Meet the Robinsons

Today Disney released their 46th animated feature: Meet the Robinsons. Wait... this is going to sound way cooler: Today we released our 46th animated feature! Sweet. Okay, so I didn't have anything to do with the movie, but I did work on the video game. Here are a few of the storyboards I did for one of the game's cinematics. I tried to find a sequence that wouldn't give away anything about the movie or the game... just wanted to advertise them both a little here on my blog. If you haven't seen the movie yet, what are you waiting for? It's pretty nice, and the Bowler Hat Guy's great. So go support animation, Disney, and ME by seeing the one and playing the other.

Don't expect to see the characters I've drawn in either of them, though... storyboard artists don't draw on model... or at least I don't.

Pretzelephant

I'm tired of making up stuff to draw from my own head. From now on I'm just going to trace food and maybe add a tail or some eyes if I need them to complete the image. This will likely leave me with very awkward-looking, disproportioned crimes of nature, but my brain demands a rest. Plus I'm eating anyway, so there's one less thing I have to do. So long, creativity. Hello, misshapen elephant.

The Frog Prince

Sometimes I see a beautiful, attractive girl with some creepy, weird-looking guy, and my first thought is, "How did that guy get a girl like her? Is he really funny? Is she really blind? What's going on there?" Then I think, "I hope everyone isn't that critical of this photo, because I was really sick that day."

The point is, as ugly or unlikeable as you probably are, there could very well be someone out there who's willing to settle for you. That's right... there's someone for everyone! And if it turns out there's no one for you, then that phrase is inaccurate.

I've heard it said that "you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince." Call me crazy, but if I was looking for a prince (and I'm not... because I'm married... to a girl... in case you didn't get that from the first paragraph), first I'd try knocking on the drawbridge at the castle. If that failed, maybe I'd ask the Queen if she'd seen him. There's also wanted posters, private investigators, pictures on milk cartons... countless methods at your disposal. Initiating intimate encounters with frogs would be way down the list for me if it even made the list at all. It seems fairly obvious that the frogs themselves developed that phrase, and I'm not buying it.

Drawing a Flying Pig

Did my blog really need another flying pig? Probably not, but this one kind of happened on its own. On Saturday I decided to make a video showing the transition from "blank piece of paper" to "finished, colored, character sketch" and put it on YouTube for the world to yawn about. After setting up our video camera on the kitchen table and pressing the "record" button, I realized I still didn't know what I intended to draw. Turns out the "flying pig" is my default sketch... so here he is.

And no - those aren't special effects. This is actually how I hold a pencil. You'd think they would spend a day in pre-school or Kindergarten teaching kids how to hold a pencil. By the time my third grade teacher tried to correct me, it was too late. I was already hooked on my self-taught, semi-retarded, freak way. I like it, though... mostly because my thumb doesn't have to work at all. It can just hang out while the rest of the hand does the work.

Duck Hunt

I never had a gun for my Nintendo... too dangerous. But whenever I visited a friend who had one, you could be certain I was shooting poorly animated, heavily pixelated ducks well into the evening on "Duck Hunt." Unless you sat inches from the TV and scraped the gun against the screen to ensure your aim, you were bound to miss an occasional duck. And the moment you did... enter the mocking dog. You think that's funny, dog? Well, laugh it up, because I just decided what I'm doing with this last bullet.

I've never been hunting, but if I did I imagine that the first time my dog laughed at me for misfiring at a duck would come just seconds before the first time I shot my dog.

I recently learned that Duck Hunt has a game mode where you just fire a machine gun at an endless parade of passing dogs. Now, shooting your insensitive dog occasionally is one thing. Mowing down his entire family... a little extreme. I did it anyway. He knows he deserves it.

Modern Mallard

I drew this for our "Chicken Little: Ace in Action" game. In one of the cinematics, Abby references Modern Mallard magazine and waves a copy of it around. We probably should have handed my rough sketch off to one of our incredibly talented Avalanche painters, but for some reason we didn't, so now my rough, little magazine cover has an appearance in the game. This duck is pretty much a direct rip off of Mulan... at least as far as her attire goes. It's nice working for Disney because you can totally rip off Disney and no one cares.

I decided to post this because I haven't drawn much lately. I went to Disneyland for a few days last week. My brother and I ran into Tony Robbins in the elevator at our motel. In an elevator with Tony Robbins? Hey, isn't this an exact scene from "Shallow Hal." I even shook his giant hand.

More stuff on the way soon.

My Chipalobuffamunk & Me

When I saw that this week's Toon Club topic was "Imaginary Friends," I didn't know what I would draw. I never had any imaginary friends... unless all my friends were imaginary. I guess that would explain the low turnout for my birthday party.

I decided to turn my childhood self into a character from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends... a fine show on Cartoon Network. Seeing my t-shirt, you may assume that this drawing is set in 1981. But if you watch our home movies (and don't) you'll see that I was wearing that same "81" shirt on four consecutive Christmas mornings. So all the numbered t-shirt indicates is that it was not before 1981.

Sadly, the head-to-body size comparison here is not a caricature... which is probably why I never changed shirts. Squeezing my giant noggin through tiny neck holes has nearly ripped off my ears on several occasions. I'd probably still be wearing that t-shirt if I hadn't torn through the thing like an angry Incredible Hulk in late '85.

Got the Lakers shorts and high-tops going there too... I was quite a Lakers fan in the 80's. Magic, Kareem, Worthy, Scott, Cooper... hey! The 80's Lakers were my imaginary friends! I'm so glad I finally put this together. Thanks for missing my birthday party... stupid Lakers.

Battling Ram

A battering ram is a siege engine... something like a large log, which, when propelled with significant force, is able to crush through walls or break open locked doors and gates. A battling ram is what dumb people call a battering ram.

As long as I'm on the topic of sounding stupid... it's not "I could care less." If you ever tell someone you could care less, please follow that statement up with a list of some of the things you could possibly care less about: CD jewel cases, Jamaican law, discarded staples, etc. If you don't care at all, the phrase is, "I couldn't care less." That means anything is a more compelling topic to you, such as, "I couldn't care less than I do about this lesson in grammar."

I drew this so people who think it's called a battling ram would feel a little less stupid, and then I wrote this to counteract what I drew. This week's Toon Club topic was "Gladiators." I once met a man in Germany who said he was a gladiator in his previous life. As it turns out, the gladiator who killed him in that life is his mom in this life. Small world.

More Sketches

Just cleaning the desk... found these sketches. Why is the big, superhero fox squeezing the neck of an unarmed rabbit? Doesn't really seem like a "superhero" thing to do. Superheroes don't strangle rabbits... they kick them.

I like the duck all right. He's making the face I do when I accidentally find myself conversing with someone intelligent. I don't mean to insult those of you who have talked to me and haven't seen me make that face, but come on... admit it... we're just not that smart.