Nancy Beiman's Animated Performance: Bringing imaginary animal, human and fantasy characters to life.

Nancy Beiman's new book "Animated Performance" should find a place on the bookshelf of anyone who creates character based work, whether it's animation, illustration, comic art, writing or portraiture.
Although written particularly for animators, it is not a technical "how to" book, which should be appealing to non animators.
There's no endless dreary theory either.
It's straight forward information that encourages the artist to think about the characters they are working with or creating.
This may sound obvious, but it's not.
A quick glance at the animation landscape should reveal this.
Further and deeper examination of character, and characters relationship to story will hopefully push us to experiment more and to do better work.
Apart from Nancy's text (which, from the little I know her feels just like her throughout), the book is large and packed full of terrific, wonderful illustrations.
I contributed a couple myself and every one of Nancy's are 163 times better than mine.
There are some birdy dinosaurs that I especially like. I also love the stretchy cats.
It's available for pre-order at amazon.com, here.

Ink and Brush

Hand In Hand

Hot

I've been working on a Sesame shoot with my pal Justin.
It's very hot and humid here in New York...

Things

Some cartoons for a thing that I did.

Certificate

Months ago I was asked to design the awards certificate for the ASIFA-East Animation Fesitval.
I thought I'd posted it.
I haven't.
Here it is.
I also did the accompanying signal film, which is here.

Essay Competition

I entered the essay competition being run at the website promoting Anthony Bourndain's new book.
My essay is called "Sausage Abandonment" and can by dound by clicking below:

The Passenger

Eunuchorn

Cura Magazine

A few months back I was asked to contribute a Boxhead and Roundhead illustration to Cura Magazine, an Italian art publication.
Orsola Mileti, the curator, suggested the characters might be trying to escape from the book somehow.
This seemed like a perfectly good idea so I used it.
The cover.


There is a preface page before my illustration that reads the following: There is no way out in the black and white world of Boxhead and Roundhead. Relentlessly bothered in the peacefulness of their house on the hill, interrupted even during their coffee breaks, chased by sea, land and alien monsters, overwhelmed by storms and landslides, attacked by exotic enemies or soldiers armed to the teeth and trapped in the works of some infernal machine. Fascinated by the world they see on TV and by the dreams of their afternoon naps, they are naïve and enthusiastic, hopelessly overwhelmed by reality. When they try to fly, they end up crashing through the roof of their own home. At times self destructive, at others times touchingly ingenuous, inevitably melancholic but drawn with a genuine noir spirit, they stoically keep on surviving through each of their Stressful Adventures. Invited to inhabit the pages of cura. for a brief moment, they find themselves dealing with the mangled and senseless Latin of “Lorem ipsum”.

And this is my drawing:

And this is the artwork.
Draw in Painter and Photoshop:

Sex Machine

The Lochless Monster

Me and rat

Although I had a exceptionally lovely weekend, my favorite moment was when a two year old boy told this granny that she looked like the old lady in the film Pixar film, Ratatouille.

Ain't Nothin'

Flerg

Highlights

These are some highlights from the little film below.

133 Watercolours In 3 Days

133 Watercolours In 3 Days from Elliot Cowan on Vimeo.

I have a client function next week and wanted to make a little piece of art for everyone.
I bought these cheap little sketchbooks that seemed heavy enough to take watercolour then splashed them out one after the other.
There're some touch ups with brush pen.
Not all of them are brilliant, but they all have life and energy which is in the spirit of the thing.
Let me know if you have a favorite.

Last night at the 41st ASIFA-East Animation Festival I won a few things.
A job I worked on with Dave Levy for The Electric Company won 2nd Place in the Commercial category and my film The Thing In The Distance won an award for Excellence In Design.
I won the same award last year which makes me kind of a Tom Hanks, yeah? No?... Ok...

A Martian Of Error