Draw

"Life is the art of drawing without an eraser." --John W. Gardner

I am not sure why I have always correlated art with philosophy. Perhaps because art like jazz, at its best, is the soul trying to communicate to the world what it wants to say.

Now, how we sometimes fail, is trying to correlate that which we think our soul is saying in a language that the general populous can understand.

When we draw, we do not draw what we see, we draw what we think we see. This is an interesting though to have but I did not say it first, how wise is Mr. Vilppu :)

Now after the philosophy of drawing here are line drawings from my digital sketchbook. I will take my camera to work and try to capture sketches from my pad. I think Pencil and paper make for nicer drawings.

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At the airport.

Carry a notebook not a computer.

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

It has been a while again.

It seem I always start any post with that :)

Again I been busy and have no real art to show and I am only here to encourage you to go see Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. I guess I am also late with that, since the movie has been in theaters for about 3 weeks. I was Lucky enough to have been part of the Assembly department, which does sets.

We take the empty environment after an artist from the design department designs the set and make it look as close as we can to the drawings they provide.

There is a lot of give and take from the design to the actual final look, due to the spacial relation on 3D. It is a fun place to be and the people I work with are amazing.

Here is a photoshopped example I took from the trailer.

I was also lucky enough to do some minor efxs for the movie. My bosses are amazing and teh Fxs department was kind enought to let me try. Thanks to everyone of them.

Movie official site

http://www.iceagemovie.com/

Here is the preview.

Also if you like games try Tetris Acorn drop.

http://www.tetrisfriends.com/data/iceage/ia3_acorndrop.html

It is fun and addictive.

Evolve

"Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning."
-Benjamin Franklin -

It is hard to summarize the last 5 months of absence without tuning to the profound, I been working a lot in the movie we are currently wrapping up and you would be amazed as to what a man can do when he is pushed.

It is also very hard to not consider how much a man has to travel, how little he knows and how fortunate he is. So why am I speaking in code? Becasue all things said we are only as good as the road we have paved and the one we pave in front of us. Art has become a medium of perceptual learning which lead me to the next thing. I am now mostly drawing on a table PC, which is kinda cool and takes drawing to the next geek level but in many ways miss the tactility of paper and pen.

Here are some drawings from around my life.

We had a bird for figure drawing :)

Waiting for the train

More waiting.

On the Train.

No words

The Sanguine

Plato once wrote or THE FOUR TEMPERAMENTS, Sanguine being the extrovert, talker and optimist.
I am not sure when it happened or how I evolved to be that, but deep inside, in the darkness of my soul, I still feel like the perfect melancholy, the introvert, the thinker, the pessimist :)

Anyway the reason I am talking about Plato this week is an array of reasons some that have to do with character development and story, so he is fresh in my mind but also because I been a very reflective mood thanks to a book am reading, 1491, it is about the way America use to be before it was "discovered" by Columbus.

Another reason is because I found myself doing cartoon of friends and I started thinking how my character always leads me to accept tasks that others would not , not complaining just examining.

Here are some sketches :)

me

Giggles (a friend who is studying chemistry)

Ryan a friend of a friend.

I am not sure I captured his essence I might draw him again.

Thanks for listening Mr. Void that is the internet.

The Rock

I was at church and when I closed my eyes for one of those pray, mediation or reflection times and I saw this image. What you don't day dream at church ? Alright throw the first stone.

I am not sure if I like my rendering as always I tend to like sketches better.


After thinking about what it meant I started thinking that the robot was me an the rock was all the problems and stress I carry. perhaps it meant nothing but I drew.

Big Idea

"No one goes to Hollywood with the intention of making a bad movie."
Harvey Harrison, a professor in my college, once told the class.

Hollywood wants to make marketable films and they want them to be big, hence the Big Idea concepts were developed. These are stories that can be summarized in a sentence but are massive in scope. My favorite, what if a gun had a heart? Iron Giant.

All this past week I attended a series of lectures that described the concept of the big idea and it got me thinking, what if our ideas where small and we just nurtured them to grow? Brad Bird once said that it is hard to sale a film in Hollywood because most execs evaluate concepts with charts and focus groups, because they want to be safe in their investment, but that honest stories where usually small in concept and huge in heart. Like Ratatouille is about a mouse that Cooks (He said something a long those lines, not the exact quote)

This was inspired by that concept, he is trying to catch the big idea but instead caught a small one, should he let it go or nourish it for growth?

Just a thought.