Nature Break Title Cards

I was asked by my pal Mike to design and paint these title cards for his Nature Break web shorts for Shut Up Cartoons/Smosh. Animation was added by Mike and his wife, Anna on the final (at the link above).

Quick, fun little exercises. Photoshop.

Clone Wars BGs/Key paintings

A nice fellow I know from the internets is selling 4 original BGs/keys from Tartakovsky's Clone Wars series on ebay. All these were painted in-house by Scott Wills or his crew. http://www.ebay.com/sch/m.html?_nkw=Star+Wars+Clone+Wars+Miniseries+Original+Background+Color+Key+Gendy+Tartakovsky&_sacat=0&_odkw&_osacat=0&_ssn=freaky_styley_store

Monstroville Graveyard BG

This was my final BG for the Monstroville pitch. I had fun pushing it in the direction of "feature", but still hopefully retain the cartoon sensibilities. Designed by the great Josh Gay and painted by myself.

Hope you like!

Graveyard BG - Photoshop

A Big Move... and Kung Fu Panda

Hi guys!

Quick update. I landed a job as BG designer at Bento Box on an upcoming production, so I'm enjoying living in LA now, and very happy to be an official part of the animation business. A big thank you to everyone for being really helpful and welcoming during the (very fast) transition.

I didn't want to post just words, so here, finally, is the painting I did for DreamWorks Fine Art awhile back. It was fun to work on this sucker. I'll post an update when the print and painting go up for sale on their site.

Peach of Wisdom - 24" x 15" cel vinyl acrylic on illustration board

Hope you all have a very happy holiday!

Outhouse (Out-Home?) BG

Just for fun, I took another shot at the Hanna Barbera painting style. This time from my own layout.

Photoshop

HB BG Style Applied

With the studies mentioned in my previous post, I've also taken one of Gene Hazelton's terrific layouts from John K's blog and applied my version of the HB painting style to it.

Gene's original

Mine - Photoshop

Minus Yogi

 P.S. The puddle of ice cream in the original story was supposed to be strawberry, but I changed it to mint. I'm allowed to do that, right?

BG Studies

I'm doing more BG painting studies on a regular basis and have started posting them over on my secret practice blog. It'll be our little secret, okay?

Samurai Jack Painting Demos

For those of you who have requested videos of my painting process, here's something better!

Scott Wills demonstrating his technique for the painters at Rough Draft in Korea. These are loaded with great tips. Scott makes it all look very easy.







P.S. I've been told that BG painters would have at least 2 airbrushes, one for water and one for paint.

P.P.S. The badger blending brush that Scott is using is one that Grumbacher used to make, but was discontinued a few years ago.

P.P.P.S. Scott made the bridge he is using from a couple pieces of wood, some double-sided tape and a metal ruler. The advantage is that it doesn't bend like the acrylic bridges you can buy and it's also lower, making it more comfortable to use.

Kevin Dart and Scott Wills Titan BGs

For those of you anxiously awaiting Genndy Tartakovsky's upcoming cartoon Sym-bionic Titan, hustle on over to Kevin Dart's blog where he's posted some of the superb background paintings for the show. They're taking TV to another level.

Glade Game BG

I recently got hired to paint this (digital) bg pan for an online game. I was also asked to design the bathroom, kitchen and transitional spaces between rooms, including the statue. You can probably tell I had a blast doing it.

Think you got the cleaning skills?
http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/home/clean-your-home-game.htm