Back during the Great Pandemic, I directed 34 episodes of Pretzel and the Puppies for Apple +. For the first few months of preproduction, before my brilliant art director Peter Lee came onboard and ran with my concepts, I planned out the overall look of the show. Recently I unearthed some of my very early concept and planning work. The foundation for the look of the show. It was important to me to have a 360 degree view in any direction of the town at puppy level, so that for the entirety of the series, we didn't have to deal with the expense and effort of filling gaps with matte paintings. Also, this gave the show a sense of familiar locations over time. 

At the bottom, you can see the final main character renders- inspired by designs of my dear friend and world class character designer Gary Dunn.

Digging up some old color theory concept stuff from Ugly Dolls 2018. The movie failed to make an impact at the box office but I gained life long talented friends from that production. 

A fun little challenge for myself: I recently decided to mimick the styling of the Netflix series Blue Eye Samurai- a great looking show that I admire for its artistry. First two images are recreations from the show, the third one is made up by me, using the painting techniques I learned from the first two.

Is this blog thing still alive? Anyway, the other night I had one my frequent insomnia episodes so I got up at 3am and decided to mess with a psd. brush I'd made. From "Skyfall", a movie that had a very silly plot, but I forgive it, because it was so much fun to watch and re-watch, and was so beautifully shot by my favourite cinematographer Roger Deakins. This took me about 90 minutes.

A couple of images from deep down in one of my old thumb drives: some very early concept work for an animated film called Extinct, that was later made by another studio.

My 2016 color script from The Nut Job II, which I art directed for director Cal Brunker. From this visual shorthand, the color keys were then made and used by the lighting team. 

A Color key sequence for the movie Ugly Dolls (2019) that I worked on as Art Director and Production Designer. Kelly Asbury was the Director. Kelly asked me to help him finish the movie in a record NINE months, after he took it over and re-wrote it into a musical. Twelve months after the movie's release, Kelly died of cancer.  He had become a dear and close friend and advisor to me. I miss him so very much to this day. 

A shot from something personal I'm working on.

photoshop brush testing/messing around...

For the last two years I worked as the art director on this movie, with some very talented people. This is the cover I did for Animation Magazine although I don't think they used it after the disappointing box office performance.

Last year I did some (uncredited) matte paintings for a truly awful Nicholas Cage movie about a ghost or something. Here is one of them

Here is the original film plate

Here are some screengrabs of my 3d teaser "The Ghosts of Tiverton Place". I worked on this last fall to keep up with my Maya and After Effects skills, and as a creative test. I wanted to make something that created technical problems, but solve them with creative and artistic solutions, rather than throw more technology at it.
The original story itself is narrated by young 12 year old Jonathan Tiverton, who moves with his mother to the gatehouse of Tiverton Mansion, after the death of his soldier father in the Great War. Strange things begin to happen around Jonathan after they arrive. Does it have anything to do with the uncle who invited them to live there? Or is there something much deeper going on?
I'm currently working on more shots for the teaser- to show Jonathan and some of the characters in the movie! Stay tuned...

You can watch "The Ghosts of Tiverton Place"  HERE

Here is the mysterious Mr. Anubis. He's a supporting character from a long since dead movie project I created with some friends called "The Adventures of Harry Sprinkles".

A background painting I did for my friend David Stodolny's very short animated short. You can watch it right HERE:

I was the art director on "Gnomeo and Juliet" starting back in 2008. I was immensley privileged to work with Karen deJong the production designer, and Kelly Asbury the director of the feature, as well as the great Gary Dunn, who designed all the marvelous characters. http://www.mr-dunn-characterdesign.com
My job was to guide the creation and look of all 3d assets- characters, props, sets, foilage, matte paintings....from the flat page all the way through to final picture, according to Karen's and Kelly's wishes. I also painted some matte paintings, color keys, additional designs and anything else that needed attention.
I directly oversaw all you see below, but keep in mind that many dedicated, hard working people contributed to the content. Unfortuately I am not good at keeping records of my original art and designs after a project, which is why there are mostly only final shots below instead! I seem to do that- and that's a bad thing.

 An example of a color key I painted over the layout screengrab:

 

...and the final shot: 

                                                    some of my matte painting work...

I remember having quite the discussion with the director Kelly Asbury in a lighting review over the pretend high price of the Terrafirminator. I won and got to keep it at that price- since I also designed it and its website! I never did see that pretend money though.