Gesture
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Drawing Venice
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Phases of Funny Faces
'The Tank Gang'
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On the trail of Replicants . . .
I headed Downtown Los Angeles to hunt down locations used in Ridley Scott's 'Bladerunner'. I made a short film of the sketch I made of the iconic interior of the amazing Bradbury Building. It was use memorably in the film as the iconic building where toy-maker J. F. Sebastian lives.
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The Christians
In San Francisco while waiting on the cable car at Market & California I would kill time by sketching the locals. There would be police standing around directing traffic or a construction worker in an orange vest stopping pedestrians from getting crushed by the cable car. Amid the chaos, standing quietly and patiently were the Christian representatives with their leaflet stands and bibles. They would be there in all weather. The masses scampering to or from work never engaged with them. About the only souls to interact with them were aggressive drunks who would hurl abuse but the Christians would remain stoic or smile politely.
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Oakland
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'Hula Girl' Painting
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Venice Beach
Sketchcrawl around Venice Beach
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'King Kamehameha' painting process
'King Kamehameha Comes Ashore' -my interpretation of the legendary Hawaiian King.
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Furiosa
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Venice Beach sketchbook
More sketches from the neighbourhood . . .
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INSIDE OUT
My first credit on a Pixar feature - I worked on this film for the first 2 years of story development. The first team were myself, James Baker and Jim Capobianco working with Michael Arndt. Story Supervisor Josh Cooley joined after he finished work on 'Cars 2'. Sam Hood joined the team with Tony Rosenast, Valerie Lapointe and Domee Shi. Shion Takeuchi came on board after she finished on 'Monsters University'. Garett Sheldrew rounded out the 'first wave'. I remember Emma Coats joined us briefly before leaving.
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Pics from the wrap party May 2nd Oakland.
The opening weekend at Disney's 'El Capitan' theatre on Hollywood Boulevard.
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For a long time the working title was 'The Untitled Pixar Film That Takes You Inside The Mind' and crew T-shirts were made with a spoof logo.
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Jaws at 40
'Quint's Workshop'
Watercolour & gouache
To celebrate Jaws at 40 here's my visualization of Quint in his workshop - steaming shark jawbones and crushin' beer cans!
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BRAINSTORM
With 'INSIDE OUT' taking over the world I'm dredging the memory bank for some of the multitude of ideas that didn't get into the final version of the story. For every idea in the movie there must be a hundred that remained on the story room floor. . .
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This is a VERY early visualization of 'Headquarters' (late 2010) where I was playing with the Emotions literally plugged into Riley's Mind as they monitor her physical state. That purple figure was pride who was the fifth emotion before Disgust.
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In an early version of the story Joy and BingBong originally entered the film-set or 'Dream Productions' through a back door and passed through a warehouse where all the props that made Riley's dreams were stored.
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This must have been a riff on BingBong's 'bottomless' backpack. 'Core memories' started out in the film as 'golden memories' and BB was hiding them . . . somewhere . . .
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In an early version of the story Joy and BingBong originally entered the film-set or 'Dream Productions' through a back door and passed through a warehouse where all the props that made Riley's dreams were stored.
Joy and Bing Bong enter the 'Center for Boy Research' - my attempt to incorporate some Freudian symbolism.
In his earliest incarnation BingBong was more of a fugitive, on the run from 'Mind-Police'. I imagined his arrest photos . . .
Having retrieved all the golden memories Joy climbs out of the Memory Pit like DeNiro in 'The Mission'!
The structure of 'The Mind' was constantly re-thought; should it be vertical, horizontal? Should Joy's journey be down or up? At one point it was depicted as a fantastic city.
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Here I was thinking of multiple 'Trains of Thought' that might converge in a cerebral 'Grand Central Station'.
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The structure of 'The Mind' was constantly re-thought; should it be vertical, horizontal? Should Joy's journey be down or up? At one point it was depicted as a fantastic city.
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The Untitled Pixar film that takes you inside the Mind!
Having lived in France for a couple of years I was aware that animated films are often given interesting new titles; 'Up' was 'La Haut', 'Brave' became'Rebelle'. Racking our brains for suggestions of what 'The Untitled Pixar film that takes you inside the Mind' might be I suggested 'La Joie de Vivre' which the editorial team actually used at the head of one of the rough assembly screenings.
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The Emotional States of Riley or even something more mysterious . . .
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Pete even tasked us with coming up with graphic 'emoticons' that could be used on the control panel displays. This page above is what Pete showed to Dacher Keltner at Berkeley's Psychology lab which led to me helping them develop the 'Finch' animated emoticon for Facebook.
I started with a 'mood board' tracking films with similar titles to some we had in mind. I collated images with colours that suggested emotions and Saul Bass style fonts.
'Life of Riley' was deemed too trite early on. I don't know who came up with 'Inside Out' ultimately but it was on a short list that John Lasseter chose from. Interestingly the French title is 'Vice-Versa'.
'HQ!' could've been fun. I thought perhaps using the name of the true main character of the film . . .
The Story team are often tasked to suggest ideas for teaser trailers. I thought of something that would have simply abstract shapes animated on screen with suitable sound effects.
I thought about Joy presenting the team in a 'Psychology Lesson'
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Plein Air
The fine weather and light of Los Angeles is inspiring me to paint on location more this year. There are so many beautiful spots down the coast and hidden architectural gems within the city. These are pretty quick sketches - no more than 40 mins each.
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'Point Vicente Lighthouse'
'Higuera'
'Poinsettia'
Two angles of a modernist home on Helms Avenue.
'Venice Beach'
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Thumbnails
Since storyboarding is now done digitally these days I have no production sequences saved on paper. In the flurry of activity that is the day-to-day race to draw sequences for looming deadlines thousands of drawings disappear into 'the system' never to be seen again. It's not really company policy to allow that material out of the building anyway. All I have are scans of paper thumbnail sketches I made when figuring out how to approach the staging and acting for some sequences. I did some early work on the 'Abstract Thought' sequence and you'll see below that the Train of Thought passed through it at one stage. Here Joy is separated from Sadness and, with Bing Bong, escapes Mind Construction Workers by hitching a ride aboard the Train of Thought . . .
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After a briefing from the directors where I make notes directly on the script page I'll start scribbling down small thumbnail sketches of any visuals or staging that spring to mind immediately.
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These are more like 'beat boards' exploring a Brainstorm, Abstract Thought and the Train of Thought.
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After a briefing from the directors where I make notes directly on the script page I'll start scribbling down small thumbnail sketches of any visuals or staging that spring to mind immediately.
These are more like 'beat boards' exploring a Brainstorm, Abstract Thought and the Train of Thought.
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Original Force
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'Noir' architecture L.A.
More exploring Los Angeles with paint. I had 2 architectural targets this weekend: first the 'Spadena House' or 'Witch's House' in Beverly Hills, another example of 'storybook' architecture.
A quick sketch to familiarize myself with the architecture and figure out any tough perspective problems. I'm also looking for detail: both to include and exclude. The property has a very interesting garden but I had to pare down the detail to the fence, the bridge and some choice flora and foliage.
I've noticed the curb markers in Los Angeles and this address has an apt design.
Leaving Beverly Hills I wound up Sunset Blvd into the Hollywood hills to find the 'Dietrichson House' from Billy Wilder's 'Double Indemnity'."It was one of those California-Spanish houses everyone was nuts about ten or fifteen years ago; this one must've cost somebody about thirty-thousand bucks...that is, if he ever finished paying for it." - Walter Neff
A resident told me the house opposite was where James Dean lived before he died. I made a quick sketch before heading home. I'll come back to paint that one again.
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Last Days of Summer
More architecture sketching while exploring Los Angeles . . .
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'8 Bit' beach house at Marina Del Rey
Vista theater, Silverlake
Wolf's Lair compound, Hollywood Hills
Hollyhock House, Barnsdall Park (Frank Lloyd Wright)
Manhattan Beach
'Snow White cottages', Los Feliz
Ballona Creek Bike Path, Culver City
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More Pages to Explore .....
