Breakin' Out - Resin Final...

Here's the smooooothed out resin. NICE JOB ERIC!!! The sculpt will get cast in wax again overseas and all areas will get even tighter before they make the final steel mold.

Next stage - COLOR

First shot of the resin out of the cast...SWEETNESS!!! One more body section then Eric will tool them to remove any imperfections.

CRUSH Vinyl -- Box Mock-up...

Stage 6B - here's an update on the head and face. Details are being refined - ears, zipper on neck, nostrils, etc. The head is pegged and swivels at the neck (for casting and molding purposes).

Next stage - molding and casting the resin.

Well here it is.

With special thanks to our pal Brian Torrens, we now have a mock-up of the CRUSH box, complete with an acetate viewing window .

Brian and I go way back. I've known him since grade 5 or so and our paths seem to cross whenever the time is right. Brian worked with Todd and I once before: He painstakingly hand painted all of our miniature sets for our YTV series "The 9th Life of Sherman Phelps". He did an awesome job then and his help with the box is greatly appreciated.

Thanks Brian!

The box is now on its way to NYC for the Live With Animals Show to meet up with its counterpart -- the CRUSH vinyl.

CRUSH Vinyl - WIP...

Stage 5A - Crush's head. My 2D drawing had tons of cheats in it and we had to make a few compromises because not everything will translate unless it has a solid form.

Eric has been super easy to work with and we've been able to make suggestions every step of the way.

Stage 3 - the rough layout is finished - at this point CRUSH has no fine facial details but all the main body parts have been roughed and assembled.

My partner in crime, Mark Thornton has started roughing out box designs.

Neptoon's 1st Vinyl - Work In Progress...

Jared and Garnet introduced me and Mark to master sculpter Eric Nocella Diaz. After seeing his work on their vinyl - BUZZ - we knew we'd found our guy.

CRUSH is one of the main characters in our concept series "Monstrocity High" and Neptoon Studios 1st vinyl "toy". I use the term toy lightly - we see it more as an interesting and fun way of building a potential audience and industry awareness - blah blah blah.

CRUSH will be unveiled Friday, July 28th, at the 'Live with Animals' Gallery (210 Kent Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211; entrance to the gallery on Metropolitan). Opening reception is from 6-9pm. The show, curated by Jared Deal.

The process has been really wild - fun to see our creation pop off the page. I'll be posting work in progress pics - so check back soon.

Shady Characters...

Here's one of the pieces I'm putting in for the SHADY CHARACTERS show that my buddyJared Deal is putting on at the Live With Animals gallery in NYC at the end of July.
Because most of my color work is created digitally, I've included the original ruff and the clean without color to go along side the finished art.

Also, Jared will be unveiling Neptoon's first vinyl - CRUSH - from our concept series Monstrocity High.

below originated at cartoon brew

"Shady Characters" is an art show that opens Friday, July 28th, at the 'Live with Animals' Gallery (210 Kent Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211; entrance to the gallery on Metropolitan). Opening reception is from 6-9pm. The show, curated by Jared Deal, is "simply a tribute to all of the creepers and tweakers, outcasts and outlaws, and freaks and geeks, we encounter daily." Participating artists include Deanna Marsigliese, Clio Chiang, Steve Lambe, Gabe Swarr, Rex Hackelberg, Anna Chambers, Mark Ackland, Todd Kauffman, Joel Trussell, Bobby Chiu, Martin Wittig, Aaron Augenblick, Phil Rynda, Peter Browngardt, Danny Kimanyen, Randy Ramos, Garnet Syberg-Olsen, Jamie Mason, Chris George, Eric Nocella, Dino Alberto, Jason Levesque, Tim Shankweiler, Eric Brown, Mark Pecoraro, Pat Pakula, Kevin Schmid, Kaori Hamura, Richard Mather, Rod Filbrandt, and Deal himself. Stay tuned to Jared's blog for additional details.

Thumbnails...

I like to do character thumbnails on the back of business cards - lets me focus on the overall shapes without getting wrapped up in all the details.

The Perfects...

Here's a very rough CG mock-up my friend Dean Outschoorn did for me...how creepy is this dude.

This is a repost - I had created a robot family and needed to round out my premise with some humans for them to interact with...I looked to Bruno Salamone for inspiration. His style is loose, fun and colorful and it was similar to the one I was working with already. I'm a big fan of Salamone's work. I could only hope one would look at these designs and see the influence.

Here are some rough thumbnail BG's for the show - I love throwing them in PS and playing with the hue.

Here's the one sheet for the show concept that goes with the rejection letter a few posts down.

I still think it's a funny idea - they be trippin'.

My Dumb Doug...

Here's the bottom half of the back of the one sheet. I'm not usually one to hide my ideas but someone was talking reverse engineering the other day and it freaked me out.

Besides, it's not the ideas but the execution that counts...right?

If you're a follower of this blog you'll remember and be able to pick out all the little ideas, influences and characters that eventually became this one sheet.

I've seen ideas similar to this before but Neptoon's added an interesting twist that makes it unique and fun.

Get Yer Pyjamazon...

The big wigs felt the show was a bit preschool - not sure how they would get that impression with ep titles like...

Courtesy Flush

Buffy the Washboard Player

Little Shop of Drawers

Dial "M" for Monotonousnessisity

Mr. Right Foot

But then again, they also said they didn't like the font we used in our bible. Wicked.

This was our original Preston Pyjamabag. After asking for Sponge Bob, Nick thought it looked too Sponge Bob - hmmm. I think if you cut open Sponge Bob PeeWee Herman would fly out anyway - what's original anymore?

This was Preston after the "nick" incident.

Older versions of the characters were fun but not as Flash friendly as we needed them to be and we've since redesigned them - see below post.

Pyjamazon Anim Test...

~CLICK TO VIEW~

While I was diggin around for old Pyjamazon files I came across some test animation I did. It's nothing spectacular - just something thrown together.

I love to do this after I've designed a cast of characters - and it's a great exercise. It's fun, quick, cheap and you'll learn tons about the limitation of your characters.

I usually grab some BG off the web (this one originally had baloo and mowgli in the middle of it - gotta love PS) then I find some old audio clips that match the characters (in this case Alf and Buzz Lightyear). Some fun music or sound FX then I throw some simple animation on top of it all.

I find it super gratifying to see my characters come to life.

Pyjamazon...

Some people had asked who these characters were when I had shown them on some pins in an earlier post. They are from an old pitch called "PYJAMAZON" created by my partner (business) Mark Thornton and designed by yours truly.

It was one of our first combined efforts back in the day when everyone was looking for the next Sponge Bob. Guess they still are???

The Rejection Letter...

On the left - a letter we received today. On the right - the response we'd love to send back.

WOW! We sent that pitch out FOUR years ago - now that's some serious red tape folks. Oh well, maybe it took them that long to come up with a nice way to tell us our idea stank.

I kid of course. We're always in the business of accepting your rejection letters - so send away.

Neptoon's Habbo Short Clip...

~CLICK~

Here's a clip from the Habbo animated short Neptoon Studios did with Elliott Animation Inc. Sorry for the pixelation - i'll try to throw up a better quality clip later.

This is another one of those projects done after hours and on weekends so thanks to all the super talented folks that helped out and pulled some late nights to help us meet our deadline;)

Rumor has it that the folks at Sulake plan to have the DVD out this summer.

Neptoon Habbosode Stills...

The pic below is from our original test - The characters in the actual short above had colors similar to those the Habbo community would be more familiar with.

Neptoon Does Habbo...

At long last - we've finally been given the okay to put up a clip from our Habbo short.

As reported by Cold Hard Flash way way back in April 2005, various studios from around the world have been invited to create a series of 15 three-minute 'Habbosodes.' The effort is headed up by Sulake, the company behind Habbo Hotel, a massive virtual environment with over 3.6 million users. The 'Habbosodes' project will resolve with the release of a compilation DVD, that will eventually spawn a TV series.

Here's a still till we get a chance to throw a clip together.