HEALTHY MOCKING

In any creative community, there should be a healthy amount of mocking. Among artists, the favored form is caricatures. Here at Pixar, we've had a caricature wall for quite a while. It's been a main attraction in our department and a major impetus for quality drawings (however cruel). Here are some of the best of yours truly. It's great how each drawing defines the relationship of the artist-and-subject just as much as it defines the person being caricatured.

By Victor Navone:
By Bobby Podesta:
By Emma Coats:



What I get from these is that I smile a lot and need a haircut ;)

NEIGH-SAYER, THE HORSEMAN

My buddy Ev runs a sweet blog called 365 Supers where he creates a new superhero/villain every day. This one was my idea, which Ev executed brilliantly. I think Neigh-Sayer could even give Bad Horse a run for his money. "Raise the hoof!"

HAPPY NEW DECADE!

My New Year's Resolution is to make this comic into a film. Hey, Disney owns Marvel now, it could happen.

Thanks to James Gurney for sharing the awesomeness that is Devil Dinosauria.

CHADES CHALLENGE XXII: SMOKING AVENGERS
As you can see, I'm still on a Batman kick. But what sort of characters are you supposed to draw with a challenge like "smoking avengers"? Feel free to contribute your own designs! Just post your tobacco-toking titans any time before next Friday (Christmas Day!) and I'll post a link to your designage. Sketch greatly!

I went on a Batman tangent this morning. Always fun!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Xorg here is thankful for his cat, Zed. Unfortunately for Zed, Xorg hails from the same planet as Alf and, well...let's just say they won't be serving turkey for Thanksgiving at Xorg's house.

Staff Meeting
I just completed a quarter staff class at Pixar.

Now I can finally track down and duel Star Wars kid.

Hog Warts

I recently discovered a breed of prehistoric pig-wolves called entelodonts. Well, I didn't discover them, I learned about their existence. Below is the aptly named Daeodon, or "terrible hog". Why they chose to use a frightened bikini girl for size reference, I have no idea. Maybe daeodons were also chauvinist pigs.

Below is Andrewsarchus, my new favorite non-dinosaur animal.

These guys reminded me of the wargs from Lord of the Rings, so I thought it'd be fun to sketch my version of a warg-rider. He had to be someone real nasty who looked like he'd be right at home riding a Daeodon into battle or wrestling an Andrewsarchus into submission. Here's what I came up with.

If this guy existed during primeval times, he'd certainly give cro-magnon man a run for his money. For the colors, I googled "mottled" and found this cool texture. It has all the earthy greens and browns you'd associate with an orc. Thanks to Photoshop's eyedropping color-sampler, I was able to use this as a direct palette, and it worked pretty well!

Dailies

We're in "the white-hot center of crunch time" as our director, Lee, puts it. That means loooong dailies. Which, in turn, means lots of time for sketching! Here are my two favorite subjects: dinos and orcs!

GIVING THANKS

I'm a huge fan of Halloween and Christmas, so after October 31st I'm always tempted to skip Thanksgiving and bust out the holly and Christmas albums. This year, however, I'm taking the time to give the often-overlooked turkey day its due and really reflect on all the things I should be thankful for.

These are just the top five.

1. The lessons of Jesus Christ, Bill Nye the Science Guy, and Yoda
2. Flavored coffee creamers
3. Control-Z
4. Audio Commentaries
5. Somewhere, somehow John Williams is still making music

And thank you for stopping by!