Happy Birthday Kaj Pindal!

In the picture above: Alessandro, Amir, Kaj and Ellen Bessen
In the picture below: Alessandro, Kaj and Annie Pindal

Yesterday was Kaj Pindal's 80th birthday tribute at the NFB store in downtown Toronto,
It was a wonderful celebration of Kaj's life and carreer so far, we got to see some of his NFB classics and rare footage of his brilliant animated films from Denmark.
My friend Alessandro Piedimonte contributed to it with very creative ideas: First, to give Kaj the caricature bust he had sculpted of him, and second a birthday card featuring a caricature by Pete Emslie, Alex asked me to help him with the text on the card, and for two weeks it was passed around the college for the students and teachers to sign.
Kaj was really moved, he appreciates creativty, just like Alessandro!

Thanks to Angela Piedimonte for taking the pictures!

Pete's expression assginment

Pete has provided us with models of his characters and assigned us to draw 4 distinctive expressions for each.


As usual, I started with getting the character on model with practice drawings.

Here they are...*drum roll*...

SCARED

SKEPTICAL

LAUGHING HYSTERICALLY

FLIRTATIOUS

I worked really hard on the top ones, they consist of several stages of roughs and cleanup, the latter was drawn once, all on one page, I guess it looks more spontaneous that way.

Tune in next week and see this guy in side splitting action.

FIN.

Baywolf

I went to my blog to see what was new and sank into a long depression when there was no update in site. Then it hit me...I'm the moderator. So I spent the rest of the afternoon coloring this drawing for posting. I drew it before Mayerson's class on Thursday, I haven't drawn anything purely for fun in a long time.
We actually got free tickets to see Baewoulf from one of our teachers, and I was about to go see it with Alex and King in Toronto, but I didn't want to miss the end of Pete's lecture.


The clean-up was done on tracing paper, which provides the creative texture for this scan, I decided not to remove the dirt, since I was going for the rough unshaven manly look, even though he's wearing a bra.

I used a limited pallete, for instance, Baywolf's toenails are the same color as his eyes. I learned a lot about using limited palletes from Nick Thornborrow, he did an excellent job color-styling his short "The Foolish Bet". Art students- I highly recommend apprenticing talented peers.

As for the tagline, I just merged a bunch of movies which I can't tell apart.

Caught on Camera: Pete Emslie Drawing

We've made a 10 minute video of Pete drawing and explaining his creative process

I convinced him that eager beavers world over can learn from his expertise, Nothing is more educational than seeing a pro at work!

Listen up, As Pete draws he explains his process in detail.
We're hosting it on both of our sites, click on the "Zoom" on the bar of the player to view in full sceen.

Video 1- Gesture and Construction

Video 2- Sculpting on paper

Video 3- Line Weight

Special thanks to Mitch Kennedy for his help and tripod!

Trick or Spam?

Late Halloween card, Drawn in Flash