The Wood Carver's Cottage

I ran across this little place the other day while hiking through the Pine Woods on the far side of Gwelf. A very peaceful area to walk as you can well imagine. The hypnotic smell of nutmeg and apples was thick on the afternoon breeze - his wife must have been baking. What's interesting about the area around his cottage is all the little bits of carving you come upon. Ornate little designs carved into tree trunks and grotesque heads fashioned out of old stumps turn up in the most unlikely places. I would highly recommend this walk to anyone the next time you're in the area. I would however avoid the mushrooms in that part of the forest. They are, for the most part very hallucinogenic and will undoubtedly make your return trip an unexpected challenge.

Happy Travels.

More soon.

Designing Oliver Part Two - Fagin

 This is the second part of the little self imposed assignment I gave myself this past Easter Weekend to design some characters from the classic Dickens novel, Oliver Twist. Here I'm thinking about the arch villain of the story and the most evil character among a wide ranging group of nasty characters. Fagin is a paranoid, greedy, two faced, back stabbing fence and exploiter of children - just awful, but really fun to draw - so here are some variations on Fagin.

More soon.

Designing Oliver Part One - Bill Sikes

This was a little assignment I gave myself over this past long weekend. As I've stated before in previous posts, character design for animation is a field I am very much interested in, and having recently had the opportunity to do a little design work for a feature 3d film, I'm convinced that I want to do more of this kind of work. I thought I would start my Oliver Twist assignment with Bill Sikes. He is a brute, a pimp, a house breaker and a beater of women. He also has a dog named Bulls Eye - his only redeeming characteristic and the one aspect of his character that makes him less evil than Fagin.

I love this kind of work and could draw character variations all day long. However I have other things to get to so the fun had to stop here.

More soon.

The Hall Of Giants - Troll Documentary.

I was recently contacted by Michael Falcone, a documentary film maker concerning his film The Hall of Giants. It's about the legendary Fremont Troll Sculpture in Seattle. He wanted to use my Troll Image in his film as an example of what trolls can, and of course "do" look like. I was happy to let him use my pic and took this old image back into Photoshop and spruced it up a little.

Here's a link to a trailer on Vimeo for his film. The password is Troll - http://vimeo.com/29587103
It looks like fun.

Travel safely and peace be with you.

Cheers.