Thursday, September 25, 2014

STAR S'MORES _ Art Direction


The 45th Season of Sesame Street premiered last week and with it came the 2nd Season of COOKIE'S CRUMBY PICTURES, a show within the show that features Cookie Monster parodies of popular films.

It's a continuation of Magnetic Dreams Studios' work on various Sesame projects and another chance for us to do farcical recreations of movies that inspire us. None of them elicited more enthusiasm and creativity from our team than the Star Wars spoof, STAR S'MORES!





Below are some pieces of concept art and finished frames. As Art Director, I create the initial brainstorming pieces with Sesame and Creative Director, Rickey Boyd. 

Determining the nature of our dessert-based "Death Star."

Once it was confirmed that it would be mechanical, I incorporated baking-themed hardware (muffin trays, spoons, waffle irons) into the interior design.


From there, I'll do rough photo plate work-ups as reference for backgrounds that will be fully modeled by our CG dept. There's usually one per episode but we ended up with 4 for this one.

My rough concept for a graham cracker and kitchen cockpit for the "S'morellennium Falcon."

And... the final model by Brad Applebaum with additional lighting, color, and effects by our Compositors. 


Finally, I'm responsible for any of the 2D assets: photo plates, logos, graphics, and any puppeted characters.

A closer look at my 2D Tatooine and our cameos of a "Banthalupagus" and "R2-PU."

With stellar writing, performances, and source material to work from, these have been a blast to develop. We're currently in production on the recently-announced Avengers and Jurassic Park spoofs and here's a sneak preview of a few more upcoming episodes this season...




Monday, September 22, 2014

THE SHOWING _ Poster Illustration

I got to illustrate this poster for S/Lang Entertainment's stellar short film,
THE SHOWING.


It's dreamy material and I had a beautifully shot still and "Hitchcock blonde" lead actress Katie Morrison to work from.

It was also my first time doing digital watercolor, abetted by Kyle T. Webster's extremely natural and responsive brushes.

The film will drop this fall, trailer below and an IMDb profile has been added HERE:


The Showing Trailer from S/Lang Entertainment on Vimeo.