Chris Mitchell

Exquisite Corpse

2011-12-09T03:50:00.001-08:00

Been really busy as usual lately. Apart from working on the vis dev at Disney Feature.....I recently just finished 6 pages of comix for a group comic book titled Exquisite Corpse. This project was originally proposed years ago and it is finally nearing completion.

Honestly, it was quite difficult to do for me. At least...when I was starting out. You'd think that doing storyboards would be similar to doing comics...but it's not. Comics require a skill for consolidating and economizing panels. What I mean by this is...in storyboards...we can draw 8 panels of someone opening a bottle...but in comics...in one panel...you may have to show someone opening a bottle with 12 breakdancers spinning in the background while a meteor shower is happening. And all of it has to read and be clear.

That kind of discipline is also similar to one panel gag cartoons where many elements need to read to form the gag in one picture. This was definitely a challenge for me.

The other difficult thing...was deciding what style I was going to do it in. Since I'm not a comics guy...I had no set way of doing things. This was VERY difficult..and there were several attempts at the first page. I finally decided to do something in a limited palette....Grey tones and B&W...and I used red for effect.

I was actually pleased with the finished result...and the best part of this experience was...I had so much fun doing it..I think I will continue this comic...and see where the story goes...I'll keep ya posted..In the meantime..Look for the anthology when it hits the shelves. In the meantime...here's a preview of 2 of the pages(not in order):

New designs for poster..

2011-10-12T04:36:00.000-07:00

Wow...I haven't posted in sooo long..as usual..Been so busy with the shop, Q Pop....and also working a full time gig at Disney Feature Animation...I know, I wasn't wanting to go back to work in animation. But the guys at Disney are really nice..and the project actually looked good for a change.

Anyway, in my spare time I have to design the flyers and posters for the exhibitions at Q Pop....

Sometimes using artwork that is in the show by other artists...but also sometimes making new art specifically for the event flyers...

like I did for the poster for the next event at Q Pop..

This is actually a combo of 2 heads I painted for the show itself..

The Super Big Micro Show

2010-12-06T03:32:00.000-08:00

Hey Everyone!!

I have a small piece in the Super Big Micro Show coming up at Gallery Nucleus. Of course it's small, it's a micro show...duh. Here's a peek at the rough sketch for all you guys that won't make it.Everyone else...there are so many good people in this show..you are dim in the wits if you miss it!

No Time

2010-11-09T03:00:00.000-08:00

As a lot of you may already know by now...I'm opening a shop/ mini gallery in Los Angeles. It's called Q Pop and if you haven't been following our blog yet..please do so here.....http://qpopshop.blogspot.com/

The blog is in it's infant stage but I plan to update it quite often...probably more often than this blog(which wouldn't be hard to do)..haha..

But anyway, opening a shop is a pretty big deal...and it is very time consuming...so I haven't really had time to post any artwork lately...but I will be posting some in the very near future...so please be patient and check back soon.

Sweet Streets 2 Show at Nucleus Gallery...still time..GO!!

2010-09-21T04:17:00.000-07:00

A very good friend of mine Sebastian Hiroshi of 6% DokiDoki fame was doing a fashion show in the new Sweet Streets Show at Nucleus Gallery in Alhambra...and the curator Caro was nice enough to ask me to do a painting for the show. This actually was the 3rd opportunity for me to be in a Nucleus show but for some reason(mostly my laziness) it just never happened before. This time I completed a small painting and was in process of finishing a bigger one but just couldnt manage it on time...just not enough hours in the day to do everything...But I AM finishing it up anyway..and will post it soon to get some feedback from all you guys. In the meantime...here's a look at my piece in the show. It's all real paint..no digital..which I don't do that often. It looks even better in person so if you can make it to the gallery..please check it out. Plus there are some other amazing works there.I think it's still going on for another 14 days so you got time.

New Post!! Unbelievable!!!

2010-08-20T03:22:00.000-07:00

HAHA!! It's true...this is actually a new post!! And this time I swear it won't be one year before the next one...promise. Anyway...here's some sickie monsters I sketched...have fun..more to come..

Oh, and I apologize to any chinese fans who got accidentally deleted from my comments...I was getting a lot of chinese spam so I had to delete it all..since I can't read chinese..there may have been some casualties..sorry!!

Cloudy End Title Sequence

2009-11-04T14:05:00.000-08:00

So Cloudy came out and thankfully it did well..YAY! Thanks to all that went and saw it.
Those of you that saw it may have noticed the 2-d animated end title sequence.A lot of people have been mentioning it and most recently there was a post on Cartoon Brew about it..with a link to an interview with the director Todd Hemker of Yellowshed.Sadly but not surprisingly, there is no mention of me in this interview...but more sadly..I seem to have been missing from the credits of designers(this has been corrected now..Thanks Justin!!!). Well this was most disappointing and I thought I'd have to write and explain exactly what I did on this thing anyway!!!HAHAH..
Basically...There were 3 designers for the look of this sequence. Justin Thompson(who production designed the entire movie), Paul Rudish, and myself.And I need to also add Mike Kurinsky here for color keying it all.. Originally, we wanted to actually create all the assets to the piece ourselves...but as we realized the schedule was ridiculously short..we had to relinquish some of the work to Duck Studios who was handling the production side of things(animation, etc).. It appears Soyeon Kim did an amazing job of finishing what we couldn't..Paul Rudish did most of the main character designs..I did a few and Justin did a few.. Paul basically boarded the sequence..and all of us did BG's...Justin and Paul were in charge of directing Yellowshed...and of course we were ALL working under Chris and Phil(the directors of the movie).I never got to meet any of my fellow workers at Duck because I would stay back at Sony and try to push out some more paintings.It ended up being very collaborative and the end result came out very impressive considering what little time everyone had. Check out the interview and then check out the sequence on youtube if you haven't seen it yet.
http://www.artofthetitle.com/2009/10/26/cloudy-with-a-chance-of-meatballs/

Here are some of the character designs and Backgrounds I painted for it. The BG's were done as assets and multiplane camera moves were going to be applied so they aren't really layed out to be looked at as non moving pieces of art...anyway..enjoy!

CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS!

2009-09-17T17:08:00.000-07:00

It's finally happening. The movie I was so busy working on....is finally coming out!!!! YAY! It starts tomorrow Sept. 18. And I have to say..I've never been happier to have worked on a project. It came out AWESOME!!! Those of you who know me...know that I am NOT easy to please. Sure, there are some things I wish hadn't been edited out or killed by studio interference...but I can safely recommend it to anyone who likes real cartoons...funny ones..Not the ones that make you all sad with miscarriages or barrenness or whatever.No offense to any movie in particular but it seems to be a trend to get VERY serious with our animation lately.Nothing wrong with serious films but what happened to being funny? I like the funny ones. I like rubber hose animation and stuff you can't see in live action...More of that please! So everyone go see Cloudy and have fun and look at all the pretty stuff all the talented people made. And please stay for the end credits..because I designed them with my buddies Justin Thompson and Paul Rudish(I'll post some artwork from that soon).In the meantime...here's some screen graphics I designed for Flint's lab computers. These aren't in the "art of" book..they dissed me..haha..but hopefully you will enjoy.And please tell everyone you know to go see the movie! So we can make more good ones.

No more eggplant!

2008-07-28T18:09:00.000-07:00

Here are some really quick sketches I did of my lovely friend Jeya."Quick" being the operative word here..I'm still working on it. Maybe in 2 decades I'll be able to capture how beautiful she is..until then I'll just draw her hideous.

Kaiju Krisp

2008-01-31T09:18:00.000-08:00

Here's a little something I did for the Cereal Killers Book that Kreepsville Industries will be putting out. I was having some trouble getting my file over to Victor Von Kreep and I hope I made it on time(last minute as usual). If not then this may be your only chance to see this.Enjoy!Please check out all the other really great artists doing work for it too..and don't forget to pick up a copy.

Q POP GREETING CARD #2

2007-12-18T23:35:00.000-08:00

YAY!My 2nd greeting card just came back from the printers.The character's name is CHEW.He's a bit emotional as you can tell from the solitaire tear from his eye.HA! But just like Q-chan..he's part of the new world I've been developing.More fun stuff will be on it's way soon but in the meantime you can buy some awesome cards.They're available on their own or you can get it bundled with card #1 in a pack of 10(5 of each type).Just click on one of the buy now buttons to the right.Hope you guys like it.

Bob Logan's Rocket Town!

2007-12-18T11:42:00.000-08:00

My friend Bob Logan made an awesome book! Please check it out..it's the perfect gift for the holidays!Available at his site:
bobopoly

GREETING CARDS(not just for New Years!)

2007-12-11T19:44:00.000-08:00

Special Thanks to all that have bought the 1st greeting card. If you haven't yet you can now buy them right here on this blog!!! Just look over there in the right corner and you will see the BUY NOW buttons. I encourage all to buy, of course...and of course please buy the 10 card set(cause you have so many friends to send to!) I also wanted to clarify my crappy marketing in the last post....this card is NOT specifically for New Years(you can send it all year!) so please don't think you're out of time..You have many months to enjoy with your new card friends..

NEW YEARS CARDS!!!

2007-12-06T02:06:00.000-08:00

It's finally happening. Q POP(my company with Miki) is just about ready to launch! The website should be finished in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, we've already begun to sell some Chinese New Year's cards for the Year of the Rat 2008.You can use these cards for regular New Year too..AND you can also use them afterward too. "Gung Hei Fat Choi" means "Congratulations and be prosperous" so you can send them out whenever you feel like spreading the warm fuzzies! That's our company mascot, Q (Q-chan for our japanese friends)giving some Emmentaler to his furry friend. The card is nicely offset printed and comes with a plain white envelope. It's blank inside so you can write whatever you want. Please get some and support your old peeps(me).. We put a set of 5 and 10 up on ebay right now(search "q pop card"). You can also just message me if you are interested in some.Free Delivery in LA..haha. Even if you don't usually send cards out, these are worth a go.. non?

2007-11-08T12:21:00.001-08:00

Mein Poop

2007-08-29T10:07:00.000-07:00

Grump

2007-08-28T18:55:00.001-07:00

What is she holding.....

2007-08-24T10:03:00.000-07:00

in that hand?

does anyone like this stuff?

2007-08-23T18:17:00.000-07:00

Just having fun with shapes..

DOODIE

2007-08-23T18:05:00.000-07:00

Often times, in story meetings ...alot of doodling happens.

Monday morning

2007-08-20T11:38:00.000-07:00

and instead of work I did these...ENJOY!

Princess

2007-08-15T17:58:00.000-07:00

A bunch of people at my work did quick little drawings and paintings for a friend's friend's 4 year old daughter who tragically has cancer. She really loves princesses so here are some I did real quick.

SQUEEZE FACE

2007-08-09T15:33:00.000-07:00

This is a napkin sketch of my friend Jeni Yang eating a lemon at lunch.

Pippi PooPoo

2007-07-21T13:42:00.000-07:00

Here's a new illustration I did for a Pippi Longstocking show in Italy.
Here's the info: http://www.illustrakids.com/
So if your in Italy..please check it out..or just go to Italy cause it's fun!

3 in a row

2007-05-22T12:21:00.001-07:00

phone doodles

BOOBS...

2007-05-22T12:12:00.001-07:00

and no arms? more doodle poop

It's time....

2007-05-21T10:40:00.000-07:00

to post something new!!This is just something I doodled out...however, I'd like to point out something that I realized while doing it.I find inking to be a bitch...I have the greatest respect for all the great comics guys who can bust out fluid and clean inks(like my buddy Stephen Destefano!)..They make it look effortless.It makes me weep....tears of ink.

2006-12-13T02:17:00.000-08:00

Here's a bit more from Super Robot Monkey..This was an episode called Lords of Soturix 7.I kind of liked the bone armor fashion idea these kids sported.

O LAWD

2006-12-06T11:45:00.000-08:00

I'm on a role! Here's a rough piece I did for a Jesus concept show.I like how rough and scratchy it is.That was intentional..I swear.

SRMTHFG! WTF?

2006-12-05T22:52:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted in ages...Here are some ruff character designs I did for a show called Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go!(whew).I was THE one and only character designer for the first 24 episodes. The shows creator is Ciro Nieli...who probably could have designed the whole thing himself(he's awesome)..but for some reason he let me go and do my own thing for the most part. It was a blast! and it's a great show! The 12 people who saw it will tell you.These few desings are from the 1st episode.Unfortunately these r scans from faxes but I'll be posting some more soon and those are from originals.

Grandmaster Flash!

2006-09-22T00:33:00.000-07:00

Do you remember Samurai Jack? Here are 2 old scans I found of some characters I designed.Are they worth posting? Who knows?

Doodles and Potato

2006-09-17T11:04:00.000-07:00

SKETCH N' SNIFF

2006-09-15T00:12:00.000-07:00

OK..It's been way too long since I posted anything but I'm a lazy bum and I don't have anything scanned to post except for these pages from my sketchbook.....mixed bag i know...

I go Thai!

2006-06-20T13:11:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of posts guys...but I was out running around southeast asia...Thailand to be precise..and it was pretty amazing...I really don't want to create some sort of lame travelogue here but there were a few things that I wanted to show you..

Like some lion sphincter.

and some Kmer influenced art...

and temples galore

Mang?

2006-05-18T00:26:00.000-07:00

This is another older peice that I'm posting while i scan stuff and make way for the new.I'm not quite sure what style I was going for here and even though it was unintentional when I was finished I wondered if I had just painted myself.

GO FOR THE GOLD:Meathaus sketchbook

2006-05-14T18:10:00.000-07:00

hey everybody....this is a bit old but my work is in this sketchbook along with 30 other INCREDIBLE artists...definitely check this out..there are previews on the Meathaus site and a link to buy it..

\GO FOR THE GOLD! A meathaus sketchbook by 31 hot rockin dudes in the following order: James Jean, Dave Kiersh, Paul Tibbitt, P. Williams, Brenden Buford, Muwen Pan, Kevin Fagin, Chris Mitchell, Tomer Hanuka, Ralph Bakshi, Chris McD, Thomas Herpich, John Kricfalusi, Farel Dalrymple, Katie Rice, Seth Scriver, R. Cory, Kenichi Hoshine, Jim Campbell, Celia Bullwinkel, Chad Coyle, JL, Brandon Graham, Jay Sacher, Wil Branca, Jim Mahfood, Kenny Pittenger, Casey Alexander, Theo Edmands, Rob Donnelly, Stephen Gilpin.

This book is the second in the GO FOR THE GOLD! series, the first being a small run hand made jobbie, it sold out and I don't even have a copy! Well this one is print-on-demand through lulu.com so everyone can have one! A very sexy deal for over 200 pages of sketches straight from Meathaus regulars and cartoon bigshots personal sketchbooks. Color cover, b/w interior. $12.95

another attempt!

2006-05-14T12:18:00.000-07:00

Here we go again....this one I did for my mom real quick

Attempt at Painting

2006-05-14T00:17:00.000-07:00

Here's a little illustration type painting I did for a Spongebob crew art show we had last year.

WÜLF HAMMÏR gig coming soon!

2006-05-13T20:16:00.000-07:00

My band WÜLF HAMMÏR is preparing a show soon so please don't miss it..