Lizard Troop 3

Here's a concept art of subterranean jungle lizard camp for the Lizard Troop.

747 in Honolulu

©Disney
I would like to supplement my friend Marcelo's posting on his blog regarding the 747 on Lilo & Stitch. The whole sequence was just completely done when 9/11 happened. Then the directors called for a layout meeting. They announced that we have to redo all the city shots and skycrapers and turn them into mountains. We have to abandon the first part of the sequence where Stitch is suppose to climb on-board the 747 cockpit and scares the pilots off the plane. Instead, we added a shot of Jumba reactivating his spacecraft "parked" in the jungle. Brian Jeffcoat, (which in fact, the one who patiently taught us how to do Maya in layout and one of the best I've worked with) redesigned the plane and turned it into Jumba's spacecraft keeping the prominent shapes and size of the 747 in order to reuse the existing animation. The challenge for us in layout is to make the new mountain bgs work with the existing 747 animation. So next time you watch the chase sequence, replace the mountains with skycrapers and the spacecraft with 747. Even the shot of the guy with the ice cream come is the same. But he was supposed to be crossing a busy street in downtown Honolulu with towering scycrapers around him when the plane comes by and hits his ice cream. They promised that this sequence would be in a special boxed DVD which until now we're still waiting to happen.

The artwork I have here (fig. 1) is when the 747 already landed and settled on the beach. It was a key backgound layout for the beach sequence with the aliens. The second one (fig. 2) is a screen grab from that sequence.

El Pacifico - "Hesus To The Rescue"

Check out my latest posting on El Pacifico.

Just A "Proud Dad" Ad

My youngest, Ysabella, recently completed photoshoots for Children's Place and Baby Style catalogues. Here's a Children's Place ad on the August issue of Parenting magazine. She's the one on the left. My two other kids, Hannah and Luke, attend Santa Clarita School of Performing Arts in Newhall, California. If your kids or you know someone who wants to do no non-sense acting lessons and living north of Los Angeles, I would highly recommend this school. You can check out their site here.

Lizard Troop 2

©Armand Serrano.
The original drawing (fig.4) was done a while back in graphite and marker on animation paper. When I opened the file recently I didn't like the character anymore especially it's weak pose (it reminds me of Dinotopia). So I modified the character in Photoshop as well as the creature (fig. 3) and made them a little more dynamic. Shadows are added for emphasis. Then I tried out different color schemes and this is the one I'm kinda happy with (fig. 2). At this point, I thought I'm almost done until I said to myself, well, why not. So I went ahead and added the whole environment and had so much fun painting it. It's a four and a half hour sitting in Photoshop.

SURF'S UP

Sony released the very first teaser poster for Surf's Up at the Con. The film is due summer 2007 so hang in there guys, one more year to go. This image I believe was painted by Paul Lasaine, our production designer. Marcelo Vignali designed the ice board, I designed the two wooden boards, and Sylvain DeBoissy did the characters. For Surf's Up website, click here. But for now, don't forget to watch Open Season, Sony Pictures Animation's very first animated feature coming this fall.

The Counsel

Here's another product of my downtime. Originally, I designed this subject to be painted with oil on canvas (26"x30") for an exhibit in Maitland, Florida back in 2003. I sketched it out in graphite then added the color scheme in Photoshop (fig. 2). But due to schedule problems, I didn't finish the painting (fig. 3) and used The Passover instead. It stayed in my garage all those years. But finally, thanks to this downtime...it's finished! It's a two three-hour sessions in Photoshop. Roman empire is one subject I'm always fascinated with. The subject is set during a first century campaign. A tribune gives a legionary commander (seated) counsel on their next move as the centurion (behind the commander with the crest), his optio (behind the centurion) and an aquilifer (with the banner) look on. Unconsciously, I draw the main character bigger and yet it works. Well, he's the "boss".

Lizard Troop

A few years ago at Disney, I was developing a story concept simply titled Lizard Troop. Due to some exciting announcements like shutting down the studio made me just abandon the project. But I did a few artworks for it that I saved. I pulled this one out (fig. 2). Since I'm on my down time this week, I decided to have fun and paint it (fig. 1). By the way, I just finished 'Surf's Up' (slated for 2007) last week and on to the next project. Work load will not kick in probably until the next few weeks. Anyway here's the finished product. It's a four hour sitting in Photoshop.

Mulan and Shang

These are a couple of character layout poses for Mulan during the avalanche sequence. I just noticed on the second panel that Mulan's size relationship with Shang and Khan is off. I drew her a bit bigger. But what the heck, it worked.

New Adventures Of Jonny Quest

While working for Hanna Barbera at Fil-Cartoons Studios in Manila 16 years ago (oh my!), I had the privilege of being part of a lot of Saturday morning cartoons that I grew up with. The New Adventures Of Jonny Quest is one of my favorite. As you may know, they go to different exotic places on every episode of Jonny Quest. That show as well as a lot of TV cartoons have been a fantastic training ground for me as a layout artist. The turnover of each episode was so quick (every month or two the most). So we have to crank up the speed in thinking, research and drawing without losing the quality as much as possible. This bg layout was one of the very few ones that I kept from that show. I believe the original layout was done in 1992. Then I fixed the rendering on it around 1995-1996 to be added on my portfolio while applying for feature animation studios. There's nothing really much going on in this layout. But I like how I played with the light and how it turned out. An epic scale was created on a very simple shot. Again, if my memory serves me well, this is supposed to be some kind of a landing pad for a secret underground facility for that episode. This was done with black prismacolor on soft medium weight vellum.

Beach From Tarzan

The first artwork is an underlay level I did for a scene from Tarzan. The foliage was purposely detailed since it's a pan set-up and needs to see details in the background as camera pans. I don't remember what exactly this scene is for but I'm sure it's towards the end of the movie. Too bad, I can't find the bg for this so I imported the file to Photoshop and made it into a quick beach painting.

Tarzan

©Disney
This rough bg layout I did I believe is for the scene where Tarzan is finally recognized by the apes as their leader. There's a slight drizzle of rain that's why a couple of puddles of water were added. It was a 16 fld set-up using graphite on smooth animation paper. Layout was done in 1998.