Corny Cole

During the Fall I teach a CG Animation Class at CalArts. These pictures were taken this past May during a break from the faculty judging of the 'Producers Show', an end of the year screening featuring the highest rated student films of the year. It's a day of 8 hours of straight animation!!!


I took this picture of Corny, a legendary animator and CalArts teacher(with an unbelievable memory), at the main entrance steps of CalArts after we had a student-faculty group photo.


Then he asked to take one of me. So I handed him the camera, a small digital point and shoot. He slowly held it up to his eye and said he couldn't see anything. I said it's digital, there's no lense or eyepiece, you just look at the screen! Then he tried again, hands shaking, and took this brilliantly composed shot! If you enlarge it you can see his reflection in my glasses.

I (?!) LA

'I (?!) LA' Ink and Acrylic on Illustration Board, 4"x6"

This is 1 of the 8 paintings I had in the recent GhettoGloss show, 'Why I'm Here I Can't Quite Remember'

MONSTERS VS ALIENS: Released Today!

I animated characters on this film from 9/2007-12/2008, and now it's finally done, revealed to the world, like a little baby. It's like sending my child off to kindergarten on the first day...oh I hope he doesn't get a wedgie.
It was directed by Conrad Vernon and I have to say it's really funny, definitely see it in 3D if you can!

GHETTO GLOSS: GROUP ART OPENING - TONIGHT!

Update(3-27-09): Thanks to all who made it to our Ghetto Gloss opening last week, it was a lot of fun, especially sandwiched between dinner at the Red Lion and drinks afterwards at the Cha Cha.
The show'll be up until April 1st, so check it out if you haven't yet!

LittleBird Gallery Paintings

"The time has come," the Walrus said,

"To talk of many things:
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax
Of cabbages and kings
And why the sea is boiling hot
And whether pigs have wings."

Opening this Saturday night at the LittleBird Gallery!

'NIGHT FALLS FAST'
Acrylic/Ink on Canvas
5"x7"

Y'AINT GONNA GET THERE FREE: Screams in Hollywoodland

New Paintings by JJ Villard, Jeremy Bernstein and myself to be debuted at the LittleBird Gallery in Atwater Village.
Artist reception: Saturday, Jan 10th, 7-10pm
Exhibition continues: Jan 10th-31st
Curious if the artwork is as debaucherous as the flyer, come find out!
We're very excited about this and look forward to seeing you there.

'pretty girl in diner'

There's something about this image that truly captured that moment in the land of the lost, at Cabazon's 'Wheel Inn Diner'. Where inside things were quite palatable, and outside...things just weren't what they seemed.

'Bronx Zoo' Gallery Opening Tonight! (Nov.14)

Come see a selection of work from the Ghetto Gloss Gallery organized figure drawing workshop held Saturdays at La Cita Bar in downtown during the Fall. Above is 1 of a few drawings I did for it.

Update: Sorry it's not in NY, it's here in fab LA. The opening was a blast, lots of people, reminded me of CalArts the way the drawings were posted 'flyer style' all over the walls. I bought a piece of Tim Lamb's, and they give you a banana pin for each one sold!

Picture Book Project

'Picture Book Project', A Coloring Book Illustrated by Thirty Professional Artists in the Animation Industry to Benefit the Orphaned Children of Ghana & Tijuana.

I did this drawing for the book; conceptualized, compiled and created by the amazing Rachel Tiep-Daniels and Margaret Wuller. There's some great artists involved, JJ Villard, Steven MacLeod and Scott Wright to name a few.
God, it feels great to do so much good for this world.
Check it out!

http://www.picturebookproject.blogspot.com/

Warthog

Last year I shared a booth with some friends at the ComicCon. I'd put a drawing in every sold 'sketch book'. This one, a warthog handyman is from a shortfilm idea I had at CalArts. It's also inspired by my aunt, who has often had warthogs in her illustrations and paintings.

The Tantalizing Tiki-Ti

Have you been to the Tiki-Ti on Sunset? Oh what an experience you'll have there. It's a special, intimate, colorful, jovial little bar with the greatest selection of Tropical drinks in LA.
Here's a sketch of a couple there.

Cruise Activities

Drawn while on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship from San Pedro Harbor to Ensenada for a weekend in May.

Neil Hamburger

This was sketched at Spaceland during Neil Hamburger's standup.
He was harrassing the audience a lot, it was awesome.

Art?/Auction tonight in Los Feliz, Ca.

CalArts grads' Art Show and Auction tonight!

RE: "Off They Flew" Art Show

The turnout was tremendous at the LittleBird Gallery opening last night, nice catching up with a lot of people. The gallery director-Mylissa Fitzsimmons, did an impressive job curating the show. About 80% of the pieces sold, maybe more since then. There was a lot of fantastic artwork from 100 artists - which will continue to be up for the next couple of weeks, so check it out!

Here's the vignette I painted. It's acrylic on wood.
Title: Innocence and Accidents

"Off They Flew" Art Show

Little Bird Gallery in Atwater Village will have their "Off They Flew" art opening this Saturday night. 100 artists(including myself) painted wooden birds in a benefit for the Griffith Park fire.
Come check it out!!!
MAP

A Greek Woman

She was a character, I drew this in my sketchbook while waiting at Charles de Gaulle Airport for my plane to Athens this past July. The Greek Woman may have noticed what I was doing, because later it seemed like she sent her kids walking by to peek.

Animation on 'Bee Movie'...

...is over, now what do I do with myself?

This is a marketing still I posed out for 'Bee Movie'. Jeremy is credited for finding it online. The rough story board for it was drawn by Dave Pimentel, the Head of Story. Sometimes it can be tricky posing these out in a very appealing manner because we have to deal with the Marketing Dept., and they'll have ridiculous notes sometimes based on silly statistics. I'm really happy with how it turned out though, I wouldn't change a thing with Barry's pose even if I drew it. The Mooseblood character was a little trickier though-for one, the camera had a wide lense which was distorting him a bit and making him seem much further away from Barry. Also, his head on the model has a bit smaller proportions than Barry. I felt like it'd be nicer to make his head a bit larger and more prominent for this, and did do a bit of translating forward on it, but couldn't push it too far before it started to seem off model or cover up more of his body. Since this was created for simply 1 frame and didn't have to move, I could really push and distort the pose just to make it look good from this view. If you looked at Barry's profile, you'd see that his entire body is stretched out quite drastically. I was hoping they'd use this advertisement somewhere cool like for the large billboard on Highland Ave in Hollywood, but I guess it just graces the web and local papers for now.

Who Gives a Hoot.

Ink on construction paper, then digitally colored.

LA Myth Art Show !!!

@ Meltdown on Sunset tonight(8-11-07)
from 8pm - 11pm
Come one, come all!
Lots of great work from a collection of animation industry artists.
I added 2 pieces to the show at the last minute...pieces you've
probably already seen before(but not in person!), regardless-don't come for me, come for the others.
check it!

!!! She's been delivered !!!

My first book: soft cover, 9*6", 36 pages, full color.
I'll be selling her at the 'San Diego Comic Con', booth#831 from 7/26-7/29.
"Sketches from the Morgue"
A compilation of drawings created in Japan, Spain and L.A.'s
finest cafes, neighborhoods and dive bars.
Basically drawings seen here, and then some.
See you there!

!!! Comic Con 2007 !!! - "We Blog"

I'll be there, caged in booth #831 - with 5 other talented Dreamworks artists...
Scott Wright, Jeremy Bernstein, Donnachada Daly, Jakob Jensen and Gabriele Pennacchioli.
We all have brand new books to sell, and I'm definately very excited to show up for the 4 days of Comic Con insanity.
Stop by and say 'Hi!'

This is our 8*5' banner!


And this is our location amongst the sea of booths!

"The Good, the Bad and the Ugly"

Not particularly in that order.
Figure Drawings! From 2 seperate classes, the top 2 were drawn at a downtown warehouse class organized by the models. Ahhh made me feel like I was at Calarts again, a large room overflowing with artists, sketches strewn on a pastel chalked floor, kids sitting on engines, horses, stairwells, beach chairs, anything they can find, sick music playing with wild costumes and wild poses.
The bottom one I believe was done at an uninstructed class held at my work. That guy was crazy looking. Seriously, crazy.

This guy lives in my neighborhood...

...some of you may know him.

Hmm...

Sidewalk Menagerie

A little sidewalk performance to get me back on track with monday's postings. Drawn in old town Pasadena over the hella hot weekend.
Thanks for all the motivation everyone.

Happy New Year!

Ch. F Interview

The inimitable and elusive Jeaux Janovsky - News Correspondent for Channel Frederator, asked me a few ?s !!!
Check it out here!

Him, his Girlfriend and...

...her friend who thinks she should be with someone better.

Ahhhh Pigors !!!

This is a caricature of Spooky Eric.
It's his Birthday today (10-12), so let's all wish him a
big happy B-Day !!!

Flappahs!

Who doesn't love drawin' wildly costumed figures. Dave's got this class he instructs every few weeks at work w/ festively garbed models. I thought I'd be an obnoxiously modern artist and try figure sketching w/ my tablet - it was pretty fun, then my battery began to run low. Surrre I could bring my power adapter, but seeing everyone else w/ their charcoaled fingers, barrage of pencils and rustling paper made me a bit envious.
This was a five minute sketch, then I touched it up a bit later.
Done...digitally.

Horned Beast

This drawing was made on my new Toshiba tablet pc with Alias SketchbookPro...I freakin' love it!
It's for a top secret project. shh.

Martha Baxton Auction !

(jolly illustration by liz ito and pen ward)

If you know and love Martha Baxton (the backbone of the CalArts Character Animation Program), click HERE !

a 'R and R' Sunday...

The 666 Art Show

Here's a gouache painting I did for the 'Devil Made Me Do It' group art show held at Basswerks Gallery in Culver City on 06-06-2006. There was some great work there, one artist had an installation with 666 photos of different license plates containing 666 in them found accross the west coasts highways...clever.

Cat on Mat

This small painting is acrylic and gouache on illustration board, 5*7".
I painted it as a gift for Fred Nilsson's birthday, a talented animator and teacher
for Animation Mentor.

A Moody Bird

"There is meloncholy in the wind and sorrow in the grass."
-Charles Kuralt

This is a small 4*6", gouache painting I did for a friend's birthday, Max Boas.

Relaxing Granada Rooftops

yes I'm still posting Spain sketches.
for some odd reason rooftops are very appealing to me.
I love all of the different shapes that intersect, the different textures,
antennas, railing, tile, cracked plaster, broken brick.

1 Accordian and 2 at the Bar

ink and waterbrush pen in sketchbook, feb. 2006 - drawn in valencia, spain

-rollerball pen in sketchbook, valencia spain, 2/21/06-
This accordian was playing the greatest music for passerbys, in Valencia.
He was much more talented than many of the other street performers around there.
I figure he just came from a school where he taught accordian, then thought...'hmm, maybe I'll make a bit of cash on my way home.'

Cafes, Coffee and Cigarettes

Cordoba and Madrid, 0.3 pen in sketchbook, Feb. 2006
This old man was so pimp.
The little dog at the top just wandered around the cafe like she owned the place.
Then she lept up to an empty chair by my table and sat for a bit.

Casa Batllo

Barcelona, brush pen in sketchbook, Feb.2006

Photos from Spain - March 2006

After seeing 'La Pantera Rosa' in the theater I ran into this baby in the lobby, an intl. poster for 'Over the Hedge' - the soon to be greatest animated film in the world! Well, actually everyone knows that the greatest animated film is 'Triplettes of Belleville', but I am very excited to see the finished version of Hedge during it's release, and what the general pop. thinks of it.


The museum cafe for the Sophia Reina Museum of Modern Art.


The Bull Ring in Seville.


Castle ruins in Segunto, a small city near Valencia.


IMAX theater at the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia.


Natural History Museum at the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia.


View of Barcelona from Guell Park, designed by Antoni Gaudi.


Casa Batllo in Barcelona by Gaudi. This is the most amazing apartment building I've been in.


I thought this meat market was crazy the first time I saw one. Then realized it's common to have large legs of pork hanging around cafes, bars, restaurants, everywhere.

Los Skaters de Barcelona...

Here's some thumbnail-sketches of skateboarders at a wide, flat, concrete park in Barcelona next to Sants Station. There were about 50 or so kids having a grand ol' time there right up until dark. I sat on a long bench and watched until I saw an interesting pose, then would quickly draw it. I felt like Jane Goodall studying chimpanzees...an outsider able to get a glimpse into the rituals of some mysterious group. Then a young man walking by asked me if I'd like to buy some chocolate. I politely declined(thinking it was peculiar), later learning that that's another name for hashish. Huh, well there you go.

SPAIN ... !

... ah the land of bullfights, flamenco, good-cheap wine, tapas, picasso, velazquez and goya, fried everything, cobblestone streets, pastries in the morning and beer in the afternoon, getting up late and staying up 'til it's early, and the best cafe con leche everywhere you go.
I was there, 3 weeks of walking, looking, traveling, eating and sketching!
Here's a couple from a restaurant in Granada.

im out of town right now.....

...and don´t have access to any scanners, but i would like to post more when i return after the 5th of march. thanks for stoppin´by.
-monday morgue

Dirty Drawings...

...I mean 'Derby' drawings, from the club on Hillhurst, that's the man Sasha Smith on piano playing with headliner Jesca Hoop - grrreat show/music. Myself and Mr.Bernstein spoke with her afterwards, instead of being creeped out by our sketches, she conned us into doing some drawings at her next show in exchange for guest list entry. Hmm, ok sounds fair to me.

The Boy in the Blue Rabbit Suit

Makiko at Figaro Cafe

hotel and saloon