'Tis The Season

Near Christmas time a few years ago,
I went to a party for my condo.

And that is where and when I met my beautiful girlfriend. The image above is of an ink and watercolor painting I created for her on the anniversary of our first date.

Happy Holidays!

Soupy Sketch Weekly- Anxious Cracker

Another week, another sketch.

Fall

Fall 2007 from Justin Cichon on Vimeo

My friend/co-worker Justin Cichon created this sweet film last year. Fall is my favorite time of the year and this film does a great job depicting this beatuiful season. I thought I would share this with the five people who find themselves on my blog. Enjoy!

For those who are unfamiliar with this animation technique, it is called pixilation, which is defined as content produced by filming frame by frame live actors to produce the illusion of motion.

Soupy Sketch Weekly- Sexy Platypus

Another weekly sketch made for the Soup blog. Last week I rediscoverd Photoshop and I am loving how quick you can do color comps underneath rough sketches.

Soupy Sketch Weekly- Ornery Chameleon

For the past few weeks, all of the artists at Soup2Nuts have been doing weekly drawings of a random adjective and noun combination. We have two jars containing pieces of paper, one with nouns written on them and the other with adjectives. Every Friday someone picks one piece of paper from each jar and then we post every ones drawings or animations to the SoupyNuts blog a week later. It has been great fun. This is the second one I was able to take part in. Below is last weeks "quizzical snot" drawing.

My first Comic Strip?

A couple of years ago my film HYPERACTIVE INGREDIENTS had its first public screening. It screened in Brooklyn NY at the Animation Block Party in front of a huge audience. This years Animation Block Party runs July 25-27, and the program guide is going to be filled with comic strips from filmmakers who have previously screened films at the festival.

This is my submission. I took a few frames from a storyboard I am currently working on and created what I think is my first comic strip. I can't believe I never made one of these before. I had a lot of fun working on it. Maybe my next film will be accompanied by a graphic novel version of the story.

Hyperactive Ingredients on the web

I finally put my first animated short film HYPERACTIVE INGREDIENTS on the web. The official site is www.hyperactiveingredients.com and you can find a permanent link on the right side of this blog. On the site you can view the entire film via the YouTube video player, download a high quality quicktime, and download the DVD case insert art. Enjoy!

UPDATE!
Now available to watch at AWNtv.com. This site has a huge selection of animated films to watch. The image quality is really good but the frame rate is a little wonky.

Vote for my Radiohead storyboard!

Last night I submitted my storyboard for a contest on Aniboom.com. Contestants pick any song off of Radioheads latest album "In Rainbows" and create a storyboard. People can view and vote on these until April 27. Then based on the votes and some other criteria a panel of judges pick 10 semi-finalist to move on to the next stage. These 10 semi-finalists get $1,000 each to animate a minute of their storyboard. On June 9 voting on these animated segments end and 5 finalists are chosen. These 5 finalists are then presented to Radiohead. Radiohead picks one to be completed and the winner gets $10,000 to finish the video. Sounds pretty damn sweet! I am usually not big on contests but this one sounds legit. It is all non-exclusive and they even give you a percentage of royalties the site makes off of your video and any merchandise if they made any.

See my storyboard for Radioheads "15 Steps" here:
http://www.aniboom.com/Player.aspx?v=204430

Vote for it if you like, but I think you have to sign up and become a member, which is free and only takes a minute or two.

I conceived of my idea right before I went on a week long vacation and when I got back I only gave myself a few days to complete it. Since the criteria for going on to the next stage involves online votes before April 27, I wanted to make sure it was online for at least 10 days to accumulate some votes. Even though the time frame to create something was extremely short, I had a lot of fun squeezing out a weird idea using very crude drawings to capture my story. This will definitely be the next film I animate even if it doesn't win.

Painting From My Darker Side

This watercolor painting (19" x 23") was inspired from my darker demons. I tend to go there when imagining ideas. Creating this painting was sort of like therapy for me in two ways. The later half of 2007 was one of the sadder times in my life. This painting allowed me to release stress and get out some of the uglier emotions that reside within me. It also forced me to get back to my roots of illustration and create something that exists outside of the computer. I love mixing and layering colors in reality. For me I have a hard time painting digitally and can't quite get the same result as I would with real medium. Plus I am more likely to create art in my off hours if I don't have to sit in front of a computer. I animate on a computer all day at the day job and it feels so good to draw on paper when I get home.

This is the first of many paintings I plan on creating for possible gallery shows. I am thinking of creating limited edition fine art prints if anyone is interested.

Valentine's Day card

I finally came up with an idea for a Valentine's Day card as I was falling asleep the night before Valentine's Day. I had to find time during the work day to create it so my girlfriend would get it on time. That is why the animation is kind of crappy and limited. But I like the concept a lot, even if it is kind of cheezy.