Rise of Guardians Trailer is Online!

I’ve had the great pleasure to work on The Rise of the Guardians for almost two years now. We’re still finishing the film which comes out this fall but DreamWorks just released a teaser trailer. This is the best teaser made for a DreamWorks movie, it encapsulates in moments the premise, stakes and hook of the film.  I know there isn’t always truth in advertising but in this instance the trailer respectfully represents the movie in story and tone.

Platypus Vigilante

Who doesn’t like platypuses they’re cute, odd and they have venomous spurs on their heels (true story.) A while back I was playing with an idea about a platypus mad max style who put a lawn mower engine on a a big wheel and became  a kind of vigilante hero of the highway.

Christmas Cheer from Tiger and Croc

Button of Doom

I meant to put this up a while back. This’ll be my last Megamind post. In addition to working on the feature I also boarded the  short “The Button of Doom.” It was great fun working with director Simon Smith and head of story Toby Shelton. I was lucky enough to board the climactic scene.

Doom syndicate 3/3

This was the last scene I did with Hal and the doom sydicate. The final scene is very similiar just minus the Doom syndicate. The ill fated doom syndicate provided added pressure and motivation to scenes. However, as individuals they failed to coalesce into strong secondary characters, except for hot flash. I still think she was brillant.

Doom Syndicate Part 2/3

Here are a few shots of Destruction worker doing what he does best.

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mindless drawing

It happens from time to time. Sometimes all they want is your wrist, not your brain.

Baby Leopard Animation Test

I’m no animator, but I like animating when I have the time.  While messing around with the photoshop CS5 I did this quick (and I mean really quick) animation test of a baby leopard running after a beetle.

Cretaceous Christmas

I few years ago I directed and storyboarded a teaser for a holiday special that never quite got off the ground. It was based on my second year animation film: Cretaceous Christmas. The project was fun while it lasted. Unfortunately like the main character the animation studio went extinct. It was meant to be an hour long TV special. I directed the story, art and animation. I still think there’s room for a dinosaur on Santa’s team, don’t you?

MegaMind!

MegaMind came out this past weekend. I had the opportunity to work on this film for two years, but not two straight years. Like many films it went through different versions and leadership.  Film making and any collaborative creative endevour is always a grind but in this case I think it paid off.  The film went through many different versions, and most of them had different names too: originally it was named Mastermind but that proved too difficult to trademark, then Obermind, briefly Blunatic and finally MegaMind. All the different story crews I worked with were stellar and in the end the story was fun and engaging. Here are a few random story sketches I did while on the film.

A hometown Newspaper the Globe interviewed me and ran an online article on my contributions as a story artist. Click here to see the link