Life Drawing by JvB

TCAF 2011! Go! This weekend...

Toronto Comic Arts Festival: Pencil it In from Toronto Comic Arts Festival on Vimeo.

Director: Christopher Hutsul
Director of Photography: Vinit Borrison
Producer: Nick Sorbara
Executive Producer: Jacinte Faria
Editorial: Melanie Hider, Bijou Editorial
Score: “Background Noise (Don’t Become)” by Solvent, Courtesy Ghostly International
Sound Design: Vapor Music
Online Artist + Colourist: Hardave Grewal, RedLab
Graphic Novelists: Chester Brown, Michael Comeau, Steve Charles Manale, Vicki Nerino, Michael Cho, Michael DeForge, Seth, Fiona Smyth + Britt Wilson.

A Hard Citizen Production.

City Dwellers...

Black prismacolour on moleskine, by John van Bruggen.

Earlier today...

Posted by Arna:

Midday on the Bloor line. Sitting across from me, this person was doing her best to stay awake but she kept losing the battle. I wonder what she'd been doing to make her so tired at noon on this Monday morning...

fatKiki

She's actually not this fat, but heck, she sure loves to hang out!

Rom Sketch Date Part 3...

Here are the last of the sketches from our July 7th visit to the Royal Ontario Museum. The first two are by Arna:

These next two are by John:

This fellow looks like he's giving us the finger. Such un-monk-like behavior! ;)

And this one is Arna's sketch of John sketching:

ROM sketch date...

Posted by John:

Here are some new sketches from today's visit to the Royal Ontario Museum. We spent a productive Friday sketching in the same area of the museum we visited several weeks ago with Mike Smukavic. This time he couldn't make it. We missed you Mike!

We'll post more of today's work over the next week, including some colour brush work from Arna.

Randomness...

Posted by Arna.

Today kids were practicing their skateboard moves on our street. I love the sound of the board hitting the pavement.

In an unrelated note:
This one is Jane, of the Peter Pan sequel 1998, from a scrap panel...


Girl, sketched last winter...

Watercolour of Tink, our first cat. Doing what cats do...

Wayback machine: Family Dog boards...

Posted by Arna.

Story artist Jenny Lerew, who writes clearly and with much insight on animation, posted this recently: A short rant on mediocrity

Jenny's post generated a lively debate and a plug from Cartoon Brew. The series THE FAMILY DOG featured fairly prominently in the discussion. THE FAMILY DOG special, created for Spielberg's Amazing Stories series and directed by Brad Bird, was glorious! However, the short lived television series that followed was less so. Since I worked on said series I decided what the heck, I'll post a sample of my boards, done approximately 1993. The episode title is HOT DOG AT THE ZOO.

Looking at these boards, I'm struck by how square and small the panels are compared to the wide screen format we're working in these days. The closeups look much too close! However, I remember that I really enjoyed working on this sequence. Tim Burton was consulting designer and he did some moody inspirational designs for the zoo. Three artists split the 21 minute show. The other two-thirds were handled by uber-talented story artists/directors Alan Bunce and Robin Budd. The thing I liked about the storytelling was that as much as possible it was from the dog's point of view. However, this was also the tragic flaw of the series, since it was often hard to tell what was happening and what the canine hero was thinking.

Well anyways, here's some of it. Hope you enjoy! And thanks Jenny for the great discussion.

More ROM sketches with Smook...

Posted by Arna and John:

These are more drawings from the day we went sketching with our friend Mike Smukavic at the Royal Ontario Museum. They didn't make it into our earlier post so here they are now!

ROM Sketches With Smook

Last week we took the opportunity to meet our friend Mike Smukavic at The Royal Ontario Museum for a sketch day. We took some snaps too, before our camera battery conked out! We had a great time with Mike, who's about as talented as they come, and also great company. Here's some images from the day (all from the main floor Chinese sculpture exhibit).

Check out Mike's (Smooks) ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) post here.

The totem pole in the main stairwell has always been one of my (Arna's) favourite things since I first visited the museum as a kid. Here's a shot taken half way up. The stairwell is four stories high, so that gives you an idea of the size of this pole:

Here's Smook snapping a shot. Notice the resemblance to some of the statues...?

Several of John's sketches:

One from Arna:
This next batch are John's:

John's brush marker sketch of one of the same wooden 'Luohan' monks from the grouping above:

Smook must have been a Buddha in a former life...

This griffin was a challenge to capture. I'd like to go back to work on him again. He's pretty spectacular, and the drawings don't quite capture his furious expression:

That's all for today. Thanks to Mike for joining us at the ROM. Wait till you see his sketches. Great stuff.

Cheers!

~Arna and John