Poppin' Ad, Part 2

The character design for our popcorn project has reached its final phases. After nailing the look of the face, I worked with the client on the modeling of the petals, which included displacement mapping in Mudbox. The two final frames are from the final spot.

Ostrich Run

Another quarter, another Prehistoric Times dinosaur drawing... I won't go into my purposes, suffice it to say I'm unpaid to do these drawings but I love dinosaur artwork so to do it and be printed in a magazine is compensation enough. My last completed work can be seen here:

http://bnb-radek.blogspot.com/2010/06/therazinosaurus.html

This quarter, Pre-Times was looking for Struthiomimus artwork (if unfamiliar, see here). This is an athletic, ostrich-like dinosaur with many graceful curved lines: the S-neck, a stiff, balancing tail, strong running legs, arms curved back against its body like proto-wings to minimize wind resistance whilst running... So I wanted to try to stay away from my standard style of very detailed work to focus on those strong lines within a simple, iconic setting.

To that end, I was reminded of the ancient Chinese tapestries that featured birds in very Zen settings, mountain ranges and feats of nature that dwarfed human beings (who are usually sketched tiny, with just a few brush strokes, toiling away in an insignificant corner of the composition), the muted desaturated color palette, the long (instead of wide) composition, and especially the occasionally-thick ink lines. You can Google this type of artwork and you'll see what I mean.

Line work was done with an Ink brush in Corel Painter using an Intuos2 Wacom tablet, coloring was a mixture of Corel Painter's Colored Pencils, Crayons, and some custom Photoshop brushes. And some real watercolors were scanned in and applied for backdrops and textures, which would have been impossible in Painter because I'm too much of a n00b. Each piece was created individually; they were combined in Photoshop with final adjustments and aging and a very small, tiled canvas texture layered on top to tie them all together and give it all the old-school personality I love so much. Final Photoshop file weighed in at 1.7 GB and was 24 x 36 inches at 300 pixels per inch. Thanks for looking, and I heart comments!

Radek

Popcorn Ad is Poppin'

We're deep in the process of creating two ads for a popcorn seasoning company. One of the ads involves a crying popcorn character that suddenly turns happy as the seasoning starts to fall, then jumps into the bowl of popcorn.

This is an interesting challenge because obviously the client wants the popcorn to look edible and realistic, but then the face has to be appealing and cute. How many times do you see that? Nemo was cute but did he look edible? Mr Peanut is edible but he's hardly cute.

Additionally complicating matters is the fact that the curled "pop

ped" extrusions make it look like this cute face has some severe deformities, a'la the Elephant Man. Would you want to munch on a tumored-up child's head straight from the microwave? I know I would.

So far, he's my progress. First pass, then the second pass.

Client is reviewing this version. Fingers and tumorous extrusions are crossed.

Sexy New Websites...

... courtesy of our designer, Mark Nadolski.

First up is his new film, shooting this week: Point of Crossing http://pointofcrossing.blueinblack.com/

Starring Paul Kratka (IMDB), it's the story of a grieving train operator who's given one chance to save a life. Updates coming shortly!

Then we have Fatal Abortion, a short, dark tale of tension within a new relationship and the monsters it spawns.
http://fatalabortion.blueinblack.com/

And, finally finding a home on the world wide web is Alone No More, our award-winning short about a young woman driven crazy by her suppressed grief.
http://alonenomore.blueinblack.com/

Shoot back and tell us what you think, and as always, see you back here soon!

Radek

A few shots of our new film, starring Deneen Melody Matthew Allis. Should be finalized soon...

Therazinosaurus

So those who've known me for any length of time know me to be a bit of a dino nut. One way I try to feed this addiction is doing artwork for Prehistoric Times, a quarterly magazine that deals with all things prehistoric. (their late-90's timewarp website)

For the purpose of vanity, I decided to post my process for my current piece, the subject of which is a plant-eater called Therazinosaurus:



My line art:



And the image that was my original inspiration:



The last one to be printed was my Stegosaur piece, which you can see in the blue in black drawings section.

The Futurist...

Just finished reading The Futurist, a biographical book about "The Life and Films of James Cameron," which features a noticeably slimmer and less hairy looking James Cameron (probably a photo circa 2000). See for yourself:



Real classy of me, right? Whatever, nobody reads this blog anyway, cut me some slack.

But to be honest, the book is great. Cameron is a man I greatly admire. I devour anything of substance written about him (a particularly good article from the New Yorker)

I won't go into an in-depth review, as the subject of this book is fairly self-explanatory. Instead, I will recount a few of my favorite parts.

- Cameron almost died on the set of The Abyss. He was at the bottom of the immense tank they were filming in and he ran out of air when his AD forgot to remind him that he had been under for an hour. (he had about and hour and 15 minutes of air). He dropped his helmet and swam to the surface and almost drowned, having to punch a scuba PA to get out of his way.

- After struggling with the English crew on Aliens, enduring short 8 hour work days, abrupt breaks for tea, and near mutiny, Cameron leaves them this little nugget before leaving for the States:

"This has been a long and difficult shoot, fraught by many problems. But the one thing that has kept me going, through it all, was the certain knowledge that one day I would drive out the gate of Pinewood and never come back, and that you sorry bastards would still be here."

- On his first Hollywood gig, he was promoted from model builder to art director. He was making $200 per week, they offered him $300. So he asked what the previous art director made. $750, but he was very experienced. Cameron:

"Yeah, but he fucked up. The show is in dire crisis. You fired him. You want me to do the same job. I want the same money."

- On his first directing gig, Piranha II, Cameron lost control of the film to the Producer. As the film was nearing completion, he broke into the editing suite night after night and re-edited the film.


And one more quote, not from the book but from the New Yorker article, which I find inspiring:

“If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.”

Book is highly recommended, though it was published just months before Avatar destroyed all box office records, so in that regard it is already a bit out of date.