Night on Macdougal Street

So my very talented friend Brennan (who you can recognize as the left twin from this post), with whom I am graduating SVA with in a mere month, bribed me with his charm, wit and DMing skillz to help him out on his thesis film: Night on Macdougal Street. It started with some storyboarding followed by a few appearances as an extra, then as the savior in a pay phone prop emergency and finally some drawings to run with the credits. The drawings, as Brennan tells it, were inspired by the end credits to My Neighbor Totoro (see why we're friends?) where the illustrations show a few scenes of life for the characters after the ending of the movie. The movie itself, to give a quick synopsis, is a semi-autobiographical account of a comedian's 8-year old son being left in a comedy club and looking for his dad around the West Village neighborhood full of tough bouncers, seedy club owners, creepy crack heads and sweet waitresses. It ends with the kid calling his dad (from said payphone) and returning to the club to wait for him. Then: roll the credits.

First we have the father exiting a cab.

The bouncer and waitress deliver Devon (the kid) to a sheepish father.


Then he tucks in a sleeping Devon.

And then a series of shots of Devon with the various other characters appearing in the film.
Devon, dad, comedians and Comedy Cellar owner (played by Brennan's REAL dad, Joe, in the glasses)

Devon with some ladies of the club.

Devon with the Cafe Wa owner and Terry the Crack-head.

Devon with some more comedians.

That's Colin Quinn on the left in that last one. He makes a very short cameo, as he is a friend of Brennan's comedian dad.

Brennan wanted the style of these drawings to be fairly simple sketches, much like the artwork on the walls of the Olive Tree Cafe where part of the film takes place (and one of my all time favorite spots in NYC). The real challenge was getting the likenesses of all the characters, especially the kid who played Devon. An early copy of the film and a folder full of screen-captures made my job much easier, and I am pretty happy with the results.

You can see the fruits of my (ok, and Brennan's) labors on the big screen at the Dusty Film Festival May 4-8. Not sure exactly when Night on MacDougal street will be showing, but I will post here when I know more.

http://www.schoolofvisualarts.edu/dusty/

I'm in a show!

The Amazing and Talented Lana Crooks over at Crooked Art co-curated a fantastic show in her gallery in Chicago. I sure wish I could see it in person, because a few of these dolls look really stunning. in particular, these beauties by Joe Shea :
Just wow. I want.

Anywho, here are the gallery shots of my Jack and the Beanstalk set. I liked the feeling the wood showing through gave them, made them seem more like old handed down toys to me, so I left them unvarnished.



And a few detail shots of my own:




Check out the A.Okay Gallery website at http://aokayofficial.com.

From the Sketchbook

Here are a few pages from the sketchbook from my visit to Nathan Fox and Becky Cloonan's lecture at the Society of Illustrators a few weeks back. First I tried my hand at capturing the likeness of Becky, Nathan and the moderator as they talked back and forth. Sometime after I ended up doodling the creepy dog and the strange cone-head man. I think this must have been post-Coraline.


Then I went upstairs to catch the last bit of life-drawing with some friends. This was my first taste of the SOI sketch/jazz night and I have to say, I liked it very much. Great models, great music and a stocked bar make for a pretty perfect evening if I do say so myself. And I do.

Richard and his Pet

Here is the preliminary drawing for a painting that will be in a massive group show in May. The curator is having about 25 artists paint him as an albino animal hybrid and is exhibiting them 19th century salon style so I thought a 19th century man was in order. I imagined Richard as a sort of Moreau-style professor with one of his creations. I thought the real question should be was Richard's unique condition a product of his own imagination or is it what inspires him to create similarly hybrid beings.

Two Heads are Better?

When given an assignment to illustrate a story about a two headed man, where both heads have completely different personalities and looks, I knew exactly who I wanted to use. Brennan and Griffin are a couple friends, really fun guys and step-brothers. I bribed them over with fried chicken, took photos of them and worked out this composition.




The background is still in flux. Initially I was thinking fire/smoke on one side turning into butterflies ( a significant image in the story) but the paint is telling me this may not work. Also Grif (the one on the right) will be a bit more sinister in the final.

Cats and Things

One of the paintings I'm working on has an animal that I'm not quite sure about yet. After hours of sketching and erasing, I realized that I was going about it all backwards and started doing sketches of some real animals I might want it to reference. So here are some cats, a bunny, and a thing I started developing after the sketches.

Storyteller

Here is a character sketch for a project I'm working on with some friends. He's a storyteller who's a little bit shaman, a little bit skald and a little bit mountain man.