David Wolter's Blog

2011-10-13T08:41:00.000-07:00

The finished product - Enjoy!

2011-04-06T09:24:00.000-07:00

Long time no post!

Here's my 2011 Story Portfolio:

My excuse for not posting is that I've been hard at work on my second student film. It's hard to believe, but its almost done! I'll be sure to post it once I finish, but until then here's some teaser screenshots:

And (when it rains it pours) here's a link to a blog I started almost a year ago to keep track of the various seeds of inspiration for the film I'm currently finishing. The image link is a painting that I saw in person at the PMCA in Pasadena as part of a Maynard Dixon exhibition that really crystallized the film for me. Click the painting to visit The Shepherdess Blog:

2010-11-22T09:33:00.000-08:00

A sequence from a class assignment to board a train robbery:

2010-11-22T09:32:00.000-08:00

An excerpt from a board sequence i did this summer:

2010-11-22T09:30:00.000-08:00

Here's some boards from my 48 hour film. This year's topic was "coat hanger."

2010-11-22T09:20:00.000-08:00

Been awhile! Here's some beatboards from a class assignment to make a feature film idea from three random ideas:

WHO: Egyptian Pharaoh
WHAT: Toothbrush
WHERE: New Delhi, India

2010-06-15T16:36:00.000-07:00

Alex Ross drawings in Bruce Timm's style.

I was looking for these online a few weeks ago and couldn't find them, so I decided to scan and post them myself. They're from Ross's DC Retrospective book "Mythology." (Is it legal for me to post these...?)

Anyways, they're great (and they're also the only work of his that I actually like). It's basically Bruce Timm with elegant core shadow placement. Tasty stuff.

I also kinda dig the colored Shazam line-up. Ross describes it as Bruce Timm meets the PowerPuff girls.

2010-06-10T09:52:00.000-07:00

How I spent my summer vacation (or at least the first two weeks of it):

John K Lessons

2010-06-03T13:00:00.000-07:00

"At The Bus Stop" Vignettes

2010-05-16T17:10:00.000-07:00

Finally finished my first animated film!

Russ's Funk from David Wolter on Vimeo.

2010-03-01T14:47:00.000-08:00

I'm crazy busy with production for my first animated short film, so this will be my last post until I finish it in two months. Here's a lineup of the characters, Russ, Obie, Barry, and Brigita:

Here's a background layout for one of the shots:

2009-11-16T20:18:00.000-08:00

2009-11-16T20:08:00.000-08:00

2009-11-12T15:31:00.000-08:00

2009-11-12T15:28:00.002-08:00

2009-11-12T15:27:00.000-08:00

2009-11-12T15:10:00.000-08:00

2009-11-12T15:03:00.000-08:00

2009-11-09T18:27:00.001-08:00

Some designs of Bacchus for Rik Maki's Character Design class. I tried to focus on generating a number of possibilities as opposed to one final design. I tried two directions: the fratboy and the fatboy

2009-11-09T10:50:00.000-08:00

2009-11-09T10:44:00.000-08:00

2009-11-09T10:34:00.000-08:00

2009-11-06T14:37:00.000-08:00

Super Late Update: I went back to school in September to study animation. And it's awesome. And I have a ton of work to post to make up for the yearlong hiatus. Starting with poses of me as a six year old:

2009-05-13T18:40:00.000-07:00

So I moved home to Colorado for couple months, and a lot of my friends have been asking what I've been doing with my time.

It's hard to believe how seamlessly that green lego platform merges with nature.

And isn't it amazing how the woodchips look just like Sherwood Forest?

Incidentally, if you dig legos you should check out this guy. He's got some neat stuff. Oh, and he happens to have been a supervising animator on two of the best animated films ever made, Wall-E and The Incredibles.

2009-02-13T08:04:00.000-08:00

Hooray Robots!

2009-01-19T11:30:00.001-08:00

This is a birthday card I did for my friend Greg. He likes the Simpsons. And the color orange.

2009-01-13T12:23:00.000-08:00

I recently came across some photos of live caricatures I did while working at Six Flags this summer:

2009-01-08T13:20:00.000-08:00

As soon as I finish this post I'm heading over to CalArts to drop off my portfolio for the character animation program there. Here's everything I'm including:

2009-01-04T10:22:00.000-08:00

2008-12-17T13:12:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas y'all!

I got to paint Santa on a window last week and it was awesome!
I'll bet you didn't know Santa sometimes rides an aerobic exercise machine and drinks tasty smoothies! Well he does. Here's some process:
Incidentally, the owners of this establishment are good friends of mine and if you live in the SCV (what what) you should check 'em out in Old Town Newhall.
They've got maniac exercise equipment and tasty/healthy smoothies and teas. (I can personally vouch for the bananna split smoothie and raspberry tea, respectively: DE-lish!)

vo2nutrition.com

2008-12-17T12:41:00.000-08:00

Some pictures from a
top secret project I'm working
on with some friends:

pictured:
greg smith
alden underhill
mike butler
austin underhill

more to come...

2008-12-17T12:32:00.000-08:00

I recently had a chance to do some logo design for a good friend. Here's a basic premise for his company, "Crushed Butterfly:"

Crush an iridescent butterfly wing, and you will see a shocking blue colour turn into a dull and muddly mess. This is because iridescence, such as is found on the wing of a Morpho butterfly, relies on a finely-tuned, multi-layered physical structure to produce its otherwise impossible colours.

Crushed Butterfly operates on the belief that, similarily, hidden in the visuality of everyday things, is a physical infrastructure that can give new dimension to common ideas; a language that relies more on architecture than memory to achieve communication. Our aim is to produce graphics with 'structural colour', graphics that, like the wing of the Morpho butterfly, make intelligent use of space and structure to brilliant effect.

It's a pretty intriguing idea, and I'm looking forward to see how its implemented!

2008-11-16T16:39:00.000-08:00

Doodle-doo Doodle-doodle-doo Doodle-doodle-doo Doodle Doo Doo Doodle-Doodle-Doo (The Office theme song)

I heart The Office.

2008-11-11T23:18:00.000-08:00

A while back I said I'd post some process images from the Animalympics, so here's a step-by-step overview of the Falcon Sprinter.

The falcon was unique because i didn't use any reference for the body. All the bodies and poses on the sprinters, the bulldog, and the warthog were from imagination. I still used extensive photo reference on the heads and coloring. The other animals were taken from actual photos and videos of ahtletes from various books and the internet (Go YouTube "Hammer Throw" if you've never seen one before! It's bannanas!)

Steps 1-4 were the exploratory stages. I draw looser and smaller in this stage (2-3 inches) to get a better feel for the overall visual impact. At this point, I'm mainly thinking about shapes, proportions, and what I want to emphasize. He started out very muscular but after watching some of the Olympic sprints I knew he neeed to be elongated. By the last drawing I feel like I have a good feeling for the relation of the shapes and some level of appeal. It's now time to work full size:

Step 5 is my first light pass, I'm thinking about making the angle of the line of the shoulders oppose the hips to create visual interest. While I like the drawing, it's a bit too Cheeks, so I lightbox another drawing over top of it (Step 6) that feels more organic, and more alive. At this point I move to a blue Col-Erase pencil.

After flipping this drawing over on the lightbox to see my mistakes in construction and perspective, I find a different pose that I like a little better. Feels more kinetic, as if he's mid-stride. (Step 7) Step 8 cleans up and ties down the anatomy from Step 7, and Step 9 is the final cleanup, emphasizing clean, dark lines, and enclosed spaces to make the coloring process easier.

Step 10 - Adjust levels to turn the blue lead to a solid black line
Step 11 - Flat colors to give me a base to work off of
Step 12 - Rendering the basic forms, giving a sense of volume and solidity
Step 13 - Adding incidentals like feather markings and sunglass tints.

(Color decisions influenced by photo reference at far right)

2008-11-08T18:46:00.000-08:00

Romans 1:16 "I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile."

These are from the project I spent most of October on, a "Gospel Walkthrough" at my church. We built a large structure that kids could walk through consisting of six separate rooms, each one telling part of the story of the Gospel.

It was a great project to work on for a couple reasons. One, I got a chance to try my hand at environmental design and work on my compositional skills. And two, as a Christian, any chance I have to explicitly glorify God with my art is great.

These were drawn in pencil, colored in photoshop, and then printed as 8' by 15' canvas murals for four of the rooms.

The Garden of Eden: (God created us and wants a relationship with us)

The Fall of Man: (But man sinned and as a result our relationship with God was damaged)

The Person of Jesus: (In His love, God sent His Son Jesus to pay the price for our mistakes)

The Promise: (We are promised eternal life with Jesus when we believe in Him as our Savior) (Turns out heaven is eerily similar to the Lion King. You try drawing heaven! :) )

It's a very simplified version of a message that has had profound impact on me as an artist and a human being, and to try to communicate some small part of that profundity in drawings was an incredible challenge.

2008-11-07T12:11:00.000-08:00

Animalympic Championship Results!

Final results are in!

And to those who accused me of rigging the contest by inserting the bulldog at the last second, I plead the fifth. Look, I just post stuff and let the people vote. The fact that the bulldog is my own personal favorite had nothing to do with it. At all. Yes, really.

Thanks to everyone who voted, and my apologies for taking so long for this post. I've got five blog posts lined up and ready to post in the near future to make up for my recent neglect. Thanks again for visiting and for everyone who stopped by and voted! I had a lot of fun with the project and hopefully you did too!

2008-10-15T10:34:00.000-07:00

Here it is! The final voting event of the Animalympics!
The Cheetah made a big enough deal about the unfairness of a two to one fight to the Committee and as a result was allowed to choose a partner for the final round. And change his costume color. Just for fun. His back up muscle may look familiar.

2008-10-13T09:42:00.001-07:00

Week 5 Results!

Apparently the theme for the Final Four was the smaller the better, as both behemoths were felled handily. You'll notice the medal podiums no longer in use, replaced by more combative results. This is due in part to my friend Lawrence, who noticed back in week one that it didn't make sense to have weightlifters competing against sprinters. So I decided to make the final rounds have a more hand-to-hand (or hand-to-pole-vaulting-pole as the case may be) combat theme. Just for fun.

Here's a related video to give you an idea of what I mean.

Thanks to everyone who voted! The final results going into the championship round are the Cheetah versus the Flamingo and Fox. Though the Animalympic Committee is currently looking into more rule loopholes to try to even the fight...

2008-10-05T23:57:00.000-07:00

Animalympics FINAL FOUR

Bracket 1:

VERSUS

Bracket 2:

VERSUS

This just in: Having shared the gold medal in week 4 and bonded over their irrational, all-encompassing love of pole-vaulting, newly consolidated "Team Pole Vault" have found an IAC loophole to leave their respective teams behind and compete together in the Final Four!

2008-10-05T23:37:00.000-07:00

WEEK 3 RESULTS!

Tie! For the first time ever, two competitors received the same amount of votes. (Unfortunately the gibbon could not be located for the awards ceremony, though there's a good chance he was drowning his sorrows with the rest of the pathetic blue team at a local watering hole.)

I wonder what happens in real life if two pole vaulters clear the same height? In animalympics world they both get gold, but who moves on to the championship round? We (the International Animalympic Committee [or IAC]) are dusting off the old rulebook to find out how this affects the final four. Come back Monday to find out.

Another first this week: Monday saw 100 visitors to the site in one day - a new record! Thanks to everyone who visited and voted - we're down to the last two weeks!

2008-09-28T23:32:00.000-07:00

Animalympics Week 4: POLE VAULT!

First off, apologies for the slightly sub-par color job this week - I've just started an exciting new project that's taking a lot of time and giving me a chance to stretch artistically. I'll be posting it soon!

2008-09-28T23:05:00.000-07:00

WEEK 3 RESULTS!

Results are in: the Rhino steamrolled the competition with the largest margin of victory yet, making him an early favorite for the upcoming championship round.

After three weeks, the Orangutan, Cheetah, and Rhino stand atop the leaderboard, with one spot left to fill. The bracket as it currently stands:

Get in your votes this week, and then choose your athlete for the Final Four, beginning next Monday!

Also - big thanks to Charles Zembillas over at the Animation Nation forum for the plug. I took a character design class from Charles at his Animation Academy a while back - this guy knows his stuff, and has also just published his first book, "Controlling Illusion." It's made up of in-class demonstrations, and if the class I took was any indication, its well worth picking up. Check it out:

2008-09-21T23:58:00.000-07:00

Animalympics Week 3: THROWING EVENTS!

2008-09-21T23:31:00.000-07:00

WEEK 2 RESULTS!

Week 2 was a barnburner! Despite a commanding early lead (up 14 votes after day one!) the Cheetah nearly blew the race, and with less than ten hours to go in the voting was locked in a dead tie with the Deer. He somehow managed to cross the finish line up by two votes, allegations of late-week vote-changing notwithstanding. :)

The Falcon, despite being, according to my engineer-genius brother-in-law, "the fastest animal on the planet" with its ability to reach speeds of over 200mph, managed to finish a dismal third.

Which is all fine and good - I'd rather have visitors vote for their favorite drawing than mentally handicap the race with scientific fact. Although I am noticing an alarming trend: so far, whoever I vote for loses. (which means I either have bad taste, or I'm sweet at picking losers! Hooray, I think!)

The bracket as it currently stands:

A big thanks to all who stopped by - there were a total of 92 votes this time around, 32 more than last week! It's cool to know so many people visit and like my drawings enough to vote - what great motivation to draw more! Thanks!

2008-09-15T00:25:00.000-07:00

Animalympics Week 2: 100M SPRINT!

2008-09-14T23:40:00.000-07:00

RESULTS ARE IN!

First of all a massive thanks to everyone who stopped by and voted! Round 1 was a close contest down to the wire, with the Orangutan ultimately triumphing by a mere three votes. (For the record, I voted bulldog)

Also, I've decided to change the format of the contest, at a friend's suggestion. Instead of having one winner each week to end up with four total champions in four separate events, I've decided to up the stakes a little...

*drumroll*

As of today, the champion of each round (in this case the Orangutan) will move on to the next round to meet the champion from a different event (I know it's not very Olympic-y, go cry to your mother). Which means a Final Four, resulting in ONE CHAMPION (bwu-hahahaha) from all twelve animal participants. Sorry, Bulldog and Warthog: your journey ends here.

So choose your animal wisely, rally support and check the bracket above for matchup dates. May the best animalympian win!

Last off - a big thanks to the fine folks at the RedFence Project for the plug.
The RedFence Project is a budding collective of Los Angeles area artists whose members run the gamut from fire sculptors to film-makers and everything inbetween.

After getting their start online, they published their first ever print edition last month, a compelling mix of stories, poetry, photos, and eclectic reviews (Ever wondered what the "Best Tea for Breaking Up" is?). I bought one, read it cover to cover, and highly recommend it.

2008-09-07T19:10:00.000-07:00

Animalympics Week 1: Weightlifting

Don't forget to vote for your favorite on the top right!

2008-09-07T16:03:00.000-07:00

The ANIMALYMPICS have arrived!

Are you going through Olympic withdrawal? Do you like muscular animals with humanoid bodies wearing skintight spandex? Then you've come to the right blog!

For the next month, I'll be posting a series of original character designs with a common theme: all of the characters are animals, and all of the characters are also olympic athletes.

Here's how it works: each Monday I'll post a new event with three new character designs. You can vote for your favorite design in the poll at the top right column. Whichever character has the most votes at the end of the week will win the gold medal. You can leave commments to voice your support of a particular character, and even recruit your baby mama to come vote if you want - it's open to everyone.

Here's the schedule:

Monday, September 8: Round 1 (Weightlifting)
Monday, September 15: Round 2 (TBA)
Monday, September 22: Round 3 (TBA)
Monday, September 29: Round 4 (TBA)

I've done a little blog redesign as a form of opening ceremonies, but alas, my army of terrifying militant unison drummers (TMUD's) backed out at the last minute. Good luck to all the competitors!

p.s.

Here's a link to the television cartoon of the same name (which debuted in 1980 and actually featured the animation talent of one Brad Bird). I don't remember watching it, but I'm sure it played a role in this idea somehow.

No sue-me, no sue-me! (It's like "no whammy" but different.)

2008-09-05T15:48:00.000-07:00

Here's a piece I worked up for the cover of my portfolio with the heading "World's Tallest Cartoonist" but decided not to use for the following two reasons:

1) While I like the simple triangular composition, the line of figures to the left is too cluttered visually and doesn't read very well.

2) The "conceited" vibe is a little too strong (woo hoo everybody look at me-ee-ee!). Which, regrettably accurate though it may be on occasion, is probably not the best impression to present to prospective employers.

2008-08-28T10:55:00.000-07:00

Some recent life drawings:

(Cuidado: Dude nudity below)

Five Minute Studies, colorstix on newsprint:

Three to Eight Minute Studies, charcoal on newsprint:

One to Three minute gestures, charcoal on newsprint:

Side note: "Dude Nudity" would be a catchy band name.

2008-08-22T10:19:00.000-07:00

2008-08-21T23:53:00.000-07:00

Three guys with ties and dreams of upper level management.

2008-08-08T23:12:00.000-07:00

These are the first five pictures I've posted on my new account at Deviant Art.

2007-11-28T18:25:00.000-08:00

Some character and style explorations for a possible story.

2007-10-04T23:21:00.000-07:00

Here's a drawing of the school mascot for the high school I taught at last year. Mascots have been a deep obsession of mine since I was small.

2007-08-06T18:22:00.000-07:00

It's definitely a mental shift to take what I've learned about character design from a purely visual standpoint (avoiding volume redundancy, avoiding tangents, utilizing contrasts, shape exploitation) and then try putting that knowledge to use to communicate personality.

These sketches are perhaps my most successful to date at trying to communicate WHO a character is instead of just WHAT he looks like. Ball point pen on copy paper.

2007-07-17T17:24:00.000-07:00

Here's a preview of my 2007 Sketchbook.

2007-07-11T01:15:00.000-07:00

2007-07-11T01:01:00.000-07:00

Here are some holdovers from my previous blog that I wanted to post. Two character lineups in two different styles.

The bottom lineup was an assignment for Stephen Silver's character design class, and the top lineup is for a pitch I've been working on.

2007-07-11T00:56:00.000-07:00

Here are some character exploration sketches I did for my character design class at the Animation Academy (link at right).

These are all studies for a character based on the kinkajou, a nocturnal South American tree-dwelling relative to the raccoon which also happened to be my favorite animal growing up.

I used to always pretend to be a kinkajou, but in retrospect, it was probably motivated more by the desire to justify my hyperactivity than any legitimate love for the species.

2007-07-11T00:46:00.000-07:00

Here's a recent piece that I've been meaning to post. It was inspired by the way Ovi Nedelcu used a similar technique to portray transformation and story in a single image.

2007-07-11T00:38:00.000-07:00

Here's a recent sketchbook page that I drew at Costco (as per David Colman's advice). It really is a great place to capture a wide variety of characters, and the customers are so overwhelmed by the Costco shopping experience that they won't even notice your stare.

These drawings will also be a part of my first published sketchbook, due out just in time for the San Diego Comic Con this year. I'll be posting more images from that sketchbook, as well as information on how to get your hands on one very soon.

2007-06-28T10:44:00.000-07:00

Probably one of my biggest influences is the video game Street Fighter. A year before I ever played the game I bought the strategy guide and would spend hours studying the character drawings and animation poses. Here's my take on a few of those characters:

2007-06-25T10:00:00.000-07:00

This is a redesign of the character below. I've been trying to improve storytelling through my drawings. A successful design is one that captures a personality and tells the viewer a story about who this character is, and I felt the first try was a little bland. (Not to mention top heavy) "What's the story?" is a question I try to keep at the front of my mind whenever designing a character.