“3-2-1 Penguins!” Character and Concept Art

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On Saturday morning NBC aired another brand-new episode of 3-2-1 Penguins! for which I had done some concept work. This epsiode was directed by Rob Corley over at FunnyPages Productions (check out their blog).

The character art needed for this episode was pretty light and straight-forward. The only new characters were a race of tiny ear-people who spoke in Munchkin-like jibberish. My instructions were to take a human ear and add cartoon arms and legs. Like I said, pretty straight-forward.

The only other concept art they needed from me were some party hats for the Penguins to wear in a birthday scene, and a sketch of the twins and Grandmum after being splattered by an exploding cake. One of the running gags of the show is that you never see Grandmum’s face. It is either out-of-frame, or strategically covered by a well-placed prop. So I left her headless in the sketch, knowing it wouldn’t matter. (Although they did send me a turn-around model of Grandmum for reference, and yes she does actually have a face. I’ve seen it!)

3-2-1 Penguins! is a science-fiction comedy from the creators of VeggieTales. It airs Saturday mornings on NBC.

Watch Your Step

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I found this using Stumble. It’s a fun (though bizarre) animated short by Pascal Campion about a man trying to open a very unique cartoon door. It appears to have been done in Flash. The timing is sharp, the animation is fluid, and the concept is delightfully simple. There is no sound or dialogue, just pantomime done very effectively. It runs a bit long, but you can tell the animator had a ton of fun doing it.

This little cartoon highlights one one of the often overlooked strengths of animation: the ability to really mess with physics, time, and space. This piece reminds me a bit of the work of Bill Plympton or “Duck Amuck” by Chuck Jones.

Click here to watch the cartoon.


Digg!

Shameless Self-Promotion: Download My New Portfolio

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To any art directors/art buyers out there:

As a freelancer I’m always looking for new clients and fresh projects. So this blog is as good a place as any to announce that a new, updated PDF version of my character design and illustration portfolio is available online. You can download it for free here or on my website. Feel free to print it out and keep it on file for your records.

I’ve also posted an updated version of my resume here.

Finally, you can join my mailing list here. I send out a promotional email 3-4 times a year, and a “snail mail” postcard once or twice a year.

To the rest of you, thanks for indulging me. Regular blog posts will resume tomorrow. (If you like animation, you’ll enjoy tomorrow’s post.)

“3-2-1 Penguins!” Photo Illustrations

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For the most recent episode of 3-2-1 Penguins! (titled “Pratical Hoax” and directed by Tom Bancroft), the script called for photographs to appear in various scenes. Since the show is built and animated in 3D, and since each photo would only be seen on screen for a few seconds, and since television deadlines are so brutal, rather than to build the characters and backgrounds in the computer the best solution was for me to just illustrate the photos. Since this is a cartoon show with wacky humor, we could get away with cartoony illustrations rather than realistic 3D images.

Television production is pretty fast-paced so I had to crank them out quickly. To help them feel more like photographs I experimented with a new technique. I avoided outlining anything. Instead I drew each shape in Photoshop with the path tool , selected it with the magic wand tool, and then on a separate layer I threw in some flat color. Once I was satisfied with the overall tonal balance of the colors I used the airbrush tool to paint in the shading and highlights on yet another layer.

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This “photo” was projected on the ship’s monitor screen for a gag about a peace treaty between a planet inhabited by dogs and tennis ball aliens. In hindsight I wish I’d have made the sling and bandages a little darker and less washed-out.

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In this episode the main characters fill in as substitute teachers at “The Academy”, which is their old high school/college. Since the show takes place in outer space, the student body is composed of various aliens (lifted from past episodes of Penguins). In one scene the camera pans a series of framed photos showing Captain Zidgel as a young cadet. I illustrated the above “photos” as part of that series.

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Finally, we also see some photos of the villain, Bert the Hamster, during his days as a young cadet. Here he is posing with an early version of his invention, the Galeezel (a device used throughout the series to shrink and enlarge things). The idea was to show an early version of the device using 1980’s-era technology. Looking at it now, I should have made the tabletop a darker color so that Bert’s feet and the computer would stand out a bit more.

“3-2-1 Penguins!” Character Designs

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On Saturday morning NBC aired another episode of “3-2-1 Penguins!” which I was fortunate enough to work on. For much of the series my job was to design various aliens which the Penguins would encounter as they hopped from planet to planet. If the script called for a prop or gag that would change a character’s appearance, it was also my job to do a concept sketch and/or turnaround drawings so that the modelers and animators could replicate it correctly.

This particular episode (“Practical Hoax”) didn’t require any new characters. However, the script called for several “photographs” of various characters and it was my job to illustrate the “photos”. I’ll show you those tomorrow. In the mean time, here’s a few of the concept sketches I did for this episode:

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This episode featured several practical jokes. Here Zidgel, the ships science officer, gets hit in the face with a pie.

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Midgel gets stuck in some glue.

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For another practical joke, someone puts guacamole in Captain Zidgel’s hair gel. I did a few sketches to experiment with how that might look.

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Ultimately the director chose version A.

Tomorrow: Cartoon “photos”!

Looney Tunes on iTunes

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Classic Looney Tunes animated shorts are now available for download on iTunes, priced at two for $1.99. Right now if you go to the iTunes store and click on “TV Shows”, you’ll see a box in the middle area of the screen that says “Looney Tunes Studio Just Added”. Click on it and you’ll see 60 classic shorts organized by character (Twenty Bugs Bunny, twenty Daffy Duck, and twenty Porky Pig cartoons). You have to buy them in pairs, but at least you can buy them.

If you are a big fan of Looney Tunes, the best and most comprehensive source of cartoon mayhem is the Looney Tunes Golden Collection on DVD. Five volumes have been released so far with each volume containing over fifty cartoons on four discs, plus commentaries, featurettes, and cartoons from the “vault”. (You can buy them from Amazon.com through my Recommended Resources page.)

At $1.99 for two cartoons, the iTunes option is an inexpensive way to build your own custom library of the “greatest hits” of Warner Brothers animation. And unlike a DVD collection, if you own a video iPod or iPhone you can carry them around with you anywhere.

For you youngin’s who might not be familiar with the Bugs Bunny classics, I highly recommend downloading “The Rabbit of Seville/Rabbit Seasoning” combo on the iTunes Bugs Bunny page. Both were directed by Chuck Jones, and they are two of the funniest cartoons Warner Brothers ever produced.