Freerange Poster

I did a “Coming Soon” poster for the short we are working on. We start shooting in a couple of weeks. It’s a comedy about a guy who gets lost in the woods. We are all soooper excited and ready for some long days.

Poster in Progress 4

With some more painting, color correction, and title design we reach the final poster for ACC’s Under the Gaslight.

Poster in Progress 3

So I moved this month and was forced to take a short break while my life was stored in a dozen mislabeled boxes. But, things are settling down now and I am back at the drawing board.

The “pulp” style sketch was too much. The client came back with these notes:

“…she needs to be moving away from someone, looking back over
her shoulder. She is pursued throughout the play, and this drawing makes me feel she’s being confronted right in that moment, and she’s warding off a blow.”

Which lead to this awkward little pencil sketch.

I thought they might fire me. Sometimes you get a clunker like this drawing and you wonder. But, the client was good to go. And if the client is good to go then I go. Good.

The next step is to collect up any image you can find that can flush out the details. Portraits from back in the day and stills from period films educate my understanding of what will end up being a very specific aesthetic.

Then I have eleven cups of coffee and sit down to paint. And this is what we get.

Still a lot to do but she is grown out of the awkward phase, I think.

Poster in Progress 2

The client likes the colors but asked for a revision to the pencil drawing. Here are her notes:

…think of her as being in motion — need some action, like she’s running for safety and looking off. Simplify hair, as if it has come down and is flowing loosely. Put a shawl, maybe, over her shoulders that she’s clutching as she runs? Want her to look a little roughed up…

I also started on the title design and lay-out a bit. This image and title will be used in a variety of formats, shapes and sizes. The title needs to stand on it’s own and remain flexible inside of the poster image.

The revised pencil drawing moves away from Victorian portrait and toward fifties pulp.

The costume notes I will save for the painting stage.

Poster in Progress

I am happy to be working on a new season of Austin Community College Theater posters. I thought it might be neat to show how one is made. The show is AUGUSTIN DALY’S UNDER THE GASLIGHT: A Totally Original and Picturesque Drama of Life and Love in These Times (1867)

A simple composite.

A reasonable pencil sketch.

A color sketch.

I’ve sent this to the client to get the thumbs up. I’ll update when I get word back and apply the notes from the client. In the meantime I begin to think about the title design.

Icon Candy

For Mockingbird Games

Here is just a a small sampling of some the icons I’ve drawn for Mockingbird Games for their site playmockingbird.com. Aphid has been a partner with Mockingbird since the beginning designing characters and creating original art for their breakout game site leading to news making team ups with Mattel and Dreamworks.

Summer 2009 News

This summer is turning out to be pretty bad ass for Big Ol Tire Fire, Aphid Animation and myself personally. I just thought I’d take a few seconds to update everyone who has been great enough to ask that most complex of questions: What are you up to lately?

Boom. You asked for it. Here it is.

FTFN’T is an animated short I wrote and directed that is in production right now. It’s a black and white roto-scoped romantic comedy about a writer going through a break -up. It was shot just like a live action movie over a three day period last december. The movie features a whole gang of great actors and will make a big splash on the animation scene if I ever get it finished. I am working on the teaser right now and we go into animation production in June. Justin Sherburn of Okerville River is working on the score. We are seeking investors, animators and interns for this project.

Spiderbabies is a feature I co-wrote with Christopher Sharpe based on his story of a three girl punk rock band who get stuck in a small town in Texas after the rapture. Sarah Rodgers aka Miss Conduct of Austin roller derby fame, Adrienne Mishler, and Hilah Johnson of Big Ol’ Tire Fire make up trio of hotness in front of the camera. My brother Chase Staggs is the production designer, I am working as art director and Chistopher Sharpe will direct this action/horror motion picture. We are very proud of the script and the team rocks, so this should be a good time. We are seeking interns for the art department.

Earp! is a feature script I am writing with Big Ol’ Tire Fire (Jason Andres, Mark Stewart, Hilah Johnson and myself). It’s a farce based on the Wyatt Earp/Doc Holiday legend. The writers meetings are hilarious disasters that usually end up going late into the amber colored night. We are looking at making this the first Big Ol’ Tire Fire feature. Imagine Andres as Earp, Hilah as Big Nose Kate, Mark Stewart as Doc Holiday, and little ol’ me as the nervous yet dastardly Johnny Ringo. The BOTF have many more story ideas in development so rest assured that you’ll be seeing us out there soon. We are also hard at work on Bigoltirefire.com redesigning the original sketch video site into a full fledged comedy blog. We’ll still produce original content, but we will also post the funniest stuff on the web, original essays, art and rabid strangeness.

Aphid Animation is staying busy producing traditional animation for Austin’s biggest and most popular media companies like Shiny Object or GSD&M Idea City. So much so that we’ve only now had the chance to refine our original web presence. You’ll notice some changes in the next few months that should help us to showcase our talents and our particular brand of 2-D frame by frame animation. We’ve added Christopher Sharpe on as a producer to help us move to the next level on the web and in project management. He is also a great film maker, writer and designer in his own right. We’d like to be the go to studio for traditional character and roto-scoped animation.

Kevin Peake and I are also very excited to begin work on a suite of iPhone apps here at Aphid. I can’t say much other than the idea is to provide very functional and useful apps that are so pretty you want to eat them like candy. We should have our first app out later this year. More details soon on this very exciting project.

Lastly is this blog you are reading which is a showcase for my illustration work. Here you can find my portfolio and links to my other web places. Follow me here as I claw my way to the top of the illustration mountain slashing with my Wacom pen and spilling pixels and pixels of my enemies’ blood along the way.

Thanks for all the support and interest. It’s a blessing to work with all of these incredible people and live the dream of making art and movies in Austin.

Portfolio: Chronicle Cover City Council Canidates

Wassup Power Seekers?

This cover for The Austin Chronicle was a challenge. The painting is based on a very complicated composite photograph with many featured portraits and poker gags. And there still had to be room for the front page elements of the paper. Jason Stout did a great job laying out the final cover.

On The Cover

Portfolio: McCain Palin Halloween Mask

They got an angry letter about respect after printing this one.

The Austin Chronicle prints a Halloween mask cut out issue each year. We were all caught up in the political spirit when Jason Stout, art director at the Chronic, decided to have me do McCain for the cover and Palin as a web extra.

This was fun. Very fun. Like seriously, I danced and stuff.

I was surprised when I picked up a printed issue and there was a double cover with Palin on page 2. Once again Palin tries to steal McCain’s thunder.

Portfolio: Chronicle Cop Cover

This is a cover I did for the Austin Chronicle in 2008.