Lecturing/demo at CTNx

Hi everyone, I'll be giving a live digital demo and speaking about Production Design/Vis Dev at CTNx so come out and say hi if you're in the area. Check out this link for my bio page. I plan on attending both Friday and Saturday. The "Digital Demo" is at 6pm Friday. I'm also participating in the "Breakfast with the Pros Sat. Morning, and doing a "Creators Conversation" on Sat, in the afternoon. Check the web site for times. Best, Sam

story sketching for Vis Dev

The coolest part of my job as a Production Designer is the initial concept of an idea. I am not talking about a finished concept painting but instead the more important scribble that will help visualize the written word. Over the years I have found a short hand for expressing my ideas, and none of it includes finished technique. Done with only a pen, paper and markers, the artist must utilize every device at their disposal to capture the viewers attention and then keep it to tell the story visually. I am starting with location design from "AstroBoy".The drawings were done during our story meetings. I sketched as we talked. I will post more and do some analysis of why and how these sketches communicate effectively. -Sam

From my flat files: part 1

I thought I would start digging around my flat files for things I usually pull out for class discussions or for fond old memories.
The yellow palace interior is for " The Prince of Egypt". I did it shortly after joining DreamWorks back in '96. It was a quick study for prop and technique design. The assignment: Could we paint directly over a line drawing instead of tracing the layout onto the board? Yes, of course! You can do it with Watercolor painting, but can you do it with an opaque painting? Yes, it just takes patience and the ability to correct the shapes and perspective as you go, if you do lose the drawing. This image was painted over a xerox of the line drawing, which was first glued to a piece of board.

Detail of shapes for our world.

My typical nightly practice sketches from around '94.
I would make up little scenes after a full day of work at Disney. I was in the Layout dept. at the time and designed backgrounds, but we handed them over to the background dept. for final painting. I have many extremely talented friends who were background artists. Many of them have made my layouts look spectacular! But, I was frustrated because I trained as an illustrator, used to painting my own layouts. The problem at that time was that I could not really paint that well... Other than my illustration rendering classes, I never took a formal painting class during my school years so I had to teach myself, with the guidance of a few very special friends, how to paint! Thus I did hundreds of these little scenes as a way to both study film design and how to express those ideas in paint. Incase you were wondering, yes there is a huge difference between painting and illustrating. These sketches were done on Masonite wood board in acrylic. The idea was to paint them very fast with lots of energy, without the tight rendering. Basically indicative painting. If you nail the correct value, color, and temperature of each shape, and of course put that shape in the right place, you can describe everything with the fewest strokes possible. Those of you who know all of this stuff please excuse the basics I am covering here.

Jump ahead several years... almost ten, and here I am sketching from imagination for my gallery oils. These were used as a guide for the larger final paintings. I always used Gouache for these sketches. Titled "upper Level",the final oil sold thru one of my galleries in Houston Texas in '02. I am still sad it sold because I had a great time painting the this and the final. Bye for now and best of luck with your image making!

Sam

Sinbad vis dev

Some Old school Vis Dev when we used real materials like markers and Oils. We had to draw and paint our images very large so the execs would notice them on the pitch walls. We did not have the luxury of large scale printers! These were 30"x40". Lots of fun!
Sam

sam

MegaMind Vis Dev

MegaMind.
I wanted to show the benefit of doing studies before the larger piece. In this case the Facade details for the BG city.
I love playing with abstract shapes and buildings always have lots of opportunity for just that. When designing anything, try thinking of the bigger underlying ideas, not just the surface details.
Sam

Sam

Little comps for film

The comps were done in black ink on illustration board.
The color image is a 5 minute class demo showing the power of the free form pen tool in CS5.
I love drawing with this tool and then using the locked layers to paint within. You can create some very bold stylized BG's and light them in literally minutes. The sketch could be taken to a very finished state but I liked the quick impression.