Scrat's Guide to Treasure Hunting

Check out my first Slideshare presentation- Scrat's Guide to Treasure Hunting. I completed this for Blue Sky Studio's Ice Age the Continental Drift. The assignment was to explore the idea of treasure hunting.

Disclosure: It may not actually help you find treasure but you will get a good laugh, and isn't that a real treasure?

Here's some sample images and the link at Slideshare:

http://www.slideshare.net/francisglebas/scrats-guide-to-treasure-hunting

Sharpen your stylus' ! Announcing Iggy and Scared Bunny's New Contest from Focal Press

ARE YOU ANIMATED?

(click to enlarge)

Enter Focal Press' The Animator's Eye Character Mentor Contest and win free books from Focal Press, a signed copy of The Animator's Eye: Adding Life to Animation with Timing, Layout, Design, Color and Sound and a drawing by Iggy.

Check it out at: http://www.focalpress.com/character_mentor_contest/

The Animator's Eye color scripts

The Animator's Eye is published! I just got my review copies today and it looks great. I hope you'll enjoy it. The color scripts for the film, The Animator's Eye are pretty small so I thought I'd let you see the full size here.

I drew the storyboards with a Ticonderoga Redisharp on sticky notes. I took digital pictures of them and sized them to make a grid layout. I painted the colors right over the sticky notes using an new layer with Art Rage Studio. Great software.

The Animator's Eye is being published Friday!

The Animator's Eye Book Trailer

Greetings everyone! Friday, September 21, 2012, my new book The Animator's Eye is scheduled to be published by Focal Press. You can watch a trailer all about it on YouTube.

And please give a big hand to Hans Karl for the wonderful score, Chris Siemasko and  Brian Cox for some super special effects and J.D. Stewart as Hans' audio production services and finally, my son, Ryan Glebas for shooting video and editing for the book.

And of course, a big thanks to all of the wonderful folks at Focal Press for their work in bringing The Animator's Eye to life.

You can see the short I made for the film at: The Animator's Eye cartoon short

Aladdin visual development early watercolors

Found some visual development that I created for Aladdin. This was the first feature I worked on for Disney. It was a really exciting and fun time. I didn't really know what I was doing, but did my best. I had so much to learn. These were completed with watercolor on thick watercolor paper with a smooth surface.

This was back in the day when an animated film didn't have to make over $300 million to be considered a success. So we were still below the radar of the money people. Fun times and great friends.

The Animator's Eye can see the light of day...

The Animator's Eye is scheduled to be published September 21, 2012. Here's a sample page. The five images on the right are flip books which run throughout the book. (CLICK TO ENLARGE)

Focal Press has posted the animated short with animatic insert on their web site- 

http://bestanimationbooks.com/

Music Score by Hans Karl-

http://www.hanskarlmusic.com/

And a very special thanks to Bryan Cox and Chris Siemasko ( http://www.chrissiemasko.com/) for adding some spicy special effects. And Audio Production Services by J. D. Stewart. And film editing by Ryan Glebas.

Yes, it's true.

You can see Iggy on YouTube. It's an 18 minute drawing lesson taken from the upcoming Focal Press book, The Animator's Eye. The book contains the making of an animated short starring Iggy and Scared Bunny as they learn the secrets of animated life. I can't wait to hold the book in my hands and flip the flip books.

Drawing tips and tricks- learn to draw Iggy

Yes, Bunny it is true, you are drawn on a sticky note. This is one of my favorite ways to work. I wrote my first book on sticky notes and storyboarded sequences on sticky notes while sitting in airports. They cheap available and easy to rearrange. I like drawing with Ticonderoga Redisharp + markers. They create an expressive black line, they're permanent, and no smell.

I'd actually love to have software where I could type and draw onscreen in the same program. So far I haven't found it. This blog was written in Literature and Latte's Scrivener. I drew the cartoons on sticky notes, then photographed them with a digital camera and imported them into the computer.

Directing the Story- Dumb Love Storyboards

When I wrote Directing the Story: Professional Storytelling Techniques for Live Action and Animation,  I had a problem. I had all of these storytelling ideas that I wanted to demonstrate but each time I was coming up with generic examples because there was no context for the ideas. Then I thought, WHAT IF I created a storyboard for the book? That way I could demonstrate the concepts in the context of a real story so you could see how they worked. 

Luckily, I had already created some stories and I chose a story called Dumb Love which was kind of like Romeo and Juliet meets Hatfield's and McCoy's but with monsters. Having a real story made it really easy to come up with demonstration lessons and I think a more valuable learning experience.

Here's some of the storyboards from Dumb Love. (CLICK TO ENLARGE)

Pocahontas' Farewell Storyboards

We were barking up the wrong tree in comparing Pocahontas to Romeo and Juliet. Once we figured out that the ending was more like Casablanca it was child's play. (Well, actually it was still hard work.) We weren't creating a tragic ending, it was a bitter-sweet one. Here are my storyboards for the first animated Disney film that didn't end- "happily ever after". (CLICK TO ENLARGE)

A Whole New World

I accepted an offer to join Disney Feature Animation so I proposed to my wife, moved to California and began storyboarding on Aladdin. It was a magical time and that came through in the movie. (CLICK TO ENLARGE)

On many films before I would start storyboarding, I would create visual development art to help define the characters, the look of the world and story ideas. Here's a sampling of those early designs.