Christmas Greetings from the White House

Here's a classic bit of Christmas cheer from Laura "Pickles" Bush as featured a couple of years ago on the Mike Malloy Show.

Sketchy Women

After several months of neglect, I finally decided to acquaint myself with my recently purchased Motion Computing Tablet PC. Although I had doodled a few minutes at a time on a few of the drawing and painting programs I have loaded on my machine, I hadn't really sat down and got down to the business of doing some serious digital drawing. So I opened up Sketchbook Pro and started playing around with some of the tools. Oh how I love the custom brush tool! Being able to create a brush that responds and acts exactly the way you want it to was a revelation! And having the ability to have multiple undos and several saved versions of a drawing was an added bonus! My first drawings here are of Jane Greer as Kathie Moffat in Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past...probably one of the most bad-ass femme fatales to walk all over a man in film noir history. I didn't capture much of a likeness, but I was happy that the versatility of drawing digitally had the effect of helping me loosen up a little. I took my tablet to a life drawing session at Los Feliz Life Drawing Workshop last night (http://myspace.com/losfelizlifedrawing ) and started doing gesture sketches with it, but by the time we got to the longer poses, my battery was wearing down, and I had to switch to my backup, a sketchpad and a ball point pen. Here are a couple of those sketches.

-Anson

Beyond Our Borders (Part 1)

Over the years, I've managed to collect a lot of really excellent comic art and illustration from all over the world. While a good number of these foreign publications make it your local US retailer, there are quite a few that don't. I thought I'd share with you a few samples from my own collection that I think are some of the best around.



I visited China a few years ago, and while browsing in a bookstore, I stumbled across this book, which is a full-color, beautifully illustrated collection of 120 Chinese maidens. Luckily, I got the last one. There were so many incredible images in this book, I had trouble picking which ones to include in the blog.









L'Association consistently publishes some of the best comics being made today. Francois Ayroles' "Notes Mesopotamiennes" is no exception. This comic caught my eye at a party that took place in the Last Gasp warehouse in San Francisco during APE a few years back. There was only one copy, but one look and I knew I had to buy this. Francois Ayroles artwork is spare and each panel is brilliantly composed. A great inspiration for any comic artist.





By the way, if any of you out there can read French or Chinese and would care to translate, please feel free!

-Anson

What's Been Bugging Me Lately

Here are a few examples of some concept and storyboard work I created for a computer game called Insecticide, by Crackpot Entertainment. The game is scheduled to be released on PC and Nintendo DS in January of 2008. Check out the website at http://www.insecticidethegame.com.

-Anson

Where's Anson?

In the last blog, I wrote about how I appeared as an extra in the CBS series NUMB3RS. Since you were up to something SO MUCH MORE IMPORTANT than witnessing my NETWORK TV DEBUT, I'll clue you in on what you missed.



I was in this shot for the original take. Apparently, they reshot the scene while Michael Aushenker and I took a lunch break. Notice our empty "booth" on the right. This is an outrage! Where is my union representative!



In this shot, as you can see, I'm explaining it all (far left). Even in this minor scene, you can see how I project an air of wisdom...a man of the world...the go-to guy...the man with the plan. Now that's talent. AND YOU MISSED IT!



In this scene, comic creator Seth Marlowe (guest star Ben Feldman) stares me (far right) down before the final confrontation. We then duke it out in a gritty fistfight of good versus evil where I ultimately end up triumphant. AND YOU MISSED IT!



In the next scene Megan Reeves (series regular Diane Farr) turns around and locks eyes with me across the crowded auditorium. She then runs over, kisses me passionately, and thanks me for my heroism. AND YOU MISSED IT!

Actually, so did I.

Anson

I'm Ready for My Close Up!

I'm gonna be on TV! Okay, I'm just an extra, but I'm still excited! My big TV debut will be on the CBS show "NUMB3RS" on an episode that will air this Friday, November 23rd at 10 pm. The episode takes place at a fictional comic book convention called ALTCON and involves a murder and the theft of a very rare comic book. Wil Wheaton (Star Trek TNG) and Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future) guest star in this episode (Judd Hirsch is a series regular, so it's a bit of a reunion for Lloyd and Hirsch). I'm going to be playing one of those colorful blurry figures in the background

The way this came about was that Katherine LeBlond, the art director of the show needed to put together a comic book convention really quickly. She talked to Steve Wyatt about contacting some comics creators who could lend their convention materials to the show to be used on the set as though it were a real convention. Steve gave us the pitch at a meeting of the Comic Art Professional Society (CAPS). We could also come in as extras and pretend to hawk our wares for the show if we were so inclined. So Steve Wyatt, Tone Rodriguez, Russ Heath, Dean Yeagle, Michael Aushenker and I came in and did some long hours as extras (7:30 am to 10:00 pm!). Dan Brereton and his son drove in all the way from the SF Bay area to participate in this.

Michael Aushenker and I shared a booth where I hawked copies of Saturday Nite and Vice and he, his own book, El Gato.
I must say, the show did a really good job at capturing the feel of a real convention; sitting behind the booth, it didn't feel that much different from the real thing -- from the way the set looked to the way the "conventioneers" acted.
In between takes, I got to hang out with all the other comics guys and watch the filmmaking process. The show fed us well, and the cast and crew were about as nice as could be. Despite the long hours, it was actually a lot of fun.

Anson

A Goy Named Who?

Yes, Jew is my real last name; the one I was born with. Don't bother with all the Hannukah jokes, I've heard them all. The first name is Anson with an "A", not to be confused with my twin brother Benton (with a "B"), who also has a blog and works in the same profession. His blog is located at http://bentonjewart.blogspot.com.

I am an illustrator based in the Los Angeles area (in the hipster neighborhood of Los Feliz) and primarily work on storyboards and concept art for the entertainment industry. Some of my credits include the movies The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Anacondas: Hunt for the Blood Orchid, Inheritance, The Cat in the Hat, and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. I also do stuff for TV: commercials, music videos, series and such. I did a little work on a kids' cartoon called Growing Up Creepie and an upcoming X-Men cartoon called Wolverine and the X-Men. Some of you may have seen a series of music videos I worked on for the Black Eyed Peas called Instant Def.
My storyboard portfolio can be found at http://ansonart.tripod.com.

I also do a bit of comics work, primarily self published, although I've worked for other publishers before. Some time back I received a Xeric Foundation Grant for my comic book Saturday Nite. I published two issues with distribution in the US and abroad to a reasonable amount of acclaim from the comic book press, but more recently, most of my comic book activities have been in self-distributed minicomics and anthology titles. I have a website for my comics you can visit: http://www.satnitesite.8k.com.

Hardcore fans of PC adventure games may recognize my name from the nine years I worked as an animator at LucasArts. Some of the titles I worked on there include Full Throttle, Curse of Monkey Island, Herc's Adventures, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine and Force Commander. I continue to work in the gaming industry with recent titles like Midway's Gauntlet:Seven Sorrows and did a little work on the upcoming A Vampyre Story by Autumn Moon Entertainment (http://www.vampyrestory-game.com) and Insecticide by Crackpot Entertainment (http://www.insecticidethegame.com).

I have lots of personal projects in the works at any given time and plan on posting sketches and reports here at least once a week. Feel free to stop on by and check in every once in a while. To start, here's a drawing of Nora Drenalin: Teen Space Ranger, a character I created a while back for the anthology Babes in Space. The plan is to have a new Nora publication ready for the San Diego Comic Book Convention in 2008.

-Anson