Shrek's house. Early concepts.

Shrek first lived in a garbage dump near a human village called Wart Creek. At one time it was thought that he lived with his parents and kept rotting fish in his bedroom. Here are more of my early concepts  for the first Shrek film, circa 1996/97.

Most of us, if not all of us, were used to designing for flat 2D animation. It seemed to me that our gouache paintings, delightful as they were, with their brush marks and paper textures, were not going to get us near to the CG look that Shrek was going to have so I started building models, photographing them and working with them in Photoshop. Using Photoshop was a fairly new concept in those days though I was by no means the first to do so.

Shrek. The first one, that is.

With the fourth Shrek movie soon to be released I thought I'd dig out some of my old concept drawings from around 1996/97 when I was working on the first Shrek movie in LA, before it moved up north to PDI. Yes, it really was that long ago. The Art Department was just learning how to use Photoshop 2, there wasn't a digital camera in sight and I don't recall seeing too many cell phones, if any.

These are landscape ideas for Shrek's world. We didn't have a Shrek or Donkey model at this stage and there was a fad for making drawings brown. These were done in black and white with pencil and then colorized on the photocopier. I'll publish more when and if I can find stuff.

How to Train Your Dragon

Here's another early concept piece of mine from "Dragon", the nursery. I'm told that Dreamworks has issued it as a limited addition giclee. I'll keep you posted.

Copyright Dreamworks SKG

'How to Train Your Dragon' early concept art circa 2004-2005

Here is some of my early concept art from 'HTTYD'. It's amazing how long it can take to make a good animated feature film and remarkable how much the story can change in five years.

This is Valhallarama, Hiccup's mum, who never made it into the final film. Below is Old Wrinkley who also got cut.

 

Toothless (above) was more like a petulant five year old in the early days.

Some more sketchbook stuff, this time from a rather well to do place about two hours drive from LA called La Quinta.

This is titled 'The Contract". It could just as easily be called 'The Bribe'....you can write your own story. But because a gift is involved, I'm using it as my Christmas card this year.

A couple of pages from my sketchbook this weekend.

Here are some faces I saw whilst sketching at the Farmers Market near the Grove yesterday.

More ten minute poses from the model. This week, would you believe, Shaft.

Darwin, Dickens, Lincoln, Washington and Rembrandt. Not being the greatest caricaturist in the world I feel I have to tell you who they are but I had fun doing them so I thought I'd share.

More five minute sketches from the model. No guessing what this week's theme was.

5 to 10 minute sketches from the model. This week - The Director.

Some more ten minute poses from the costumed model class. Much more fun than stuffy nude models.