Piglet's BIG movie color script by Fred Warter

These small paintings were created by art director, Fred Warter as a color script for Piglet's BIG Movie.

A color script is a guide for the crew to follow so everyone uses the right colors. More importantly, it is a way to track the emotional journey of the movie. They focus on light, atmosphere, and color relationships. Enjoy. (CLICK TO ENLARGE)

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 weirdness:Genie of the lava lamp

When you make an animated film, you create thousands of drawings that you won't use. It's just part of the process. Sometimes you just get an idea and you have to go with it. You never know where an idea will take you. Here's one of those goofy ones that I did while doing visual development for Aladdin. Usually, one doesn't spend a lot of time on these because you know it probably won't be used. But, you never know what can happen when you rub the magic lamp. (RUB TO ENLARGE IMAGE, I MEAN CLICK)

Now that I look at again, it kind of looks like what the director of Aladdin, John Musker, might have looked like during the 1960's. John is one of the most incredible caricaturists that I've ever met.

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.

Why a duck? Why an ark?

Here's a fun piece by art director, Dan Cooper, that he did for Pomp and Circumstance. Unfortunately, this old copy doesn't convey any of the incredible color and light subtlety of Dan's original. For a real treat watch Fantasia 2000's Pomp and Circumstance and pay attention to the color and light. 

If you look carefully you'll notice that the ark is actually shaped kind of like a duck. Only a great art director pays such attention to detail.

I learned so much from all  of my crew. Thank you all.

(CLICK TO ENLARGE)

You can see some of Dan's personal paintings at his blog: http://dancoopersblogsplotch.blogspot.com/

The Space Chimps Trailer that wasn't.

Digging around in the digital archeological site, I came across a trailer I did when I was working on Space Chimps. I can't understand why they didn't use it. Enjoy!

My first tweets

I started tweeting the other day. Here's a few samples. I like the idea that I can add a drawing. That way I get an extra 1000 words. I've been inspired by cartoonist Hugh MacLeod. He does these insightful simple cartoons with a few words added for punch. You can check him out at: gapingvoid.com/

I use a stylus on my iPad using the Skitch app. It's a very simple app that's free and I love working with it. When my drawings complete I just tell it to tweet, add some text and off it goes.

Skitch is by the makers of Evernote and you can also save your art to their cloud. Skitch is also available for Mac as well.

I'm trying to be spontaneous with the ideas and sketches or should I call them skitches. Anyway it's a fun way to share my imaginings and musings. You can follow me at @frankiegenius I'd like that.

(CLICK TO ENLARGE)

Piglet's Big Movie beat boards

Here's a poster we created for Piglet's BIG Movie. I think we didn't use it because Victoria's Secret had the same tag line. Oops!

Below are one set of story beats for Piglet's Big Movie. It's really great being a director because you have all of these incredibly talented people whose job it is to make you look good, I mean make a great movie. Beat boards are kind of like storyboards but they just include the main beats of a story. A movie might have thousands of storyboards but it might have 20 to 100 or so beat boards.

I have wonderful memories of all of the friends I made while working in the hundred acre wood. There's a link to the credits at the end of this blog, but I'll note the artist when I can remember them. I apologize if I don't remember exactly. (CLICK TO ENLARGE)

We can up with the idea of letting the characters draw like children and our Japanese studio did a wonderful job of bringing the crayon drawings to life. I think this design was by Sue Nichols or Robert Sledge.

This one looks like a Robert Sledge drawing.

This whimsical one was by Sue Nichols who storyboarded this opening sequence.

These are the final frames, art directed by Fred Warter.

Robert Sledge

This might have been Sue Nichols or Andrew Austin.

Robert Sledge.

Andrew Austin.

Andrew Austin.

I think Roo drew this one.

Robert Sledge.

We had such trouble getting this waterfall to look just right. It was one of the very few computer graphic elements used for the movie.

Robert Sledge.

Andrew Austin.

PIGLET'S BIG MOVIE CREDITS There were over several hundred people who contributed to making this such a wonderful film. Thank you all.

The people that I worked with on a daily basis made a BIG impact in my life- Michelle Pappalardo-Robinson my producer and Ferrell Barron- associate producer. Brian Hohlfeld wrote our screenplay.   My right hand was film editor Ivan Bilancio. (I'm left handed.) I feel bad we never got to go surfing together. 

It was incredible watching our composer Carl Johnson at work leading a full symphony orchestra. Also a blast was meeting the voices behind the characters. In the starring role, John Fiedler as Piglet. Jim Cummings as Pooh and Tigger. (He would have conversations between Pooh and Tigger. Mind bending to watch) Kath Soucie as Kanga. Andre Stojka as Owl. Nikita Hopkins as Roo. Peter Cullen as Eeyore. Ken Sansom as Rabbit and Tom Wheatley as Christopher Robin.

And last but not least was Carly Simon who wrote and sang the wonderful songs for our movie. She once asked me if I had a personal project I wanted to complete. I now have an answer- I finished a screenplay and am now in the process of making it a graphic novel. I hope one day she can read it. It's a trauma drama about transforming a life of anxiety.

Oh, bother. I forgot to thank Mr. A.A. Milne.