Surf's Up!

©Sony Pictures Animation.
Finally after three years, here it is! Definitely the best looking animated film that came out in the last couple of years. Enjoy the movie.

Surf's Up Book

©Sony Pictures Animation/Columbia Pictures.
If you haven't gotten it yet, head on to Barnes & Nobles or Amazon and
grab Surf's Up - The Art and Making Of A True Story. It has loads of visual development pieces from the earliest concept designs to designing the waves. Here's a sample of my artwork inside - one of the main characters sitting on his ritualistic sandcastle while chanting to call the waves. Done in prismacolor on vellum. Enjoy the book. Below is the original Surf's Up design team doing research atthe Quicksilver surfing competition in San Onofre, California back in summer 2004. (l-r) Sylvain Deboissy, Paul Lasaine, Marcelo Vignali, Armand Serrano, and Ron Lukas.
Make a note on your calendars - movie comes out in the US and Canada on June 8. For worldwide release dates, click here.

Carved Temple

A recent practice piece that actually started as a doodle in Photoshop playing around with the idea of a carved temple inspired by Petra. But instead of being carved from a rock, a temple is carved from a massive tree. Anyway, it's a visdev idea that might come in handy for another project in the future.

Dense Jungle 2

This is another practice jungle piece for lighting snd composition using mid-ground elements for framing. Done in Photoshop.

The Empty Tomb

Easter is here and what a great opportunity to illustrate the origin of this very significant celebration - the empty tomb. This is my depiction of the dawn after the stone was rolled away for all to see that the Savior has risen from the dead. This is a fun one hour Photoshop session and I only used two colors - green and red. As red echoes the death on the cross, green swallows it up with hope and new life.
Happy Easter to all.

SURF'S UP Trailer 2 in HD

©Columbia Pictures.
Here's a better site for the second trailer in Quicktime HD. Click the image to watch.

SURF'S UP Film Clip

©Columbia Pictures.
By the way, you can view the new second trailer at THIS SITE. Enjoy

Dense Jungle

©2006 Armand Serrano.
I've notice that I've been designing a lot of foliage and organic elements for features in the past six or seven years. As of last month, I'm officially doing visdev on "Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs" for Sony which is slated for 2009. And the first production task I have to do is design two environments heavy on foliage. Why am I not surprised! Anyway, so I've been busy lately with work, at the same time doing the final editing for the music video and finishing up the script for my David and Goliath project on the side. So for now, I'm posting another practice piece which I did last year. I love playing around with foreground elements using them to create another "aspect ratio" for my shot. The intention for this practice is to make the elements graphically designed yet dimentional and not to feel like "cut-outs". Lighting plays a big part as always.

Tonal Sketches for Mulan

©Disney.
My little daughter watches Mulan over and over again and everytime I glance at the TV, I still can't help but watch and enjoy it over again myself. It's such a beautiful movie and brought back a lot of memories and artworks in mind. Seeing some shots that I did, I went through my files and dug up these two artworks what we used to call tonal sketches. Whenever we finished a cleanup layout, we used to include also a smaller composite drawing complete with tonal renderings of both bg and animation pose. This represents how we see the complete layout on the screen and the basis for the background painting. These were done in pencil and grey pantone markers on heavy animation paper ten years ago!

Music Video 2 - Boards and Stills

We edited the first half of the video over the weekend and here's a side by side comparison of some of the storyboard panels to the corresponding production stills.

Music Video

Last weekend, I directed a music video for a joint project of Santa Clarita School of Performing Arts and a junior high school in Valencia, CA. It's a hip-hop song titled "Listen" geared towards the teens and young adults regarding the importance of listening and diversity. These are some of the storyboard drawings I did.
It was a two-day shoot with a little over a hundred cast and crew and three months preparation. My friends from DSI Studios brought their talent and equipment all the way from Long Beach. We shot everything in anamorphic widescreen 24P HD. Lighting and grip equipment courtesy of Pat Christman and his crew. I have to give it to my wife, Bing, the associate producer, for managing very well the logistics of the production especially feeding that many people for two days. I don't usually put photos on my blog but I'll make an exception. By the way, photos courtesy of my good friend, Aixa Deluca, the official photographer. Below are some pictures during production. Now, we'll be in post production at DSI.

(Above, clockwise from left: me, assistant director Mike Merrill, DP Paul Olson, and 2nd unit director Marc Hampson; we used 2 Panasonic HVX200; my wife, Bing, at work; on the set day 2.

My DSI friends: (left to right) Paul Olson, myself, Aaron Fairley, Marc Hampson, and John Olson during a break. For complete photos on the video shoot, click here.

Visual Development Class

I'll be offering a mentorship program on visual development in animation for both students and professionals which will start next month. This will be in the Valencia area of Los Angeles and here are the details.

Class will be Fridays 7-9 pm starting March 9 to April 27 at the Santa Clarita School of Performing Arts 23502 Lyons Ave., Suite 106, Santa Clarita, CA 91321

CURRICULUM

Week 1 • March 9 • Research
Week 2 • March 16 • Design Explorations
Week 3 & 4 • March 23 & 30 • Visual Storytelling
April 6 • Good Friday • No Class
Week 5 & 6 • April 13 & April 20 • Background Design
Week 7 • April 27 • Portfolio Preparation

Cost $700.00

Since this is a personalized mentorship program, space is very limited. Click here or email to artist@armandserrano.com your name and contact number to register and you will be given payment instructions. Payment accepted through Paypal or personal check.
Note: This is a first come first serve basis. Please email only if you're serious in taking the class. Bring your own drawing materials. Any medium of preference is accepted (eg. graphite, markers, laptop with tablet, etc.).

Click here to see poster in my website