Drawings Inspired by Eleuthera

When you wait until your early 30's to enjoy some snorkeling, it affects your creative output. 

© 2014 Mark Phillips

© 2014 Mark Phillips

© 2014 Mark Phillips

I Hope You Voted Today!

.... or pole-dancing Newt Gingrich will find you.

Philip De Guard x "Bewitched Bunny"

Can anyone ever get tired of Looney Tunes?

I was doing a bit of traveling this weekend and managed to watch a few episodes before my laptop crapped out on me.  These screenshots were taken from the Bugs Bunny episode "Bewitched Bunny"[YouTube]:

Bugs Bunny is as dapper as his framing.

Everything about the witch's house is so crooked.

The backgrounds by Philip de Guard are frustratingly good.

Amazing wall-art for any child eater.

I think more posts about Philip de Guard are in order... 

Malika Favre

I recently had the pleasure of animating the designs of Malika Favre, whom I've admired since her work on the Kama Sutra typography book.  Her style lends itself well to animation, and it was rewarding to be able to pull it off with working to get those masks in After Effects to move fluidly.  I'll post the final version once it hits the airwaves.  In the meantime, check out her website and a few of these other selects...

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

Recent Illustrator Work

click to enlarge

Updates Coming Soon

I've been eating, breathing and pooping work lately.  .... freelance!

Updates about everything from work to not-work will get posted on the blahg soon; until then enjoy this handsome sketch.

Lab Rats Love

Concept Art & Painting in Photoshop

I took a stab at some concept-arting* for a project last month that involved painting in Photoshop.  I haven't done much digital painting yet so it was pretty new to me; I really enjoyed doing it & want to work on refining it more.  Just think of all the detailed pimples & vivid in-grown hairs I could paint... maybe if I ever save up enough money to get me a fancy new Cintiq...**

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

More on these & what they're for later...



* If you want to check out what beautiful professional-level concept art looks like, check out this great tumblr feed: FUCKYEAHCONCEPTART 


** In the meantime, I did take the time to pre-order Wacom's new Inkling on Amazon.com and if you love to draw and are looking for a $200 investment that will change the way you sketch & edit illustrations then I highly encourage you to do the same.  I think it will be a great opportunity to get back into hand-drawn animation as well, since there's no tedious need to scan every image.

Leo Burnett "Language of the 21st Century" Intro

Shot on a Canon 7D w/ Dragon Stopmotion, composited in After Effects.

I worked on this project via The Lifelong Friendship Society in collaboration with agency Leo Burnett & artist Kieran Antill for the agency's 2011 Cannes Presentation.  The blocks themselves were actually quite large, over a foot-&-a-half across and hand-constructed by the good people of twoseven with wood.  It may not look like much but it was definitely one of the more physically challenging shoots I've been on lately, if only due to the weight of the cubes & the heat that day.  Riding $10K of camera equipment on a bike across Williamsburg to try to make call time probably didn't help much either...

BONUS: The official website up now: www.AlphabetOfToday.com

.... and I thought that was CGI: Fantasia 2000

Hand-drawn animation doesn't get much more detailed than that.  Happy Friday!

Tuesday Quotery

... this would explain why the last time I went to the New Museum there was an exhibit featuring piles of rags on the floor.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed

This is considered to be the oldest feature-length animated movie to still be in existence today and it's available RIGHT NOW on Netflix streaming.  I watched it last Friday night and was completely blown away by the craft that went into creating each frame of this film.  Even the story is engaging and each character has a sense of purpose; not just to be seen & never heard from again.  Just because it's from 1926 doesn't mean it lacks sophistication, and while the animation itself may be a bit rough I can't help but wonder how it looked back when it was initially released.  I can't recommend it enough to someone who loves the art of animation.

From Wikipedia: 

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (German: Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed) is a 1926 German animated fairytale film by Lotte Reiniger. It is the oldest surviving animated feature film; two earlier ones were made in Argentina by Quirino Cristiani, but they are considered lost.^[1] The Adventures of Prince Achmed features a silhouette animation technique Reiniger had invented which involved manipulated cutouts made from cardboard and thin sheets of lead under a camera. The technique she used for the camera is similar to Wayang shadow puppets, though hers were animated frame by frame, not manipulated in live action. The original prints featured color tinting.

It'd probably be best not to leave Hans Bellmer alone with your kids.

Despite the fact that I attended and graduated from Columbia College Chicago back in the mid-aughts, I managed to learn and retain a few bits of information that I found to be useful later in life.  During a drawing class I learned about and revered two artists from the last century, in particular.  One was Chicago-area artist Ivan Albright (whom I'll write about later) and the second was Hans Bellmer (1902-1975). 

From Hans Bellmer's Art Directory biography page:

In the post-war era Bellmer succeeded in rendering the subconscious aspect of sexuality in intoxicatingly hallucinatory dream pictures, working with the precision of the Old Masters and soon supplementing this approach with an infusion of Mannerist influences and beautiful, fluid line which recalls Jugendstil/Art Nouveau.
In Hans Bellmer's mature late work, line is refined to a filigree tracery, the eroticism is even more pronounced, partly because death is now included as the opposite pole of lust.

Like most Americans who enjoy videogames nowadays, I was unwittingly introduced to Bellmer via Silent Hill 2 back in 2001 in the form of these disturbing monsters that moved and groaned erratically.

I chose this over not eating only ramen for two weeks when I was a freshman.  So worth it.

Oh, four legged mannequin monster... it wasn't until the following year in art class that I learned it was all inspired by Hans Bellmer.  Say what you will about Hans, but thank goodness he pursued art and not something like childcare or social services. 

... now go enjoy your Saturday morning cartoons.