the LEGO MOVIE_part 02 (Vitruvius)

Continuing the LEGO movie posts…. After joining the design mix for the character of “Wildstyle” (Lucy Lego), I was asked to contribute to the design exploration of Vitruvius. the ancient and heroic, blind wizard (A small sample shown above). There was already quite a bit of really great design work done on him, but I was asked to shake him up a bit. They wanted me to explore more specifics and humor within his design. To do so, I asked lots of questions about the characters history and role in the story. I learned that Vitruvius was going to be living in an old west Lego set (part timing as a saloon pianist)in order to hide out while he lead the rebellion. This inspired me to play with some old west influence in his overall design.

Another major aspect of Vitruvius was the fact that he was blind, and I was inspired to search for a more specific visual solution to communicate this. I remembered that when I was a kid, after having played with my LEGO figures for a while, some of the figure’s facial detailing would rub, or scratch off. Hey, maybe that's how or why a LEGO figure would become blind.

I also played with the idea that Vitruvius' head might just be turned backwards, so we would see no eyes or face whatsoever. Just a couple solutions I presented to keep things more “LEGO centric”. The rubbed off face concept was realized (by people who are much smarter than I) in the infamous Nail Polish remover sequence that exists in the final film.

I played with various real world found objects such as rubber bands, twist ties, and toothpicks, that Vitruvius might use as a staff, or head band…etc. The lollipop stick was established before I came on board, but I thought it was brilliant. I played with making Vitruvius feel a little more tribal, and mystic at times. Maybe a little more of a crazy aspect to him, playing with strange mixes of Lego parts. Maybe a Chewbacca torso with Native American legs and classic yellow hands…etc.
In the end, a couple aspects of my explorations squeezed their way into the final design. There were several hands and hundreds of versions in the development of this guy, and he was a lot of fun to have been involved with.
In my next LEGO Movie post, I’ll share a bit about my involvement with the look of Lord Business.

the LEGO Movie_part 01 (WIldstyle)

A couple of years ago the directors of “the LEGO Movie” (Phil Lord, Chris Miller, and Chris McKay) asked if I might join them in the design and development process. After they gave me a brilliant pitch of the film’s story, I knew I had to be part of it. My assignment: Help to “find” the main characters…design wise, personality wise…etc. They already had quite a bit of amazing development work done by that point, but they wanted me to look at it all, and see where I might take it? What did I like, what did I think t could be funnier or clearer...etc. Shake it up.
Everyone was pretty happy with where the design of Emmet Brickowski (the star of the film) was, and I could not have agreed more, So my priorities were: Lucy Lego (Wildstyle), Vitruvius (the blind wizard), and President Business . I started with Lucy.
Lucy (Wildstyle) was conceived as a rebel with a tendency to try a little to hard (in life and in looks). There was a lot of discussion on what that could mean visually, and above are just a few of my early explorations. From Military to Punk to Rockabilly, we played with lots of symbols and details that might give more insight into her and her world. In some images I tried incorporating elements like crayon marks to act as tattoos, war paint, or graffiti. For others I tried incorporating real world objects like stickers and toothpicks…etc. We knew that the real world was going to come into play in the film ( IE: the Kragle), and that a human little sister might even have an affect on the LEGO world (though the audience would not discover this until late in the film), so these real world elements were experimented with on all of the character’s. But Lucy was a lot of fun to explore. I’ll share a bit about Vitruvius and President Business in upcoming posts.

the LEGO Movie, Peabody & Planet Kindergarten

Its turning out to be an eventful 2014. Now as little as I update my blog, many must assume that: A) I am the laziest human being on earth, B) I hate all forms of social media, or C) I am insanely busy. While “B” would be a very good guess, “C” is actually the primary reason that my blog has been neglected. I have been extremely busy working on a slue of feature film projects (animated and live action), television shows, books, and even some incredible Theme Park projects. I have been able to contribute in numerous ways to each, and have collaborated with some absolutely amazing people along the way. Many of these projects I can not share yet, and some things I may never be able to share, but in the upcoming months there are several projects I had the pleasure of being involved with, that are being released to the world: The LEGO MOVIE, Mr. PEABODY & SHERMAN, and a children’s picture book titled “PLANET KINDERGARTEN”.
I’ll be sharing a bit about my involvement with each over the next several months, so it will be nice to feed my emaciated blog once again. Stay posted.

Mr. PEABODY and SHERMAN (part 01)

Ive been a little busy lately, so I will go out of order with the posts and start with Mr. Peabody and Sherman (I’ll post on the LEGO movie soon).

Mr. Peabody and Sherman was the very first film I touched as a development artist at Dreamworks, but it happens to be the last one to be released. “Way back” in 2006, when I was still designing on “Coraline”, Director Rob Minkoff asked Shannon Tindle and myself if we would help develop a pet project of his…”Mr. Peabody and Sherman”. Dreamworks had just acquired the property and Rob wanted us to be the first artists to touch it. There was no script yet, so Rob wanted us to explore the storytelling possibilities as well.

We were told that we would be left alone to play and explore for several months. Just a small team searching for the potential of a concept with no outside influence, or check-ins every other day. It was the first time anything like this had ever been proposed at Dreamworks, and they dubbed it “the Look Lab”. So after our duties on Coraline (in late 2006), we headed to Dreamworks to tackle the challenge of this Peabody and Sherman "Look Lab". Just before we started, Rob Minkoff headed off to China to direct a live action film, so legendary Art Director Alex McDowell acted as our “Look Lab” manager (and protector). We would stay in regular contact with Rob, but now we were officially off and running.

We all knew Jay Ward’s work, and the original Peabody and Sherman shorts very well, So design wise our first instinct was to say, “Well, lets just model Jay Wards original designs as closely as we can in CG.” Rob had the same instinct, but still asked us to show him how far we felt the designs could go in a more “naturalistic”, “organic”, three dimensional direction before they would break. Just to see.

The drawings of Mr. Peabody and Sherman you see in this post were my take on that request. These are not what I felt should be the final designs, but just how far I thought they could go before starting to look TOO far off base.

I was also exploring their features, figuring out how we might treat their mouths and eyes and limbs to gain as much expression and clarity as we might need for the emotional journey we hoped these two might embark on.

But all the while we were working to capture the personality and vibe that Jay Ward had already established for these guys. Again, these were all VERY early, first pass takes on everything. These characters and concepts would go through several other artists and modeler's hands over many years before they became the characters you see in the final film.

Rob was encouraged by our first attempts, and soon after we started exploring the characters more through story development. We asked ourselves, “What would we want to see in a Peabody and Sherman time travel movie?

What periods in time would we want to visit? What kind of conflicts could arise, or need to be resolved along the way? What historical figures would be fun to see and help propel a story? How would a boy and a dog deal with being a family? What are the possibilities?” So we started creating as many fun storytelling images, and designs as we could, just blue skying and sharing thoughts.

Putting everything up, looking at each other’s ideas, which sparked new ones. Here are just the first couple of those images I created, but I will share much more of that development work in my upcoming posts!

If you want to see and hear more about the making of Mr. Peabody and Sherman, I will be just one of the guest speakers on a special panel taking place at GALLERY NUCLEUS in Alhambra California on March 22nd. They will even have a print of one of my original pieces from the development of the film (shown above in fact) available for purchase. I hope to see some of you there, and stay posted for the continuation of my Peabody and Sherman blog entries.