arm. From there we witness his transformation, all in his mind, and weirdly played out upon a stage. Quirkily drawn and loosely colored, the film surprises at every turn-from the aspiring lycanthropes' delivery to the woods to his eventual deliverance as a wolfman.
Paul Cabon
France
LA POUDRIÈRE, ÉCOLE DU FILM D'ANIMATION

Lebensader
Once again we chose a hand drawn piece. It might be easy to conclude that our choices as a jury reflected each of our penchant for the hand made and hand-drawn, which may very well be so. But my main criterion was that the film should affect me, which of course is in itself a subjective requirement. How could it not be? What else can one use, but his gut? There were fewer full-on digitally animated films than I expected. This one was hand drawn in the truest sense of the term. Clearly influenced by Inuit and other aboriginal art, Lebensader, depicts a child showing the wonders of Nature to her father, all in a single leaf. Fluidly morphing birds feed their young and transform into fish, into bugs, into larger mammals; a celebration of life and renewal. I know, it sounds precariously sweet, but it’s balanced by the father’s response. Grim faced, he turns from her to reveal the scars on his back ,which tell the other side of the story. Predatory birds clutch victims, and transform into huffing demons who bare their fangs in equally fluid, but more sinister imagery. Lebensader is moving, both visually and thematically. I related deeply to the father’s sad task of doling out the painful truth of this world to his child. Life is not all fairies and unicorns and the task of revealing that, however piecemeal, is a heartbreaking one.
Angela Steffen
Germany
FILMAKADEMIE BADEN-WÜRTTEMBERG

The biggest surprise in the whole jury process was when the winners came up to the stage to receive their awards. My God, they looked so young to me. Apart from feeling my age, it made me realize how tremendously talented the competitors are.

Congratulations to all of you!

Annecy! (part one)

2010-06-07T16:31:00.001-07:00

I am here at the 50th anniversary of the fantastic Annecy Animation Film Festival where, as of this morning, I began my duties as one of three jurors for student films. Do not let the title of the category fool you. These are not just kids with flipbooks.These are the animation geniuses of the near future and the task of choosing favorites is a daunting one. Luckily, I am sharing the burden with two animation geniuses of the present- Juan Pablo Zaramella, director of the multi-award winning film, A Journey to Mars and a certain Nick Park of Wallace and Gromit fame. Two of the nicest fellows you could possibly talk about cartoons with in a medieval town perched on the edge of a glacial lake.

to be continued...

Juan Pablo Zaramella and Nick Park

Oil, Oil, Everywhere

2010-06-02T06:47:00.000-07:00

The gulf spill continues unabated and with that will be a flood of images from illustrators commenting on this heartbreaking catastrophe. My effort above did not make the cut, but Barry Blitt managed to score this weeks New Yorker cover with a great piece on the same subject. For many months now, Greg Manchess, with the help of Tara Jacoby and Kate Fiertag, has been feverishly curating an exhibit at the Society of Illustrators entitled, Earth: Fragile Planet, work by artists concerning the environment. The timing of the show could not be better. The show opens tomorrow to the public, with a reception to be held this Friday evening. I'm certain this is going to be an outstanding exhibition.

I don't quite understand this myself.

2010-05-28T05:39:00.000-07:00

Somehow, I find myself the winner of a Daytime Emmy award for Outstanding Achievement on an Animated Television Series.
The award is for character designs I created for a show within a show on Sesame Street, called Abby's Flying Fairy School.
I'm very happy to get this award (hell, I'm happy to get any award) but it's still mysterious to me.
The Emmy's are like the Oscar's in that there are nominees who must wait for the evening of the event and the tearing of the envelope to see who finally wins. For some reason, my category, Outstanding etc., is the only one that is prejudged so I don't even get to look shocked, nervously unfold my crumpled speech and forget to mention my wife. I do, however, get the swell statuette as seen above.
The gig came about completely by accident when I bumped into an acquaintance, Ronda Music, at my local coffee shop. She told me about this show she was producing and would I consider doing some designs for it. I said, "Absolutely not! No Way. I'm busy working on my children's book and it would be suicide for me to try and do anything more."
I started work that afternoon.
I have always loved the Muppets (talk about pleasing character design!). If anyone has ever honed in on what makes a character appealing, it was Jim Henson and it was fun using his visual vocabulary. My only regret is that they aren't actual, real-life Muppets (the show is CG). I would love a chance to design one of them!

Gonnegan

Blog

A Gerbilcorn ( a gerbil/unicorn)

Miss Sparklenose

Commercial Whaling

2010-05-27T06:15:00.000-07:00

In between my duties as the character designer on Ice Age 4 (that's right, Ice Age 4) and efforts to maintain my career as an illustrator, I sometimes have the opportunity to design for television commercials. Of the handful of commercials I've worked on, most have been with Hornet Inc., a cool little production house in Soho, N.Y.C., that does a really impressive variety of work. The commercial, which is a quick thirty seconds long, is about a race between a whale and a shrimp. Below are a few sketches, turntables and the finished version.

This is one of the first versions of the shrimp I came up with before I realized he needed to be a bit more motocross.

I explored various species of whale and for performance reasons, decided on the sperm whale.(No pun intended).

Whale model turntable

Shrimp model turntable

Toys, Sculptures-they're all the same to me

2010-05-14T05:31:00.000-07:00

My love for the three dimensional cartoon figure goes back before computer animation was even invented and way before my professional life began. I clearly remember at the age of five or so, my preoccupation with hand puppets, particularly one I owned of a frog. I can remember delighting in the way his eyes were simply two orbs stuck to the top of a simple sphere, which had a cut across it's diameter that provided him his perfectly frog-like mouth. I can still recall the satisfying clop! those two shapes made when closing them hard with my little hand. He wasn't my only puppet. I had a terrifying Jerry Mahoney ventriloquist dummy as well, who I would push down the stairs to see in what freakish position he would land.
The attraction to these weird homunculi stowed away somehow into my adulthood and is not only evident in my work, but on the shelves of my studio as well. These various toys, sculptures and maquettes scare the hell out of my daughter, Paulina and she refuses to come downstairs to my studio unattended. In truth, I can't blame her. Some of them are pretty damned creepy.
I thought it would be fun to show a few examples to you and tell you what little I know of them, or at least what they bring to mind.

The obvious resemblance to Darla not withstanding, I found this little bronze sculpture of a pitt bull irresistible. Apart from the beautiful molding of it's cartoon form, it weighs a highly satisfying couple of pounds, deceptively heavy for it's small size. I would bet money that it portrays Bonzo, a popular cartoon dog from the 1930's, created by George Studdy.

A happy couple.
From Hell.

This heavy, plaster sculpture of a cat is almost three feet high and has all the stuff I love about good character design. The exaggeration of the pose and the breakdown of the shapes make me happy every time I look at it.

This is a contemporary piece of sculpture, done in papier-mache, I believe, by a brilliant young talent named Chris Sickels, who singlehandedly runs an enterprise he calls Red Nose Studios. Amazingly, he creates tableaus exactly like this one, for use as editorial and advertising illustration, among other things. This means that he has to do them fast! Not only does he have to first conceptualize the piece, but than must sculpt the figures ,design and create the costumes , paint the figures and props and then photograph the final result. Go to his site and enjoy this unique and beautiful work.

Several years ago now, my friend and illustrator, Steven Guarnaccia, decided it was time to sell part of HIS collection of weird toys, which by the way, is astonishing in it's breadth and goes way beyond strange cartoon characters. Steven has always had an amazing eye for design and the books and toys he collects are evidence of how sharp his eye really is. I'm guessing that he decided he could no longer live with this mutant elephant "toy" and I'm beginning to wonder the same thing.

Above is what was once a Victorian rubber squeaky toy. You might not be able to see it, but there is absolutely no fun in this guys face.
That's what I love about it.

I'm embarrassed to admit how many of these superhero figures I own. My obsession with them has almost nothing to do with the characters they represent, as there are literally hundreds of different statues you can buy that portray them. No, what I love about them is that they were designed by Bruce Timm, a comic artist with the reductive eye of Brancusi. Look at the shapes on the Batman figure and how beautifully distilled they are. Timm is credited with resurrecting and reinventing Batman for television, Batman, The Animated Series (check out the killer title sequence!). The genius of these over-the-top, film noir inspired adventures, was in the style that Timm created, which not only streamlined the look of all of the characters, but in a way that actually embraced the limitation of farmed out television animation. In other words, he took the budgetary restriction and made it an asset.
POW!

(I'd love to credit the sculptor but I can't locate his name. Anyone?)

The very first image at the top of this post is of a painted metal figure that once sat atop some kind of early vending machine and probably turned a crank when a coin was deposited.
I wonder what the machine sold.

Souls, maybe?

Frank Frazetta 1928-2010

2010-05-10T09:50:00.000-07:00

What can I say? His work has always meant a lot to me, obviously. I can't help but feel sad about this.

From his family:
Frank Frazetta, one of the most renowned fantasy illustrators of the 20th century whose stunning and energetic images influenced a generation, died this afternoon at a hospital near his home in Boca Grande, Florida. He was 82.

The cause of death was a stroke.

Shapeshifter!

2010-04-30T02:36:00.001-07:00

One of the first things you learn when starting out in character design is the importance of shape and the almighty silhouette. Are the elements that make up your character clean and legible? And more importantly, do they telegraph the personality that you are trying to evoke? Knowing that and actually mastering it are two very different things. I for one, still struggle with this skill, all too often allowing myself to get lost in the nuance of individual aspects of a design while missing the forest for the trees, so to speak. So when I see an artist accomplish it, and with such apparent ease, it gives me pause.
In this case, it makes me cry.
There are very few designers I know of who can distill a character's personality into such utterly "animatable" shapes as does Nicolas Marlet. By now, there are maybe three people reading this out there who have not seen Nicolas' work on the big screen. There are wisps of him in Prince of Egypt, and even more evidence of his touch in El Dorado, but it it wasn't until Over the Hedge that Dreamworks began to really understand the power of their secret weapon. In most animated films, there is more than one character designer at work on the same project and that is true of Over the Hedge. My pal, H.B. Lewis did very fine work in that film as well, so the end result couldn't be called entirely Nico's. That moment would finally arrive with Kung Fu Panda. I had secretly dismissed that film based on it's silly title (well, it seemed silly at the time) and the fact that it seemed to wallow in development hell for so many years. As it turns out, it is a masterpiece, especially in the visual sense and due in no small part to Nico's strong stylistic navigation. And now, on the heels of that coup, Nico has made his indelible mark again in How to Train Your Dragon.

KAPOW!

Below are some images I pilfered from the Character Design Blog, because frankly, it saved me a lot of work and also because it's a good excuse to make you aware of that site (after you've finished here, thank you).

And finally, I want to alert you to a beautiful little limited edition sketchbook that Nico has just published which is available here.
You will not be disappointed.

This drawing is from the sketchbook.

Kung Fu Panda

Over the Hedge

Darla

2010-03-24T11:03:00.002-07:00

I won't bother trying to describe how hard it is to lose a dog like Darla. Let it suffice to say that she was one of those dogs that people loved, even people who think of themselves as not-the-dog-loving-type. The fact that she was a pit bull, that most maligned of breeds and could still enchant even the most dog phobic among our friends, speaks volumes about her charm and sweetness of character.

From the moment we spotted her twelve years ago on a cold and rainy night in Brooklyn, clicking down the middle of Court Street, she had us. Or perhaps I should say she had me. Randall and I were with four friends and had just left a movie theater where we saw Sheakespeare in Love. As we all climbed into our beat up station wagon we spotted her coming down the middle of the street, skeletal, soaked, without a collar and clearly lost; her enlarged teats told us she was also a mother separated from her pups. For some reason, I'll never know why, I immediately jumped out of the car and followed her, Randall calling after me. I trotted slowly down the street alongside her until gently cornering her in a doorway. In retrospect, cornering a starving pit bull was probably not the cleverest thing I could have done, but somehow I got her to trust me. She was shy and tentative but made no objection as I picked her up and carried her back to our wagon.

The plan, or so I convinced Randall, was to bring her home for JUST ONE NIGHT, until we could place her with a family who could actually take in a dog. We already had three cats, so it was OBVIOUS that it wouldn't be us. My friends were all sitting in the car when I closed the back hatch, and I must admit that I did picture for an instant the kind of scene you might see in a movie like Cujo- the car rocking back and forth with screams and windows splashed with blood. As it turned out,for all those years we had her in our family, she never once demonstrated anything approaching ferocity and was an eager friend to any child, man or cat that she met. She was armed to the teeth, so to speak, but just didn't know it.

Darla was a walking cartoon and my four legged muse. I have used her in many of my drawings and if I hadn't seen her with my own eyes, I would say that she was a cartoon cliche to be avoided. She had a black patch over one eye and looked for all the world like Petey from the Little Rascals serials of my childhood. Naturally, calling her Petey would have presented obvious difficulties so we went with the name of another character in the series, Alfalfa's object of desire, Darla.

I used Darla in as many pictures as I could, whenever a canine was needed (often even when one was not). I've included some photos here along with a few of the drawings she still inhabits.
She was the sweetest, gentlest, funniest dog I ever knew and an important member of our family. Randall, Paulina, Fia and I are are all heartbroken, but we know how lucky we were to have her in our lives.

She was, quite simply, the best.

Miraculous Recovery!

2010-03-22T14:03:00.000-07:00

The title to my rejected New Yorker cover sketch.
Alas.

Ich Bin Ein Illustrator

2010-03-18T19:04:00.001-07:00

Who would have thought that there exists an actual conference devoted to the art of character design. Not me, but what do I know? I've recently been invited to attend the Pictoplasma weekend in Berlin to share my thoughts on character design, my influences and how I go about it. I am one of the more decidedly commercial artists to appear there judging from the gamut of bizarre and beautiful work represented on their website. I am very excited about the weekend and look forward to meeting character designers from all over the planet (and other planets, from the look of things).

My trip is sponsored by my friends at Hornet Inc. with whom I've collaborated on several television commercials.
The conference runs from April 9th to the 11th.

BROWNSTONES TO RED DIRT POSTCARD ART BENEFIT

2010-03-12T09:13:00.000-08:00

Over the years I have been repeatedly impressed and humbled by the spirit of generosity so many of my friends at Blue Sky have exhibited. Whether it involves charities for the disenfranchised or green initiatives for the sake of the environment, Blue Skyers always step up. Below is a dramatic demonstration of this spirit taken to an astonishing level. I've cut and pasted the information so as not to dilute or confuse it's content.

Two colleagues at Blue Sky Studios, David LaMattina and Chad Walker, have created a feature-length documentary about a pen pal program between a group of at-risk sixth graders living in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn and orphans from the war living in Freetown, Sierra Leone. This Postcard Art project is an extension of the their film "Brownstones To Red Dirt" which features children from both schools. The kids in both places have inspired us all to want to do more and so we're putting together an art auction of original postcards based around the same central theme of the film in a fundraising effort to build a school for the orphans in Freetown, Sierra Leone and create a library for the youth at their school in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn.

I also want to mention Vicki Saulls, one of our great sculptors at Blue Sky, who has taken on the daunting task of launching and overseeing the auction.
It's taking place at this very moment, and not surprisingly, my entry above, is the very last to be submitted. If you want to help this very worthy cause and at the same time, jump start your art collection, go here.
Now!

From 2D to 3D- without those annoying glasses.

2010-03-10T08:30:00.000-08:00

One of the most enjoyable (and yes, sometimes horrifying) things about working in animation is seeing my work in the hands of other artists. Top among these pleasures is seeing a drawing translated into sculpture. I've worked with some great modelers at Blue Sky Studios over the years and I can easily say that finding a character in clay is one of the most exciting parts of the process. It requires a respectful dialogue between the designer and sculptor and a lot of trust. I am the first to admit that my designs are often too loose to sculpt with any real accuracy. They are sometimes cavalier little doodles that look good on the page, but offer little in the way of solid information for the purposes of translating it to three dimensions. That's where the sculptor's skill comes in. He or she needs to be able to interpret the sketch and somehow wrestle it into our reality. Alena Wooten, one of Blue Sky's top sculptors, seems to be refining that skill every day. She came into the studio recently and unvieled this beautiful piece which I had been completely unaware of until that moment. She based it on a little drawing I published in a collection of sketches several years ago and I am truly impressed by the result. I am usually standing over the sculptor's shoulder niggling over every last detail, but this appeared fully realized, with nary a peep from me. The dog is not quite finished but after some convincing, Alena allowed me to share it with you.

More drawings from the Underground

2010-03-07T19:51:00.000-08:00

I've heard people say that it can be intimidating drawing someone on the subway. What if they look up and see you drawing them? These days, you need never fear. NOBODY LOOKS UP ANYMORE. Everyone's face is so deeply buried in his gadget, you can do a sculpture if you feel like it.
I'm not an expert at drawing from life, but here is a tidbit I am relearning. When you are drawing someone from life, don't look away from your figure for more than a dot or a dash. Don't look at the nose and say to yourself, "now I will spend some time drawing a nose, because I remember how to draw a nose." You have to study every curve and taper in it because each line will be unique to that nose, the way each person's nose is unique to his face. You have to draw it as if it's the very first nose you have ever seen.

This is what I keep telling myself, anyway.

Malice Underground

2010-02-26T05:39:00.001-08:00

Let's face it, I've never been very prolific, and the situation is worse at a time like this, when I am working on a film. So anyone waiting around for me to post something finished will grow bored pretty quickly. To break the tedium and perhaps give the illusion of actually accomplishing something, I'll show some sketches I've been doing on the train lately.
Nowhere on earth is there more a wealth of characters needing to be drawn than in the subways of New York City.

Mathilda is off to a great start!

2010-02-25T09:48:00.000-08:00

Within just a few days, Randall's new book, Mathilda and the Orange Balloon (or here) is garnering great reviews! Naturally, I'm biased but it's a great little story and if you get a chance, take a look.

Kirkus Reviews
Refusing to follow the boring herd mentality of her grazing companions, a visionary little sheep uses her imagination to achieve the impossible. Mathilda’s world of grass, sky, stones and lots of other sheep seems small until a magnificent orange balloon catches her eye. Enchanted, Mathilda immediately proclaims she, too, is an orange balloon. The other sheep laugh, warning Mathilda she’ll never be anything but a gray sheep since she’s not round, can’t fly and isn’t orange like the balloon. Undaunted, Mathilda happily proceeds to creatively visualize herself into a round, flying, orange balloon proving “anything was possible.” Relying on black outlines, simple shapes and effective use of white space, Corace’s precise watercolor-and-ink illustrations reinforce the upbeat message of possibility. She artfully contrasts the dull gray-and-green existence of the sheep with the alluring bright orange balloon as it floats across the pages to spark Mathilda’s exuberant, imaginative and infectious flight of fancy. The unflappable Mathilda will tickle and inspire. (Picture book. 3-6)

TimeOut NY Kids
MATHILDA AND THE ORANGE BALLOON
Refusing to follow the boring herd mentality of her grazing companions, a visionary little sheep uses her imagination to achieve the impossible. Mathilda’s world of grass, sky, stones and lots of other sheep seems small until a magnificent orange balloon catches her eye. Enchanted, Mathilda immediately proclaims she, too, is an orange balloon. The other sheep laugh, warning Mathilda she’ll never be anything but a gray sheep since she’s not round, can’t fly and isn’t orange like the balloon. Undaunted, Mathilda happily proceeds to creatively visualize herself into a round, flying, orange balloon proving “anything was possible.” Relying on black outlines, simple shapes and effective use of white space, Corace’s precise watercolor-and-ink illustrations reinforce the upbeat message of possibility. She artfully contrasts the dull gray-and-green existence of the sheep with the alluring bright orange balloon as it floats across the pages to spark Mathilda’s exuberant, imaginative and infectious flight of fancy. The unflappable Mathilda will tickle and inspire. (Picture book. 3-6)

Ohdeedoh/ Apartment Therapy
It's natural to want to keep reading your favorite childhood books to your kids, but there are wonderful books for kids coming out all the time worthy of a shot at becoming your family's next favorite book. Mathilda and the Orange Balloon is a contender to put on your list. We're always charmed by artist/illustrator Jen Corace's work (see our post on Hansel and Gretel) and her imagery here is among the friendliest, happiest we've seen it (orange has that effect on people). The affirming story by Randall de Sève is charming as she convinces the reader that, indeed, a sheep can be an orange balloon. You'll just have to read it to see what we mean.

VES Award nomination for work on Buck in Ice Age, Dawn of the Dinosaurs!

2010-02-21T05:12:00.000-08:00

The Visual Effects Society will be holding their annual gala this weekend to celebrate nominees for best work done in film and television. I'm very happy to say that I will be sharing a nomination with Simon Pegg (he once played a famous Scottish Engineer I mentioned recently-hint, hint) for Outstanding Animated Character in an Animated Feature Motion Picture for our work on Buck, the deranged weasel from Ice Age, Dawn of the Dinosaurs.
Also nominated under the animation category are my amazingly talented Blue Sky chums :
Galen Chu, Supervising Animator
Jeff Gabor, Senior Animator
Anthony Nisi, Animation Production Supervisor
Melvin Tan, Senior Animator

As they say, it's an honor just to be nominated and it's particularly gratifying since Ice Age, DOTD, didn't quite garner the kudos I had expected from the industry despite it's colossal success at the box office. I believe Blue Sky really delivered their best work on this one so I can only chalk this up to the curse of the sequel.
Oh well.

Curses...!

2010-02-18T18:46:00.000-08:00

Only a couple of you fell into my trap. My last Frazetta post was meant to teach you the same lesson I got taught, but without costing you $1800. That drawing was also a fake, a fact I was blissfully unaware of for the five years it proudly hung in my studio. The only excuse I can offer for that blunder is that the only reproduction I had ever seen of the piece was in a yellowed Ace paperback circa 1965 and printed on low quality newsprint paper.
Still, when you actually get a good look at the both of them together, the truth of the matter becomes painfully obvious.
To quote a famous Scottish engineer: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Randall has published another book!

2010-02-17T10:17:00.000-08:00

Mathilda and the Orange Balloon, was officially released yesterday by Balzer and Bray, an imprint of Harper Collins! It is the third book written by my wife, Randall and is charmingly illustrated by Jen Corace, of Little Pea fame. Mathilda, is the story of a sheep who doesn't think like one and uses her power of imagination to become anything she chooses to be. I think this is a wonderful message for a child to to take from a story and consistent with Randall's other two great books- The Duchess of Whimsy (gorgeously illustrated) and Toy Boat. All of her books have something worthwhile to say to children without them realizing that something worthwhile is being said to them. It's the gift of a good children's book author and makes sense coming from someone who was also an excellent lower school teacher for several years. All I can say is thank goodness one of us is smart or our own kids would be in big trouble.
Congratulations, Honey-Pie!

Easy for you to say.

2010-02-15T15:05:00.000-08:00

But yes, every one of you is absolutely right. The second one is the real deal. I must say in my defense though, that it's much easier to see
how wrong the fake is when it's seen next to the real Mccoy.
Anyway to wrap up the Frazetta chapter , I'll end with the last piece in my collection, before moving on to the other stuff on my walls.

Oh, yes, I'm QUITE the Frazetta expert...

2010-02-11T16:52:00.000-08:00

How hilarious, that only days after crowing about my most fabulous Frazetta collection,I should discover that I am the proud owner of a Frazetta Fake.
As you might have gleaned, I consider myself somewhat of an authority on the guy's work, so imagine my surprise this afternoon, while trolling for other possible purchases that I can ill afford, when I discovered this little beauty:

Uh, wait. Or was it this one?

You tell me.

Signed with Drawings- A Sketchy Past! UPDATED!

2010-02-10T08:42:00.000-08:00

The Society of Illustrators in New York City is the best place right now to pick up copies of my book, A Sketchy Past. To keep them moving I've signed a bunch with drawings, all comparable to the one above. At last count, there were a dozen left. If you happen to be in NYC, stop by the museum and get one. It's located at 128 East 63rd, between Park and Lexington. And of course, make sure to visit the main gallery where the annual exhibition of some of this years best Book and Editorial work is now on view.

~I've just added another dozen copies signed with drawings.~

On my walls, part II- FRAZETTA

2010-01-28T05:25:00.002-08:00

Yes, I put his name in caps.

What can I say? I have been a Frazetta geek since I first discovered comics and illustration in the early 70's. I was fortunate at around 13 or 14 years old to meet an equally distracted soul who was also consumed by drawing and collecting. My friends name was Jon Victor and through weekly meetings, mostly held by riding my bike (no speeds, no frills- God I loved that thing) to his house several miles away in another neighborhood, we fed each other's mutual passion for telling stories with pictures.

Once in his bedroom, a comic geeks paradise, we might proceed to weigh the merit of Berni Wrightson's latest Swamp Thing comic, or bask in the warmth of a vintage Wally Wood story in a prized issue of Weird Science Fantasy or debate which of the Crusty Bunkers actually inked that page in the latest Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.
Then we would compare our latest drawings. Every week or so, we would show each other what we had been working on, inspired by heroes outside of drawing as well- from Gene Roddenberry ( Star Trek was still decades away from it's many reincarnations), to Rod Serling to Ray Harryhausen. Jon was much more technically proficient than I and a tough critic to boot. This was a good thing, of course. It made me try harder. And whether he ever knew it or not, for me it was a competition and I worked hard to improve my drawing to make sure I was ready for the next throw-down. Jon was also much more comfortable with color and it took me many years to finally figure out how to use it in any way resembling competence. I was lucky to have a friend like him at a time when I was just beginning to find my legs as an artist. We kept each other honest and inspired.
Again, it was the 70's and The Studio was at it's peak-- Jeff Jones was producing his finest pages for Idyl, Mike Kaluta was dazzling us with art deco inspired masterpieces for The Shadow and of course, Wrightson, whose work walked that fine line between humor and horror. He would leave an indelible impression on a legion of future illustrators and comic artists, myself included.

And then there was Frank Frazetta.

It was Jon who first introduced me to his work. He pulled out samples from a precious manilla folder he had painstakingly compiled of images carefully cut from paperbacks, magazines and comicbooks. Some of them were holy grails- cheezy Sci-Fi and fantasy novels from the 1960's that would never see print again and covers from magazines like Warren's Creepy and Eerie, the last bastion for many of the great artists from the EC Comics days, all adorned with Frazetta's fantastic tableaus. With the authority of a veteran collector- he was a good five years older- Jon would make his case for the superiority of one painting over the other and I would make my own impassioned case, for or against. It was fun debating which were best, especially because it was such a futile excercise- there were simply too many favorites to choose from. Frazetta's work took my breath away. If there is a common thread through the work of most of the artists I collect, it is their ability to draw from the imagination. The artists who seem to inspire me most are the ones who somehow successfully blend the facts with the fiction, at least enough to tell their visual story best. Kley had it, Bauer had it and so did Wrightson and his Studio mates. It's difficult to distill exactly what it is I enjoy most about Frazetta, but it certainly has much to do with his distillation of shapes. The choices he makes for a fold of drape or shape of a shadow- are part of his magic. It's what he doesn't show, that is so tantalizing. A warriors face might be beautifully rendered, along with his shoulders and part of the pelt he is wearing, but the rest of his body might disappear under a carefully shaped shadow intimating perfectly the form underneath, but without us seeing a thing. Loathe as I am to say it, Carter Goodrich's work has this in spades.
Frazetta's brushwork was so deft and economical and his images often only glorified vignettes, but what was in focus, ignited my imagination and made me want to know what was beyond the edges of those scenes, for surely I was seeing only a piece of a fully realized universe.

I quickly became an obsessive collector of virtually anything the guy had put his hand to. I combed every used book shop I would pass for years, my head tilted at the shelves, looking for any of the titles that had by now been branded into my skull. Looking back I realize, by scanning the covers of thousands of books that weren't Frazetta's, I was unwittingly taking myself to school in the art of illustration, and soon came to know the names of countless other illustrators by default. I still have my collection of books, magazines and compendiums that make up most of Frazetta's ouevre and still have an almost Pavlovian response when I go into a bookstore. I tell myself I'm done collecting, but in the back of my brain, I can't help keep my eye out for one that might have gotten away.

I think ebay has become a wish fulfilled for those kids in us that never quite sated their particular obsessions and I am certainly one of them. So when I grew older and had achieved something of a career, I was actually able to purchase an original sketch or two. To my continued amazement, I was able to get my hands on a few of Frazetta's color preliminary thumbnails. And I do mean thumbnails. They are astonishing, not only for their resemblance to the much larger oil paintings that followed, but for their tiny size. The biggest one is no larger than five inches across. And like many of his studies, these tiny little watercolor sketches are fresher and more beautiful than the final piece.

So it is with way too much pride, that I show you part of my Frazetta collection above and hope that you will enjoy them half as much as I still do, every single day.

birds, for no good reason.

2010-01-25T18:39:00.000-08:00

Bill Plympton!

2010-01-22T10:35:00.000-08:00

Bill Plympton is that very rare thing in animation- the one man studio. His films which include both shorts and features, are drawn completely by himself with only two or three assistants helping with color and cleanup. I've been friendly with Bill for many, many years now and considered myself a pretty knowledgeable fan of his work, but I was a bit surprised the other night while watching a lecture he was giving at the Society of Illustrators, to realize how out of step I've been with him lately. In my defense, Bill is so damned prolific that if you do happen to blink, you've missed another one of his films. At the lecture he showed several shorts including the darkly funny Santa the Fascist Years and the hilarious Hot Dog starring Plymptoon Studios ugly bulldog mascot. In addition, he previewed several minutes from his brilliant new feature,Angels and Idiots, the story of a thug who wakes up one day with a pair of angel wings growing out of his back and his ensuing struggle with his self image. One of my favorites of the evening was "The Cow Who Wanted to be a Hamburger" an alternately touching and grotesque tale described perfectly by it's title. That piece was drawn with a black sharpie and colored on the computer, giving it the most graphic look to date in a Plymptoon. The room was packed full of entranced young illustrators and animators and everyone there was taken to school on the importance of preserving one's own vision and the need for good, solid draftsmanship. I left the place inspired and I must admit, a little chastened.
In this world of ever more highly buffed CG characters (guilty as charged) it was so refreshing to see pure drawing, with all it's smudges and imperfections, flicker unapologetically across the screen and make me laugh as hard as anything I've ever seen in Imax 3D.
It was a sobering reminder of what the art of the humble pencil can achieve.

On my walls

2009-12-28T06:14:00.000-08:00

It's taken me a little longer than usual to post any new drawings due to the fact that most of what I am doing these days is for feature animation and cannot be shared without terrible retribution from on high. So apart from the random drawing (see above), I am constrained to talking about work created by people other than myself, as difficult for me as that may be.
I've been wondering about exactly how to go about it though. After all, there are a LOT of people, dead and alive, whose work I love.
So I've decided to start with artists whose work I own. My goal, apart from the obvious one of showing off my collection, is to hopefully introduce some of you out there to work by artists you may not have heard about until now. I remember the first time I encountered some of this work and each one these artists opened up a new door for me.
I hope one or two of these will do the same for you.

This is a lovely watercolor by Harry Rountree, an illustrator from New Zealand, who had an uncanny gift for anthropomorphising animals. His talent, beyond his incredibly deft hand with the watercolor brush, was his ability to preserve the essence of the animal while still imbuing it with a truly human personality. It's one thing to draw funny animals, but something else entirely to really understand the creature you are exaggerating. Rountree was a naturalist with a sense of humor.

Heinrich Kley. There are very few illustrators I know who don't own the two Dover paperback collections of his work. They are like bibles to me and are so dogeared and tattered, I've had to buy backups. I became aware of Kley's work when some overzealous fan in my high school print shop (I know, what the hell is a print shop?) printed up a huge montage of his drawings on one big yellow sheet. I had the thing hanging over my headboard until I left home to go to college. I've often wondered if that poster functioned in the same way people used to think that if going to bed while listening to a recording of French lessons one could learn fluency in his sleep. All I know is that to this day, I will find myself drawing a familiar figure and flash back to one of the vignettes on that poster.
The drawing above was one of them.

Here is another Kley I picked up a few years ago. My favorite section is the women waving their sashes,
a gem in itself.

And then there is the genius, Winsor McCay. Not the inventor of animation per se, but the guy that showed us what was in store. I see him as one of those freakily gifted humans who pop up every now and then, like Einstein or DaVinci, to give us an evolutionary kick in our pants. This little ink drawing, done on a small yellowed piece of paper, is of Gertie the Dinosaur, and is one of four thousand that McCay drew to create the film. Gertie the Dinosaur represents a major milestone in the history of animation.

A Sketchy Past reviewed in the New York Times Book Review!

2009-12-06T19:31:00.000-08:00

Below is a review of my book, A Sketchy Past, The Art of Peter de Seve, written by Steven Heller, the former art editor of The New York Times Book Review and highly prolific author and editor of countless books on illustration, graphic design and popular culture.

Peter de Sève is much better known than kamishibai artists [a reference from the first section of the article, not shown here] , but he does the same job of telling stories. His numerous covers for The New Yorker tell ironic tales of the city. “Panhandler,” a fanciful drawing of the mythical half man, half goat Pan playing his proverbial pipes on a New York street corner, is as farcical as it is evocative of the real talents who busk for loose change. De Sève’s “Through the Wringer,” showing a flabby naked man walking through an airport metal detector (ignored by all the passers- by), captures the way many people actually feel when going through the ordeal. These and many more illustrations are collected in a gorgeously designed coffee-table book, A SKETCHY PAST: The Art of Peter de Sève (Akileos, $54.95).
The sketches implied in the title are probably the best part. De Sève’s finished pieces are very fluid and impressionistic while totally representational, with hints of caricature at every turn. But his looser sketches are the real masterpieces of visual erudition. He depicts character and expression so completely with only a few well-composed lines and shades. And among the most delightful, in a book that will doubtless serve as a textbook for today’s aspiring artists, are production sketches for the animated “Ice Age” films, for which he designed the amazing characters (under the supervision of the director Chris Wedge, who wrote the book’s foreword). Although de Sève is certainly a people person, drawingwise, I haven’t seen such a master with animals since John James Audubon, if Audubon had done caricatures of prehistoric creatures, that is.

The CTN Animation Expo, pt.II

2009-11-25T05:34:00.000-08:00

Absolutely killer Kung Fu Panda maquettes sculpted by Damon Bard.
Oh, how I want one.

An artist shows her portfolio at the Blue Sky Studios table.

Very talented, way too young guy, Justin Gerard.

Stuff.

Kent Melton begins a maquette. Like a dope, I walked away
not realizing who he was.

Me, talking about Me, while Roger Allers politely
waits for Me to stop.

People watching me draw.
It was like something out of a fever dream.

Finally, a few minutes to post something on the CTN (Creative Talent Network) Animation Expo in Burbank,California. I must say, it was a tremendous event. I think everyone I met (and I met quite a few people there) expressed surprise and excitement at how well attended and well organized the whole shebang was. I do believe this thing has legs and will be even bigger next year.
More than one person described it as a distilled San Diego Comicon experience but just for animation geeks. Only the good stuff: various artists showing their latest work, including Craig Elliott, Andreas Deja , Kei Acedera and Bobby Chiu to name a few. Also on view were Damon Bard's Kung Fu Panda maquettes, translated so perfectly from Nicolas Marlet's flawless designs (do not get me started on how much I hate Marlet!)- more on that genius later. Mike Mignola was there with his wife Christine and their daughter. Mike had several masterworks for sale, one of which I scored. More on that guy later, too.
Beyond the work displayed by those artists and many more, was a seamless loop of drawing and painting demonstrations, both traditional (Craig Elliott) and digital (Justin Gerard) all staged on a platform near the center of the main room and viewable on large monitors all over the convention. You might be having a coffee outside the hall, look up and find yourself mesmerized by some dazzling display of draughtsmanship only to realize your coffee's gone cold while you sat there slackjawed. There were many panel discussions, (all of which I missed due to my own obligations that weekend), including a history of the maquette by the sculpting superhero, Kent Melton and a roundtable on character design including folks like Harald Seiperman and Greg Couch. Outside the main hall in the lounge area were ad hoc gatherings of artists sharing their sketchbooks with one another. In the same area were also displays of maquettes ranging from vintage Jiminy Crickets circa The Nine Old Men to finished painted models from Tim Burton's upcoming Alice in Wonderland (designed by Kei Acedera and Bobby Chu). Beyond the sharing of ideas, techniques and general passion for the art of animation by both vets and newcomers, was the search for job opportunities, a central goal of CTN. Blue Sky Studios had a table set up and my Blue Sky pals, Sabrina de los Rios and Greg Couch spent much of the weekend going through countless portfolios, giving advice and taking business cards. Sony Animation was there and doing the same thing. I strongly suspect the other studios will follow suit next year.
The very kind Roger Allers, director of The Lion King, generously agreed to interview me on stage before an audience. Despite our jitters, confessed to each other only moments before going on, we had a great time and a lot of laughs.
For myself, I was especially delighted with the wonderful reception A Sketchy Past and the Duchess of Whimsy received. Every time I went to Stuart Ng's table someone was either perusing one of the books or had one in hand, ready for purchase. It was the debut for A Sketchy Past here in the U.S. and I could not have been happier with the response. Thank you to those of you who purchased it!
photos by Marianne Franco
And congratulations to Tina Price, for organizing such a successful weekend!

Finally, a NEW website!

2009-11-20T03:02:00.000-08:00

After six years, I finally have a new website. Let me know what you think!

A Chilly Reception

2009-11-15T17:57:00.000-08:00

Every year in Kiruna, Sweden, 125 miles north of the Arctic Circle, a team of sturdy Swedes works from dawn until dusk (which, up that far north, means about twenty minutes) to complete construction of the famous Ice Hotel. It is exactly that, a hotel constructed from great blocks of perfect ice, harvested from the Torne river that runs through much of this wintery hinterland. The hotel is reconstructed every year around this time and it is there in very chilly Kiruna, that Twentieth Century Fox decided to hold a three day press junket to promote the release of the Blu Ray, DVD of Ice Age, Dawn of the Dinosaurs.

That's where I was last week.

Here are a few pictures:

A "wilderness picnic lunch" on a frozen river.

We arrived by dog sled and yes, we ate reindeer.

I went for one of the most beautiful runs of my life,

and did not see a soul.

It was cold, even by his standards.

Randall, The Duchess and I

2009-11-13T17:27:00.000-08:00

The shameless self promotion continues!!

Shoes Make the Man

2009-11-11T17:46:00.001-08:00

While we're on the subject of Norman Rockwell, please allow me an observation I've made about him as a character designer.

There are many who would quite incorrectly dismiss Rockwell as an artist enslaved by the photograph. The contrary is true. One of Rockwell's many gifts was his ability to choose what to use from a photo and what to throw out. More importantly, the photos he worked from were of subjects he posed and clothed himself. Now to my point: for a short but (I feel) illuminating lesson in character design, take a look at any Rockwell painting, and don't even bother with the faces. Look down. In every one of his paintings his figures are dressed in exactly the shoes that character should be wearing. Their color and patina, style and condition speak volumes about the wearer's history and personality. You almost don't have to look up again to know who's wearing them.

I am still not the costumer of characters I would like to be, not by a long shot, but artists like Rockwell make it very clear:

it's not the amount of details you choose to include,

but which ones.

The Norman Rockwell Museum and The Duchess

2009-11-11T11:06:00.001-08:00

Have you ever been to the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachussetts? If you are a fan of Rockwell or a fan of illustration in general, than make the trip sometime. The museum is world class. The galleries are large, beautifully lit and there are many of them. Most are filled with the very best of Rockwell's work and they are very impressive to see in the original. It's a beautiful museum in a gorgeous part of the country and well worth a visit.

As I mentioned, the NRM also focuses on the work of other artists as well and hosts events to help launch new books about and by contemporary illustrators.

Yes, you know where this is going, don't you?

Randall and I will be spending a couple of hours at the Rockwell on November 28th.,the Saturday after Thanksgiving, to give a little talk on the process of working together to create our book, The Duchess of Whimsy. The event will be absolutely kid friendly and will include a reading of the book and I'll be drawing some characters as well. I'm proud to say that there will be a little showing of my originals from The Duchess on exhibit, too. The idea for the talk and the exhibit arose pretty quickly, so the work will not be hanging in one of the formal galleries but in a more casual space near our presentation.

The museum has an excellent bookstore, which I'm proud to say will also have copies of A Sketchy Past, which I will be happy to sign for anyone who is interested.

One more bonus I should mention: Rockwell's final studio is situated on the grounds and available for viewing, just as he left it. It's always interesting to stand in a space you know one of your heroes stood and maybe screamed at the top of his lungs when a picture went badly.

Or is it only me that does that?

The CTN Animation Expo!

2009-11-08T15:34:00.001-08:00

On November 20th, an organization called the Creative Talent Network, will be hosting a brand new convention in Burbank, California designed to bring together professionals in the animation industry to discuss their experiences in the business and share them with colleagues and people looking to make their careers there. Tina Price, the founder of CTN and the Expo, has flattered me with the invitation to be a featured guest and to take part in several of the events being held there, including a one on one interview on stage, with the legendary Roger Allers , director of the masterpiece, The Lion King. Other events will include workshops, panel discussions and simple meet and greets at the bar located within the convention ( you know where to find me.) The CTN Expo has been snowballing over the last several months and looks as if it might be shaping up to become something special.

You can find all the info here.

A Last Minute Announcement!

2009-11-07T08:03:00.000-08:00

Randall and I will be doing a signing and reading of The Duchess of Whimsy at Book Court in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn tomorrow morning , November 8th at 11:00 am.

We hope you can make it!

Arludik and Books of Wonder

2009-11-06T18:02:00.000-08:00

Look, I know that photos from signings don't make the most riveting posts, but

I do want to share these events somehow and this is certainly the best way. I'm doubling up this entry to include last Sunday's Duchess of Whimsy reading at Books of Wonder and the wonderful opening of my show at Galerie Arludik in Paris. Both events were very well attended and full of good cheer and encouragement, which believe me, is much appreciated. Thank you to all who joined us. Randall and I will be hosting a few more events surrounding both The Duchess of Whimsy and A Sketchy Past, all of which I will soon list in the upper right hand corner of this page. If you happen to be in this part of the world, please come by.

(thank you, Fabrice Leduc for the Arludik photos above and to Jessica Yeomans, for the Books of Wonder photos below)

PS: Our next reading/signing of The Duchess of Whimsy will be tomorrow, November 8th, at Book Court in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn at 11:00 am!

The Duchess of Whimsy is officially released today!

2009-10-29T05:51:00.000-07:00

Randall and I are delighted to announce that The Duchess of Whimsy will finally hit bookstores today! We will be doing readings and signings in various places in around New York throughout the next month or so and hope you will have a chance to join us.

First off and one of our most important events is this Sunday, November 1st at Books of Wonder, the biggest children's bookstore in NYC. It will be a reading/signing/sketching/eating of grill cheese sandwiches/pub party kind of thing from 2:00 to 4:00.

And it's BYOK.

(Kid)

We hope to see you there!

that's TWO for the books

2009-10-27T13:53:00.000-07:00

I am proud to have the opportunity once more to blag ( I thought I coined this word first, but apparently I didn't) about being partly responsible for an actual entry into the Guinness Book of World Records.

Many years ago, I illustrated a very small pop-up book of Aesop's Fables which was designed by a fellow named Roger Culbertson. It was a minor affair and my work for it was admittedly middling, but still it was fun to illustrate a pop-up book and to invent amusing pop-uppish ways to tell the stories. Roger, was quite passionate about pop-ups and decided to recreate the book, but scaled up to a relatively enormous height of 4ft., thereby breaking the current World Record, and officially placing it in the Guinness Book of.

In an equally unintentional way, I have found myself once again associated with a record breaking entry. This time for an ice sculpture of a colossal Scrat, holding his acorn aloft and measuring 45 ft. high. To be clear, I just drew the thing and never picked up a chainsaw. That job was left to a crack team of fourteen ice sculptors who worked feverishly through the night to complete it in time for a promotional event announcing the release of Ice Age, Dawn of the Dinosaurs on Blue Ray and DVD.

The ice sculpture was unveiled yesterday in Santa Monica under brutally sunny California skies.

Sorry, I don't have any good photos of it and I'm not authorized to show my actual design, but it looks something like this:

Dwuh and Swuh

2009-10-24T19:56:00.000-07:00

I'd like to introduce you to two very nice and very funny fellows named Dwight and Swain. These guys have created a wonderful series of podcasts on the topics of illustration, comics and pop culture in general, which are posted on a site they call Sidebar Nation. Each installment is an hour long interview with an artist discussing his or her career. They were gracious enough to invite me to their show and I have to say, it is one of the most enjoyable hours I have spent giving an interview.

You can find it here.

Guarnido

2009-10-21T07:49:00.001-07:00

There are quite a few things to mention about my trip to Paris for the opening and book launch, so I might as well begin here. One of the very best things about traveling abroad and showing my work is having the privilege of meeting artists whom I've admired but never thought I would ever actually get the chance to meet. Such was the case with Juanjo Guarnido, the scary talent who illustrates the now classic Blacksad series written by Diaz Canales. it's an ultra pure film noir detective story that takes place in a Dashiell Hammett universe populated not by people, but by completely anthropomorphized animals, all perfectly cast to suit the character they are portraying. John Blacksad, the titular character, is a detective and a black tom cat, very much in the mold of anti-hero Sam Spade or in this case Spayed ( I had to say it!) The criminal underworld is portrayed by likewise suitable fauna-- thugs may appear as apes or rhinos, the police chief and his squad are vigilant canines and the kingpins of crime can be anything from a Greenstreet-ish albino tiger to a Soprano like frog. All of this is set in a quintessentially noirish city of the mind, tinted with the unmistakable patina of New York in the fifties.

Beyond the beautiful characterizations, Guarnido is a dazzling master of perspective and uses it in a powerfully cinematic way. It is easy to imagine this animated on the big screen ( but be careful, whoever you are, it will be a very delicate thing to get right).

One would think this guy would be a bit intimidating to meet, but I'm relieved to say he's a very nice fellow and humble to a fault.

My hosts, Jean-Jacques and Diane Launier kindly invited me to their home just outside Paris to see their amazing collection of artwork, movie and comic collectibles before meeting Guarnido for dinner at a restaurant nearby.

The restaurant,which happened to have a giant one hundred foot long sculpture of a plesiosaur skeleton hung from the rafters ( I'm still not certain why), served us a delicious meal. In the meantime, Guarnido and I got to exchange notes on artistic influences and found we have many heroes in common . He loves Rountree! He loves Sullivant! He loves Kley! Look at their work and you'll see why. (more on those masters at some later post).

I made him a gift of my book and he surprised me by doing the same in kind. He gave me a precious, signed limited edition of his Blacksad book , Ame Rouge. A glass of wine or two later, I fished out my pen and handed him back the book. He knew why and didn't bother to protest. Below, are photos of the two of us, (me, with the better end of the bargain).

After dinner, Guarnido was kind enough to drive me back to my new place near the Luxembourg Gardens. Having changed my sleeping arrangements three times since arriving a week before, I was a bit confused about exactly where my hotel was located. When we finally figured it out, Guarnido let out a sigh of relief and confessed he was glad he didn't get us lost, which apparently happens to him all the time. We were both laughing as he drove off and just as he turned the corner and drove away, I realized I was in front of the wrong hotel.

Oh well, there are worst things than being lost in Paris.

Daumier

2009-10-14T15:37:00.004-07:00

Any one who has known me for even a little bit, knows of my fondness for the work of Honore Daumier. He is one of France's best loved caricaturists and political satirists of the late nineteenth century and spent most of his energy attacking the hypocrisies and excesses of the bourgeoise. For me, his work has always embodied the ability to capture the essence of a character, with detail and rendering as lesser priorities.

On Tuesday, Randall, and my assistant and friend, Malia Hughes joined me for a trip to the Musee D'Orsay along with my two girls, Paulina and Fia. It's a spectacular place which was once a vast railway station at the turn of the century. Combing the various galleries, we stumbled upon a room devoted to the work of Daumier and there in a huge glass case were over thirty busts of the parliamentary figures of the day, molded in his characteristically energetic and unapologetic way. They look like as if he was rushing to capture the individual spark of each personality and if you look closely enough, you can still see his fingerprints in the clay. They are just as loose as his lithographs for which he is more widely known and are as alive as the day they were first molded into existence.

The following day, I was interviewed for a french television program about my work and influences. Daumier was fresh on my mind and I spoke a lot about him. Afterwards, I decided to take a different route back to the apartment we are renting in the Marais and strode along the Seine, taking my time. There, right before a bridge that would take me back to my temporary home, I happened to look up at a small building with a plaque set in it's face. "Here lived Honore Daumier" it said. Much of Paris has not changed physically since Daumier's time and it was easy for me to imagine him pulling open the front door and leaving the building with drawings tucked under his arm, ready to be printed by Le Charivari. It was a wonderful moment for me. I hope you enjoy these little sculptures. And if you aren't familiar with Daumier, than it is my pleasure to introduce you to him.

A Crime of Passion

2009-10-13T15:09:00.001-07:00

Above is Diane Launier, proprietress and co-curator of Galerie Arludik and me, in front of a broken window where my little one man show will open this Thursday evening in Paris. She is very upset because sometime in the wee hours of the parisian night, someone smashed the window of the gallery and made off with only one thing, a copy of my new book, A Sketchy Past.

I'm not making this up!

Naturally, she was very unhappy about it.

Naturally, I wasn't.

Big but Graceful

2009-10-08T07:49:00.000-07:00

That was the assignment I posed to Bobby Chiu's chuistream audience last night: draw a character who is both Big but Graceful, and it brought out some impressive results, especially considering the very short amount of time everyone had to do the piece and submit it. In the end, I chose the drawing below by Charles Santoso. Here's my note to the folks who submitted ( also posted on chiustream):

Bobby,

I'm going to go with the majority here on this drawing signed Chao. I like a combination of things about it and the fact that it works on more than one level. It certainly fits the basics of the assignment" Big and Graceful". Like many of the submissions, (including my own) there is a character delicately balanced on one foot. I think it's interesting and maybe a little alarming how many of us went to that exact idea. It's a good lesson for us all to try and think of an unusual way into an assignment and hopefully come up with a solution that no one else has. That said, the drawing here has a beautiful sense of volume, weight and at the same time, delicacy. I am also impressed by the added emotional layer in the way the face is drawn. There is grace there as well. When creating a character it's crucial that we consider not only what it looks like but also how it "feels". What emotion does the design evoke from the viewer? After all, the face will be the most important aspect of your design- it is what the audience will need to relate to most.

Congratulations to all on doing such great work in so little time. And also congratulations to the two runners up. Great job, folks!

Good luck to all of you.

all the best,

Peter

On my last post, I also neglected to say that there was a prize for the competition, which was my own answer to the assignment which you can see above. I hope you like it, Mr. Chao.

Good Lord!

2009-10-07T18:17:00.000-07:00

Look at the time!!

I suppose I should have mentioned it earlier, but I am going to appear on Bobby Chiu's great experiment, the chiustream at 11:00 EST this evening. It's a brilliant idea for a streaming show. Each episode features a different illustrator who poses a drawing challenge to the artistically inclined viewer. Everyone has an hour to complete the task and send in a scan by the end. In the meantime, Bobby conducts an interview with his subject. Tonight it's me. Wish me luck.

Paris, part IIIa

2009-10-01T05:26:00.000-07:00

Here are yet a few more from the Arludik show. That apeman drawing is very reminiscent of two drawings I can see in the back of my skull. One is a Neal Adams and the other is by Frank Frazetta.

So sue me.

Paris, part III

2009-09-30T05:32:00.001-07:00

Here are a few more from the upcoming show in Paris, two weeks from today. As you might have noticed, there will be a healthy mix of some older drawings with some new work. I'm thinking of the whole enterprise as a way to turn the page and move forward.

Now this is kooky...ERRATUM!

2009-09-23T16:28:00.000-07:00

According to this, Ice Age 3, Dawn of the Dinosaurs is the third highest grossing film of all time on the foreign front.

Still, that ain't too shabby.

Paris!, part II- the poster

2009-09-17T09:31:00.000-07:00

Voila!

Paris!

2009-09-12T06:47:00.000-07:00

There is a charming little gallery in Paris on Isle St. Louis called Galerie Arludik which is run by an equally charming and improbably nice couple named Jean-Jacques and Diane Launier. As a gallery that promotes and sells artwork done for both print and film, Arludik has succeeded where many have failed. This success is almost certainly a direct result of the passion that JJ and Diane share for illustration and art in general, but also because of the respect and support they demonstrate for every artist whose work they exhibit.

In just a few weeks, I will have the honor of a one man show at Arludik and am eagerly looking forward to it. Opening night will serve the double purpose of launching the exhibit itself and also to officially release a monograph of my work- A Sketchy Past, The Art of Peter de Seve. Galerie Arludik is co-publishing it with Akileos Editions.

The show will open on the evening of October 15th and run until November 21st.

Below are some examples, all of which will be available for purchase, should anyone be so inclined.

If you happen to be wandering the streets of Paris next month, you know where to find me!

A very early review of The Duchess of Whimsy

2009-09-10T08:57:00.000-07:00

For the last year or so, Randall and I have given a few sneak peeks of the Duchess of Whimsy to friends and family, who have said such nice things about it. Naturally, we have not trusted a word they've said. What a relief to finally have the book out of the bubble and reviewed (and quite wonderfully!) by a complete stranger. Read Elizabeth Bird's review here.

This weekend in Brooklyn

2009-09-08T19:49:00.000-07:00

This Sunday, September 13th, is the Brooklyn Book Festival in Brooklyn Heights where many of this year's children's book authors and illustrators will be trying to get your attention. Though we won't actually have copies of The Duchess of Whimsy in hand (it won't be released until the end of October), Randall will be reading from her previous book, Toy Boat in the Target tent at around 2:00. After, we will also be signing and giving away posters of The Duchess. If you happen to be wandering around Brooklyn, by way of Paris or Cairo, please drop by.

A few sketches

2009-09-07T21:00:00.001-07:00

In the spirit of keeping things moving around here, I'll throw down some random sketches. I hope the fact that these are essentially doodles is not a disappointment. The truth is that I enjoy doing these more than I do wrestling a final, finished piece of work to the ground. I have yet to preserve the confidence and playfulness of an early sketch all the way to the final color version . Half the time, the paint is just lipstick on a corpse.

(Hey, good idea for a sketch!)

Sketchtravel!

2009-09-02T21:53:00.000-07:00

Have you heard of Sketchtravel?

Sketchtravel is an ingenious idea concocted by my two pals, Gerald Guerlais and Dice Tsutsumi. While discussing the virtues of sketchbooks one day they came up with the inspired idea of purchasing a high quality, strongly bound sketchbook and passing it from one artist to another, hand to hand, all over the world. The book is now two thirds full of gorgeous examples of some of the top illustrators and comic artists working today. Because they are my friends, they let me put something in, too.

The book actually passed through my hands three times before I could summon the courage to commit something to the page. You can imagine that with each drawing submitted, the book becomes heavier in more ways than one. The artists seem to be raising the bar with every new picture and with almost sadistic pleasure. Just taking temporary ownership of this holy tome and protecting it from coffee and other unnatural disasters was enough to paralyze my drawing hand for days. Part of me wished I'd gotten it over with on the first go-round but last week I was finally able to come up with something. I couldn't begin to tell you whether it's any good or not but the drawing certainly reflects my anxiety about the project pretty well.

I should mention, that a facsimile edition of the book will ultimately be published along with some kind of traveling exhibition, presumably including preliminary sketches, photos and film clips. Unfortunately, the contributors are not allowed to post their pieces online before publication so as not to undercut the final impact of the book.

After each person is done with his/her contribution, they are also obliged to photograph the handoff to the next artist. The photos are sometimes straightforward but have veered into the surreal on occasion. I thought it would be funny for my handoff to Natalie Ascencios to actually light the book on fire and then quickly put it out.

I was only partly successful.

Sketchtravel's blog is here.

Thank you.

2009-08-27T20:26:00.001-07:00

And by the way, thank you very much, all of you who have written in, for your very kind words and encouragement. I really didn't know what to expect from this blogging thing and it's a huge relief to know I'm not just talking to myself.

A Blue Sky Evening

2009-08-27T09:28:00.000-07:00

I'm honored to have been invited by Blue Sky Studios and the Society of Illustrators of New York to host a presentation on Thursday, September 24th at the Society, describing Blue Sky's process of animating Ice Age, Dawn of the Dinosaurs . With the help of my four supremely talented Blue Sky pals-

Mr. Michael Defeo -Sculpting Supervisor

Mr. Michael Knapp -Art Director

Mr.Tony Maki - Story Artist

Mr. Galen Chu - Supervising Animator

we'll take you step by step in the development of a single character- Buck, the slightly unhinged weasel, and the sequence "Campfire", one of the most dramatic and hilarious of the film. We'll show you Buck's development from my designs on paper, to modeling him in clay and computer, to storyboards and finally, to the fully animated sequence. The evening will end with a Q&A followed by drinks at the Society's bar where you'll also have the pleasure of being surrounded with work by some of the masters of illustration like Norman Rockwell (his stagecoach mural hangs over the bar!), Winsor McCay and Harvey Dunn among others.

I hope some of you can make it.

Ice Age, Dawn of the Dinosaurs, pt.1

2009-08-22T06:04:00.001-07:00

As you may have noticed, a movie called Ice Age, Dawn of the Dinosaurs came out this summer and seems to still be doing very well at the box office. It's animated by the truly incredible Blue Sky Studios and typical of them, they have raised the bar once again. They simply get better and better with every film.
This is now the third in the Ice Age series for which I designed all of the characters and I can honestly say, I never get tired of the process. The thrill of creating these characters begins at the very beginning of pre-production when I am handed a rough outline of the story. I begin thinking about how I might portray the new characters being introduced. This really is the most exciting time in the production for me. Basically, I'm given a blank page and am let loose. So little has been decided upon at this point that there is plenty of room to suggest whatever comes to mind. I spend a few weeks just spitballing. I pore over my books and go to the American Museum of Natural History here in New York and look for inspiration. In the case of the dinosaurs for instance, I simply used the fossil record as a menu and chose my favorite saurians, a la carte. For a character designer, this is pure joy. Essentially my assignment is to have fun and doodle. And that's exactly what I did. At this stage, a character might be chosen by the director (in this case, the great Carlos Saldhana) to develop further and things will begin to move more slowly. Much time will be spent trying to bring that little offhand doodle to life in three dimensions, but more about that in a later post.

Below are some exploratory sketches you may not have seen before , some of which will be included in A Sketchy Past.
I hope you like them.

A Sketchy Past, The Art of Peter de Sève

2009-08-14T12:56:00.000-07:00

I'm glad I waited so long to start a blog. Listing all of these things that took so many years to come to fruition might actually make me appear prolific.

Sadly, this is far from the truth.

A Sketchy Past, The Art of Peter de Sève will also be published this October, by Edition Akileos, a French publisher best known for their hardcover collections of bande dessinees (comics, in europeanese) in partnership with Galerie Arludik, a gallery in Paris which specialize in artwork created for animation, film and books (more on all of these wonderful people later).

The book will be a hardcover of about 240 pages, full color finishes and offhand doodles and preliminary sketches throughout. Amid Amidi, an accomplished author with many fine books to his credit and a very popular blog called cartoonbrew provided a great introduction. Chris Wedge, the director of the original Ice Age film, was kind enough to write a very flattering foreword for which I am very grateful. For a preview of the book, please go here:

http://www.akileos.com/coming_soon_from_Akileos_and_Arludik.html

Copies should be available sometime in October through Stuart Ng books and Bud Plant Illustrated Books among others.

Like the children's book, this is another project I put off for several years, but I'm very glad I did. If I had succeeded in putting together a similar book all those years ago, it would have been premature and showed it. This is not to say that I really have done enough work to warrant anything that resembles a retrospective, but at least there is enough material now and enough variety in the work to make it seem worthwhile to some degree. With Ice Age, The Dawn of the Dinosaurs completing the trio of those films, The Duchess of Whimsy and a book of sketches under my belt, at least I won't feel there are any gaping holes in the book. And if it does fall short in some way for its audience (whomever that might be), it at least accomplishes something important for me personally. I've come to think of A Sketchy Past, only half jokingly, as the "End of Part One" of my artistic life. Fifty years is a long time for one chapter, but perhaps, if I can put all of this work behind me, I'll be more open to bigger and more challenging artistic opportunities in the next fifty years. On the other hand, I might just curl up in a ball with a bottle in my fist and pore over the book every night, wondering whether I'll ever be able to draw again.

It's a disquieting thing to see so much of one's work collected in one place; trapped in amber for all to examine. No longer is there an impression of a career, flattered by the viewer's unreliable memory. It's just there, trapped between the covers.

Despite all of this handwringing though, I am delighted with the finished result (at least in it's present pre-printed state) mostly due to the superbly elegant job done by Lori Barra, the book's designer and one of my dearest friends on the planet. A collection like this, a retrospective (unintended as it was), is not something that should be dashed off by an acquaintance. The entire undertaking is heavily weighted with emotion. From self doubt to nostalgia to the stark realization that so much of your life can fit in so few pages; this kind of project should only be done with the help of a very close friend and an expert off-the-ledge-talker. I can't imagine having done it with any one who didn't know me as well as Lori. And anyone who knows Lori, knows that her patience is legendary. She will be mortified to read this but she is known by some as St. Barra. But even someone like her, so Zen and soaked in green tea, would find herself with an uzi in a shopping mall after the punishing months of flipflopping, second guessing and self flagellation that I put her through-on literally, a daily basis.

All of this is secondary however to what makes Lori the excellent designer she is. The book is my dream of the book. It breathes and flows so well because of every minute choice she so carefully and lovingly made; from the fonts, to the witty and playful combination of images- both literal and subliminal. Her personal investment is evident on every page-in the care she put in choosing the paper stock and color of ink, to her agonizing over a 2% difference in opacity of a color, undetectable by a mere mortal's eye. It is a very pleasant book to dip in to and honestly, when it comes to art books, aren't we all just dipping in, hoping for some kind of inspiration, or at the very least, a distraction?

Or is that an awkward confession I just made?
Anyway, thank you again, Lori. As I wrote to you in my acknowledgement, the book is more than a book to me, because of you.

The First Post

2009-08-13T07:27:00.000-07:00

Well, here it is. My first blog. My first post on my first blog. I feel like I'm addressing an empty room.

Hello?

Hello?

Luckily, I do have a few things to mention, otherwise, why would I bother to build this digital soapbox? First and foremost, I am very happy to announce that I've finally gotten around to illustrating a children's book after many years of putting it off with the same perennial excuse: "I can't find the right story." All of that ended when my lovely wife, Randall, came up with a very charming tale she called, The Duchess of Whimsy. It had all the ingredients I was looking for in a story: absurd characters, playful language that doesn't condescend to the child, plenty of opportunities to draw animals (I'll use any excuse), and above all, a warm heart at it's core. It's a quirky love story about the Earl of Norm, a very plain and simple man who adores the Duchess of Whimsy, a beautiful and eccentric royal who has no patience for the ordinary. The book will be published by Penguin/Philomel in October 2009. Somewhere down the line, I may post some sketches and talk about developing the book and collaborating with Randall.

And yes, we're still married.

By the way, Randall has written two other books- Toy Boat, also by Penguin/Philomel and a New York Times Bestseller! Plus, another due out in January 2010, Mathilda, the Orange Ballon from Harper Collins.