El Tigre Concept: Dad's humble abode

Some more Concepts from El Tigre- This time concepts for Dad's (White Pantera's) room.

White Pantera is a super hero... but refuses payment for his good doing... so lives in complete squalor. I thought it would be fun to push the contrast between the sparseness of Dad's room with the opulence of super-villain Grandpa's fancy crib.

As usual I explore the bathroom area early on... to get a better handle on what sort of man lives in this space.

The Book of Life: 2D Flashback 002

Above: Some key color frames for the 2D bullfighting flashback

One of the key themes in The Book of Life was that the main star, Manolo, was unable to kill a bull in the ring. He did defeat a bull once however when it was struck by lightning. Which is the moment this key frame illustrates. Of course Manolo goes on to defeat the grandest bull of them all... with love.

Below: Some color day time color exploration.

A Little Lindy

 As a youth the story of Charles A. Lindburgh inspired and captivated me. Through the years I have played around with the idea of making a short based on his first trans-Atlantic flight. A friend of mine even built a 3D model for me as reference. Recently I bought a balsa model of the "Spirit of St. Louis" with a 34 1/2 inch wing span!

In honor of "Ink-tober" I decided to post a few of many quick inspirational ink sketches I did for the project. In these sketches I tried to explore Lindy's inner thoughts and feelings rather than simply re-telling his story.

All images copyright tod polson

AARP spot

A few years ago I was asked to create some concept art for an AARP commercial pitch. The agency wanted something with... "movement and vigor. Youthful... but not juvenile." So I worked up several approaches... including this one... "Bruce E Petrie... Rocket Man!"

Dark Forest

A friend of mine contacted me a few weeks ago, and asked if I had any "Dark, scary, forest" reference I could give him to show a client for a potential job.

Above: Going through some of my old files, I came across a development sketch from a few years ago. I was working on a film about an elephant... and this character was the villain. I'm not sure why his eyes are glowing now... just seemed right at the time :)

Above: Variation on a theme... trying out a few lighting schemes... from "Secret of kells"

Above: This sketch is from my early 20's when I was working at Chuck Jones! I believe the studio was developing some sort of "Film Noir" story with a cat. I'll have to dig up the rest of the sketches someday. Was a fun project... but like most of the stuff we were developing at Jones... it never got beyond the development stage.

Dave Thomas' Wilburville

Not so long ago, my pal Dave Thomas asked me to do some color sketches on a project he was developing. He liked the feel of "Mantelope", which of course we developed together years ago. He also liked the feel of some of my sketches from "John Deer". A concept that we also had originally started together, before life took us different ways.

Above: Some rough development ideas for the town of "Wilburville".

Dave wanted the town to have the feel of classic "Americana" with quirky differences. Here I am just exploring color and shape in broad strokes to give a general feel. The uniqueness, and details of the place would come from the characters that inhabitated it.

For example below, Daisy, a bird character, would live in a classic American house, that happens to be built for a bird.

Above: Color exploration for Daisy's bird house.

Dave is always coming up with cool, fun story ideas, and it's always a pleasure working with him. I wish him luck on his pitches, and hope to get the opportunity to help develop these visual ideas much further.