Mr. Coolman goes to Stuttgart...

We're happy to announce that two of the COOLMAN! shows; DEEP SEA BLUES and HOOTCHY KOOTCHY HAIKU, have been selected for the competition ANIMATED SERIES at the 13th Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film to take place on April 27 – May 2, 2006 in Stuttgart, Germany. This is a big deal and an honour.

As a change of pace, here's a taste of the storyboard from DEEP SEA BLUES, written by John van Bruggen and storyboarded by Steve Whitehouse. Steve was Flash animation designer for COOLMAN!, and also animator for the entire five minute DEEP SEA BLUES. Congrats to Steve!

Our animators for Hootchy Kootchy Haiku were: Jens Pindal, Daniela Strijleva and James Robertson of Iron Scythe fame. Congratulations, guys!

costume sketches...

These are both from an earlier time. I'm posting the green woman pretty much as I painted her. For the woman in the robe, I just goofed around with some free textures from a site that Gerben Steenks recommended:

http://www.mayang.com/textures/

Thanks Gur-B, for passing on the tip! Ain't blogging grand.



(Posted by Arna)

BG Fun!

Because he does them so well, we can't resist posting this. It's a Clive Powsey bg. The image links to Clive's blog.

waiting...

Here are some sketches John did while in a hospital waiting room, and on the GO train:

those damn, dirty apes...

Arna's son, Max Douglas (AKA Salgood Sam), has a new comic out, scripted by Ty Templeton & Joe O'Brien and coloured by Max's friend and fellow Montreal comic artist Bernie Mireault.

Here's a link to the Mr. Comics site for more cool preview pix and info.

Here's a link to an interview with Max.

King Horse

Just to shake it up a bit. This one's a not so recent sketch by Arna. Guache and india ink.

these are the guys whose house we live in...

Kiki on a chair...

Jasper on the prowl...

Happy New Year All!

Have a merry one!

We wish all of you a Merry Christmas and all the best for 2006! Thanks to everyone who visited our blog in the last few months. We've enjoyed the chance to meet you and to re-connect with so many of our friends. We've found inspiration visiting amazing creative bloggers around the world. Here's to 2006 and more blog adventures for us all!

John took this photo in the village when we were last in New York.

Clive Powsey

esteemed background artist and fine painter... started blogging and you must visit. The paintings and drawings speak for themselves.

Clive Powsey's new blog

Clive's website

show us yer wienies part 2...

Updated December 18_05:

Here are some more wienies from far and wide. To add your wienie dog drawing: post your wienie on your blog and please let us know in the comments on this post, so we can copy your dog and put it up here.

By the way, there seems to be many ways to (miss) spell dachsund daschund dashound and the American Kennel Club spelling: dachshund. So we've got all kinds of spellings on this post. No biggy as far as I'm concerned. As well, I misspelled the word 'wiener' and I've corrected the spelling most places except in the comments.

From the delightful Michael Schlingmann of DRAWNOGRAPHY fame: Dachshund (or Dackel for short) is indeed the correct spelling, Dachs being the german word for Badger and hund being the German word for hound. Bread originally with short enough legs to run at speed through a badgers home and flush them out towards the hunters.

According to the Kennel Club: The Dachshund temperament is clever, lively and courageous to the point of rashness, persevering in above and below ground work, with all the senses well-developed. Any display of shyness is a serious fault.

Note: all these wienies are copyright of their respective creators!

From Pat Pakula:
From Jeff Shelly:
Two from Smook:




From Elliot Cowan:


From Gerald, San Rafael, Ca:


From Smook again:


From John T Quinn:


One more from Jeff Shelly :


From Steve Daye:

show us yer wienies*!

Because we saw a fine drawing of three dachshunds* on Jeff Shelly's blog...

Here's an oldie, by Arna, in watercolour on cheapo manilla paper. I had two of these wonderful dogs as a kid -- mine were named Susie and Hank -- so I have a soft spot for them. Plus, they're fun to draw! Anybody else want to show us your sausage dogs? We can make it a dachshund* sketch-off!

*Thanks to Michael Schlingmann for the correct spelling of the breed name and Smook for the correct spelling of the word 'wienies'.

Eve...

From John (about 1980) ... Collage.

Acrylic paint over two glued together calendar photographs. The photo on the left included flowers, which probably suggested the Garden of Eden idea... hence 'Eve in the Garden.' That would make the striped dangly bit the snake, of course. I'm not sure where the numbers and arrows came from, though. It's a mystery!


Arna goofed around in photoshop to get this blue version:



This one below is the original:

Papillon

a short film directed by: Antoine Antin & Jenny Rakotomamonjy: click here

more juvenilia...

Continuing with the theme of posting stuff we did when we were younger:

This one's Arna's. The original is a 'stream of consciousness' doodle of the sort that I used to do often... just start drawing and stop when I felt like it with no big picture plan in mind. There's something wonderfully liberating about the process.

Original: felt-tip marker on cheap mountboard, circa 1969...possibly earlier!

I just now made the three variations in photoshop.

one...

two...
three...

revisiting the past...

We've been looking through our older drawings and paintings. Here's the first in a series of posts of things we found from our back pages.

Self portrait, watercolour by John, painted in Florence.