Thursday, February 17, 2011

Some Inspiration

Hey guys!

It has been way way way too long!  I have failed miserably this month in not only posting but actually doing projects to post at all.  Our house has been filled with sickness and injuries for literally a month. It started with my mom and I being bowled over with reoccuring illnesses and inflictions for weeks AND THEN my dad, as a lot of you know, had a bad bicycle crash and shattered his clavical and broke 3 ribs. Just when Mom and I were starting to be able to function again, Dad had his traumatic few weeks with the accident, Dr's visits, a surgery, more Dr visits, and pretty much round the clock care to stay on top of the wounds and pain. It's been a really hard beginning of the year for the Hobbses. But now, we're all on the mend and it can only get better from here, right?  ....crossing my fingers...

Ok, because I don't have anything to show you, I thought I'd share with you a few of the things that have inspired me.

1. I love when illustrators are able to evoke emotion and story telling into the simplest of characters. I adore Mo Willems and his Pigeon books! Here's a link to his blog page: Pigeon page  Mo creates the simplest form characters and shows an incredible amount of expression and body language throughout each of his books. I highly recommend them to anyone wanting a good young childrens series. They are so fun to read!



2. The art and humor of Marc Davis.  Ok, ok, I know its super cliche' to say I love Disney animators and add them to "favorites lists" but this particular artist had a knack for adding in his personal touch of humor and wit. In each of his projects, be it imagineering a park attraction or sketching out a character for an animation sequence, he was able to put his own little marc (ha ha PUN!) on each. If you look into a lot of the classic Disneyland attractions many of them have jokes and puns hidden within.
Some examples are:
A: The Hatbox Ghost in the Haunted Mansion, where the ghost carries around his own head in the hatbox
B: Some recent, but original ideas from Marc Davis, that were added during the Rivers of America refurb. Poor raccoons... its either the skunk or the water!!


C: Last, look at this characterization! So sophisticated and yet it's a pig...and an eagle... and an owl. And its hilarious. This is some concept work for the now extinct attraction "America Sings" (Fun Fact: a lot of these animatronics were/ and currently are being reused in Splash Mountain!)

3.Ok, the last little thing I want to show is a new (to me) blog one of my friends posted on facebook this week. I've sent it around to my friends already, but it's so stinking cute that I can't not show it on here for you all to see! It's called My Milk Toof  and it's the most teeth rotting sweetest thing you'll ever see.  Its a blog about 2 "Milk Teeth" and their adventures. The artist took some sculpy and made about 5 of each character with different expressions. Each frame is a picture illustration, so the story goes sort of like a stop motion comic. Please go check this out!! you will NOT regret it!



Hope you guys enjoy those little tidbits :) Im hoping to get back into the swing of things this weekend. It's been so tough, I'm more than ready for the weeks to get back to normal!

Have a Great Weekend!