Red Bird

I was recently studying some of Ovi's bird drawings from his book Desene ( a really great book of sketches, go get it!) I was inspired to do a drawing in his style of one of my favorite birds. The really great thing about Ovi is that his method of working is really similar to my own, in that he likes to draw with what looks like blue animation pencil and then develop ideas more fully from there depending on the direction the work should take. Here is a page from my sketch book inspired by Ovi

I chose the drawing on the end since cardinals are my favorite. My uncle Bob called me little cardinal when I was a baby so I've always been fond of them. I even have one tattooed on my foot. (Sorry if the picture is blurry but I had to take it with my phone) So I chose to do some light color work on the bird in Illustrator to punch it up a bit. I've been really fond of flat planes of muted color recently, and thought it worked nicely to suggest a vibe that's some where half way between traditional cel animation and modern illustrations that can tend to be a bit twee. I'm pretty happy with the results as a stand alone concept for a character.


On another note I've been applying for internships, scholarships, animating, reading, and developing an idea for a pitch. Oh and I met Bill Plympton today, go check out his blog Scribble Junkies(link in blog roll at right) if you haven't already. He was super nice and even drew me a picture of a character from his up coming feature film. It's always nice to see fellow Americans when you're abroad, especially when you're abroad for so long.