I’ve doodled quiet a bit on my Wakefield project these last few weeks. One of the bi-products has been this half-finished thought of a storyboard sequence. It has kindled a lot of conversation amongst my friends and family who are all very close to the story. I’ve learned that nothing is set in stone and sometimes the best thing for a stagnant project is to throw away convention. I’m curious to see where Wakefield will take me in the coming weeks.
Painted this on my iPad while on a road-trip up to Vancouver. Its imagery from my Wakefield project.
Below are some exploratory character designs from the “Dragon” project. Most of this designs are about four years old and were made right after I finished up my time working on Space Chimps. The script was finished by then but because of Space Chimps reception all of Vanguards projects were put on hold or outright shelved. It was a frustrating time for me so I started drawing Dragon art when I could, hoping that some fresh designs would help push the project forward.
This didn’t really work but it did open the door to a bigger movie and what was once just a little tale began to grow into a romanticized epic adventure.
Here is a collection of concept paintings I made for the Dragon project. All were painted in Photoshop.
Dragon is the story of a poor street sweeper in an ancient Himalayan city who sets out to clean up his city and in doing so uncovers more dirt than he was expecting. Our humble young hero is pulled into a world divided by greed. As an army of wild mountain bandits threatens to invade the isolated city its people see little hope for survival but to pray desperately to their dragon god for protection. From the grit of the gutter to the lavishness of the city’s palace our street sweeper must use all of his sweeping skills to uncover the truth about the dragon and find a way to save the city he loves before time runs out and all is lost.
The project is based upon the book “Everyone Knows What A Dragon Looks Like” BY J. Williams. Vanguard had the rights to the books and paid me to write it with a writing partner, Sejung Kim. The project has sat on the shelf for years. It’s a beautiful story and I would love to see it get its due some day. In my free time I have donated a ton of time and artwork for the project hoping it would help grease the wheels and get it moving. Every now and then I get a phone call and then the excitement fades and its back on the shelf again.
Above is a pitch trailer I made for the project and below are the panels I used to make it. Interestingly enough I drew all of this while I was in Jerusalem.
Dick and Don go all the way back to elementary school days. They have evolved of course but stay true to their slap stick roots. I used to run a comic strip in the USC Daily trojan student newspaper with these guys. They are a lot of fun to draw.
This little sequence is part of a larger project I have been dreaming about. Someday I would very much like to expand it into either a video game or a feature.
In this scene Dick and Don, two american tourist, have just escaped from prison, and discovered to their surprise that they are in London. They have been framed and they need to find out why and by whom. Being handcuffed at the ankle though is going to make the search difficult.
