That Perfect Girl is Gone

2014 was at our house, like many others, the year of Frozen. For my younger daughter, who was four at the time, it was all Elsa all day everyday. As a stay-at-home parent, you have two options in this situation: go absolutely, completely bonkers or just embrace it. I opted for the latter. Yes, I know the words to ALL the songs in Frozen, not just “Let It Go.” Yes, I have been seen at stoplights singing “Let It Go” at the top of my lungs with the windows open.

2014 was also the first time I decided to exhibited my work at an arts and crafts show. Nothing huge, just one one sponsored by our public library. When thinking about pieces I would make, I knew I had to make one based upon Elsa, especially after I found some great papers that would perfect for recreating her ice dress. The dress top is a blue vellum with glitter paper beading. The dress is made from a great shiny, not quite metallic paper with blue vellum snow flakes. For the detailing on the arms, I made stencils for the shapes, painted them with glue, and sprinkled them with glitter.

(Process pictures above)

A few days before the show, posted pictures to Facebook of what I would be selling – including my just completed “That Perfect girl is Gone.” The morning of the art show, my buddy Barry (The Grand DM) showed up with his family and immediately purchased Elsa. Apparently, he’d been looking through his feed and his two daughters fell in love with the picture immediately. Needless to say, I was flattered. Then, while his wife took the kids to look through some of the other booths, Barry asked me if I could make a matching Anna they could give the girls for Christmas. No way I could turn that down!

Anna was quite a bit of fun to make, especially since her costume is more intricate than Elsa’s. I used Prismacolor pencils to give the embroidery on her bodice a more realistic look as well as using them for her hair. Her face and hands are hand-painted watercolor paper since I have yet to find a mass produced craft paper that captures normal skin tones well – they are usually too yellow or brown.

The Phantom of the Opera

This recreation of the Playbill for the Broadway smash hit The Phantom of the Opera was commissioned as a Christmas present for theater lover. (My first commission for non friend or relative.)

While the design for this piece is deceptively simple, I actually had to develop several techniques to achieve the desired look: how to glue paper to glass and not have it fall right off as well how to score the heavy water color paper and bend it into shape. I had initially tried my normal layered paper techniques but the results were less than satisfactory so I had to learn to score, fold and bend for a more three-dimensional look. I also had to use a heavier paper so that it could be painted to give the porcelain appearance of the Phantom’s mask. All of the lettering is glued to a separate layer of glass so that it floats above the background.

Wild Ride

Still playing catch up…

Somewhere around two and half years ago, I received a Facebook message from my friend Jeff's wife Lisa. She’d seen pictures of my work and wondered if I could make a Disney-themed piece for Jeff’s birthday. A Disney themed piece for my first commission? Doesn’t get much better than that!

The first hurdle was determining which character from the vast Disney lineup would be right for the project. Jeff had made numerous references to Mr. Smee from Peter Pan in his Facebook posts, so that was my first pitch. Then in the course of conversation with Lisa, he mentioned that his favorite character was Donald Duck. While searching out some Donald Duck reference images, I came across the cartoon short Bee at the Beach (1950) and thought it would be a perfect fit - Jeff and Lisa are big beach people, proponents of the beach life attitude and year-round residents of Oak Island, NC. While I was working on some early ideas, Lisa continued brainstorming and came to the conclusion that maybe something based around one of Jeff’s favorite attractions from Walt Disney World (WDW) would be better, something along the lines of The Hatbox Ghost piece I had made for myself. Maybe something from Pirates of the Caribbean or better yet, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride:

“Jeff loved that ride. His parents took us for a week after we graduated college. They hung out with his sister and left us to ourselves. We had an amazing time one particular day, and it ended with us getting the Mr. Toad car on our last ride as the park was closing. Made Jeff's day. The teenager running the ride thought his excitement was a little weird, but he had fun.”

That was it, we had to do Mr. Toad. Of course, there was a problem -

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride closed on September 7, 1998, and was subsequently replaced with The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. (Wikipedia)

I had to recreate something that hadn’t existed for about 15 years. While the attraction still exists at Disneyland, the exterior looks much different from the defunct WDW incarnation. 1998 was still squarely in the pre-digital age and as such, I had to rely on people’s scans of  their “old” photos they had posted to the Web. Luckily, I was able to find enough old photos (and even a 3D VR Rendering) of the entire ride to make a reasonable attempt at recreation:

  

(Some of my reference pictures)

After looking through all the photos I could find, I decided that the best way to capture both the essence of the ride and Jeff’s attachment to it was to make the outer mat layer represent the attraction’s entrance pillars (complete with Medieval Faire canopy) and have the main center layer show the Toad Hall Exterior queue area. Finally, I would have silhouettes of Jeff and Lisa sitting in one of the ride vehicles heading into the first room which would make up the back layer. Here is the sketch I put together sketch for Lisa:

As you can see, the sketch is remarkably close to the final product, except that we eventually changed the tag line to “The Wild Ride Goes On”  and changed the silhouettes from Early 90’s Jeff and Lisa to 2013 Jeff and Lisa (which really only entailed giving Jeff a bit less hair .)

 

Process Pictures

The picture with Mr. Mole gives you a scale idea of the detail I used.

Detail Pictures

Unfortunately, what you can’t see is that the fireplace is fully realized and there are miniature, hand drawn versions of the “Modern Art” painting of Mr. Toad hidden by the car and figures. I didn’t get a chance to photograph them before I had to put it together.

Each and every stone is hand drawn and hand cut, as are the wooden roof shingles

 

This was a really fun project made all the better because it was for friends - there is just something about knowing your art is hanging in a friend’s house.

Leaves, Leaves and Some More Leaves

 

A little more than a year ago, my mom was invited to the wedding of our family friends’ daughter (they were all actually long time neighbors from house where I grew up.) My mom has always been one for special gifts, something out of the ordinary and memorable (often loud and obnoxious.) The couple had  chosen a unique wedding invitation (right) and she thought that a custom cut paper mat for their wedding photo based on the invitation design would be just the one-of-a-kind gift she was looking for.

 

 

Here (left) is the final product: the mat is 13”x19” with a double-matted section for an 8”x10” photograph. In order to accurately replicate the leaves in the original design, I used both light and dark orange craft papers. For each color, I created a small, medium and large leaf shape and then made right-curving and left-curving versions of each size. That’s twelve distinct leaves. I hand cut all the leaves, about 200 in all (enough for some extras) and then added veins with a marker to each and every one. I think I went a bit cross-eyed by the end, but the result was worth it.

In an effort to get all my artistic endeavors under a consistent and easy to find name, I've decided change my business name to Ike Horton Arts.

Book Review: ROUGH DRAFT by Mike Yamada and Victoria Ying

Mike Yamada and his wife Victoria Ying have pretty impressive animation credits for a couple of young artists: He’s worked on Puss in Boots, Kung Fu Panda 2, How to Train Your Dragon, Flushed Away, Monsters vs. Aliens as well as a bunch of live-action films and she’s worked at Disney Animation on Tangled, Paperman, Wreck it Ralph and Frozen. So, when they write a book about Visual Development, it’s time to pay attention.
2011-2013 rough Draft: The Collected Art Demos of Mike Yamada and Victoria Ying ($20+shipping for the paperback version or $15 for the ebook) is a slim volume of only 46 pages that gives a great introduction to the field of Visual Development (Vis Dev in industry slang.) The book is split into two parts: Part One – Ideas and Part Two – Case Studies.
Part one gives a brief introduction to the world of Vis Dev including the many roles the Visual Development Artist plays in the early stages of an animated film, helping to create the “look” of the the film. There are sections of research, how to match the lighting of your world to the needs of the story, and a step by step look at their painting process.

Part Two follows the Vis Dev process from start to finish through three case studies taken from classes Yamada and Ying taught at the Concept Design Academy in Pasadena, California: Snow White set in Feudal Japan, Pinocchio set in Tibet and Peter Pan set in the South Seas. Seeing how the pair worked through each of their concepts, changed the design and developed the color scripts for the projects is really an eye opening experience and could be helpful to traditional artists as well as animators. I found the color scripting sections the most interesting, how the changing dominant colors in the sequences followed the progression of the story as well as how certain colors become identified with different characters. Although I'm not an animator, aspects this concept seems to be applicable to any sort of of illustration work, especially if you are working on multiple pieces to illustrate a book or story  (I just ran across this same concept in James Gurney's (Dinotopia) painting book Imaginative Realism. ) After reading and studying Ying's and Yamada's work, I definitely have a better feel for how to relate the colors associated with certain characters in my work with the appropriate feelings I want to evoke. And there is so much more: how to develop props and do set dressing, creating characters who seem live in the same world, and how incorporate parts of your reference pictures so that your work feels genuine without being a slave copy of the original.

If you are interested in animation and Vis Dev in particular, Rough Draft is great little book well worth the price (hey, the book is self-published so you are supporting some awesome artists.) For more of Yamada’s and Ying’s work, check out their blog site Extracurricular Activities – they update regularly with tips, product reviews and thoughts on being an artist.

If you are interested in further reading about Visual Development/ Production Design, check out Hans Bacher’s Dream Worlds: Production Design for Animation (2007) which I will review in a future post.

“Got My Eye on You”

Art Size: 9 1/2" x 9 1/4" ( 11 1/2" x 11 1/2" matted)
Frame size: 12 3/4" x 12 3/4"
 
I have to admit that I didn’t see Monsters, Inc. when it was originally released back in 2001. That was pretty busy year for my wife and me: we bought a house and then spent months doing extensive renovations before we were married in October. Also, our Disney obsession hadn’t kicked in yet. I’ve always been a fan of Disney Animation and I loved the first two Toy Story films from Pixar, but it wasn’t our older daughter was old enough to really enjoy the Disney magic that our true obsession manifested. I have seen Monsters, Inc. on video numerous times since then (it’s now among my favorite animated films) and made sure to see the 3D conversion in the theater the other year.
 
It’s really is no surprise that Mike Wazowski has been my favorite character, as well as one of my favorite Disney characters period, since I first saw the film. I’ve been a fan of Billy Crystal’s smart-alecky style of comedy for years. He’s note perfect in films like When Harry Met Sally, City Slickers and even his bit part in The Princess Bride. In Monster's, Inc, Crystal played Mike as the embodiment of the everyman nerd, a perfect balance of joie de vie, chutzpah and sarcasm. The relationship between Mike and Sully (John Goodman) is the closest to the old Vaudeville acts of Abbot & Costello or Laurel & Hardy we are likely to see.

I created this illustration around the time that Monster’s University was released in the Summer of 2013. While Mike’s overall design is a simple ball with arms, legs and an eye, there is actually a bit more nuance to him as he appears in the film. I created the interior of his mouth from several layers of paper and then added detail with Sepia Pigma Micron  drawing pen and a tan Copic  brush marker on his teeth (I used the same technique on his horns.) I also used watercolor paint for shadow areas (the first time for this) and scored/bent the paper around his mouth and on his eyelid to give a more three-dimensional look.

   

For the First time in forever…

 

Now, that we’re over half-way through January 2015, it seems like a good time to recap what I did in 2014. I didn’t accomplish everything I’d planned in my January 2014 post, but I did manage quite a bit. I created 13 new works, by far my greatest output so far,  participated in a local arts & crafts fair and sold eight pieces (included in that total were three commission pieces – two for family/friends and one for someone who saw my work at the craft fair.) I also submitted my  piece “The Hatbox Ghost” (coming a future post) for consideration in a group show, but, unfortunately, wasn’t chosen.

2015 looks to be an exciting year. I’m currently working on another commission piece that will grace the walls  the soon-to-open “Game Tavern” – my good friends Raithe and Barry have been renovating half their basement into a Medieval-themed tavern for our Dungeons &Dragons role playing group (best mid-life crisis ever!) The piece is  based on Dave Trampier’s cover for the 1979 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook, probably one of the most famous/recognizable pictures in fantasy art. We decided to put a bit of a person twist on the project and replace the adventurers in Trampier’s original with five of the legendary characters from Barry’s over thirty-year-old campaign world Ultanya (he started this world when we were in elementary school!) For this project, I’m departing from my general practice of using commercially available craft paper and, instead, I’m going to hand paint each and every piece to capture the feel of the original. I’m working to bring my acrylic painting skills up to the level of the task ahead.

Skill building is actually a lot of what the first part of this year will be about. Besides painting, I’m also working on my drawing skills so that when my younger daughter starts Kindergarten in the Fall, I can really start seriously producing pieces. Look for posts about my progress along the way as well as reviews of the books I’m using – I’m currently working my way through Andrew Loomis’ Drawing the Head and Hands, a 1956 classic that inspired many modern illustrators (including the phenomenal Alex Ross) and has only come back into print in the last few years. Beyond that, I’ve also recently reorganized a spare room into a studio space so that I will no longer have to work at the dining room table – a big relief for our whole family.

Over the next few weeks I will post pictures of my 2014 work (  as well as some older pieces I never posted) and some reviews and later this Spring possibly even a tutorial so you can see how I work. Happy 2015!