Motorbirds Illustrated: Smashing! Bird-Controlled Cow-Robot Jet Air Bike!

The hidden truth about Branda!

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Let's Brand Branda!; Rio

Update: Apropos colours (not forgetting the beautiful character designs), look what a beautiful piece of fun the good girls an' boys from BlueSky pulled of (again). Cheers to Willie, Jake and all the other talented wizards who were part of it! Voila, the first two minutes of RIO:

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This is Branda, she can change her brand mark and colour depending on her mood.

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Motorbirds Illustrated: Tintin Inspired Rocket Ship

I love ducks an' my ducks love rockets.

Apropos, there is a nice article by Paul Gravett: Explorers On The Moon:

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Update: Look what Christian DeVita was doing in his second week teaching at the Animation Workshop in Viborg! You can't leave him alone for a minute! :)

Photo via Christian DeVita's blog

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The Gruffalo, Willie, The Italien Chef And Me

Photo via Christian DeVita's blog

I'm back from teaching at the Animation Workshop Art College in Viborg and - not surprisingly - it was a ball. Willie Real and I had a wonderful time. The students are smashingly talented and the campus, with state-of-the-art equipped facilities and a homely teachers' house, is really nicely located. Moreover, Anja and Lana, the coordinators, were extremely caring and super-kind all around.

Like Willie already wrote on his blog. This school is top-notch, it's definitely one of the best art schools in Europe when it comes to design and animation (well, I don't like words like "best" or "top" that much in connection with art and design but - what the heck, it's so true here).

Furthermore, we had the joy of having London based Christian DeVita stay with us, head of storyboard of Wes Anderson's "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" and Tim Burton's upcoming "Frankenweenie", plus Italian chef (man, this gangster can cook) and party tiger extraordinaire as well. He's an orchestra all in one :)

By the by, did I tell you that the Gruffalo brought me there? Some sort of, to be honest. Its director Jakob Schuh was calling me if I could go to Viborg in January instead of him, because he's too busy with things at that time. Actually, he and Uwe Heidschoetter, if I heard Jakob right, were designated to do the design class. Anyway, my schedule was ideal, so I checked back with Willie and asked if he could come over from NYC to join me for this week and - tataa - there we were :)

I promise I will reply to the comments of the last couple of posts as soon as I'm back to my drawing desk on Tuesday. Take care everyone!

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Animation Workshop,Viborg

Update: We got some snow, finally...

Just arrived in Denmark at the Animation Workshop Art College. Willie has already posted some pics, too. BTW, the smashing Christian DeVita is also with us here.

Update: Here are some quick pieces I did the first days in regards of line of action, pose and movement etc... the deer-ish creature on the sheet right below is btw based on a student team's (Stinna and Christoffer) creature concept.

Here's another piece based on a student's (Elisabet) design:

Reference photo: © Chriss' Blog

Reference photo: © Holger Neeb. All rights reserved.

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Warm-Up Mouse

Recently, my graphic tablet got broke, so I configured my new one by doing this rough warm-up piece. It was the first time I did the mouse house's mouse, I guess. I drew Mickey btw from mind, so don't judge me too hard ;)

BTW, can someone stop me from drawing freakin' antennas on everything!

100% Photoshop and Wacom Intuos4

I'm always sketching in blue and then, for instance, I convert it in those warm earth tones.

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TS

So, I'm really happy that Toby Skybuckle is back on my desk after a longer production time-out due to some publishing business reasons etc. Anyway, things are (still) really promising and I'm looking forward to getting Toby started (again).

This sheet here is a rough development piece with no further relevance for the story:

This is the analog pre-sketch of this:

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Fish Tank

This March, I'll return to the Ars Electronica Center. Here are some rough prevs of something in connection with our talks and workshops there. I will tell you more about it a little later...

Happy New Year's Day, everybody! And sorry for the lack of responses to comments, lately! I've been busy (and still be) with HOLIDAYS! :)

UPDATE: Don't miss out on Jake's grand Missile Mouse Giveaway!

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