The Mystery Hat teaser

Our Children's book is coming out November 4th and is now ready for pre-order. This is incredibly exciting! We put a little video together with some development doodles and animation to spice things up. Hope you enjoy!

Happy Seasonings!!!

Happy Holidays!!!!

Season's Greetings!!

Hiccup, meet Hiccup!

Here's a little drawing I made for Cressida Cowell, the writer of "How To Train Your Dragon", the book.
Although our film differs quite a lot from her book, she assures us all that she's perfectly fine with that.
They are two very different animals, but with the same heart, so to speak.
I was very fortunate to Supervise the animation on Hiccup, and while I'm still
far too close to it I feel that Cressida's Hiccup and our Hiccup somehow inhabit the same soul.
I hope fans of the book feel the same. The film opens this weekend. Hope you enjoy it as much as we did making it!

A study in silhouette

A fun little thing I did a while back for an animation class I gave.
I gave it a B-.......

AB Ed 3

AB Ed 2

AB Ed

This guy was never used in the film. I think he sort of preceded Hamegg as an antagonistic character of sorts.
Again, this is me following up on Luis' designs.

How embarrassing....

To everyone who's posted comments since, well my first Holiday Card it seems, my apologies for never realizing you did.
You see, I'm an idiot!.... I never realized that I had the power of censorship in having to approve your comments (thank you, Rune for enlightening me).
What a dumb concept! Dammit, I approve, welcome and thank you for all your wonderful comments. What idiot wouldn't?

Anyway, I'll try my best to keep posting a little more regularly (although it seems I'm running out of worthy posts already).

AB Alternative take on President Stone

I did these sketches as we departed from the earlier look of the character. Totally different vibe.

AB President Stone & DR Elefun

AB President Stone

Now, this guy here is an early incarnation of President Stone, then General Stone. Again, these are improvisations over a theme by Dr. Grane. It may or may not show that we both are very fond of the simplicity of the Muppets and things of that nature.....Ok, fine, maybe it doesn't show.....

AB Soldier

These were some poses I did for Luis Grane off his designs to explore their character a bit. The soldiers in the final movie look nothing like this, of course......

AB Twins

Theses are my version of Luis Grane's designs of the twins, slightly bastardized by yours truly as I attempted a few character poses.

AB Kid Poses

As you can see these were done quickly..... I think I took a few cues from Bodart here. I aspire to one day share his effortless draftsmanship. At the rate at which I'm drawing theses days, it surely will take a while....

AB Faces alt.

I went over the same page one more time to see what else I could find. It's more or less the same, but I think I prefer this version.

Astro Boy Designs

I figured I'd post some of the design/character pose work I did on Astro Boy before we started to animate. I had a blast working on the show, primarily because I got a chance to work with my good friend Luis Grane who of course served as the show's Character Designer. I mostly did turnarounds and expression sheets from Luis' approved designs for modeling, but what I'll post are more exploratory material (and quite off style..).
Hope you enjoy (all three of you)....

First, a couple of faces.

Happy Holidays!

Forgive me friend(s?) for I have sinned....It's been a year since my last doodle......
Oh well.

Happy Holidays!