Schoolism!!!!

Hi everyone! Here's a great interview with Team AE David Levy! Thanks to our wonderful friend Bobby Chiu and his wonderful Schoolism, which we are proud to be part of! Austin Texas here we come ;)

Enjoy the interview HERE

More Plug news and thank yous

Hi everyone, its been about two weeks since we screened Plug at the Gnomon School of Visual Arts. The response has been fantastic and I am thrilled and honored that you all have enjoyed our hard work. Plug was definitely a great experience and a journey I am happy I was on. Thank you all very much. io9.com we are honored and ecstatic to have been featured and liked on your site.

PLUG is now a VIMEO staff pick. Ever since I watched and followed religiously all Philip Bloom's videos the day I subscribed to VIMEO many years ago, it was a dream of mine to be there. Done! Vimeo I love you.  LINK to i09.com and VIMEO

I am very happy everyone is enjoying the short, the making of and the soundtrack. Thank you all very much! More coming soon! All the best

David

Enjoy more PLUG pics

The making of PLUG

An inside look at the making of my short Plug! Enjoy and thank you for the kind remarks everyone!

David

The Making of Plug

Art Explorers present PLUG

Its been an amazing experience. One that I am thankful and appreciative of. Thank you everyone for your support and friendship. It means the world to me. Here it is I hope you enjoy! See you on our next "Art Exploration"

David

PLUG the MOVIE Link here or Clik Pic above

Exploring PLUG

Exploring PLUG

Years ago I went on a long road of working on a project that would be created from scratch. All of the things I love. Science fiction, vehicles, robots, industrial design, film and exploring art. I have worked on many projects, all of them teaching me something different. This project would be fun,  creative and more importantly challenging. That doesn't mean it would not take endless hours and hard work, but it would be something I would be personally passionate about. A journey for myself. Along that journey friends and people would help me bring this project into fruition, as I also learned how to surround myself with the right people. Building props, creating designs and filming actions scenes in the salt flats would all be worth the effort. It was a hard journey, but nothing is ever simple when passion and care drives you. We are never satisfied as artists or artisans. Striving is part of the journey we face, the struggles build character and make us better sculptors, better carpenters...etc.

Saturday October 25 at the Gnomon School of Visual Arts we will present PLUG. If you're in the area please come by, see the screening  and say hi. We will have several talks about making the short film and a gallery showing of art and props that were made.

In the meantime enjoy some pics and the plug trailers.  And stay tuned for the short film coming online in few days! See you soon, on the next Art Explorer's adventure...

Sketching

I usually carry a sketchbook with me all the time. If it's not on me it's in my truck. Nowadays smartphones are phenomenal to gather reference and snap pictures one can use for later reference. But to me, sketching on the spot ,whether a particular tree in the Grand Canyon or an elephant in a zoo, there is a huge difference. Sketching trains your eye to observe the important things in a subject. The gestures and shapes that you , as an artist on the spot, will pick out as important "landmarks". Rather than seeing how many whiskers are on a cat or how many buttons are on that jacket we are focusing on an overall feeling. Shapes, silhouette and landmarks that make lines important. Yes details are important but without a strong foundation, they are all useless and irrelevant.

We are going to cover some things that work for us in approaching a sketch. What do we look for? Where do we start? What is my goal? 

 Q - What do you look for?

Manu - in approaching a subject I will look for its general shape. Back to basic cubes, cylinders, spheres etc. nothing new there, "When you feel you are in trouble, go back to your basics" Rickson Gracie.

That statement is meant for martial arts, but it applies art perfectly. In drawing animals at zoos or parks, I break the animal in three parts. Forequarters, belly and hindquarters. I look for angles and landmarks in the silhouettes. My sketching approaches can vary from using lots of gesture lines to what I call noodling. I remember once hearing animator Glen Keane talk about this type of sketching. Your pencil make lots and lots of lines trying to find that perfect one that will do the job. One important rule is to stay loose. Do not focus on hair, eyelids or minor detail. Learn to observe. This is what sketching is.

David - My view on sketching is based on surfaces. I enjoy working with masses and contrasts. The line to me is a way to organize my thoughts, design and composition on the page, where I come to life is during the contrast part of sketching. Of course, the line will always be the foundation, but strong contrasts allow me to quickly validate or cancel volumes and shapes. As one of my friend, Joe Watmough mentioned before, it is as if you were an alien who just landed on earth, and you are seeing light and shapes for the first time. By detaching yourself from the subject you observe, you can attain a truer view of it.

Team AE

Finally sailing

I may have been silent over the last few weeks, but I truly wanted to put my sailing foot where my mouth was.... so to speak. Few weeks ago, I finally decided it was time for me to act on my intense trimaran passion. As I was scouring the internet at night for trimaran news as I do daily (yes it is an addiction) I encountered a used ad for one of the smallest trimaran available on the market. The WETA.

 

But don't be fooled. That little thing has almost 20 m2 of sail total, in short, it is a sailing rocket. The plus, it is also very easy to sail in low winds, making it perfect in easy conditions to take my wife with me :)  (and my daughter, when she is old enough!)

This was not a decision I took lightly, as I had already done in depth research on that thing. For the novice out there, New Zealand, has one of the most amazing and passionate sailing community, so it is without surprise, that they would come up with such a nifty design. If you look at the Americas Cup crews, a big part of the sailors where from down under. They breathe and love sailing, a little bit the same goes where I grew up, in France, where sailing is truly considered as one of the most exciting sport, especially multihull sailing (more than one hull).

Designing a sailboat, whatever the size, is not small feat. That is probably why there are so few "classics" on the water. I call a classic, a boat that has a great following for very specific reasons, whether it is it's "sportiness" like the Laser, or it's ease of setup and use, like the Optimist. The weta, arrives in a market, where the economy is harsh in 2010, and people want easy setups and tons of speed (but safe!). The boat is not cheap (but still very affordable for a multihull), but used (like the one I found) you can find great deals too.

Since I can not really windsurf in L.A (winds are too low), and I now have a family, I thought this was probably the best way for me to fulfill my passion. Not enough wind for windsurf? Ok, let's get more sail area!

When I saw the price of Hull#352 online, I had a mixed feeling of excitement and uneasiness. Great price, but can it still sail? I knew that the picture would not be pretty, but after discussing with my wife, we thought it was worth the trip down the coast to go look at it. 

My uneasiness was partly proven... 

My wife, Amy checking that the hull is still sound....

That poor Hull#352 had been left rotting in the sun, partly protected, and mostly covered with a serious layer of guano (bird poop). Nevertheless, despite the superficial disastrous situation, the hull was sound and the deck fitting too, just a tad rusty, and the carbon coating gone. A neglected beauty, that Amy and I were not going to abandon there. Even the rudder which had been left in the water by mistake (or abandon) had grown a beautiful family of seashells which was reproducing at a "rabbit under viagra and redbull" rate.

Now the other scary part was the sails, the bag was there, laying outside, and my hart was beating as I reluctantly opened the quiver and unrolled them. To my surprise and joy, the sails were almost mint! Not much outing it seemed. I have owned many many sails over the year during my windsurfing times, and I have seen my fair share of used sails (and created a lot of them too!), but this was not it, these sails had been out maybe 10 times at most! Just a little bit of aging on the main sail luff, and knowing gaastra well, I knew that such a brand would not disappoint.

After a few discussions with the Yacht broker, we agreed on a price, and after a week of back and forth and a very nice broker who built the trailer to carry it (Paul Leake) at Breakwater Yachts in Oceanside, off I went with my friend Tim Noyes to go pick it up! Tim almost lost a foot as we were latching the hull on the trailer, but ended up with just a scratch, thanks for helping! 

 

 The boat waiting for us at the dock, and as we are dismantling it.

 I had a few minute of sailing it to bring it to the ramp. It was short, but already amazing, and the jib was not even up :) 

The road back home to Marina went great (despite the amazing 405 traffic being even more nightmarish than usual). I left the hull at the Boat Yard in Marina after a night spent at local multihull guru Mike Leneman (thanks for giving #352 a place to sleep!). Going for waxing and carbon recoating. 

Will keep you posted next on naming the boat, and hopefully, some more sailing!!

David/vyle/Levy

Field Sketching

Hello and welcome!

I hope everyone has enjoyed the direction of our Art Explorers Blog. I am about to go on a pretty amazing trek and was resupplying my art bag and thought I would share what I carry as far as art supplies. These supplies are what I take with me to zoos, out on a hike, travel and it's always usually in my vehicle.

All of the things pictured above are packed inside an Oakley laptop bag that I've been using for years. I'm actually looking into a new bag that seems like it will work, but for now its the same bag.                                                              

The art supplies I carry are the following:

China Marker black and white. I used these years ago when I was animating traditionally and have been since. The big size of the lead stops the drawing of detail and one can focus on shape and mass. The white china marker I also use to highlight drawing on the brown paper I like to draw on.

Copic Markers:

I like to carry the earth tones and a grey marker to do quick gestures and layouts. I like to draw using just markers as well. The drawing of the cowgirl was from a horse clinic and was drawn using a marker. I can afterwards tighten my rough using a darker marker or a brush pen. I carry a couple of marker refills in my bag as well. Usually a grey and a sand color.

Caran d'Ache supra color soft water color pencil. I love these pencils. I usually use the white pencil to highlight on my marker drawings when I'm done.   

                                                 

Faber Castell brush pens. Any brush pen will do, I just like the variety of colors they carry. I actually do an alteration to the tips on most of them. I get my leatherman scissors and actually cut the brush tip to fray it. I like the variety I get in the line work. I like  to turn the pen as I draw and get a variety of lines or a repetitive pattern. I'll do a video tutorial soon and explain. The horse is an example of the lines one can get with this frayed tip. I do carry unfrayed ones as well :)

Bic Ballpoint Pen. Old reliable. Its waterproof, its very inexpensive, its fun and I've been doodling with these since high school.

Pentel Brush Pen. A great pen that I recommend playing with. Its brush tip is great for sketching and the variety of brush lines it can make is beautiful. The only downside is its not waterproof. I have refilled and experimented using different waterproof inks. The Rapidiograph ink seems to work the best and hasn't clogged yet. Unclogging these brushes can be a task so be careful if trying other inks in the tube. The lioness was drawn with the Pentel brush pen, the thick Copic marker and the handy correction fluid pen.
Correction fluid pens are great. My studio mate David Levy was responsible for the influence. I actually call the brand I use "the Levy White."

Pentel Waterbrush. This is great to carry and use with watercolor pencils and portable watercolor kits. I have also used them with a drop of ink in them and they're great. Just be aware and dont let the brush sit too long or it will clog and again not fun.

The water color kit I use is this Koi Kit by Sakura. A good variety of colors and Sakura is a reputable company. The colors are nice and bright. The kit opens up and has a thumb ring which helps one keep the watercolor palette easy to hold and handle.

Pencils of course. I try a variety and have been happy with Derwent so far. I found a company that makes "Cedar" natural pencils and Like them as well. ( They smell great ran thru an electric  sharpener.) Blackwing pencils of course are great. I also use Col Erase pencils, usually blue and crimson red.  Speaking of sharpeners heres what I recommend.

I found this KUM long point sharpener and like it a lot. Im weird that I love the lead to be out quite a bit, just my preference. That's the main reason my main sharpener is a knife. (The whittling technique can't be beaten) But this sharpener does do a good job.

And there's the Leatherman. Everybody should have one of these. I use the knife and file on it to help sharpen in the field all the time. The file is two sided and the rough file works great. This tool has helped me out millions of times but that's a different post. If your going to buy a multi tool spend the money on a good quality one, it is well worth it believe me. 

The Sign Pen. One of my favorite pens ever! If you have never drawn with one go get one!!! Pentel Sign Pen. My fellow Art Explorer, Thierry Doizon introduced it to me when we shared a studio together years ago. The feel of it on paper is great!  There is also a flexible tip one as well. Super flexible and can give you those great thick and thin lines. I prefer the original tip, looks a bit like rice soaked in black ink. The Rhino is drawn with the sign pen and brush pen shadows. Only downside. Not waterproof :( sigh!

The animal below is the reason for my upcoming journey. They are suffering in numbers due to them being slaughtered for their horns. Going on quite the "Art Explorers Adventure". I will keep all you posted on the journey and hope to post while there.  Thank you Cabelas and Kuhl for your awesome sponsorship!

Now its your turn! Tell us what you have in your Art packs!!! Any certain bag you like? Certain supplies? Any art packing secrets? Please share them with us! We are always looking for the perfect art bag between all of us we will find it!!!

Best to you all

MANu

Art Explorers class at Gnomon!

Join the class now! Gnomon Masterclass

Join Art Explorers now, at the Gnomon Masterclass until the 3rd of July! I will be giving details on how to design a vehicle for the entertainment industry in an instructional video in 5 chapters, including theory, 3ds Max basics and a lot of Photoshop tricks! We will also be posting soon on this blog, free tools for artists, such as PS brushes gradients and more!

Downwind run

Very happy to start a new project focused on something directed outward. Enough monitor sun tan.

I grew up sailing. Ever since I was around 6 in the 70's, I began sailing on optimists, ramping up to 420's, cruising and racing for years with my dad between Gibraltar and Capri, then, during my rebel years away from my father, windsurfing all over the Mediterranean.

For many years I abandoned that passion which truly was a part of me: to ambition, dreams of recognition and pure excitement. I never thought that not fulfilling that passion would take a toll on me, but it did.

Many years later, my newly married wife and I decided to move to Marina Del Rey in California. As I was having trouble dealing with Father's passing away, my wife and I began long walks around the Marina, which helped me rekindle with my lost love of gliding on the water.

I now again have a true dream, to be back on the water, and find the things that truly filled me with happiness: winds in the sails, dolphins and loved ones as companions, the camaraderie of preparing a hot soup before taking my watch as the sun disappears behind the horizon, and our magnificent galaxy above my head. Long life to Art Explorers! Let the adventure begin.