After getting bumped from story and character design there wasn’t much for me to do around the office. Still I tried to be productive and help the art department out as much as I could, but it was very uncomfortable. I was no longer welcomed in the Space Chimps universe. For the next month I mainly just waited around for my contract to end. Here are a few of the loose ends
Hong Kong Alley way
Out in the west
For a shot with the pope
just insert a chimp bull rider
planet landscape idea
Hams father was a famous space chimp in the early space days
After a few months in the story department I was pulled aside by the Directors of Space Chimps and told that they were impressed with my designs and I was asked if I would like to take them a few steps further. They offered me the character designer job which I excitedly excepted. I wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to collaborate with our production designer, Dean Taylor! The man did Nightmare Before Christmas for petes sake!
From the beginning one of the big goals we set for ourselves was to create an alien world which was rich and diverse. The last thing we wanted to have was three or four creatures repeating though out the movie. I decided wasn’t just going to design creatures that were mentioned in the script. I was going to draw all the ambient ones as well. So to create a logic to the world I started from the ground up and created a Kingdom, Phylum, Class structure. I built rules and limitations and then built off of those. One of the big ideas was not to design specific creatures but to design elements and then mr. potatohead them together to build thousands of characters. (note: I was really impressed a few months ago when I saw theSpore creature creator which was essentially the same sort of thing I was thinking of.)
Once some of these basic elements were in place, everything just poured out.Everyone was really happy with the work and in no time I had a long list of approved characters. But the party wouldn’t last long.
Barry Sonnerfeld took over as creative producer and everything at the studio was turned on its head. In a character design meeting that I wasn’t invited to Berry cut everything Dean and I were working on. After everything was cut, I was told my “aliens were too appealing” and that “they upstaged the main charcters.”
Here they are in all their overly appealing glory. let me know what you think.
Below is a small sample of some of the character designs that I explored for the King in the movie Space Chimps. It doesn’t include the cornucopia of really great designs by any of the other wonderful artist on the team. In the future if I can get permission I would love to share some of their work as well. Months of work went into these designs and there are a few in here that I think would have been big winners. I would love to here peoples thoughts on what they see.
Here are some panels I drew showing the chimps arrival and departure from the planet Zeta.
ARRIVAL: This “was” my favorite scene in the whole movie. The wormhole was going to be mix of Pink elephants and some of my favorite abstract animators: Jordon Belson, Oscar Fischinger, Len Lye and Norm Mclaren. It was going to be a wonderful departure from the normal screensaver look for these things. Alas… it never came to be. ( p.s. sorry didn’t have time to write up the text on this one.)
DEPARTURE: Once again the script didn’t explain how the chimps actually got into space so we the board team had to make it up. We invented a volcano to parallel Hams circus cannon act and reverse engineered it into the rest of the story.
We just started drawing… In the beginning I rushed in and overdrew everything. I would walk into a pitch and have ten panels of boards. The directors of the movie, Donavan Cook and Norton Virgien, showed me the ropes and tossed out everything but the key drawings. Donavan would fold over and pin so many of my boars that the panels would look white. It was trial by fire and I quickly began to get the hang of storyboarding as we raced to put up the feature. I learned more in two months than three years of grad school at USC Animation. The original story team consisted of Kirk Hanson, Mike Bell, Francis Glebas, Andrei Svislotski, Vitaly Shafirov and myself. I am indebted to them all for showing me the ropes. Here are some pix I took as we moved into a partially built Vanguard studio in Burnaby B.C.
the Editor
He’s a hugger
Boarding on Space Chimps
Kirk
how exciting… the parking lot
storyboarding on Space Chimps
ehh
moving into the new office
working on Space Chimps
lots to do
waiting for our desks
around the office
Directing Space Chimps
Vitaly Shafirov makes cameras
hypnotic
storyboarding away
Setting up the office. Vanguard animation studios in Burnaby BC, Canada
Flying into work
drama
looking out over Burnaby
board board artists
boards to pin
Eric
pinning boards
taking a break from setting up the new Vanguard office
One of the downsides to being a writer or a concept artist is that no one ever gets to see your work. If you’re lucky it will navigate its way to the screen, but chances are it will never see the light of day. Even when everything comes together, for better or worse, it is never what you intended. It always remains an impression of a thought. Only that. It never come out they way you expected it to. If your lucky, its better.
The following is a gallery of early ideas I was exploring for the animated movie Space Chimps.
the rocky path
alien waterfall
alien sky
alien architechture
the palace
palace study
rope bridge
Space chimps ladscape
mountain path
looking for life
I would personally like to thank John Williams for believing in me back when this all started and standing up for me when others were trying to show me the door.
