I was honored to participate in this year’s benefit for the Penfield Children’s Center in Milwaukee WI. I created one of the 3 posters that will be auctioned off to raise funds for the center. Catalina Estrada and Emiliano Ponzi created the other two images.

The event takes place Sept 11 2010.

here is a bit about the Croquet Ball:

For 15 years, the Croquet Ball has raised significant support for over 1,400 children at Penfield Children’s Center.  The event has contributed funds to renovate the Special Care Nursery at Penfield and support children and families through the Family Fund.

here are the sketches i submitted to the great crew at Cramer-Krasselt:

here is the color study i created from the approved sketch.

the final poster.

CLUTCH is a new character that i thought would make an appropriate post this week. Here in Indianapolis, the  MotoGP races are going over at the speedway this weekend.

a bit of backstory:

Clutch has never won a race, he is still looking for that elusive victory, any victory for that matter. He will race anything, a tree, a barn, his shadow, you name it he’ll race it and no matter how hard he tries he still manages to loose.

this is a shot of the 1:9 scale model of the Norton bike that i assembled and ‘modified’ along with an initial sketch of Clutch scaled to the size of the bike.

here is a schematic of Clutch with notes on his costume and gear

the final shot with his ‘mark’

it was a bear getting the image to have speed (that’s where a cordless drill and a hairdryer came in handy)

here is a film of the set in action:

i recently finished up a series of 13 labels for Blasted Church Vineyards in Canada. i worked with the fine folks at Brandever who masterminded the campaign. The labels tell the story behind the name of the vineyard.

The Blasted Church name is derived from the true story of a little wooden church, first built in 1848 in the gold mining town of Fairview.

At the turn of the 20th century, Fairview had a population of 2,000 and was known as the largest city north of San Francisco.
When the mine was depleted, people drifted away and the town declined.

By 1909, Fairview became a ghost town.

The church stood alone for nearly 20 years until a determined team of parishioners decided to relocate the church to Okanagan Falls.

Their plan called for a blast of explosives inside the church, in order to “loosen the nails”.

Save for losing the steeple, the plan succeeded.

Here is the dismantled church being moved.

Rebuilding the church.

The plan worked. In 1929, the church was given a new life in the community of Okanagan Falls – a stone’s throw from our vineyard.

This wine pays tribute to the commitment, passion, steadfastness, and vision of the people that moved this church over eighty years ago.

The book was officially released last week on Feb 9th! you can pick up a copy of it wherever books are sold. as well as amazon.

here are a few of my daughters favorite pages.

Gino Stroffolino is a key character in the book and is the mastermind of the barge scheme of making money by shipping the garbage to be sold and buried somewhere else. In fact he is a fictional character that takes the place of a few of the men behind the scheme. Jonah Winter, the writer of the book, told me he made him up because he didnt want to end up making somebody(s) mad that might just have the ability to make a call and have Jonah’s kneecaps shattered. after a few bad sketches i stumbled across this one that seemed to fit Gino’s personality.

and here are a few shots of Gino from the book:

i was delighted with the greenish, fluorescent lighting for his office. hopefully the viewer will here the ceiling lights buzzing the way old fluorescent lights do so annoyingly.

getting right down to it the tugboat was one of the most intimidating things i have had to build recently. it was going to have to look good from all angles and viewpoints because it was going to be the other half of the main character. most of what i build it only meant to be seen from one viewpoint for a single illustration, so for the tugboat i needed to build it in the round and with an even finish on all of its surfaces. once i had the schematic drawings down and i was ready to build i was determined to build the boat out of only materials i had on hand in the studio, found objects and random bits of stuff that i seem to continuously attract. being that the book is about controlling the garbage you create i decided that if the tugboat was built out of junk that i would be doing my part to live up to the moral of the book.

here are a few close up shots of some details of the stuff that the tug is built with.

old furniture caster and pulley that stands in as a rope handling system that ties to the barge

showing the engine housing with old rubber tubes for the exhaust and i thought that yellow fuse looked good there

the railing is from a found wire screen and the edging under the railing is from used windshield wiper blades, the lifesavers are made from old rubber washers

salt encrusted windows

a view of  the gauges inside the windows (one of those details never seen in the book)

an old Leviton light switch

here are the steps in the front of the ship. the bumpers on the tug are rubber tires kept from discarded toys, and they are hanging on old leather belts which were used to construct the sides of the ship.

the cables and ropes are made with old wiring i found while remolding my house a few years back.

as a bit of a side note: i was given a box of  junk that was found by my uncle Jim while cleaning out the garage of his father, my grandfather who was known as Rusty. the 15lb box of  bits of machinery, misc hardware that is always left over from projects and broken things that my grandfather was sure would come in handy someday sat in my garage for awhile because i wasnt sure how to sort all the pieces and parts. the day i started to build the tugboat i hauled the box up to the studio hoping to find some pieces that would ‘fit’ on the tug. once i started to really look at what was in there, it was clear as day to me that all of the stuff did, in fact, come in handy. here’s to you grandpa!

if there are any fans of the Science channel there is an episode of Science Of The Movies (episode title ‘Secrets of South Park’) that will run on thursday Dec 3rd. the episode will have a segment on the Chiodo Bros who i was fortunate enough to work with on a project called Innards. i worked along side Brian Krueger and Stephen Chiodo and all the wonderful folks at the Chiodo facility. its my understanding that the main character from Innards named Chunk will be part of the segment on stop-motion animation and the science behind the technology of both old and cutting edge techniques.

The *CHIODO BROS.* segment is slated to air on:

*Thursday, December 3rd at 10PM ET/PT.
*
Because airdates frequently change, please be sure to check your local listings and/or the Science Channel website to confirm the airdate:
_http://sciencechannel.com/scienceofthemovies

_****You’ll need to search by the title of this episode, which is “Secrets of South Park.”*

here is a shot of Chunk on the set of innards

and here is a very early talk test i did with Chunk and his sidekick Miller.

cheers
chris

the next thing i needed to tackle was how to pull off an expressive Captain who goes from exuberant to angry to down right beaten up by countless rejections not to mention that it is just him and the garbage out on the open ocean. so i leaned on the old stop-motion animation technique of replacement animation. i created five heads that could be interchanged on one master body. i was able to categorize the captain’s many expressions into just five facial poses(expressions). first there is the neutral face which has a gentle smile/ smirk , second there is the open mouth exuberance, third is the jaw dropped expression of ‘oh no! it the mexican navy!’ forth is the teeth gritting scowl where he is about to blow his top and fifth is the face of a man that is beaten down and gasping for the last breath of fresh air. **(the ‘neutral’ face is not included in the following photo)

capt duffy's many faces

one little problem that arose in the midst of making the multiple heads was that his captain’s hat would need to fit each head and look good from any angle. after finding the right blue leather and about 3 hours of trial and error i got this little gem.

duffy's captain hat

another small detail throughout the book is the captain’s constantly changing t-shirt, my favorite being the one with Mr. Yuck from the green poison control phone number sticker that we had on the center of our rotary phone dial in my childhood home.

Mr. YUCK t-shirt cameo

last september i was one of a handfull of artists commissioned to create a desktop image for the new Windows 7 software. being that Windows 7 launched this week, i am finally able to make a post about it.

if you watch the following video at about 2:24 you’ll see my image on the touch screen demo.

the objective as far as i can remember was to create an image that conveyed adventure, delight, lightheartedness, and something fun to look at, and it needed to be able to appeal to a wide audience…

with his homemade cloud suit and a pair of feathers he takes a leap of faith at the center fountain where all wishes are made.

so for any rednose fans out there, you’ll be happy to find a little ‘freebie’ in your next Windows upgrade. i just hope ‘the launch’ goes over well…

here are the approved sketch and colorstudy. it honestly was a blast to work on and even the rejected sketches ended up being created for my own work later on. thanks to everyone at 72&Sunny for the adventure.

some details

after the landfill research, i dove into trying to figure out the color scheme for the book. keeping in mind that the story spans an entire summer and travels to several places, i wanted the color to help convey various times of day , attitudes, conflicts and most importantly to use color to show how the garbage gets worse and wears more heavily on the captain over time.

here is the colorstudy sheet with each spread being about 1.5″ tall. i like to keep all of them on the same page so i can see how the color flows thru the book as a whole as opposed to just working on each individual spread. i used watercolors and the small scale to help me work quickly and to hopefully not to overthink the color.

here are a few details of the colorstudy. with scribbles and notes in the margins. looking back at this i see that it was merely a starting point for the colors that as i worked on the finals, evolved into more complex color schemes but this initial study was constantly referred back to and use as the primary direction for the whole book.