Concepts, Sketchbooks, Diners and Space...

Hey Everyone!

As you've probably guessed, I do A LOT of drawing in my sketchbooks. Since I was a kid, it's always been one of the best ways for me to unwind. I found some random sketches tonight in some old sketchbooks and I thought I'd share them with you.

The drawing above is a quick concept sketch of the Nufonia Must Fall Live stage. 

Below is a version of a moving "puppet-able" wall for one of the sets. With this design we can pull the whole room into the frame to create a slick transition into the scene. We didn't end up using the rolling wall rigs for Nufonia, but it looks like something we are going to refine and integrate into the Creatures of the Late Afternoon show! 

I also found an "Intermission" slide from either the Nufonia book launch tour in 2003. We used to tour with an actual carousel slide projector! 

Here are some early ideas for how the robot puppet in Nufonia would move. We thought about using a "top down" hand puppet version at first but soon decided it would be better to use a rodded puppet from underneath because that design better suited the type of movement we needed from the robot.

There was also a moment when I was considering giving the robot multiple facial expressions... like he has in some of the more cartoon-y panels in the book. But we soon found out the puppet could emote all of the moods from just how it turned and tilted its head!

Here are some early concepts for covers for a series of Space Cadet 7" singles.  I was playing around with the idea of the die cut center in the sleeve. One where the center sticker could act as the "moon" or "planet" and the art printed on the jacket could complete the image like rings of saturn, or the robot and the girl looking at the stars from the roof top.

When the soundtrack was finished, I felt it worked best as a complete continuous listen, so I decided instead to release all the tracks on 2 sides of a 10" vinyl. 

Oh! here's are some early brush pen drawings of Space Cadet.

And here she is floating off the planet! 

Anyhow, I've been revisiting some of these old sketchbooks and getting into the Space Cadet zone since we are in the midst of creating a feature length animated film based on the book! More news on all this later! But I thought I'd share some early sketches with you tonight.

Enjoy!

E