Upcoming "Shifting Mayas" Art Show

For those in the LA area that love art and the artists that make it, I will have all three of my "8 Bit Legends" pieces, framed and for sale, in the "Shifting Mayas" art show next month (Fri/Sat May 10th-11th). It will be held at the Atwater Crossing restaurant and art space in the Los Feliz/Glendale area. It will be much more than a gallery show; there will be live performances and painting, appetizers, and the full dinner menu and bar of the restaurant will be available. I hope to see you there on Friday night (May 10th). Click here for the Facebook Event page, and check out the flyer below for more information:

300 Sketchbook: Top Chef finalists

Brooke Williamson, Sheldon Simeon, and Kristen Kish.

I'm posting this a lot later than I was hoping, but here are the latest trio of portraits from my "300 Heads" sketchbook. The theme was "the last three finalists of Bravo's Top Chef." From left to right are: Brooke Williamson, Sheldon Simeon, and Kristen Kish (who won).

The portraits were drawn first on paper (reproducing photographs from Chelsea Sektnan, Star Chefs, and Bravo), then scanned and corrected, then digitally painted over in Photoshop. The background colors were chosen based off the colors of competition ribbons.

WIP shots:

Raw drawing.

Adjusted lines in Photoshop with rotate/transform tools.

Overlay comparison between raw lines (blue) and final lines (black).

Final lines, post-adjustment.

Color flats.

As with all reproductions I do of photographs, I hold no copyright on that material. This is a non-commercial fan art piece.

Red Dead mentioned on The Daily Show this week

It's good to see Red Dead back in the news...

Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem to Open at Universal Studios, Hollywood in 2014

Well this is nice to hear. The Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem ride I worked on--which is running now at Universal Studios in Orlando, FL--apparently is planned to open right here in Hollywood for next year. This means I'll be able to see my work as it was intended! Here's the news article, and here are other times I've written about the VES award-winning ride.

New '300 Heads' sketchbook drawings: Rocket Jump

Freddie Wong, Brandon Laatsch, and Brian Firenzi.

More drawings for my “300 Heads” sketchbook. This week it’s the Rocket Jump guys: Freddie Wong, Brandon Laatsch, and Brian Firenzi. Their web series Video Game High School is a must-see.

Jack the Giant Slayer press screening

I finally saw Jack the Giant Slayer this week! Reviews are not out yet, so I'll keep my impressions brief and vague, but I was very happy with how the film came together. I had forgotten just how many previs shots I had worked on for it, but it seemed like dozens. Seeing the final versions of the shots that I worked on is still akin to an out-of-body experience, but I'm getting a bit more used to it with this being my second screening.

The performances were terrific, and the costumes and score impressed me a lot. Overall, it's a gorgeous movie to look at, and paced very well, in my opinion. Now that I've seen it, I can wholeheartedly (and honestly) recommend it, especially to those who were already curious about it. It opens in theaters this Friday, the 1st of March. Look for my name in the credits under the 'Previsualization by The Third Floor' section, on the left-hand side (as Joshua Lange). If you're quick enough to take a picture of it with your cameraphone, email it to joshlange at gmail dot com.

Celine Dion on China Central Television for Spring Festival 2013

(starting at 11:22)

This was something I briefly worked on at The Third Floor, inc. the last couple weeks. It was a new concept to work with, and the way the final came out on their LCD stage was impressive.

Back when the Titanic song came out, I remember working in a music store and selling album after album of the soundtrack. At this point, I think I've heard "My Heart Will Go On" over three hundred times. She puts on a great show, though.

'Jack the Giant Slayer' interviews, images, and videos

The press embargo was lifted for media reporting website Collider and their site features a "slew" of  blog posts covering the upcoming movie Jack the Giant Slayer. I recommend listening to the audio interviews with Bryan Singer and Ewan MacGregor in particular. Both include mentions of how The Third Floor's previs was utilized throughout the production, such as this excerpt from Singer's interview:

[Collider]: Can you talk about the previz, is there a team that does this?  Are you sitting there designing this in the editing room?  Can you take us through how the previz comes together?

SINGER:  It begins with the story board artist, I’ve worked with a couple of artists, Doug Lefler this one guy Doug’s worked with Sam Raimi for years, he’s a really good guy.  We sit down and talk through story points, talk through the scene and he draws pictures and from those pictures, the team at Third Floor which is this previz company, it’s a whole company, I had been working on this and X-Men: First Class at the same time, they do tons of movies, they’re probably one of the top in their field, I’ve known the guy who runs it since the company only had three people so I always go to them.  They take the storyboards and they embellish them to some degree and they craft it into a sequence and I look at the sequence animated and I go, “Ok, that’s too slow, that’s too fast, or can you speed up this?  Lose that shot, give me a better composition.”  And they do performance capture too, when they do their previz, they put on Moven suits, which are basically suits with a very high-grade sophisticated oscillator that you have in your iPhone, like a military grade version, and then they act out the scene.  Do you have another previz you want to show?  Show that.  [Previz clip plays]  So these are all people in Moven suits, that are acting out the scenes, that’s not a cat, the cat is animated, f----g cat.  You have no idea.  The bane of our existence, the cat’s in water and rain, you’re like come on, come on.  Don’t listen to that.  Stick with the action.

Jack comes out March 1st. I'm looking forward to seeing how the previs I worked on comes together in the final movie.

Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem wins a VES Award

The theme park ride I worked on two years ago, Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem, won a Visual Effects Society Award last night for 'Outstanding Visual Effects in a Special Venue Project.' Congratulations to the 'Despicable Me' team at The Third Floor, inc. and to the team at Illumination Entertainment, including award recipients Heather Drummons, Joel Friesch, Troy Griffin, and Chris Hummel. One of these days I'd love to see the ride in person...

Click here for earlier Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem posts.

2013 Annie Awards

The Annie Awards were held here in town tonight at UCLA. Wreck-It Ralph received Best Animated Feature, and two projects I worked on at The Third Floor also won: The Avengers, for Visual Effects in a Live Action Production (awarded to ILM); and the Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem theme park ride won for Animated Special Production (awarded to Illumination). Congratulations to the people at those companies who saw those projects through to a successful end! It was a lot of fun to be involved with each of them.

Now I've got to start seeing all those great films! Deadline has the full list of Annie winners here.

Star Wars: Episode VII/Star Trek mashup movie posters

I’ve made two new Star Wars Episode 7 mashup movie posters, done in the same spirit as my last Star Wars/Little Miss Sunshine mashup poster. This time they’re a riff off this Star Trek: Into Darkness poster, since that director J.J. Abrams has been announced to also direct Episode 7:

One of the fun things about making Episode 7 fan art is sitting back and coming up with scenarios that might theoretically occur in the new sequels. There are many unanswered questions for them to address, such as which principle characters will drive the plot, which locations will be used, and which “wow” moments will be created. I tried illustrating two very different directions for these mashups, both involving the silhouette of the Rebel Alliance logo replacing the Star Fleet insignia from Star Trek.

For this first poster, I went to the Star Wars canon from the novels, where Luke Skywalker, now a Jedi Master, returns to planet Yavin IV with R2D2 to set up the new Jedi order at the Massassi temple. I’m fairly certain the Jedi order will begin to be remade in Episode 7, and will continue to grow throughout the new trilogy.

The second mashup features an unknown Jedi padawan, surveying a battle-ravaged Coruscant, where massive fleets of Mon Calamari and Imperial Star Destroyers wage war above the planet’s smoking skyline. I have faith that Coruscant will play a big role in the new films, since it was the home base for the Empire before expanding to the Outer Rim in the original trilogy, and the Rebel Alliance cannot rule with confidence unless they control the city planet. Time will tell if any of these ideas are proven correct.

See also: Boba Fett Episode VII Facebook cover image

Oscar Nom for The Avengers!

'Marvel's The Avengers' (couldn't leave off the "Marvel's?") was announced today as garnering a Visual Effects nomination at the Oscar site. Exciting! A good number of people across many companies were involved with its visual effects, so I get a kick to think of all the other people out there who are also happy with this news. Although it's probably an underdog against The Hobbit, since WETA and Peter Jackson were 3/3 for Visual Effects Oscars with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and The Hobbit was nominated in two other categories this year, I'll be crossing my fingers for it on Oscar night.

Star Wars Episode VII Mashup Poster

Here's a mashup poster I made of Star Wars Episode 7 and Little Miss Sunshine, two movies written by screenwriter Michael Arndt. When he was announced as the Episode 7 screenwriter, the poster idea popped into my head and it wouldn't go away.

The moment I tried to capture was the main characters getting ready to hop into the Millenium Falcon and head out into the next movie (of course, the story for Ep VII will most likely not have them all in it, but I picked them in the absence of any real story details). I wanted to stay as true to the iconic LMS poster as I could, and adjusted the Millienium Falcon's dimensions to better match the VW van. Picking which character would replace which was fun, and certain subtleties were serendipitous, like the similarity of vests between the characters of Alan Arkin and Harrison Ford. Although I included official logos and crew names at the bottom for a more realistic touch, this is of course just fan art and was not made for commercial purposes.

Shout-out to the guys at 8-Bit Cubist for their helpful feedback as I worked on it.

For those who dig it, here are some desktop background versions:

1680 x 1050 (widescreen)

1600 x 1200

For those who liked it, be sure to also check out my Boba Fett Episode VII Facebook cover photo.

Rockstar Games wins "Best Animation" award for Max Payne 3

Congrats to all of the animators who worked on it. I'm proud to have briefly been among you on that project in 2010, and it's great to see your work pay off like this!



The trailer:

New portraits for the "300 Heads" Sketchbook

More portraits from the "300 Heads" sketchbook. The theme for this week was Top Chef judges, and in Bravo fashion, I introduced some bold color...

Tom Colicchio, Emeril Lagasse, and Hugh Acheson

New trailer for 'Jack the Giant Slayer'

The Jack the Giant Slayer movie that I worked on now has a new trailer:



I worked on the movie for six months at The Third Floor, which previsualized many, many shots for it. Shots from the trailer that I worked on include:

0:46 Isabelle screaming as Jack's house lifts/Jack running through rising vines to get to his house
1:28 Giants throwing flaming trees from across the castle's moat
1:32 Jack jumping across giant steps along rope bridge to Gantua
1:42 Giant throwing windmill blades at horseback riders

300 Heads Sketchbook Update

More portraits from the "300 Heads" sketchbook. The theme for this week was The Three Amigos.

300 Heads Sketchbook Update

More portraits from the "300 Heads" sketchbook. The theme for these was White House Cabinet members.

Arne Duncan (Education), Shaun Donovan (Housing/Urban Development), Eric Holder (Justice)

Ray LaHood (Transportation), Hilda Solis (Labor), Steven Chu (Energy)

300 Heads Sketchbook update

Barack Obama’s campaign “Dream Team”: 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe, senior advisor/strategist David Axelrod, and 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina. Together the three controlled the two most dominant political campaigns of the modern era, and with Obama's re-election success this week, it seemed fitting to draw them for this week’s trio of quick portraits in my "300 Heads" sketchbook.

David Plouffe, David Axelrod, Jim Messina

Election Day

You know what to do.