Wes Anderson’s ‘Fantastic Mr Fox’

Wes Anderson’s ‘Fantastic Mr Fox’
09/16/09

I love Wes Anderson. Some people don’t get him, his style, his humor or his movies.

I do.

He’s probably my favorite director, and definitely my favorite Art Director. He was roomates with Owen Wilson at the University of Texas where they collaborated on short films, most notably Bottle Rocket, which was later made into a feature length film. His other films include Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and The Darjeeling Limited.

In Life Aquatic we saw Anderson’s fasination with Stop Motion Animation in a lot of the wild life portrayed in the film. Well, his most recent film Roald Dahl’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox, is a feature length animated movie. I was curious how Anderson would keep his signature stlye (balanced cinematography, panning one-take shots and a keen eye for set and character organization) in the animated universe.

Check out the Trailer and you’ll see it wasn’t that hard.

I’ve been excited for this film since I read about it, and I’m more excited now.

It looks like the entire this was done stop-motion. Think Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, not Pixar. No CGI, or not much. He just made sets, made characters and started shooting and moving, one frame at a time. Here’s a little featurette that explains the technique Wes Anderson and his team used.

The movie comes out this November and stars a lot of the standards, Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, but this time adds some newbies including George Clooney as Mr. Fox and Meryl Streep as Mrs. Fox.

Check it out.

Fun work

Martin Luther King Tribute
06/1/10

I wanted to attempt this style  in February, and being Black History Month I chose the Rev. as my muse.

His face is made up of the words of his epic Lincoln Memorial “I have a dream…” speech.

Take a look. I am having it framed as I type.

Smoking Goat Branding
04/1/10

I like beer.

Beer high in flavor, alcohol and price. I brew at home, but wouldn’t consider myself very good at this point. I’m working on it.

We have friends in Louisiana who I would consider really good. I designed some branding for their forthcoming brewery down there.

The Smoking Goat will hopefully be amazing, especially if I get some good beer out of the deal.

Have a look. Then drink a beer and have a look again. Continue this process until the logo looks awesome.

New Poster
02/4/10

This is a poster I made for my buddy Dustin.

A classic quote from him as we drove by Effingham, IL’s infamous and huge cross.

I thought it would look good in his new apartment.

Sheltered Perceptions
01/6/10

I recently got the chance to work on a project for the Humane Society. Given the fact that every time I walk into an animal shelter I have to be talked down from taking home every animal in the place, I was happy to help in anyway I could.

With the majority of pet buying in the United States coming from breeders, mall pet shops and unfortunately mills, animal shelters (specifically the Humane Society) are left overflowing with pets that need loving homes. They are running into a perception problem however, and many misconceptions about shelter pets are accepted as fact, and often repeated as such.

To get past this, we decided to take the problem head on, and address the most common misconceptions individually.

Here is where we landed:

Lauren and Dan sit’n in a tree…
01/5/10

My good friend Lauren is getting married in July, and though I am extremely jealous of her fiance Dan (don’t tell my wife), I made their save the date cards.

I use VistaPrint to print these types of things. Though the quality suffers, and the rumor is that they are destroying local community printers nationwide, for the price they can’t be beat. Check them out next time you want to customize your own holiday card or invitation.

Here’s how Lauren’s STDs turned out: