HOLLYWOOD STEPS OUT (1941)




    I always loved cartoons with celebrity caricatures. Warner Brothers' "HOLLYWOOD STEPS OUT" is one of the best.

    The background art does a beautiful job depicting the glamorous Hollywood nightclub scene at Ciro's, one of Tinseltown's notorious hot spots.

    The pan shot of the interior is digitally recreated, giving us a view of the art we never saw in the movie. That's Cary Grant on the far right.

    You can find out who all the old movie celebrities are here:

    http://classiccartoons.blogspot.com/2006/02/whos-that-guy-hollywood-steps-out.html

    More art from this great cartoon will follow...Source URL: http://lifestyleartsblogs.blogspot.com/2008/03/
    Visit Lifestyle Arts for daily updated images of art collection

The april pages

An SLR but not the camera


    On Saturday I covered the wedding of Claire and Ian at St Mary's Church in Denham followed by a reception held at Great Fosters in Egham. A blustery and windswept day allowed the couple and their guests to make full use of the beautiful interiors of Great Fosters to create a very memorable wedding day.

    Claire did not have the getting ready photographed so the usual shoe shot will have to be replaced with the shot above of the fabulous McLaren SLR which was specially brought to the venue as a surprise for the groom (more about this in the full post which will follow once the couple have their pictures).Source URL: http://lifestyleartsblogs.blogspot.com/2008/03/
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Snow White: Windows!

The Beautiful Briny, Shimmery Shiny Sea



    This fantastic artwork underplayed two dancing fish for mere seconds in the BEAUTIFUL BRINY SEA segment of BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS.

    FIrst up, the featured fish in a screen cap. Remember them swimming by? Below it, my digitally re-created pan Background.

    After several hundred backgrounds and blog entires, I'm running out of words! I hate to repeat myself, but...

    Truly, the texture and play of light is marvelous.

    After doing this for years, every once in a while I am truly amazed at the artwork revealed. This is one of those times. Who would expect such an intriguing piece of art behind this very brief scene? Disney excellence raises the bar again!

    Gorgeous!Source URL: http://lifestyleartsblogs.blogspot.com/2008/03/
    Visit Lifestyle Arts for daily updated images of art collection

Illustration Friday: HOMAGE

    Click on the image to see it BIGGER.
    Homage to Marc Chagall's "Au Dessus de la Ville",
    one of my all time favorite artists.
    If you click here and here you will see
    two other homages I made to my other two favorites:
    Vincent Van Gogh and Georgia O'Keeffe.

    Watercolor on paper,
    I replaced the loving couple with a black bird
    just to give it my own twist.
    You can see the original painting by clicking here
    Source URL: http://lifestyleartsblogs.blogspot.com/2008/03/
    Visit Lifestyle Arts for daily updated images of art collection

THE LITTLE MERMAID





    A new guest artist from Italy, Andrea Scipione sent these wonderful digital re-creations of backgrounds from THE LITTLE MERMAID. Thank you Andrea!

    This was the last Disney feature to use hand-painted cels.

    Enjoy these wonderful B/Gs. Bella!Source URL: http://lifestyleartsblogs.blogspot.com/2008/03/
    Visit Lifestyle Arts for daily updated images of art collection

THREE CABALLEROS



    Here are two different treatments of the same street from THE THREE CABALLEROS. The first (like a pop-up book) is very cartoonish. The second is more like a chalk drawing.

    Theoretically, they could have used one B/G and zoomed in for a close-up. instead, two B/Gs were painted and the textures are quite different.

    This is intriguing to me. How about you?Source URL: http://lifestyleartsblogs.blogspot.com/2008/03/
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POPPINS Returns: English Countryside

An organized collection of journals

PETER PAN - London skies at night

Sketch journal

Spring

Mathmagic Land Pan B/G

Donald In Mathmagic Land

Backyard camping

    This is how my boys
    decided to spend their spring break vacations...
    We got both of them their very own swiss army knives
    and Manolo taught them how to start a fire on their own.
    We've had bonfires every night after that :)
    Source URL: http://lifestyleartsblogs.blogspot.com/2008/03/
    Visit Lifestyle Arts for daily updated images of art collection

PETER PAN




    Guest artist Andrea Giglio recently sent a huge folder of recreated artwork from PETER PAN. Thank you, Andrea!

    Here is the first set from Andrea's beautiful recreations, with many more to come.

    Our sincere appreciation for sharing!Source URL: http://lifestyleartsblogs.blogspot.com/2008/03/
    Visit Lifestyle Arts for daily updated images of art collection

Progress

Illustration Friday: PET PEEVE

HOW IT'S DONE: Re-creating Digital B/Gs


    I frequently get questions about how I actually recreate these backgrounds. Today I was working on refining a B/G for one of my Mary Poppins Penguin cels, and I thought I'd show the process, step by step. There were actually eleven layers. Here I am sharing the major steps only.

    On rare occasions, a background will appear for a frame or two by itself, before a character enters or leaves a scene. They are the exception, however. Usually the animated character(s) move all over the scene.

    So then, the concept is (with DVD screen caps) to look for the places where the character is NOT. I layer these in Photoshop like a jigsaw puzzle, blending the seams where the pieces meet, and eventually I have a completed background. As an example, here is a montage of just a few of the background fragments this POPPINS piece required.


    I darkened the underlying original frame cap, so the background pieces really stand out. This shows exactly how the process works. You can clearly see in each successive frame a different piece of the background, with which I can cover the penguins, thus re-creating the entire original background.

    It's a painstaking process. This one took about five hours. I was lucky here, the colors matched perfectly frame to frame. The really tough ones are long pans where the various sections' colors actually change hue, brightness and/or tint. All this can be adjusted, but it compounds the complexity of the process exponentially.

    Since this POPPINS setup has people in it, there was one more step than usual: they had to be digitally erased on each layer so their original key frame position remained.

    Remember, you can always click on the images to see a larger version.

    This first image shows about half of the left penguin removed:

    A few layers later, most of the left penguin is removed:

    Again, a few layers later, most of both penguins have been eliminated:

    Here's the finished background. Notice there is a slight artifact of the left penguin's flipper on Mary's dress. This is good - it will help with exact placement of the cel overlay. It will disappear underneath the cel, as will all the re-created B/G art. But at least we got to see it, first!

    And just for fun, I took an earlier view of Mary turned toward Bert, and overlaid that, so you could see a finished image of Bert and Mary at tea, with the table set, no penguins, no flipper artifacts, and a beautiful unobstructed view of the background art.

    "Ain't it a beautiful day?"

    Source URL: http://lifestyleartsblogs.blogspot.com/2008/03/
    Visit Lifestyle Arts for daily updated images of art collection

Sea

Don't miss "ART CORNER RESTORATIONS!"

    There's a new post today of Art Corner animation art restorations on our companion blog, CELS AND SETUPS.

    Featured are original Disney production cels of Donald Duck and Peg Leg Pete.

    For some reason I am having problems with inserting the link. Please copy this URL,paste it into your browser, and away you'll go!

    http://celsandsetups.blogspot.com/2008/03/art-corner-restoration-pete-donald.htmlSource URL: http://lifestyleartsblogs.blogspot.com/2008/03/
    Visit Lifestyle Arts for daily updated images of art collection

Sun

LILO AND STITCH Pan Background


    Here I've recreated an entire pan B/G, and you'll recognize the far left and right elements from yesterday's post.

    Don't forget to click on it to see the larger version.

    Ain't technology grand??!!!Source URL: http://lifestyleartsblogs.blogspot.com/2008/03/
    Visit Lifestyle Arts for daily updated images of art collection

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