My Brilliant Other Career

Well, not exactly. Although I have sold a few of my watercolor paintings throughout the years, I have approached them as a personal pressure relief valve from my work in film. I became involved in watercolor when I was a teenager - when I first met Lee Blair - one of the guiding lights of the California School of watercolor which made national news back in the 1930's. I was so impressed with both the technique and the subject matter of those early California Style paintings. The technique was direct and spontaneous - unlike the East Coast and English Schools which are basically drawings that are then carefully tinted with watercolor washes. The Californians put it down quickly with broad strokes and very little preliminary drawing. The subject matter was considered ugly by some. Lee was especially famous for genre scenes of life in Southern California - sometimes showing the tawdry side of life. Some critics have classified these images within the "Social Realist" school.

My friend Steve Moore publishes "FLIP", an incredible monthly web magazine that just so happens to feature me in the month of January. I discuss my work in watercolor, what kind of thought that I put into each piece, and how my work in watercolor differs from my work in the animation industry. The images above are a couple of my favorites, and there's more at "FLIP":

http://flipanimation.net/

Robot Chicken Storyboards

This summer I spent some time with the wonderful people at Shadow Animation storyboarding on Robot Chicken. This is one of the shows aired around midnight on Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim" programming block. The pace is fast and furious putting out a show on a very small budget. One of the pleasures of working on the show was that production moved so quickly. The animators would begin working almost immediately on things that I storyboarded just a couple of weeks previously. The format of the show is sketch-comedy with some of the sketches being lengthy and some sketches playing as short as one or two seconds. Click HERE to see one of my favorite sketches from the Christmas episode.

The Transformers Movie worthy of the Big Screen

I liked the Transformers movie. I wasn't planning to go see it as I was never a fan of the toy or the 1980's animated series, but a friend of mine wanted to go and I tagged along. The film has an impressive scale which is easy to appreciate on the big screen. Home TV screens get bigger and bigger, but certain films still require a theatrical viewing and this is one of them. Michael Bay treats the audience with an appreciable degree of respect and he avoids the current trend of throwing in fleeting pop culture jokes that amount to cheap laughs and limit the appeal of repeated viewings. There are a few moments of robot-homiletics that take the viewer into dreckland, but the bulk of the film is dominated by exciting, large-scale action motivated by clear goals.
Shia LaBoeuf does a good turn as Sam, the geek-turned-hero of the story. I think LaBoeuf has become a fairly good actor and is definitely ready for some juicier roles than can be had on the kid's network shows where he earned his acting chops. The animation was outrageously good - the weight implied in the movement made the giant robots believable and they are well integrated with the live-action world. The technical challenge of designing the machine transformations was done with incredible showmanship.
Its the action of the film that seduces you. If you're looking for heart-tugging emotions from these machines, you will find a few attempts withing the course of the film, but you will most surely be disappointed. The film's running time is indulgently long, so hook yourself up to a catheter before you enter the theater or you will be leaving to visit the restroom halfway through. Yes, the use and promotion of General Motors products is blatant, but I've grown numb to that aspect of the business - it's there to stay. At lease the GM product placement caused me to forget that the Transformers are a line of toys available from Hasbro.
The story is what I would refer to as "serviceable" - it gets the job done and provides a framework for the entertainment. You will definitely find films with better, more original story lines and deeper characters and just about everything that we've always been taught is necessary for a successful film. But you can get all of that in books as well as anywhere else. The big screen of a cinema should deliver the thrills and chills of a good circus, and for sheer spectacle and fun The Transformers Movie is one of the greatest shows on earth (for the summer, anyway).

Hansel and Gretel in Stop Motion

CLICK IMAGE FOR CLIP
I saw this stop-motion version of Hansel and Gretel when I was very young and it burned itself into my brain. It's kind of crude by todays standards, and sort of unintentionally nightmarish.

There is a great entry from last year (June 6, 2006) on Michael Sporn's Blog regarding this film.

Another Preston Blair TV Graphics masterpiece

Remember when they used to “pause, for station identification”? If you don’t, then you missed items like this which were used to sex up local TV stations and make them look cool. Sorry about the quality on this. I improved it the best I could. Click HERE to view.

Preston Blair's Air Force Recruitment Spot

Preston Blair did some amazing motion graphic spots for television through the New York animation house TV Graphics, Inc. They are mostly station identifiers (WOR-TV New York, etc.) but this one was for Air Force Recruitment and uses music from the Air Force Jazz Band. Click HERE to view.

More Betty Boop Movie Designs

As per Mitch Kennedy's request, these images show more of the surreal animation ideas that were in the script for The Betty Boop Movie. They were individual moments, though rather than setpieces, so these images were done more quickly and are less well-designed than the others. Koko would have been the wildest character for animation with his ability to morph/stretch. Betty was kind of a sexy muse that would "animate" the world around her - so she would end up dancing with/being chased by/being serenaded by - things that would "come to life".