Frank Miller's 300...The Movie....

It's hard to say what this movie is going to be like. The trailer itself leads me to believe it's going to be pretty faithful to the frank miller novel, but anyone who knows the story is aware that it has some flaws. I hope they make at least a few changes to it.

They did go the bluescreen route with the film, a la Sin City. A good choice. It's amazing to see what a hybrid of real life and technology can bring to the screen. It's almost become something of a reinvention of what cinema means. Past the spectacle and onto the story itself.

Blah blah blah...

UPDATE:

The trailer was taken down from Youtube...but here's another link.

Viva la revolucion!!!!!

http://www.ste.ag/2006/09/25/300-movie-trailer-frank-miller/#more-1866

Pretty interesting art work...

I think this is all graffitti art...but it looks kinda like photoshop too...nice stuff..

http://vhm-design.com/

More background work....

Mark and I sent this back and forth a few times. I think it looks great, so hopefully we'll start animating soon.

Tiki Heads...

Here's some tiki heads I drew in my notebook.

Little Children

What makes a movie appealing? Is it the actors? The images? The soundtrack? The story? I think it's a combination of all of these. Story is probably primary, but I have seen some films that lack any direction whatsoever and they still hold some merrit to me.

I just saw two very interesting films, Night of the Hunter and The Asphalt Jungle. I'd say "Hunter" probably falls in the category of having a severely flawed story, but the main character was completely amazing and the cinematography was brilliant. Asphalt Jungle was really amazing too. The film was made in 1950 but it plays like French New Wave cinema. Neon lights everywhere and raw, uninhibited on-location cinematography. I've always been a big fan of film noir and I highly recommend checking these two films out.

Here's what led me to write this post. I just saw the trailer for the new film Little Children. I have no idea whether the film is going to be any good, but the trailer is an amazing piece of editing, images and soundtrack. Very inspiring and worth watching multiple times.

I think good trailers are ones that don't just show funny clips or sexy images or big explosions. They tell a story on their own, captivate and excite. Yeah, I do hate watching trailers, but they do have some merritt in that the good ones tell you how to communicate quickly and effectively.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/newline/littlechildren/large.html

Possibly Final Background

Mark Chun helped me a bit with the colors and some design. I tweaked it and added some more trees and leaves. I think this might be the final, but I have to let Mark see it first.

The leaves will be chopped down by the Safari Dude.

Richard WIlliams on youtube....

Lots of clips of him talking about Roger Rabbit, The Thief and the Cobbler and more. Very cool...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VpT5Xa2cDk

Jungle Background...

For the Monkey and Monk project, we've decided to do a voice test. Since Mark was doing quite a bit o' work, we decided I would do the background design.

I have a background in photography, so I thought this wouldn't be such a big deal. Yikes! It's hard! Here's my first pass. If you come across this page please gimme some comments please! I'm working on more of the shrubbery, but I could use some help on rendering the foreground elements...

Update: Just found this guys stuff. Layout artist on Sleeping Beauty. Beautiful!

http://www.gallery21.com/

Building a new site...

I've been trying to build a new website for a while now. My girlfriend helped me with the last one and I was pretty happy with it. But I feel like it's time to try something new. I need to put up a ton of new work anyways...

Here's what it's going to look like.

http://www.designersfrommars.com/GRoss/new/

More Sketches....

Just some random sketches...

More sketches coming soon....

I just scanned in a bunch...should be up soon. Also, my parents have been bugging me to put up some animation, so I'll try to get the whole youTube thing working ;)

Nice blog for 2d animation....

Lots of tips abound here. I still haven't gotten through the whole thing!

http://handdrawnnomadzone.blogspot.com/

If this dosen't inspire u....

I don't know what will!!!

Radar Men From The Moon

Fun quick animations....

I was inspired by Pascal...so I think I'm going to try to do a few of these each day. They take me less than a half hour to crank out and they're fun!

Sad walk

GumDrop

Pascal's blog

Sketches from Monkey and Monk....

Here's some sketches I thought were fun...

I'm with Stupid!

Web site almost up again....

My website it being redesigned, but I decided to put up my old web site just to have something in the space...

http://www.designersfrommars.com/GRoss/

Pencil Test of Glen Keane's "Beast" transformation...

Glen Keane has really been an inspiration for me the past year. Here's a pencil test of the transformation animation from "Beauty and the Beast". Interestingly enough it appears he's using a grease pencil or china marker to draw with.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cDC9ExkZYE

Monkey and the Monk

I've started working on a Flash project with a friend of mine, Mark Chun. Check out the blog here:

http://themonkeyandthemonk.blogspot.com/

The ten commandments of Freelancing

Helpful for all you freelancers out there...

http://sthig.typepad.com/my_weblog/2005/03/the_ten_command.html
http://sthig.typepad.com/my_weblog/2005/02/top_ten_ways_to.html
http://sthig.typepad.com/my_weblog/2005/02/top_10_ways_to_.html

And of course, how to deal with "difficult" clients...

http://www.zefrank.com/punc/