Music video concept art...

CHIHUANHAS

Our initial feature film "CHIHUANHAS" is scheduled to shoot this summer on Mt Hood, Oregon. Take a peek at locations, character designs and the cast at chihuanhas.com.

Harrowdown Hill and SmallGantics

Recently I developed a style which I have dubbed SmallGantics and was asked to incorporate the technique into director Chel White's new video for Thom Yorke titled "Harrowdown Hill". I was originally inspired to pursue the technique by tilt lens photography stills, but I wanted to take it one step further and treat moving footage to make full size imagery appear small with short DOF. Here are a few stills from the final video.

Go HERE to see the video and HERE to read the story of how we managed to pull off this technique.

Lux Provocateur Spot

We recently completed the new LUX Provocateur spot directed by Chel White and co-directed by Ray DiCarlo of Bent Image Lab. I was responsible for production design, supervising character design and set construction, as well as solving the technical challenges of combining live-action performance with stop-motion puppets. The project challenged us technically and creatively and turned out to be a beautiful commercial.

Go HERE to see to the finished commercial on the Bent web site.

Regarding Firehouse Tales...11.08.06

To the best of our knowledge, it appears that our animated program, Firehouse Tales, which was picked up and developed by Warner Brothers and aired on Cartoon Network, is no longer being shown in the US and the Bandai line of toys is leaving the shelves of Toys-R-US stores.

We have also received word that the show is playing in Europe and as many as 20 countries worldwide, but the toy line has been discontinued until further notice. So for our FHT fans, we have launched the official FHT fan site at www.firehousetales.com to provide all FHT fans with the latest news, air times, toy and book availability and DVD distribution(Coming Soon!)

If you cannot find Firehouse Tales or licensed products in your neck of the woods, please visit the site, send us an email and we'll help you get the FHT stuff you want!

Jim Clark

"LUX Provocateur" concept art

I really enjoyed working in this new technique in Photoshop. I used a custom brush with images of flowers and leaves in a random setting.

Click image for larger version

"LUX Provocateur" character concepts

For a recent, challenging commercial done at Bent Image Lab, for the agency Santo-Buenos Aires, I was contracted to provide character designs and develope techniques to capture live facial performance that could then be manipulated, distorted, match moved and finally composited onto stop-motion puppets. Below are a few interesting results I came up with; part photo manipulation and a lot of hand painting in Photoshop.

Click any image for larger version

Katie Holmes

Natalie Imbruglia

Natalie Portman

Selma Hayek

Ward Kimball response...

I'm very pleased that there is such a positive response to the Kimball painting. In response, I accept the millennium old animator vow to take good care and share it with all.

For those who have inquired(Many of you!), I stumbled across the painting at an art auction of Illustration work. Amazingly, nobody but I apparently knew who Ward Kimball was. It is a miracle to find such an amazing piece of animation history. Better yet, I was doing research on Ward's styles and that specific era when I discovered it. Now what better piece of art to stare at and ponder my own creative vision!

For all those interested, I may pursue the rights to recreate the painting as a limited edition print so that others can enjoy the image on their wall too. If you are interested in a print, please email me: jim at animationwerks dot com.

Jim