Cosmonuts

Regrouping

2009-10-28T00:45:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody! time to collect our selves and do some more organizing...get ready to do another big shoot....write more, build more dirty-up costumes more.

Here are a few shots from the last few weeks to wrap up our recent progress:

first up the closeup makeup tests.

He I am with jared prepping the floor for the garage shoot.

Kevin and I during the shoot.

Here's Jen hanging out after the shoot, still in costume.

A week later we watched the dailies with the kinder.

.

A few days after that we began working on another puppet.. this time out of rolled latex tentacles and an old portable T.V.

Marc started by coating some linoleum left over from our kitchen with the liquid latex.

we soon transfered the project to beneath the orange tree.

Marc sped things up with a hair drier.

Many layers of latex later we began rolling the tendrils.

Who'm I kidding, I'm just posing like a jerk! Marc did it all!

Mike faking it .

Here "we've" (i.e. Marc) attatched the first tentacles to the glove.

And Here's the robots head.

Eventually it will hopefully look something like this...

Thanks for looking!

J.G.Orrantia

First day of live action shooting!!!!!!

2009-10-20T01:03:00.000-07:00

Here's our first day of shooting with the actors!!! Finally!!!

Here Danica is doing EVERYONE'S makeup. (I'll post the make up tests soon)

A nice behind the scenes shot with evan and jen and mandy and laurie and myself.

My favorite pic of mike for the night.

The main crew on set!!

And finally... as if you didn't know it ... DON'T mess with jen the security chief!!!

good morning to all and keep looking!!!

J.G.O.

2009-10-12T18:43:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone! Another hectic and GREAT Friday! There were so many people at the J4 studio that we all spilled out into the yard! It was ALMOST overwhelming!

The Usuals showed... there's Marc and Kevin!

Our good friends Ed and Mike showed up! And it was Jen's cousin, Linda's last night in town!

We did fireworks with Jared! Here I am lighting one with the buddy.

Marc took somegreat pics of The boy twirling his sparklers through the night air.

Our friend Ken brought by his bitchin' camera for us to do tests with!

Here's Christian setting up the green screen to span the corner of the room. He lit the factory model just right! Some how it does'nt look like it's made out of garbage! The Magic Christian!

Here I am pulling some of my paintings off of the ceiling of the J4 workspace. Jen's cousin Linda's husband Alan is helping me. He will be driving away from L.A. in like 5 hours... good luck Alan... good luck. it's what like 1:30 right here....

Call when you get home!

Thanks for lookin' out everyone!
J.G.O.

2009-10-05T00:43:00.000-07:00

Hey every one! Another great friday!

We have a few new puppets on the table, in the first stages of construction. So far only their foam sculls are shaping up.

We did a preliminary costume design and fitting session. The only one that came out of this one really was Danica's costume. Good thing since she's our Captain! Here are a few pics. These are early days yet so we have a ways to go here but... the initial impression so far is good! Take a look...

Amelia Earhart, eat your heart out you sickly little wench!! move over and let a REAL woman through!!

Here's one of the alien costumes for the opening. Again early days here...

And some more gratuitous shots of the city...

Keep checking in!!!

J.G.O.

VIDEO!!!

2009-09-30T22:27:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody!
Jen and I finally got most of our ducks in a row and put a video test together! Here we are just dancing around with puppets to a song. It's the first time either of us has really done any puppeteering, so go easy on us... this is also the first time we've built real foam puppets, thank you Project Puppet. As I've written before the greenscreen is simple gartorboard painted with home depot house paint, and nailed to the studio's rafters. We just used the final cut pro color keying settings for this one. Next time we do an after effects pass first. OH Yeah! AAAnd we accidentally left one of the lights off so the puppets are dark on one side! We rock so hard...still it came out all right, I think.

Just to remind us what we're dealing with...

2009-09-29T00:09:00.000-07:00

2009-09-27T10:49:00.001-07:00

Hey everybody! We had a particularly great Friday gathering. It turned into the first day of shooting! Here's the pics of the surprise effects shoot we had.

Danica, the ship's captain, and Kevin who is playing one of the crew members were the first to arrive.
Danica is helping us keep the paperwork trains for the production running on time, on top of leading our little crew of misadventurers.

This is Christian! He's our awesome new D.P.

Here he's setting up the lighting for the alien city. He called us a couple of days ago, and told us he would have access to a red camera, and thought it would be great, to film some of our miniatures in high-def!!! I spent the whole next day fixing up the city, which had fallen into disrepair, over the years, to get it camera ready.

Our friend Joe Russo stopped by to help spin cities and wiggle fishy ships around. He didn't know, that he was gonna be pressed into service, doing manual labor on his friday night.
He just thought he was coming over for beer and pizza.

Here we are wiggling around the aforementioned fishy ship.

Mike stands ready with the egg whisk... just in case.

You can never be too careful!

Here's joe still waiting for his beer.

Mike jumps into action plying his whisk like a master!

Thank all that is good on this earth, that mike was on hand, to perform such an awe inspiring display of whiskery! Thanks to mikes fast whiskeration, we thankfully, will never know the tragedy that almost occured.

Christian sets up a lighting effect that Joe Russo suggested.

Here, we're rehearsing what it would look like. Marc is spinning the Russo contraption.

It ended up looking great!

Christian behind the camera checking out the shot.

Getting the back of the ship.

We also started figuring our our costumes. Kevin is modeling his crew jumpsuit. It's the only one that's working out so far!!! bummer...

As usual Marc is the last man standing. Here he is on his way out..

Goodnight Marc.

Thank you everyone for a great fun Friday night!
J.G.O.

It's about time!

2009-09-23T23:34:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone. As some of you may know, we are neck deep in puppet building! We are flying fast and furryous! Cutting fleece and foam, glueing stuff burning ourselves with hot glue guns and poking ourselves with needles. I've never has this much fun in my life! We have filmed some video tests and I hope to post them soon, until then take a look at these few pics of our process.

Here's another shot of the puppet bay in the studio.

And here's one of jen building one of the little buggers! she's working on a foam skull for a girl puppet.

We are using patterns fromProject Puppet a great source for simple professional puppet patterns!

Here's a pic of Marc testing one of the early prototype puppets against a home made green screen I set up in the studio. I'm using halogen track lighting to illuminate it, and had the paint clerks at Home Depot mix up the brightest green they could muster up.... hope it works. We'll find out soon I guess!

Here he is setting up a test for motion tracking the screen of a robot puppet we are building.

And here's a pic of the studio as we set up another test with a couple of the puppets.

...Mmmmm naked puppet...

I am now in the middle of setting up the costumes and props for the show... lots of running around let me tell you. And putting together all the paperwork and schedules to try to get this thing done, bummer stuff man. On a brighter note We just aquired a DP!!! welcome aboard Christian! He's helped us to get out $#!+ together. Just having to explain what we are trying to do has sharpened our idea of what we need to do!. No big news I'm sure but a revelation to me. I got so much to do.... i gotta go to bed....

hope every one keeps checking in!

J.G.O.

UNDERFOOT

2009-09-23T23:33:00.001-07:00

We are doing a bathroom remodel and we found this embedded in the middle of the room under our floor. Apparently it's been there since the 30's!

cool

2009-08-02T23:26:00.000-07:00

No big meeting this week. Which is kind of good, since I still have to finish the board. Jen's doing some cool stuff with the animatic. A portion of which We may post at some point. This week however, I thought I'd post a couple of designs I did, for some random crew members. We could do these as hand puppets.

2009-07-25T16:57:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody! We had a real great session friday night working on the short! I pitched the first draft of the board to a good chunk of the crew. We spent some time working out how to extend the Orbitz drinks we are going to use for outer space. And we watched a rough cut of the animatic of the opening! Unfortunately we dont have any photos of the pitch but we do have some of mark and I trying out something for the ship after every one else went home.

I bought a couple of rolls of reflective tape to use as lit portholes.

We used a paper punch to cut out uniform portholes and placed a couple on the side of the ship. using the flash we got a pretty good lit window effect.

next thing to do is to strap a high powered flashlight onto a video camera and see if we can get the effect we are trying for in motion.

the following pics are cloae shots that marc took of stuff laying around the studio just for fun.

Wow! it's been 3 months since my last post!

2009-04-30T22:47:00.000-07:00

Well i'm back at lest for tonight! here's a shot of what I want cosmonuts to look like !

to a certain degree...yes that's mike bell! He will be playing the ships cook... and doctor! Is his food so bad that he HAS to practice his medical skills or is it that his food is so bad so that he CAN practice his medical skills ... we'll never know!

I'll have more posts as we complete the short that were doing this year. As soon as the Phineas and Ferb hiatus starts...(if it is a hiatus that is ) We'll be able to shift into high gear! ..... I hope!!

A most beautiful city

2009-01-22T21:02:00.000-08:00

Here's a city in the air I am calling Boufant City. It's for the same project as the Fish Ship and it's made the same way. See if you can find the shampoo bottles and medicine jars, toy parts and a Senior Frogs novelty beer swilling bugle shaped plastic cup vase thing.

new ship pics

2009-01-13T00:57:00.001-08:00

Here's a few new pics of Mark and I working on the fish ship. My kids got into the act and helped us paint some of the under coats.

(scroll down to see the original ship post)

Benefit for Djangos education

2009-01-09T00:15:00.000-08:00

This here's a marker and transfer study for a school benefit. I used brush pens, dry transfer texture, zyline xerox transfer, and AD and Prisma color markers.

Happy New Year

2009-01-05T23:54:00.000-08:00

Well We're not really done yet actually. My friend Marc Ceccarelli and I are working on a spaceship that looks like a fish made of copper. It's for a project of mine. I started this particular project long, long ago. But I'm still at it... like a dog with a bone.

These are a couple of sketches we started with. I did this first one back in the day. It's been hanging on my walls for almost a decade by now.

A little while later I did this one.

Neither of these was ever meant to be a definitive design. Because of the nature of the way I build stuff I realized that the final result was going to be determined as we went along.

We started with a spinal collumn made of nested widths of PVC pipe. the sections are bolted together.

Then we inserted 1/2inch thick wooden dowel rods into the bottom of the fish/ship spinal collumn. This whole thing is going to be a glorified stick puppet. I don't have photos of this part though sorry.

After that we built ribbs for the width of the body out of 1/2 inch thick foam core

you can see that we have already started to glue the engine shapes onto the tail there. Yup those are cups were glueing on there. Thats how we're building this one too glueing trash together!

Here's a better view of the "engines". We've also glued more bits of stuff on as you can see. That there's Marc.

Then we glued squares cut out of cereal boxes and light bulb packaging over the remaining ribbed sections.

Once the building is done we applied a base coat of flat black spray paint.

This helps start to knit all the bits you've glued together visually.

Here's the first layer of copper color over the black.

Now I know I'm skipping over a lot of stuff here but I just want to cut to the quick here. this is the state we got to by the end of this christmas break.

Here's a close up of the paint job on the front of the ship.

first the left side

then the right

and here's the right side before the paint job...

can you find the top of the apple juice bottle?

Now even at this stage the painting here is still undercoats. after this we'll put whatever details or decals we want on the ship. then we still have a level of "weathering" for the whole ship to go through...

but all that's for next time.

HOLY CREEHAP!

2008-12-19T22:16:00.000-08:00

I have gotten so much shiite since my last post! Maybe it's because I made like posting more often was my goal. It was!! I still want to and, won't give the awesome reasons that wasn't done. I will however make another empty promise to indeed post more in the future.

On an altogether different note, I am publishing my sketch books on the Apple Ibook through Genus publishing. ( Maybe that wasn't such a different note) anyway, the down load will be $1.99 or less. It will have more stuff from my sketch books than Iv'e posted on this blog, but some of the images will be from here. If the sketch book does we'll be putting my finished paintings that haven't been posted here next.

now onto the pics!!

This is a comic that I published in Hot Mexican Love number 2. This was a comic published by Rob Gooden, Albert Calleros, Larry Reynosa, Bradley Gake, and Rafael Navarro. Thanks guys for giving me this venue!

I know this is long over due but I thought I would post some of the stuff that has really inspired me over the years.

First here's some Andrew Loomis. I got this book when I was like 10 or 11 from a family friend named Bunny Poe who owned a thrift store that stocked some great art books.

These are from fun with a pencil.

I need to read this book again and just do the lessons in it ... like every year.

Since I have many of the same influences a the rest of you I thought I'd post some stuff that I like that's off the beaten path a little . Not that this stuff is like unknown or anything. I just didn't want to be posting more Disney, Warners, Fliescher, or Hanna Barberra stuff. I love all that stuff, but everyone else has much better instances of that art.

Here's some Hunt Emerson...

some Al Columbia...

And here's some Eric Pigors stuff. This guy is one of my all time favorites!

I'm sure you can see the influence these guys have had on me.

So sorry for my Sloth!

2008-09-30T23:00:00.000-07:00

Hey Everybody!

I hope everyone's still there! Thanks for always checking Dan! I've gotten alot of flack for not posting from everyone! Lots of changes have been going on! Jen's back to work on some big budget extravaganza that I can't mention, and I've moved on to working with a new writing partner at Disney on Phineas and Ferb! Exit Mike Roth, One of my best writing partners ever!, and enter Perry Zombolas! Very glad to meet ya! Our latest storyboard went over very well with the crew today! Testing new waters! So far so good!

We'll see how well it flies, with the Disney brass on friday!

One of the reasons that I started this Blog was to exibit my sketch book work. Tonight I want to show why carying a sketch book is so important to me. I've never been the best draftsman in class, but just two weeks of regularly drawing in a sketch book, affected my drawing abilities in profound ways! These are drawings from our honey moon in Paris. The first is from LAX on our way out.

So stiff and inaccurate! Sloppy yet fussy... mmmm good! I was trying so hard to draw.

This next one is from the end of the trip. So much looser and at the same time more accurate! After two weeks of not having enough time to care about the accuracy of my scribbelings I was drawing so much better!

Here's a few more scans from that trip. Not in any order, I'm sorry to say. My advancement in skill level was so erratic over those two weeks that any accurate portrait of my learning curve would be rather random and chaotic. It was more a general elevating of all abilities. Just draw and draw fast is all I can say.

We stayed in a muslim suburb of Paris with my very good old friend Robert Gooden.

And his wife Georgine, who really took care of everything.

Rob and his Wife Georgine, really acted as our anchor in paris and Jen and I were able to venture out into the city. in our neighborhgood we saw many muslim populations. Here are a couple of Somali girls dressed in the height of hip hop fashion. They both looked like Lauren Hill who was I believe living in Paris at the time with her husband , Bob marley's son.

Here's a few people I saw in cafes around Paris and some observations and experiences written down.

New logo

2008-07-21T22:33:00.000-07:00

Here's the new logo for J4 productions.

American Yaqui!

2008-07-17T00:23:00.001-07:00

Here's a sketch of my boy I did a while back n my sketch book...

Playing with Photoshop

2008-07-16T00:25:00.000-07:00

ReEngage!!

2008-06-03T23:58:00.000-07:00

Hello anybody that is still out there!

I'm making another last ditch effort to start posting more regularly. I guess I fell into the same pattern that every on else did, i.e. most of your posts were in the first month and then it dropped off from there. Hope fully your posts didn't fall as precipitously as mine.

let's see. I'm still working on Darklings, andI'm still on Phinias and Ferb over at disney.

I have to say, I've been having the best time working on this show.

And it's primarily because of these two guys.
Dan Povenmier and Jeff (Swampy) Marsh.

show creators

They really fight for the funny. How often we get there is, as always up to debate. I hope we can make some people laugh. I know I was laughing my a** off sometimes.

I know that the show isn't the most "designy" show on T.V. and it isn't the way I draw my own stuff. But the idea that Dan pitched to me about the design is kina cool, at least to me. It may not be Kricfalusi correct.

His idea was to create characters with such basic shapes that small kids could draw the characters themselves. Phineas is a triangle. Ferb is a rectangle. Letting kids get a feeling of accomplishment by being able to draw these characters so easily, is the best way to encourage kids to draw, that I can think of.
In fact the drawings we have posted on the walls from grade school classes prove the point. Some of them are AWESOME.

(I'll try to get some scans of the kids drawings. I need to ask Dan.)

Maybe some day, when these kids are older like in 2018, ( it's not that far away) they'll remember how we made them laugh, and they'll employ us out of nostalgia. That would be so awesome for my kids' colledge tuition.

On a more immediate note, here's a few scans from m new sketch book.

This is the cover of my new book. It stars my daughter Jessie.

This next one's not so bad,

This one's kinda dark, a little pretentious...

Okay Creepy...

I probably should'nt have done these ones.

Bye every one!

2008-06-03T23:57:00.001-07:00

Darklings update

2008-05-07T00:09:00.000-07:00

Here's a couple of boardpages from darklings. I did these a while ago now. How the time flies. The days they are long but the years are short.

THANK YOU!

2008-04-29T00:12:00.001-07:00

Thank you to everyone that made it to our show! A special thanks goes out to those of you who bought a pic! More then a few were purchased that night and over the next couple of weeks, all told we sold about 19 pieces. Everyone had a great time! Just doing the show has really spurred us on to get more stuff done. We are now going to be in a couple of charity auctions and the like. We took some pics during the show but haven't gotten them out of Jen's camera yet. Her camera takes HUGE photos and I haven't had the time to bust them down to size, soon though!

In the mean time here are some photo's I took when I was working over in the industrial section of the Disney Empire! These Alice and Wonderland heads were routered into the concrete and asphault and filled with a white rubber. This was in an abandonned part of what used to be imagineering back in the 60's I think. If anyone can tell me when and what these were from, that would be amazing. I can only guess that this alleyway was used as a test to put drawings in the roads of the parks that would be able to withstand the wear and tear of millions of feet grinding into them. Unfortunately I don't have a photo of the really big(I'm guessing 20 feet wide) blue alice head over in the parkinglot. That one wasn't routered into the ground. I love that they were concerned with getting the thick and thin brushline look going for these girls.

2008-03-18T09:00:00.000-07:00

Gallery Show!

2008-03-17T00:13:00.000-07:00

Well here it is! Our little gallery show at monkey house toys is next weekend! I was hopeing to have more paintings than I do but Jen has made up for my slack with a bunch of great photos. Here's the flier for the show I hope y'all can make it!

More fuffle

2008-02-26T22:02:00.001-08:00

This is the sort of stuff I would busy myself with while I was waiting for the overlords to review my work on Lil Pimp.

Here's some more stuff i would do. These are designs for t-shirt illustrations. I made a bunch of t-shirts for my wife's birthday that year.

First here's a photo of my lovely wife from back in the day.

And here's a few of the shirt designs.

This one is acutally a drawing of our cat back then. She is now an ex-cat thanks be to jeebus.

she was a monster.

more sketchbook nonsense

2008-02-12T23:08:00.001-08:00

This is the original painting from my sketch book that I posted to the Revenge of Mary Blair site that I was a member of. This is the pic before I Photoshopped Mrs. Blair's head and the bottle of gin into it, that caused me and my friend Uffler Mustek so much trouble! I don't know if any one remembers the brew hah ha that resulted from our loving (seriously) little tribute site, but I didn't know sarcasm was so intolerable in America these days. Mary Blair's son even weighed in and he was the one that convinced us to shut down the site.In fact I think he was the only one that really raised a stink! Still I guess It's better to just shut up than pay tribute to some one you revere, if you aren't going to revere them with religiously fervent and intensly earnest accolades. I love the new America! This is actually a painting of my wonderful wife.

Here's some random sketch book pages...

Old test

2008-02-12T22:38:00.000-08:00

This is and old motion graphics test that I did years ago with a piece of music that I created late one night when I thought I might be able to make something listenable. It's extemely short.

An old comic from an old time

2008-02-04T22:05:00.001-08:00

Here's a comic I drew in one of my sketch book years and years ago. I was just starting to do more complete stuff in my sketch books and I was starting to use my sketch books as portable laboratories the way I do now. This sketch book was really a break through for me. It was, I think the first sketch book I had carried since high school. For some reason when I went to Calarts I stopped carrying sketch books. I also didn't see any of the bigshots at Spumco carying sketchbooks when I worked there after Calarts. That also had a big effect on me. I thought that it was an amature habit, I guess. Thank god I eventually got over that misconception.

OOPS!

2008-01-27T02:44:00.001-08:00

I've had to do another box cover for the cereal killers book. The one I did before was WAY too close to one that had been done earlier! I got back from taking my family to Disneyland and my wife and I were cruising through the Cereal killers website and we found Jorge Lacera's Cthulhu Crunch! I had never seen it before, but it was so similar to mine, that I was shocked and mortified! So I did a new one. I hope it's in time to make it into the book! It's too bad too since I'm such a Lovecraft fanatic.

Here's my new one!

I'm much happier with this one than my previous effort for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that, so far I haven't found it's doppleganger on the ceareal killers blog yet!

Here's Jorge's awesome box cover for comparison with mine. To see it's twin just scroll down!

Sorry Jorge I didn't set out to go bitein' your rhymes or nothin, rotten minds think alike, I guess!

Factories

2008-01-25T19:58:00.000-08:00

Here's some factory models that I built out of trash! Try to fugure out what they're made of!

Cereal Killers Painting

2008-01-21T22:53:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in my last post, I was invited to be in the Cereal Killers coffin table book being put together by Kreepville Industries. I finished my box cover and submitted it so here it is! If you want to see some of the other great entries go HERE. there's stuff by lots of great painters like: Bill Wray, Lou Romano, Lauren Faust, Miles Thompson, Alex Kirwan, Chris Reccardi, Derrick J. Wyatt, Ben Balistreri, Eddie Mort, Lili Chin, Gabe Swarr, Rob Lilly, Nate Wragg and many more! hope you like the stuff!

Happy New Year!

2008-01-09T23:10:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the blog abandonment. The holidays, and the annual holiday cold that we have acquired, since having children, have taken their toll. Also, I have been busy as a bitch lately. As many of you know, Miles Thompson and I have sold a pilot idea to Cartoon Network. I am still at the mouse factory, and I'm working on a small gallery show at MonkeyHouse Toys in Silverlake, with my wife Jen. Lots of stuff to do in '08! I've been invited to do a piece for Dr. Viktor von Kreep's "Cereal Killers" bookas well. I'm behind on everything. I will also endevour to continue Blogging of course. I have found that keeping this blog has been as awesome for my productivity, as I had hoped!

Here's some art...

These are some blueprints for a church renovation I found, in a pile, behind an extinct architects's office. The B/W photos were put into the blueprints to be referred to on site. I painted the ghosts in using bleach, to fade the photo emulsion. I decopaged them into a larger painting. Now after years they have faded, and the spots in the painting are almost totally white, big bright holes in the picture. These are the only version left of the photos now.

Thanks for checking in everybody ! Have a better one!

UPDATE:
Hey, I found another pic from this series, while trawling aroung in my files.

Vanities andPuffery

2007-11-08T08:22:00.001-08:00

Hey everyone! Here's a photo by my friend Jorge from the lunch box show at monkey house toys a while back. It's the first Darklings merchandise. Hand made and hand screwed up! I messed up the back side. As you can tell it was priced not to move. I want it all for myself. Its all mine mine mine mine down down down! OH my beloved ice cream bar... not that anyone else would want the thing.

Screen Shots

2007-10-25T22:51:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the long delay I've been swamped at work these days.
A few screen shots of my cleanup phase.
I thought they looked cool in just their cleanup lines against black.

.I.X.

2007-09-26T00:04:00.000-07:00

This stuff is from an old project of mine. I think I came up with this stuff back in 1997, HOLY CRAP! this shit is TEN YEARS OLD! any way I still want to do this one, but the writing is way too convoluted and I need to work on it A LOT.

The story as I remember it, is about a girl that wakes up one day unable to remember anything. She quickly learns that she is the cloned product of the interstellar LodeStone Corporation. She is a Lilith model Psychic Cleaner. Her purpose is to seek out and steal the religious and magical objects and talismans from whatever planet her mother corporation is raping at the time. In this world magick is real and a powerful resource to be harvested and exploited. She is woken up by an older version of herself and learns of the devestation her actions have caused. The show was to be about her stealing the sacred objects back from her former employers and returning them to their rightful owners. Indiana Jones in reverse... on another planet... if he was a female clone...a psychic female clone...sort of...here's some cool art anyway...

These are the initial Ideas for the project. I did these and a few others one night watching public access T.V. back when we had cable... and back when cable had public access stations.

Here's one of the badguys... These guys (there were supposed to be three) were called the adjusters. they were holographic projections of the LodeStone Corps three vast Articicial Intelligences.

This is a trailer I made in after effects for pitching the show idea.

I have a few scenes more it's gettng late I'll post the rest later...

A new post from the war of ghosts.

2007-09-13T21:00:00.000-07:00

More Darklings Stuff

2007-08-24T00:53:00.000-07:00

Again just to keep up with the short, here is a test of how some factory miniatures I built are going to look with animation over them. Since this short is sort of my tribute to the influence the fliescher studios has had on me, there's no way the thing would be complete without a few miniatures sets. I didn't build these factory minature for the short but they just sort of seemed the perfect place for the climax of the cartoon to take place. of course when I shoot them for the cartoon the lighting will be much darker and gloomier.

Podunk Possum!!!

2007-08-14T16:55:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody! I just found my first short on line! I've been wanting to get this up on youtube, but haven't had the time or equipment to get it off the 3/4 inch tapes that I have at home. I don't know who this guy is but thanks for posting it! Now I too can share the sweet inexperience and steadfast industry of my youth.This short was created and written by Elisabeth Stonecypher and I, the layout on this was done by Andy Bialk, Carey Yost, Charlie Bean and myself. the B.G.s were done by Mike Moon, and painted by Carol Wyatt. I got Uncle Jesse from the Dukes of Hazzard himself Denver Pyle to do the main character's voice. Like all of my later stuff it's filled with grey aliens, cow mutiations, anal probes, ghosts and distrust of the gubmint. It's an overflowing conspirocopia of fun!

Darklings Update

2007-07-22T21:11:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the lack of posts on what this blog is supposed to be about, but here's a screen shot from a scene I was working on. Since this short is partly an excercise in stream of consciousness comic booking, I have been putting a little of my Darklings time in on that. So much art to do so little time.

Nursery Mural

2007-07-19T21:40:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody! We finally finished that mural I always said I was gonna do for my children's room!

I started with some designs in my sketch book as usual. I did these in acrylic inks and rollerball V.5 ball point pen.
First I thought it would look best in warm, no, hot colors, red, orange, etc.

The holes in the design are where the doors and windows are in their room,the lower, darker part was to be chalk board paint, the kind that turn's your walls into black boards. You can get it at Home depot. I used some copper ink stamps to see what metallic paint woould look like with the flat color.

Here's a design for the serpent that I liked.

Then I though the whole thing was too harsh and decided to make it a winter wonder land.

We ended up painting the kids' room blue so the winter scheme was out, too mono chromatic and all. So I went back to the warmer colors, here's the final painted BG. (the drawings are by my friend Camille Reeves Lucier)

The stars in the sky are the same copper ink that I used in my sketch book. I also used gold ink with 2 or 3 different types of star stamps. I used a floral stamp in the border with the gold. All this metalic paint took forever to dry, 8 months in fact. That was a long time to stear clear of the wall especially since the flowery border is exactly at hip level.

Here's a better look at the town section.

Some of you may notice, I stole the tree style from my friend Andrew Brandou's burning LA painting. As you can see I did end up painting the lower part of the wall with Chalkboard paint.

Next I moved on to the serpent. I didn't just want to paint the main figure. I wanted a collage of some sort, so I decided to build it out of gatorboard, cloth, and paint chips from Home Depot again. They just don't make construction paper as rich or with as many variations as paint samples plus, paint samples are free, if you have the guts to just load your self down with them. The harried underpaid staff at HD never seemed to mind.

Here he is in progress,

and here's the finished mural!

Take a closer look at the guy, Jen jumped in and helped glue the scales on, paint the back fins, and make the ribbon out of satin.

After all this, Jen and I wisely decided to just do one wall. Maybe some day we'll get up the gumption to do the rest of the designs, but don't hold your breath.

rough girls

2007-07-06T13:50:00.000-07:00

here's few sketch book girls for your edification.

Old Flash Files

2007-06-24T01:31:00.000-07:00

This is one of the first flash things I did. It was done in 2002 while I was working on something called Lil Pimp. Once again sorry for the fuzz on the beginning. If anyone knows why this is happening whenever I upload to YouTube please tell me, it's really harshing my mellow man.

Here's a B.G. done in flash for a pitch I did a couple of years ago. It was for a show I want to do called "Doomsday High, school for super villains". I'm still pitching this one around town as well.

Jessie

2007-06-23T01:10:00.000-07:00

Here she is! My girl! My little Jessie, she is now about 2 weeks old. Isn't she a sweetpea?

At 9 pounds 6 ounces she was a big girl! Sorry mommie! On her second day she was already lifting her head up to get a look at her mother! Not failing to thrive I'd say.

And here's all of my progeny to date. They are sleeping for now, but soon they will awaken and the world will know it's MASTERS!

On a less momentous note here is some more stuff from that previously mentioned UNNAMED project!

This is a guy that's been nixxed as far as I know. He was designed by Carey Yost, and drawn by Marc Colangelo. As before I just did the coloring.

When I first started on the show I was given free reign and was allowed to build some set miniatures for the production. This place is called the Haunted Palace. The building is made out of foamcore and paper. The stop lights are made of coffee stirrers, plastic drink straws and paper.

Here's a better look at the stop lights.

I put everything together with hot glue.

Here are a couple of preproduction paintings I did for the show. I'm so sorry that it hasn't seen the light of day yet. The crew on it, that Doug Lawrence got together, was amazing; Lynne Naylor, Chris Reccardi, Chris Battle, Chris Mitchel, Craig Kellman, Miles Thompson, Justin Thompson, Jim Smith, Bob Jaques, Bill Wray, just to name a few! This thing should have been out years ago.

This one's about 5 inches tall by 3 and a half inches wide

Small marker comps

The flash from my camera destroyed this one.

A thumbnail done in acrylic inks

Thanks for waiting, but as you can see things have been hectic around here.

p.s. does hectic refer to hecate? I would love some etymological info on that if anyone can share.

Wabbits! Wabbits! Where are they all comin fwum?

2007-05-28T23:57:00.002-07:00

Here's a couple of pages of rabbits done for a friends bar a while back. The place was gonna be called "the wild hare" obviously. I guess it actually was called the wild hare, for a few months there, but now it's gone, bummer. All that's left of the place are these little guys.

And these guys too.

another sketch book post

2007-05-28T14:16:00.004-07:00

This stuff is from years ago. I can only hope I've gotten a bit better since then. some one once told me that you can't get any better after the age of thirty, how depressing. In my own life I,ve improved immeasureably since turning thirty, only now am I finally feeling I can draw at all, or have any level of skill.

2 scenes + a new painting

2007-05-14T22:46:00.000-07:00

(Fri May 17th)
For some reason the only way I could get a new pic up on Blogger was to edit a previously existing post, so that's what I did, cuse I'm a dooer not a waiter. This little picture is a study for the robot and girl paintings I am doing. I did it in my sketch book with acrylic inks. I tried to get it out as fast as I could. I'll try and fix it when I can get to the final.

Here are a couple of scenes strung together. This is still rough timing. I'm primarily creating new assets right now, but every once in a while I have to pick at a scene, and push it along a little further.

p.s. Sorry for the crap on the front of this one, but I don't have time to mess with YouTube for hours trying to fix it. For some reason this scene hates YouTube no matter what type of file I render it out in.

conglomeration

2007-05-08T18:20:00.000-07:00

Here's an image I put together from some odds and ends in my project files.

Hello, is any body still out there?

2007-04-25T19:23:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of posts, but Iv'e started working full time again, and preparing for the arrival of our new daughter. The skies have cleared for the evening though, so here's some new stuff for you...

First here's a new BG for the cartoon.

And here's some color I did for a project that must remain nameless, the great drawings were done by my friend Mark Colangelo who hates computers.

This character isn't even used in the show any more anyway.

This guy didn't stay in the picture either

He also didn't die.

By the way a Big Happy Birthday goes out to my mom today.

Falling

2007-03-30T15:50:00.000-07:00

Here's the scene from one of the stills in the last post. I can't seem to get a clean version out of YouTube so I'm just leaving the electric green fuzz on the front of this one. I've been exporting and re-exporting versions of this test for days and up loading them. This is as clean as I've gotten it. This is as clean as I'm going to get it.

new stills from "the darklings" short

2007-03-28T15:49:00.000-07:00

ufo

2007-03-22T10:25:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of posting this week. I'm in the middle of some home renewal. I'm painting, hanging, sanding, installing etc. Here's a ufo pic i took while working at the new Film Roman building. I didn't use photo shop with this pic I just took a picture of what was in front of me.

The Great Trocantor and the Marker Monsters

2007-03-16T14:05:00.000-07:00

Here is the Great Trocantor he is made of many things; old magazine clippings and tape, markers pencils and glue.
Kneel before him and whimper for he is the god of refuse. the intercessor for the cast off. His hoards are multiplying, and you are their food.

and these are his marker monsters.

Flash Experiment #555 (Goldfrappe)

2007-03-13T00:14:00.000-07:00

This is another abstract music video thing I did a while ago. It uses the same geometric sort of pieces that the one of my wife used, only more extensively. To make the objects I went to places where flash breaks down like the "soften fill edges" function. The "shape tween" function was used for some of the movement to see how it would morph some of the more complex shapes. My computer had a nervous breakdown doing some of this stuff. I was really into this band Goldfrappe at the time. While working on this I read that the band were heroin addicts and that made it's way into the movie a little. I think I put that stuff in there mostly for shock value, and edgyness... what a loser. I should have put some skate boards and guitars in there too... oh yeah and some cool sunglasses, a cigarette, a pair of dice and a zippo lighter. I could have used some music by Bruce Willis's band "the Accelerators" instead of Goldfrappe as well, and my journey to the dark side would have been complete. The quality of this copy is attrocious, sorry for that. I'm trying to find a better version of it, but It may have been lost. If I find it though I'll repost it.

Oh yeah, and my pretty wife makes another quick appearance as well.

ROBOTS! GIRLS!

2007-03-09T23:19:00.000-08:00

these are the first couple of paintings for the monkey house show.

Pen Pals

2007-03-07T16:46:00.000-08:00

This is a painting about two boys who were pen pals. One is named Jack Parsons and the other is Verner Von Braun. One went on to help start Jet Propulsion laboratory and in his off hours became head of Aleister Crowleys occult lodge the Ordo Temlpi Orientis. Rocket scientist by day satanic sorcerer at night. The other became one of the heads of Hitler's rocketry program. He used slave labor from concentration camps that he worked to death in order to do his furer's bidding . He went on to head up the American space program after the war. Without these two men, a nazi and a satanist, America would never have gone to the moon. I thought they deserved a painting.

Wasting Buffalo like the Pale Face.

2007-03-05T17:11:00.000-08:00

Banishment

2007-03-05T00:23:00.000-08:00

This is a painting I sold last month at the Monkey House Toy Store, on silverlake blvd. I'm gonna have my own show there in Jan.08. It was gonna be this June, but that is the month our baby girl is supposed to be born so I pushed the date back. I may still be a little ambitious about getting a whole show painted by next year. anyway, I will start posting the progress on the paintings for the Jan. show here. Thishere painting though is called "Banishment".

Who loves ya baby?

2007-03-02T22:49:00.000-08:00

Jared's Back, and he want's you to know that THIS is how he likes to dress.

...and unfortunately here's how his Dad likes to dress him at home.

He is gonna be so stoked when his Mommy starts dressing him again

Another ghost story

2007-02-28T11:00:00.000-08:00

Here's a one page comic. Another report from the Great Ghost Wars. This one is called "The annointing of the sacrifice"

I'm Back...

2007-02-26T10:47:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the lag in posting, but the time has come for me to be getting a real job. I was working on a test for a T.V. show I am hoping to get on. I also got on a roll animating on my short, so between the pencil and the stylus I kinda disappeared down the work hole. Here are a painting and a sketch book page though.

More girls, these are roughs for a painting I never did.

...and ant thugs, this painting is called "the victory of time over science".

Edgar Episode 2

2007-02-15T11:15:00.000-08:00

At long last, the second part of Edgar and the Voyagers...

2007-02-14T15:07:00.000-08:00

the devil... himself!

More Sketch Book Comics

2007-02-13T10:53:00.000-08:00

This here's a little ritual called "Making Manifest All That Is Hidden". Another post from the planet of ghosts.

2007-02-09T16:38:00.000-08:00

"The Naked Truth"

This isn't My work. I'm just fascinated with this type of stuff. "This Video Takes Us On A Deep Journey Of Exploration Into The Origin Of Most Of The Religions We Know Of Today" at least that's what these guys tell us. Some of it is ridiculous They get some stuff wrong, and all of it is dated. These guys get really condescending and almost bitchy at times. I think they work for Satan, like sales men of disbelief or something. The sight I got it from makes this claim. "I Had Run Across This Video While Searching Video.Google.com...Shortly After ...This Video was no longer available." I haven't bothered to check out if this is true. mainly because I choose to believe in a Google conspiracy to silence athiests and bitchy intellectuals. It is quite long almost 2 hours, so beware.

2007-02-08T13:15:00.000-08:00

Scene1 micro test

Here's a little update on the short. This is a rough test of the first scene. As you can see the "going up the stairs" part hasn't been worked out yet. Sorry it's so short, but there it is. Glory in it's infinitessimalitude!

2007-02-07T12:37:00.000-08:00

HAND PAINTED TOYS

Here's a couple of toys I hand painted. they are for sale at Monkey house toys on Silverlake Blvd. in Silverlake. They are part of show to benefit a sick little girl, so go get em'! It's for a greate cause.

2007-02-04T16:44:00.000-08:00

EDGAR EPISODE1

Here's my Cartoon Monsoon short. Thanks to Marc Ceccarelli for compressing it for me. This is only the first episode the second is soon to come.

2007-02-01T18:45:00.000-08:00

GALLERY SHOW

Hey everyone I ve got a couple of my paintings up in a little echo park gallery/jewlery store. The guy that runs it makes jewlery and has a serious star wars fetish. he make s the pieces himself, and he has a belt buckle he made that is a small gold plated version of han solo's blaster. and a gold 20 sided die pendant necklace. any way i know this last minute notice and all, but it's this saturday night. sorry. i just got wind of it a couple of days ago it was supposed to be next weekend but the date was moved on us. anyway here's the street address.

It's across the street from magic gas.

2007-01-30T00:17:00.001-08:00

Flash Experiment #1

This is a flash experiment I did a couple pf years back. I got the shapes by exploiting a weak point or two in flash. one was the smooth fill function and the other is the shape tweening function. The photo is of my lovley wife jen. I loved this picture she took of herself and had to use it. The opening of it has some grey digital crap on it, but it goes away quickly. It got that when I uploaded it to you tube. I kinda think it looks cool too. Especially the part where it crawls across her face and pops off right to the music.

2007-01-29T10:26:00.000-08:00

I wonder what these guys are laughing about? All I know is that I love Poppie's vato shades! and ... are 41 and 42 holding hands while 43 isn't looking?

2007-01-27T00:55:00.000-08:00

A couple more from the books.

I used to live here.

This is the back cover to one of my sketch books.

2007-01-25T11:01:00.000-08:00

Go here to see some factories I've built out of trash! This is an old site I put up about 3-4 years ago. Andrew Brandou and Miles Thompson helped me to put it up. As you will see I ran out of steam while working on it. a lot of the pages don't work. Sorry guys, I dropped the ball.

http://www.cosmonuts.com/cp/factory.html

DO NOT Use the EMAIL address from the Wesite It will NOT get to me. If you want to get in touch with me use the email in the profile attatched to this blog. Do not use the contact me button in the web sight.

This next URL will take you to a painting I did a while ago. I used a set of church blueprints as an element. Some one was doing a church renovation and I found the blue prints for it in a pile behind an architects office. Because it was a renovation they took black and white photos of the different rooms they were renovating, the vestibule, the music room etc. and put them into the blueprints making them blue and white photos. I used bleach to paint ghosts into these rooms and came up with a couple of cool images. I like how the bleach burned the paper giving the ghosts a warm yellow tint it shows up well against the blue tones of the blueprint photos.

http://www.cosmonuts.com/cp/acrylic.html

When you get there, click on the girl face not the brain guy or the mouth or the ghostie eyes. That will take you to the painting I'm talking about. then roll over the blueprint pic in the painting and they will enlarge, slightly.

Over the years these blueprint photos I used have faded almost into nothingness. Leaving big white spots in the painting with only faint glimmerings of what was there. these photos are what I have left of the images. The drawing of the church front is completely gone. I love that.

2007-01-25T10:51:00.000-08:00

A two page spread from one of my sketchbooks.

2007-01-24T11:41:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple of screen shots, just to keep track of how the short is coming along.

I hope to have some more animation, from the short, to post sometime next week.

2007-01-22T11:38:00.000-08:00

Ladies and gentlemen Sean Szeles 2004 model,

And Glendale mexipunks 2006 style

2007-01-19T16:39:00.000-08:00

here are some more sketch book pages.

This first is a collage I made from old McDonaldls comics, old Bobs Bigboy comics and Sgt.Rock.

Spray paint, Ink, and Xerox transfer.

Spray paint gouache and ink stamp.

Gouache, Dr.martin,s dyes and Xerox transfer

2007-01-18T16:15:00.000-08:00

Here is a better view of the atlantis B.G. from the Edgar trailer. I did this one myself. It didn't make it into the episode unfortunately. I'll post some of the B.G.s that Justin and Andrew did as soon as I can find them or render them out.

2007-01-17T10:12:00.000-08:00

EDGAR ad the VOYAGERS TRAILER!
This is the trailer for the cartoon monsoon pilot I did for warner's Online a couple of years back. Carey Yost did the character design Justin Thompson did the B.G. design and Andrew Brandou did the BG. painting in flash. The in-house team was Steve Belfer my jeffe, Dave Fain, Carlos Palazio, Sean Szeles, Seth Cooper, James Jacob, Jennifer Branch, Kristin McCormick Adndrew Feinstein, Ryan Pringle and Sam Addes. Thanks guys, for making a great short. I will be posting the two 3 and a half minuet episodes as soon as I can get them busted down to size.

2007-01-13T22:39:00.001-08:00

Time for a cuteness overload! Introducing my son Jared Octavio Calbi Orrantia better known as Monkeyboy. Sorry I know this is disgustingly late but these pics from last halloween just make me laugh.

At this point he doesn't know what the F#&*K to do. All he knows is that he isn't gonna take no candy from whatever the hell that thing is.

It's all good though "G" cause at the end of the evening the J_man has what all the ladies want aaiiight!

2007-01-13T17:58:00.000-08:00

Here's the walk cycle that I took the still from to post earlier. I have to work out the animation better on this and some stuff in it is very choppy and out of synch, but most of it's there I think. The short's going to be called "Abduction Munchkins What's Your Disfunction" Corny I know , but I done said muh piece and I'ma stickin' to it.

2007-01-13T17:03:00.000-08:00

Here are some more adventures from the same world as the cartoon I posted earlier. hope you like em'.

I hope you can follow this stuff it's kinda esoteric. This is the ceremony of the Killing of the King. I hope there's some entertainment value in all this even if it's just the pretty pichures.

2007-01-10T14:12:00.000-08:00

This is how the wide city shot looked originally in my sketch book. I might go back and put in all the secret society badges into the final B.G. I might just say forget it and move on.

And here is a full comic page. I get the stuff into flash as fast as I can draw it and start animating. I'll save the dialogue and any coloring or tones on the comics, until after I'm done with the short, I guess. It might give me a chance to plus the dialogue as I record it, as well.

2007-01-10T14:01:00.001-08:00

Here's an old after effects cartoon I did a while ago. This was also taken from one of my sketch books. I just cut the comics up in photoshop, and import them into after effects from there. The music is by a guy named Hans Reichel he plays the Daxophone.That's an instrument of his own design that operates on the same principle as the noise made by a wooden ruler being clamped to a desk and plucked, you know that vibrating sound that makes. I go tit off a CD called "Gravichords Whirlies and Pyrophones" a compilation of experimental instruments. Any way if you want to know more go to www.Daxo.com it's his site. I think he also does type design. The story for this short is much larger and the other sections are episodes in thier own right, but I just haven't gotten the gumption up to do more animation on the rest of it.

2007-01-10T13:37:00.000-08:00

And here are the pages from my sketch book that have the character designs for the short. I was watching some old betty boop cartoons again one day, and drew up these guys. I took such a liking to them that I started doing a sort of stream of consciousness comic book thing in my sketch book. That eventually turned into the short i'm working on. I'll post some of the comic pages next.

2007-01-10T12:51:00.000-08:00

Here are some stills from the short I'm working on. I accidentally left the guides on when I published the picture, but I kinda liked the way they looked, so I just left them on.

2007-01-10T12:45:00.000-08:00

Spleeeee! Here we go!

2006-06-15T21:27:00.000-07:00

hey every body, I guess I'll jump aboard the band wagon and put one of these up too. I'll mostly be putting up pics of artwork (as soon as i learn how) and posting the progress on a crtoon short i'm working on in my sparetime.