Volcanic Eruption

©ArmandSerrano.
Always had the urge to draw a volcanic eruption. So late last night, I had the chance and here's it is. All in PS.

Animation Book Look 2008 and Aardman

I will be at the Animation Book Look 2008 for book signing together with Sony colleagues Marcelo Vignali, Paul Lasaine, Richie Chavez, Ron Lukas, Mike Kurinsky, Chris Buck, and Chris Jenkins on May 17th. For more information, click here.

Last week, I wrapped up a gig with Aardman Studios in their temp studio here in Venice Beach. Sony had me on loan for a whole month and it was quite an experience. I had the pleasure of working with director Sarah Smith and her Aardman team, topnotch visdev talents George Hull and Francois Audouy, and a good old friend from my Disney days, Scott Caple. The last time I saw Scott was eleven years ago when we were working in Mulan. Hopefully next time we meet again will be sooner than that, right Scott? Photo above was taken during our "wrap" lunch. Left to right: myself, George, Peter, Alice, Francois, Sarah and Scott. Btw, I have links to George and Scott's sites here in my blog.

Proud Daddy Ad

If you have the Graco Baby catalog, You'll see my daughter Ella's photo on page 48. You can also view the online catalog here just for this month.

Another Sci-Fi Doodle

©Armand Serrano.
Another spacemen thumbnail while still in the sci-fi mode for now. Enjoy.

Sci-Fi Doodles

©Armand Serrano
I've been painting in PS a lot at work lately. So while in that mode, I tried to continue painting at home (whenever I find time which was normally either 12 midnight or 5 am!)) and do some more practice pieces. Sci Fi was the chosen theme and here're my doodles from last week. By the way, for the next six weeks, I'll be busy working on a new feature film here at Sony in collaboration with Aardman Animations. Definitely looking forward to this venture and I'll try to continue posting as much as I could during those weeks.

Lilo & Stitch Layouts

Digging the archives again, I came across my old Lilo & Stitch BG layouts which I'd like to share. Above is a shot of Lilo's house done in prismacolor and velum. Notice the tape mark I used to stretch the bg dates the artwork back to the pre-photoshop era.

Above is one of my favorites. The simpler the shot, the more challenging to make it interesting since there's litttle to play with. I was asked not only to lay this one out but also to design the the book cover. This is the only time this book is going to be seen on the screen so it has to be very clear for a one second shot. I did a couple of designs and this was the one I was happy with. Remember, this was pre-PS days so I have to do do the fonts by hand. Done in graphite on paper and the same goes with the rest of the artworks below.


Again, above are two layouts that were simple but challenging. For those of you into 2D, the front door was a 24 fld vertical pan setup. The 5000 peg mark can still be seen on the left hand border.

This is a layout of a street corner from a deleted scene. The painted bg turned out so nice that the directors decided to include it in the Wynona Judd song montage sequence at the end of the movie.

I never expected this one to be a favorite of mine when I was working on it because of the shot's "simplicity". This layout was painted by the "master", Xiangyuan Jie (Check my link to his site, it's amazing). Click here to see the painted version online.


A couple of my warm up design sketches before production kicked in. All images in this posting are ©Disney.

Big Bear and Third Day Concert

I took advantage of the President's day weekend and took a couple more days off to take a long overdue vacation. Since I celebrated my birthday two weeks ago, my family decided to spend a couple of days at a cabin up in Big Bear here in California to catch the last snow of the season. It was sunny and beautiful. No celphones and internet but I brought the very essential Xbox 360 and spent until 3:30 am playing Halo 3 and Ghost Recon 2. Photo above was taken from the patio of our cabin facing north overlooking Big Bear Lake.
Then to conclude my "birthday vacation", my wife Bing bought us tickets to one of my favorite Christian rock bands, Third Day at the House of Blues in Sunset Strip, Hollywood. They definitely rocked the house and there were also moments when they turned HOB into a sanctuary of worship. Awesome. For those of you in Florida, they will have a concert at the House of Blues at the Downtown Disney in Lake Buena Vista on February 29. Check thirdday.com for more concert details.
Anyway, it was a good time off...now I'm back to work.

Surf's Up - SURFBOARDS Part 2

My friend Simon Rodgers (Sim-R) already warned me to post something or else... So here's my second installment on the Surfboard design for Surf's Up which by the way is nominated for Oscar Awards in two weeks for best animated film together with Ratatouille and Persepolis. Again, this is a surfing movie and it's a privilege to be the one to design the surfboards for the entire film.


Tank's approved surfboard above came a long way. Looking at these designs below, using his tatoo patterns and very fancy colored boards were tried. But the simpler "Jaws" motif was decided to be the best route to go.




The Japanese surfer's board was a hoot. I started with the obvious - Japanese WW2 patterns. I thought I hit the homerun till our senior 3d visdev modeler, Takao, said this could be very offensive to our Japanese friends. So I went for the high tech penguin version of a surf board which the directors liked. The characters painted on the board (which ended up on the big screen) means "Hannah Rules" - Hannah is my oldest daughter.






We have an Australian dude named Rory which the board design was based from aboriginal tribal patterns on boomerangs.




Last one on the list was the Brazilian surfer whose board has a shark bite. I love how it ended up on he big screen when art director Ron Lukas added loose shark teeth still embedded on the board.

Surf's Up - SURFBOARDS Part 1

One of the most exciting tasks I was given in Surf's Up was to design the surfboards (all except for one, the ice board which was designed by my good friend Marcelo Vignali). Here's my first installment showing designs for the Shrine, Geek/Big Z, Cody, Lani, Chicken Joe and the generic competition (Reggie's) boards. All my board designs are completely done digitally in color with suggested textures using photoshop on top of backgrounds painted by Paul Lasaine, Joty Lam and Noelle Triaureau and characters by Sylvain DeBoissy. All images ©Sony Pictures Animation.


Above: What's left of the surfboard from Big Z's "accident" were put together and turned it into a shrine. Below: My concept for the Big Z board that was used in the film was it's a part of him being "one" with the board. So I used the same flower pattern on his body for the design on his board and it worked.



These next concept designs for Big Z's old boards are based from long boards and patterns used in the 30's-40's. Somehow, long boards for me, signifies age, experience and stability which are what Big Z was all about.




Cody's board has to be plain and simple to stand out and since he built it from scratch with Big Z from a log.


For the earlier concept designs, I used the pointed short board for Cody to show his restless personality and speed.


You'll notice that for Lani, I used a pattern from one of Big Z's shrine concept boards above which has the typical Polynesian "Lilo & Stitch" feel. She uses a medium board which for me signifies a combination of both speed and stability.


The first concept I had for Chicken Joe's "cornboard" was an actual sliced corn cobb that he uses as surfboard. Can you see the "hidden" liger underneath paying homage to his previous Napoleon Dynamite character.


Then for the one used in the film, I figured that since Chicken Joe lives in the backwoods, their surfboard design never changed through the years so the shape of his board was patterned from the old longboards with flat tips circa 1920's. Notice the hammer marks and nails sticking out on the deck.


Reggie is a very flashy, flamboyant promoter so the surfboards he issues to surfers have to reflect his personality. That's why they're painted with bright colors (has the plastic feel like Reggie's character) and has his logo (which is his face) on each one (for he's full of himself). Again short board is my choice to show speed and competition.



More surfboards to come and HAVE A WONDERFUL CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL...

An ArtRage Piece

©Armand Serrano.
A few months ago, I posted my very first ArtRage piece, Well, I havent touched the software since till a couple of nights ago. I was talking to another artist in the studio how tedious and slow Painter software is. Well I got reminded of Artrage and decided to play around with it again. After a couple of hours of enjoyment, I'm so satisfied with the simplicity and ease of use versus the very complex Painter. The textures are working out fine and not to mention that it doesn't lag down even when I'm using a big brush. It has no fancy saturation, color balance, even brightness and contrast controls so it trains me to be sharp in choosing my values and colors. I'll be definitely using it more in combination with Photoshop for the new project I'll be art directing at the studio. It has my endorsement if you guys want to check it out. By the way, did I say it's only $25 bucks! This is the piece I did that night - I'd say 99% Artrage and 1% Photoshop (just for a slight tonal gradation).

More Tonal Sketches for Mulan

©Disney.
Looking through a box full of my old artworks a.k.a my Disney "archive", I came across these tonal sketches I did way back for Mulan (I'd say at least ten years ago!). These are done in graphite, prismacolor and pantone cool gray markers on standard animation paper.

Canyon Country Fires

You all have seen on the news the fires here in Southern California. I live in Canyon Country and had a first hand experienceof some of the scary moments during this buckweed incident that started rapidly Sunday afternoon. We were not evacuated but had to stand by just in case. The first five photos were taken from my backyard Sunday night. We're looking at the Whites, Plum and Sand Canyons which are approximately only 3-4 miles away from where I live. Last two were taken yesterday. That's Saugus area near Castaic. Fortunately, it's quiet now on our front but let us all continue to hope and pray for many whose lives and properties are directly affected by this calamity.