Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog

I had the chance to interview OneHandClapping’s Christian DeVita, the lead storyboard artist for Wes Anderson’s stop motion adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox. Here is the interview, along with several of Christian’s storyboards, sketches, and even some of director Wes Anderson’s thumbnails.

Drawn!: Tell me a little about your involvement in the production of Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Christian DeVita: I was the lead storyboard artist on the movie. I was drafted in early in the production (Sep 2007) along with other 6 artists.

We went through a few passes of the scenes, based on some thumbnails that Wes drew, before he decided he wanted to work closely with one of us in Paris. The animation studio and sets were in East London’s Three Mills studios.

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I don’t read Dutch, but I can tell that Sjors Vervoort is a newly graduated animator from the Netherlands. Beyond that, I’ll need a good translator for his website, but not for this great stop-motion/hand-painted hybrid animation, made with painted bits of cardboard inserted in the streets of (I assume) the Netherlands.

(Thanks, Julia!)

I’m a big fan of the stylized action of Samurai Jack, one of the best designed shows on TV. And now I’m a fan of animator Chel White of Bent Image Lab, who created this cutout animation promo for Cartoon Network.

I had never heard of Pat & Mat until I came across this bountiful post on MetaFilter, which helps explain the origins of these comical Czech stop motion shorts:

Considered ideologically impure by Czech authorities, creators Lubomír Beneš and Vladimír Jiránek were allowed to make around 30 episodes by the Slovakian arm of the state television corporation. They continued making new episodes after Communist rule ended and production was kept going after they passed away.

The first short was produced in 1979. The series was sporadically updated through to 2004 with 78 episodes in total according to this Pat & Mat fansite.

I am a new fan. It’s hard to believe that this harmless comedy of errors, which seems outlandishly tame even for children’s programming, was ever considered subversive. Visit the MetaFilter post for a whopping playlist that should keep you entertained for several hours.

I was jonesing for some of that great stop motion animation from my days as a thumb-sucking, bed-wetting, Sesame Street-watching young lad. YouTube to the rescue.

Michael Stevenson created Pigeon Pilfer as his senior film at San Francisco State University. The Pigeon Pilfer website has some behind-the-scenes photos.

To commemorate the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, which occured 64 years ago today on August 6, 1945, Dan Blank presents his stop-motion film Shadowplay.

Dan writes:

Shadowplay focuses on the permanent shadows imprinted on the city’s walls & streets by the intense flash, creating indelible images from the exact moment the bomb hit. The film was created at NYU, and took two and a half years to complete. It won multiple awards, including a Student Academy Award and Student Emmy. I hesitated on posting it online for years, but felt it was better to have it available rather than let it sit buried on my hard drive. Thank you so much for helping share my work!

Visit Dan Blank’s website.

Say what you will about Coldplay, but this stop-motion/pixilation chalk video for Strawberry Swing by creative powerhouse Shynola is just plain cool.

This is just wonderful. For her final year project at the Glasgow School of Art, Eleanor Stewart created a stop motion music video for Aaron Copeland’s Hoedown. In it cowboys, horses, and the wild west come to life from the very pages of the musical score: Hoedown from Rodeo

Gumbley’s News is a 3D stop-motion animation made using newspaper and animator Louise Lockhart’s dad. She describes her project as “a sweet surreal pastiche of a Frankenstein style tale, lonely newsagent Mr Gumbley creates his ideal woman from the products in his shop.”

No, it’s not the missed opportunity that’s currently being sold on the bookshelves. If you’ve had the unfortunate opportunity to thumb through that book, you would’ve surmised that the only artist that worked on pre-production for Coraline was Japanese illustrator Tadahiro Uesugi. While we know that Tadahiro’s work is brilliant, the ‘visual companion’ is a complete slap in the face to all the other artists who worked on the production. Have no fear, though. The best way to see pre-production art of Coraline is to view it online. Here, I’ve created a nice tour of sorts for you (click on each name for much more art):

First up, early character and conceptual work by Dan Krall. Ronald Searle is definitely an influence:

Next, we visit Chris Appelhans for some visual development and color studies. The artists’ were definitely using Tadahiro as a point of reference:

More visual development, color studies, & props by Jon Klassen. Beautiful work, with a great sense of space and color:

Now, check out the fantastic character designs by Shane Prigmore:

More great character development by Shannon Tindle:

Stef Choi also did some early concept sketches. Check out the cute, little garden characters. Here’s a shot of Coraline & her mom:

Finally, gorgeous sculptures of all the Coraline puppets by Damon Bard. Be sure to check out all his galleries while you’re visiting his site. Incredibly talented guy:

In fact, there was a great deal of other incredibly talented people who worked on the film, but were never mentioned in the book. Vera Brosgol, Graham Annable, and Andy Schuhler, among others. (UPDATE: Katy Wu is another vis-dev artist.) Shane Prigmore does a great job listing more of the artists responsible for the look & style of the film. Be sure and check out all their hard work.

UPDATE: Kevin Dart just informed me that Chris Turnham has started up a blog for Coraline production art. Chris did some extensive work on the Fantastic Garden sequence:

Hope you enjoyed the tour. Come back again soon.

Related:
Coraline Artist Panel at Nucleus
The Marketing of Coraline
Coraline Site Up

Gallery Nucleus recently hosted a Coraline Production Artist Panel, and over at Steve Lambe’s blog, he’s posted the majority of the event online in segmented YouTube clips, courtesy of Sean Szeles who recorded the talk.

I’ve only posted the first one here, but all eleven can be seen at Steve Lambe’s blog.