''ANY DREAM WILL DO!!

animation clean-up

Three different characters from the film JOSEPH: KING OF DREAMS, namely Joseph and his parents. All from the same scene (basically Joseph approaches his father who hands him a roll of parchment...

(Never fear, we will jump into some more cartooney goodness very soon!)

copyright 2000 dreamworks skg / bardel animation

DESIGNING SOME ARISTOCRATS, part 3

character design

Yet again another design for an austrian memeber of society from the PRINCESS SISSY series...Working with historicaql reference is always interesting, and it's not often one gets to draw realistically in television series. A great change-of-pace...

copyright 1997 animation ciné-groupe

M Appeal!!

production layout

lo- OOoove the catsuit...:)

 

background design & layout by Wayne Millett

copyright 2012 mario carmel

''THREE THE HARD WAY''...

character design

yet another character model page, this one for the afro-topped kung fu butt kicker in my film...the original design had him with a much more modest hairdo, but given the time period (early 70'S) it almost seemed criminal not to give him this most distinctive of hairdos...

If you've been thirsting for some coloured drawings, I should be able to indulge in a few weeks as soon as official colour jpegs are completed and approved for this film...

copyright 2012 mario carmel

''WEIRD SCIENCE!''

character design

your standard scientist type, a design from my forthcoming film...

copyright 2012 mario carmel

DESIGNING SOME ARISTOCRATS, part 2

character design

I've been going through some things in my storage for the last few days, trying to gather up some older drawings to help fill out this dandy little blog. Today I found a whole box full of almost-forgotten things, including these two designs for more generic crowd characters of the royal court, intended for 1997's PRINCESS SISSY animated series...

copyright 1997 animation ciné-groupe

''SCHOOL DAYS...''

production layout

I seem to have a lot more character drawing on this blog than anything else (only natural since most of my assignments over the years tended more in that direction), but once in a while I would take a job where I would have to draw BOTH characters and backgrounds...

Above pictured is a production BG from a series called THE KIDS FROM ROOM 402 (animation ciné-groupe). From most of my postings on this blog, one would tend to think I always draw very realistic characters, but the opposite is actually true, as 90% of the series with my name in their credits tend to be pretty cartooney-looking...

A little exercise in deep perspective, I'll try to find some more to post...

for an added bonus, here is the opening sequence from KIDS FROM ROOM 402:

 

 

copyright 1999 animation ciné-groupe

"ENTER THE DRAGON!"

CHARACTER DESIGN

Above is one of several characters for my forthcoming film. His face is partially based on the late Bruce Lee (RIP). As we do for model sheets we take another character and place it on the same page for a size comparison (the character on the left is of average male height (5'10") so all the other characters relate to him. "Bruce Lee" above in real life would be about 5'5"...

copyright mario carmel

''BE SURE TO WEAR FLOWERS IN YOUR HAIR''

 

production layouts

background design & layout by Wayne Millett

 

Some more production drawings from my upcoming film: as you might remember, my short film occurs during the very early '70's which was the height of the Vietnam era. So of course I couldn't miss out on showing a clash between the ''imperialist pigs'' and the flower children...It was quite a lot of work to research the clothes, the weaponry and the uniforms (I'm probably far from 100% accurate, but for a low-budget film with a staff of 1 and a half, hope I did good :) ) (character co-designing credit goes to Stephan Peloquin)

 

For the background drawing included above, credit goes to my colleague Wayne Millett. Thanks, dude!!

 

copyright mario carmel 2012

 

A LIL. BIT' O THIS, A LIL' BIT' O THAT!!

                                  animation clean-up

For those of you who enjoy their cartoons when they're MOVING!, here's a video to reward your patience!!:) Above is not really a film to enjoy the narrative, but more as a sample of some of the work I've done over the years...

I've selected a few notable films I've worked on in the past, namely JOSEPH: KING OF DREAMS, THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN BUZZ CHEAPLY and THE OLD LADY & THE PIGEONS. I worked on those films as an assistant-animator, which means I would finalize an animator's rough drawings, making it ''all purty'' :)... I've edited together ONLY the content I worked on...

Hope you enjoy it

copyright 1998 pascal blais/les armateurs, 2000 Dreamworks SKG, 1996 Hanna-Barbera

''...BELTED BY GAMMA RAYS...''

 

                                                           

                                      

 

 

 

storyboard pages...

 

Today instead of the usual animation drawings or character designs, I'm going for something different which is some storyboard pages, chosen randomly from my upcoming short animated film.

 

For those of you unfamiliar with what are storyboard pages,  they are similar to comic book pages with panels telling the story in sequence. Stbd pages are crucial since they establish the composition for any given scene, strive to have clear action, and are a guide to the production army of artists as they fill up the screen with great character and backgrounds.

 

If you'll notice on the last page directly above this text, panel 2 has my afro-wearing martial artist character in roughly the same action pose as you might see in a posting from 2 days ago...Eventually I may post the finished animation , all coloured to show how a project evolves along...

 

But we are still some ways from that...

 

copyright 2012 mario carmel 

FAVORITE PROJECT TO DATE!!

animation clean-up

Easily the most prestigious project I've ever worked on: LA VIEILLE DAME & LES PIGEONS (the old lady and the pigeons) was a labour of love for myself and many other friends and co-workers who chanced to work on it back in 1996. It was Sylvain Chomet's first directing feature (short form), and he went on afterward to direct some better-known animated features (THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE & THE ILLUSIONIST). I was still pretty new back then, but this film helped to push myself creatively and I have never regretted working on it.

It was nominated for the Oscar for Best animated short film in 1998, losing to PIXAR's GERI's GAME...disappointing, but still a career highlight...I am including part 1 of 3 of the film above... you should really watch all three parts, you will thank me :)

copyright 1998 PASCAL BLAIS animation / les Armateurs

''SHUT YO MOUTH!!'' (shaft!!)

production layouts

background design and layout by Wayne Millett

Some more drawings from my current film project! The top 2 are character layouts for a scene, and below is the background drawing they will be placed against! My film takes place in early 1973, so there needed to be a lot of research for the clothes, weaponry, hair and shoes.

For the background, the original idea was to have these thuggish characters simply standing in front of a generic Harlem tenement or warehouse, but later on I realized the character they were facing against made his home on the floor above a Times Square movie palace, so back we went to recreate one. While watching the opening to the movie ''SHAFT'' (with that great music by Isaac Hayes), John Shaft passes in front of this same cinema, which we renamed...

Awww, who doesn't love pimps!!

copyright 2012 mario carmel

FATHER KNOWS BEST!!

animation clean-up

 

 

Some more JOSEPH: KING OF DREAMS cleaned-up animation. Some subtle animation involving the title character's father, Jacob. For those of you who like their cartoons moving, I should be embedding a video of scenes I worked on from some favorite projects before the end of this week.

 

By the way, animation clean-up, as a job, has always been a favorite position of mine. While it is great fun to actually make a character MOVE and interact with things and others on a page, it is very zen and a personal challenge for me to take another artist's rougher drawings and to ''pretty them up'' for the screen...

 

copyright 2000 Dreamworks SKG / Bardel Animation



GONNA GITCHA, SUCKA!! :)

PRODUCTION LAYOUT

From my current production, a short film I will be broadcasting on YouTube hopefully before the end of this year...More details to come with each days' new postings.
Above is a production drawing from a single scene of the film, a Kung Fu action hero, complete with '70's afro!! :)
In the finished film, the character should be styling some awesome martial arts moves!

production copyright mario carmel

STEEL HELMETS SHOULD COME BACK IN STYLE :)

 

character design

 

Going through some older art samples from my little bag of tricks, but we should be getting around to more current items very soon...Here are some more character designs (well, heads to be more specific!) that were used in the 1997 PRINCESS SISSY series. The Hussards, basically the Austrian police force, had the same body shape, and we simply designed alternate faces for some variety...

 

copyright 1997 Animation Ciné-Groupe

''FEELINGS...NOTHING MORE THAN...FEELINGS!!''

animation clean-up

Some more JOSEPH: KING OF DREAMS art! Above is Joseph himself, from the beginning of the film. Since this was made back in 1999 and in the middle of the Disney musicals era, you couldn't get away from having all of the characters erupting into song...

Despite all that, Joseph the character, as well as the movie itself was a great opportunity to bring my A-game, if you will, to draw with a sophistication and level that standard cartooney designs don't often reach...

A great training ground for my current endeavour, stay tuned as I should be posting some designs this week...

copyright 1999 Dreamworks SKG / Bardel Animation

THAT DOITY NO-GOOD...!!! :)

animation clean-up

More from the JOSEPH:KING OF DREAMS feature!: a juicy little character scene with a prisoner when Joseph was wrongly sent to the hoosegow by a jealous pharaoh. I did what is called ''Clean-up'' for this scene, which means I took an animator's rough drawings and I have to redraw with a clean line, all the while respecting the emotion and subtleties given by the animator...

A fun scene to do!!

copyright 2000 Dreamworks SKG # Bardel Animation

DESIGNING SOME ARISTOCRATS!!

character design

On a roll!!! :)

Even earlier in my career (back in the dinosaur age of 1997), I worked on PRINCESS SISSY, a very toy-derived series based on the real-life 19th century Empress Elisabeth of Austria. I think they wanted the toy line to catch on with its Barbie meets the Disney princesses. It got a bit silly as we would need to show Sissy wearing specific outfits within each episode...
Nevertheless, my early duties had me designing again some crowd characters (here are two austrian aristocrats!) before I soon moved on to supervising an army of designers... Fun memories!

For those who might be interested, here is the opening to the PRINCESS SISSY series...:

copyright 1997 Animation Ciné-Groupe

DESIGNING SOME WINDOW DRESSING LADIES!!

 

character design

 

I've been seriously neglecting this Blog! Sorry as most of my time recently has been spent pushing my short film forward on its way to completion...
More on this in the following posts, but in the meantime, here are some designs I was lucky enough to do about a decade ago for a DREAMWORKS project I went across the continent to work on. The project was called JOSEPH:KING OF DREAMS, a direct-to-video animated "sequel'' to another Bible-inspired feature, THE PRINCE OF EGYPT.
I got to finish up these models for three egyptian handmaidens to a more major character. They were crowd characters, but fun to work on...

copyright 2000 Dreamworks SKG # Bardel Animation...