The Conductor

drawforce.blogspot.com

Ed Catmull interview

There's this really good interview with Ed Catmull (co-founder of pixar) that I found very interesting, inspiring, and wonderfully honest. There are a ton of great points he makes about the film process and the success of his company, but there was one that really stuck with me. He was answering a question referring to children being 'consumers' and changing with time and technology and here's what he said...

" ...In terms of the way we think about our stories though, we don't segment them in that sense. We do make films that children can enjoy but we also make films WE can enjoy and we believe very strongly that children live in an adult world. We want things in the films they don't understand, not that were trying to do that. What makes things interesting for children is they are figuring out their world and if you make something that is all easy for them to figure out your actually having a distortion of the world they operate in and the world they like to be in."

He has a really good point when it comes to censorship and 'thought control'...something I personally juggle when making decisions about what's acceptable when I work in film or in picture books. Anyways, my apologies for the personal post...I was really inspired when I listened to it and I'm posting it hoping you all will be too. Thanks for all the comments lately! Stay tuned, more to come =]

-willie

'beatdown'

a moment/color piece i'm testing out...originally it was for a charity show called 'beautiful grim'. I was nowhere near where I wanted to be so decided to hold onto it and work on it a bit more.

'beatdown' - digital

Mural

digital

Above is an image I was commissioned to do for a mural in NYC. An awesome couple are having their first new born and decided they wanted to give their little guy a safari in his room. I jumped at the opportunity and tried a picture book style, which in this case worked well (i thought) for the wall... I also tried tying all the characters together in a 'moment' under a tree in the safari somewhere...

1. projecting the design and tracing it onto the wall

2. prepping... i have to thank bobby and vinnie for suggesting pre-mixed paints. you guys saved my life.

3. filling in...

and more filling in (thanks for the help babes!)

4. the line and detail came next. this took a while. if you look closely i re-drew most of it a second time, with white chalk...just to make sure my scale and relationships weren't gettin' crazy.

fin!

one of my favorite details.

Dragon Emperor

Dragon Emperor was the topic over at DrawForce this month (how to train your dragon was awesome! congrats to the folks who worked on it!) Anywho, I wanted to take this one a bit further with color. It's new for me to finish something to this level but I had fun and I'm trying to balance flats and form to create something that you might see in a picture book...or in an animated short. Please drop knowledge or crits here...

meet woodrow...

Blog-land, this is Woodrow. Woodrow, this is blog-land. hi. hello.


I have this old wooden toy that's been sitting around for a while and I finally gathered the courage to draw on it. I've been testing brush pens on all kinds of wood recently and It feels really nice...natural if you will. Lines flow very nicely and wood welcomes the ink. I have a few other things in the works that I don't think are quite ready to show, but stay tuned! In the meantime here's Woodrow (last name?)

Woodrow loves chucks

sorry about that... Woodrow tends to go pee every two hours
and strongly feels that 'when you gotta go, you gotta go'
-willie real copyright 2010

fake book cover

i'd love to illustrate book covers and things of that sort, so here's a mock cover i did for fun...

copyright willie real 2010

girl wearing keds

A drawing I did (from reference) with some buds over the weekend. i like when a girl sports some clean keds. if keds gave me an assignment...i think this is what i'd do =] hope everyone had a nice weekend.

added some color below...

pen & ink & digital - willie

Evil Motoman

The topic over at Draw Force had me soo very excited that I did 2 motorcycle men. I wanted to contrast the previous smooth, clean, cool motorcycle man with this filthy, exhast spewing, grimmey, motocross, mad max like character who's thirsty for blood. -willie

Moto Man

moto man, digital - willie
Draw Force!

The new topic over at Draw Force is motorcycle man and I had soo much fun diving into reference for this. Steve McQueen was all over the web and I fell in love...

Beautiful Grim

'beautiful grim' pen and ink - willie

The piece above is for an auction called 'beautiful grim' concocted by a few colleagues for an old classmate of mine who's gone through some downs in recent times, but none the less is on the come up. More info here and please keep tuned in for updates on when the auction starts. Thank you all for the wonderful comments as always and take care.

Oh, almost forgot... There's another auction I'll be a part of for a few bud's who've made a documentary called 'Brownstones to Red Dirt'. You can read all about it here and check out the blog with all of the amazing postcards that will be auctioned off for a good cause. I've also added the link to the right. You might remember my posting from a few months ago...

pen & ink, acrylic, varnish - willie real

Again, thank you.

-willie

gnome

gnome for mike d

Space Man

'fist pound'

Draw Force isn't dead!...it just took a long nap =] Add it to your faves and check back often. Hope everyone is doing good and thanks soo much for all the comments on the blog! I'm terrible at replying but I truly appreciate each and everyone of them...so thanks again to you all. Here's a little process to the piece above...

1. rough on the cintiq

2. pen & ink on paper

3. best of both worlds (detail of final)

fernando & his imaginary friend

here's some work for a short i'm developing about a boy and his imaginary friend. the story is very, very loose and it's been in and out of my head for years but i thought of starting off the new year with a decent post. the first is a moment where the imaginary friend is helping fernando with a 'midnight snack' and the second one is a page of character studies.

happy new year! i hope yours is filled with inspiration and creativity.

-willie

fernando & his imaginary friend - copyright 2010 willie real

Happy Holidays!

vampire baseball!

or a food coma is more like it...

Polska

polska . copyright willie real 2009

Polska, which means Poland in Polish, is the name of a little old lady whom lives in a little old town that's a little out of the way. Polska is very determined! She's determined to cook with the freshest most essential ingredients and will accept no substitutes whatsoever. She'll travel to the ends of the earth on her trusty little mo-ped for the freshest food. One summer day she was planning a very special little dinner and that's how far I've gotten in developing this character =]

I love getting into the story and the environment when drawing characters. You can really find your answers when you want to know what to draw...

I hope to have the oppurtunity to make this some day.

-willie

wooden postcards

pen and ink - 4 1/4" x 5 1/2" thin birch wood

here are three postcards i'm doing for a benefit auction that's coming up. they're works in progress... i still want to add some mouths and varnish them up to punch the black ink. i'll post more info about it when its closer to the date. it was very pleasing to tune everything out and use the brush pen again.

-willie

new sketches

Merci