Justin Wright

On March 18th, Pixar story comrade Justin Wright passed away due to heart complications at the age of 27. I saw first hand Justin's dedication to his craft as he worked his way through a summer internship to become a full fledged story artist at Pixar; a goal he had had for a long time and through hard work and tremendous spirit, achieved.

Last summer, we worked closely together on the short film PRESTO, for which there were just three members of our story squad. It's a surprise we got any work done, because most of the time we were howling with laughter at each other's gag drawings, each one topping the next, flowing like water. In one of those sessions, Justin humorously declared he had drawn the "worst drawing ever". We debated him, but Justin insisted on bestowing the honor to himself. Much to his chagrin (and amusement), director Doug Sweetland framed the drawing and presented it at our next meeting, where it presided for all our future sessions. Justin's attitude combined professionalism with an eagerness to please and brought tremendous spirit and humor to the productions he was a part of.

In a few months he will be credited for his work on "WALL•E" and "PRESTO", the short that preceeds it. A mighty achievement.

My thoughts go out to all his family and friends.

You can see Justin's work on his blog.
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Angoulême 2008

Time for a quick report...

The best parts of my France trip were not necessarily seeing the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe or the Musée D'Orsay for the first time, or the fine meals I ate while in the various cities, but rather the terrific people I met along the way. Here are just a few of the fine folks I met on my trip to France.


Richard and Emmanuel (L to R), editors of Akileos. I had my first meeting with them in San Diego last year and between now and then they really stepped up to make the French edition of Rose and Isabel a terrific looking book. They have been great to work with and the book is a wonderful result of their collaboration. Huge thanks to them for making this whole experience happen!(pictured here at Album in St. Germán.)



Dean and Barbara Yeagle (seated across from each other at far table position) and Jean-Jaques and Diane Launier (seated across from each other at middle table position). This was taken at dinner after an opening of Dean's art at Gallery Arludik in Paris. They are a very friendly couple and were a pleasure to hang out with during my stay. Jean-Jaques and Diane are the owners of Gallery Arludik and have been putting on shows by tremendous artists over the years. Their passion for animation as art was very inspiring and they were very gracious in showing us a fun time while we were in Paris.



I met Christopher and Brigitte while in Tours; Christopher is a well established comic artist that lives and works in Tours. He was incredibly gracious in lending his day to translate for Bill and I, as well as taking pictures of us signing and showing us around. Brigitte is from Bédélire books, an amazing shop where we did our signing; Brigitte made sure that we were well taken care of and enjoyed our time in Tours.



Here I am at the Hotel Mercure in Angoulême with (L to R) Christopher, Ben Cornish and Nick Parry-Jones, who work for Diamond UK and Legends, two fine Brits who I had the pleasure of drinking some beers with. Very funny fellows both.



Nicolas Seigneret (Bannister) and his girlfriend Flora. Bannister and Flora are an artist/writer team who have stories in the Flight compilations as well as books published by Dupuis. I had chatted with Bann via email and the web over the years and we finally got to meet in person at Angoulême.



Here we are with Jean Giraud! at The Hotel Mercure. The Mercure was the spot to hang out and socialize with fellow artists and exhibitors after dinner. Jean Giraud was very kind to accept copies of our books.

Many thanks also go out to the people who facilitated our signings and those that came by to check out Rose and Isabel at the stores and the festival. I've said it before about the San Diego Con and will say it about Angoulême as well -- it's meeting people that's the most fun for me. Thank you all for coming by!
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This is awesome

Cate Blanchett costumed up for Indy 4. This Annie Liebowitz photo is a great way to start my 2008. I know Indy 4 takes place more than 100 years later, but anyone who has read Rose and Isabel knows why I like this picture.

Happy 2008 everybody!
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The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (pt.2)

Now that AOJJ has disappeared from local cinemas, it's really started to irk me what a short shrift this film got. It was quikly dispatched from the two screens it was playing on here in Emeryville, and then relegated to the tiny screening room at the Opera Plaza cinema in SF before being shuffled off without even a moment to shine. What an injustice to such a beautiful film.

I was lucky enough to see it in one of its better presentations at the ArcLight in Los Angeles. This film was meant for the big screen. It will be awfully hard to appreciate its beauty and scope on the small screen when it comes to DVD and people finally have a chance to see it.



I got the soundtrack today however and it's fantastic. Nick Cave and Warren Ellis have crafted two of my favorite soundtracks in recent years, for AOJJ and the Proposition. If you have a listen to the soundtrack and haven't seen the film, it's not hard to imagine the imagery that Roger Deakins put up on the screen. Masterful.

Casey Affleck will most likely be overlooked at Oscar time which is too bad as well, he was very very good in the role of Robert Ford, a tragic character that Casey really brought to life.

UPDATE (1/6/08) Regarding my pessimistic and sarcastic remark about awards shows ignoring Casey's performance: much to my delight he is being recognized and just won the National Society of Film Critics award for best supporting actor.
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Robert Richardson, ASC

I'm a big fan of cinematographer Robert Richardson's work, and wanted to post some stills from The Horse Whisperer which he shot. I wish I had higher quality images because these do absolutely no justice to the magnificence of what he captured with the camera. I really like the film as well; there are a couple scenes in particular that I keep going back to that I hope to analyze here.

The film has been an influence on my work in Rose and Isabel and also with Cora and was the reason I changed the Cora setting from Texas to Montana, where the majority of The Horse Whisperer takes place.

How he got the snow to refract light like that (in stills #4 & #5) I have no idea. Beautiful. I also really like the figure eight/moebius strip of fences in still #6.










More Richardson from Horse Whisperer:

Return from SDCC07

First off, thanks to everybody who stopped by the booth this year; I enjoyed meeting and talking with all of you. I had a lot of fun this time around and Derek and I ended up selling out of all the books we brought with us (nothing to ship back!). Once again, I didn't get out onto the Con floor as much as I'd liked and there were some folks that I wasn't able to catch up with and I apologize for that.

I did however manage to acquire a few things and here are some of them:



THE ART OF DEANNA MARSIGLIESE : I can't say enough about this one - I've had her blog linked here for quite a while and I'm very excited to now have a book of her work. I kept it in the booth with me so I could look at it in my free moments as well as to pimp it to my friends who stopped by. It is chock full of design awesomeness and Deanna was very gracious in drawing in each and every book she sold.



Every page is gold and my favorite of all of them is "Cat Fight" with the space girls and aliens. What I love most about the drawings in the book is not only are they great designs, but they have an incredible amount of character and story attached to them. This is a rarity and the reason I will go back to this book over and over. The attitudes and body language of the characters in "Cat Fight" (and every other page in the book) say so much and are absolutely hilarious to boot.



JOCK is Jamie Baker's mini comic about a pet dog he grew up with in Australia. This is a little gem of a book and I had a blast reading it. Jamie has posted some very well written and funny stories on his blog and to experience his autobiographical writing matched up with his funny drawings is a real treat. He really captures the spirit of the dog Jock and his rag-tag group of canine buddies. Jamie I hope you do more of these!



MISS PAS TOUCHE by Hubert and Kerascoet is a book I heard about from Ronnie del Carmen who posted about it here. I was finally able to track them down at Stuart Ng and I am making a vow to learn the French necessary to read them because the drawings are amazing.

In addition to these, a few of the other great books I picked up were Louie Del Carmen's STEEL NOODLES, Pierre Alary's BELLADONE pt. 3, Chris Sanders' SKETCHBOOK #2, the new LOVE AND ROCKETS, Kelsey Mann's NOIR SKETCHBOOK, FLIGHT 4 (thanks Kazu!), Bobby Rubio's ALCATRAZ HIGH, SKIP LIEPKE's art book, and more. Next year I'll be driving down so I'll be able to safely transport the toys, posters and prints that I wasn't able to this year.

-T

PS: book orders that were placed during the last week will ship tomorrow and thursday.


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Lou Romano

The June 25 issue of THE NEW YORKER features a cover by Lou Romano! Very cool. Congrats Lou!

Lou Romano
New Yorker

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photo inspiration

When drawing for the Rose and Isabel and Cora books, inspiration comes in all forms. The latest is this picture of Japanese pianist virtuoso Hiromi. I love the intensity that's been captured.

Photo by Bruce C. Moore

Bernet and Brushes

I have been constantly turning to "TEX - L'homme D'Atlanta" by Jordi Bernet for inspiration; his drawings have a looseness and accuracy at the same time which I can't get enough of. His interplay of light and shadow is fantastic, as are the compositions, and...well, basically everthing about it is cool. I've been playing around in Photoshop a bit to get a digital brush that feels more natural to me and thanks to Mr. Bernet's work, I've been getting closer to the mark. I was also given a different type tip for the Cintiq pen which feels more like scratching on toothy paper; I kind of like it so far. Experiments will continue...here's the first.

Composition, part 1

I love Wes Anderson's films; I refer to them often when I'm storyboarding because of the way they are composed. I love the flat space staging, the design of the shots. It's very hard to stage something in flat space without making it look, well, flat.

That's where the design of the frame comes in. The placement of characters, props, lighting; things to move your eye and keep you interested. Below are some shots form the prologue of The Royal Tenenbaums that illustrate this idea very well. Not all of the shots are flat space of course, but to me, for some reason, the shots with diagonals and shapes that recede in perspective still seem to imply flat space, like a storybook. And that's a GOOD thing.


Title card; totally flat, as well as symmetrical, with the mouse added for interest (also a story point). Also of note is the use of color here. Pink against green. Who would've thought? (pink, green and brown are dominant throughout the film).


Flat again, with just a dab of asymmetry.


Although the buildings recede in perspective, this shot is still flat. The tops of the buildings form a straight line that cuts right through the middle of the frame. (notice the color on the flag; green and pink)


Deep space. I love the placement of the actor Gene Hackman here; taking full advantage of the 2:35 frame. There is a tiny swatch of warm orange in the doorway to emphasize him.


Awesome staging. Great use of the wide frame and interesting placement of characters. This is flat space again; there are only two (yup, two) diagonals in the shot; the molding on the wall behind Margot's head and the angle of the book she's reading. Both are angling towards Etheline (Anjelica Huston), the focus of the shot.

The book Margot is reading is cheated to the camera so we can see the title (Chekhov - she is smart and like plays). Chas' head is out of frame and he's standing in profile to the camera, creating flat space (supporting his rigid and analytical nature). Richie is wearing tennis gear and looking at a book of maps (when we first meet the adult Richie, he is traveling). There is so much information just in this one shot, all because of the way it's composed.

More to come next week.

Comics and Wine

This is from a while back...a trip I made to Italy earlier this year. During a late afternoon in Bologna, we stumbled upon a cool little bar while looking for a snack and drink to tide us over until dinner. We walked in and lo and behold, there were shelves of comics to read while snacking on prosciutto and drinking wine. i picked up a book of Torpedo, which had some really great work by Mr. Bernet as well as an artist I had not heard of, Alfonso Font. Our bartender was exceedingly cool as well. Ah, serendipity.