Halleux hails from Belgium, where he spent many an hour dragged by his parents “against his will” to different museums. But this reluctant extracurricular education paid off: when he was 10, he was in a museum where he was taken with the work of sculptor Jean Tinguely – playful art that looked like toys – and found himself inspired.

The artist is drawn to film and comics, and so it was natural that he wound up at an animation studio in Luxembourg for a bit, finding work as a colorist and layout artist. According to Halleux, this part of his life marked a seven-year period of “drawing uninteresting things for other people”, and he began to despair of being able to ever draw anything else. When he ultimately found the animation industry too lacking in creativity, he took a job working for a bankruptcy furniture liquidator, where he began finding tons of discarded objects that began to form the basis of his work, and his artistic inspiration returned. His work was well-received in a very successful exhibition in 2005, and he’s been a full time artist ever since.

Man, I’d love to have one of his pieces sitting on my desk. Inspirational work from an inspirational artist.

]]> http://steveogden.com/blog/2011/12/stephane-halleux/feed/ 1 http://steveogden.com/blog/2011/12/scott-nelles/ http://steveogden.com/blog/2011/12/scott-nelles/#comments Mon, 19 Dec 2011 10:49:16 +0000 Og http://steveogden.com/blog/?p=2429 Scott Nelles makes really cool sculptures. Wouldn’t you love to have that cool raygun, or that whacked-out retro-hotrod? If so, you’re in luck – he’s got an Etsy store, and if you’re lucky, you can snag one of these extremely cool works of coolness while supplies last!

Ten years ago, a friend loaned me his copy of 3D World Magazine, issue #14. The mag was running a feature article on Brian Taylor, an artist in Dundee, Scotland, who was making a little animated short with off-the-shelf software on his consumer grade computer in his spare time.

The project was Rustboy, of course, and like most artists who saw anything to do with the thing, I fell in love with it. I was drawn to the color palette, the vaguely Tim Burton vibe of the design. Most of all, I fell in love with the romantic notion of an artist striking out, making a film the way he wanted to, on his own terms and in his own time. Best of all, Taylor was tracking the progress of his short’s development online, complete with a behind-the-scenes area, a very actively-attended fan forum and a development journal. The site went viral as soon as it went live, and fans flocked to Rustboy.com.

I’d like to think Rustboy launched a thousand projects, artists suddenly rushing to their favorite off-the-shelf animation software, inspired by Brian Taylor and putting up blogs to share their unique visions with the world. And I know that Rustboy launched AnimWatch, a website I started in 2003, tracking the development not only of Rustboy, but also many other films that caught my eye in those days. Some of the films went on to be completed, run the festival circuit, win awards and wind up distributed via DVDs, online, or through iTunes. Many more failed completion. The demands of an expertly executed animated short are often incompatible with the demands of full-time employment, family obligations and a life, and these little side projects are often sacrificed to keep life on an even keel.

Rustboy went further than most, inspiring professionals and amateurs alike. Along the way, Taylor garnered serious attention and job offers from Hollywood at various points in the project’s life. And the fans couldn’t get enough. Taylor even released a behind-the-scenes book which was snapped up by many a Rustboy devotee.

And then, in 2006, the trail suddenly went cold. Taylor stopped updating the website, stopped attending the Forum, and everyone feared the project had been canceled. The truth turned out to be more interesting than that. Ultimately (inevitably?) Rustboy had attracted more than just job offers from Hollywood. The project had attracted a feature-film development deal.

But then what happened? The only official word from Brian Taylor since January 2006 was the cryptic note at his online journal, saying that things were in motion for the feature film, he’d be redesigning the site soon, and other than that, he couldn’t say anything about it.

Until now. Brian recently posted the complete Rustboy Opening Sequence on YouTube:

His posts about the video had the air of a postmortem about them, and that prompted me to write to him about the project, to see where it stood after 10 years. Sadly, he said he was basically done with Rustboy and had long since moved on. That exchange began a conversation that resulted in the following interview:

OGDEN: Did Rustboy fall victim to Hollywood’s notorious “Development Hell”, or to “One-Man Show Fatigue Syndrome”? (Or a combination?)

TAYLOR: I think “Development Hell” would be a fair way to describe Rustboy activity in recent years.

Going back to the early days when I was working on the film alone, I did receive a little funding but it didn’t go very far. The problem back then was that I simply couldn’t afford to devote the time required to work on the film while attempting to earn a living and pay the bills at the same time.

OGDEN: Is there any chance you would ever go back to Rustboy and try to resurrect it as a one-man show? Kick Starter should net you enough money to start it up again, maybe even finish. Would it work if a private investor provided a small budget for you to complete it?

TAYLOR: In a word, no. The thing that folks out there probably don’t realise is that a company has grown around Rustboy over the years. It is not ‘my baby’ any more, and hasn’t been for a long time – there are other people involved. Kick Starter would not be an option for all sorts of reasons, including legal issues. This whole thing has gone way deeper than that, but I can’t go into it in any great detail here. One thing I should point out though – Rustboy isn’t necessarily dead. Once a project like this weaves its way into the “Hollywood” system, there are always other possibilities to explore.

OGDEN: Without making you delve too deeply into the dirt, what lessons from this experience can you impart? What went wrong? What is to be learned here?

TAYLOR: In my opinion, the problem was trying to turn the movie into something it wasn’t meant to be. I believe that Rustboy’s appeal was largely down to the sense of loneliness and isolation, and a slightly dark overall tone. These were the very elements that were being stripped out in order to appeal to mainstream family movie sensibilities. If you take that away, there is very little left that has anything to do with my original concept. I’m not blaming anyone for this – it’s just the reality of big budget movies. They have to appeal to a wide audience to justify the cost involved. However, the positive side of this experience was learning from my mistakes. I would go about things differently in future, and enter into deals on different terms.

OGDEN: And to be fair, what went right?

TAYLOR: What went right was meeting some interesting people along the way and making a lot of useful contacts. I am now working with one person in particular on other projects.

OGDEN: If you had it to do all over again, what would you do differently with Rustboy, if anything?

TAYLOR: Well, I wouldn’t even attempt to do a short film, (not on my own anyway) and if we’re talking feature films, I wouldn’t have come up with Rustboy in the first place. I would work on a concept and story that was intended to be a feature film from the outset.

OGDEN: Are you still passionate about animation, the process of getting down and doing it? If not, what are you passionate about?

TAYLOR: I’ve never considered myself an animator. It was just a means to an end in the early days of Rustboy (an unfortunate term considering the end has yet to come). I feel that my strength is in the concept, pre-production, look and feel side of things. That is the direction I intend to pursue.

OGDEN: What are you working on now that Rustboy is done?

TAYLOR: I can’t say at the moment, but if you read between the lines in my answers above, you should be able to figure out that I have something else in the works.

OGDEN: Thanks for taking the time out to answer my questions, and I know everyone’s eager to see what you get up to next.

One of the guys at work pointed me at Creaturebox yesterday, and I spent a pleasant, inspired and pretty jealous half hour browsing through their site. Creaturebox is the home of two fantastic artists, Dave Guertin and Greg Baldwin. They are really great character artists, and their designs are just pure fun to look at. They are the guys behind Ratchet and Clank, which I’ve always enjoyed.

Go check ‘em out when you have a small chunk of time to spend:

I also have a little comics section which is an embarrassment of riches of Creaturebox style and artistic flair. My favorite, I guess predictably, is Morton the Bad Luck Bot. How much do I love that!?

But I feel like I want to share something with you here – an animated comic version of Cubicle Pigs which is being brought to you by a partnership between me and Jake Strider Hughes (Hughes is the man who brought you the Watchmen and Walking Dead motion comics, both of which I highly recommend.)

Jake’s put his considerable talents to trying to bring my Cubicle Pigs drawings to life, and super-talented voice-over actor and Robin Williams lookalike Jerry Stone helped out with the voice acting. You can see a work in progress here. Even though it’s rough and unfinished, I can see a lot of potential here, and we intend to finish it as soon as we can.

Jake and I would be interested in hearing your thoughts and feedback about this motion comic, meanwhile. Add comments here.

Hello, my fellow Rustboy fans! Once upon a time, all of us at AnimWatch were watching a film called Rustboy slowly coming to fruition from the bedroom studio of one Brian Taylor. It is in fact this film, and the process of watching him make it, that made me want to make my own films, and what prompted me to start AnimWatch.

At one point, Taylor stopped working on Rustboy as the property had been optioned as a Feature Film by mysterious Hollywood types, and soon after that, all went silent running. It has been since 2006 that we’ve heard anything at all about Rustboy.

Until now. I just had a conversation with Brian the other day, and he has informed me that the feature film is not to be. I asked him if I could ask him a few questions, one final Rustboy interview for me and all the Rustboy fans, and he has agreed, with the stipulation that there are some details of the deal and players he probably won’t feel comfortable going into. But of course I’m happy to leave that to his discretion.

So, I thought I should open it up to you, any of you who were once upon a time waiting for this film, do you have any questions for Brian? Leave them in the comment section below.

UPDATE (10-16-2011) –
An all-new interview with Rustboy creator Brian Taylor is up:
http://steveogden.com/blog/2011/10/the-future-of-rustboy/

My buddy Paul Caggegi (he of The Process Diary and the online graphic novel Pandeia) has created a really neat short story. Called Great Googly Moogly, the short lives in an interesting twilight zone between children’s book and comic. It reads like a beloved children’s book, even while it uses a comic book format to tell the story.

Just above the world below
Stood thirteen houses in a row 

So begins the tale, and don’t you just love that labyrinth beneath the streets? The art in this story is a real step up for Paul.

Caggegi tells the tale of an aging monster who’s losing his edge, losing his ability to scare people. What is a self-respecting monster to do? And when he meets a young girl who think’s he’s “cute”, where does he go from there?

Great Googly Moogly is a story about who we are at any age, and any stage. The story will be appearing in the Illopond anthology (Paul’s second entry in the series) later this fall, but will also be available before that release as an ebook through The Illustrated Section.