Molly Walsh is the student who spearheaded my visit to RISD, she is a student with excellent drive that will lead her to amazing places.

RISD holds a dear spot in my heart, as I spent a semester there in 1995 as part of the Mobility Program where students in a network of private art schools can attend another school for a semester to take classes that their home school doesn’t offer. If you are a student you should inquire about it, it is/was a vastly untapped resource.

Anyways, I went to RISD to study scientific illustration, I spent practically all semester in the nature lab and spent my nights in the basement of some building at Brown Unv. drawing cadavers that the med students studied during the day.

I also was fortunate to take a watercolor class with the amazing Thomas Sqouros who sadly passed away in 2012.

After a semester I discovered that scientific illustration wasn’t exactly the right fit for me and I credit  Jean Blackburn for sitting down with me and telling me that I had a drive that needed to explore other realms of illustration and image making.

So needless to say I was delighted to visit with the classes of Jean Blackburn, Judy Sue Goodwin-Sturges, Ellen Weinstein, and my good friend Chris Buzelli.

I explored the Nature Lab all over again

and enjoyed a coffee at Carr House with SooJin Buzelli and Sota.

I then took the train to NYC and visited with the fine folks at Schwartz & Wade to talk about PR for the upcoming book The Beginner’s Guide to Running Away From Home.

I was able to pick up a copy of the April 22, 2013 issue of The New Yorker at a stand on Broadway to see my series of spots in it. Just a little thing, but was a pretty cool experience for this farm boy.

That evening I had a chance to sit down and chat with Sam Weber as part of his audio side project Your Dreams My Nightmares. I enjoy listening to his interviews (although I wasn’t able to listen past 10 minutes of my own). If you are not familiar with the podcasts, you should check them out. My interview is here.

this was my view overlooking Roosevelt Island

Next on the agenda was the main event at the Society of Illustrators. 4 hours of slap dash full throttle stop motion animation.

It was a packed house with 22 participants. Everyone was randomly paired with a partner, each pair was assigned a puppet and a prop or two. I gave a 30 minute demo and then set them loose. I am always amazed at how everyone just jumps in and goes at it.

Its a very small stage and folks have to practically work on top of one another and it soon becomes a large collaboration with several puppets and animators working simultaneously and taking every imaginable risk with the animation. 

I absolutely love this shot with all the hands on stage.

We did have a rogue pair that took to setting up their own scene complete with handmade iphone tripods. It almost appears to be a stereo-optic animation in the making.

All in all, they ended up with roughly 20 seconds of motion. Not too shabby for 4 hours:

and here is the result of the iphone breakout session. Credit to Wonil Suh:

Thanks to Molly and her cohorts at RISD and a very special thanks to Anelle, Johnny, Kate and Katie for allowing me to take over the Society of Illustrators for an afternoon.

when Irene described the story like this, i was hooked:

The story has a great atmosphere. (The writing is just odd enough to feel unfamiliar but not so much to be distracting or overly self conscious.) A urban dystopian setting. A group of young men without enough to do…And then an oddly dressed stranger comes in to give them some direction.

read the story here-> Jack of Coins

after reading the story i was obviously drawn to the stranger and his uniform. part band uniform, part military with a bit of face card thrown in. here are the sketches i narrowed it down to:

once Irene and i tossed the sketches around and talked about what we felt worked best, the building began.

here are shot of how the buttons for his jacket were created:

a collection of references for the uniform:

the ArtCraft Theater in Franklin, IN was my inspiration for the theater that needed to be constructed: 

here is the group of ‘kids’ that hang out under the marquee in the story: topping out at about 1″

the final:

thanks to Irene Gallo for thinking of my work for this project and to Christopher Rowe for the story

On the stands this week the Journey’s Issue of the NewYorker. If you happen to pick one up, get your postage stamp magnifying glass and see if you can find the series of Red Nose Studio images sprinkled throughout the issue.

Needless to say this is my first appearance in the NewYorker and i am beside myself. the scale of the images created a challenge compared to the vast real estate of a full page illustration, so i felt i needed to find a way to reduce the information so it could read at a postage stamp scale.

here are the sketches and initial tests i presented to the art director, looking for a way to capture the sense of adventure, exploration and an all around good time.

i was glad to hear that the Senior Designer Kathryn Long was as excited about this new approach as i was.

when digging through my sketchbooks looking for a character to build for the auction i stumbled across a crusty post-it note, at least 4 years old,  that simply said SHACKLETON CREW – dark figures on white.

the Shackleton story has many layers and mysteries, but one thing that is clear to me is the stunning imagery of the adventure captured by Frank Hurley. Specifically the figures of the crew whose clothing  and features had turned black because of the seal oil that they burned for heat.

after spending a weekend revisiting all the sites and references i had bookmarked for years i had my subject:  

i will be sure to post a link to  the auction when it is announced.

for now you can see the other works in the exhibit here: http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/04/microvisions-auction-happy-hour

Dana Hart, who runs the academy, has a heart  of gold and can inspire kids to attempt things I can hardly pronounce i.e. – Croisé, Pirouette, Échappé etc.

The story revolves around the struggle between a young girl, Sophia, and her Mother.

Taking place at the eccentric Grandmother’s house on Christmas Eve, Sophia searches for a lost gift, she stumbles across a a magic door in Grandmother’s bookcase. The portal leads to the secret world that is inhabited by Gremlins, Spiderwebs, Evil Witchy Things their Queen and the Mastermind Stephen Von Breckenbocker. Sophia must summon her strength from the Christmas Angels, Faith, Wisdom, and Perserverance. They help Sophia see the qualities in which her Mother has struggled to instill. Will Sophia be able to wrangle from the dusty grasps of the Evil Queen and Brockenbecker? Or will her spirit be swallowed up by confusion and fear?

Pretty cool stuff for a Christmas Ballet don’t ya think?

here is a nice little documentary of the production, showing rehearsals, costuming, make up and a few highlights of the ballet. the documentary was filmed and produced by Rebecca Elayne Dixon

Little Things – A Christmas Ballet from Rebecca Elayne Dixon on Vimeo.

For me, the challenge was how to create characters that help tell the visual story without any dialogue. Designing costumes that enhance movement of the dancers and not hamper it proved to be the biggest challenge. Seeing a costume on paper and on a body was one thing, but if that character couldn’t move like they needed to, things had to be modified.

below are the plans and progress shots of the magic bookcase-

this is a rehearsal shot of the Gremlins (my favorite characters) streaming out of the bookcase and into Grandmother’s house.

Journey created by That Game Company.

I am about as far removed as one can be from video games, but when i watched some of the walk throughs of the game on youtube i was instantly drawn in by the visuals and the concept of the game. A game that is described as peaceful to play, what a unique concept…

The game speaks for itself, if you can, give it a go. I look forward to playing it one of these days.

here is a bit on the process:

the nondescript character’s eyes have a mysterious glow to them that i wanted to capture. I notched the back of the head and inserted two led lights, and wired them to a button and circut board from a discarded superhero greeting card.

the cloak was fashioned after the character in the game, trying to remain as faithful to the design as possible yet keeping a handmade feel to it.

20 pounds of sand on the set.

the swirling light that wraps the characer was created by drawing with a little light bulb on a wire while the camera took a 3 second exposer. it only took about 300 shots to get the light steakes to look right.

here is a sequence of some of those light tests:

RedNoseStudio_Journey-lighttests

and the final piece:

This time it was for the Design Family Reunion aka the INSTEAD Conference. It is a conference unlike any other that i have participated in. A slowed down pace and conversation galore. Never have i had such an opportunity to sit back and take in conversation with new and old friends. No masses of people herding in and out of ballrooms and no powerpoint presentations.

Matthew Porter  spearheaded this event and he says ” We modeled the gathering  on family reunions and wedding weekends sans the pyschotic uncle or the perverted old grandfather. But we were inspired by other out of the box gatherings including Design Farm, Design Ranch, Into the Woods and Design Camp at AIGA chapters across the nation. We hope to call another gathering in two years in Washington Stat or outside Santa Fe.”

Here is the short animation put together by about 16 folks in 6 hours.

to see a plethora of photos from the Reunion go here on flicker.

my transportation for the weekend (the bike that is)

The set was supposed to be set up outside but due to heavy drizzle during the workshop we had to make due with what we had. (wouldnt have had it any other way) this still is from a test i did the day before. loved the light from the overcast day.

Rebecca Bedrossian of Communication Arts, and Adam Brodsley of Volume Inc and Wendy Quesinberry of Quesinberry & Associates.

Doug Grimmett of Primal Screen working the Cyclist.

Jacqueline McCarthy of Vivitiv on the left. Burt Durand on camera and Brian Stauffer aka rigging.

Special thanks to Mark Kaufman also of Vivitiv for helping facilitate the workshop prior to and during the conference.

the mass of negatives from the polaroid land camera workshop by Woody Welch and Sean Carnegie of El Chavez

Me and Debra Naeve of Monterey Bay Aquarium trying to figure out a land camera before we cycle around the area for the elusive ‘perfect’ shot.

my humble attempt at a lino cut from the print workshop with Mr. Patience himself Francois X Pavy.

Hats of to Mr. Porter for a delightful gathering and for raising the bar on this crazy notion of getting to know folks face to face.

I was taken back a bit, never would have figured that i would be asked to the poster. (although, i remember staring at Tim Bower’s image for the 44th annual call for entries poster (the 19th image in his portfolio) and dreamily trying to imagine what i would create if i were in his shoes)

John told me that i would be able to pick the designer i wanted to collaborate on the poster. and i quickly jotted down 2 names on the corner of whatever sketch i was working on at the time. As the next few days passed, i was digging up names from projects in the past, people i hadn’t worked with but always wanted to, designers and art directors from a variety of fun jobs. i found myself scared to ask anyone to collaborate on the poster with me, what if i really screwed it up, who would be willing to go down with me?

ultimately it came down to those first two names i jotted down. i knew both of them were extremely busy and if i was going to ask i would have to do it so they just couldn’t say no.

i drew up this clumsy but honest note to ask my top pick, SooJin Buzelli to collaborate with me on the poster and sent it in the mail. knowing it would take at least a week to hear back if i was lucky.

Within a few days i received a call from SooJin saying that she hardly ever looks through her mail and she wasn’t even sure when the note was sent to her. THANKFULLY she said yes.

We talked about possible themes and John mentioned that he wanted to see something humorous, not to0 self-serving and not too topically specific.

Here is a selection of sketches i sent off.

Some of the sketches were favorites from my then current sketchbook and some where more directed to the spirit of competition.

It came down to the pencil sharpener and buffalo concepts. I am still not sure what the origin of the buffalo in relation to the Society of Illustrators is, but we were trying to find a way to play off the idea of the double buffalo and the number 55.

In the end we chose the pencil sharpener concept and when discussing how to address the back of the poster we thought something like this might be fun.

when i initially created the sketch i hadn’t put much thought into the type of pencil sharpener that would work best.

here is a test with the studio sharpener and a paper figure to determine the scale and general format of the image.

i quickly discovered that all pencil sharpeners are generally 4″ tall which meant my puppet would need to be roughly half the scale of what i normally build.

after asking all the older folks in the neighborhood,  if they had any old, crusty pencil sharpeners in their garages and barns, i turned to Etsy and Ebay, eventually finding a nice yellow one in Idaho and a red one in Chicagoland. I went with the red one from the 1920′s from Chicago off Ebay.

here is the colorstudy.

here is a bit of progress on the backside of the poster.

After many phone calls and wonderful sequential folding systems by SooJin, we eventually came to a solution on how to best make the information flow.

it was up to me to give SooJin images that would make her job as easy as possible.

here is a final view of the front and back. it is a real treat to see it at 36″x24″

Thanks to John Hendrix and the Society of Illustrators for having the confidence in my work and especially for SooJin for taking this journey with me!!

Thanks to Magnet Reps for a delightful 11 years, looking forward to the next 11. I don’t think any of us expected Red Nose Studio to have this broad of a reach, although our guts had a ‘feeling’ way back then.

Here is to trusting your gut!