comingsoon.net interviews John Lasseter

for those of you who are interested, there is a great article over at www.comingsoon.net in which John Lasseter talks about Cars and the Disney merger.

some worthwhile quotes:

"At Pixar, the movies are director driven. What I mean by that is that the stories that the directors choose, they write and they come from their own heart. We're the only studio that's like that. All the other studios are executive-driven. The movies are picked by executives in development and directors are assigned to them."

"Tire store to a car is like a men's shoe store, right? I don't know if you noticed that when Luigi had McQueen try on the tires that there's a patch of asphalt in front of the mirror so you can see how good the tire looks on the asphalt. We have fun that way in really thinking through this world."

"[E]very boy is born into this world with his own set of sound effects. Right? Cars have a very different sound than a motorcycle, bombs, machine guns, flying like Superman, and all those sounds, and lightning and thunder, right? I had the tape rolling and I said, "Owen, what was your sound for thunder growing up?" and he started going, "Kachow! Kachow! K-k-k-chow!" I was sitting in the room laughing so hard. I would have never thought of that!"

"[T]he merger isn't going to change Pixar at all, because that was one of the parts of the deal. Bob Iger recognizes how special Pixar is and it's culture, and it's really protected. It's going to stay exactly the same. "

"Disney has been sort of an executive-driven studio for a long time, and I believe in having the stories come from [the directors], whether it's something they wrote and they like and it comes from their heart, and surrounding them and being honest with them when things are working and not working."

cliff

And so it begins...

so here is something i did in painter9 for a card that stefan and i will be giving his sister for her wedding :P

cliff

MoMA's interview with Ralph Eggleston

courtesy of Luxo: a Blog featuring Pixar Animation Studios, here is an interview with pixar's ralph eggleston. he was:

art director for The Incredibles and Toy Story,
production designer for Finding Nemo
story writer for Monsters, Inc
director of For the Birds, among other things.

http://redstudio.moma.org/interviews/behind/#

check out all the clips, they are pretty informative. he talks about how it's not about the technique of the drawing, it's about the emotion; that's the only thing people will respond to. learning to see is more important than learning to draw well. make movies for yourself, not for the audience.

cliff

My First (Serious) Painter painting

hey guys, here is my first "serious" painter piece.. although i did it mostly as an exercise in realism. i'm not really counting the painter pieces i did for michael hitchcox because i didn't really try on those... plus, i never really found the brush i wanted.

this is a painting of my friend kelly. as for likeness it's pretty good, only her eyes aren't as far apart as they are in the drawing.

any comments? they would be much appreciated...

cliff

FORTUNE: Interview with John Lasseter

check this out: there is a great interview over at CNN with John Lasseter.

some worthwhile quotes from the article:

"My older brother Jim, who passed away six or seven years ago, was a brilliant interior designer who studied Japanese design. What he loved about their approach is that they'll design something and then they take away until they can take away no more. We have adopted that same philosophy here in our films."

"'You know, what I think makes sense in fashion design is to take a really wild fabric and then make a classic pattern or piece of clothing with it. Either that, or you take a classic fabric and make a crazy pattern with it.' [Jim] said if you design things that way, there is something familiar for people to relate to. But if you do both - take a crazy fabric and make a crazy pattern - people can't make any sense of it."

"Let me tell you a funny story. I took the family to see this film one weekend - I'll go to see almost any film that's good for the whole family. And so we're sitting there watching this film, which I won't name, and there are long stretches that are just not very entertaining. My little son - he was probably 6 at the time - was sitting next to me, and right in the middle of this dull section, he turns to me and says, 'Dad? How many letters are in my name?'

"I must have laughed for five minutes. I thought, Oh, man, this movie has lost this little boy. His mind has been wandering, trying to figure out how many letters there are in his name. So I told my wife, Nancy, what he said, and she started laughing, and then the story went down the row through my whole family, our four other sons, and we're sitting there as a family giggling and laughing.

"And I thought to myself, If ever a child anywhere in the world leans over to their daddy during one of my movies and asks, 'How many letters are in my name?' I'll quit."


the bit about japanese design is very useful for filmmaking, i think, and the second bit about always keeping something in your character that people can relate to is really important too. hope you guys take the time to read the article; it's a very good read.

cliff

CARS

i'm super-excited for CARS! i remember when the teaser first came out, i was like wtf... but every new trailer that pixar has released from then on just made the movie seem better and better..

here is the newest and final trailer... check it out!

Avatar: The Last Airbender

i don't know how many of you have heard of the show Avatar: The Last Airbender (i certainly haven't up until last week), but i saw an episode last saturday morning, and it was amazing. the backgrounds are stunning and the animation is top-notch for a TV show. it's anime, but (gasp) i didn't mind!!! it's made in english, so there's no bad lip-syncking either. i am currently download all the episodes (they're in the middle of season 2) but you can buy season one on DVD.

if you haven't heard of the show i suggest you go download an episode.. it's like a show straight out of piotr beliecki's mind!!

harro???

okay.. so this blog has been created and deleted and now created again.. i just hope it doesn't consume my free time. i am making it in hopes of getting my art out there and getting noticed.

so anyway.. here is my year two final lifedrawing portfolio.

--cliff

ps. took forever to load these--after my first 5 were uploaded the next images were really stubborn in actually showing up even though blogger said they were uploaded.. is there something i'm doing wrong??

(update: fixed the broken links)