OG’s BLOG

After I spent all my allowance on model kits to bash, Plaster of Paris to make landscapes, and countless bottles of modelling glue and paint, and then filled cannisters of 8mm film on my little special effects and stop-motion animated shenanigans, I found myself out of money. This is when I discovered, as many art departments before me, that pen-and-paper is much cheaper than Building Stuff Willy Nilly. (Side note: if your last name is NILLY and you are looking for names for your soon-to-arrive son, think twice about William.)

This is when the other book found its way into my hands: The Star Wars Sketchbook, featuring the pre-production drawings of Joe Johnston. The designs this guy came up with set the look and feel for pretty much every sci-fi production for the next 20 or so years. But his line quality is to die for! It is at the same time precise and effortless.

I love the attention to detail. All those Greebles on the ships, senseless visual noise, while at the same time suggesting utility and scale. The main thing that impressed me is that Johnston’s designs actually look like things humans would build. They’re not all round and smooth and shiny and bright. They look like artifacts from a used, lived-in universe, which is what George Lucas wanted.

It is safe to say that Joe Johnston taught me how to draw vehicles. I began by tracing the drawings in that book, and then I graduated to copying them by eye. Finally, I let go of that comfortable artistic embrace and wobbled out into the deep water on my own, but I don’t think I ever truly let go. Johnston’s influence shows in my work today, although I never did truly get his line work down. Here are some examples of his fine, fine work:

Joe’s gone on to become a director, where he’s achieved notable success with films such as Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Jumanji, October Sky, and Hidalgo. But it’s fun to think that his drawings as a lowly designer on a small film in the mid-seventies inspired me way back when.

But he also taught me a bit about managing production. More on that in a couple of days…

That’s it, ladies and gentleman. Not to be too melodramatic, but that’s the picture that changed the course of my life. There was just something about seeing all those ship models lined up together that twisted my dials.

I immediately began designing ships. I immediately began making them out of scrap bits of wood and half-used model kits. My brother showed me how to bang them up and add carbon scoring without an airbrush by using spraypaint filtered through cardboard with different sized holes.

What hard core Star Wars fan wouldn’t want an actual Y-Wing model on his shelf? Or an X-Wing? Or several? (Yeah, I’m still thinking of that table full of ships from the picture up there… if my basement could look like that, that’d be just about right.) Plus, while we’re dreaming, I’d like the original 6-foot Millennium Falcon, mounted on its shooting stand. OK, and a house big enough to accommodate it comfortably in any room. Well, I’d move it around from room to room, wouldn’t I? You never want to be too far from that model…

Not lucky enough to work for Lucasfilm? You could make your own models. Hobbyist Lasse Henning has a tutorial on how exactly you create several of your favorite models from Star Wars.

I don’t think I have the time or the patience to do this now. But if you do, I’d love to hear how it turns out.

When I was 11, it was a different story. I had nothing but time, and that picture of all those ships on that table had me worked into a frenzy. I immediately began shooting little 8mm movies with these little ships, shot against black fabric, and superimposed against a black card on a table with salt sprinkled across it for stars. I hung them on strings, I shot them upside down, I mounted them to tripods, I held them with my hand and zoomed the camera past on a skateboard. All I wanted to do was make fantastic objects believable.

It’s oddly reassuring to me that in working for a game company now, I’m doing what I wanted to do 30 years ago: I make my living building fantastic things. It’s actually pretty amazing that it turned out this way. Not many people can say they achieved their childhood dreams. I know that makes me lucky.

So, when I think that it’s been 30 years since Star Wars came out, I can’t help but think of that picture that inspired me to say I Gotta Do That. I only saw it for a couple of minutes, borrowing a book from a kid on the bus on the way to school. But I’ve remembered it all these years, and finally went online and bought the book last week. It’s an amazing thing, the power of a picture.

But in order to get where I am, I also had to learn how to draw, and believe it or not, Star Wars also came into play here. More on that on Monday…

Well, it’s almost been 30 years since the original Star Wars came out. I suppose the readers of this BLOG can be effectively broken into three camps:

Some, like my former Art Director, will only shrug, and perhaps yawn. No Star Wars fan, he. Some, who were not born when the movie came out, will perhaps wonder if I am speaking of one of the Prequels released this century. (I am not). The rest of you, who were old enough to remember when the movie came out, will think, “Dear God. Can it already have been 30 years?”

Yup, you old fart. It’s been 30 years.

So much of what made me want to draw, made me want to make movies, made me want to write, was in that original movie. No matter how schlocky and melodramatic the film may seem to you now, it was magical. Sure I was only 11 when I first saw it, but it really hooked me, as it did an entire generation.

And where I was concerned, the film actually had a lot to overcome. First, I didn’t like sci fi as a kid. Found it dreadfully boring. Second, it had the word WAR in it, and I didn’t want to see a bunch of soldiers running around shooting at each other. (I also found war movies boring.)

But mostly, even as an 11 year old, I had a cynical voice in the back of my mind asking whether Star Wars was just a piece of government sponsored propoganda designed to show young kids that War was Cool. (Yes, I was a strange little kid, but remember that the Vietnam War had just ended poorly, a conflict my older brother and his friends narrowly escaped. It was a scary time and I had no desire to be a soldier.)

But the colors, the effects, the spaceships, the music, and the characters all added up to something special that I don’t think has been duplicated. Like I said, it was magical, and by the time the smoke of the first battle had cleared, I didn’t care about whether it was sci-fi or not, about whether it was war or not. My jaw was on the floor and I wanted to know what happened next.

There was a book that came out not long after Star Wars became a phenomenon. I saw it on the bus on the way to school when I was 12. That’s the cover in the header of this article, and of course it uses the art from the Hildebrandt brothers’ great Star Wars movie poster. Believe me, for years, everything I drew looked like that poster. (A shame the title blocks out all but “BRANDT” from their name…)

Anyway, the kid next to me on the bus let me look through it on the way to school, and I saw something that would wind up having a huge impact on me, perhaps even leading to my current career.

More on that tomorrow.

Finally broke 66,000 words on my novel. That has been the ceiling for about 6 months, as I’ve been wrestling with a particularly troubling passage.

It’s a pivotal scene in the book, setting up the final stages of the story and putting most of the rest of the events in motion, and so it was very important to me that it hit all the right points and made sense. It didn’t before, and it does now, but I had to change a lot of scenes around to get this one to go where I wanted it to go.

I don’t know how many re-writes this particular scene took – certainly more than 10 – but I can confidently say it was too many. (Or just enough?) But at least it’s fixed now and I can get on with the rest of the book.

Evidently it’s all downhill from here. 80% and counting.

3D World magazine #90 is out, and I wrote the Showreel article on the film, “Samurai”.

The first moment you see the fuzzy-headed titular character in this charming animated short, you are struck by his overwhelming cuteness. Well, that and the fact that his fluffy little head is on the chopping block.

But, of course, that is a fine a place as any to start a hero’s tale. Before long, the little samurai, the brainchild of Santa Monica animation collective Three Legged Legs, is off and running to complete a seemingly impossible challenge and save his own neck.

Samurai is my favourite of all the films I profiled at 3D World in my tenure as Showreel authour, and somehow fitting that it is, sadly, the last film I’ll be profiling at the magazine. They’ve hired an in-house authour to do the job from now on. *snif*

It’s been really fun writing these articles, and I’ll miss it very much. It’s been quite a ride. On the other hand, I guess I’ll have more time to work on my novel…

Well, I’m pleased to report that all the hard work that went into my snowman animation was worth it. It has won the Grand Prize at Mobifest, the Mobile animation festival sponsored by The Animation Show. The prize included a Zune digital media player, a Palm Treo Smartphone, a mobile distribution agreement, and a creative session with Mike Judge, creator of Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill, as well as the hysterical movies Office Space and Idiocracy.

The punchline on all this is that last month, before I had even entered Flakes into the festival, I rented Idiocracy. Half way through, I turned to my wife and said “You know… I would seriously love the chance to sit down and just talk to Mike Judge for about a half an hour about this film…”

Ask and ye shall receive? Surreal.

The bad news is that Mike’s wife suddenly began giving birth just as I was scheduled to meet the man for dinner. The good news is that mother and baby are evidently doing fine, and the good folks at The Animation Show have generously offered to fly my wife and me back out to meet with Mike at a later date.

“Stop laughing… you’ll only encourage him.” That’s what I’ve been hearing my whole life, and I’ve been making stupid jokes the whole time. Laughter would have been all the encouragement I needed. Giving me a prize on top of the laughter for a film built on an admittedly stupid joke… very encouraging, indeed.

LA was great, and I enjoyed winning. Now, I’m hooked. Gotta go make more films.